In the mix
overnight Dragi Jovanovski had somehow put in an appearance, emerged from the scrum of foreign workers here no doubt, who shared so many of the features of
our own crowd from that earlier era of the 60s down on the Great Southern Land.
This morning at the kitchen sink the little Bangla lad through the window was
sweeping the Void beneath Block 9. Wielding a brush-broom and swinging into his
improvised shovel (from a 20l. oil can), the earpiece he was wearing delivering tunes
or news from home no doubt. At one point the elderly man on the iron bench
facing the carpark seemed to lift his legs in the time-honoured way in order to give access beneath.
Down in Spotswood Dragi—“Dear” literally—enjoyed Engelbert Humperdinck and Tom Jones on
his little trannie in the room at the end of the hallway. When he finally
returned to Macedonia to bring out his wife and son Dragi left a suitcase with
us for safekeeping and cried out back before departure. Tall, dark, chain-smoking Dragi, quiet, cheerful and respectful, with his cans of Spam and jars
of chili. Once over the choice of a TV channel after Bab had finally relented
and bought the box, a young teenage scream had told Dragi where to get off. Like
Godfather Luka, Dragi made a frightful sight in the hospital at his premature
end, unfit to be seen by youngsters. Frane the Dalmatian—or Islander, he liked
to correct, being from Pag in the Adriatic—with his wife Ana the Slovene, took
Bab out to the hospital. The look of the group on return made you wonder about the other side of the screen.
No comments:
Post a Comment