Preparations

You no longer find your way around people and events, you have already said the sentence: Stare Serbian nonsense; all your flags turned white, and the flag under which you often uttered the word turned into a dirty rag: honor, spreading rumors about your connections with people from the diaspora; the rare individuals who, sometimes a few, knew how to whisper "he's not a bad man" were also lost, while you kissed and fraternized with the basements after one of the events people, where you took care of your soul.

You have removed the bandages from old wounds, about which there was never general agreement, although there are such wounds among those wounds copies in front of whom even a career executioner would take off his cap and remain silent in prayer. You realize that you are a man who has long overstepped his bounds, you throw your hair back from your forehead and conclude that caressing and a few kind words cannot smooth over what was between you and That one who signed important documents in your name in Latin. Example: R. Weis Markovicz instead of: R. Beli Markovic.

It's time for preparations, for serious preparations, and not for the jam of old sorrows from the eve under umbrellas. You are a man of every rank and certainly do not think of death in front of drums and a brass band. We have no doubt that, in principle and in the affirmative, you have already answered the question should li in general to die, and the preparations will help you find the answer to the question kako?

You dismiss the very thought of those monumental rifles you used to hunt white elephants, listening to your own footsteps in the endless savannah. You cross out, one after another, the fatalistic sentences from the time when you called the mob the people: your justified absence is best witnessed only by the grass. Classical repertoire (Take care mi Yugoslavia, etc.) has long since been spent, and everything you can think of, from Glossary a will i the last ones to tell, sounds like a slander to say the least.

Your suicide should be dignified, real and constructive, and not unreasonable and superficial; as if a climacteric cook, or a grumpy postman frees you from a hard and difficult life. No dark riddle! No sleazy ravings in the parks, on the last tram, or on the eve of some kind of jubilee... An exalted man will think of Florence, Venice, Marienbad and all those places where he carried himself on his hands, but why, after that, should people talk about you as having wandered off? ?

You are not only killing yourself, you have started to liquidate and That one who, for years, wrote your name in Latin: even in your identity card, which will soon cease to be valid, it is not possible to distinguish whose signature and whose index finger print. Therefore, pour some cognac, light a cigarette, and think about everything.

Hochzylinder, death in a carriage, known art nouveau and similar nonsense, intrusive turning of the barrel of your revolver, rural settings, ropes, fences, pears, stables, lowing cows, neighing horses, stacks of hay... Get drunk and forget!

Beware of everything that could resemble a goat shop: spring mornings, fog, the Lajkovac railway, bridges, barbers, overheated bathrooms and, in general, porcelain dishes, toilets in cafes with glass doors (Ibarska magistrala!), failed Serbian poets, skirmishes alleys at dusk, friends who enjoy your special trust, then: those trees, at the edge of the forest, which almost solemnly stick out a suitable branch.

You are a serious man. No Zilahi... No Remarque... Manite pathetic lyrics: Yesenjina, and others. Read Rosa Luxemburg if you need some literary potpourri already. Don't think of fashionable repetitions. If you kill yourself in the way that someone has already killed themselves, there is no question that you have done anything serious in your life! And all of that comes from books that, for the most part, portray life as life really isn't.

You are a kind of emigrant who should not look at what he will take with him, but what he will leave behind; despite your peculiar position, in which social instincts are somewhat tingling. It is disgusting, in every way, to go out somewhere for lunch or dinner and to supplement on a napkin what you, during preparation, missed, borrowing a ballpoint pen from the waiter.

The matter can be solved in a surprisingly simple and elegant way: open the fridge, take some chicken from yesterday, pour some good poison from bad novels on it, and then: get behind yourself, turn into a hungry cat ... and it will be over, before than you would smoke your 87th cigar.

Do not make a list of what you have missed in life. The list could be long and lead you away from the main intention indefinitely. In life, among other things, you missed being an underwater mammal; could, in life, the wind blow your hat away and that hat, far away in the field, be appropriated by some scarecrow who just lacked your hat to proclaim himself the leader of the other scarecrows; you could, for a while, live as a deaf man; let's not count that, without much effort, you could have become a more famous drunkard, especially since you never succeeded around women; you could also become a member of the church board, or study somewhere to become a journeyman executioner, which would come in handy under these circumstances... You could, but what now?

You look ridiculous with dark circles, your preparations have already entered the paranoia stage. You ask yourself: will one of your souls go to the east and the other to the west, and will the soul from which you write the Latin signature be mistakenly sent to that part of the world that is written in Cyrillic? Elem, you have publicly stated what you think you will do in your own interest, and now, because of your hesitation, it may happen that your friends start to consider you an insane person, and your own wife - a fool.

Russian nobles killed themselves without warming up beforehand.

With a feeling of great discomfort and anxiety, you think of giving up. No idea is right and, the longer the preparations last, the more you dwell in the third person plural which, as a precaution, like a protective cordon, has moved into your being. And in both souls. In the basements of your main apartment, servants and maids are hanging themselves, one after the other, out of sheer boredom, and you don't even notice it, but walk diagonally through the room, with your hands in your pockets, as if you were browsing a haberdashery shop.

That R. Weis Markovicz secretly looks at the clock, and you, R. Beli Markovic, ignore your case and, as it were, start working on the aforementioned!

Not even a literary yellow-bill would imagine such a thing.

You have spoken the final sentence. I guess you won't let death catch you alive...

Or is it a rumor going around town?

Pour the drink. Champagne, of course.

You are a ship that is sailing away!