Belgrade Noir

When she went to the kitchen, the apartment remained oddly silent. Kozma started digging through the boxes behind us and pulled one out. The label on the box showed that it had once contained a video camera. I sat down on the closet floor and Kozma slid down next to me.

“We’ll never get out of this one,” I whispered.

“Let’s wait a bit, then go for the door,” he replied.

“You’re not scared?”

“No.”

“How come?”

“Everything I dreaded in life has already happened to me.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know how you survived.”

“Life goes on,” he said. “It’s just that afterward… Well, there’s always sadness underneath everything. Like a river.” He smiled.

His answer didn’t surprise me. He probably didn’t know I would take his river of sadness over mine anytime, though he might’ve suspected it. Maybe that’s why he put up with me in the first place.

Peering through the crack, I watched the woman enter the room. This time I clearly saw that she was wearing a green army jacket, while on her head there was an army cap with a red five-pointed star. She was followed by a gray-haired man in a long coat.

“The loudmouth,” whispered Kozma.

It was the politician we’d seen the day before, a patient in the clinic connected to this apartment. He managed to drop his pants down to his ankles before she pushed him onto the bed. He tried to get up, but she wouldn’t let him. She pulled out three different-sized lashes from under the bed and tried them all out in the air. He screamed after each swing although she did not touch him.

“More,” he said, panting. “I need more. You’re crossing all my boundaries.”

The woman swung once again, this time hitting him. He moaned.

Kozma and I looked at each other in the dark. We sat back down and listened to the lashings and shouts for some time. Despite worrying about my bladder, I eventually dozed off.

I came to sensing a light on my face, and when I opened my eyes, I saw Kozma’s eyes were shut too. The politician stood in the open door of the closet, his face purple and his body red all over. He only had on leather underpants with spikes.

“Didn’t I tell you I heard snoring?” he said to the woman.

When Kozma and I fell out of the closet, the woman was standing in the middle of the room slapping the lash against her palm.

“Who are these people?” the politician shouted.

“Nobody,” the neighbor said from behind him. “Annoying old nobodies.”

The neighbor had come out of the next room with a small black gun in his hand. It seemed to me it was pointed more at me than Kozma.

“And who the hell are you?” the politician said.

I gestured toward the mirror hanging on the wall opposite the bed. “You think you’re just having some perverted fun, but they have you on tape. They’ll squeeze you dry before the elections, for money or something else.”

“Don’t listen to them,” the neighbor said.

“Stop waving that under my nose or I’ll shove it up your ass,” the politician said, but then he frowned at the mirror.

“All right,” the neighbor said. “Listen to them, then. You don’t want us talking to your electorate. We recorded everything you two did. Just remember.”

The politician turned to the woman. “Pandora!”

“Do what you’re told,” she said, holding his gaze.

“I’ll tell the authorities!”

Pandora snapped her gum. “Give me the gun,” she said to the neighbor.

The naked apartment suddenly became too crowded. The dominatrix playing a kinky partisan, the politician caught with his pants down, the psycho whose eyes I still couldn’t see.

And us, two jinxes. I thought they’d kill each other off, and that Kozma and I would just have to sit back and wait it all out.

No such luck.

The politician burst into tears. He cried his heart out while collecting his clothes from the bed. Wiping his face, he asked, “What do I have to do?”

“First, get rid of these two,” the neighbor said. “Then we’ll talk.”

“I have my man downstairs,” the politician mumbled. “All my men are former police or military.”

“Good for you,” the neighbor said, then turned to Kozma and me. “Why are you two spying on us?”

While I was wondering if we should tell him anything, Kozma’s eyes moved to the woman.

The neighbor caught it. “Ah, I see. She thought if she disguised herself she’d be inconspicuous. I begged to differ. But she also likes it.”

Pandora blew him a kiss.

“You would have gotten away with it, if it weren’t for him,” I said, pointing at Kozma, who seemed at once ashamed and proud. “By the way, how did you get into my apartment?”

“I have your keys. Not only yours, the whole building’s. I have cameras in each apartment.” The neighbor laughed when he saw the expression on my face. “C’mon now, everybody out. I’m tired of you.” He turned to the politician. “You too.”

While we all obediently marched to the door, Pandora entered the room with a camera and started packing what looked like a bunch of video cassettes. I assumed they weren’t, because technology did not wait for old farts like me. It was probably something you could store a lot of video recordings on, though.