“Think of it like this—if I wanted to screw you over, I could’ve just told you about the fieldwork and you’d have agreed. They will be researching genetic material, as well as the environment. They’ll try to figure this out. After they’ve found the location, they won’t need you anymore. They’d pay you like the Sherpa guides who take people up Mount Everest. And you would be okay with that, right?”
“Probably,” she said, disheartened. In his hands again. “Okay, Michael, so why are you doing this?”
She said this quietly, as if she were talking to the Michael of the past.
“I am also on contract with them. I have half of the information, I lead them to you, and you have the other half. . . . Maybe I screwed you over once. . . . I don’t know. . . . That was difficult for me, because . . . well, it was how things were. If I were to trick you now, that wouldn’t be right. Sorry, you said we should talk freely.”
“Fine,” she said.
“Besides. . . . I don’t like them very much,” he said.
“Really?”
“Simple as that. I don’t want them to use you.”
“All right, tell me everything now.”
“I’ve only been in this for a short time. Some things have surprised me. Honestly, Sheila, I don’t really like all of it.”
“What, exactly?”
“They can patent genetic material. You are a microbiologist, after all, you know what that means.”
“I never became a microbiologist, my dear.”
“No? What have you been doing?”
“All sorts of things. Mostly worked for NGOs on peace, culture issues. . . . Projects. Fictions of all sorts. Even an art manager. Nonsense.”
“Art manager?” he repeated like he found this impressive
“Ha ha ha, sorry,” she laughed. “That only sounds serious. You know how things work here. Auctions without minimum bids. . . . And I didn’t get the job at the water utility. There’s nothing tying me down business-wise, if that’s what you’re asking. Go on.”
After a brief silence and something resembling a sigh, he continued: “Right. . . . They can patent it. As a discovery. Even though it’s something that exists in nature. That’s the law, and I . . . I don’t like it. I’ve been thinking about where this all leads. But that’s the state of affairs. If there is something there, they’ll patent it.”
“And then it’s theirs?”
“Yes. There’s a huge battle underway. Companies like theirs will patent anything showing potential for profit. Everything. So much is already under patent. Life itself will have an owner.”
“Michael, you are telling me this now, after you’ve told me to work for them.”
“Yes. I don’t tell this to everyone. . . . Fuck, I haven’t told anyone.”
He sounded like a man who was struggling.
“Michael. . . . This is weird.”
“Yes. But I’m in.”
“Why are you in?”
“I don’t know. I guess I don’t know what else to do. . . . I don’t know. . . . It’s all pretty much the same. Besides, I’ve got some ideas.”
“Wait, you want to be fair with me? Or share your burden with me?”
“This is my thinking: If such a thing exists they’ll find it, no matter where. Okay, that would only be the cure for baldness. Nothing bad. But if by some chance I were to earn a lot of money off this, I could stop working, and then I’d join the fight against the laws that allow the patenting.”
Now he really sounded like someone who wasn’t feeling well.
“First we make money off it, and then we fight against it?”
“I will,” he said, the tone of his voice rising quite high. “It bothers me. . . . Designer babies, cloning. I don’t like the idea of cloning.”
“What?”
“Cloning. These are private companies. I work with them, I know them. Sooner or later they’ll try everything. Who will monitor what they are doing? It should all be regulated. . . . Maybe, maybe it shouldn’t even be private. But that’s business for you.”
“Michael, has something changed you?”
There was a long pause.
“Maybe it’s the fact that I have kids,” he sighed, knowing this wasn’t merely a piece of information. “There have to be limits. . . . This is a Pandora’s box. I don’t know what to think. . . . But it is realistic. The laws are on the books. This will happen with or without our help.”
“I understand.”
“Think about everything.”
“Michael, this is a really weird conversation.”
“I know.”
“So, you have kids?”
“Two.”
“Happy marriage?”
“Yes.”
“Take care, Michael.”
“Bye, Sheila.”
• • •
“You ask me what sets us apart. We were Bogomils, we sought shelter here, in the highlands. That’s what my relatives used to say, that we were Bogomils, but others prevailed. I don’t know what to tell you. We’re not anything anymore. We forgot, and we dispersed. My grandfather used to say that his grandfather still knew everything. But that man disappeared when he was young, they say. He went down once to trade and never came back: he was enlisted, mustered into an army. Never to return. My grandfather used to tell me this. After that, they lost the knowledge. Since then, we’ve remained as you find us. Some say this; some say that, but nobody really knows for sure. Everyone worshipped as they knew how and as they said it should be. I, for example, call our god Godling, as if he were small. And that is how I pray to him. I say a prayer that is mine only. Some men used to say years ago that this was wrong, Godling. They said that’s womantalk. But older women called on God that way, and I liked it. That’s how I say it. That’s how I like it. This other woman in my village, Irva, she says it differently. But none of this matters any more. Our church no longer exists, anyway. It was, my folks used to say, a people’s church, but our community was isolated and small. So I believe my god to be small, too. Smaller and smaller. We’re gone. The folks from here all moved down into the valley. Only she and I are left. Her son visits her sometimes, almost never, in fact, and nobody visits me. I never had any kids of my own, there. The last of my kin, those who still used to visit, went off to faraway lands during the war, if they’re even alive. I know nothing of them.
“Since when have we been here? I don’t know exactly. A long time, child. We were attacked, or so my folks used to say, even before the Turks came. People slaughtered each other here before the Turks came. That’s what they told me. Over religion. And probably over money, because you had to give the church its due. Our folks refused. They persecuted and killed us Bogomils, and I guess we did the same to them. Then we took refuge in the mountains. One elder of ours, Dragodid, led us to the mountains so they wouldn’t kill us and we wouldn’t kill others. Later, when they finished killing each other down there, the Turks came with their religion. Our people used to say this was the reason why the Turks came here in the first place, which is something I’ve never heard about over the radio, I don’t know if you have. I never went so far down the mountain, but I did get a battery-powered radio, and I can hear how, whenever a shot is fired somewhere, someone arrives afterward. I don’t know who they are.
“This used to be Bogomil country, that’s what they told me. Then the country changed, and now no one dares say that their family were Bogomils, because they’ve become something else. What’re you going to do? The people change their ways, and then they’re embarrassed to know they used to be something else. That’s the way it goes. I ain’t one to complain. The Bogomils, after all, came after someone else, it’s not like they were the first.
“The way we disappeared, I’ve made my peace with that. We’ve always known—even when I was a child, we knew we’d disappear. We weren’t a people anym
ore but something on the margins. And we were always sad about that, about the fact that we were gone and our folks forgot about their ancestors. The standing stones are everywhere . . . everywhere there are monuments to what our forefathers used to be; it’s just that folks turn strange when the tide turns: when that happens, they say, I don’t know, I don’t know what this stone’s all about, I don’t know what things used to be like, and then they say, It’s always been like this, and nothing’s ever existed except for us, even though all kinds of things did exist before, and everything used to be different. Then it disappeared, just like this here will disappear one day, and no one’ll remember, because everyone’ll be embarrassed to remember that they used to be someone else, that someone’s grandfather fought for something different, that someone’s father changed his faith with tears in his eyes, that he was humiliated in this faith. But that’s how things’ve always worked, they say, everywhere. Who knows who chose whose faith? I respect every person who chooses beliefs on their own terms and immerses themself deeply in it. More power to them. But a lot of people, my folks would tell me, changed their faith with a sword hanging over their heads, and that’s why their faith’s restless; it’s not peaceable and it doesn’t live inside them but is external like flimsy armor, it’s linked to the sword, it thinks about the sword and follows the sword. . . . Then they start killing each other again, one side led by one sword, the other side by another, the third by yet another, because they confused the sword with God. It’s the same everywhere, I hear, because I’ve got a radio, and sometimes I listen to it in the dark, and I can hear they’re killing each other here and there, just like they were once trying to kill us and we were trying to kill them. Dragodid brought us to the mountains to stop us from killing each other and so we could disappear in peace and quiet, dwindle in peace and quiet, and forget in peace and quiet. That’s why my faith’s small but peaceable, and my small god, Godling, is by my side. There. And this friend of yours who doesn’t understand what I’m saying, where’s he from?”
“From America.”
“Right.”
“That country is far away.”
“I know. You can only come from away. And what does he want?”
“He’d like to stay here for a while. He’s a doctor.”
“Oh, he cures illnesses?”
“Yes, if there’s a need.”
“And he just does that for free.”
“Yes.”
“Right. You’re lying about something.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I see it in your eyes.”
“What do my eyes say?”
“Nothing. Your mouth talks, but your eyes keep quiet. Like they’re ashamed.”
“Fine. He is a doctor and he’s got different kinds of medicines. But there’s one more thing. He’d like to know if any bald person has ever lived in this village.”
“They’ve already asked about that.”
“They’ve already been here?”
“Yes.”
“When were they here?”
“A long time ago. Communists.”
“Really?”
“They were here and asked about that.”
“And?”
“They took some blood from us.”
“And after that?”
“After that, they disappeared as well.”
“I see. . . . And you and the other old lady are the only ones who are still here, you say?”
“That’s right.”
“And her son visits her, you say?”
“Let me tell you right away—we don’t speak to each other.”
“Really? Awkward. You’re the only ones here.”
“What can you do?”
• • •
“Ma’am, have you ever seen a bald person in this village?”
“Never seen one until during this last war, when they came here.”
“Who?”
“They came here looking for shelter, four or five of them. They ran away from the war down there. Didn’t want to join the army. Sometimes they come back. They linger, repair things. They say they’re going to move here.”
“She didn’t tell us anything about that.”
“She wouldn’t. Because they’re hers.”
“Hers?”
“A sect. She’s filled their heads with rubbish.”
“What kind of sect?”
“A sect based on her nonsense. She says we used to be Bogomils. . . . These are her stories. Her grandfather told her about it, she says. She doesn’t know anything. It’s true we used to be a special breed back in the day: a tribe who knew some things, but I’ve no idea where from. We used to be miners in the old days. We had a mine right here.”
“My grandma told me you used to be shepherds. That your summer pastures were here, so you stayed.”
“Your grandma didn’t know anything. They had livestock, of course, they had to for food. But they had a mine, too.”
“Which ore was mined? Did all the men work in the mine? My friend here is asking.”
“Ore? They used to call it cone. The men worked there, who else . . . But that was before. The mine shut down years ago. The supports fell in when folks started to leave. There was no one left to maintain them. They fell in while I was still a child, but I didn’t know about that at the time. Maybe we were running out of the cone, I don’t know for sure. They said there was less of it than before. I don’t know if that was the reason why folks left or if they just got bored with life here. But, yes, it was the men who went into the mine, not the women. The mine was farther up the mountain. They built their houses here because the shelter was better. The material extracted from the mine was in small amounts, I know that because the elders would carry it to places far away to sell. They were able to carry it far away because there wasn’t a lot of it. They didn’t want to sell it close by so no one would find out we had something here of value. They took livestock with them and pretended to sell the cattle, but they were really selling the cone. Being just kids and all, we didn’t know anything about it because they were afraid the kids would eventually leave and go to the valley and spill the beans. And the kids did go. Only those who stayed to have their children here found out about the mine. The parents knew about it, but their children didn’t. That was the rule. That’s why she doesn’t know anything about it. Ask her about the cone. She won’t know a thing. She couldn’t have children, so the older folks didn’t tell her about it. They stuck to the rule even when the mine fell in. They did it because they thought the mine could be brought back and because that was the nature of our rule. She believes in fairy tales, the things they’d tell the kids. Sometime later, I once told her this has nothing to do with faith, because it didn’t even matter anymore and because I was tired of her stories. Everything was over by then anyway. But she wouldn’t hear of it. She says I betrayed our old faith. This ain’t about faith! There used to be old faith in these parts that nobody knows much about anymore, whether it was Bogomils or just the folks believing in something they’d made up so they wouldn’t have to give money to the collection plate. I heard both versions and nobody now knows for sure, least of all her. Only thing folks knew was that there was something and there was trouble with it, folks being persecuted on all sides, and then it was gone and nobody talked about it much. You could just keep quiet and pretend like you knew, which is what our folks did. They went out into the world, silent about their ways, and I really mean that—they kept to the shadows, silent, letting people think whatever they wanted. But our folks had something else in mind. Our folks would act strange when they went down among the rest of the people, so no one would think of them as their own. Our folks would say: Stay out of our business, don’t marry us, don’t talk to us more than necessary, stay away. . . . That was our forefathers’ wish. That no one would want to have anything to
do with us and no one would come up here out of fear of devilry. And everybody would think we were living up here because we’re strange, and not because of the mine. And they’d return from faraway places carrying coins, loaded with all kinds of things, but cautious and following their own paths. And life was good here. And they were clever.”
17
SOBOTKA CAME UP with a simple solution: he added Slavko’s name to his mailbox and the door.
Sure enough, the next day Youry the Mailman appeared at Sobotka’s door and said, “Okay, I can see this is where he lives.”
“So the name was the only problem?” said Sobotka.
“A different address is written on the letters, but I can see that this is where he lives. I’ve been keeping track,” Youry the Mailman explained.
He handed over a sizable bundle to Sobotka and said, “You give it to him, you’re his housemate, it’s not registered mail.”
Out of curiosity, Sobotka asked, “How come you didn’t give these letters to those relatives of his? They’re also his housemates, aren’t they?”
Youry the Mailman gave him a meaningful look and said, “First of all, they don’t seem like such a reliable bunch. Second, and most important, they’re not his housemates. That’s not their address. They’ve never registered as living there. They have no documents on them. I asked them, they don’t have anything. I reported them to the police.”
“What did the police say?”
“Nothing. I don’t get their logic. The only thing I can do is work alone. I’ve done my part.”
“Yes, you have,” said Sobotka.
“You betcha,” he said. He had started to turn around when he decided to say, “You know, Mr. Engineer, people send so few letters these days that they have to be delivered. To tell you the truth, he’s the only one who receives them, and he doesn’t even want them. Get it? Like someone’s playing a joke on me. He almost brought me to rock bottom, to tell you the truth. I’ve started pondering the meaninglessness. If I weren’t so tough, I’d wonder . . . I’d wonder whether I should even exist. If I don’t deliver everything that’s been sent, where has this world gone? I don’t know what’s happened with letters. What do people do?”
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