july 1974.
Now I have to cram the whole july somehow, because I wrote everything very late, some time in august, dates are anyone's guess (mostly mine then guess). The vacation issue was a failure on both fronts: she must not go, I must. Because I have to work off my driver's license, it had cost so much etc etc, dad's elbow hurts and he can't drive the whole 600km in one go and so on (even then we knew his pain was psychosomatic, ie. it hurt for the last exams, and now that he graduated, it stopped).
We go as a caravan again, the only other car being Ilona and Aranka in their fića.
Mom somehow made peace with Tejka, through dad, during the prom evening, so she was practically furniture here almost half the july. Mostly rummaging with mom through issues of Burda... and once she also spilled the beans to me. She wanted to have a grab with some guy, but he managed to drive it in though not all the way, just a bit; then on some other occasion she gave to some other guy, couldn't resist the temptation, then she had to (go to Belgrade to) abort, and now she's calming down and trying to forget.
We two lived famously, though we were under pressure from our big failure, we'd become almost aggressive and would come up to arms around any paltry thing. She said she got nowhere to kiss me, so we negotiated and I started shaving zone A (from mouth to chin) and zone B* (between moustache and sideburns). We were also visiting the swimming pool, starting on 5th. Pleasant atmosphere there. After the pool we went to some guy in the vicinity, picked a puppy for her, called her Grga. The best pearl of Oma's wisdom for the week is that it wouldn't matter if we went to a vacation together and not fuck at all, because there's no way we could prove we didn't, and then how would she get married afterwards. Probably the same thing as with my folks - had I stayed at home, half the neighborhood would have known when I was alone and when not, i.e. Đuđa would know and the next day everyone would know.
(... 56 words...)
The next evening, as if nothing happened, went out, scratched for a beer, all normal.
On seventh, supposed to have something in DC-99 but dunno whether it happened. Disco in the evening. Met Dženk, explained who Grga was - "naše kuče od prekjuče" - our puppy from day before yesterday overyester. On the way back Kid and Branka gave me a ride.
(... 85 words...)Didn't work somehow, something reminded us of our circumstances. We want to live our life, and it's all reminding us that we're economically dependent, namely subordinated. There's no liberty without material base. She smoked three cigarettes one after another, I saw she's taking it hard. How can I help, when my hands are tied too.
On the pool on 15th too. On Cyprus, Makarios was toppled, a military junta took over. The pictures of Makarios being all over the newspapers, her dad said that with this beard I looked like him.
On 16th, probably, went to Belgrade with Eči, in the morning. Tried hitching, and hit the worst of the crop: at least two stopped only to express their opinion of my hair. One even pulled in reverse so we could hear well what he had to say, and the other one stopped, waited until we approached, and then hit the pedal, squealing with his tires, the novisadist cunt. And I put my best trousers on. A couple stopped, though, and the lady even started moving to the backseat (promised myself never to buy a car with less than four doors), but they went only 10km, thanked them. Eči said "we are something, got three cars, motorbike and a bicycle among us and we hitch".
Eventually got the 11:30 train from Fabrika station and got there at 13:30. He composed a playlist for the background music while we rode through the yellow fields of wheat - Neil Young's "Harvest" for sure, than at least one Mlinarec, and we'll see what from Dylan.
In Tolbuhin's st. we found the service shop but the guy who sold parts worked only til two, so again didn't buy the needle. Walked through Beograđanka (aka Black widow), which was the fresh architectural miracle of those years, nothing much from inside. In Knez Mihalova I staked out the Academy's location. In antikvarijat (just old and foreign books) he bought "The last tango in Paris" and I bought a pocket edition of Joyce's "Ulysses" - though at 700 pages it would have to be pocket of a šinjel. Hit the pinball and a beer at the station. Day passed.
I remember taking the škodilak to Kljajić to have wheels balanced, had to wait quite a while. Sat on a tractor tire and read Ulysses. On twentieth new cuntup on Cyprus, Turkey invades the north part. Three days later, the military junta in Greece was over, Karamanlis comes back to take over. Next day, supreme court orders Nixon to hand over the tapes. On twonyseventh the ispičment begins (I invented the word right then, ispičiti - to beat out, kick out, not quite related to pička (cunt); rhymes fine with impeachment).
The negative which Arpi shot with their Smena 8 I actually developed later, maybe in september, but the shots are of july. Smena 8 was a miracle of soviet tech, a small plastic shooter, just a few rings on the lenses being metal. I heard that even the lenses were plastic, not sure they had the technology to do that at the time. It was ridiculously cheap, real workers', and many photolaboratories survived exactly thanks to every jack and jill having a Smena.
It also solved the problem of the parallax between the viewer and the lens. The solution maybe wasn't the most elegant, but it worked. On many photographs the character's heads or legs would be cropped out, because the photographer stood too close and did't aim quite carefully, or did but moved hand at the moment of snapping a shot, lacking the feel for how hard it would have to be pressed. The solution was simple - the angle of the viewer was as if for 50mm, while the lens was 40 and caught wider. Of course, many have, just in case, moved away while shooting, so the two compensations gave a reliable yet tiny result. Uncountable shots I developed where the group of people occupied less than a quarter of the frame's width. That I salvagad in the laboratory, because the regular film in use was fine grain, 17 DIN was the norm, and that meant very little was possible to shoot in low light, so they shot it outside, in the sun. There was another fame around, that the sun must be behind the photographer's back, „so they all can be seen well“. True, it was possible that someone would be in someone[ else]'s shade, but they did this even if there were just three in the cadre. I took care to avoid all these when I shoot - I like a nice side light, or from behind, why not.
This time, by some miracle, Arpi (and whoever else shot, he's on many frames) avoided all these traps - most were shot from near, in shade of a late afternoon. And there's no lineup for an all-together, this is a documentary series. The occasion - the boys are sitting on the grass and playing sevens, just like I remember we did as well, behind the corner near the well, likewise in late afternoon, some seven-eight years ago. Sevens are a game like simplified preferans, but without trumps, actually a seven is a trump, so there's four card in the game which take the whole table, and the takings count (or was there some other way of scoring?). There was also some bidding, and the bidding up a „meksiko“, which I guess raised the stakes and conditions, similar again to declaring „game“ in preferans, when the two extra cards are not used. Sevens were played with a deck of 32, mostly with hungarian cards, but also with regulars where cards from two to six were taken out. While preferans is a game for exactly three, sevens can be played with two and four as well, though I don't quite recall how were cards dealt in each case, probably six each per hand.
And lo how nobody mowed and it didn't bother anyone, and how it was only grass and no weeds whatsoever.
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* replicated the naming of the solution for the Trieste crisis.
** common expression for "couldn't take it anymore"
Mentions: Aranka Gnajs, Arpad Gunaroši (Arpi), Branka, DC-99, Drago Mlinarec, Đurđa Rođanović (Đuđa), Endre Felbab (Eči), Fabrika station, fića, Gradivoj Jankulov (Dženk), Ilona Gnajs, Oma, Slavica Tejin (Tejka), šinjel, škodilak, Zoltan Čonti (Kid), in serbian
4-VIII-2022 - 4-IX-2026