“I don’t…I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say and pull away from her in my chair.
“A reporter with a foreign newspaper?” She smiles, and it reminds me of my mother.
I pull a tissue from my pocket and wipe away the sticky film of sweat that has spread across my neck.
“Let’s go,” she concludes.
“Here,” I say and hand her the envelope I promised.
“Thank you,” she replies, stands up, folds it, places it in her pocket, and nods to me as if asking for acceptance, permission to leave, to take me to him.
We arrive in a small waiting room smelling of ethanol and old socks, with white plastic chairs along both walls. On a glass table in front of them, an artificial plant has been displayed in a vase that is far too big for it. In the foyer there is a reception desk and three doors: one leading outside, another probably to the patients, and the third to the staff area.
“Wait here,” the woman instructs me and disappears through the door behind the desk.
I sit down on one of the chairs, lower my gaze to my numb legs, and don’t dare open the folder she has given me. It stings in my hands, burning me the longer I hold it.
My mind is filled with a horror I have never experienced before. The woman is going to take my money, I tell myself, everything she’s said is a lie, he’s not really here, I must have seen wrong. I feel the sudden urge to flee. I want to run outside, back to the car. I want to stay where I am. I want to stand up, to stretch my legs, to sit down again, grip the chair or the vase on the table and smash the Plexiglas, knock down the doors, go behind the desk and ransack the folders, the drawers, and filing cabinet, to pour kerosene all around the room and set the whole building ablaze. I am angry and ready to lash out. I get up, take a few steps, sit down again and feel how tired and weak I am, and furious too, and I stretch my legs in front of me. I can’t breathe but then I breathe so much that my lungs hurt. I should stop smoking. I stand up, sit down, stand up again.
A long time passes before I hear a sound outside myself: a hefty piece of iron clanking against another, then a heavy handle turns, a set of twisted hinges squeal as though they will never learn to bear the weight placed upon them.
First I see the nurse, just a young girl; she holds the door open and gives me a modest smile.
And then I see him—at the end of a long, dark corridor, he walks slowly, guided by the director, her arm around him as she whispers words of encouragement in his ear, dragging his feet across the cracked floor, toward which his face—hidden from the light—is turned, as though weighed down by an infinite guilt. Dangling from his forefinger is a plastic bag, which he refuses to give up, as though it means everything to him. Through the thin plastic I can make out at least two different fabrics, the edge of a wallet, a belt buckle, a notebook, and some pens, and I don’t know why I’m looking at these things and not at his face, why I see only his greasy hair, his ashen skin, his dirty stubble, the contours of his muscles and bones, seemingly random like a broken trellis, but not his eyes, or why I still feel the urge to run, not toward him, but in the opposite direction.
2 DECEMBER 1999—DR. SELMANI, ARBËR
Patient found battered near Mitrovica, left shoulder dislocated, left knee broken, unconscious upon discovery.
Transferred from Mitrovica hospital.
Speaks little, responsive.
Claims to be a doctor.
Serb.
General condition, weak. Excessively thin.
Next of kin, unknown.
Continuous nightmares, prescribed sedatives.
14
PRISTINA, 2004
He sits in the passenger seat next to me, motionless, and I try to let out short coughs and pointed sighs simply to fill the silence.
I have imagined this moment, so many times and in so many different ways: what I might think, what I’ll do, the feel of his fingers against mine, how his scent and voice might have changed—the two of us, so close to each other after all these years.
But in my imagination he was another man, not this emaciated, silent, and confused human form‚ devoid of senses and that cannot be touched. He scares me somehow, with everything he is and is not, with his stillness, his reluctance to speak, his terrible smell, with his shaved head covered in scars, strips of dried skin, and oozing blisters, with his skeletal fingers and wrists, his knobbly knees and shoulders that look so strange, like little clusters of grapes, with his clavicle, the edges of which look like the prongs of a fork, even with the plastic bag in his lap.
He doesn’t look like a living being whose body is a home for human thought and action, but an empty birdcage, an object forgotten in a closet, a broken clock, a toy in which the batteries have died.
Driving feels so difficult that I turn toward a gas station, which rises from the middle of the field like a rusty anchor from muddy water.
“Hey,” I say and turn to look at him with a smile, and he flinches immediately, as though I have said too much in one go, too much and too eagerly.
“Are you hungry?” I ask, slowly, hoping he will look at me and see from my smile that everything is okay, everything will work out, that I will take care of everything.
He lowers his chin, pulls his shoulders even closer together, and from the way his eyeballs dart from side to side as though they want to jump out of their sockets, from the way his eyelids blink rapidly as though he were trying to get rid of a resilient piece of dirt, I can see that he is terrified.
I open the door, get out of the car, and step inside the gas station, the elderly woman behind the counter says something to me that I can’t hear, and I fill my arms with potato chips, chocolate bars, candy, nuts, water, and soda, wondering whether I left the car doors unlocked because I didn’t want to frighten him or because I hoped he would escape while I was shopping, that he would break into a run, that in the middle of the wilderness he would feel the fresh grass against the soles of his feet, the gentle, cool breeze against his skin as day turns to evening, and would end up on a high ledge where he could see far and wide, people in their homes, the lights of villages and cities and swaths of verdant trees, and then the rain that had been forecast that evening would wash him clean and he would be warm, he could stay there, he could let go.
I place my shopping by the register, and the woman starts packing the items into a plastic bag, and on the counter I notice a basket of fruit where, crowning the overripe bananas, the soft peaches, and black-spotted pears, there are two fresh, flawless green apples, their skins shiny. I pick them up too, put one in each pocket.
Back in the car I take the water bottle and offer it to him first, and I am not the least surprised that he doesn’t appear to see it at all, neither am I surprised that he doesn’t touch the bag of chips or the chocolates, nor the fact that he doesn’t seem to hear me as I explain whatever it is I’m holding in my hand and where I’m going to put it, the water and the juice in the bottle holders behind the hand brake, then the nuts, they are on the back seat, along with the candies and other treats.
We set off again, the sky looks like slowly bubbling porridge, and after a while I slip my left hand into my pocket, pull out the apple, and look at it, turning it in my fingers in front of the steering wheel.
Then I take a bite, and he instantly turns his head, and from the corner of my eye I can see him surreptitiously lick his lips, I can almost feel the saliva gathering in his gaunt cheeks—and then, without looking at him, I move my left hand to the steering wheel, holding the bitten apple between my thumb and forefinger, and with my right I pull out the other one, for him, his own apple.
I haven’t held it above the gearshift for long when he grabs it with both hands and pulls it swiftly from me like a treasured object. He nibbles off a piece of the apple, then starts cautiously chewing it, all the while holding his cheek as if his teeth were aching, and f
or the kilometers that follow I am sure that everything will work out for the best.
We don’t say a word to each other before Pristina. We don’t have to.
* * *
—
We arrive late in the evening. He looks so frightened of the city’s flickering lights that again I start commenting on the life around us, what is happening and where and what will happen soon.
I tell him I will leave the car near the city center in an unpaved yard that the owner has decided to fence off and turn into a parking lot—people will do anything for money these days, I tell him; here too, money rules everything. Then we’ll walk to the house, I say, I’m renting one of the rooms there; it’s nothing special, the kitchen, shower, and toilet are all outside, it’s a very modest setup, but doubtless better than the place you were before, I say as we stop at a pedestrian crossing where a noisy group of young men on the road startle him.
“I have a bed and a mattress with plenty of room to sleep,” I tell him, and we continue on our way, we pass a few familiar government buildings, a mosque. “And I’ve even got a television, you can watch programs all day if you want, and there’s a fast-food place nearby that’s open round the clock, just like in the big European cities, if you get hungry in the middle of the night…I lived abroad for a while too…in a city far bigger than this…You wouldn’t believe how high up people have built…or how many people can fit into such a small space, how many airplanes fly over a single city…You know?”
By the time we arrive at the gate, he has closed his eyes and appears calmer, in fact he looks positively relaxed now, so I carry on talking as I drive up to the hatch where a parking-lot attendant sits on duty like a policeman.
“But when I lived there, I realized…,” I say and stop the car for the duration of what I’m about to say next. “I realized that what most people dream of around here, of getting away, of a new life in the West, it’s completely different from how they imagine it. Because you know nothing about the life you are about to start, and nobody values the life you have left behind, after a while you won’t either…Soon you won’t even remember it…And then you forget who you are, who your children are, you don’t know what significance your work holds or where your wife spends her time, what language your family speaks, with you or with other people, how they behave around strangers…”
I’m not sure whether I mention these things simply to convince myself of something, to defuse my nervousness, or because I notice he is all the calmer for hearing my voice. He lets out a strange grunt, it sounds as though he is trying to dispel a bad memory through his nostrils, and then the parking-lot attendant appears in front of the car and whistles and shows me to the left; it was that man who scared him, not anything I said.
As I park the car, inertia floors me; I can’t open the door, either his or my own. I don’t want to talk to the attendant, give him money for the night’s parking, then ask Miloš to get out of the car and walk to the house together—if I have to carry him, if he is unable to walk by himself, what will people say, I wonder, what will they think, who is this man, they’ll ask, this poor thing.
Please say something, just one word, anything at all, I think before opening the door and doing everything I am afraid of; I hand the attendant some money, tell Miloš over my shoulder that we’ll be at my place in no time, then I convince him to stand and start to walk, and soon we arrive at the house.
I instruct him in whispers. He is astonishingly docile, walking quietly behind me, pulling off his tattered leather shoes outside my room, just as I do, and stepping over the threshold with his right foot. He even allows me to take the plastic bag carrying all his worldly possessions and place it on the floor by the wall.
He walks up to the window, pulls the curtains back slightly, and for a moment sticks his nose almost tight against the windowpane as though he wanted to smell it, then lowers his slight body into a chair, and as his eyelids soon press shut I see something approaching a smile on his face, only for it to disappear the minute I switch on the lights, beneath which the sight of him—his pallid skin covered in long, faint hair, his limbs that move slowly like boats in a gentle swell—seems anything but real.
I spend the night on a mattress on the floor while he sleeps on the bed, only I don’t sleep at all but lie awake until morning, unable to relax, to steady my breathing. I know he isn’t asleep either, but simply lying still, waiting for the night to end, the end of anything. I can’t get up to look at him because I’m afraid his eyes will be open, possessed, glowing blood crystals in the pitch-dark night.
* * *
—
I’ve taken a few days off work in order to get everything done, to return the car to the rental company, to show him around and tell him it’s best to keep out of sight of the landlord, at least for the time being.
As soon as Behxhet has left for work, I say to him: A lot of cars drive past here, but there’s no need to be startled by them, or the sounds of the local kids either, it’s best to stay indoors, even during the day, but you can always go for a walk, to the park opposite or the streets nearby, as long as you come back before dark. You can take any clothes and towels from the closet, just throw the dirty ones in the basket, I’ll wash them later, there’s food and drink outside, above the oven and in the refrigerator, my things are always on the left-hand side, don’t take anything from the right, only the left, there’s water in the mornings and the evenings, they usually switch it off at night and during the day, be sure to remember this when you go for a wash, and yes, I’ve bought you a toothbrush and some soap, they are over here, the lowest drawer of this chest is all for you, you can put your things in here.
I’m not sure whether he hears me or not, whether he understands a word of what I’m saying, because he doesn’t respond to anything. I learn that it is best to talk to him in short sentences, to which he reacts either by turning his head slightly, closing his eyes, or swallowing, and for a moment it’s as though he understands, as though he nods or shapes his lips into an answer, but a second later he disappears again, as if dissolving in water.
Questions seem to distress him, phrases such as “do you understand” and “isn’t it” are like punches in the gut. I think it’s because they imply a reaction from him, they ask too much of him, force him to become an equal conversation partner whose words should have the kind of gravitas that his spirit no longer commands. It frustrates me, though I understand that he has been away for a long time and that we have been away from each other for even longer.
* * *
—
On the second night he falls asleep for a while, letting out painful groaning sounds and thrashing in his dreams, and I sleep for a while too. It feels good: to forget that he is here, even if only for a moment.
But the following day he still doesn’t say a word to me, doesn’t change his clothes, wash, brush his teeth, eat, or even drink much, and I can’t do these things on his behalf. Everything seems to frighten him; if I switch on the television, he doesn’t like it, doesn’t like anything that could be considered normal.
It’s impossible to talk to him about the past, because he is not present in the here and now. I don’t know whether he remembers anything or whether I even believe he knows who I am, who it is here speaking to him.
I’m away from the house for hours at a time. I go for walks, wander around the shops; we don’t fit in the same room. I can’t think of anything else to say to him and don’t have the strength to take responsibility for all the talking. With the exception of nighttime, the constant silence feels unbearable.
The following day I tell him I am going to work and that I’ll be back late in the evening, that things are going to change from now. I have to work, every day, all this costs money, I tell him, this apartment costs money, food costs money, and just as I expect, he doesn’t react in any way whatsoever but simply stands by the window watching t
he brightening morning. At the front door I finally bump into Behxhet, whom I decide to tell that my brother is visiting me, and that he is a bit ill, in the mind.
“Very well,” Behxhet replies. “My condolences.”
At work, I drive the bus along the familiar route from Vreshta through the city center to the hospital and back again. In the afternoon a woman resembling Ajshe gets on my bus with a baby, and later on there are boys and girls my children’s age, pretty as ripe plums, and seeing them makes me miss my family. On the wall of one of the buildings a new piece of graffiti has appeared; I can’t make out the text but there’s a picture of President Rugova’s face, his mouth taped shut, and some of the houses have been put up for sale again, either that or I haven’t noticed them before.
During my shift I feel I have used up all the energy I have. All day I regret not taking more clothes with me, yet I still periodically take off the sweater I put on in the morning.
I am irritated. I blow the horn at other drivers for no reason, brake suddenly, almost wishing something would happen to someone when I do. I can barely see where I am supposed to drive people, the roads carrying the weight of endless traffic chaos on their shoulders.
What I once felt toward him is turning into something else. I’m not sure what the emotion is, but I could drive the bus into a wall, into another car, I could kill all the passengers and pedestrians if I wanted to. I can do whatever I want. It doesn’t matter, it wouldn’t mean anything.
After work, I buy two burgers, costing a euro each, and just before turning in to my own street, I throw one of them in the trash, then I feel stupid because I guess I bought the burgers in the hope that we’d eat them together, that we’d watch television or something.
Then I feel frustrated, not at the fact that we won’t share a meal together but because I wasted money on a burger I threw away, though I could have saved it for myself and eaten it later. It’s going to be a cold night. By nine in the evening the wind is stinging my legs like a swarm of jellyfish.
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