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Sven Mijailovic |
Sven Mijailovic might be in his late forties, but his white-haired head
adds plenty of decorum to a lean, weather-beaten figure. Perhaps the
different shades of gray he is always dressed on accentuate his
wasted physiognomy. His slow speech, furnished with the blossoming of
distant lands, and his paced step offer the impression he is in no
hurry to meet his destiny. He never sleeps. Yet when the full moon
triumphs, Sven, anchored to a bottle of chartreuse and dreams of
Yugoslavia, gives himself up to slumber.
More often than not, he awakens terrified after one of those drunken
dreams. The petrified image of a ten year-old who smiles at his gun
paralyzes his breathing, and brings him a feeling of suffocation difficult
to overcome in the night. In his dreams, a veil of blood prevails on the scene long forgotten of the frozen fields outside Sarajevo. The ghost of the child in slow motion momentarily meets that of a
younger man, without any white hair, who, dressed in a military garment,
takes the child in his arms and damns both souls to eternity.
Long before the morning dawns in a pale hallelujah of yellowish light, the
fatigued eyes of sleepless Sven return to his favorite spot in the
American real state he supervises. The trash cans provide refuge from the
haunting image of the child whose blood stained his spirit almost a
decade before.
Early this morning, a resident who was throwing away her
trash found Sven's earthly body. When the paramedics arrived, it was
already too late. Sven's soul is now back to dreamland. Somebody was
awaiting him long ago and, together, they head towards the horizon. The
child inside his battered body smiles now.
copyright 2004
Paula
Rodriguez |
