Maragana Girl Ch. 04

Kim somewhat resented the whole exercise in permissions. All she wanted was have a friend and spend Sunday afternoon with someone her own age. She did not want a long-term relationship, just a friend. However, apparently in this country all contact between a young man and a young woman had to be sanctioned by the girl's parents, no matter how casual it might be.

Saturday afternoon Vladim and Maritza Dukov dressed up in traditional Danubian clothing; a tunic for him and an old-style dress for her. They prepared several elaborate traditional dishes and awaited Sergekt.

Kim rolled her eyes when she saw the set-up in the kitchen. This is totally ridiculous, she thought to herself. We're just friends. That's all I want from him. On top of everything else, she was not even Dukov's daughter. But she had learned not to argue. Upper Danubia had its own logic that she could only begin to fathom.

Sergekt came onto the Dukovs' property. Because Dukov was a public official Kim's friend immediately went to his knees, touching his forehead to the ground. Dukov quickly requested that Sergekt stand up and join himself, his wife, and his client at dinner. Dukov and Maritza spoke at length with Sergekt as Kim stayed quiet. Over time Sergekt spoke more and more. The elder Dukovs initially wanted to have three basic questions answered, what had Sergekt done to be convicted as a criminal, how he saw himself as a person, and what were his plans for the future. Once Sergekt answered to their satisfaction, the conversation became more two-way.

The evening ended pleasantly enough with a strange combination of salutations. At first Dukov warmly shook Sergekt's hand and patted his arm, but then Kim's friend acknowledged his role as a criminal by going to his knees and placing his forehead on the ground. Kim did not like any of this. She resented having Sergekt essentially spend the evening with the elder Dukovs instead of with herself, and she resented all the formality. However, in the end Kim got what she wanted, Dukov's official blessing that she be allowed to spend time alone with Sergekt.

"Sergekt is a man with honor. He has proper values. He will become a good friend for you."

Gee, thanks "Dad", thought Kim to herself. I think I had that figured out already.

Later that night, when she was alone, Kim gave some thought over the significance of the Dukov's stepping into her personal life. He had handled the matter with Sergekt in the same way he would have handled it with his own daughter. She now remembered that there had been no recent mention of her needing to find her own place, no hint that Dukov and Maritza expected her to move out any time soon. Increasingly, whenever the elder Dukovs went out, they wanted Kim to go with them. It seemed that at first they had taken Criminal # 98945 in as a temporary house-guest, but now increasingly they were subjecting her to household rules and Danubian protocol. For better or for worse, with no one ever saying anything about it, Kim had become a member of the Dukov family.

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Kim spent a very pleasant Sunday afternoon with Sergekt. They went into town and walked along the East Danube River, struggling to get to know each other through the language barrier. They had Kim's dictionary and were constantly looking up words. They had dinner at a café in the warm late-summer sun, and finally went to see a British movie. The movie must have been 30 years old, but it was in English with Danubian subtitles. Kim was grateful that Sergekt had taken the effort to find a movie she could understand. It was nice to hear something in English again.

Kim's second outing with Sergekt was a crash-course in Danubian culture. It also was the beginning of many huge changes in Kim's life; of her relationship with Sergekt, how she saw her own role as a Danubian criminal, and ultimately how she would look at herself.

Sergekt suggested going to a nightclub called the Socrates Club. Kim was thrilled. A nightclub, we can actually go to a nightclub? Sure enough, in the old part of town was the Socrates Club, which had been in that location for many years. Apparently the club was only for criminals and ex-criminals. The first thing she noticed was that everyone going into the club was naked. Not everyone was wearing collars, but club protocol mandated that anyone not still wearing a collar had to show proper respect to those who were still serving their sentences by not entering the club dressed. At first Kim felt a pang of fear, thinking that a nightclub only for criminals might be dangerous. Once inside, she realized that danger was the farthest thing from anyone's mind.

Danubians often used the saying "to sing like a criminal" to describe a person who was capable of expressing himself in a very emotional or moving manner. The expression resulted from the fact that most of the country's romantic and serious music was written and sung by criminals, and most of that music had its origins in the Socrates Club.

Kim later learned the club was a fixture in Danubian popular culture. It was a refuge for Danube City's criminals, a place where they could express themselves to a sympathetic audience, listen to each other's poetry and music, and share what they had created. The evening's entertainment started as club-goers stood before the audience to express their feelings, in as poetic a manner as possible. The poetry readings allowed other club members who had a talent for writing music to pick up ideas for songs from their companions on stage. During the ensuing week musicians in the audience wrote songs and music, which in turn were performed by the criminals who had the best talent for singing and playing instruments. It was a collaborative effort that produced a huge amount of very high-quality music, much of which eventually made it to Danubian radio.

Sergekt introduced Criminal # 98945 to a bunch of his fellow classmates. They greeted her warmly, but also with much curiosity. Finally they were able to meet the young American drug addict who had been so horribly betrayed by her friends. Kim saw in them a group of determined and very serious young people, hardly a group of rioting hooligans. Again she wondered what on earth had happened at their school. She also saw in them a group of people her own age with whom she would be able to hang out. Kim was a foreigner and a convicted drug-user, and yet Sergekt's friends seemed to accept her as one of their own.

The group ordered several pitchers of Danubian beer and sat down at a couple of tables that had been pushed together. Sergekt's friends talked a bit about themselves one-by-one. For a long time Kim struggled with introducing herself and trying to understand as much as she could from her companions. That effort was cut short by the beginning of the night's activities, the poetry reading. Two of Sergekt's classmates participated in that portion of the entertainment, as did five other club-goers.

Sergekt and five companions excused themselves for the next portion of the evening, the musical presentation. As two of his classmates, a man and a woman, sang together, the other four in the group played back-up instruments. Sergekt played an instrument that looked something like a balalaika. Even though Kim could only understand a few of the words from the group's songs, she could tell they were immensely sad and moving. One song she did understand almost in its entirety. It was a duet from Sergekt's classmates, in which the male singer lamented about no longer being able to sit at the table of his girlfriend's family; while she responded that she would wait for his sentence to end, and then insist he be allowed to return to her house.

Once Sergekt's group was finished singing, several others followed, all of which had produced excellent music for their companions. The criminals sung of lost love and lost opportunities, and also of the humiliations and physical suffering they were enduring. They sang about friendship and the personal sacrifices a person sometimes had to make to stay loyal to a friend. Above all, however, the criminals sang about their hope for the future. Kim sat fascinated as she listed to one sad philosophical song after another. None of the music that came out of the Socrates Club was light and happy, and certainly was not the type of music that would go very far in the United States. However, Kim reflected that what she was listening to now came far closer to the reality of her life than the escapist industrial product coming out of Hollywood.

Sergekt and Kim got up to dance, joining several other naked couples on the dance floor. They danced slowly and sadly, holding on to each other and seeking refuge from their lives on the outside. Kim vaguely wondered if Vladim Dukov and his fiancée Maritza might have danced here 25 years ago.

Sergekt and Kim left the club very late. The temperature outside was rather chilly, a warning that summer was coming to an end. On the way home the couple hugged each other for warmth. Kim was thrilled at the feel of Sergekt's body against her own as they huddled together on the trolley to Dukov's house. By the time Sergekt left Kim at Dukov's front door, she realized that her feelings towards him were much more than friendship. Perhaps her Spokesman had been right after-all by taking this relationship seriously from the very beginning.

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The following day was the first day of high school for Dukov's teenager. That morning the Spokesman's household was hit by a loud crisis. It began very early with several doors slamming and Anyia screaming at her mother. Both Vladim and Maritza tried to reason with the irate teenager, but she stormed off and slammed yet another door. There was more yelling, and another door slam.

The issue was the teenager's school uniform. Having spent the entire summer tanning, the Anyia wanted to show off as much of her body as possible by converting her uniform skirt to a mini-skirt and shortening the sleeves of her blouse. Dukov was incensed. He had no problem with his daughter lying naked in the back yard all summer, but when it came to the school uniform she needed to wear it properly. Maritza had found the mini-skirt in the girl's closet and burned it the night before, replacing it with a standard school skirt. Once Anyia discovered her converted skirt was now a pile of ashes in the backyard fire-pit, she directed her wrath full-force at her parents.

The battle continued four days; screaming and door-slamming in the mornings and tense sullen silence at dinner each night. Danubians normally tended to spoil their children and rarely punished them, but by Thursday Dukov had enough. He borrowed a leather switch from the police chief and returned home with it that night. He did not really want to use it, but he was ready to if necessary. That night Vladim and Maritza Dukov sat their daughter down in the living room. Dukov pulled out the switch, tapped it in his hand, and in Danubian stated very coldly:

"I brought this switch from work today and I am keeping it in the library. I want you to understand the issue of your school uniform is resolved to the satisfaction of your mother and myself. Whether or not it is resolved to your satisfaction is of no concern to me whatsoever. There will be no further talk about your school uniform in this house. If you wish to discuss it further, you can get undressed and we'll settle matters in the backyard with you bent over a chair. Now...do you want to talk about your uniform anymore?"

The wide-eyed girl shook her head. "N...negat, Papa."

With that peace returned to the Dukov household. However, the next day, as she was heading to work, Kim noticed Anyia standing in front of her friend's house. The friend was showing the girl how to shorten her skirt by rolling it up at the waist. Kim pretended not to notice. Better not to get involved in this one, she thought to herself.

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The desire to talk burned inside Criminal # 98945 the week after she visited the Socrates Club. She had so much she needed to get off her chest. Where to begin? At night she began writing her disjointed thoughts down on paper. She wrote about everything she could think of; the kindness of the Dukov's, her feelings about Tiffany, the painful conversations with her parents, the horror of her first two days while under arrest. She wanted to talk, to be heard, and to have her feelings put into a song. Ultimately she wanted to stand at the microphone at the Socrates Club and speak her mind.

Finally Kim settled on an unlikely topic for her first reading; her mountain bike in the US. Somehow that bike seemed to represent everything she had been given in the past and never appreciated. She struggled with the words in English, trying to make sure that her listeners could understand her bicycle as a metaphor for something much greater in her life than simply an unappreciated object.

She presented her idea to Dukov, who spent three hours helping her translate the text to Danubian. Anyia then helped her go over the phrases and memorize them. Finally Kim presented the idea to Sergekt, who looked over her text. She could tell he liked it tremendously.

Two weeks after she visited the Socrates Club for the first time, Kim spoke to her fellow criminals in heavily accented Danubian. She stood at the microphone with her knees shaking as she struggled to express herself in a language she still only partially knew. The entire club listened with respect to the perspective of an American trying to come to terms with being a Danubian criminal.

Two weeks after Kim's first speech to the club a group of Sergekt's friends presented a song titled "Nemát mi biciklet". They officially dedicated the song to Criminal # 98945.