| CIgarettes | Dusan Velickovic |
DAYS OF BOMBARDEMENT AND MARTIAL LAW IN BELGRADE: true stories |
I am
beginning to smoke again, and that unnerves me. It is not because cigarettes are difficult
to obtain, but rather because I do not know in what category to classify myself and my
willpower. Why am I not like the hero of Vonnegut's novel, Jailbird? He sits in
jail, thinks about Nixon, and praises himself for quitting smoking. My prison is so much
larger, and yet I am not succeeding to be even remotely similar to that
"jailbird". Then I think of Danilo Kis.
We sat together once in the restaurant "Clauserie de Lila" in Paris. I was smoking. Danilo was chewing on nicotine tablets. He knew that he was terminally ill, and he kept talking about it poignantly and wittily. He said: "See that old man in the street? He walks and smokes. How nicely he is managing his supply of cigarettes, while I have smoked away all of mine."
But of all the losers, Raymond Carver fits me best today. So I remember what he wrote: "I leaned back in the seat and I breathed in, deeply, drawing into my lungs some of what I thought to be the atmosphere of grief around my head."
Or, even better: "I lit up another cigarette. I looked at my watch. The barman raised his eyebrows and I raised my glass."
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