The Stockholm Story

To Igor and Marlene

Yesterday I walked along Drottninggatan. That street is something like Knez Mihajlova street in Belgrade or like Ilica street in Zagreb.(1) It was a beautiful and cold day in February but I was not too lazy to go to stretch my legs, to go back to Apelbergsgatan, and than straight to Malmskillnadsgatan and sit there in “Jadran” restaurant.

I am doing all this because of my favorite Hungarian goulash. The owner of the restaurant, a great chess player, Henrik Högberg, swears to me with the whole of Scandinavia that this dish so dear to me is being personally prepared by a Hungarian lady Dora Hedgyi - though I am convinced that this Hungarian lady of his gets this goulash, this Ungerska Lantsoppa, from the supermarket and that such goulash is being sold in Knorr international bags at shops all over the place.

To put it simply, as soon as the pious Henrik sees that I reach the door handle, as soon as the fox notices that I am opening the door of the restaurant, he immediately sends the small and awkward Dora to buy some goulash in the supermarket. She is embarrassed with Henrik lying to me but she doesn’t dare open her gob.

When I devoured the stew and thanked Henrik for his service, and he to me for my money, I set off toward the editorial office of a respected art magazine from Stockholm. There, the main editor is waiting for me; he is an old acquaintance of mine, a capable man, and a self-thought soul who came from some poor and simpleminded village in Sweden.

I go into the editorial office but my acquaintance isn’t there yet. The secretary tells me (2) to take my coat off and sit where I think I would feel most comfortable. She will bring straight away a cup of hot coffee and a biscuit. For me?! I guess?!

The first thing that catches my eye there is a magazine - “Život Umjetnosti” (number 63-00). It has pale blue covers and on the front page there is a photo of some foggy face. The man from the cover page is familiar to me. It seems to me it is Dalibor, Dalibor Martinis – Martinez! The last time we met was here in Stockholm two years ago. We were residing in the same hotel – Crystal Plaza – in Birger Jarlsgatan. The hotel was posh, or at least appeared to be to my Balkan eyes. Martinez goes straight to the cover page of the respected art magazine, whilst I, an unfortunate, sad and alone soul, am roaming the endless gorges of Scandinavia.

I open the magazine and guess what I see there. Branka Stipancic, (3) Sanja Iveković, Dalibor Martinis, then Branka Stipančić, then Tomislav Gotovac nicknamed Jim on the weekend and under the burning sun (4), then Branka Stipančić again, then Merleau-Ponty, then a cultural-artistic society from Slovenia: Artists without Borders – IRWIN, then Miško Šuvaković, then Slavoj Žižek, then the unfortunate German Jew who is being quoted and sliced by every fool, Walter Benjamin of course, then Popper, then a French philosopher whose name starts with L, then a French philosopher whose name starts with B, then Branka Stipančić again, and all of this printed in a duplicate, in English and Croatian, and with no end to it.

At that moment the secretary brings in the promised coffee, and I point with my finger toward the magazine and say to her: “From Zagreb, Croatia! A!” She smiles, probably enchanted by the warmth of my openness, so that she offers to me to take both copies with me. I was touched with such a generous gesture shown toward an artistic giant and living legend from the south of Europe, but I politely refused the offer thinking that it would be pity to throw around like that artistic magazines of foreign origins.

Raša Todosijević, Art Hotel, Stockholm 25/02/01

Notes

(1) … or like Ilica street in Zagreb

When in the beginning of a theatre play somebody mentions the word “gun” or when without any particular reason this little and lethal weapon is brought forward and shown on the stage, it is clear to the audience that it is a psychological trick and that there will definitely happen a murder in the third act, alluded at by the gun which was shown at the beginning of the play.

In another case, if at the very beginning of a theatre play somebody pulls big field gun onto the stage, an anti-recoil monster, and then one of the actors starts to shoot at the bewildered crowd at the stalls, it will be clear to the audience that the play has reached its obvious ending.

(According to the editor)

(2) …the secretary tells me

Todosijevic creates a false impression here; As if deliberately making a factual mistake, he is falsifying relationships in the manner of the skilled Seraphim. The person described here is Mrs. Sara Arrhenius, a skinny divorcee, ex main editor of a respected art magazine from Stockholm and also a respected film critic. The mentioned lady was dismissed from her position of a main-editor as soon as she came back from Japan. It was to do with a dodgy financial scandal and Todosijevic was very well or well enough familiar with this.

Such a reducing of the respected lady with a very good reputation to the status of the nameless secretary, who was there to wait the guest and bring him a cup of hot coffee, says something about their personal relationship.

What does John Peter Nilsson say about this: How much is Todosijevic different from Mrs. Sara Arrhenius! She speaks Swedish, Todosijevic speaks Serbian, she is the person of hills and Scandinavian gorges, Todosijevic is a typical city-man. She is a bodiless northerner with modest movements whilst he is a southerner made of flesh and blood. He is a mystic; she counts money. She is tied with all her soul to Sweden; he is a cosmopolitan, the son of his epoch and the big world. She doesn’t trust talent and intellectuals, Todosijevic are an intellectual.

(According to the editor)

(3)…“Branka Stipancic…”

Looking at the available documents, we can claim that the author alludes at Dr. Branko Stipancic who is a Canadian neurologist born in Zagreb. Out attention here attracts the author’s lack of wish to conceal carefully the identity of Dr. Branko Stipancic. The alchemy of transforming a male name into a female name with the purpose of reverting the attention to the other side and thus hiding the traces leading to the real identity would hardly satisfy the taste of experienced literary experts. We are surprised with the complete carelessness the author shows in the choice of this Chimera – which is so untypical in terms of his kabalistic skills to disguise his thoughts into dark or general themes. In short, the personality of Dr. Branko Stipancic is obvious and could be discerned between all these written words.

(According to the editor)

(4)(… In rain and snow, in the summer’s storm)… under the burning sun … (in a dark tunnel, in a cold forest stream…)

A few unused used notes which remained after the work had been completed – and which miraculously survived in the chaos of Balkan, prove to us that the author had had in mind the work whose dramatic intensity was supposed to be incomparable to this, somewhat incomprehensible, belletristic line; rain, snow, summer’s storm, the burning sun, dark tunnel, the limp and demented Jim, and then finally that cold forest stream in whose grey and blue waves there is an apparition of seducing Maynada, maybe the face or disguise of an Lithuanian – the late Adolfus Mekas – who whishes to say something in the mute language of the underworld.

All of this creates a whirl of different moods in our consciousness, and makes us face a libidinal character that is similar to the unfortunate Magdalena Malm – the character from his book “Depreciation of the passion in paradise.”

(According to the editor)