Trafika Europe 7 - Ukrainian Prayer

Milorad Pejić

THE HOUSE OF H. LUNDBOHM*

Hjalmar, to your house from your life, everything is unchanged, the superhuman mounds of snow and birchwood up to the porch, the bustle of dogs under the light bulb where they are waiting for their master to return from travel. The slowness of the worm hole in your case made it to open for me, unannounced, without inquiring about our acquaintance: “This is the room, and here are the slippers and towel...” How else would I explain that where I come from I did not live in poverty but that something else, in which we are equal, brings me to you: the same disappointment? Everything in your home is untouched, Hjalmar: the still wet inkwell, the smoke of ashtrays, the accounts, as if you went to lie down for a while in one of the forbidden chambers. Somewhere from black telephones you are doling out your hospitality. Long into the night I listen to the door locks and lamps from distant servants’ attics, and when everything shuts down and everyone subsides, I get up alone and go on tiptoe to silently turn the key in the door. * Hjalmar Lundbohm (1855-1926), a mine manager and founder of the city of Kiruna, an experimental mini-model of an ideally organized society.

Kiruna, September 1993

242