26-V-2024.
Twennyfifth passed in a working way - we picked the cherries from the tall one on the front lawn. Collected twonyfive kilos, almost enough for one still. Because we can't possibly eat that much, not to mention the lack of space in the freezer, and she already made more compot than we can eat, ergo brandy it will be. Stanley and I climbed the ladder on both sides while we could, and then we reconfigured the ladder to 4,5m straight, and he took it from there. The cherries were firm, tight, of the kind that bursts in your mouth.
And so that twonysixth came, all by schedule. For lunch, we had sarma with dry ribs from Svetofor (with some hint of a weird smell, not quite the edge-of-bacon fermentation and actually quite right and edible, just felt a bit weird). Then a catnap, about half an hour, will suffice. Then a shower, then switch into clean jeans and the pink-like shirt from the sekendica in Sokobanja, which I intentionally did not wear in public so far. She said „I know why that one, it's because it's in color“. Of course, in case a heap of faces in gray appears, to slap them a bit of a counter. Then there was a question whether to wear a jacket. The jeans jacket is heavy and not for this weather; the one from Lidl is actually lighter but it's for winter. The only reason I'd need a jacket is to have a pocket, for the mobile. This one is a tad bigger than nokla was, it would be clumsy to carry in the jeans, I don't have a pederka*, so a jacket... well she said what do you the mobile for. To record if anyone gives me a phone number, or to type in, same. Well you have eos70, it can record as well. Well, what you said. I'll need it to call a cab to return... last time there were none on Žitni, so I walked home. Well, even easier this time, I'm not burdened with equipment, going minimallistically, so no phone, no jacket.
Stanley drove me to the gimnazija, I think he just loves to drive around in Joda. When we arrived, we had to wait for a guy coming from the hotel to pass, and he seemed to be waiting for us... after you, after you. So I got out, to show that we're not moving and he can pass, but then he rolled down his window - it was Jasmina's husband.
The gang, at least the first batch, already gathered in front of the gimnazija - Sredljak, Bajlo, Staša, Mima, Žara, and now there was a surprise, Biljana. She's gotten very thin, and until she speaks she looks much older than... when was it we met last time, seven years ago. But she stayed the same, and at least I had company for a smoke afterwards. IV4 gathered in much larger number, and have already taken their old classroom (which wasn't quite theirs, perhaps for just one year). We also went to ours, but couldn't talk there, it echoed so badly that from a meter and a half's distance we couldn't understand each other. Made a few shots there and went down to the yard, and then had our shots there taken by Mongol. G.M. from IV3 joined us for a while, though I didn't quite catch that it was her - the face is the same, but she somehow looked low, stooped somewhat, whatever, but as soon as she spoke the doubts dispersed.
Then slowly to city hall, the solemn academy is in the hall there. Of professors, only the old Ana (I think she didn't teach us at all, or perhaps only astronomy if we had that subject at all), she's 93 already and doesn't miss any parastos, and Cvetana, all bent, walks aided, but doesn't give up.
The atmosphere in the hall was all too stuffy, it's capacity is hundred people, and there were 220 of us (on the list, some not arrived yet but then there's staff, musicians, guests of honor etc). I shot half a dozen and scrammed out. I can barely breathe in such a dušegupka [soul taker, place where soul is lost, denotes exactly the overcrowded underventilated spaces], I'd rather bleet outside on the square for some forty minutes than be all water.
Pretty women are passing through town... Some kid, pretty face, elegant movements and stances, carries one of the better shooters on [her] shoulder, comes to sit on the next bench and lights something thin and long. „Excuse my staring, but I bet against myself and won, it's a Nikon after all... All my daughters run Nikons, I'm the only Canonster left in the family“.
Around 18:45 I saw some have come out, and from afar, by sheer dimensions, I recognized Bajlo... and the two tiny ones with him must be Dragana and Oli Boj. Later I heard Oli Boj came to night at her, loaded with two large bags of wardrobe as if for a whole summer vacation, had her daughter drive her, and of course makes for the wrong entrance, despite of having been there hundreds of times, of which at least a handful in the last decade. It's, of course, impossible to kiss her because she again had some makeup armor on her face, though far less noticeable than before.
Then the folks started leaving the city hall, and it took a good quarter of an hour until Mongol managed to herd us against the horse (i.e. monument). In the crowd, row behind me, I spot B. whom I haven't seen for five years, and right behind her, she looks at me, I look at her, it can't be... is it... is it not... Theatre (v. 26-VI-1972., named Nameless then). Blast from the past, haven't seen her since that january of 1973... but she recognized me, though she never knew my name, didn't want to, and I didn't hers until I got the whole album with matricular photos for all three schools. Said „you are healthy, I can see it by your eyes!“. „So I am, just didn't know it'd be visible“... At some point it seemed to me I spotted a person in uniform, but nope, that was just Bora with a huge beard, even more luxurious than mine, all in black.
And I did use the eos70 as a taperecorder - one B.M. from the second, know her well from before, used to be married to Bora for a while, dictated her mobile number, because her class wanted a separate shot, and both B. and Theatre and a few girls from my old end are there, I know half a dozen of them from somewhere. I wonder if they ever got those shots, because she didn't reply to my messages later, didn't send me her email adress, don't know how to pass the link.
And the photo op passed somehow, and we went to the hotel. We of IV5pp at least got the same table as five years ago, but IV3 got one next to the band, couldn't survive there so they took two of the separes, despite the plan being that these not be used at all. Don't know why they did that, the band was arranged, if I'm not mistaken, by their guy, Borko, and he promised the music won't be too loud. Well, it wasn't, it was just very loud. And bad... there were more tavern tricks than finely honed tunes, despite the fact that their singer once worked in an opera, and the repertory was mostly of Banat and of hollywood (lowercase, this is an adjective) fifties, some of Garavi sokak, Zdravko Čolić, Bijelo dugme (if that one is the only rock number of the evening...) plus a heap of various rubble, actually narodnjaci just without the turbo prefix, so they hit the music of our youth worth a suicide. But we wouldn't get dismayed.
Of ours, two more came by this time - Mjedac with his wife, who are just sweet and good looking, said he sold the apartment in Novi and bought a house in Temerin, already pruning the vine there, and also Savka came. She somehow passed the care to her brother and his family, to mind her immobile husband for the evening, while other two colleagues with the same problem didn't manage to do the same.
I buzzed around, sometimes with a shooter, sometimes just so, met a bunch of knowns, many of which I know by just hello, from šećerana or Zmaj, then one D.O. whom I remembered from stour, she actually recognized me and I her not, because she changed her hairstyle completely, from a rich brown over-the-shoulder she was now a blonde, pulled up and in curlicues, but when I started going through the girls from the stour HQ that I remembered, it just clicked and I recognized her. Embraced and kissed profusely.
Dragana specially drilled through her phone to find the shots, to show to Oli Boj a selfie with our twins :).
Not to be forgotten, in order - of IV3, the aforementioned Borko, G.M. with husband (same class) from Toronto, Strle from Newark, J.J. (still looking great, just like two years ago), Paja, Radoje and a few others. Of IV4 a bunch - Žuca (in something dark blue with big white dots, with teal sleeves, just like I remember her wearing at one of the early parties in third grade), Ksenija (handbrake off, says the therapy worked), J.B., Ildika (this time in charge to babysit profesoress Ana, who she hoped would last until half ten, but stayed until almost midnight... serves you well for speaking hungarian), Gavra, Jozda, Vlada, Miljka, Čarga, Milica and at least seven more who didn't earn separate pages here, and now probably won't.
I danced with Dragana, of course, though the music wasn't anything appropriate, but at least they played a few things by Dragan Stojnić, which she always fell for. Then once I danced with Miljka, a bloc aka a salad of few songs. Just like when I tried to talk with her two years ago, didn't understand a bit, could have grown at least a head taller... the music was simply just loud enough to understand nothing less than mouth in the ear.
The booze was, by already established custom, unlimited. The larger restaurants know already that, when we oldsters gather, most of us just can't drink anymore, some can't take much, some claim it's counterindicated with their meds, and those who still drink can't do that much. I tried their viljamovka (william pear brandy), not bad, of course ours is better. My second shot was taken over by Sredljak, because he sat where I left it, and I took the one that Jasmina forgot, I don't even know why she ordered it. When that was gone, the waiter was not on the horizon, so Dragana poured me half of her apricot from a larger glass. For her wobbly leg I had asked the waiter to bring her a crate, stool, upended bucket, anything, but he said nope, must not do that (fuckit, it's a hotel with four stars, improvizations are forbidden), but she can freely pull up a vacant chair and lift the leg on it. That she preferred not to do, said she'll manage as is somehow. But, after a while she noticed the onset of incoming fuckup, so we sat by the corner, and under the tablecloth she laid her leg over my knees. Which we actually tried two years ago in Elmont, but then it seemed she's got quite a heavy leg (well still better than hand), and then she got a crate. This time it went swimmingly, she didn't mind and I saved her evening, she made it to the end without grumbling, and nobody noticed anything.
During that hour Mima sat to my left, and I grabbed one moment, by shooting almost over my shoulder and not really aiming the lens, when she was staring far away into the ceiling, with a serene smile, turned out excellent, even though the eos70 focused beyond her, on Savka. I got a kiss on the cheek for that shot. What can I do, gal, as you look better each year. It's not that all of it is up to the photographer, some of it is up to the model.
By then the dinner arrived, around 21, as per the schedule. Despite Bajlo and me having made 330 shots, of which I did 271 the next day, there's no full plate in sight, and maybe we should have done it. A real hotel dinner, whatever was on the plate was good, no ingredient was in the way and didn't spoil the total, and it was plentiful enough that exactly nobody cleared the whole plate.
Now the hotel too has a coded toilet door, though it's lighter than regular cafe's have and at least has a down-to-earth dial pad to type it in, not the two-column idiocy they have at Rene**, where the org. committee met. And the code was on a sticker affixed on the doorframe, in large font. Still nobody liked to type that - both times I got there when the door was already open, and I held it open for the next guy.
I managed to put Theatre and Gavra together, but the universe failed to implode, unless we count the great non-event. It lasted whole three seconds of... just nothing.
Before the closing time, while the snake dance wiggled between the tables, Dragana and I sat to go on with the wine (some „dubravka“, not bad at all, just the kind that sits well with me), since we heroically endured some twenty minutes of dance. While the snake dance was passing behind my back, three girls went with their fingers through my hair, to ruffle a bit what's left of it (I think it was Ksenija, didn't memorize the other two), and just for kicks so did Čarga, he carried the lantern (i.e. held the tail end).
I looked around to see whether and company would gather to continue somewhere else, but it didn't seem likely to happen this time. By then Dragana called a cab, and it arrived promptly - of course, they were ready, they were forewarned over their networks that there's this event, not a minor thing, a fifty year parastos of all three gimnazija on a heap. She and Oli Boj got off at Lesnina and I took the rest of the trip alone, came home by half two.
----
* 'peder' - gay. The kind of very light jacket, some thin and sturdy plastic, which you could crumple no larger than a snowball. We bought a couple in Trieste, in 1976. They were a technological miracle, don't know why they vanished. I later asked on burundi whether anyone remembered them and why they vanished, and Fikret did, and nobody knew.
** real name of it is Renesansa (renaissance), but it's nameplate has it in two rows, different fonts, few notice the second row. Jozda summoned meetings in Renesansa, I mentioned „kod Renea“ (at Rene's) and there was no confusion either way.
Mentions: 26-VI-1972., Theatre begins, Biljana Grgurević, Borivoj Pragović (Bora), burundi, Cvetana Mladović, Čedomir Spajin (Paja), Dragana Vitas (Dragana), Dušan Starkić (Strle), Elmont, eos70, Gavrilo Taroški (Gavra), gimnazija, Gradivoj Raža (Žara), Gradivoj Sredljev (Sredljak), Ildika , IV3, IV4, IV5pp, Jasmina Vlajin, Joda, Jovan Zdanić (Jozda), Ksenija, Lesnina, Mališa Borkovski (Borko), maturski parastos (parastos), Merima Tabarski (Mima), Milica Zubatović, narodnjaci, Nenad Bajlo (Bajlo), nokla, Novi Sad, Olivera Stojanović (Oli Boj), Radoje Stević, sarma, Savka Čajkanić, sekendica, Smiljka Grajin (Miljka), Stanley Berger, Stanoje Serdarević (Staša), stour, šećerana, Velemir Prokin (Čarga), Vlada Markanić, Zmaj, Žika Šašić (Mongol), Živana Armatović (Žuca), Živko Mjedenica (Mjedac), in serbian
9-VI-2024 - 18-VI-2024