Crumbs

 

 

 

 

Crumbs

 

 

 

 

Crumbs

by Miha Mazzini

Translated from the Slovenian
by Maja Visenjak-Limon

 

 

 

First published in the UK, February 2014

Freight Books

49-53 Virginia Street

Glasgow, G1 1TS

www.freightbooks.co.uk

Copyright © Miha Mazzini 1987

Translation copyright © Maja Visenjak-Limon, 2004

The moral right of Miha Mazzini to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without either prior permission in writing from the publisher or by licence, permitting restricted copying. In the United Kingdom such licences are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 0LP.

All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental

A CIP catalogue reference for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-908754-39-4

eISBN 978-1-908754-40-0

Typeset by Freight in Garamond

Printed and bound by Bell and Bain, Glasgow

 

 

 

 

 

Contents

 

Part One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Part Two

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Part Three

Chapter 12

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The most amazing fact about Tito's Yugoslavia was its lack of a singular, uniform identity: the country spread across a large part of the Balkans and was an incredible mixture of cultures, languages and religions (Orthodox, Muslim, Christian, Communist - you name it). I grew up in the northern industrial town of Jesenice, a town that was considered to be a microcosm of sorts, a Yugoslavia in miniature: people from all over the country came to work in the town's foundries and brought with them their own brands of cultures and religions. Even when Tito died in 1980, it seemed as though that amazing coexistence would last.

Growing up, I noticed that some people in the human river that flooded the streets of the town to and from the factory three times a day were trying desperately to be different, but the models we had to choose from were limited. It was a small, isolated town, and films at the local cinema were the only real sources of “foreign” images we had access to: tough guys with golden chains around their necks; cowboys, both American and Mexican; and of course a few Indians in costumes seen in the East German westerns.

I suffered from such a lack of identity as a kid that my favourite comic book hero was
The Invisible Man
; that's probably why I always loved the films where one of the
characters, who is practically non-existent throughout most of the film, is revealed at the end to be a writer telling everybody how it really was and forcing us to realise that we were watching his story all that time.

My first thought, then, was to write a script, but I had to be realistic and ask myself who would want to film it. So I decided to write a novel instead; a prequel to a future script. I was working part time as a night watchman where I had a lot of time to think about the story and characters, and I had an hour or two for typing during the days after I put my baby daughter to sleep. It seems to me today that a good part of
Crumbs
is typical male baby-sitting stuff — I was writing about the things I was without at the time (booze, sex, poetry readings…). The style of the writing was definitely born out of baby-sitting circumstances: short sentences meant that I didn't have to press so many keys on the typewriter and make so much noise; short paragraphs because I had to constantly check if my daughter was still sleeping.

When
Crumbs
was published in l987 it sold 54,000 copies in a language spoken by fewer than two million people. The novel won both the state and the opposition award for the best novel of the year and that was probably the only thing that both sides agreed upon in those late stages of the Yugoslavian disintegration. Unfortunately, after the book was published, inflation soared astronomically, queues for petrol formed, and the general state of the Yugoslavian economy took a dive. When I finally received my share of royalties from the publisher for the 54,000 sales, the money was only barely enough to buy a good (but not extravagant) dinner for my family and two friends. The fortune from my aspiring writing career would have to wait for better times.

As I was re-reading the novel before this publication, I spent the first few chapters just sighing over how much better I could do with the story today. But after a while I let go of my embarrassment and criticism, and the story hooked me once again. As it did for tens of thousands of readers at a time when all I had wanted to do was to write a prequel to a never-written and long-forgotten script and – without knowing it at the time – take the first of many steps in a long journey to find myself.

Miha Mazzini

Ljubljana, Slovenia

January, 2004

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PART ONE

I don't wanna hear about what the rich are doing

I don't wanna go to where the rich are going

– Joe Strummer, The Clash, 1977

Whatever next
.

– Ibro Hadžipuzić, The Foundry, 1983

 

 

 

1

After three days of starvation, I gave in and took it from under the bed. The small, round, dented tin. The label said something about minced beef.

I didn't have the strength to look for the can opener. Dizziness came in waves. I took a hammer and a kitchen knife and made a hole in the lid. With the tip of the knife I scraped out the contents and gulped them down like a wild animal. I picked bits of tobacco from the seams of my pockets, added the leftovers from the ashtray, and rolled a cigarette with a scrap of newspaper.

There was a mouthful of liquid left in the bottle on the windowsill. I gulped it down.

My stomach rejected the stale, lukewarm beer, which had been scorched by the sun. I barely managed to get to the bathroom and stick my head down the toilet. With a sad look, I said goodbye to the fragments of meat, stood on my tiptoes, and pulled the string on the cistern. There were only a few centimetres of water left. I took a cold shower. There was no hot water. Bare wires stuck out of the wall where the water heater should have been.

I put on clean underwear and socks. I immediately washed dirty ones with soap and hung them over the
window to dry the next day. I put on my combat jacket and jeans again. And tennis shoes. I nearly fainted when I bent over to tie the laces.

The lace tore in my hand. I couldn't prolong its life. There was no room. Knot after knot.

I took the piece of string from the toilet cistern and tied my tennis shoes. I straightened up and looked in the mirror. I waited for the fog in my eyes to clear.

The Cartier bottle was empty.

I was devastated. Even though I'd always known it would happen sooner or later. I was left without the one thing I could not do without.

I turned the bottle upside down, put a finger under it, and waited.

It fell.

The last drop of aftershave.

I dabbed it on my neck.

I put the top on the bottle and stood it upside down. Maybe more would come. I went out onto the street. Everything was grey: no color anywhere.

This always happens to me after three sleepless nights. I leaned against the wall and waited. The picture was moving and splitting in two, sometimes drowning in fog. A woman marched past. Her sweater suddenly became bright red. The contrast hurt my brain. Soon after, the colour came back, first to the sky, then to the smoke, and finally the houses took on a reddish tint. The dusty pavement was streaked with streams and puddles left by the melting snow. The foundry fence ranalong to my right.

The bar was empty. The waitress was sitting behind the counter drinking coffee and reading a trashy novel. She glanced at me. Then immediately carried on reading the book.

Written by me.

I sat at the table in the corner, made a pillow with my arms, and fell asleep. When I woke up, the first thing I noticed was a different body behind the counter. The book was lying by the till. It was dark outside. I looked around the room, searching for victims. At the next table there were some pensioners drinking spritzers. Next to the exit, a tall, muscular guy in a long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans was slowly sipping beer from a glass.

On his T-shirt there was a coat of arms and underneath it said “UCLA”.

That's supposed to mean the University of California Los Angeles, wherever that is. I bet he'd never been there. He probably hadn't even been to the primary school in Lower Bottomley. A worker at the foundry, an immigrant from the south. He came to the bar every night for a beer. When the waitress started putting the chairs on the tables, he would get up and leave. No hassle, no drunken singing, he would never even talk to anybody.

I didn't have enough strength in me for breaking new ground, I preferred to concentrate on my eyes, which were blurring and seeing double. I managed to control them somehow and concentrated on the table at the other end of the room, where a woman I didn't know was sitting with two vultures of my sort, Hippy and Poet. In front of them were half-empty bottles of beer. No doubt the woman had paid for them and, in doing so, bought the unconditional support of both parasites.

There was nothing left to do but join them. I pulled myself together, focused on a spot on Poet's bald patch, pushed my chair back, and rushed to their table before dizziness knocked me over. I grabbed a chair and sat down. I adjusted the image in front of my eyes and caught
a surprised expression on the woman's face and quite friendly looks from Hippy and Poet, as if they didn't mind me muscling in on the act. The woman must have been loaded. All three of us would be able to drink on her all evening.

‘What's up with you?' she asked. I looked her in the eyes. I didn't like her. She gave the impression of being bloated – no, inflated.

‘I'd like a beer.'

I got it.

I could feel the icy liquid slide down my throat. Then splash against the walls of my stomach. I could barely stop myself from throwing up and fell to sipping it slowly.