169
It is the end of October. I think I’m done chronicling Julija events. Her story is finished; I just need to print it out.
…
Not much will change. She will keep on visiting me; visit me tomorrow, in fact, if everything goes as planned – I will merely stop recording her stays and my inner world events.
170
There is no reception, no celebration today. She walked through the door without me greeting her. I’m silent. She may do whatever she pleases.
171
I would say that Julija’s tiny hands with their delicate, thin, long fingers are not suitable for physical warfare. Their elegance is more in line with chess figures and their movement. But she shudders at the thought of thinking fifty-five moves ahead.
…
I hold Julija’s right hand, her long, thin snow-white fingers; she tries to hide it, she feels shame. She does not want her hand exposed like this.
…
I say mockingly while embracing them with my two hands, “My lady, your fingers are ice-cold.” I put my right hand on her forehead. We are both cold.
Why did Julija inherit these thin, delicate fingers? I feel strange looking at them. They were clearly made to caress, not to harm or command.
172
Julija is leaving now … My fingers are cold. Sigh. I will suffer without her.
…
I put my right hand on the spot the heart is supposed to rouse, yet I feel almost nothing. Just something very, very faint …
173
Well … I survived! But for what? Those umbrellas … Uhm, yes, Julija, they are not supposed to be smashed against the ground. Relax; let me handle the umbrella!
…
You talk as if you were just a story. I live in this horror … We’ve been talking about this since July one decade ago. I’m sure you know what the horror hanging over me means!
…
Be that as it may, now that Julija is gone, I have no desire to talk about her hands anymore. It’s a bleak Novembre day.
174
My heart is beating almost imperceptibly. It’s as if it’s ashamed of keeping me alive.
…
My heart beats only because it must. And when it beats, and beat it always does, it beats calmly, slowly, for it does not want to be heard and blamed for my existence.
175
That dullness that always creeps back after Julija leaves is painful.
Days before the last Julija’s visit, my head was filled with the unpleasant feeling of what else is there to do; is there anything I can become excited about besides Julija’s visits? Yes, there are things I am still able to … not enjoy, but merely tolerate. I feel like a hardened fortification; I just am, protecting whatever is inside of me. Are those insides worthy of sustaining, though? I will never be able to transform myself into a blossoming flower. When the ice thickens around me, I become distant and ruthless; I rarely find myself in the right mood to tolerate sentimental thoughts about elegance-invoking things. They irritate me; I dismiss them as nonsense. I harden and come off as inaccessible.
This typical late afternoon blackness of Novembre is uncanny; it’s pressing against my head.
176
When I look at people marching in the streets, the sense of violence this cold world is able to project becomes unbearable, especially when compared to the warmth I experienced during Julija’s recent stay. But if I remember a pleasant feeling related to her, I become filled with sadness, knowing I can’t simply re-wind back time to those moments. And when I remember all those intimate things I wrote down before your eyes, I feel silly and exposed. Had people seen them, they would have derided me.
I do not want to expose myself to the world while I’m still alive. As strange as it may sound, I do not want foreign eyes floating in my mindscape. As of today, you are the only stranger present in it. Lake Redoubt, however, as you know, is still off-limits.
Ah, Lake Redoubt – and its castellan, the Buried One. I feel that she is my most powerful force. She is the one who prefers warm fragility to violence, and who likes to talk about her hands when she wants to be loved. And she is also the one whom Julija accused of being a deceiver: a calculating, machine-like vixen. She, however, needs Julija’s sun to thaw my exterior and let her true feelings pour outside. When Julija is absent, she hardens: she becomes ice-cold and unfeeling.
Does she, though? No – it is the Keeper who is suffocating her, not permiting the feelings to emerge through her.
177
There is a very old blockade in me which dates back to the kindergarten days, and which I imagine as an unbreakable steel lid tightly fixed onto a surface. It allows me to define my own worth and survive the greyness of an average day. If something or someone had it removed, I would wither from within. This steel rectangular plate is something secret and something that is protecting my core. The moment of transparency occured in January two thousand sixteen. It was then when I finally realized there is a very old, hidden blockade in me, and that I was unaware of it during my teen age and the age predating it. When I saw what is behind the lid … I was overwhelmed by sadness; that’s the most striking thing I remember in regard to it. So it probably should stay shut and be treated like a treasury. Perhaps it’s best not to define whatever is inside. After that event, I had tried multiple times to dismantle it right before I fell asleep, knowing that it’s something that’s preventing me from seeing myself the way the external world sees me. It seems that it indeed does exist to prevent the world from imposing itself onto me.
178
There is no place for the sentiment and æsthetics emanating from Lake Redoubt and Julija’s story in Slovenian society. Its dishonest socialist, or Catholic, humility had already hurt me at a tender age. “You want world peace!” said the teacher when she heard my New Year’s wish.
179
There’s a recurring dream I have: I’m chased by a ghost-like woman, but she does not have my ghostly form from July, nor is she Julija, or even her corrupted version. Her hair covers only the upper part of her face. She is always silent. She stalks me. Today, I somehow managed to hurt her legs, so she would not be able to pursue me. I was dining in a big, grey room with other people; they were not my relatives or my friends. She appears on the opposite side of the room, and I say in a mocking tone, “There she goes again!” but no one seems to care. I get up and move to the left corner, then up, but she cuts me off. This time, she does not track my footsteps. I scream and wake up.
She actually appeared on crutches, so I loudly ridiculed her because she was so comical. A ghost on crutches.
She is alien and nothing like me. She even has black hair. She would not fit in the Flatlands. Her presence would be too distracting.
It’s probably something from the school days. She always appears in public spaces, in the street, etc. Her facial features are soft and round.