There is a woman in the city here walking around and conducting her day-to-day life with the memory of an argument, a screaming match, that had horrible consequences. Or rather, that ended badly; badly in the extreme. It would be wrong to ascribe the end result as a consequence of the argument. Hopefully the woman concerned could keep that last thought at bay.
The couple had been together over fifteen years. He drank a great deal, smoked like a chimney. A wild lad, though wild in the context of the art world. Not a wild, hard man.
In the usual way, even the couple’s closest friends didn’t know too much about their intimate, private life. One of the circle suggested the man, a prominent local musician, played an important role as step-father to the woman’s son from a previous relationship. The same person too who had commented on the fatherhood role suggested the man had been struggling recently with his ageing. Early/mid-fifties’ life position worsened by the booze; there was the beginning of various ailments.
The argument, the screaming match, took place in the inner city apartment the pair had bought some years before, an apartment sitting on the 24th floor of the building. Wild screaming it had been. She from one of the rooms indoors and the man eventually from the balcony.
A sudden silence arrived from the latter after the man, the woman’s partner, flipped himself over the balcony railing.
In such circumstance there might not have been any scream once the rail had been cleared. That was the likelihood.
Clearly, there had been no thought of the danger to anyone happening by on the ground beneath the balcony. (Nothing further had resulted.)
Some kind of sudden impulse involved, a sudden trigger action, whatever precursors there may have been earlier. In the months and years earlier.
The first report of the incident had not mentioned the screaming. It was a close intimate of the pair who later divulged that part of the matter.
In an unrelated event thirty-five years ago, a cousin had thrown herself down a well up in our Montenegrin village. Bacila se. Thrown herself; when in fact in a case like that Cousin Jovanka must have let herself slide down from the rim of the well.
It has surprisingly gone now from memory how the news reached us. The earliest memory of the reception was Bab’s quiet absorption of the shock. Very little was said. Some words from Bab had been expected; there had been almost none.
Jovanka had been Bab’s niece, the pair having spent a good part of Joke’s youth together and developed a fondness for each other. Memorably, Bab had defended Jovanka more than once when she thought her interests were not being taken into account by her parents and her sisters.
We were all assailed by the event ever since of course, all the particular details involved. The long climb up to the village, which would have needed well over an hour at Jovanka’s age. All the determination and settled resolve. A set of her best clothes Jovanka had taken up with her and left beside the well. Her ready burial attire. On top of the clothing was her wedding ring.
Assailed across all these years, regularly and inescapably. In night visions and waking. Jovanka’s sons and daughter had suffered how much more. The partner of the musician at the balcony in her case too.
Gnawing memory. Always there. You could not shake a fist at the horror; take the head in hands like in the Munch painting. The memory could not be dislodged. After receding in the usual way it always returned.
It was the first anniversary of the balcony jump a few weeks ago. Possibly there had been some kind of commemoration for those most nearly affected.
In the high rise living in Singapore desperate leaps from the upper storeys were common and regular. One of the neighbours in Geylang Serai said the jumpers always did it in other neighbourhoods, not their own. A strange quirk that was perhaps understandable.
Mother had fixed in her head that Jovanka had gone to her father’s well for her act; not the house where she had married. A decision that in Bab’s mind spoke loudly. There had been hardship in both houses for Jovanka, but it had been an argument with her father that had eventually precipitated her action. Another source had the other well chosen, the house of Jovanka’s husband.
In the cases of both Jovanka and the vaulting musician there had been no prior attempts. You might guess the thought of suicide had occurred for both previously. Different as the actions were, one would guess so. It was impossible to know.
There had been some sharp words, not screams, with Jovanka’s father some while before her act. The musician had apparently been wildly argumentative; arguments with the partner seem to have been regular and dramatic.
The slide; the leap. Complete emptying of mind in the moment—that most surely.
A sudden lunge in the one case and a much longer passage for our Jovanka. Fixed and unequivocal mind. Silent screams came later perhaps on both sides.
Melbourne
NB. Published by New World Writing July 2021, in a trio with the general title Code Red.
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