You by Zoran Drvenkar Page A

teapot’s gone and how small you have to be to live in a tea cozy. Between sleeping and waking you see your phone vibrating, it quivers from left to right before freezing again. The walls stay horizontal, the light comes, the light goes.

    Your nose runs all the time, sometimes it’s blood, but mostly it’s just snot. You smell urine and the acrid smell of vomit. But that’s nothing compared to the stench coming from the kitchen. You shut the door because you thought it would help. Closed doors don’t keep out flies. They come through the cracks, they come from all around and make straight for the kitchen. They’re everywhere. You don’t want to think about it. You take a sip of water, and a few seconds later it’s as if you hadn’t drunk anything. You wish it would rain. Your mouth is so dry that you’re wishing it would rain in the middle of the room. You don’t have the strength to sit up, you can’t even stretch out your arm to reach for the edge of the table. You try, and you think you can hear the sinews in your arm creaking. Your fingertips touch the edge of the table. You give up exhausted, you pull back your arm and fall asleep again.
    You believe in time. You pray to time and hope it hears you.
Just a bit, go back just a bit
, you think and know how absurd the idea is.
    Still …
    Sometimes you stare at the clock above the fireplace, at your dad’s awards. Platinum—gold—gold—platinum—gold. And in between the clock, like a special prize for …
    Nothing?
    You concentrate. Sometimes you manage to make the hand of the clock pause. It lingers. That’s all you can do, whatever you try, the hand never moves backward. It’s like arm-wrestling with the world champion arm wrestler. Eventually there’s no juice behind your will, and the hand unfreezes and ticks on a bit.
    And another bit.
    And another.
    And time is time again and laughs at you in seconds and minutes and hours. You hate it for that. At the same time you yearn for it. You can’t be without it, and you want it to disappear forever.
    Time is your new religion.
    Sleep is traveling inside your head. No packing, no waiting, just being there. And that’s what your There looks like: a house on acliff, water below you, sky above you. You’re sitting by a fjord. Even though you have no memory of the place, you know:
I was born here
. It’s a gray day. Snow falls and turns the valley walls into Japanese ink drawings. An icy wind scratches over the water. That’s where you are, that’s where you want to be. On a terrace, wrapped up in several blankets, on your right a table with a cup of tea, in the background the silence of the house. You pick up the cup, you feel the heat of the tea through the china, your palms warm up.
    There’s nothing more, nothing more is needed.
    You wake with your face buried in the sofa cushion and sneeze twice. Blood drifts down onto the pillow like a fine mist, you feel dizzy and lay your head back so that the blood flows down your throat like a gentle lava flow, feeding and warming you. Everything in your body hurts and throbs. Your thoughts are sore. Your hand claws onto the back of the sofa, you inch your way into a sitting position. The table turns horizontal, the walls vertical and your legs tremble, even though you’re not standing. You set your feet down on the floor and try to get the shaking under control. You stay like that for a while. Your face in your hands, the trembling in your legs. You look between your fingers at the powder and feel the stinging in your nose like far-off longing. You know what will ease the pain and let you sleep again. It’s as simple as that. As if the thought has reached your legs, they stop shaking. You lean forward, pick up the teaspoon, and stick it into the plastic bag. You scatter the powder on the tabletop and use one of the brightly colored straws. It doesn’t take long, it hurts and your senses greet the bitterness of the drug with jubilation, then you feel like