The Bridge is one of Serbian author Zoran Živković's short mosaic novels, that is, a novel comprised of seemingly autonomous stories (The Bridge features three such stories) but upon closer inspection the stories share themes and motifs that together form a cohesive, integral whole. To observe the mosaic form in action, let's turn to the three stories themselves.
1. The Raincoat
The tale's opening lines set the tone: “I met myself at the entrance to the building where I live. I was just about to go inside after my afternoon walk, when someone pulled the door open from the inside. I stepped back to make room for the person coming out – and stared at my own self.”
Ah, the doppelgänger. Fyodor Dostoyevsky had his The Double wherein an opposite personality exploits the failings of the protagonist in order to take over his life. Acknowledging the influence of the Russian master, Zoran Živković creates his own unique rendition of the double; however, it is important to note, the Serbian author's storytelling possesses a charm and playfulness more reminiscent of Roald Dahl's The BFG or Neil Gaiman's Coraline than D's Crime and Punishment or The Double.
The tale’s narrator is a reserved, mild-mannered gent, age fifty-six, who doesn’t drink, was never attracted to sports, isn’t a churchgoer and would never come close to stealing a book or frequenting the red light district. His double is just the opposite: a flamboyant smasher of accepted norms and seeker of adventure. Such an introvert/extrovert polarity echoes Dostoyevsky’s low-level bureaucrat Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin and his outrageous double.
In keeping with the waggish happenings in the story and since I suspect protagonist and author share much in common, I’ll refer to the narrator as Zoran and his rambunctious double as Zorro. So, with this in mind, on with the story: Zoran notices Zorro is actually himself and not an unknown twin since Zorro is wearing his recently purchased dark green raincoat with a distinctive defect: one lapel is narrow and the other wide.
Zoran follows Zorro down the street when he notices his double enter his barber shop. How odd – it has been less than two weeks since his last haircut. Zoran wouldn’t dare enter the shop himself as it would invariably lead to confusion and require an explanation; the barber might even call the police. Zoran is in a quandary – he wants to see what Zorro is up to but he can’t very well draw attention to himself by peering through the window from close-up. Zoran devises a resourceful plan: he’ll stand across the street and give the appearance he’s reading a newspaper but actually he’ll tear a hole in the paper so he can keep an eye on the barber shop.
And what a sight: the barber gesticulates wildly and starts washing Zorro's hair. Zoran waits and waits as time drags on. What can be so incredibly time-consuming with washing someone's hair? But when Zorro walks out of the barber shop, Zoran almost faints: Zorro didn't have his hair washed, Zorro had his hair dyed, dyed a bright red!
A thousand thoughts pop into Zoran's mind all at once but he doesn't have time to reflect since his double is a man on the move: following Zorro through the crowd (easy peasy now that he has bright red hair), Zoran watches as his double enters a wine shop. A wine shop! What's his double doing? Zoran knows very well he has never been a drinker. Several minutes pass and Zorro emerges carrying not one but three bottles of wine. Abominable!
The fun continues - more specifically, fun for the reader but not fun for Zoran: Zorro buys a bowling ball at a sporting goods store (a bowling ball!); Zorro enters a church (Zoran never goes to church); all sorts of fantastic shenanigans take place in church with a priest, nun, wine bottles and bowling ball (Zoran is the last person in the world up for fantastic shenanigans, let along in a church with members of the clergy).
On and on, more madcap twists and turns - to cite several: Zorro steals a book at a second hand bookshop and he eats rose petals in a house of pleasure. Then Zorro leads Zoran to a warehouse where Zorro puts on a tragedy mask and Zoran puts on a comedy mask. Together the ZZ boys enter a room where a croupier with short red hair stands behind a massive roulette table. And there's a young painter in formal evening attire at his easel on one side and stout middle-aged violinist in grey evening gown on the other. The stage is set - Zoran is about to shift from passive to active in his new role as riverboat gambler, or, perhaps more accurately, let's make that Dostoyevsky's gambler. Bets are placed, the wheel spins, the ball rolls with fate in the balance.
The Raincoat concludes on a bridge, a most fitting scene since bridges figure prominently in the work of Nicolai Gogol, another one of the author's prime influences. And, of course, who could fail to notice the connection between a Živković raincoat and a Gogol overcoat?
From beginning to end, a careful reading will reveal clues at every step, telling detail that will serve as keys to open up multiple levels of meanings in The Raincoat and the novel as a whole.
2. The Scarf
Madam Olga is in a huff. She usually does not like going to sales and now here she is, wearing a scarf she bought on sale, a scarf of bright yellow, a color not at all suited to her. What was she thinking? On top of the gaudy color, the scarf has a defect – one end has two dark spots resembling the eyes of a sleeping snake. And because of their location and symmetry, they give the appearance of not being a defect but part of the design. Ugly in the extreme.
What other mature woman would ever wear such a gaudy scarf? But then Madam Olga is immediately given the answer: standing in front of the store window is an older woman wearing the same, exact scarf. Madam Olga recognizes this woman as Madam Vera, her fourth-floor neighbor who died three and a half months ago.
Madam Vera walks off and Madam Olga proceeds to tail her. What follows is weird and whacky in the extreme. Again, the more care a reader takes, the more connections and multiple meanings are revealed. Only this time, we have the images and happenings from two stories to consider.
3. The Sneakers
“Miss Anita knew at once that the young man wearing unmatched sneakers, one white and one black, had to be her son.” So begins this tale of a fourteen-year-old girl pursuing her future seventeen-year-old son all over the city, from one end to the other.
Sound impossible? Squarely In the tradition of Middle-European fantastika with such authors as Franz Kafka and Mikhail Bulgakov, Zoran Živković has written a tale that’s beyond impossible, it's truer than true. I urge you to read this remarkable trio of stories forming The Bridge.
The Bridge is available both as a standalone novel and as part of Impossible Stories 2 published by Cadmus Press
Serbian author Zoran Živković, born 1948
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