Kelvin's Zero

By Sead Mahmutefendi?

A content of this novel is simple. Ida Alagar, the main character of the novel, is locked in a lift in one of the mansions in Milano, where she works as a house servant. A married couple Sforza, the owners of this three-storey Taj Mahal, went to America for one months and Idas chances of survival are equal to Kelvins zero, the absolute zero, when even atomic movement stops. Twenty three year old incarcerated Ida remembers her past. There is a string of effective episodes: childhood, fathers death, a loss of virginity.

This claustrophobic novel, written in 1987, symbolically forecast bloody reality of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Bosnian-Herzegovina lift is still stuck between a lower and upper floor. And contemporary reality of Bosnia and Herzegovina is more fantastic than the most fantastic phantasy, as Mahmutefendic said, borrowing the expression from Dostoyevsky.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Mar 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493142408

Sead Mahmutefendi?

Sead Mahmutefendic was born on 29th May 1949 in Sarajevo. He graduated from faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade in 1973. After obtaining his degree he started teaching and writing. His entire literary work is comprised under the title ‘Devil’s Comedy’. He wrote 24 books, 13 of them novels. His chosen novels are ‘Kelvin’s Zero’ and Fish and One-eyed Jack’. In June 2012 an international symposium about his work took place in Sarajevo under the title ‘Modern heretic apocryphal script about ante-apocalypse.

Book preview

KELVIN’S

ZERO

Sead Mahmutefendić

Copyright © 2014 by Sead Mahmutefendić.

Library of Congress Control Number:     2014905447

ISBN:                  Hardcover                        978-1-4931-4241-5

                            Softcover                          978-1-4931-4239-2

                            eBook                               978-1-4931-4240-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 03/26/2014

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CONTENTS

I

VITA SICUT METAPHORA

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

II

ANEXUS HUI LIBRO ET

FINIS HUIUS HISTORIAE

Translated from Bosnian to English by Edward Alexander

The lowest temperature ever to have been reached was at the University of Tokyo in February 1983. With the aid of a special device, the temperature was recorded at 0.0003 Kelvin. This means that they were really close to absolute zero, Oo Kelvin, equivalent to—273.16o Celsius. Science considers that it is not possible to achieve absolute zero since even atomic motion ceases at this point.

I

VITA SICUT METAPHORA

1.

A t the very last moment, Ida remembered she might succeed at reaching Mrs Anera and Mr Antonio Sforza, so she stops to listen down the staircase but doesn’t hear any sound whatsoever coming from downstairs, and at the same time she thought that they’d probably already left the villa, but at the very same moment, like a spring which had till then been coiled, she rushes towards the lift with all her strength, flings open the iron doors, runs inside and presses the lowest button for the ground-floor, after which point she feels the downwards slide, and then frantically turns to face the mirror, observing herself in it with a particular grimace which she would usually make whenever she was in a hurry, pouting her lips with the tip of her tongue, and then, just a moment later, she started flirting with a well-rehearsed film-star smile à la Greta Garbo, as though at that moment she was stood in front of dozens of flashing cameras, and thought, God, it’s going to be a real gala without those two mummies in this three-floored Taj Mahal for a whole month while they’re in America, having been invited there by some old man, who’s simply rolling in money and boredom just like these two stiffs, the Yankee wanting to repay them for his stay here last year with that furniture of his my wife Newmann mon cher enfant, just a drop more for my wife , but my wife weighs as much as a pubescent elephant, oh-oh, when I just remember how much junk that my wife left behind, oh, God, just thinking about it, I can’t believe such decent people, who prefer to speak about Gluck and Gershwin than about the numerous price-hikes and shit that inflates quicker than the Lira, because these are such Lumpenproletariat topics, precisely that these sorts of ghosts should leave so much rubbish all around themselves, behind themselves, beneath themselves, so bloody much of it that it was as nocuous as the streets of New York after the dustmen went on strike, so much so that I once dared to tell Mrs. Anera: No! Discreetly enough that theoretically she couldn’t have heard me while she was doing her embroidery in the next-door room, I at least told her everything openly in my mind, that for the money which they pay not a single living soul would clean up what Mr Sir and Mrs Madam had shat out over the course of those days, so, I said it, she should know, let it be known, my dear Madam, and she said to me, you know what, Signorina Ida, these people would drown in their own shit if they couldn’t pay anyone to clean it all up after them, then the lady took a deep breath, and sighed, letting the air flow from both her mouth and her nose as though she was wondering about what is to be done in order for this no longer to happen to the noble people, and I, so as to help her, murmured, more to myself, the horror, the absolute horror, when you can’t believe your own eyes, and who knows for how many years I’d have kept spouting these ridiculous jokes if I hadn’t had to roll up my sleeves and get down to work, making my way through the tunnels of rubbish in this shit-ridden house in which I can’t even theoretically work on all three floors at the same time, well, now me and my Borghese will enjoy ourselves, play hide and seek all over the place so that it wouldn’t be a surprise at all if those two found us upon their return before we managed to find ourselves, that’ll be a veritable stunt when I chuck on the twenty-third year of my life in seven days time, my thoughts exactly, on this very day me and my Charles III will celebrate it in style, let it go to where it came from and where all normally goes, he still needs to be called at his house today and informed, my mate, Little Red Riding Hood is at the end of woods, granny isn’t at home, she went off with the hunter over to the other side of the Pond, and the wolf began crapping out marbles, like, haven’t we said everything to each other, you’ve really offended me, and you’d done something similar before, but this time I really lost it—INTERFERENCE ON THE LINE—WE’RE SORRY—’scuse me, it’s deliberate and all in a similar tone, and then he’d give me a statement for the press so that I have to promise him that it’s really, really the last time I’ll behave like this and that he really wouldn’t be able to put up with my insolence and vulgar allusions, not even my innuendos, not even that, everything has its limits, if somebody is good to me, get on my back and ride me however much you want, until I bleed!—take however much you need, but don’t start making a fool of me in front of other people, that’s when I lose my temper, and adio mare , that’s it, that’s the wanker for whom I took to the megaphone to say that he should give up all of his inherited genes about the rights of a man to all of those rubbish strategic ruses, you know those famous lines, you should never give in first so that she wouldn’t wear the trousers and alongside this up your sleeve you have, let’s say, something small, like a fucking cop, because, for God’s sakes, you’re not the only lady I can take advantage of—SAVE YOUR ENERGY—there’s no Little Red Riding Hood nor the old granny, nor cake nor hunter, there is Ida Agalar and that’s a full-stop, fuck you if you’re ever somewhere out there lurking in the shadows, thinking that your pride will be demeaned by some sort of cos fi if you honour me by climbing up the staircase in this villa, and at the top of it the Queen of Sheba is awaiting, oh, don’t go serenading me my dear, who gives you the right to strut around on me, the one who rolled up the blinds which covered your eyes, dear me, if only you could have seen yourself and that idiotic expression on the face caused by your constant Madams, and then you even managed to say a whole load of bollocks, a whole bloody essay about the divine properties of the chips which I’d quickly fried on the gas hob and even managed to scorch and burn them so much that they looked more like lumps of coal than fried potatoes, and you defended me, my dear young man, as though Michael Mansfield was your father, boasting that you’d never eaten anything like it in your life, but in earnest it was very pleasant for you to be talking bollocks like that so freely because your balls were no longer ringing the way they used to when you alone could be woken up by them when asleep, that’s how things are, mate, my boyfriend now wants to show off in front of me just because you used to have that chick under you—A MAN CHASES AFTER A MEMBER OF THE FEMALE SEX ALL UNTIL THE MOMENT WHEN THIS PARTICULAR FEMALE AGGREES TO HAVE PHYSICAL CONTACT, OF COURSE, OUT OF HER OWN FREE WILL, AND THEN THEIR RELATIONSHIP FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGES BECAUSE THE RELATIONSHIP NOW HAS AN ENTIRELY INTIMATE MEANING, MORE PRECISELY, IT IS SENTIMENTAL, AND HEREUPON THE MEMBER OF THE FEMALE SEX STARTS TO CHASE AFTER THE MAN, WITH THE ONLY DIFFERENCE BEING THAT, IN A VERY LARGE NUMBER OF CASES, THE MAN ATTEMPTS TO GET HIMSELF OUT OF THE INTIMATE RELATIONSHIP IN QUESTION, OR IN OTHER WORDS HE WANTS TO RUN AWAY—yes, that’s what Zoroaster always used to say, my grandfather Hilmbeg, may Allah bless you, let it be seen, and let it be known, Charles, the third one as well, I love you, listen, I need to tell you something good, for the next month you can come and visit me without having to wear that fleece, hey, for the whole and entire month, man, we’ll have a honeymoon in their bed so that somebody finally rocks it up, that great big old bed deserves at least once for somebody to practice some really good and proper fucking on it, to finally make its springs screech, and not that in the morning its cold and clinically made before the officer does his morning rounds, as if nobody had even been in it that night, if it wasn’t for madam’s hot water bottle it wouldn’t even know what lukewarm feels like, Christ Charles, how could you have confused the people’s ticket numbers, why is it that every single time I have to wave to you first, why don’t you do it for me sometimes, yeah, more like messing around if your male pride allows it—YOU SCRATCH MY BACK AND I’LL SCRATCH YOURS—man, I don’t always have the patience for such a thing, that’s the sort of thing both sides should tag along, not just one person because in his raw mind he dreams up a film in which he screws the bird and does his deed, oh wait a minute, if it’s like that then you are casting you and me and our film and what we have to the devil, when our brain cells are operating on that wavelength, I didn’t approach my father first, that sort of father, but I did approach you first—IN, SHALL WE SAY, AN IN-TEAM-MATE RELATIONSHIP, TWO THINGS ARE IMPORTANT ABOVE ALL ELSE: UNDERSTANDING AND RESPECTING THE OTHER PERSON. IF THAT’S NOT THERE THEN EVERYTHING ELSE IS FUTILE, NOT ONLY CAN THE RELATIONSHIP NOT HAVE THAT WHICH IS MOST IMPORTANT, BUT IT CAN’T HAVE ANY LASTING IMPORTANCE EITHER. ON THE CONTRARY, IF WE UNDERSTAND