Viktoria picked up the phone.
“Hey, what made you think of us?” she said, surprised.
“I’m always thinking of you,” he answered in a choked voice as a wash of sorrow came over him. “I’m your father.”
“Yes, I know.”
“So how is everything going? How are you?”
“It’s fine. Me and Mom are here, but she’s outside right now. Jasmina is all right, but she’s not here. She lives with her boyfriend, you know.”
“I know. What about you? Have anybody?”
“I do, but I still live at home.”
“How are your classes at the university?”
“Fine, but I’m also working, so I’ll need more time.”
“Really? What are you doing?”
“I’m a waitress.”
“Oh,” he said, not so happy to hear that. “That’s not easy work.”
“I work at an alternative bar. It’s not bad. How are you?”
“Fine, I’m working again.”
“Really? What are you doing?”
“The same as before, we’re making the old turbines in the old factory,” he laughed. “Same target, same distance. We’re organizing ourselves.”
“You’re kidding! All on your own?”
“Well, there is an investor. But we’re running everything ourselves.”
“That’s wonderful,” she said in a tone that surprised him.
“You think?”
“Of course I do.”
“I’m glad to hear that—not everyone finds it normal.”
“So how does it work?”
“We do what we think is best. We run it ourselves, because the investors don’t know anything—the two oddballs who showed up here. . . . And there’s an oddball living in my place as well. Slavko, remember him?”
“Slavko? I’m not sure who . . .”
“It doesn’t matter. Is there anything else new?”
“Oh, yes—Jasmina’s pregnant.”
“Really? Wow! With that boyfriend of hers? Will there be a wedding?”
“I don’t know.”
“Wow! Tell her I’m happy for her. . . . If you want to. . . . Does she ever mention me?”
“Not really.”
“She’s angry at me, right?” He stopped for a moment. “What about you?”
“Me? Well . . . Right now, I’m glad you called.”
“You can come here whenever you want. I’d be thrilled.”
“I’ll think about it. You don’t plan on coming here?”
“Not right now. I don’t know. I don’t think . . . I don’t think I should.”
“Oh. I see. Keep in touch.”
When he hung up, he felt as if he’d gotten someone back. Viktoria. He barely knew the child, and they talked more like equals. And her voice . . . He’d just realized—so like his mother’s. Do people inherit voices? He’d never thought about that before.
But that name of hers—Viktoria—it was so serious. Yes, he was the one who’d wanted the name, after he’d beaten Veber.
Maybe I should have given her a different name, he thought. Something gentler, a name that fit her better. And that victory of mine turned out strangely in the end.
Slavko entered the house as if someone were after him, slammed the door shut, muttering “What a lunatic!,” and stomped off to his room.
Sobotka went to the door and opened it. There was Youry the Mailman.
Youry the Mailman said, “What a lunatic!”
“What’s going on?”
“I’m trying to give him his mail. He won’t let me. But I’m persistent.”
“I know,” said Sobotka.
“The mail is the mail. The mail is the state. I don’t care if everything around me goes to ruin, I will not allow this. Order is order.”
“And Your Mail is Your Mail,” said Sobotka. He enjoyed Youry the Mailman’s circuitous sentences. Talking to Viktoria had buoyed Sobotka’s mood.
“Can you bring him in so I can give him his mail?”
“Doubt it. Slavko is Slavko. He’s weird.”
“I asked the police if it was possible to bring in someone to make him take his mail—they said not unless it’s a police summons. There you have it. The police are the police. They won’t protect me. I’m left to do this on my own.”
“You’re right. The police are the police. Everything is exactly what it’s called.”
“And now I have to deal with this lunatic!”
“Have you been chasing Slavko for a long time?”
“Don’t get me started! There isn’t a corner in and around this town where I haven’t searched for him. But he doesn’t want to receive his mail. He’s persistent as hell! I, too, am persistent. I say—you can be as crazy as you want, but as long as you’re that guy, as long as that’s your name, I’m not leaving you alone. Work is work.”
“So what’s in this mail of his?”
“There’s a whole pile of letters. I carry his burden every day.”
“Oh,” Sobotka became serious. “Real letters? Not bills?”
“Letters are letters, don’t you think I know what letters are?”
“All right, just asking.”
“You think I’d give bills to an idiot who wouldn’t pay them? I’m not crazy! Bills are bills, you can give them to a subletter as well.”
“You said it!”
“I keep track of everything, don’t you worry. So are you his guardian now?”
“Um, yes.”
“You have papers?”
“These are ordinary letters,” said Sobotka. “There’s nothing to sign here for them, right?”
“Ordinary letters are ordinary letters. You can’t just give them to anybody. This isn’t even his address. It doesn’t work that way.”
“But maybe they’re important?”
“They’re definitely important. But work is work, as I said before. Bring him in so I can give the letters to him.”
Sobotka thought about this. Slavko obviously didn’t want to receive his letters. He was still unstable, and Sobotka was afraid this could worsen his state of mind. Who knew what was in those letters?
“I’ll talk to him, but let’s take it slowly. Why don’t you come by in a few days?”
“Look, you’re not the one who decides when the mail is delivered.”
Sobotka scratched the back of his head and said, “You’re right.”
“You betcha.”
He tried to talk to Slavko about the mail, but didn’t even get that far—starting with the mailman—because Slavko immediately jerked his head, meaning he was switching off.
Sobotka had begun to consider him a normal person, so he was irritated that the man was able to switch on his madness whenever he felt like it—or so it seemed to Sobotka.
“But Slavko, someone is sending you letters. You know what that means.”
“I can’t read,” Slavko told him.
This confused Sobotka.
“I can’t read what others think. What others think are their wishes,” Slavko continued. “I don’t know who’s behind the words. I don’t know them anymore. I can’t read!”
Sobotka had not heard such a stream of words from Slavko since the eighties.
“No letters, no goddamn letters,” Slavko shouted as if the words hurt him in some way.
To reassure him, Sobotka, said, “I don’t know. Maybe this is all a mistake.”
“A mistake,” Slavko repeated, twisting his mouth. “Of course it’s a mistake! It’s an absolute mistake! It’s all a mistake!”
Sobotka didn’t know what to say. He just watched Slavko pacing frantically around the kitchen, reminded, once again, of a real lunatic.
“Adam and Eve—a mistake! They say it�
��s a sin, a sin . . . but it’s not a sin, it’s a mistake! It’s all a mistake! A mistake since the beginning! You can’t correct a mistake! The numbers don’t add up, there’s no way! You can’t solve it, there’s no solution! Everything’s set in stone! All wrong!”
Slavko glared at Sobotka as if he were the enemy and left. The dog followed him.
15
THE DINNER BECAUSE of which he’d had to travel, where Oleg and Lorena met the editor, was wonderful. Oleg was wonderful, the fact that he’d heard nothing about the turbines was wonderful. Everything was wonderful. Everything but the journalist, who, as the editor put it, always brought a touch of irony to his work. He was just that kind of guy; he couldn’t write anything without a little teasing note, most likely so as not to lose his critical distance. This is what the editor said of the journalist, in a somewhat ironic voice. “What can you do? He is that way. I can’t interfere with his article unless something is clearly wrong because that would be violating the freedom of the press.” But all right, he said, he, the editor, would take a look at the piece’s layout. Titles and subtitles went with the editorial remit, so he would. He’d take a look. Then he looked over at Oleg as if they were old friends, actually new friends, but as if Oleg were an old friend because the editor drew no big distinction between old and new friends.
Now Oleg understood: he had dispatched a journalist who couldn’t write without a little provocation, who had scribbled God-knows-what, and heaven forbid he’d interfere with the freedom of the press. However, Oleg felt that freedom of the press began before the article was written, as soon as you decided to send a guy like that off on such an assignment. And then you even wink to him. Surely, at that point, you already know what the freedom will be like. But things were not so bad. They weren’t interested in the turbines. Given the circumstances, things could not have turned out any better. This was actually great, and the dinner was delicious—was there anything better? Anything more dinner-like?
Oleg drank some more and also snorted a couple of lines. He realized this business was very unhealthy for him. But all this would pass, let them have their fun. What mattered was they had no interest in the turbines whatsoever, for the editor showed no sign of having smelled a bigger story than that Oleg was a slightly oddball bohemian businessman. Therefore, he could continue acting like this. Just avoid major outbursts—he kept saying to himself—avoid major outbursts.
Oddball yet no major outbursts—he had to find this middle ground.
• • •
Nikola saw Šeila talking to a man in the town square. He was walking toward them when—and this happened in a split second—because of the way she looked at him, maybe just a tiny twitch of her facial muscles, he decided she was not glad to see him. He slowed down and, not knowing what to do, stopped in front of a dusty shop window, and then, realizing it was empty, he went to a neighboring kiosk and asked for a packet of tissues.
The vendor with thick glasses said to him, “It says in Novi dan that the main actor in the TV series Triumph of Love was lucky to escape death in a plane crash.”
“Why tell me this?”
“I have to tell everyone.”
“Oh really?”
Nikola’s confusion seemed to encourage the vendor, who said, “So you tell me—is this normal?”
“What?”
“The new directives.”
“What?” said Nikola, turning around.
Šeila and the man were just saying goodbye, and Nikola thought he heard the man speaking English.
She approached him, now with a smile, and said, “It sure is small, this town.”
“A very small town,” he said.
“It’s a village,” she said. “There’s no getting around it.”
“I was about to grab something to eat at Haiduci. Do you want to join me?”
“Sure.”
“You forgot your tissues,” said the vendor.
Nikola dismissed this with a wave, and Šeila smiled.
While they were walking, Nikola couldn’t help but ask, “So who was that?”
“Just a friend.”
“A foreigner?”
“Yes.” Then she added, “A business friend.”
When they arrived, they took a seat at a table and ordered. Nikola began listening to the silence around them. Actually, it was not really silence—you could just barely hear the song “Unde-s haiduci” coming from the loudspeakers, which he had gradually realized was something like the restaurant’s anthem.
Nikola thought she’d say something else about her friend, but she didn’t, so he said, “I didn’t know there were other foreign businesspeople in town besides me.”
“You’ll find the occasional one.”
“Where does he come from?”
“Is this an interrogation?”
“I just asked where he’s from.”
“He’s American. But let’s stop the interrogation, all right?” she said.
His next question, though, had already slipped out of his mouth, “What’s a Yank doing here?”
He could hear the lyrics which he knew by heart, although he didn’t understand them: “Să ia toţi banii pentru ţăranii . . . Pentru sărmanii plini de nevoi . . .”
“He’s on a business trip,” she said with a sigh. “I’m not having an affair with him. Can we stop?”
“All right. But . . . what’s he doing here?”
He could see her hands fidgeting. The waiter brought their food, and she kept looking around, as if she regretted coming to the restaurant.
What is an American doing in this nowhere town, where we are coincidentally making turbines for the embargoed Colonel? When did he get here? What exactly does she do?
Yes, she had told him something vague about an occasional job—some kind of outsourcing—but she’d just waved it off, he remembered, as if she found the topic distasteful. He remembered from her stories that she’d worked at a variety of different jobs before coming to N. and the jobs that sounded the best were the most bogus—this was what she used to say. You know, the more fictional the job description, the better its title, she’d say. She had mentioned associations and projects, named names she’d worked with as if they were well known—but when she realized he hadn’t heard of them, she said it was better that way.
He never realized until now that she was working on something here, he thought she conducted her business over the Internet.
Nikola had many questions even though the interrogation was over.
“Wait a second, you’re doing something here?”
She gave him a piercing look, saying nothing. Maybe an extorted yes.
“Šeila, what are you doing? Hey, you really should tell me.”
She stared at him. The fact that she had told him the interrogation was over meant nothing? She hated this behavior, his complete disregard, which surfaced so spontaneously. Now she was looking at him and thought, Here’s the boss. This thought dismayed her. As if she were being attacked in a space she’d thought was safe.
“I should tell you? Who do you think I am? Your wife? Let’s say I have a contract that doesn’t allow me to talk about it. There’s nothing for you to worry about.”
Where does her coldness come from, he thought. I shouldn’t worry about it? We are making turbines for a man whose country is under American sanctions. Of course, he hadn’t told her about that, so she had no idea why he should care. Hmm, no, he couldn’t tell her why he was asking questions. He stopped talking. He was hungry, but he hadn’t started eating. Then the thought hit him: he should find out what the Yank was doing here, and what she was doing with the Americans. Thoughts welled up and roiled in his head.
“Wait, I can’t know what you do?”
“Not necessary.”
“Like, like you’re some kind of secret agent?”
He a
ppeared a bit frantic to her, and in that instant she felt she didn’t know who he was.
“And who are you?” she said, smiling caustically. “The Service for the Protection of the Constitutional Order?”
He fell silent, swallowed some of his food. Meat. She tried to eat, too, but then she realized she couldn’t. She had to tell him some things now.
“Well, I didn’t know what my partner was doing, either, and we lived together. . . . I don’t even know what you do, you and your cousin. . . . So what’s the problem? A woman shouldn’t be able to do the same? You have to know everything about a woman? Oversee everything?”
“No, but I should know some things. Is what you do secret?”
“I’m telling you, I have a contract that says I can’t talk about it. I shouldn’t even have said that much.”
“Well, what kind of job is it? Here? What could it be?”
“Are you deaf? I told you I’m not allowed to discuss it. Your questioning is getting on my nerves. This is beyond me. . . . You want to know my every step? You see . . . this is all about the ancient fear that the woman will get pregnant with another man. That’s why the Taliban keep their women at home. C’mon, think about what you’re saying before you open your mouth again, because if you don’t stop, I’ll get up from the table and you’ll never see me again.”
“Wait, you say you don’t know what I do? I go to the factory every day.”
“No one here knows who you are and how this is possible. Why was the factory brought back into production so suddenly? Why are the workers voting on who they’ll accept? What are you? Businessmen, hippies, lunatics? Nobody knows. But, you see, that’s not a problem for me.”
Lunatics, yes, we are lunatics, he wanted to tell her, but this was not the moment for that conversation, so he just said, “It’s about self-organization.”
“Self what?”
“Self-organization.”
“Well, my business is also self-organization.”
Now she’s laughing at me, he thought, and said, “I’ve heard a lot of things from you now, but not what you do.”
“That’s my own fucking business! Can’t you understand that?” she raised her voice.
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