The Mesecnik Files

A Nalepka Noir Novelette

Chapter 4: Mesecnik, Interrupted

                                            During a transaction, a mesecnik is polite, but firm.
                                         - Rules of Mesecniking #8

                                            I keep a close watch on this heart of mine. I am a mesecnik; I walk the line.
                                         - Johnny Gotovina

It's another gray day, one just like the day before, the kind where it always looks like it's going to rain but never really does. I notice the mesecniks are wearing new raingear outfits. I like 'em. Yellow and navy blue in near- equal proportions, with two sharp-looking silver bands running across the forearm and one matching silver band at the bottom of the breast pocket. Orange caps, through the back holes of which many of the girls thread ponytails. The look's completed with kavbojke (pronounced cowboyke - jeans, for you clueless out there) and sturdy shoes made for pounding pavements.

Me, I'm just pounding the pavement in a Druga Godba T-shirt, plaid pants and Doc Martens. Branko put me on something called Official Suspension Pending Investigation. I'm in mesecnik limbo; haven't been fired, but I had to turn in my jacket, cap and mesecnik pouch for the duration of the farce. Don't quite know how this is going to go. In fact, I don't really have any clue at all. I'm sleepwalking during the daytime. I'm a sleepwalking mesecnik. Yeah, that's really funny. I get it.

When Branko dropped the bomba, for a couple of seconds I just stood there, dazed, with Bojan, Sveto and the girls staring questioningly at me. Then I started yelling something into the receiver, don't really remember what, prekleta pizda jebi se something or other. It was an early night, and I caught the next-to-last avtobus home to Crnuce.

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What does a defrocked mesecnik do to pass the time? (And don't tell me "the same thing she does the other 25 days of the month." So you were wondering?) It's not at all the same thing.

I go to the LPP kiosk at Bavarski Dvor and buy a tedenska nalepka, that accursed slip of white paper that always reminds me of people who've come back from some vacation at an inopportune time to buy the full mesecna. If you're carryin' a tedenska, you'd better have the suntan to back it up, bejba.

So, I pound the pavements. And as I do, my mind spins and churns back to the early days. The three days of mesecnik training - Nalepka Academy, me and the other rookies in the Class of September '99 called it. It was held in the basement of Big Green, a damp, vast no-frills whitewashed oblong with a beige linoleum floor, with final exams during Nalepka Time in October on the buses themselves, under supervision of course. I can still hear Mojca teaching us how to cry out the Two Words - the bird call, as the M's say. Ah, Mojca the unforgettable mesecnik drill sergeant: mid-twenties, short dark hair, fireplug torso, flashing blue eyes, motor mouth, hard head containing everything about everything. Commanding the room - six girls including me, and two boys - by sheer presence, verve, and unsurpassed knowledge of how to Do the Thing. Bog, I was so raw then! I thought I was supposed to say "mesecna nalepka" any old way and be done with it, kaj je vraga was the big deal, and when Mojca called on me to demonstrate my bird call to the class, she stopped me and in a disbelieving tone of voice, barked out:

"WHAT did you say, young lady?"

"M-mesecna -"

"Ne, ne, ne! MesecnE nalepkE, plural! You don't have only one prekleta nalepka to sell, do you? Remember! A mesecnik NEVER runs out of nalepke. A mesecnik ALWAYS has more nalepke available! There's ALWAYS more where the last one came from, bejbe. That's a bottomless pouch strapped to your waist! Now! Again, prosim!"

"Mesecne nalepke!"

"Put your nostrils into it! Imagine you're throwing your voice five centimeters in front of your face. PROJECT, Anja, PROJECT! Keep the passengers in mind. They've got heavy shopping bags from Mercator and Interspar in both hands. They're craning their necks through the fog down the street for the 7, which should've been there five minutes ago! They've got one foot on the sidewalk, one foot in the road! They're late getting back from lunch! They're late for their next appointment! They're late for whatever, kaj je vraga it is they've got going! Their pass expires the next day and they want to get a new sticker but they just DON'T HAVE THE ZAJEBAN TIME TO DO IT! This is the true function of a mesecnik! TO SAVE THE PUBLIC FROM THEMSELVES!!! To ANTICIPATE their needs, because THEY CAN'T HANDLE THEIR LIVES ON THEIR OWN!!! If they could, they wouldn't be riding a bus, would they?

"They have to hear you from half a block away. They NEED to hear you. You can't assume they'll find you on their own. They're just stupid passengers waiting for a bus. YOU have to make yourself a BEACON, you have to CALL THEM TO YOUR SIDE. Remember, they're the sheep and YOU, pal, you're the SHEPHERD. You are their SOLUTION. You are their SAVIOR. Call THEM to YOU. Now STRAIGHTEN that BACK and RAISE YOUR HEAD HIGH and TRY AGAIN!!!"

"May-sech-neh na-LEYP-keh!"

"YES! HOLD THAT THOUGHT!!!"

I glowed with the accomplishment of the first time you do something you really wanted to do, and realizing it turned out really cool. You know what they say, everybody has this one thing they're really good at...

                                      Your fellow mesecniks are your true comrades. You can count on them, and they on you.
                                       - Rules of Mesecniking #11

Now that Nalepka Time is over for this month, at least I don't have to feel quite so much like an outcast every second. And as much as I care for LJ's bright lights and big buses, I have to admit, dober je to be back in good ol' Crnuce, where nothing ever happens (and even that takes forever). Humming a promo jingle I heard on Radio Student that morning, I take a good sweet time ambling down to the Picerija Tiffany, from the outside an unprepossessing gray concrete cube, but where inside await some of the best za-related delights in the northern burbs. You don't even mind the faded pink-and-orange cloth-covered seats, with matching tablecloths made from patterns designed when Dedek Josip was in flower, and big signs everywhere advertising no absence of MALICE. It's all part of the charm, so go have a snack. (One caution: stay away from the kava, it's Emonec...and we all know what that means. Where do they get that stuff from, leftover landfill?)

I choose a seat at a small table next to a sandbox filled with plastic pails, shovels, sifters, hollow stars and other beachy kids' diversions. On the patio adjacent, a tousled blonde toddlerette frolics on a swing set.

I zivijo Ljubica Tavcar: waitress for and daughter of Miro the picerija proprietor, she's a mesecnik in good standing, occasional Stripburger cartoonist, part-time secretary at the Ljudmila computer lab, and my old classmate. Heartbrejker Ljubica, cool and slim-hipped in tight kavbojke and black T-shirt, her equally black, straight hair pulled back in a konjski rep, minimal sminka. Italian bloodlines somewhere back there, brez dvoma.

"So Ljubica, kaj se dogaja? What are you still doing slingin' pies?" I ask, between sips of cvicek (the pause that refreshes) from a 1 dl Alpeks glass. "You could be a crack web designer." The cvicek swooshes through me like a Vlado Kreslin ballad at 1 a.m.

"There's world enough and time, sosolcka. For now I'm happy chillin' out and servin' the good people of the 'hood. There are many ways one can amuse oneself."

As Ljubica sashays back into the kitchen with my order of a mala morska and Cockta, I glance streetward at the handpainted sign advertising ceramic plates for sale. I examine the sugar dispenser up close: glass with a black, slanted, pointed top, filled with irregular, not quite square white crystals. It occurs to me that I have a bit too much time on my hands.

And I've definitely been in Crnuce long enough.

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Seeking fresh air following the repast, I stroll out past the cornfields and dandelions, towards Nadgorica. Strange little neighborhood, Nadgorica end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it: where everyone absitively posolutely knows everyone and has everyone's number, where if you're a stranger -- which means, even if you're from Crnuce proper -- you're probably an object of suspicion, eyes peeking out from behind curtains as you pass by.

I stroll past the Lauder Pub (whatta name), a small, basic-as-a-log roadside cafe at the edge of a cornfield. Morning kava a bargain at 100 tolars, dandelions on the side and no regrets. Glorious results of a misspent youth.

I finally, reluctantly wend my way home to moji starsi, my immediate ancestors (parents to you); gospe in gospodje, I give you Cveta and Bogomir Krajnc.

Mom's on the prowl again. She had me late in life and she's a nervous type. Dad's an avto mehanik and more easygoing, but you don't want to push him TOO far. Mom's still missing her parents. They died last summer within six weeks of each other, and she inherited the old family house in Dol pri Ljubljani. She rented the place out to a couple of Bosnian immigrants, but Mom and Dad still go back every couple of weeks, to water the roses and trim the weeds, she says ("those people don't know how to do it"), and pick a basket of strawberries when they're in season, but the real reason is she misses gossiping with old lady Potokar across the street. A good 20, 25 minutes worth of swappin' tongue poison with Vida P. sets up Mom for another week or so, then she starts getting grumpy again.

Back in my bedroom, I open the bottom right drawer of my desk and pull out a copy of my Mesecnik List, the one all Ms have to fill out at the start of their career. I don't know what compelled me to make a copy (seven tolars a page at Podhod d.o.o., ja, briga me) and file it away, but right now I'm glad I did. Good at this point for a laugh, if nothing else.

MESECNIK LIST
Name: Krajnc, Anja
Date of birth: 25 September 1983 (can't believe I'll be 18 soon)
Place of birth: Ljubljana Center
Parents: Krajnc, Miroslav and Cvetka (Podbevsek)
Address: Verdnikova ulica 44, Ljubljana-Crnuce
Lives with: both parents and sibling (brother)
Siblings: One (1) brother, Primoz, born 1 February 1986
Religion: Roman Catholic (nominally)
Favored political party: LDS
Political role model: Vika P.
Favorite musical group: Dicky B. Hardy
Favorite color: Orange
Favorite drink: Zadnji Avtobus do Crnuc
Secret crush: Bojan, bartender at the Klub Nalepka

OK, maybe some of these items aren't actually on it. But it's all true nonetheless. Mesecniks never lie. Point of honor, brez zafrkavanja.

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Pssssst! What you've been reading up to this point is all there's ever going to be...on this particular website, anyway. For the conclusion, you'll have to visit my novelette-as-blog outpost at http://pogoer.blogspot.com/, the updated, expanded and revised version (it's all so 2006).