/ world today news/ Excerpt from the last book of the Macedonian writer Mladen Serbinovski
Mladen Serbinovski is among the most talented Macedonian masters of the pen – publicist, novelist and playwright. He was born in 1958 in the Gostivar village of Vrutok, near which the Vardar River springs. He graduated in sociology. He works as a journalist at Macedonian Radio and Television. During the time of Prime Minister Lyubcho Georgievski, he was appointed director of the National and University Library “St. Kliment Ohridski”.
Mladen Serbinovski is the author of: “A Year of 13 Months”, “Marko Kings”, “Cunning Peter”, “Guardian of the Rainbows”, “The Perpetual Calendar of Growing Up”, “Macedonian Augian Stables”, “Particles of Nothingness”, “The Macedonian Faust”, “Masons of the Night”, “The Marionettes”, “The Kidnapping of Frozen Disney”, “Tales from the Lower Earth”. His latest book is “Novel about Mother Teresa”.
A novel about Mother Teresa
– What will come out of this girl of ours, who is looking at the sky all the time?
– She has everything that is hidden in us too, and here we have only small pieces of her wholeness.
– The text can remain as it is; like dominoes, mosaic. Well, let the book be only about her deeds.
– It cannot be otherwise; to embrace all of Teresa would mean to touch God.
– No problem, just write it. Short forms are in fashion now, readers can’t wait to read long ones.
– Only, now we are in the years when we want to preach, not tell. And you are looking for a text, a fairy tale from us…
– You both wrote, this is nothing new for you…
– The old insubstantial literary ambitions are detrimental to literature…
– We, as a publishing house, are not looking for great literature from you. A book about great people rarely becomes a great book by itself. We want a book from you that will sell. A text that will go smoothly. Easy reading. And although this cannot be explicitly stated in the contract, let there still be intrigue inside, you must come up with an interesting connection. I am aware that the main problem for the authors of such books is to come up with a good connection. But this could also be done by the people from our publishing house…
– You want to say that my text about Teresa will be corrected by your people, and my name will be on the cover?! Do you have in mind some love knots or triangles behind the monastery walls, like in the soap operas? Did your professional authors just see inserted and kinky sex with nuns? Yes, this will greatly increase the circulation… Dear friends, may God bless you, but it is proper for me to confess before you, and before the Lord, and before myself, that I am unworthy, in a purely human way, to describe the life of this woman…
– But you know her best… Society is too interested in Mother Teresa… Her life is of great interest to me, specifically, as a reader… You both master the art of writing and now in old age For years you have been given the opportunity, and you have been paid, to go through all the places that your Teresa has gone through… How about you? You are only asked for a hundred pages of text for her. As you write it, so be it. I thought that as soon as I mentioned the subject and offered you the contract, you would not hesitate for a moment to accept it… Lest the journalistic and poetic nerve has died so much in you that you reject an offer such as they dream of all writers and journalists… I personally don’t know a pensioner who would be paid to travel from continent to continent and he refuses… I expected many more delays because you are her people after all gender and religious affiliation?
– No, I did not ask for permission from Teresa or the church, but I know that there will be no problem. She actually allowed me to come. Many texts and books have been written about her, incl. and the church has yet to write.
– This is not bad, but we want something for modern readers as well…
– Ah, what are these modern readers that I don’t know them? Because of Teresa, I can neither day nor night raise my head from the young people who come here… Except that I don’t know if they are modern according to your criteria? Why do you think that books about Mother Teresa should be divided into those written by the church and others written by secular authors? With Teresa, there is no such division, and as far as I can see these modern young people who want to win as new readers, and they, themselves, do not divide Teresa once into a holy person and a second time into a humanist…
– Here you are right, this is not a secret, that’s exactly why I invited you…
– It’s a secret, Mr. General Manager, a big secret. You do not know what this secret is… But I, who have been with it all my life, am also aware that I do not know it… You want to burden us with an extremely difficult task… If I were worthy to write about it , my text about Teresa would be an addition to the Bible, a woman’s book, along with the other books of Christ’s disciples.
– Let them write such books in the Vatican. You are asked for a readable text, no larger than one hundred, one hundred and fifty pages… You know that and you can do it. Let it remain between us, but if you want, we can present you with a pseudonym, with a made-up name; I didn’t want to offend you in the least, but only to suggest that it be slightly spicy. I do not bind you with this, but the time today is such that now it is difficult to sell a book without something scandalous inside it.
– Scandal!? That’s the real word. Well, Tereza in herself is an unprecedented scandal for this humanity, sunk in sin, – the other person, who has been tensely silent until now, joined in mockingly.
– Yes, you are right that the books about Teresa must also be spicy. You have to. You are right that they should also be overflowing with love. Yes, but not under a foreign name.
– Yes, one writes about her only under her name and as a direct testimony.
– Still try to understand me too? I understand you completely, I understand that you want to remain as honest as possible about it, but I also need to sell, I don’t need your honesty in addition to fill my stores. I don’t want to go bankrupt. I am looking for a source of adrenaline in the form of a fairy tale that will attract readers and excite them. Understand me, however, for allowing myself some misgivings about your text, though not yet written. Fear of becoming boring… This is exactly what I have to tell you now, it is dictated by my function as general manager… In a word, your story or testimony should not turn out to be too boring…
– Look, Mr. Big Boss, it is very honest of you to insist so much on your rules and requirements and not give them up for anything in the world, but you do not want to listen to my opinion at all regarding the project that we you suggest… I’m too old even to preach, but I don’t think about writing at all. Especially for writing according to set rules. How can I explain to you that Teresa is a new rule, including in terms of writing. Right here, I can see that we will not be able to understand each other. My plane to Calcutta leaves in an hour and a half, I already have to get up, and that means we have to stop the conversation. Oh, why am I in such a hurry and want to go back to Calcutta today to see Teresa? That’s because I’m never bored with her all my life. Unfortunately, she is now bedridden, but she still told me to come here. However, when I am not by her side, as it happens today, while we are talking, I actually realize how good I feel with her… Mr. General Manager, for your spicy searches and adrenaline, you will have to knock on other doors… You have lost me to this cause. Tomorrow I will fill myself with new adrenaline, being close to Teresa. I am sure of that, if only she could live a little longer among us. God bless you. Have a nice day.
*
Skopje is God’s eternal food, fasting God’s food with a divine taste, without which the people of Skopje cannot go through any fast. They mix with their fingers in the delicious mixture of all the vegetables, so mixed in a homogeneous mixture that they can no longer be recognized individually. Ashmara, this old word with its specific whisper of pronunciation, older than the name of God himself, which with its three open vowels has a greater breadth than even the word universe, has recently begun to be replaced by the word pinjur, but although forgotten, the old expression is still used, especially in football matches, when the good player, the football master, worthy of the deification of the green field, manages to confuse the opposing defense with his dribbling the public says – make them at eight o’clock .
On the very first day, as soon as he separated the earth from the sky, God made a pot and a pan out of clay, and while he continued tirelessly with the Creation during the following five days, the clay pot and the pan dried up, and on the first day of rest in the week ata of The creation of the world, hungry and tired, he lit a fire, and with the pot he scooped up water from the Vardar and placed it on the fire. He took a few large potatoes and a few dry red chili peppers, put them in the pot and while they were boiling, he hatched a few onions in the pan and pounded them in a mortar with a lot of salt, poured them into the pan, added a few ripe eggplants on, pounded everything together again, and having added the already roasted peppers and boiled potatoes, pounded it all together again until a crimson-colored oshmara was obtained, similar to the muddy mixture of the earth not separated from the sky on the first day of Creation. Finally, God’s dinner was sprinkled on top with olive oil. Sitting by Vardara, like an old Skopje butler, who sits down to eat the fasting meal brought from home in a bundle, the Lord ate voraciously. He ate greedily from the fasting food, and while chewing the first loaf of bread, from time to time he lay on his stomach and drank Vardara thirstily.
In the afternoon of the first Sunday of the Creation, full and satisfied, the Lord fell asleep next to Vardar, and he is still asleep from the delicious oshmara.
That’s why it’s always boring and boring in Skopje, it looks as if nothing happens there, and for Skopjes every day is like Sunday.
Mladen Srbinovski. A novel about Mother Teresa. Skopje, “Makavej”, 2012
Internal language translation from regiolect to literary Bulgarian – chief assistant. Dr. Ana Kocheva
See more about the Macedonian writer in “Reviews”
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