Smell. The city I come from smells of gasoline, cigarettes and bakeries that work all night. The town I moved to smells like a spa resort - birches, chestnuts, roses and tulips. I can't shake the impression that I came on vacation, just a short vacation, which will end in a week or two, and I, with my eight suitcases of clothes, will return from where I came, to concrete and gasoline. As I walk down the street, I consciously inhale - the air here has no taste. It's pleasant, but strange - I'm used to being able to taste what I inhale.
A cat. Confused sitting on the new couch, in our new living room - a picture and image of my inner being. He walks to the window, sits down, and then looks out, with the expression of a Russian count who has just lost the family estate. I try to explain to him what is happening. "We live here now," I tell him in Serbian. He looks at me silently, so I tell him one more time in English, just in case. There is no reaction, but I get the impression that he is not thrilled.
Large backpack. Lilac color, cracked at the seams, but still holding up. The kind that travelers and adventurers wear, big enough to fit a tent, cans, a blanket, waterproof shoes that can warm the heart. It stands unpacked, huge and heavy, like a sack of coal that has yet to be unloaded. It contains memories that I saved from previous lives - jewelry that I don't wear, two old mobile phones that I keep because of pictures that I can't transfer to a safe place, press credentials, ID card and driver's license under my maiden name. A younger, more naive woman is staring at me from them, who could not even in her wildest dreams imagine our current life.
New notebook. For writing down words of a new language, which I probably mispronounce. For scribbling little flowers, which helps me reduce my nervousness while watching TV. Sometimes I also record sketches from everyday life - I make a caricature of a drunkard from the street, who every morning neatly puts vodka bottles into the appropriate container behind our new building. There is also a babushka from a pet store, who follows you with the look of a guardian of a national treasure as you walk through her 10-square-meter kingdom, located in the basement of an apartment building.
Keys. Every time I go back to the apartment, I dig through my purse a little longer than usual. I recently removed a large bunch of keys from my pendant and replaced them with a modest pair of keys to a new building. On the pendant - a panorama of the city I came from - Pobednik looks at the Sava and the Danube, a souvenir that I would not have picked up just a few months ago, but now a dear gift that I hold on to tightly. The new keys are small, as if they unlock the door of a children's tree house, not an apartment where two adults live. They are easy to hide at the bottom of the purse. "We are not yours yet", as if they are trying to tell me.
A box with trinkets from a previous life. At the bottom of the closet, which I still haven't been able to fill because my things are mostly still in suitcases, there is an ordinary, brown cardboard shoe box. The name of a relatively inexpensive fast fashion brand is written on the lid. Of course, there are no shoes in it. When I scratch my hand to look for the key to the jewelry box, my fingers go through a sea of plastic - an old bank card, an old ID card, a long-discontinued Belgrade public transport card. At the bottom are envelopes - some bills, an internet contract that I recently terminated, and a confirmation that it was terminated.
Pendant for chain. In the week before I boarded the plane with a one-way ticket and a cat in the carrier, a friend gave me something really special. We were sitting in a cafe where we had both been for the first time - we haven't lived close for a long time, new countries are just an addition to the already complicated puzzle of our long-standing friendship. "Hold out your hand and close your eyes," she told me. She placed a square box in my palm. I open my eyes. I open the box - in it is a silver pendant in the shape of a clover with four leaves made of green and white zircons. "She brought me a lot of happiness - now let her bring it to you," he tells me. I hug her. We both cry a little. Then we talk for a long time about everything and anything, we imagine what we will be like in a year, in two, in ten years. Then we part for who knows how long, but we are sure that one day we will sit down for coffee again.
Understanding, silently. In a new apartment, in a new country, the cat and I are silent together. He looks at me with the look of an experienced customs officer who knows that I managed to smuggle something suspicious across the border. Now I know that it is true that cats look straight into the soul - he peers into the most hidden corners, the ones I don't even talk to myself about. Then he came, sat on my lap and started purring, as if he had already forgiven me for everything. "You dragged me here, but I still love you - your lap is my safest place to nap", as if to say. Warmth spreads through my body as I stroke his colorful ears. That feeling, that we are together no matter what, whispers to me that the new place is starting to feel like home.
