Second voice: Veton

I feel like a cigarette.
And I wanna pee.
I forgot to go to the toilet
because of that nosy Finn and
the discussion on Balkan relations.
The woman on my
left can't take her eyes off me.
Maybe this nausea comes
from that lousy food I ate a couple
of hours ago.
To quench my appetite.
Why's she staring at me like that?
Because she sees a sick man
for the first time?
Fat and bearded.
Sweating 'cause he's got a bad stomach.
'Cause he feels like smoking
and pissing at the same time.
'Cause the sticky afternoon
heat went to his head.
'Cause he's forty-three and
twenty kilos overweight.
'Cause if this nausea doesn't
come from bad food, then my
ulcer's gonna flare up again.
'Cause I don't give a shit for
the Swedish lady scientist's statistics
on human rights violations in Chile.
In the time of military junta.
Converted into percents rounded
to the third decimal.
Even though it has nothing to do
with the subject of the symposium.
Tolerating this piercing and squeezing
in the bladder is pure masochism.
Only an idiot would allow it.
I've gotta stand up and get out for
a second 'cause my bladder's
gonna explode.
I feel her stare on my back.
Maybe she wants me to fuck her?
Well, I don't give
a fuck for fucking today.
I'd rather smoke a cigarette and
have a beer!
She's leaning against me.
If my ulcer explodes, it's gonna
happen because of her or this dried
herring collecting other people's
misery for years, turning it into
numbers and columns.
Maybe this nausea comes from
the overload of incurable puffed up
highly-educated optimists.
Arrogant world-saviors.
Babblers.
Babblers babbling on the
imperfectness of human society.
Of the endemic Balkan evil.
Or something third.
They're setting the millennium scale.
December 31st 2000.
Who jumps over it can enter into
the Twenty First Century.
Into the heavenly garden of
globalization.
Into the promised land of
Capitalistic Communism!
Why don't I just stand up
and go for a justified pee.
And then light a cigarette.
Then a second.
The third.
I'll stand up, fuck'em.
I'm standing up.
I'm going.
Into the twenty first century
which is in my personal calendar
written with two zeros
or /d blju ci: or toilet.
And pronounced crapper, john,
shitcan.
I don't care that the chair's
gonna squeak when
I get up,
that everybody's gonna get
distracted from
the lecturer or
from whatever they're
driving in
their heads and give me a scornful
look because I'm disturbing
the sacred act performed by
Mrs. Stevenson.
Who could become a member
of the Saint's Committee for
the Nobel Prize One Day.
But, I'm not getting up and
I'm not going out.
I crouch over the desk and
close my eyes.
I've got pain under my left ribs.
And some subdermal piercing
under the right shoulder blade.
I'm positive I'm gonna have
huge problems over
the next few days.
And my ulcer's gonna explode like
a volcano.
This stomach bloating might come
from a sleepless night, though.
From too many coffees.
From the enormous amount
of cigarettes smoked.
I'll have to ease up on them.
Bullshit.
I know I can't ease up.
I've got to quit smoking.
Yes-or-No.
So, I'll quit smoking.
I promise.
First second of January first
two thousand I'll quit smoking.
At five to midnight of thirty
first December I'll light
my last cigarette.
I'll turn it off at exactly twenty
three hours fifty nine minutes
fifty nine seconds.
And in the last second of
the Twentieth Century I'll resolutely
breath out the last patch
of smoke from my lungs.
I'll smash the rest of the cigarettes
and chuck'em together with
the lighter into the old year.
Into the old century.
Into whatever old cock of the cock.
And that means another
two hundred twenty eight days
or five thousand four hundred
seventy two hours
or three hundred twenty eight thousand
three hundred twenty minutes
plus the time that remains till
the end of this day
I'll enjoy nicotine with the passion
of smoker who's been lighting cigarette
after cigarette for thirty years.
Twenty eight to go.
Twenty nine days...
Is it Tuesday or Wednesday today?
May sixteenth or seventeenth?
Fuck, I don't know
what day is today.
There's no sense
in spending such
a day in this murky room.
Pretending that I follow
lines of numbers
and curves
representing the amount
of human suffering.
While the same day the international
committees uncover mass graves.
In which only
last Summer, dredging
machines buried the bodies
of my neighbors.
And cousins.
Only a couple of hundred kilometers
away from this town.
Which was itself
ten years ago
under siege for months.
Shot by missiles
right in front
of the world's eyes.
This lousy air conditioning
isn't working right.
It's obvious.
I shouldn't allow myself to accept
any more invitations
to similar
assemblies in period from May first
to the first of October.
I've got to get out.
And drain out the liquid that's
gonna make my bladder explode.
Even if all the
we-bring-happiness-to-the-world
people would turn around with scorn.
I just wanna piss, guys, for God's sake.
This need for nicotine returned and
I begin fidgeting again.
This chair's squeaking.
Mrs. Stevenson's turning around and
coughs a little into her hand,
warning the person that disturbs
her presentation.
Who's the woman sitting at the
end of the table with
her hands crossed,
staring through the window.
She's much more corpulent than
many males in this hall?
She's attractive, though.
It's hot.
I should take a shower.
And change my outfit.
Before the dinner.
I've read somewhere that this is
the hottest May of the Twentieth Century.
The two thousandth May.
The final one.
Who's that woman?
What time is it?
What day is today?

Third voice: Ines

In just a few days, just a few
more days and I'll
be back with Dalibor.
Oh, my sweetie, I miss
him so much. I couldn't
make it through this
symposium without his support.
The symposium on redefining
cultural identities at
the end of 20th Century.
And Dalibor is cute, you know.
He doesn't resemble
the chap sitting
next to me a bit, beside
my right shoulder, sweating
and puffing
like a steam locomotive.
Smoking like a pipe.
Shaking and rumbling
like an overloaded truck
going up a gravel road.
And I'm not attracted to
him at all. I have to ring up Dalibor.
I should have called him
during the break.
And told him I loved him.
And heard his voice.
Whispering my name.
Because I'm out of strength.
But I won't cry. I mustn't cry.
I just have to finish this
symposium and I'll be free
as a bird, in the heavenly
garden, in his arms.
With him between
my thighs.
With him deep inside me.
Don't cry, don't cry. Resist.
Copy the curves
Mrs. Stevenson's
drawing on the blackboard.
Fill this notebook with
notes I'll never look at again
after I finish
the report from this
assembly. Just picture,
how hard it is for
the others... for some others,
in some wars, in prisons
and misery.
Just imagine that there
are people
who are thirsty and hungry,
the humiliated and
the oppressed.
Just imagine that things
could be worse.
It could always be worse.
Was it only a couple
of days ago, or a week ago
that a bomb
set in a Paris café
by Arab terrorists
blew up three people,
leaving several people crippled, don't you see invalids
on the streets of Zagreb
everyday with wounds
still fresh from war.
No, don't think about it.
You are supposed to
appear at that dinner
at nine, because
the director of
the institute asked you to,
because he char- ged
you with being
hostess tonight to
the participants and guests of
the symposium,
because you accepted,
took the task,
because you didn't have
the strength and pluck to deny,
because you never
have enough strength
and pluck to
deny anybody anything...
and at ten
already Dalibor will ring
you on your mobile and
you will excuse
yourself with a formal
apology mumbled just
for the sake
of appearances,
and then you will go and
sneak into bed and
chit-chat with him till
late at night, you'll
close your eyelids and
see his magical
green eyes, it will be
just as he were there,
his soft whisper will
embrace you,
his words will
lull you to sleep and you
will dream that you
two making love on a beach
amidst the sea foam,
a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-aaahhhhhh!
I'll explode.
I feel so useless writing these
numbers
and graphs like a machine.
With no concentration,
no sense.
I mustn't allow that
bearded Spaniard to
distract me. That Portuguese.
Or whoever.
I didn't catch his name.
Nor where he comes from.
I'll look for a new job
in the fall.
I promised that both
to myself and Dalibor.
To look for a new job.
One that wouldn't drag
me away from him.
I owe that to both of us.
I'll go somewhere
in August. With Dalibor.
A one month cruise across
the Mediterranean?
Two or three weeks lazing
on some beach?
Šolta? Šolta maybe?
Or go back to Dubrovnik?
I'll let him decide.
I know he'll be glad about to.
I'm supposed to be at
the restaurant at quarter
past eight.
To make sure everything
is going according to plan.
They'll prepare a seafood
dinner.
For twenty four people.
The chap on my right
is fidgeting in his chair.
The chair is squeaking.
He looks like he wants
to ask me something.
Can you tell me what
day is today, please?
Or a similar phrase to
start the conversation with.
I would accept it,
knowing me.
Instead of telling him
to fuck off
and to follow
the Mrs. Stevenson's
lecture.
Which has nothing
at all to do with
the subject of the symposium,
but she's been prepar-
ing for it for more
than one and a half years.
With a research team.
And which Mr. Rosenberg,
the indisputable authority
in the field, received
approval from everybody
at the Boston symposium.
That must be respected.
My chief was there.
He didn't have the nerve
to refuse Mrs. Stevenson
when she expressed
her wish to take part
in this symposium.
Because Mrs. Stevenson
is enchanted
by the Mediterranean.
He accommodated it
by widening the approach
to the subject.
Though, I think it had
to do with
some kind of deal.
But I won't rack
my brain about it.
I'm tired. Of people reporting
to each other every month,
always from a different town.
And drinking a lot after rich dinners.
Like they will have tonight.
(But, without me, without me).
They'll liquefy themselves
with liters of prošek
and pošip wine.
I know their choices.
I know them inside out.
They'll plan to spend
the first free day (that's tomorrow,
right) at some hot Lokrum
cliff. To get a beautiful
bronze tan.
Which they will proudly
present to their acquaintances.
Making them slightly
envious. Because vacations
start there
only in a month or two.
In July and August.
I'm so sick I could cry.
I want to be with Dalibor.
Oh, darling, I miss
him so much.
Just a little bit longer,
just a little more and
Mrs. Stevenson
will ring the horn
marking the end.
I'll stand up and
I won't let
this puffing Portuguese
get on me with
his nose up my arse.
I'll go straight to the hotel.
To have a shower.
To change my outfit.
To ring up Dalibor.
To go to the restaurant.
To check things out.
To drink to the health of the
participants and guests.
On behalf of the
symposium organizers.
To eat my dinner.
To wait for Dalibor to call.