The Blue Tower Read Online Free

Živko.
I’ll bet not just the picture from Marezige, I’ll bet
    Â 
you even have my Lujo statue in your cellar. What will you do
when the hunter’s horn starts poking its way through your
soul? What will you do when you find out Snežnik isn’t
    Â 
yours anymore? What will you do when you encounter a bear,
grumbling, looking around for a pair of slippers. Take them off so they don’t
give you blisters. Lower your periscope. And the canoe, the falls,
    Â 
the kayak, all those rubber deals, so you bounce gently,
pull in your knees, pull in your knees, Živko!
of course I’ll shove into your Postojna
    Â 
Cave through a quiver. Putin learned from me
to poison before a hand even touches the trigger.
Diran doesn’t have his black belt and I’m not
    Â 
forbidden to say his name. I prize human
beings. In the clay they’re lovable creatures. In Venice
I fell in love twice: with a fifteen-year-old girl in a
    Â 
fur, on the Ponte dell’Accademia, and with a
seventeen-year-old boy who constantly
put on and took off his sweater in front of me at the Bacon
    Â 
retrospective. All the attainable ones, wings of a dove,
I’ve brought along with me. Dunk the
veil. Made out of fox lairs, sleeps
    Â 
blissful dreams. The horse climbs up on four
legs. I leave my driver. I leave my bike.
The joints pale and go rusty. Honor beats the bags.

THE GENTLEMAN IS A BIT INCLINED TO DISORDER
What I softened and what I didn’t soften
what I stabbed into Ogrizek’s body, they say
he had a dog that ate bones. I warm myself,
    Â 
close the armoire, turn off the light in the
bathroom. Yesterday I steamed like a horse after
riding. O scents of stable manure, o spurs
    Â 
of Dr. Ewa Rogalska’s late sister,
Pan jest troszeczkę

nieporządnym,
Christine told me, because she’d been
told to say that to me, instead of preparing
    Â 
the servants properly for welcoming a guest.
Servants have to have a plan. They can’t help it if they’ve
forgotten history. Servants have to be
    Â 
ready for blows from the most unpredictable
quarters. Masaccio draws a red piglet in the middle
of the church, and this is what I told him: I’ll pay
    Â 
for everything but your whores, that would cross her, and I
don’t like anything to cross her, or what I told
Andraž. Go and saddle up. In Sejno they’ll
    Â 
teach you to ride at least well enough for you
to talk about it. You’ve been silent long enough.
Out of that Dostoyevsky cage of yours. Žižek ran off. Only
    Â 
Jani Razpotnik came with me. Žižek hid around a
corner, I clearly remember. They had just
made those holes beneath our house, Ravnikar wants Bologna,
    Â 
the machines clattered away beneath my bed and they moved
Mrs. Novak out, while Žižek hides from me behind the
wall where Miška is now. Besides,
il n’a pas bien roulé ses
    Â 
r, but Jani could. We insisted that the director of the
French Cultural Center deal with us, and
not with so-called French cultural
    Â 
interests. Just where do you think you’ve opened your
center, we told him. And left. It turned out
Žižek was more cunning. He hit them straight in the
    Â 
heart and buttered up that Milner, that
worm who forced his way into the party line till
Slavoj liquidated him. Now and then he still spits at me,
    Â 
but less and less. Andro has stopped riding.
Pan jest

troszeczkę
nieporzą-dnym
just as much and Janko simply thinks
(I’d got on some stairs beneath an eave, since it was
    Â 
raining and Janko with his shining face asked: what are you doing
up there on those steps—he was convinced I’d gone
mad, and that he’d find some relief—hey, Janko, it’s
    Â 
raining) and Å umi, who turned me like a screw,
spoiled brat!—of course those weren’t the words he used—
young man, for years and years I was Stele’s gofer, I’m giving
    Â 
you the directorship