The book was laboured during Ljiljana Maletin Vojvodić’s residency in an artist-in-residence project at The United Sardine Factory, USF, Bergen, Norway as well as during her residency in Q21 Artist-in-Residence MuseumsQuartier in Wien and is part of the international Guest Artist Project.
CONTENTS
WRITER TEMPORARILY WORKING ABROAD 9
HE SHOULD HAVE SWITCHED OFF THE TELEPHONE 12
IN INGUNN BREMMER’S DRAWING ROOM 18
VANITY OF SMALL DIFFERENCES 23
HONEST PIONEER’S WORD 26
FATHER 31
NOBODY HAS MENTIONED A MOUNTAIN OR A CHIMNEY 36
BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO NORWAY 39
WRITING STUDIO 44
WHAT IS IT LIKE BEING IN OTHER PERSON’S SHOES 47
MESEN IS UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES A GOOD PLACE TO BE IF YOU ARE LONELY AND IN TEARS 51
IT IS COMPLETELY CERTAIN THAT I SHALL NEVER BE A MOTHER 54
EDVARD MUNK 58
PENIS, BALLS AND CIGARETTES 65
SOPHIE CALLE 67
I WRITE BECAUSE I AM A WOMAN 72
ALMOST A WOMAN 76
A NEWSPAPER ARTICLE 81
ERLEND LUE HAS ALREADY WRITTEN ABOUT IT 84
KNAUSGAARD-MANIA 98
15 MINUTES OF FAME 94
SHE DID NOT KNOW THAT THERE WAS AN E-MAIL IN HER INBOX
FEAR OF PREGNANT WOMEN 102
MILOŠ RELJIN 106
ONE DAY I’ll GROW UP, I’ll BE A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN… 112
MONDAY BEGINS ON SATURDAY 117
MY STRUGGLE, PART FIVE 119
DIRECTIONS AS WRITING 124
BRING CHAOS IN ORDER 127
LUNCH 130
THERE WAS NO DOUBT 133
WE HAVE BEEN TAUGHT TO BELIEVE WHAT WE SEE IS TRUE 137
VIDIMO ISTINA 137
SHE CLEARLY REMEMBERED HER DREAM THAT TIME 139
CAT 142
OLAF, A SWEDE 144
ANGEL OF DISEASE 147
SCANDINAVIAN PAIN 154
Ljiljana Maletin Vojvodić’s Skrik 157
Excerpts from the novel
WRITER TEMPORARILY WORKING ABROAD
I do not expect to be a mother, but I do not expect to die alone, she realised one sleepless night, tormented by a headache again. Although Tracey Emin had said this instead of her. She was one of the women she was writing about that summer in the North.
‘What is going on with me?’ Jul wondered for God knows what time: ‘I wake up – I wash mu face – I brush my teeth – I drink coffee – I have breakfast – I put on clothes – I put on lipstick – I get out of the house – I nod – I remember – I repeat – I forget – I worry – I make up things – I have lunch – I have supper – I lose weight – I gain weight – I do the laundry – I wash my hair – I take a shower – I forget – I mourn for what has passed – I run away from the future – I browse the Internet – I read e-mails – I wait for something to happen?’
So, she hid in the house for days.
Or she would not go back there for months.
She was lucky to find one who would love her more than she loved herself.
But she was afraid that he might turn his back on her.
She left him for fear that he might do it.
She changed countries and cities, houses and beds, trying to become someone else.
And so, for one whole summer, she imitated Sophie Calle… who was imitated by Maria Turner, Paul Auster’s heroine from Leviathan.
Or was it, indeed, the other way around?
In all that conundrum of the imagined and the read that was going nowhere, just as her reason had never led her, Jul decided to find purpose: she coloured Mondays orange, she sprinkled plum dumplings with roasted breadcrumbs, and pumpkin with cinnamon. On Tuesdays she drank red pomegranate and currant juice. On Wednesdays she had white potatoes, she boiled rice in milk and added icing sugar. Thursdays were reserved for colour green – she had kiwi for breakfast, gherkin and rucola for lunch and she would have nettle pasta with parsley leaves and mint for supper. Fridays were days for omelettes, vanilla ice cream and bananas, while on Saturdays she washed down the taste of homemade ham with rosé wine or strawberry shake.
Sundays were the only days when she paid no attention to colours. Sunday was all about letter P. She would have pizza, pasta, pork pies, pears, pudding, pecan pies and would drink Pago Pago (p)cocktails.
She managed to do so for one entire summer.
And then she terminated it, feeling relieved.
Then she decided to live for art like others believed in God.
She started writing, even though nobody expected her to, although nobody needed it.
Nobody sought her words, nor did they want her sincerity.
She wrote to save herself.
She wrote not to feel guilty.
Forcing herself to give her days the gift of purpose, she experimented with countries and genres, she searched for distant artist-in-residence programmes as if they were her salvation.
Although there were different euphemisms to describe herself, she was a cultural Gastarbeiter.
She was somebody from the fringes, temporarily working abroad.
In exile, she felt just as out of home as she was in her own country, where she pursued a variety of professions, which were supposed to be noble missions when they were in fact sheer agony.
‘Between the first and second books of my Embajadas,’ her favourite writer, Crnjanski wrote, ‘that is, between my first and second posts in Berlin, I lived three lives in Belgrade: as a professor, a journalist and a writer. At the time all three were wretched.’
Nothing had changed from the time when Isidora Sekulić, who was resented for being insufficiently national, yet too personal; who lived just as wretched a life of a professor and a writer in Serbia.
There is no happy ending in sight regarding the old story about conflicts between the local and the foreign, woman and man, artist and citizen, one and the other.
If nothing, it had become even more futile.
That was why Jul was running away.
From Serbia.
And from her own self.
First to a Latvian Writers’ House, then to a Portuguese hacienda, a Catalan village, to the Finnish province near the border with Russia and then to a former sardine factory, the United Sardine Factory (USF) in Bergen, after which she arrived in Hardangerfjord and Arthouse Messen in Ålvik.
To a house the colour of calvados with white window frames and black roof tiles, where a Belgrade writer, Miloš Reljin, had placed her, after a phone call that woke him up early one morning.
HE SHOULD HAVE SWITCHED THE TELEPHONE OFF
Miloš could not instantly remember who Tor Ulven was, when he heard him on the phone. It had been a couple of months that the two of them were introduced at the Belgrade Book Fair. They exchanged a couple of courtesy sentences, but there were too many people around them constantly interrupting them and Miloš was not comfortable with the crowd, so he kept toying with the idea to flee as soon as possible. He avoided literary encounters and book promotions, even the promotions of his own books. Yet, because of that damn UPS award, his publisher insisted that he appear at the Format’s stand. There he met Ulven, who gave him his business card and Miloš gave him his telephone number in exchange.
They promised each other that they would keep in touch, but they had not heard from each other until that morning.
‘I hope I didn’t wake you up, but I was hoping you would be an early bird and that my call wouldn’t find you still asleep,’ the Norwegian apologised to Miloš for calling at the ungodly hour while he was trying to remember where they had met. ‘I couldn’t wait to tell you the great news,’ he paused, ‘The Bergen Writing Academy authorized me to…, he paused again for a brief moment, to create a tension or, perhaps, to drag a cigarette smoke, ‘to invite you to be their special guest’.
‘We’ll send you an airline ticket, provide hotel accommodation, per diems and an official translator, you will meet the publisher to whom I’ve praised your novel,’ Ulven referred to Miloš’s latest book for which he had received the UPS Award.
Miloš listened, bewildered. He was confused by all this English language, he focused all his mind power on understanding it, and, apart for the multiple stuttered yes, he probably did not say a word.
‘What you are expected to do is read your story to the Academy students. It must meet two requirements: it can’t have been published and the action takes place in Norway,’ Ulven added, and he continued persuading Miloš in response to his silence ‘You can spend the rest of your time however you want. You can…,’ he suggested, ‘hang out with fellow Norwegian writers or,’ he could no longer hide his pride, ‘enjoy the collection of Munk’s paintings in the city museum; our wonderful nature, and climb Mount Fløyen.’
Miloš was confused because he had to respond in English, and on the telephone at that, so he nodded, which, Ulven, of course, could not see. But he stuttered an ‘OK’, which sounded like a deal.
The conversation ended with Ulven promising to send him an e-mail the following morning so that Miloš could plan the trip.
He had no idea why he had sat at his computer that very morning and started writing about … Jul. He usually measured every word carefully and was not a person who would easily promise anyone anything. He wrote laboriously. He scribbled, typed over, deleted with more ease than he wrote. The dust had barely settled after that award thing. He knew that his books were not read locally, so no wonder he was surprised when someone outside of Serbia was interested in his writing.
There was no logical explanation regarding why he had accepted Ulven’s proposal. Especially him who was notorious for avoiding obligations. Not only did he have to write a commissioned story, but he had to find someone to translate it for him. He was helpless in Internet communication; he was a man of the analogue age. He did not have a Facebook account; he rarely used his e-mail address; he barely parted ways with his old typewriter and started typing on his computer keyboard. He was not attracted to Norway, he had a fear of flying, he avoided public reading and felt best at his home.
Above all talented, but immobile and apathetic, he was a true Oblomov. He was rather expected to completely stop writing than to win the prize, which was seen as an excess situation by all, and above all by himself.
In those days, newspaper headlines said, ‘The Least Read Serbian Novelist on Top of the Best Seller Bill’ and ‘The last Mohican of Belgrade Asphalt Writes a Masterpiece’. Yet, Miloš was not a novelist. Instead, he was a poet who had heard somewhere that ‘poetry comes out from paradise and prose comes from hell’ and this was why he wrote that one single novel thus losing his readers who were devoted to him while he was living on the margins, and gaining new ones who bought his book and then not read it.
Urged by his publisher, he appeared on the first channel of the state television, gave a dozen or so interviews for local newspapers: he even gave one to a popular weekly with the cover bearing his photo from when he was young. In the interview, he revealed his associations from A to Z and ‘shared’ with the readers the recipe for poppy seeds noodles although he could not cook.
He was bound by a contract to be present at the official award ceremony. In the banquet hall of a prestigious Belgrade hotel, in the presence of distinguished guests, journalists and previous laureates, of whom the most cordial were those who would otherwise turn their heads away from him, he was handed a charter with a UPS memo and a check for 10,000 euros provided by a local detergent manufacturer.
The president of the jury read the reasoning, mentioned a ‘highly aesthetic achievement’, an ‘effective storytelling process’ and ‘minimalist style necessary for the contemporary Serbian novel.’
Being logorrheic and using tons of catchphrases thus burying any sense of what he was saying, he talked less about Miloš’s novel and more about the award that ‘still continues to arouse the undying public interest.’ He tried to fish for empathy on the account of the jury, which ‘had read diligently, from cover to cover, two hundred and two books precisely,’ but did not fail to emphasize that ‘it was undoubtedly the best book that made it to the finish line,’ as if it was a race of a sort.
‘Therefore, with clean conscience, we pass our choice to your judging,’ he finished seemingly humbled when in fact he had never doubted being wrong.
‘The UPS award is proof that there is still literature that is art, not a commodity,’ he added in a distinguished tone, which was not a lie, but neither was it true. ‘This award establishes a literary canon and, despite the crisis of values, it establishes the status of a writer in the Serbian tradition, because of,’ he had no intention of being modest again, ‘the authority of the jury and the authority of the literary form of the novel itself, by which its creator forms social consciousness.’
The speech of the president of the jury went on without any fillers or stuttering. He spoke clearly, and it was obvious that he was sure of what he wanted to say.
But no one in the room was listening to him. Not even Miloš, who was thinking of what he was going to say. Following the protocol, he thanked all the jury members and continued to stutter: ‘I have to admit that at first I didn’t understand why you voted for me, but later on I realised that your intentions had really been genuine because awards, actually, destroy writers, and after this, I will certainly stop writing.”
He then attacked the local literary world more clearly, and especially his book. He called literature ‘the devil’s work, his own novel, ‘a futile soliloquy, an exorcism beyond meaning and sense.
His solemn speech was his revenge because he was disgusted that he did not have enough conscience, because by accepting the award he failed himself. Earlier on, he had claimed that the award should best be discontinued and was now feeling ashamed because he was accepting the award for the sake of money and for the vanity nobody was aware of.
The jury did not feel comfortable, and neither did the writers sitting in the audience even though he had nothing against them personally. But he had to exude the discomfort caused by so much hypocrisy in one place.
Some pretended not to understand him while others made a scandal of everything. The publisher was rubbing his hands with satisfaction knowing that, after all, the book would also be bought by those who could not care less about literature.
It was talked about for a few more days: mostly it was about Miloš’s speech and the award, not his work, and then the tension subsided, and the writer was able to dive into his routine. He had never been ambitious before, and he particularly did not intend to become so now that he had received more than he thought he needed.
And just when he returned to the rut, he once again acted contrary to his own nature.
He did not procrastinate as usual; he did not look for excuses, but sat down at his computer and started typing: ‘I do not expect to be a mother but…’
Despite this not being his wish, Jul will take after Nina Faber created by Erlend Loe. He knew there was this writer, but he had never held his book in his hands. Although he had not read his Inventory, it just so happened that both Jul and Nina had several books published each, that they were both yearning for approval, and were bypassed by all the significant accolades and awards. The difference was that Nina withdrew from the public life, while Jul was still struggling to be remembered by her audience.
Miloš was not in two minds regarding whether to write about a woman fleeing to the North from Serbia. He just had no idea where to place her exactly.
He found a worn-out school atlas among the books, opened a map of Norway and pointed his finger at Ålvik. He saw that the place was located in the Hardanger Fjord, found in the dictionary that the word meant bay, but he did not know what to do next.
He called a kid from the neighbourhood to help. The kid liked to hang out with Miloš in spite of his being perturbed by puberty. This was probably because the writer did not smother him as they did at home and because he could smoke at his place without hiding. On top of that, while his neighbour, who was otherwise barely able to say anything without using words such as like or bro, helped him with computers, Reljin wrote school compositions for him in return. Both knew that it was not a very nice thing to do, but for a long time Miloš didn’t care what anyone would say.
He had no illusions about others, or about himself.
Anyway, the boy googled out that Ålvik dates back as far as the Bronze Age. Until the first decades of the last century, it was an idyllic village with a few dozen inhabitants. And then the authorities decided to place heavy industry in the unspoiled nature. They displaced farmers around the area, so it seemed to Miloš that this could be used as a plot. When they discovered that the company went under after decades of making profit and was subsequently bought out by the Chinese, it was not difficult to create a story. The kid took him to Google maps, showed him Nordic homes, a waterfall, but also the factory, the chimney and the abandoned office building.
Then it ocurred to the author: ‘I’ll make that building an Artist House, and I’ll put Jul in it.’
‘It just mustn’t look like art colonies in Serbia,’ he found the local guild socialising futile and irritating, and yet they never ceased inviting him over.
‘I’m going to create an art commune that I’ve read about in the daily press recently. Jul will find about the competition on the Internet, and she will apply accordingly. When they reply from Ålvik, she will not be clear about where she’s going to. But she won’t be bothered with the details – she’ll snatch the opportunity to go North. She’ll thank someone who will be signed with Ingunn, a person she will be unsure of whether this is a man or a woman, or what (s)he does in the House. She will ask for further details about the journey.’ The story was getting a pulse in Miloš’s imagination ‘She will be waiting for their reply for days, and when news from the House finally arrives to her, she will find the cheapest air fare, pack her suitcases and head for Ålvik.
And this was how Jul Malić found herself in Ingunn Bremer’s drawing room that very summer.
To be continued…
LJILJANA MALETIN VOJVODIC 