As Milena tilted her head and carefully dissected her mother with those dark eyes, Neda realized the strength of Marković’s genes.
“What do I want? Everything I don’t have, Mother. Everything. I. Don’t. Have. Isn’t it logical? Don’t all people want that? Not you, of course. Oh, no. You have to be special, even if you are starving. Go read your books and give me a break!”
October 30, 2018
Neda had never watched reality TV. Her brain simply couldn’t understand the purpose. She asked people who couldn’t miss an episode what attracted them to these shows. She didn’t ask what was on the tip of her tongue: how could they watch uninteresting people talk about uninteresting things, peppering it with all sorts of equally boring exhibitionism? She had never gotten a satisfying answer. Either those she asked didn’t have the inclination or capability to dive into their inner self, or maybe they intuitively knew they wouldn’t like what they’d find there.
So she ignored the whole phenomenon, that plastic, toxic package of basic instincts and vulgarities that made headlines in the media.
So the information that her daughter, who was legally a minor, had become the youngest participant of Vimark TV’s Commune — the newest and, according to newspapers, most expensive reality show in a sea of humiliating circuses aimed to make people forget about more important things — was something she couldn’t believe at first. And once she was forced to believe it, she couldn’t really feel it. It was just like all those tsunamis and massacres in distant parts of the world that make you sad but are too far away to break your heart the way one crippled beggar child in the street you see with your own eyes can.
Milena used the name “Millie Wow” on the show. She was reportedly seen fucking one of the male participants in front of the cameras.
So for the first time, Neda sat down to watch Commune. She poured vodka into a highball glass and watched Milena showing off her thong while kissing some simpleton with a strange haircut who used vulgar language. Neda couldn’t help remembering her daughter’s faded underpants from the annual physical at school. Was that the event that led her to where she was now?
As she refilled the glass, Neda wondered how Millie Wow would feel if she knew that her bare butt funded the jet-set lifestyle of the TV station owner’s recognized children. While sadness replaced every other feeling in her, a single spark of rage began to burn within her broken heart.
Maybe it was finally time to reset things. Maybe it was finally time for a bang in her life, something that would completely rearrange it, even if, along the way, it first broke it into a thousand pieces.
November 15, 2018
After some time, Neda’s plan was in place, complete with logistical support: Goran could certainly get her a weapon. Swearing like a sailor whenever he heard Marković’s name, he clearly felt quite good about it.
As Marković was a man who loved control, Neda knew that he would be there early, just in time for Vimark TV’s morning show. So it was still dark outside when she resolutely entered the main building of the television studio just after him, passed by his still-smiling secretary, and opened the padded doors of his office.
The room was full of tasteful pieces of art and books — a declaration that the father of carnal entertainment was a spiritual person who was above the audience paying for all of it.
Looking at her with his impenetrable eyes, he slowly put his cell phone down on his antique writing desk.
As always, Neda had the urge to avert her eyes from his face. But she knew she couldn’t do that. Not this time. Her hand slowly reached into her bag. She saw Marković gripping the edge of the desk. She almost chuckled, but she just smiled instead and pulled from the bag the newest edition of Flash, a tabloid with the largest circulation in the country, where Goran had made his living for several years. In a few minutes, readers who wanted to know who was screwing whom, literally or metaphorically, would be able to buy it themselves on their way to work.
“Frame this cover page and put it by that Dürer print,” she said, before turning and leaving the office.
November 16, 2018
Well, like a true representative of those without imagination or courage for actual drastic changes in their lives, to which, gladly or not, I now belong, I chose a “fart” instead of a “bang.”
The Fart, directed by Neda Adamović, looks like this: tabloid headlines, bold with avarice, scream that the illegitimate daughter of Vimark TV’s owner takes part in his reality show! I am sure that for a man who at a certain point in his life started to believe that money could transform a ravenous cannibal into a Renaissance man, those headlines were more painful than a bullet through his head. Yes, a bullet was my original plan. But I abandoned it when I realized that the anger in me was more complex than simple rage directed at Viktor Marković.
Mind you — he was certainly a very suitable devil for the exorcism I needed to perform.
New headlines kept coming as I’d predicted. Divorce! Rumor has it that Mr. Marković “has very specific tastes in sex.” Namely, it seemed that Mrs. Marković had received photographs of an unidentified long-haired blonde doing something nasty with Mr. Marković. I could just imagine horny readers making faces of disgust, wondering at the same time if they should try something like that. Marković can insist the images are photoshopped until he’s blue in the face, but who would believe a man who let his own daughter fuck in front of a camera?
And just like NATO — thanks to Goran and his permanently geared-up journalistic instinct — I have an infinite wealth of weapons. Such as the many images of certain high-ranking men with “specific tastes” enjoying the company of Marković’s merry “secretaries.” To stop these photos from leaking to the press, I had a price. Goran and I were laughing while we split the money. Truth be told, it was quite therapeutic.
As for Milena, she is an adult now and ready for her fate. I won’t give up on her, of course. Even with the set of genes she inherited, I hope she will eventually realize the difference between the real starry sky and the one where the shine of the stars is measured by their nudity and vulgarity.
And if I share a few things with her, she might like the fact that her mother can be a badass bitch too.
You see, I can avert my gaze as much as I want, but I must accept that Evil is ultimately appreciated these days. To people made insensitive by all the loud distractions of modern times, it is exciting and exotic. How else would all those snakes, parasites, and leeches, all those stains on the face of humanity, become media darlings?
There’s one thing consoling me in this newly found cynicism: I am not a killer. Of people, countries, or culture.
Alter Ego Inc
by Goran Skrobonja
Translated by Nataša Milas
Učiteljsko Naselje
After many years, she visited Učiteljsko Naselje again.
She’d grown up in this neighborhood, but since she’d moved away she’d had no reason to come back. She remembered the place — located between Konjarnik, Šumice, and Zvezdara — as unpleasant, shabby, and depressing.
What she saw from the taxi — a small, inexpensive, autonomous, and noiseless electric Asian vehicle — Marija didn’t recognize, nor did she associate it with any of her childhood memories. The neighborhood that she remembered consisted of several narrow streets and residential buildings erected around two large factories built back in the 1960s when the area was still at the edge of urban Belgrade. At the time when Marija left Učiteljsko Naselje, huge concrete buildings with broken windows were turned into furniture warehouses, yoga and pilates studios, and squats for struggling artists. The same streets were now covered with solar panels, placed on every corner, looking like phantasmagoric, dazzling sculptures.