The Town

I closed the bureau something like 9:25 this evening. The shadows of the last customers were still roaming around to the sound of the printer and the final couple of contracts to be agreed on Friday. Through the Venetian blinds of the window the sound of the dusty street flew in the room soon to be left behind my summer sandals. The trams clattered outside on the heated rails and the sound of the last belated paces complemented the end of the working day harmony in D-mol. The venues and the street cafes slid heavily down to lock the show windows for another long and warm night.

Somewhere in the distance a roll of thunder floated to announce the forthcoming summer storm. Heavy rain drops beat to the rhythm of African drums on the sidewalk and the tin sills. The dusk covered the street in a cloak and a warm wind started to roll and sweep the early fallen leaves down the pavement. Somebody’s high heels rattled hurriedly to the marquee across the street. The warm rain began to lash and huge water bubbles split to drops over the warmth of the white heated asphalt. The people were crawling restlessly like ants that were in a hurry to gather the corns for the winter. ”How are you going on such height?”…The evening fell mildly on the towers of the castle and the town lights glittered all over the wet streets. Oh, such a cliché! Yet, the clichés of this place are the welcome drink you are handed in at the very entrance. The traffic lights reflected in the small ponds like a thousand of small moons ready for the night shift.

My high-heels rattled on the pavement and I felt the vapour from the asphalt over my toes. The sound of a hurdy-gurdy mellowed from the other corner and somebody was baking chestnuts down the street. An extraordinary before-Christmas treat. By the stairs of the underpass, an old man in worn-out clothes was selling even older books, neatly arranged on the very ground. As I ran down the stairs, he was tucking the cover to protect them from the uninvited rain. I grabbed one of his magazines and the coins scrounged in his coarse cupped hands. “How are you walking at such height, my dear?!...”, his caring voice saw me off. I hurried to my hideaway at Kalenić and the filled with tobacco smoke halls this place was as popular with as with the Bohemians who came to show off here. Men of the art, failed actresses and street musicians dived in arguments about life in general here on daily bases.

In the canteen-like noisy hall, unrecognized poets scribbled on the paper napkins the at-the-half-litre of wine rhymes, or their latest melodies. Famous painters scratched etudes, dazzled men painted love on the cloths in token of the local beauty who would find herself in the company that night. They elegantly paid the bills and those cloth the girl would take as a present in memory of this evening in this town. Some of the paper napkins were carefully tucked in one of the shabby pockets of worn-out jeans as a homework to dwell upon at later inspirations. Others were inevitably swept by the wind down the town street…a parade of one-night loves on the wind.

The evening embraced in its hug all belated, all misunderstood and all rejected to prevent them from the homesickness they might feel somewhere around 23:56 in the night. The town shrank to the form of a ring-shaped bun and befriended all those beautiful girls, their suitors and their declarations of love on the frayed cafeteria table cloths at Kalenić for a longer night to come.