Spending the night in a pub – that's not uncommon for those who think that real life only happens at night. I haven't been going out every day for a long time, that was a privilege of my youth. Since the pandemic, I've also changed my pub habits. Lunch instead of dinner, I go home when others are just going out into the night. As if through a fog, I remember the time when nine in the evening was "still too early" to meet up with friends.
My night shift at the pub always has an occasion. Most often it's some celebration from the literary milieu. A friend who won an award, so honors. Or a team move of the literary group from a book promotion to a nearby pub.
That's how it was this time. But I'll tell the story that's being rewound in my memory in exactly that way – from the end. From the dawn that creeps in imperceptibly on Autokomanda to the Užice cafe, where the four of us, with light jazz playing on the speakers, try to convince each other even of things we never believed in.
NEXT MORNING
Autokomanda has been bustling for an hour now. It's dawn. I leave the cafe and breathe in the cold air. Its sharpness is parching my lungs. The morning light chases away the last traces of darkness from under the overpass, but I can't see the sun from the buildings. I walk above the highway towards the Franš restaurant. I remember a family gathering and goose liver on stewed pears. It was a long summer afternoon.
I look at the bust of a man – a monument that no one approaches. Except me, numb from a sleepless night. Louis Felix Marie Francois Franche d'Eperre. The man under whose command the Salonika front was broken through. I wonder if the Marshal of France and honorary duke of the Serbian and Yugoslav armies knew how to wake up in a bar in Paris. The monument is silent.
Tram number 9 takes me past the Temple, around Slavija. It is crowded with early risers. Everyone is staring at the day ahead, and I am staring at the night behind me. Some are even dozing, carrying their unfulfilled dreams along the tram tracks.
Belgrade has always had a wild nightlife. It is said that the first coffee house in Europe was opened here during the Ottoman period. The Turks originally named this coffee house using the Persian words – kafa and han. Later, this term would be translated into German – Kaffeehaus. The Americans turned a Viennese copy of an oriental coffee house into a coffee house.
Unlike these adaptations of the original idea of drinking coffee and chatting, in the Balkans the tavern turned into an alcohol taproom, a fine dining room, a living room, a literary salon, a meeting place for criminals and informants, a music stage, and a psychotherapeutic institution.
I'm riding the 9th next to a hungover Stefan Nemanja. A fellow Roma citizen with an accordion gets on the tram. Without hesitation, he starts singing Toma's song: The tavern is my destiny. That's enough for my inner folk library to activate Džinović's voice in response: I'm fed up with you too, tavern, may it catch fire. I think Oskar Davičo would have phrased it differently: In some tavern, the singers scream and drink a little liquor, And the gendarmes are escorting a stunted pickpocket.
This accordion player on the tram must be the grandson of the stunted pickpocket from Davič's poetry.
I almost missed my stop, so absorbed in my tavern associations. I got off at the Fair. During the Book Fair, it was common to return in the morning from a boat tavern on the Sava River after a noisy night with writers who were treating the inflammation called narcissism with ice-cold drinks.
The traffic lights tell me that my tram – number 12 to Banovo Brdo – will arrive in about fifteen minutes. I buy a slice of pizza at a nearby bakery. It's not very good. But I enjoy breakfast at the Fair, while the beast called Belgrade accelerates around me.
HOW DID THE NIGHT START?
A friend who wrote a book about the woman who left him found himself on stage at a famous festival in Studenjak. Today, this type of confessional literature is called autofiction. I rarely venture into that area. I was invited to talk about the book. The author and I had talked about it so many times during the creation of the text that we no longer knew where the fiction began and where the woman who left him ended. That's why I didn't have to prepare especially for the half-hour performance. We talked the way we had been doing it for months, only in front of an audience and for a modest fee.
Immediately after the performance, we burst into the Jakarta pub. The musicians were preparing to string our tired souls on their strings. But we knew about the Jadac, so we sat in a side room. So the pain, the ecstasy of pain that these guys sang about, reached us only as a background sound that concerned someone else. We were all different and diverse at the table. The author's friend Steve, who spent a good part of his life in America. One was a writer and television editor. Another writer, from Nikšić in Vojvodina. The third writer, the sigh of all Belgrade literary critics. The festival organizer also joined us.
The house specialty arrives at the table, and the quick-witted waiter quickly realizes who he's dealing with, so he brings the drink without even asking.
After midnight, the larger group disperses. Someone has to work the next day. Someone has to see a doctor because they're stiff. Someone simply doesn't feel like going through another night of Belgrade's pub marathon. But they persist. There were four of us.
CASINO – ADDICTIVE BLUES
About twenty literary awards on his biographical card, including one from NIN, a considerable experience in pubs. But the question of where we will go next remains hanging menacingly among us. There are many students in this area, but few pubs. Logical.
Barba – I call him that because he has grown a beard, which, unlike his hair, is completely gray – lives nearby. And he knows the solution. There is a casino where drinks are served until dawn.
Let Nedeljko Bilkić see us. Instead of a tavern in the mountains – a casino.
In short, there was barely any space in the parking lot. The most sober among us, Ninovac, drove to our destination, and we tried to avoid the police patrols on our smartphones. We succeeded. Or there weren't any.
The interior was a cheap replica of the glitz of Las Vegas. Here and there, an addict. From gambling. Or from alcohol. But, with a little getting used to, the ambiance becomes pleasant.
The waitress, who came after several calls, recited the drinks list. She had nicely filled thighs that were cut into by her fishnet stockings. About thirty years old. With a martyr's face. At one point, when she was listing the types of beer, I noticed that she was stuttering: Hh-heineken. Za-zaječar-sko. Sss-stela.
And I feel sorry for this woman who is condemned to serve a major league literary team afflicted with bohemian insomnia in pseudo-erotic lingerie, with a speech impediment.
The drinks we ordered were brought by her colleague. Slightly younger, with a punk haircut and an arm with an entire science fiction comic tattooed on it. I remember Đuro Jakšić. Ana pours, Ana serves, But my heart aches for Mila.
This, despite my considerable experience, was something new for me too. We were having our meaningless literary conversations in the middle of a casino, somewhere on the border of New Belgrade and Zemun. The night was seeping through us like a funnel.
The sound products of pop synthesis tried to suggest something, but on the inner ear again Nedeljko Bilkić: Well my eyes fall on those lush breasts, Bona Maro give me more wine, September. Maybe a sign that we should order more beer. But a stuttering waitress appeared at the table.
„F-f-f..“
"Fajront?" I helped her.
"And".
That's how we ended our stay in Bilkić's Las Vegas. But that wasn't the end. The night is still young, it's only five.
ROPES
I wonder what verse would go with all this. And when you call it – the verse appears. Miodrag Tripković: “The night is poisonous, alcoholic, heavy and the informant smiles in the tavern”. We traveled almost half an hour to the famous Užice tavern on Autokomanda. We crossed the river, then crossed the deserted Slavija and climbed the Vračar hill. We parked the car in front of the tavern. I knew I had to stop by here for a few drinks before going home.
I once stayed up all night here with a native of Sarajevo. It was summer, we drank beer like water. They told me that this pub was dangerous, that criminals frequented it. Of course they did, and they are people who love the night, sometimes thirsty and hungry. But I never witnessed the slightest incident.
A Sarajevo resident told me that a living classic, at the urging of younger hangmen, came to a tavern that was actually called Staro Užice for the first and only time. That night, the "turtles" raided there, special forces looking for some murderers. A raid is a tricky thing. You have to show your ID even when you go to the toilet. Or, like a living classic, you stand with your hands raised against the wall, while your rough fingers rummage through your pockets.
Nothing happened this morning. The tavern was slightly redecorated compared to its previous state. Along with the new furniture, which gave the proverbial rusticity a makeover, American jazz classics were played. "While the Saints March". We talked about Belgrade taverns that no longer exist. Or about those that the wild transition turned into restaurants, where former ministers enjoy whiskey and Cuban cigars. We remembered the taverns in Sarajevo, the taverns in Split, a tavern in Athens, the taverns in Niš. German beer halls. And we toasted to the repose of the souls of each deceased tavern.
Then someone mentioned Serbian-Croatian relations, invoking Thompson's concert as the main argument. The night disintegrated into a painful morning. Hey, tavern, painful, Toma would say. And Crnjanski: Gouged out eyes, wine that is poured, In praise of murder and sacrifice.
Rade Drainac holds the third: The windows of the tavern light up at dawn, beneath the frozen branches, the violins cry like a blazing fire, and my sad lies pain me to tears.
I'm getting up to go. Both this night and this text are best ended with Tino's verse:
We were walking along the road. The road was long.
We noticed too late that the path was a circle.
Bonus video:
