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Dubravka Ugrešić - The Ministry of Pain

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Dubravka Ugrešić The Ministry of Pain

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Having fled the violent breakup of Yugoslavia, Tanja Lucic is now a professor of literature at the University of Amsterdam, where she teaches a class filled with other young Yugoslav exiles, most of whom earn meager wages assembling leather and rubber S&M clothing at a sweatshop they call the Ministry. Abandoning literature, Tanja encourages her students to indulge their Yugonostalgia in essays about their personal experiences during their homelands cultural and physical disintegration. But Tanjas act of academic rebellion incites the rage of one renegade member of her classand pulls her dangerously close to anotherwhich, in turn, exacerbates the tensions of a life in exile that has now begun to spiral seriously out of control.

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The Ministry of Pain
Dubravka UgreiTranslated by Michael Henry Heim NOTE The narrator her story the - photo 1

Translated by Michael Henry Heim

NOTE The narrator her story the characters and their situation in the novel - photo 2

NOTE

The narrator, her story, the characters and their situation in the novel you are about to read are all fictional. Not even the city of Amsterdam is wholly real.

D. U.

Contents

I dont remember when I first noticed it. Id be

They called me Professor LuciPicture 3 at first, but once wed

The first time I entered the classroom I could tell

The first thing I required of them was to write

Occasionally, when confronting my own image in the bathroom mirror,

I told them they had nothing to worry about: they

At the Department I felt somewhat of a stowaway. I

Our game derived from Anas symbolic bag.

Surrounded by the indifferent walls of our imaginary laboratory, we

Amsterdam is one of the most beautiful cities in the

I kept thinking we had time to burn, but the

Ill pick you up at the airport, she said. Dont

Once Id left, I could never quite get it together,

I watched her pricking her finger with the needle and

I bought a few boxes of the requisite chocolates at

The day after I got back to Amsterdam I paid

I didnt know what to do. I paced the cramped

The complex housing the ICTFY, the International Criminal Tribunal for

Leaving the courtroom was like leaving a funeral at which

Eventually Ines and Cees did invite me over. Truth to

I paused in front of the door. A mere two

I couldnt quite pinpoint what had brought it on. There

And then came the exam. There they wereall four of

I walked slowly down the five flights of stairs and

You one of us? he asks with a shrewd look

I knew it was Igor the moment I heard the

After Igors departure an image of my first year in

I was plagued by nightmares at the beginning of the

We are barbarians. The members of our tribe bear the

I stood, pulled down the first video that came to

I left the flat and headed toward the metro station.

Life is sometimes so confusing that you cant be certain

Those pangs of homesickness!

That long since detected upheaval!

I am altogether indifferent

As to where to be altogether

Alone or how to drag my tote

From bazaar to house and home,

A home that is mine no more

Than a hospital or garrison;

Indifferent to what sort of people

Will see me, the caged lion, bristle

And from what sort of world I will

As I mustbe banished into

Myself and my own feelings.

Like a Kamchatka bear with no ice floe,

I dont care where not to fit in

(I dont try to) and where to eat crow.

Nor am I charmed by my mother

Tongues call, cajoling and creamy:

I set no great store by the tongue that others

Use to misconstrue me

(Readers solely intent upon

Milking the press of its bletherings),

For theyre of this twentieth century,

And I precede the centuries.

I am stunned like a log left to lie

On a path with trees. Everyones the same

To me, its all the same to me,

And what is all the more the same

And closest of all, perhaps, is the past.

All my features, all traces, all dates

Have vanished into its morass:

I am merely a soul bornsomewhere.

My country has so let me down

That should a sharp-eyed sleuth

Search that soul inside out

It would fail to sleuth forth native roots.

Every house is alien, every temple empty,

All the same, all one, all mere trash.

But if by the road theres a tree

That chances to be moutain ash

Marina Tsvetaeva

The northern landscape like the desert makes for absolutism. Except that in the north the desert is green and full of water. And there are no temptations, no roundnesses or curves. The land is flat, which makes people extremely visible, and that in turn is visible in their behavior. The Dutch are not much for contact; they are for confrontation. They bore their luminous eyes into those of another and weigh his soul. They have no hiding places. Not even their houses. They leave their curtains open and consider it a virtue.

Cees Nooteboom

I dont remember when I first noticed it. Id be standing at a tram stop waiting for a tram, staring at the map of the city in the glass case, at the color-coded bus and tram routes that I didnt understand and that were of little or no interest to me at the time, standing there without a thought in the world when suddenly, out of the blue, Id be overcome by a desire to bash my head into the glass and do myself harm. And each time Id come closer to it. Here I go, any second now, and then

Come now, Comrade, he would say in a slightly mocking tone, laying a hand on my shoulder. Youre not really going to?

Its all my imagination, of course, but the picture it creates can be so real that I actually think Im hearing his voice and feeling his hand on my shoulder.

People say that the Dutch speak only when they have something to say. In this city, where Im surrounded by Dutch and communicate in English, I often perceive my native language as alien. Not until I found myself abroad did I notice that my fellow countrymen communicate in a kind of half language, half swallowing their words, so to speak, and uttering semi-sounds. I experience my native language as an attempt by a linguistic invalid to convey even the simplest thought through gestures, grimaces, and intonations. Conversations among my compatriots seem long, exhausting, and devoid of content. Instead of talking, they seem to be stroking each other with words, spreading a soothing, sonorous saliva over one another.

Thats why I have the feeling Im learning to speak from scratch here. And its not easy. Im constantly on the lookout for breathing spaces to deal with the fact that I cant express what I have in mind. And theres the larger question of whether a language that hasnt learned to depict reality, complex as the inner experience of that reality may be, is capable of doing anything at alltelling stories, for instance.

And I was a literature teacher.

After going to Germany, Goran and I settled in Berlin. Germany had been Gorans choice: Germany did not require visas. Wed saved up quite a bit, enough for a year. I quickly found my feet: I landed a job as a nanny for an American family. The Americans paid me more than a decent wage and proved to be decent people. I also found a part-time job at the National Library, shelving books in the Slavic Division one day a week. Since I knew a thing or two about libraries, spoke Russian in addition to our language, and could make sense out of the other Slavic tongues, the work came easy to me. I lacked the proper work permit, however, so they had to pay me under the counter. As for Goran, whod taught mathematics at the University of Zagreb, he soon found employment in a computer firm, but he resigned after a few months: a colleague of his had been hired as a lecturer at a university in Tokyo and was trying to lure Goran there, assuring him he would get a better job forthwith. Goran in turn tried to persuade me to leave, but I held out: I was a West European, I said by way of self-justification, and I wanted to be close to my mother and his parents. Which was true. But there was another truth.

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