It is necessary, for the sake of the story, to mention right here at the beginning that the Tanzcafé (meeting place of the literary characters) was occupied by a striking number of customers. The room was aired out (a little surprise for those who expect alcohol vapor, smoke, dust, sweat); dancing couples are whirling around on the tanzfloor (total of 3 couples) with twelve fixedly-gazing-transparent eyes whose points of view of the surroundings, as well as to reality, do not correspond. (The content of this relational sentence is in accordance with the writer's intention to criticize everything that is typical or clich?d, be it a café or some exoesoteric problem; a consequence of excessive reading and a pretentious, clichéd tendency to avoid clichés). Mina and I (that is: the main character = narrator) found two available seats at the bar, on the far end, in dim light. Mina wasn't enthusiastic about it at all, (Mina is a girl, the female character) so that, as soon as our drinks came (two beers) she fell into lethargy, into warm mini-lethargy, into, so to speak, let... ŠIn a photo taken by some aficionado half an hour after the let..., one could notice the following: three couples dancing cha-cha-cha (despite the fact that the photo is by its nature static and an inappropriate means for literary licking into shape of course of time, it is easy to tell from the expressions on their faces that it was a cha-cha-cha); two gentlemen were seated at one table discussing the destructive effects of medicine on human health and dignity (it is beyond any doubt that this was the very topic of their conversation); at another table, two protruding half-filled glasses were taking up space (naturally, the glasses were the temporary property of some dancing couple), and a third table, the last one, was empty, emptyish (it wasn't vacant when the main characters entered the Tanzcafé someone had left the room in the meantime, obviously?-the writer is still in control over all elements of the story, even though this lapse could have been avoided). The bar looks like an old woman from caricatures with every second or third tooth missing from her jaw; seated-at-the-bar teeth are darting glances all over the place: toward the mirror, that is toward themselves, toward their neighbor's mouth that is slobbering and wide open, pouring out a lecture on "refurbishing history through the centuries" (I know that this was the subject!) toward the cha-cha-cha dancers, toward the waitress's tits (classic: she often washes glasses), toward the liquid they ordered (similar to the brain of the customer who is shivering with desire to find out everything about an enormously large crack on the bottom of the Pacific), toward the zipper (ah!), toward the ceiling (someone is boring her to death with his rattling on about non-existence of good and bad languages, they're all bad, and what's worst that guy is scratching her hips with his little lustful eyes), toward... Fuck all, this is proceeding as if I'm a database! Get the photo and let's get this over with! Forget my monkeying about! (however, it is worth mentioning: the female character-ugh! that's interesting-has a pistol in her hand, the barrel of which is in the position of tickling the male character's temple; he is, surprisingly, trying to quietly explain to Mina the reasons for her madness, which is a disastrously wrong move, a big mistake, and so causes the predictable reaction: she is pressing the trigger, gently, as if she were limbering up a numb index finger and there the story ends, taking away two lives: that of the main character and the narr - can't you see the drops of Rh negative blood trickling down this page while the amputated ator is taking off with a pair of new wings stuck between a and t and with or, which, from the tail of the story now becomes the beak in a totally new surroundings - and so the whole story, with ease, evaporates through a high-quality air conditioner and becomes fresh air, a relativity of the necessary...)


Translated by: Jelena Stanovnik