Neven Ušumović – Vereš

The narrator of Croation author Neven Ušumović's short story, Vereš is newly arrived to Budapest, and the life he has found there is perhaps not the one he expected. Budapest is lovely, he writes home, but its not always lovely to him. He finds himself revisiting cheap Chinese cafes, an immigrant eating the food of other immigrants, while Budapest sits unknown and, perhaps, unknowable.

At Aranysárkány (The Golden Dragon), he meets Vereš, a charismatic and slightly mysterious young man. Vereš works at Aranysárkány, cheerfully swearing in Croat (a language he knows nobody else can understand, neither the patrons nor the Chinese staff). Of Aranysárkány, the narrator writes,

The actual cleanliness of the restaurant was another matter, however; it was a cleanliness that never shone, a cleanliness that seeped into the skin, steaming from the ceramic tiles, as in a bathroom, beading your forehead, beading the walls. A very low-level, institutional cleanliness: rational and merciless.

Nonetheless there is something about both Aranysárkány, and more particularly Vereš, which attracts our narrator, who finds himself returning again and again. Vereš, upon learning the narrator is also a Croat, makes sure to share a quick word each time he visits the restaurant. Then one day, late in the afternoon, the narrator and Vereš talk. Thus far, Ušumović has taken us, in that horrible expression, from point A to point B, but he has done little else. The opening of the story is never quite as engaging as the narrator believes, and it is really only when Vereš appears that the short story gains focus. At any rate, Vereš tells the narrator his story of escaping Serbia, which begins with,

”I ran away too, like every 'citizen of Serbia' who had half a brain! Which isn't to say I have half a brain myself...besides which, what little brains I do have these Hungarians will turn to mush soon enough.”

Vereš goes on to relate his awful story of escape from Serbia, an escape that involved, both metaphorically and quite literally, the destruction of his past, his possessions, and any hope of returning.

”The following day, on a train, I looked forward to Pest with a sense of foreboding. Before this I'd only ever gone there to see concerts at the Fekete lyuk and Tilos az Á... but now I was a frozen, bloodless refugee. But for the Hungarians – whether we were Hungarians from Vojvodina, Serbs, or Croats – we all had blood on our hands. And they treated us like we were mounds of stinking carrion.”

He goes on to share his increasingly bizarre and violent tale, which involves animals being tortured, an artist so agonised by the act of creation that he has difficulties attending to his bathroom duties, a kidnapping by Hungarians who demand to be referred to as Hartmann and Conen, and finally rescue by the very Chinese who run Aranysárkány. Vereš' story is implausible to say the least, but his matter-of-fact tone and casual attitude in the face of insurmountable bleakness attest to the plight of the immigrant, granted in a somewhat exaggerated form.

Our narrator, once Vereš starts to talk, all but disappears into the background. He too is an immigrant, and he too has found a very different Budapest than the one he expected. Vereš is a Croat caught in the winds of progress, buffeted by the ongoing march of other nations. No wonder he is so casually tossed about – a Croat is not an American (rich and powerful), or Chinese (also rich and powerful), or – but you get the idea. There is little else for an Eastern European immigrant to do but be pushed in one direction or another, and if that involves somewhat ridiculous levels of violence and alienation, then so be it. These people have seen worse, have had family members suffer immeasurably more than the difficulties faced by Vereš and the narrator.

Ušumović's story is uneven, it is true, but the dislocation of the immigrant's new life from the memory of their old is told well. The narrator never really gels into a coherent character, and the exuberance of the opening chapter is quickly replaced with the matter-of-fact reporting of the remaining. Vereš is as arresting to us as he is to the narrator, and his adventures are told excitedly when they should be, and sombrely when that is necessary. Vereš's tale is engaging, and enjoyably strange – it never quite crosses the line into the ridiculous, though it dances nearby), but unfortunately the framing of the story is workmanlike. Narrative devices are sometimes necessary to put all the pieces in place, but one wishes that the opening sequences were done with a little more skill, with more care taken to hide the seams and smooth away the rough edges.

Vereš by Neven Ušumović is a short story from The Dalkey Archive Press’ publication, Best European Fiction 2010 (edited by Aleksander Hemon). This review is part of a series intending to examine each story from the collection, in an effort to broaden awareness of both the project itself, and the excellent array of authors contained within.

Author	Neven Ušumović
Title	Vereš
Translator	Celia Hawkesworth
Nationality	Croatian
Publisher	Dalkey Archive Press
Availability: ---Amazon (US) ---Amazon (UK) ---Fishpond (AU)

See Also

Other titles under review from the Best European Fiction 2010 anthology include:
---Belgium: Toussaint, Jean-Phillipe - Zidane's Melancholy
---Bosnian: Štiks, Igor - At the Sarajevo Market
---Bulgarian: Gospodinov, Georgi - And All Turned Moon
---Danish: Aidt, Naja Marie - Bulbjerg
---Estonian: Viiding, Elo - Foreign Women
---French: Montalbetti, Christine - Hotel Komaba Eminence (With Haruki Murakami)
---Hungarian: Konrád, György - Jeremiah's Terrible Tale
---Icelandic: Bragi, Steinar - The Sky Over Thingvellir
---Italian: Mozzi, Guilio - Carlo Doesn't Know How to Read

List of title published by The Dalkey Archive Press under review

Links

Links provided by The Dalkey Archive Press:
Books about Croatia
Council of Europe site on Croatian Art and Literature
Croatian Literature in English