The Meats of Yesterday

by Nenad Pavlović

The Tower drills out of the turf and spirals outwards, skywards. It is of a tasty eggshell off-white in the glossy-pages of the catalogue, though here, on the spot, it bears a tint of weathered bone. The structure is a skeletal arm breaching out of the mud and reaching to squeeze and crush the sun like a rotten egg.

Marianne likes the view.

“You can see the Elysian Gardens from here,” she points her bony finger capped with a blood-red fingernail across the river, and she is correct. Even though only halfway up the unfinished edifice, on the landing of the outside spiral staircase, which is highly impractical even though it looks very, very nice and stylish, yes, I can see the Elysian Gardens, a project like this one, completed and gleaming.

I try not to look down, because downwards lies a Tartarus of construction sites and mud and debris and scaffolds and the remains of the shantytown. It looks like it thrives under the overcast steel sky. I don’t want to know. It will all go away anyway, and faster if I don’t know.

“We should’ve taken the elevator,” I say.

“No, we shouldn’t have,” my Mary giggles.

We enter the hollow marrow, and our steps echo in the gray dark. I want to go to our apartment, only I really don’t, because it is barren; half of our things haven’t been brought up yet, and the other half lies compacted in cardboard boxes.

Music screeches through an open door along our way. I glance, and I stop, ever slightly, to listen. It is metal and raw. Curiosity draws me, and I come closer.

“It’s our neighbors, our future neighbors,” I explain as I drag Marianne’s arm. She doesn’t resist.

It is metal, and raw, raw as they seldom play it today. There are people inside. Young, younger than me. Actually, no, they are only younger inside.

“Alexander?” I ask, gazing at an oval expression of mirth of an unbothered mind in a frame of baroque hair.

“Gordo?” I recognize one more memory of my teens. A visage of a friendship, severed by life choices. The rest of the people, the ones without electric guitars, I don’t know.

Gordo doesn’t smile at me, but he doesn’t frown, either. His eyes recognize me.

“Korean Joe!” Alexander sings and offers a hug. His chest is as skeletal as the metal mascot on his t-shirt.

Mary shakes hands and repeats her name before declaring she wishes to retreat to her chambers, sending a message clear to me and to all, that she wants to let me reminisce in peace.

“What is this, Gordo, that you’re playing, what is this? I have never heard a sound like this!” My feet dance on the floor, there is no ice to break. Time is powerless against childhood friendships like these.

“It is death metal, real death metal, and raw, nothing poser in it!” the blond giant boasts and, to demonstrate, plays anew. Alexander follows. A twig of a girl with greasy brown hair in the room next door, placed there because the hallway is too small, releases an earthquake upon the drum set.

Gordo growls. Hairs whip. Beads of sweat roll down his face. I am not concentrating on his face, but on his fingers on the guitar neck, wrung wrong, twisted as though broken. It is all very strange.

“I’ve never seen anyone play like that!” I shout, even though there’s no need to, since the song is over.

“Well, that’s the way I play,” Gordo justifies himself, confrontational and boastful. “Listen! That’s the way I play because I like it like that, and that’s that!”

“It sounds amazing! I’ve never even heard of anyone playing like that! It’s a brand-new technique! You need to copyright that!”

As I reach for my expensive phone, I feel like an imposter among these people. My hair is short and my shirt is boring, and that’s what I am these days. Years, exactly.

“What do you mean, ‘copyright’?”

“Copyright the way you play. The technique. The sound. To protect your rights, earn from your creation. Copyrighting, it is what I do.”

“Listen, man, I play how I wanna play, don’t make me angry! This is my thing and I don’t care about anyone else! If they like it, fine, if not, I don’t care! I won’t sell out.”

I grin, sensing that it would be unwise to push the subject any further.

“I don’t wanna sell out, man, I don’t, my music is everything to me, but, listen, listen.” Hs arm is on my shoulder, heavy arm, but friendly.

“It’s my dad, man, you could help him out. He makes sausages, and he’s really good, like, really good, like a sausage scientist, an artisan, and he could use your help.”

I say OK, I agree. I am taken aback a bit, but product is product. I promise to come visit tomorrow.

He didn’t sell, Gordo explains. Because he is not a sellout. He likes hanging at Alexander’s flat in the Tower, but he will never sell, he says. He asks me if I still know where he lives. I say I remember his house well, and I do.

* * *

Shanties form a maze, adorned with blooming dandelions and dried cornstalks. My memory, hazy as it is, guides me, and I wade through mud and dust to Gordo’s half-finished brick monstrosity of a dwelling, hidden amidst walnut trees and pungent smoke. Screech of the rusty hinges of the gate of peeling blue iron announce our arrival. Dogs howl and surround me, a pack of mutts, laughing and sniffing in curious greeting. I am led between mounds of debris and dried vegetables to the well-known one-story hut. The insides are just like the outsides, silently screaming squalor. It smells of home cooking and DOS games.

“Here we are. We are here, Pa!” Gordo proclaims.

A hunchbacked man in proletarian clothes skulks about. He eyes us with his back turned.

“We need to offer something to our guests, to be polite! We should give them some hors d’oeuvre, don’t you think?” Gordo baits his progenitor with badly hidden hunger in his words.

The grouch in blue turns and scowls disapprovingly, ultimately admitting his son’s sneaky victory. Approaching a rusty kitchenette, his hairy claw pulls out a scarred sheet of wood and butcher’s tools. A white monolith is opened, spewing fetid cold, and a bunch of meaty foods is placed on the slab. Accepting the present conditions, Gordo’s father’s mood turns, and now he is ready to present.

“Of course, of course! We know our hospitality! Coffee and rakija and meze! Look,” he jazzes with a sly look, “look what I’ve got!”

An assortment of meat cylinders of various shades of red lines up upon the cutting board. The old man slices the first, then the second.

“Try! Please! Good, homemade! Different kinds!”

Gordo swipes a slice, then a second, chewing it hungrily.

I reach out and take a morsel, and taste it.

An electric current of impressions courses through me. Meaty! Raw! Spicey! Rancid! It is highly unique.

“This is good! This is specific! You must copyright it! It will sell!” I raise a second slice high, before putting it into my mouth. Gordo’s pa doesn’t hear me and cuts into some more sticks.

“Hey,” he addresses his son, “’member how the dogs wouldn’t eat EX31? Now, take a look at this!”

Dogs swarm around a sausage piece thrown onto the ground, tails wagging excitedly; the fastest one gets to gulp it down.

“How?” Gordo inquires. “They hated it!”

The old man smiles. “This is EX33. It’s EX31 wrapped in EX32. They can’t tell, stupid animals. Here, try!”

Gordo pops the meat bit into his mouth, chews, scowls. Swallows. Nods.

I am not offered a taste and I believe that there’s a reason for it.

“Hey, call your lady! Let her feast on this,” Gordo suggests, and I agree and pull my comm gadget out of my pocket.

Marianne arrives some time later because she finds the suburban maze more of a challenge.

“It is unique,” my Mary confirms, chewing, although she scowls more than I do. “What’s in it?”

Gordo’s father slaps his thigh. “Oh, goodness, you don’t want to know how the sausage is made, lass!” It is the most humorous joke to him at the moment.

“But we need to know how the sausage is made! The copyright people must know! That’s the only way they’ll pay!”

“Oh, they won’t like it! They won’t approve! But I’ll show them anyway! Call them!”

And I do.

They arrive shortly, in a fancy black car that barely fits the street. The team walks surely through the mud and the dust; apparently, they have some experience in this kind of situation. Marianne is smoking a cigarette; she offers Gordo and his father one each, and they accept.

“We need to know how the sausages are made!” insists a tiny bald man in an expensive suit.

The dogs growl at him.

“We like the product, but we need to know how the product is made,” adds a corporate woman, smoking a cigarette that looks more costly than Mary’s.

“I’ll show you,” Gordo’s father grins and dances, “but you won’t like it!”

We take a walk through the neighborhood. Eyes spy us from windows, over walls, and through the hedges, though the black suits aren’t as strange a sight any more; the building people looked the same, some of them are the same, I suspect.

Our goal is a spacious hanger-like construction on the outskirts. There’s only clear sky above it, made of palest blue. Gordo’s father pulls the shutter aside, and an abattoir smell assaults us.

“It’s livestock, mostly,” the old man explains. “Chickens, pigs, cows, goats, sheep. Abandoned, seized, confiscated. Starved. Run over. People left, livestock often remained. No buyers. No kind souls to take the animals in. So, I take them, and I slaughter them.”

The slick-clad people nod and scribble down. They seem content.

“Then, there are people,” he says, in a lower tone. “The stubborn ones that refused to leave. Ones that had to be taken care of. Like the ones from Elysium Gardens. Old coots. I’ll be one of them someday, but today, I am their butcher!”

“This is scandalous!” protests a woman in a suit. “What percentage of this is murder meat? Is it within acceptable boundaries?”

“I don’t know, I never learned that in school. Finally,” he continues, “there are the dead. Freshly dead, for the most part. Except those I used for EX31. Those ones were rotten, I must confess. Even the dogs wouldn’t eat them.”

“Scandalous! Preposterous! I ate some of that meat!” a copyright man shouts out. “Just so you know, if I suffer any consequences to my health, this whole deal is off!”

“Don’t worry, I fried all the life out of it. In pig fat! I also offer kosher and halal versions,” the old man advertises expertly.

“What would those people say?”

An apparition of glowing light phases through the wall. I am spooked, but only briefly, as I suddenly remembered that the graveyard is just over yonder.

“He is a monster! A cannibal butcher!” the ghost accuses.

“I concur! He still owes me money for the half of the field he took from me!” agrees a second specter.

“Well, people need to eat,” a spirit of an old lady with a shawl wrapped around her heads contradicts him. “And we are of no use to anyone dead, anyway. Let our children eat good!”

“A vote!” one of the corporate men proposes. “A vote is required! We might just get to an agreement yet!”

“I... I should have sold,” says the fourth ghost, and many more step to his side.

“What is it you say?”

“I wanted to sell, but, you see, they talked me out of it. I want running water! Electricity that doesn’t break down, and toilets I don’t need to unclog! Snow that I don’t need to plow! If I couldn’t have it, I want my children to have it! My grandchildren! It is the modern age!”

“A new deal can be made! A new building project! We have potential sellers!” exclaims one of the suited men excitedly.

“I don’t know if it would be legally binding,” Marianne scowls. “They are dead, after all.”

“Laws can be adjusted with enough money!” sings the corporate choir in unison.

Gordo crosses his arms. “Well, I won’t sell. Neither will my pa.”

Pa nods, steadfast.

“This is my soul, this is who I am. This is how I play my guitar the way I do. And I won’t change it.” He twitches his shoulders. “I won’t.”

“Me neither. I like my sausages tasting the way they do. They taste great with eggs.”

“It is never simple,” Mary concludes wisely, and I sigh.