Dragi prijatelji, dozvolite da Vam predstavim Ramona Martinsena. On je Holanđanin koji živi u Srbiji, na krajnjem severu Bačke u Subotici. Piše poeziju, kratke priče i prozu na holandskom i na engleskom jeziku. Objavljivan je u holandskim, srpskim i drugim internacionalnim časopisima koji se bave književnošću, takođe je bio i učesnik "Pesničenja" u Beogradu.
Ukoliko Vam se dopadne ovo što pročitate, a to je priča pod nazivom "Subotičko mleko", ispratite njegov blog http://ramonmartensen1983.wordpress.com/ .
Ramon Martensen
SUBOTICKO MLEKO
She brought her own milk. Every time she does and I never saw her drinking from the plastic bottle she holds in her hands. Probably it’s over the date, but it must be like some sort of amulet. The nails that are wrapped around it change colours every time she’s here. So do the drawings on the self-created labels. She has covered the plastic with a layer of Tip-ex.
‘Come in,’ I say while stepping away from the door. A man is coughing while spitting on the hallway floor. ‘That’s what I have to endure while waiting for you,’ she says.
‘You are not taking good care of me.’
I once saved her from the dripping jaws of a street dog or gipsy, which somehow got into the building. She was not sure which one it was. The light was poor.
‘Yes, yes. You have a hard life without me.’ She smiles and passes me. The nails and drawings are red today. That means her milk-mood is kind of critical. I never dared to ask if it’s period related. She is too young to have bitter feministic frenzies, but better safe than sorry.
She walks up to the table and sits down. The books lay open. Pictures of people sitting in the park, reading newspapers or riding bicycles are shown with dots underneath them.
‘So this is what you teach the retards?’
She lets her tiny finger run over the dotted lines.
‘Let’s call them the less fortunate average,’ I say to her while sitting down beside her.
She signed up for my classes some months ago. Her English didn’t require any improvement. It’s linguistic therapy as she puts it, since she thinks her own language sounds like a deflating tire, fighting for its last breath. I didn’t make up that analogy but I’m happy to make money from it.
‘Coffee, tea?’
There’s a week worth of dishes in the kitchen. It is my way of finding out if I ate healthy enough. The smell of rotting vegetables tells me I am doing alright. I put some water in the boiler and start waiting. She followed me to the kitchen. Everything that is mine frightens her. My things are like vicious dogs to her and I am the owner that can prevent them from attacking with a single word.
‘You live like a caveman, you know that? This is foreigner unworthy. You are starting to be like a Balkan guy.’
‘I always was. I was just born in the wrong body. A Balkan guy born in the body of a Western-European.’ I watch while the water is boiling. It hisses at me aggressively.
‘Well, just keep on eating this shit food till you’re fat and sweaty, then your body will match your Balkan soul.’
‘Way ahead of you,’ I say while squeezing my beer belly. ‘Way ahead of you.’ She walks up to me. She wears All-stars that make sucking sounds. With her right hand she strokes my stomach.
‘You still have some gaining to do. Your dick will still be wet when it rains. That’s why guys from around here have those fat fucking bellies. They are afraid that their dick will melt when it touches liquids. That’s also why they never, ever would touch any cleaning products or put effort in foreplay. God forbid she would enjoy enough to cause the whoopiewaters to start flowing.’
‘Ahhh, it is so heartbreaking that in your fourteen years you haven’t had a single satisfying sexual experience. I would write a letter about that to the’’Dear Mary Menhater’’ section of one of your teenage magazines.’
She is fourteen years old and a genius. Now only guys twice as old can be her intellectual match. At my age she will make the greatest writers fall hopelessly in love with her, just for the fun of it.
‘I am sure you can educate your lovers by watching Sesamestreet together .A is for anal, that is not where it’s at. B is for breasts, not when you just met. C is for clitoris…’
She gives me the finger. Around it she wears a ring shaped like a snake with two eyes made of green plastic. I think she got it from some cheesy Indian shop where the cool alternative kids go to show how exotic and open-minded they are.
‘Watch where you put that finger, you will need it in the future.’
She puts some coffee in her cup and stirs it through the boiling water.
‘Really? Are you now throwing this ‘’popular parent’’ shit at me? Come on …’
‘Watch your mouth young lady or I will stick a carrot in it.’
She rubs her tiny ass over the kitchen sink and bites her lip while I take my own cup.
‘Mmm, that is very Freud. Are you sure you don’t want to get jiggy with it? You must have jerked off to Lolita a Zillion times.’
She follows me back to the table. The leftovers might shape into a giant hand that pulls her into one of the pans.
‘I don’t like Russian writers. They are too …’
‘Russian writers are frustrated paedophiles without the luxury a catholic church.’
She sits down next to me and blows the steam away that twirls up from her coffee. Her hands are wrapped around the cup. We could be father and daughter in a family commercial:
‘Get a deeper connection and drink our shitty instant coffee. Fuck young, spawn young.’
The only thing missing is her smile that says everything will be alright as long as we drink Nescafe together.
‘How are things with your boyfriend? What was his name? Bojan wasn’t it?’
She sighs and puts down her cup. The milk is still in front of her and she starts rolling it around between her hands. ‘We are in sort of a fight. He doesn’t want to see me.’
‘How come?’ I stare at the bottle. The label is starting to get off a bit.
‘Well, I slept with another guy and he didn’t like that.’
‘Aahhh, why would you do that? He was such a sweet and caring boy.’
She rips of the self-drawn label completely and rubs it straight on the table. She looks at the image she drew. It’s a red man with fork hands who is perforated by bullets.
‘He wasn’t there.’
‘What? Are you a television? Do you need to be plugged to function?’
Her facial expression remains unmoved while she grabs the bottle and pushes it against her chest like a teddy bear. ‘I need to pee now,’ she says.
While she’s in the bathroom I’m standing in the doorway, facing her with my back. That’s our ritual. Once I accidentally closed the door and forgot all about it. When I opened it again after fifteen minutes she was trembling on the toilet seat with tears in her eyes. She wore a pink belt with smiley faces that I never saw her wear again. Since then I am where she can see me. While waiting I’m watching the layers of dust, the plants that dropped their wrinkled leaves, the notebook that’s opened at its first, blank page. Her milk bottle is just standing there without any label.
‘Can you wipe my peepeepalace for me,’ I hear from behind me as the sound of water on water stops. Her voice is sprinkled with sardonic sweetness. Kind of what Satan’s love baby with a pageant child would sound like.
‘Well, God gave you two hands didn’t he?’
She doesn’t want to touch any part of her own body or be in any way aware of its existence. She once asked me to move the scale, because she might accidentally step on it and discover what a fat monster she is. Machines never lie. That’s why she hates me so much, she once told me. I always lie or tell mean truths.
‘I am sure there is nothing that you need to touch that hasn’t been touched before. Just grab a piece of paper and do what you always do whenever Justin Bieber is on TV.’
I take a cigarette and light it. The smoke floats into the bathroom. Like an unleashed genie granting cancer wishes.
‘I smell heart disease. Can I have some?’ she asks before flushing the toilet. Her belt buckle rings. It’s yellow this time with green skulls on the surrounding leather. She calls them her anorexic sisters.
‘Aren’t you a bit young for that?’
She laughs as she’s standing with her hips pressed against mine. There is a lump of mascara on her eyelash.
‘Come on, you are not my father. You must know something about the quantity of things I’ve put in my mouth so far.’
I lift my shoulders as she takes the whole pack from my hand. She just keeps on staring at me, without blinking, her lips tightly pressed together. In one grab she takes out all the cigarettes and mashes them between her fingers. Paper, filters and strings of dried tobacco are falling down on the communist brown carpet.
‘Are you going to hit me now?’she once walked into my ‘class’ with a black eye. ‘Are you being abused?’ I asked her.
‘Here we call that parenting. Or expressing love,’ she replied. ‘Depending on the person giving it.’
‘I will not hit you. I will just buy new cigarettes.’
‘That is how you solve all your problems. You spoiled Western Europeans! Just throw some money at it. That’s why you don’t want to fuck me! You can buy all the pussy you want!’
I rub my hands. Some of the skin is coming off. She looks from my hanging shoulders to my bend knees and bites her lip.
‘Music!’ she says.
Ukoliko Vam se dopadne ovo što pročitate, a to je priča pod nazivom "Subotičko mleko", ispratite njegov blog http://ramonmartensen1983.wordpress.com/ .
Ramon Martensen
SUBOTICKO MLEKO
She brought her own milk. Every time she does and I never saw her drinking from the plastic bottle she holds in her hands. Probably it’s over the date, but it must be like some sort of amulet. The nails that are wrapped around it change colours every time she’s here. So do the drawings on the self-created labels. She has covered the plastic with a layer of Tip-ex.
‘Come in,’ I say while stepping away from the door. A man is coughing while spitting on the hallway floor. ‘That’s what I have to endure while waiting for you,’ she says.
‘You are not taking good care of me.’
I once saved her from the dripping jaws of a street dog or gipsy, which somehow got into the building. She was not sure which one it was. The light was poor.
‘Yes, yes. You have a hard life without me.’ She smiles and passes me. The nails and drawings are red today. That means her milk-mood is kind of critical. I never dared to ask if it’s period related. She is too young to have bitter feministic frenzies, but better safe than sorry.
She walks up to the table and sits down. The books lay open. Pictures of people sitting in the park, reading newspapers or riding bicycles are shown with dots underneath them.
‘So this is what you teach the retards?’
She lets her tiny finger run over the dotted lines.
‘Let’s call them the less fortunate average,’ I say to her while sitting down beside her.
She signed up for my classes some months ago. Her English didn’t require any improvement. It’s linguistic therapy as she puts it, since she thinks her own language sounds like a deflating tire, fighting for its last breath. I didn’t make up that analogy but I’m happy to make money from it.
‘Coffee, tea?’
There’s a week worth of dishes in the kitchen. It is my way of finding out if I ate healthy enough. The smell of rotting vegetables tells me I am doing alright. I put some water in the boiler and start waiting. She followed me to the kitchen. Everything that is mine frightens her. My things are like vicious dogs to her and I am the owner that can prevent them from attacking with a single word.
‘You live like a caveman, you know that? This is foreigner unworthy. You are starting to be like a Balkan guy.’
‘I always was. I was just born in the wrong body. A Balkan guy born in the body of a Western-European.’ I watch while the water is boiling. It hisses at me aggressively.
‘Well, just keep on eating this shit food till you’re fat and sweaty, then your body will match your Balkan soul.’
‘Way ahead of you,’ I say while squeezing my beer belly. ‘Way ahead of you.’ She walks up to me. She wears All-stars that make sucking sounds. With her right hand she strokes my stomach.
‘You still have some gaining to do. Your dick will still be wet when it rains. That’s why guys from around here have those fat fucking bellies. They are afraid that their dick will melt when it touches liquids. That’s also why they never, ever would touch any cleaning products or put effort in foreplay. God forbid she would enjoy enough to cause the whoopiewaters to start flowing.’
‘Ahhh, it is so heartbreaking that in your fourteen years you haven’t had a single satisfying sexual experience. I would write a letter about that to the’’Dear Mary Menhater’’ section of one of your teenage magazines.’
She is fourteen years old and a genius. Now only guys twice as old can be her intellectual match. At my age she will make the greatest writers fall hopelessly in love with her, just for the fun of it.
‘I am sure you can educate your lovers by watching Sesamestreet together .A is for anal, that is not where it’s at. B is for breasts, not when you just met. C is for clitoris…’
She gives me the finger. Around it she wears a ring shaped like a snake with two eyes made of green plastic. I think she got it from some cheesy Indian shop where the cool alternative kids go to show how exotic and open-minded they are.
‘Watch where you put that finger, you will need it in the future.’
She puts some coffee in her cup and stirs it through the boiling water.
‘Really? Are you now throwing this ‘’popular parent’’ shit at me? Come on …’
‘Watch your mouth young lady or I will stick a carrot in it.’
She rubs her tiny ass over the kitchen sink and bites her lip while I take my own cup.
‘Mmm, that is very Freud. Are you sure you don’t want to get jiggy with it? You must have jerked off to Lolita a Zillion times.’
She follows me back to the table. The leftovers might shape into a giant hand that pulls her into one of the pans.
‘I don’t like Russian writers. They are too …’
‘Russian writers are frustrated paedophiles without the luxury a catholic church.’
She sits down next to me and blows the steam away that twirls up from her coffee. Her hands are wrapped around the cup. We could be father and daughter in a family commercial:
‘Get a deeper connection and drink our shitty instant coffee. Fuck young, spawn young.’
The only thing missing is her smile that says everything will be alright as long as we drink Nescafe together.
‘How are things with your boyfriend? What was his name? Bojan wasn’t it?’
She sighs and puts down her cup. The milk is still in front of her and she starts rolling it around between her hands. ‘We are in sort of a fight. He doesn’t want to see me.’
‘How come?’ I stare at the bottle. The label is starting to get off a bit.
‘Well, I slept with another guy and he didn’t like that.’
‘Aahhh, why would you do that? He was such a sweet and caring boy.’
She rips of the self-drawn label completely and rubs it straight on the table. She looks at the image she drew. It’s a red man with fork hands who is perforated by bullets.
‘He wasn’t there.’
‘What? Are you a television? Do you need to be plugged to function?’
Her facial expression remains unmoved while she grabs the bottle and pushes it against her chest like a teddy bear. ‘I need to pee now,’ she says.
While she’s in the bathroom I’m standing in the doorway, facing her with my back. That’s our ritual. Once I accidentally closed the door and forgot all about it. When I opened it again after fifteen minutes she was trembling on the toilet seat with tears in her eyes. She wore a pink belt with smiley faces that I never saw her wear again. Since then I am where she can see me. While waiting I’m watching the layers of dust, the plants that dropped their wrinkled leaves, the notebook that’s opened at its first, blank page. Her milk bottle is just standing there without any label.
‘Can you wipe my peepeepalace for me,’ I hear from behind me as the sound of water on water stops. Her voice is sprinkled with sardonic sweetness. Kind of what Satan’s love baby with a pageant child would sound like.
‘Well, God gave you two hands didn’t he?’
She doesn’t want to touch any part of her own body or be in any way aware of its existence. She once asked me to move the scale, because she might accidentally step on it and discover what a fat monster she is. Machines never lie. That’s why she hates me so much, she once told me. I always lie or tell mean truths.
‘I am sure there is nothing that you need to touch that hasn’t been touched before. Just grab a piece of paper and do what you always do whenever Justin Bieber is on TV.’
I take a cigarette and light it. The smoke floats into the bathroom. Like an unleashed genie granting cancer wishes.
‘I smell heart disease. Can I have some?’ she asks before flushing the toilet. Her belt buckle rings. It’s yellow this time with green skulls on the surrounding leather. She calls them her anorexic sisters.
‘Aren’t you a bit young for that?’
She laughs as she’s standing with her hips pressed against mine. There is a lump of mascara on her eyelash.
‘Come on, you are not my father. You must know something about the quantity of things I’ve put in my mouth so far.’
I lift my shoulders as she takes the whole pack from my hand. She just keeps on staring at me, without blinking, her lips tightly pressed together. In one grab she takes out all the cigarettes and mashes them between her fingers. Paper, filters and strings of dried tobacco are falling down on the communist brown carpet.
‘Are you going to hit me now?’she once walked into my ‘class’ with a black eye. ‘Are you being abused?’ I asked her.
‘Here we call that parenting. Or expressing love,’ she replied. ‘Depending on the person giving it.’
‘I will not hit you. I will just buy new cigarettes.’
‘That is how you solve all your problems. You spoiled Western Europeans! Just throw some money at it. That’s why you don’t want to fuck me! You can buy all the pussy you want!’
I rub my hands. Some of the skin is coming off. She looks from my hanging shoulders to my bend knees and bites her lip.
‘Music!’ she says.
She walks towards the stereo next to the faded, communist-orange drapes. They are closed. Sunlight gives me headaches. And I don’t own sunglasses. Sunglasses are for people who get out of the house. I watch her standing there. She has holes in the knees of her jeans. Her legs are too skinny to show any flesh. The little girl with floating ghost legs. She is holding a Nirvana album. Her tiny fingers sliding over the plastic cover. As if she is maternally stroking Kurt Cobain’s goldilocks.
‘I like depressed people,’ she says. ‘They don’t give enough of a fuck about anything to bother me. Not with their bloodfloaded dicks or their gossip sucking mouths.’
All of the sudden I imagine her with pink framed glasses and a too wide My Little Pony sweater, instead of her pierced, bare bellybutton. Maybe a silver ring around her finger with a ladybug.
A ladybug would never land on a pushy dick-top.
She puts in a cd of Depeche Mode. Personal Jesus starts playing.
‘I am too lazy to be your personal Jesus,’ I say. ‘It requires too much standing up.’ She smiles as she walks back to the table. The milk bottle rolls between the palms of her hands. She starts peeling of the tip-ex. The white is curling up under her red nails.
She’s the only person I know who makes drops of snow drip on a surface of blood.
‘What’s with the bottle?’ I ask.
She takes the book for my less fortunate students. I look nervously at all the blank dots as she runs through the pages.
‘What do you do when you’re not teaching?’ she asks.
‘I sleep.’
‘And jerk of probably.’
‘No. That makes a lot of a mess and I am too lazy to clean that up.’
‘And you wouldn’t get it up anyway.’
I smile and take over the book from her. The pages filled with nothingness.
‘Probably not.’
She takes an empty glass from the table.
‘Here everybody wants everything. The guys your body, the girls your soul. Just for the fucking fun of it. What is in this bottle is what I want to keep for myself.’ The glass turns white as she fills it with the content. The stench of her well kept secret fills the apartment. Big lumps are floating at the surface.
‘I will leave this with you. If you haven’t flushed it the next time I am here I will be coming back every day.’
She stands up and takes her bag from the chair.
‘I hope to see you soon.’
She shivers as she’s standing at the doorstep. Her eyes focussed as if she is monitoring the surroundings for predators. Then she starts walking. The squeaky sound of her sneakers following her to the elevator. Both the sound as well as her movement pick up speed, chasing one another. The little girl who is hunted by herself.
Back in the kitchen I start cutting tomatoes. Just for leaving them there to rot, hoping that the stench will overrule the stench of bad milk. The terrible smells created by oneself are always better to handle then those of others. The red liquids are sticking to my fingers as I pass the glass.
I smile at it while taking of my clothes. I am ready to go back to bed.
Ramon Martensen, 2012
‘I like depressed people,’ she says. ‘They don’t give enough of a fuck about anything to bother me. Not with their bloodfloaded dicks or their gossip sucking mouths.’
All of the sudden I imagine her with pink framed glasses and a too wide My Little Pony sweater, instead of her pierced, bare bellybutton. Maybe a silver ring around her finger with a ladybug.
A ladybug would never land on a pushy dick-top.
She puts in a cd of Depeche Mode. Personal Jesus starts playing.
‘I am too lazy to be your personal Jesus,’ I say. ‘It requires too much standing up.’ She smiles as she walks back to the table. The milk bottle rolls between the palms of her hands. She starts peeling of the tip-ex. The white is curling up under her red nails.
She’s the only person I know who makes drops of snow drip on a surface of blood.
‘What’s with the bottle?’ I ask.
She takes the book for my less fortunate students. I look nervously at all the blank dots as she runs through the pages.
‘What do you do when you’re not teaching?’ she asks.
‘I sleep.’
‘And jerk of probably.’
‘No. That makes a lot of a mess and I am too lazy to clean that up.’
‘And you wouldn’t get it up anyway.’
I smile and take over the book from her. The pages filled with nothingness.
‘Probably not.’
She takes an empty glass from the table.
‘Here everybody wants everything. The guys your body, the girls your soul. Just for the fucking fun of it. What is in this bottle is what I want to keep for myself.’ The glass turns white as she fills it with the content. The stench of her well kept secret fills the apartment. Big lumps are floating at the surface.
‘I will leave this with you. If you haven’t flushed it the next time I am here I will be coming back every day.’
She stands up and takes her bag from the chair.
‘I hope to see you soon.’
She shivers as she’s standing at the doorstep. Her eyes focussed as if she is monitoring the surroundings for predators. Then she starts walking. The squeaky sound of her sneakers following her to the elevator. Both the sound as well as her movement pick up speed, chasing one another. The little girl who is hunted by herself.
Back in the kitchen I start cutting tomatoes. Just for leaving them there to rot, hoping that the stench will overrule the stench of bad milk. The terrible smells created by oneself are always better to handle then those of others. The red liquids are sticking to my fingers as I pass the glass.
I smile at it while taking of my clothes. I am ready to go back to bed.
Ramon Martensen, 2012
