DOUBLE SUICIDE OF THE ENAMOURED

A New Version of Cain and Abel, Without the Use of a Weapon Here, we will set the thing like this, which really happened, and for a while the whole country lived on that story. It was about two brothers, “fat K.” and “skinny S.”. Two intellectuals from Herzegovina, two brothers, estranged Allah only knows why, and who hated each other the way one can only hate in the South. Blood had to be spilled – there couldn't have been the slightest doubt about it. Nobody was surprised when skinny S. disappeared one day, and his bloodied shirt was found in a bush on the plot that belonged to fat K., the athlete with a shaved bull neck. They locked him up. He did not admit that he had murdered his brother S., he did not even know where his brother was. After all, he was not obliged to look after him. - He’s not a baby, is he? They convicted him, the evidence was too obvious. Some nerds protested, is it possible to convict someone of murder if there is no body? In the meantime, S.'s body was nowhere to be found. The press scoffed at the legal eager beavers. K. the murderer was sentenced to life imprisonment. They also detained his son for complicity in the crime, because it was precisely those days that he came from Paris to visit his father. Which one? K. or S.? In any case, the public opinion got the full satisfaction. Seven years passed, the case of brothers K. and S. had long been out of the newspaper’s columns. The journalists could no longer earn a single penny on it. K. behaved well in prison. Every year he said prayers in a memorial service for S.’s soul. But on one occasion, a resident of the Ovčari village went to a friend of his daughter-in-law's friend in Surdulica, where he came across a worn-out tramp in the street. He turned after him because he looked like someone familiar. The next day he returned to Ovčari. A few days later, the news spread that the killed S. was alive. Three weeks later, all Bosnian and French newspapers in their editorials published huge photographs of two men in a fraternal embrace. One of them was heavy, stocky, and bald-headed with small curved ears. He was pressing his lips on the cheeks of a wide-eyed gray-haired man. In the background were silhouettes of policemen. The photo emerged after a three-week manhunt. S. the victim covered his traces to the very end. Caught, he admitted to having simulated his own death – for the fear of death. He knew that his brother would kill him, and to avoid it, he opted for this kind of self-destruction. He was n o b o d y for seven years. The brother kept in the cell for seven years was a guarantee for his life. Had the neighbor arrived a day later in Surdulica, it could have taken another seven years. The assumption of the public was that skinny S. was not afraid that his brother would kill him, but that he would not let him live. He was afraid of the psychological slavery to fear and decided to redeem his freedom. He paid a high price. Instead, he got a fiction that lasted for seven years, but which could also have lasted for seven days only. The journalist thought he was truly free just for a moment – for the second in which he decided to do so. The very next moment brought him a new kind of slavery. But that moment, the moment of creating fiction, was really freedom. Looking at their photograph, I was sure that fat K. would suddenly kill his brother S. I felt uneasy about this crime that could have happened the following night. But the police reassured me. This time skinny S. would be locked up, and fat K. would be released. I don't know exactly what sentence the Bosnian law provides for charging a person with fiction of one's own death. Someone relentlessly whispers: seven years... The new version of Cain and Abel – I would end this article. – Without the use of a weapon.