The L@st Witch

excerpt (Yes, man, it was her, Dalia, his girlfriend from fifteen years back, the sausage girl, the blonde at the slaughter house, married to the drunken sub-lieutenant who was away one week at a time on field practice, yeah, mate, the one you first saw at a meeting with the working women, and who blushed bashfully as soon as she laid eyes on you, not to mention the private readings in the one-bedroom apartment on the first floor of the brick building in the neighborhood, not far from the barracks where the good guys from the countryside who wanted to serve their country had their living quarters, how sweaty and embarrassed Dalia was when she saw you to your car in the parking lot behind the building, how she carried your salami, bacon and bratwurst for you so you wouldn't discredit yourself by dragging the eight or ten kilos of meat, although it was pitch dark everywhere at that time of night. But do you remember that Christmas night, how rotten you felt when she kept pestering you, calling you at your newspaper office, begging, insisting, what the fuck did she want now, after all you'd been screwing her for a month, in the middle of the communist fast, for nothing but rind and jellied corned beef, because all the meat that was good for stuffed cabbage rolls, the sausages and the salami went to export, for it was Christmas in Europe, too, dude? But you went anyway, you weren't about to waste such a good piece of ass, you sang a carol in front of her door about the three shepherds, or rather the three postmen, revengefully picturing all three of them fucking her, with their huge coarse peasant coats and their knotty clubs, reeking of dirty vats, and when she opened the door you could hardly say anything before she dragged you inside and she smells like the pastures of heaven, mate, she takes your hand and puts it on her boobs, and instead of roundness and nipples you come across two bundles of pastrami tied tightly with rope, further down a whole smoked pork leg anchored with blood sausages to her strong thighs, and her arms wrapped in garlic sausages, you make to kiss her, full of gratitude, and you sink your teeth into a dill-flavored stuffed cabbage roll, then a millet one further down, salted, well done pork scraps, and you start eating before you know it, you chew frantically, unzip your pants with greasy hands, ahhh, the knockwurst says, but you keep going and this heavenly pate, where do these Provence herbs come from, and you fuck her in the overwhelming smell of garlic which intoxicates you, makes you lose your mind. And she suddenly turns on the light and you are in the freezer, a sarcophagus full of salami and sausages that she had been putting aside for you for a month now while, behind the door, her mouth open, she breathes out in jerky gasps, hiccups, swallows dryly, unable to speak, her eyes bulge out, the blood rises to her cheeks, the skin goes red on her knotty fingers which all day long handle the meat about to be minced, the thick arms and the prematurely round shoulders, the discreet cleavage of the glamorous, purple evening dress which you haven't seen before, to say nothing of the string of Chinese beads made of painted glass, she dressed up for you and you, with your pants down, have already come over the thin bratwurst she kept for New Year's Eve, on the paprika-flavored cabanos sausages, the Salonta salami, the Trandafir sausages, the liverwurst, the jelly-glazed turkey with its torn, jelly-soaked rump.) Alina Nelega's (b. 1960) The L@st Witch presents "the experience of a sick angel, Angel-Dracula, who takes part in, or just watches, the social-cultural life of a Transylvanian city… The theatrical, literary or journalistic environment of the city are wrapped in vague mystery with a specific local touch. The European extensions or trips in cyberspace finish off the contemporary tableau." (Paralela 45, 2001)


by Alina Nelega