TE17 Mysterious Montenegro

Serioja, Maria and the Mop

he was afraid she might have a heart attack, was the beginning of a long period that in Serioja’s biography would be known as “the heartbreak.” At first, he contented himself to drinking in the solitude of his studio, writing laborious letters toMaria, which he peppered with love poems— yes, his own love poems, in which he compared her to a rose, a nightingale or awitch, depending on his mood. Then, when his grief was too hard to bear in solitude, he moved in with Olga and, between stormy arguments and stupor- inducing episodes of drunkenness, he wrote letters and poems, which grew ever more bitter and reproachful. The poem he was most proud of was called “The Evil Woman,” which he learned by heart and took to reciting in pubs to his buddies after exhausting all his travel stories about America:

The Evil Woman

Once I was handsome and smart, Now I nurse a broken heart. In the heatless, forlorn room I drink my vodka full of gloom. I am toothless, sad and lonely, You are cruel, mean and horny. You have practiced your deceit As if I were but a piece of meat.

For a dress to show your ass You turned into an evil lass.

It isn’t certainwhetheror notMaria read Serioja’s poem, but all his drinking buddies did, or rather, heard it from the author’s mouth, and clapped and cheered enthusiastically, encouraging him to send it to Molodezh Moldovy ( Moldova’s Youth ). Serioja, who 183