Life itself writes novels.
At least that's the relatively popular phrase from third-rate Serbian TV series.
Maybe there's something to that phrase.
But anyway, the novel about D.V. will never be written.
Because nobody wants novels about losers. About the naive. About the poor. About good deeds.
D.V. was a good man.
At a time when good people were despised.
Born in the meantime, in an undefined country, at the crossroads of history, at the moment of the unknown, under a gray sky, D.V. was not an ambitious person. Raised according to rather outdated concepts, he grew up into a normal man, a character with modest self-confidence and hidden sentimentality. The gray sky under which he lived brought a time when work in a suburban village no longer brought even bare survival. His childish will, which leaned towards his grandfather's wishes to remain on the property, was ignored and he found himself on the gray asphalt of the city between two dried-up riverbeds.
The trauma of replacing the rural world with urban life remained with him throughout his teenage years and into his youth. He came from a traditional family of former forest guards. A long-extinct duty that had been passed down from generation to generation through the centuries, through all the changes and replacements, through all the wars, epidemics and powerful men, until the time when the sky turned gray. It was hard for him between the school desks. Too hard for his simple soul to find verbal expression for the burden he carried every day, for six hours or more.
The path he took later, with his craft, was not easy either, but it still seemed infinitely easier to him to work all day than to listen to the monotonous voice of a middle-aged monstrous fat man in front of a blackboard or to ask him if he could go pee. School completely killed D.V.'s desire for reading and intellectual development. He was afraid of books like a mad dog. His character, on the other hand, did not allow him to believe in any deity, and so D.V. found himself in the middle of the road again, under a gray sky.
The sky was also gray the day he went abroad.
The sky was gray when he got married.
And when his daughter was born.
And when he realized that he had earned quite a good amount during his two decades of stay in a country whose language he had not managed to completely master. Perhaps he would have learned it better if he had not been afraid. Of reading. If only he had managed to become attached to some collective, to get fired up by some ideology, to enter the waters of organized mysticism - his life path would probably have had a different outcome. But that possibility never even crossed his mind.
The day of his funeral was sunny.
About seven people were present, who felt sorry that they had to spend such a wonderful day seemingly sad. His wife had left him long ago for another, and his daughter was the only one whose heart had been broken into more pieces than there were crickets in the cemetery. The priest was absent ex officio, because those who took their own lives will burn in hell anyway. In the last couple of years of his life, D.V. somehow managed to suppress his fear of reading and writing, and for the first time since graduating from high school, he bought a pencil and a notebook. And in it she would put naive, clumsily sentimental thoughts, extremely childish and bad drawings and the occasional stain from tears that she sometimes couldn't control.
His daughter inherited his savings and the fully paid-off house, but what was dearest to her was the notebook. And in it there were trees, streams, undefined birds, a thin black cat that she had more than the other elements, houses and simple scenes of rural life placed between the sadness that flowed from the naive and not particularly meaningful sentences.
On one page she recognized herself in a poorly scribbled drawing...
Not knowing why, the girl wouldn't let anyone see the notebook. And fortunately for her, no one wanted that. She too was raised according to rather outdated concepts. She too grew up to be a normal person, a character with modest self-confidence and open sentimentality.
She was a good person.
At a time when good people were despised.
(Roger Mortis, 156)
