Nothing, nothing at all has changed. Like the repertoire of some provincial theatre with largely predictable, only slightly varying dramatic plots, just performed by a new cast. But three articles grab his attention. The first one an account of a long-married retired couple who were acquitted by the Court of the Third Instance, the highest of the courts, after having been convicted of tax evasion while trafficking in waste candle tallow, which they scraped off of graves and sold on to chandlers.
The two pensioners are now suing the state for severe emotional distress for a sum equalling 2, average Slovenian pensions. Maribor holds the dubious distinction of having been the southernmost point in the Third Reich. An exuberance of flowers which, during the later industrialized period, never bloomed again in such vast numbers, not even in honour of Marshall Tito, not for Yugoslavia. The city declined even further following the independence of Slovenia, when it became a dead zone, horticulturally speaking.
With a good measure of nostalgia for the good old days, the writer concludes the article with a surprisingly daring thesis that draws on the philosophy of history: that human history is a continuous process of negative repetition, a circular regression, and not what the linear logic of technological advancement tries to impose on us. The third article in the Crime section mentions two outbreaks of unusually aggressive psychosis that led to an intervention by the relevant authorities and mental health professionals as well as the forcible commitment to the appropriate institution of the influential Maribor CEO Tine B.
So far it has been impossible to determine whether there is a connection between the two cases. Both subjects were considered to be relatively stable personalities and their psychotic breaks occurred almost simultaneously, which is why the possibility of a reaction to an undetermined illicit substance cannot be excluded. The investigation is still underway, concludes the article.
Half an hour later, Bely exits the Hotel Eagle. Rosa exhales smoke and flicks her half-smoked cigarette into the snow. Absence of words. Dim light and the smell of petrol in a subterranean garage a few blocks off. Bely nods. Rosa heads east, towards the Maribor cemetery, then further south, toward the industrial zone. Could it have been brought on by exhaustion? Too much stale air from that cellar?
