ANTONIJE NINO ŽALICA

The only person I saw today was a local young man from Pale who was in charge of the ski lift. He didn’t bother to check my season ski pass, and he even left the cans of beer and coke casually unattended near the ski lift entrance, which he would typically overcharge from thousands of brightly dressed, out-of-breath tourists in the past. I saw him walking about, waving a bottle of Zvecevo brandy which he dangled by its neck between his fingers; then he shut himself in his hut; later he sneaked off somewhere, leaving the lift running by itself. In the afternoon, as it was already getting dark, I noticed him with a pistol in his hand near the shed where the great caterpillar- tracked snow ploughs were kept, ostensibly practicing shooting his target. The shots echoed though the empty mountain, cracking as they multiplied.

We were the only ones on the bus, just the four of us. On our way back we were not stopped and searched at Lapišnica as we had been on our way up. The groups of armed men carrying Kalashnikovs and semi-automatics, some in the uniforms of the Yugoslav Army or the Police reserve, some in no uniform of any sort, faded behind us into the shadows and into the mountain darkness. And in front of us the City opened up, with all its myriad of lights shining, divinely beautiful when seen from above. Later that day, as we got onto the street car with our skis on the shoulders and people stared at us like we were crazy, we laughed amongst ourselves, convinced that, despite everything, we would be going skiing again next weekend. Anyway, the newspapers just reported that a famous prophet from India predicted that there would be no war.