“We boarded the plane and rose up above Belgrade, and I looked out into the night. I wanted to go to sleep so much, so I closed my eyes, but I kept thinking: What’s going to happen now? My life flashed before my eyes and I thought: Yugoslavia has failed, I can’t believe it. What’s going to happen to Macedonia now if everyone starts grabbing whatever bits they can? So that abyss was down below us, I couldn’t get to sleep, and I kept hearing the crackle of the cellophane as he rustled in the bag; the noise really bothered me, Ole, and I was upset; I opened my eyes and looked at Vasil, about to tell him off, but stopped. I just couldn’t believe it all, and I watched him as he demolished that meat.
“When he saw I was looking at him, he said: ‘Kiro, there’s nothing better than cold pork chop!’
“Kiro’s mobile on the table kept ringing as he was telling me this, and I didn’t know if he was getting agitated because of it or because of the story.
“And then Kiro spread his arms and said: ‘So tell me, Ole—could he be the president?’”
That was too long for an anecdote in the newspaper, I figured as I left Olenić’s building. The rain was easing up and I was hungry, almost like Vasil, so I retro-ed into a dank diner left over from the previous system. I had the old waitress in orthopedic work shoes bring me tripe soup. Usually I found backwaters like this relaxing, but today I remembered that I had ignored Milka’s calls.
I felt that I couldn’t beat around the bush with Milka. She a mother and I just a journalist. Provincial women know their area of operation: family and extended-family concerns. They leave politics and other foreign affairs to the menfolk, but as far as extended-family matters are concerned—if someone happens to need supervising, keeping tabs on, or brainwashing, if a confession and an expression of penitence have to be elicited—they’re on deck. I’d always known that Milka was the informal boss of the extended-family ministry of the interior. She went to visit everyone, called up regularly, inquired, and interrogated. She even kept in touch with distant relatives on other continents.
When she came to our place she always complained about her son, and she provoked my old ma to complain about me too. So in my presence they complained together, about my unfinished studies, about me not yet being married, not having children, not having a flat of my own, and guzzling beer by the gallon. This yammering was their medium, and it devastated everything around them. Milka very quickly made me feel miserable even when I thought things were going wonderfully. I was glad not to have seen Milka since she had that falling-out with my ma. That was where the conflict began. Milka was the elder and acted like an authority and couldn’t forgive my ma for aligning herself contrary to caucus instructions. But my old ma persisted bravely in her mutiny.
The downside was that she had to endure the long-term consequences. Milka had done thorough groundwork to turn the whole extended family against my ma and make her a kind of dissident, isolating our family from the rest of the clan. As a consequence, my mother became embittered, as edgy as a Soviet defector with the KGB on her heels.
Since we didn’t have anything else to talk about, my mother continually informed me about the development of the conflict, which from here in Zagreb looked like a soap opera. I sometimes recounted that colorful Mediterranean imbroglio with a smile at parties. All the same, my ma carried out her dissident struggle and it kept her alive; otherwise, life as a pensioner would have killed her.
Yet I hadn’t thought about that in depth, the way Olenić thought about the economy. From my perspective, the whole thing seemed unreal and unrelated to me. But thinking about it now it was clear that my old ma had one ace up her sleeve: me. She gave everyone my number to prove the modern power of our faction. Perhaps we didn’t have any real support on the ground, but we held the capital and the media. The West was on our side, and the liberal intellectuals too.
Only now did I realize what it meant that my mother sent Boris to me. She gave him my number and sent him to me like a misfit who scrounges a favor—as if he was seeking asylum. She wanted it to be a public humiliation for Milka in the eyes of the family. That was why Milka and Boris weren’t communicating. He’d accepted the help of the family dissident and betrayed his mother—he’d gone over to the other side like the Bolshoi Theater ballet dancer who sold his homosexual soul.
My involvement in all of this was much deeper than I’d realized. Milka now assumed, logically enough, that I was part of the conspiracy. And I was. Damn it, in Milka’s eyes I was the chief operative in the service of my ma. My ma had devised a plot, and I had put it into practice. Not only had we humiliated Milka by driving her own son to betray her, but we’d even gone so far as to send her son to Iraq to disappear in the desert.
Everything I’d run from for decades had caught up with me. The provincial world and all that went with it were pursuing me like a posse. The past, spirits of a pre-modern life: everything that I wanted to emancipate myself from. I imagined myself running across an urban wasteland hotly pursued by peasants armed with pitchforks and whatever they could lay their hands on, and Milka was leading them on like Delacroix’s Marianne, an open-shirted heroine boldly raising her arm and advancing with her old boobs at the fore.
I’d fled to Zagreb and become a city boy; here I went to a thousand concerts, lived with an actress who played avant-garde dramas, I acted cool, and did everything right. The fear of someone thinking I was a redneck made me read totally unintelligible postmodernist books, watch unbearable avant-garde films, and listen to progressive music even when I wasn’t in the mood. I was terrified of everything superficial and populist. If something became too popular, I rejected it. Even in moments of major inebriation when I felt like singing a popular peasant song I stopped myself. I maintained discipline. But in vain. All at once they were breathing down my neck again. I thought I’d given them the slip, but now they’d encircled me, having used Boris as bait, and were closing in for the kill.
Half pissed already but needing to drown these thoughts I went and stood at the bar. I tried to strike up a conversation with the waitress about the war in Iraq, purely along the lines of whether the war had been worse here or if it was worse there. Since Boris had survived here as a soldier, I wanted to assure myself that he’d probably survive there as a civilian.
The waitress calmly ignored me; she’d apparently learned in her school of bar diplomacy that one shouldn’t talk about the war with fellows my age because you couldn’t tell who had post-traumatic stress disorder and who had a cousin in Iraq.
I phoned Sanja; she said she was going home to relax before the premiere, so I decided to return to the office to give her some peace. There I checked my email, excited to see a message from Vito Čuveljak, the Reuters cameraman in Iraq. But he didn’t know anything about Boris.
Just as I started working on the interview with Olenić, my mobile started ringing again. Milka. I switched the ringer to vibrate. Every few minutes or so my mobile trembled.
I shouldn’t have sent him there. That’s all I can say to her. What else can I do?
But I didn’t answer.
My mother called. She’d read Sanja’s interview. “I'm ashamed she's talking about sex like that.”
“She talks about it—and you’re ashamed?”
“I’m ashamed.”
“What did she say to get you so hot?”
“Hot? Why canna’ ya talk like a normal human being? If ya don’ mind. Whaddid she say? She said she’d go naked for a film. Insteada gettin’ married and havin’ kids, she’d go naked for a film! Y’are not normal.”
“That’s just how it is.”
“Is that all you have to say?”
“I’m at work. I can’t talk now.”
“I dunno where you’re from, and who made you and brought you up. I dunno why you’ve turned out the way you are.”
Next, Markatović called. His voice was subdued.
He was calling from the bathroom; his wife was packing suitcases.
“Whose suitcases?”
I asked.
“Hers. When someone’s going away they pack their own suitcases.”
“Where’s she going?”
“I don’t know,” he whispered. “She’s gone crazy.”
“What happened?”
“I told her I had shares in Rijeka Bank and was still waiting to see what happened.”
“Where’s she going?”
“I said I don’t know.”
“Well, ask her, man.”
“But she’s crazy.”
“So what?”
“All right. I’ll go and ask her,” Markatović muttered and hung up.
In the end Sanja rang too. She said she’d been napping and had been woken by the phone—or rather by Milka. She didn’t believe I wasn’t there. And when Sanja asked her politely to leave her in peace because she had a play, Milka replied that she would also like to have a play with us because we had it coming, so Sanja unplugged the phone and did a bit of meditation. Now she felt better. She was just about to leave for the theater and suggested we meet after the premiere. I wished her good luck and said everything would be just fine.
I called Markatović and said, “My head hurts.”
“Why are you telling me?”
“Because I’m going to switch off my mobile, take one of those popular tablets, and go home for a bit of a kip. Just so you don’t think I’m trying to avoid you while your drama is going on.”
He mumbled absently.
“What’s happened? Is Dijana still there?”
“She’s locked herself in the bedroom. I looked through the keyhole. She’s writing. I guess she’s writing me a letter.” “Call me when you get it.”
Tits.
Darkness.
The end.
She’d done it. The palms of my hands were moist.
The applause was thunderous.
It’s rare to hear any critical opinions in the lobby after a play. But half an hour later, when the first discussions were taking place over drinks and canapés, things started to look different.
There are people whose mission it is to be the first to pass negative judgment. These are people who attend all cultural events, although they don’t like anything. Charly was one of them. I saw him coming up to me with an enigmatic smile as if to remind me that I was one of them too.
“The director botched things up a bit,” he said.
Charly had always wanted to study stage direction. “I wouldn’t have said so,” I replied.
“The actors are good but the director messed things up,” he pressed.
“And how was Sanja?”
“Excellent. But, really, you have to admit, the director messed things up a bit.”
Just then Ela appeared. Charly went all stiff as if he’d been jabbed with a needle. She nodded to Charly and gave me a kiss on each cheek. “Sanja was just phenomenal,” she gushed.
“And how are you?” she asked Charly in a gentle, almost maternal way.
A glance behind them showed Silva coming—complications were in store. I said I had to go to the toilet and disappeared before Charly could do anything about it.
I waited at the bar until Sanja came. She hadn’t changed. That cheap costume really was sexy. I’d put on the suit I wear to weddings and funerals. I kissed her. She grabbed my ass, and I automatically looked around to see if anyone was watching.
“Look at you in that suit,” she said.
“Well, I thought I had to.”
“But it’s dashing.”
People around the bar looked at us. They had lots of reasons to look at us, but I got the impression it was mostly her butt in that white, vinyl miniskirt. Her belly button was showing beneath the blouse sewn together with the white push-up bra that enlarged her breasts. The little white glitter boots and the white cowboy hat made her look like the ultimate lady of the night. Even I couldn’t resist looking at her tits instead of her eyes.
“You were great,” I whispered in her ear. “You really turn me on.”
“You too,” she whispered back.
She seemed more flirtatious than usual. “Are you on something?” I asked.
“Doc brought some coke. We’ve just had a snort. Wanna leave this crowd?”
I followed her through the people. She stopped in front of the men’s bathroom.
“Check if anyone’s in there.”
I peeked in. A guy was washing his hands. When he left, we dashed inside. There was just one stall amidst the urinals. We went into the cubicle and locked the door.
I kissed her and grabbed her hard by the ass. I felt I was about to explode. She lowered the toilet lid, sat on it and started to unbutton my pants. My dick bounced out. She looked me in the eyes from below, shook her head with a grin, and then took me in her mouth.
Her hat blocked my view of the action, so I took it off her and put it on my head. She let my dick out of her mouth for a second and in a mock naive voice said, “Are you some kind of cowboy?”
“Yeah, just passin’ through.”
The door squeaked. Someone started using one of the urinals. Sanja went back to sucking. I was terrified. The door squeaked again, and this time someone rattled the stall handle. I almost stopped breathing. Sanja licked me wickedly from below.
“And what do you say about the acting?” a voice muttered at the urinals. It sounded like Doc.
“She’s got a good pair of tits,” was the response.
That piece of theater critique in the men’s room obviously amused Sanja, and she nodded and made some grunts of consent as she was sucking away.
She’s mad, I thought, in a panic that in no way lessened my excitement. The coke had an interesting effect on her. The men were still talking. I fought off my orgasm but she didn’t stop, and I watched as she changed rhythm, without any sign of relenting; she took it deep, and mumbled quietly, which they probably didn’t hear out there, I hoped, but I wasn’t worrying about that any more because the situation obviously turned her on even more. I wouldn’t be able to hold on anyway. Yes, that was obvious, and now I shuddered as I came. She waited until the end, and then smiled up at me. I kissed her hair.
“OK then, let’s go,” she whispered when she heard the door slam.
Out in the corridor I saw Doc who’d stopped to talk to a girl, and he called out to us, “What are you up to here?”
“Just having a blow,” Sanja said in a shrill voice, pretending to be a bad fairy.
Doc burst out laughing. He was wearing a garish orange T-shirt with ANTI-DRUGS HOTLINE printed on it.
We headed toward the lobby.
At the abundant buffet, I helped myself to some white wine, had a few sips, and reached for a canapé with a lettuce leaf and a little turd on top; at least that’s what it looked like, but it tasted OK.
Suddenly, a flash went off in my face and Sanja was grabbing my arm. She’d been looking into the flash and didn’t notice that my mouth was full. I dodged her. By the time I finally swallowed that blasted canapé, Sanja was surrounded by journalists, flashes going off all around her. I considered rejoining her but didn’t want to be seen as the star’s boyfriend desperate to emerge from his anonymity.
I drank my wine and thought about how I’d have to cut out her photos when they came out in the papers so when she became a big star and left me, I’d always be able to look at the photos, those eyes, that smile, that mouth that still had my semen in it, and be able to wank over those photos.
The thought exhilarated me in a perverse way at first, but then I rejected it as depressive. She wasn’t going to leave me. Where did I get that idea? This isn’t Hollywood, I consoled myself. I was relieved when Sanja reappeared and kissed me. More flashes. I couldn’t believe this was really happening to us.
It always showed when guys were unable to live with the success of their wives. I’d seen guys lose their alpha roles and was sure it wouldn’t happen to me if Sanja made it big. But right there and then, at the very first step, I began to feel inferior. Was I really such a redneck?
Had she anticipated all this? Was the blowjob just compensation? No, I told myself: it was proof that nothing would change. It was proof because she also needed it. Standing there in the white hat beside Sanja, the flashes fired at me, and I laughed at the way fame—even a tiny brush with it—accelerates your thoughts and opens up a new space in front of you, in which you can easily become lost.
I drank my wine too quickly and my glass was empty so I looked around to see how to get hold of another as fast as possible. Ela probably had the same problem, and we found ourselves at the table at the same time. We each took another glass.
“Hasn’t Sanja seen you?” I asked.
“You can see what bedlam there is,” she said. “There’ll be time.”
“How are things otherwise?”
“Fantastic.”
Fantastic, fantastic, fantastic, uh-huh, I thought. What are we going to talk about now? Should I say everything’s fantastic too and we wind down the show?
“And you?” she asked.
“Disaster.”
“You’re kidding? What’s happened?”
“Oh come on, Ela, we’re allowed to be fucked up—it’s not a crime.”
“What are you getting at?”
“You and I don’t have to get into that super-cool bullshit. We’ve known each other from back when I didn’t have a washing machine.”
Fortunately that made her laugh. Then Sanja came over to us. She and Ela kissed and exchanged a few lines of small talk, almost at a scream. But I could see that, after the initial enthusiasm, Sanja was at a bit of a loss with her. She was simply in a much more lively frame of mind than poor Ela, who'd probably given up drugs and everything else fun because she was too busy dieting.
Our Man in Iraq Page 10