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National Geographic August 1938I am crazy about mysterious things- DostoyevskyAt the beginning, January was warm and full of light. Made the concrete shine a little. But when the cold came, everything became the same - a whale washed up upon the doorstep of the slaughterhouse. The sky became a dome, as if the whole world suddenly existed here and here only and there could be nothing else. My boots became full of the heavy sighs of the crowds and for days and days, I retreated into our apartment as my skin came away and flew south, once more.The words stopped and doubts inflamed my toes. I didn't jump up and down with excitement for a long time.One day, prancing around the living room and talking to the stuffed toy penguin with sunglasses perched upon its nose, on a whim I pick up our disconnected phone.Instead, the phone almost jumps out of my hands, such is the force of the shock that possesses me. On the other end of our disconnected phone - two voices. Quieten and listen acutely. They hadn't heard anything. They talk of a man who has made the elevator shaft his home. That he's painting on the elevator walls paintings of the people in the building. I hang up the phone and race out of the building.For days I try to find him, entering various different blocks of flats. But nothing. Every time I have to wait for someone to enter or exit. Sometimes they look suspicious but no one has time to think about anything in this city but for the old people and I'm gone before they have a chance to begin to think.The days turn into weeks and still I can't find him. I ask people, and no one knows or cares. Or understands. By the time I realise the futility of my search, I realise that my doubts had disappeared and my sickness all but gone. Somewhere, in the search, I'd decided to go on.Almost every evening, since my return, I will come out onto the balcony at dusk and watch the first star burst through. Sometimes a little old woman with shiny eyes plays the drums somewhere in one of the old garages. In this moment, everything calms. A mug of tea and a biscuit beside me. One evening, in central, I saw a large unmoving Alsatian in a car parking spot. It seemed to be dead. Or pretending to be a motor vehicle. Regardless, it shook me, absolutely. It didn't seem to be wounded, or injured. Just, collapsed, out of cold or hunger or sickness. The cold was terrible in this time and it hurt to even walk out of the door. The cold just gripped your face and pulled at it with just its nails. My thoughts often turn to this dog and to the homeless man we once passed lying in quite the same position. Two guys told us that he'd probably drank too much Rakia and it wasn't worth waking him up as he would probably attack us. I looked at his chest and he didn't seem to be breathing at all.The weekends - glorious escapades into laughter and tenderness after the churning weekdays of exhaustion and frustration. As if time suddenly becomes real again. I never thought in my life that I would begin to pay attention to what day it could be. Hard days where doubts shot through me like flocks of migrating birds, the lazy and old ones staying behind to gnaw at my insides. With sickness, everything always comes out, anyhow. For days movement was barely possible. A dream away, now. Building again, you must leave the wreck of your attachments behind. Somehow the decision to be strong comes. It must, or all is lost. But what is now shines and bristles through my immense disenchantment with this concrete city. Gamble everything, but I can only hope and hope and hope that we won't be here for much longer. My guts would turn grey if so. You're a clever little man, full of fantasy and doubting, Rumi whispers into my ear.I whisper back : no. No more.
