49 Hours in Belgrade

I go to a party in Belgrade. The trip is six hours long, I cross Europe from North West to South East. On my way down, I get to see Belgrade’s stellar constellation. I redo my makeup and change into high heals in the car from the airport. The party is stellar too, I see some excellent people, I dance all night.

I go out, it’s warm and overcast, my head hurts, I buy a pljeskavica, and diving into its divinity, I reconsider my atheism.

I roam the city with hands in the pockets. Belgrade’s the only place where I walk with my hands in my pockets, that’s my Belgradese walk. I look at the buildings, high up there are statues and caryatids that I had never seen before. I look down a building, and see a dead stone crow. I hold my head askew and look at her. As dead stone crows go, it’s a good one.

With the rhythm of my steps, the constant “go! go! go! go! now! now! now! now! (go where? why now? doesn’t matter! just go! just now!)” in my head ebbs away.

Having no sense of direction, I let myself be surprised by streets with well known names appearing in most unexpected places. Makedonska, Svetogorska, Takovska, if I turn here, I’ll come out on the Kralja Milana, right? Wrong. No sense of direction.

But then, again, having no sense of direction means I don’t expect to come across the statue of Ivo Andrić, I never do. No one has ever written in this language of ours as well as he had, and yet, no pedestal, he’s just standing on a narrow street, on the top of the stairs, not even in the middle, a little to the left, and his humble, unassuming “don’t mind me, I’m just standing here” fills me with inexplicable tenderness.

I drop by a nearby gallery, I look around, I don’t look at the names of the paintings, or the names of the authors, just the paintings, they are many and different, large, different styles, many textures, more textures than colors. I get rattled, just a little bit, a little buzz of beauty and unease.

I go into all the bookstores on my way, they are many. Belgradese bookstores have geography, and history. I find my coordinates in them, they soothe me, ground me.

I buy a book of poetry.

I order coffee and rakija. I open the book, the poem is long, the language is old, I don’t understand many of the words, but I get the rhythm, the poet is repeating words, stanza after stanza, he’s repeating words, as we do when frozen with terror, as if repeating the words would make it go away, knowing it won’t, and I feel it, just for a moment, the petrifying fear of death of a poet, five hundred years gone.

I think of him, I shake my head a bit, to dislodge the thought, but it won’t leave, so I let it be. I lean back and let myself feel it, the presence of his absence in my mind.

I sip my rakija, I read other poems.

I watch people go past, sounds of my native language washing over me, a reassuring twitter of human voices.

It starts to rain, it starts pouring as if it was a summer shower, and not late September, but it’s still warm, we don’t need to go inside, the waiter helps us pull the tables a little further in under the parasols.

The rain stops, I go back to my mother’s apartment, the last snippets of conversation with her, and my brother, it’s always superficial chat at the end, we clumsily avoid the unease of leaving.

Back in Norway, I’m back to “go! go! go! go! now! now! now! now! (go where? why now? doesn’t matter! just go! just now!)”

Back in Norway, I carry the book with me over all, I don’t read it, I can’t muster that kind of peace here, but I feel its reassuring weight in my hand, in my bag, as a promise, as a reminder that love for a city goes both ways.