She made a point of getting to work ahead of time; her colleagues would find her at her desk early in the morning, bent over papers. Several weeks later, Gordana Sekulić, a pale, unpleasant young woman, invited her for a walk after lunch. It was late autumn; a fierce wind blew right through them, and there was nowhere to take shelter. Gordana, shivering, became impatient. “Can we go to your place?” she asked Vera. Wary, Vera said no, and they went back to the Post Office. The cleaners were shuffling up and down the corridor; the room was being aired. Gordana shut the window, and they sat down on cold chairs opposite each other. Vera lit a cigarette. Gordana screwed up her face and, with her eyes fixed on the desk, spoke of the aims of socialism—humanitarianism and justice—aims certainly dear to Vera after what she had suffered. She, Gordana, had been entrusted, by the older comrades, with the task of inviting Vera to join the League of Young Communists. And Gordana raised her troubled, almost tearful eyes and asked tensely, “Will you?” To which Vera simply nodded. Gordana jumped up, hugged her, kissed her with cold lips, seized her hand, and the two ran down the stairs and out into the street, where the wind, whistling, drove dust and scraps of paper.
The next day, Gordana gave Vera a questionnaire and some sheets of blank paper to write her biography. “You mustn’t leave anything out,” Gordana said before placing the paper in Vera’s hands, “particularly anything that concerns the Occupation. That’s what Danica Jurković told me to tell you.” Vera was supposed to return the papers within three days. That same afternoon, with some difficulty, for the questions were complicated, she filled out the questionnaire and at once set about writing her biography. She was surprised by how little there was to say once she had given the details of her family; so much of her suffering, she realized, was general, and the personal could not be recounted. But, remembering what Gordana had told her, she tried to put the unutterable on paper. The crucial events, it seemed to her, ought to be described in the minutest detail, but they were in disorder, unconnected, and connecting them in memory would cause immeasurable distress. She tried to generalize, but that didn’t work, for her generalizations quickly degenerated into half-truths and therefore falsehoods. She threw the sheet of paper away, took another, and in a fury of decision hurled herself on that past which was suddenly demanded of her. But the words wouldn’t come. She lay down, writhing in her impotence. She would have liked to rest, but her heart went on hammering, would have liked to run out into the street, but hadn’t enough breath left to move. She was a prisoner of those blank sheets of paper, as she had been a prisoner in the camp.
This was camp, too, she realized, a continuation of camp, the camp in which she had been walled for a year and a half. The war had ended, but she had not escaped; her former captors, drowned in blood, even in death, stretched out their arms to her, to her captivity. She shouldn’t have come back, she remembered, she should never have come back; she had made a mistake coming back, and now would pay for it. She tried to think of a way out. Go somewhere? But where? Apart from this house that everyone had abandoned, there was only one other: a wooden hut in a field fenced off with wire. There was no one there now, its inhabitants gone, a place of disgrace, a monument to its visitors—forced to visit it—full of judgments on the past. But she was part of that past and, although a victim, as guilty as the guilty.
She lit a cigarette, put on her coat, went to a nearby grocery, and bought a bottle of wine. She never drank, she never wanted to drink, but people said it numbed you. The wind was bitter and cold. She forced herself to gulp it down, but her stomach rebelled, and she ran out of her room to be sick. Broken, deprived of relief, she lay down and went to sleep. Heavy dreams, water, drowning, rain and snow in the square, on the roll call.
Morning found her listless. She went to work late, with dark circles under her eyes. She worked silently, angrily. The girl who sat next to her, Stasa Dimitrijević, a doctor’s daughter, asked in a low voice what was wrong. Vera shrugged, barely able to hold in her hatred. Gordana, whose eyes she noticed looking at her worriedly, came up after work and asked if the application was ready. “It isn’t and never will be,” Vera replied with a decisiveness that surprised herself. “I’m sick of the whole thing!” Gordana recoiled as if bitten by a snake and hurried off. Vera felt delivered of a great weight. She went to the dining room, sat among strangers, then went home and lay down. After a short sleep, she drank what was left of the wine, drank it straight from the bottle, turned the bottle upside down and let the last few yellow drops fall on the papers scattered on the table.
Gordana, a few days later, was waiting for her in the corridor. “I told Danica you’re not going to do your biography. Is that still true?” When Vera said it was, Gordana said, “Then it’s as if we never had our talk. Return the questionnaire to me.”
“It’s already filled in.”
Gordana thought a moment. “That doesn’t matter. Return it anyway. It shouldn’t be left lying around.”
After lunch, at home, the first thing Vera did was clear the table of the papers, crumpling them up with disgust, with pleasure, and burning them in the kitchen stove, which had not seen fire for a long time. Then she sat down with the questionnaire and carefully crossed out, in thick ink, every word she had written. Now, following the questions was a row of black dashes, long and short. First name, last name: nothing. Father’s name: nothing. Mother’s name, maiden name: nothing. Day, month, year of birth: nothing. She was nothing, and she folded that nothing, put it in her coat pocket, and the next day placed it on the desk in front of Gordana. Soon thereafter the telephone rang, and she was summoned to Danica Jurković. She went up the stairs and found the personnel officer at her desk, her back bent almost double, her eyes tired, her face sagging and lined.
Jurković, not asking Vera to sit down, looked at the papers in front of her and in an expressionless voice read the dates Vera had been late to work. There seemed to be too many, but since Vera could prove nothing, she said that on those days she hadn’t felt well. Jurković raised her tiny eyes, red around the rims, and explained that unless Vera had been to a doctor, her lateness was unexcused and that legally she could be dismissed from her job. Nevertheless, she, Jurković, for the time being did not intend to resort to that extremity, taking into consideration the fact that Vera came from a family that had given one martyr to the cause, Gerhard Kroner, and that Vera, too, in her own way must have suffered under fascism, though she had close relatives who were collaborators and it was not altogether clear how she had come back from the camp alive and in relatively good condition. For that reason, Vera’s past would be looked into, and until then she should go back to work and had better guard against further infringements of the rules.
That afternoon, Mitzi arrived at Vera’s apartment, out of breath, her face puckered with indignation. Jurković had called her in and expressed displeasure with Vera’s work; she had also cast doubts on Mitzi’s motives in recommending Vera. “What’s happened, my dear? Everyone was so full of praise for you before!” Vera said nothing. She could not tell Mitzi what oppressed her, because the telling would lead to half-truths, not the final truth. “Well, say something. What is this all about? Is she lying now or was she lying before?” Vera’s silence gradually exhausted her frightened curiosity, and the habit of always doing something diverted her attention. Mitzi picked up the dirty dishes that were lying around the room, began to wash them, and soon there were shining cups of freshly brewed tea between them, and a plate of cookies. “Aren’t they good?” Mitzi asked brightly, and began to talk about old friends she had visited recently and the friends she had made. They were fine people, she assured Vera, inviting her to come the following Tuesday, because Mitzi decided that on Tuesdays she would hold a little “soirée” for her closest friends. But Vera would not go; the very thought of socializing scared her. She felt, now, as if a barbed-wire fence had been thrown up between her and the outside air, between her and the world, between her and words, between her and memories.
She withdrew into herself, this time consciously, since Vera was the only person left to Vera, being different and surrounded by hostility. She began to pity herself and to find consolation in taking care of herself. She bought better food, and sometimes skipped the dining room and cooked for herself at home a tasty supper of eggs, bacon, and onions, washing it down with a wine of better quality, for she had become more discerning. She bought some material that caught her eye in a poorly stocked, half-empty shop, found a dressmaker, and turned up at the office in a clingy new dress of artificial silk, blue with polka dots. Her hair she wore close to her face, with two bold curls turned toward her cheekbones. She tried to ignore everyone as she walked through the corridors of the Post Office and sat at her desk, with head down, but she was not ignored.
Voja, the young man whose desk was in the corner of the office, cast long, blushing glances in her direction. The men who worked on her floor brushed against her as they passed and greeted her pointedly in deep, admiring voices. This first provoked, then pleased her, as if she had opened a way through the enclosing wall of hostility, letting in the warm breath of existence. She was not beaten, downtrodden; she could still make an impression, accomplish something. Now she returned those passionate looks. She allowed Voja to meet her after work, on the way to the dining room, allowed him to find a table where they could sit alone, and laughed ambiguously at his awkward compliments.
So, she had broken down their wall, she decided as she lay on the settee, still dressed, stroking her thighs, which had become firm again, in a room warm with the approach of spring. She had divided them, she had revenged herself. And it became a pastime for her, those roving, hungry eyes—blue, brown, green—which rested on her, assaulted her, tried to slip under her dress, down her breasts, between her thighs, trapped as in a web. She recalled each male, as if they were strung out like trophies on a string, then made her selection, measuring one against another. She decided on several, like choosing decorations in a shop window: I’ll take these. And, indeed, one of her choices accosted her on her way home, the Post Office secretary, a dark young former NCO recently discharged because of a wound in his leg. “Shall we go somewhere together?”
But, walking on the street, he soon tired, his bad leg stiffened, and beads of sweat broke out on his forehead. They stopped at a pâtisserie, a cool place, and empty except for the owner, a Macedonian in a short white coat and cap, who stood behind the counter. They ordered two cakes each and sherbet. The cakes were floury, the sherbet too sour, but the secretary didn’t notice; he ate and drank quickly. Then, leaning over the table, pushing the crumbs around his plate with his stubby fingers, he told Vera how much he liked her, of the state he had got himself into because of her. He couldn’t sleep at night, couldn’t work during the day; he had to study for his correspondence-school exam, but his thoughts kept turning to her; he would like to be with her all the time, look at her, talk to her. Would she be his girl?
Vera looked at him, at his excited, bashful eyes, the beads of sweat at the roots of his curly hair—everything about him was so soft and childlike that she had to laugh. And then she couldn’t stop. She leaned back in her chair, shook with laughter. The secretary lowered his head gloomily, and the owner leaned over the counter in surprise and then went to the back of the room to watch from there. The secretary turned red, his lips quivered, he clenched his fist and hit the marble-topped table. The plates danced; a fork fell to the floor. “Stop!” he cried.
But Vera could not control her laughter. She was not afraid of him. Here was a person, for the first time in so long, of whom she was not afraid. She waved her hand to calm him down. “It’s nothing,” she said. “Don’t worry, I’ll stop in a minute!” And in fact, she slowly recovered, lit a cigarette, and suddenly felt distant again. This trembling, childish man irritated her. “Pay and let’s go,” she ordered.
His hand shook as he counted out the money and got up. “May I come with you?”
She looked at him. He was handsome, slim, quivering, like so many of those who had forced her to submit and then disappeared. They were now probably dead. “You couldn’t if you wanted to. Your legs won’t carry you.” And, laughing in his face, she left him and turned the corner.
But her rudeness did not discourage him. He kept looking for her, popped up in unexpected places, but never again asked her to go out with him. Others did so in his stead: Voja, from her office, still saying nothing but looking at her plaintively, and several older Post Office workers, who confronted her in the corridors, waited for her at the dining room, stopped her at a street corner to breathe desire into her face. Even Alexa, the doorman, over forty, enticed her into his cubbyhole on the pretext that there was a letter waiting for her and tried to pinch her. Like a pack of wolves, who alerted one another that she was close by, or were alerted, perhaps, by the scent she gave off, they crowded around, baring their teeth and snapping, offering to prove their virility. The chase began to affect her. At night she was troubled by amorous dreams; in the afternoons, drowsy, she would get drunk and conjure up a man’s words, a man’s touch.
One evening—she had not yet switched on the light—she heard a soft knock at the door, almost a scratch, and when she opened it, she found herself face to face with the secretary. He looked haggard; his eyes were mournful. She kept him in suspense for several seconds, then stepped back and with a gesture of her hand invited him in. As soon as he shut the door, she pressed herself against him. Because his hands shook too much, she unbuttoned his trousers for him, and gave herself to him, right there in the kitchen, on the table, almost fully dressed, not letting him take her clothes off. Then she quickly refastened his buttons and pushed him outside. “That’s it,” she said sternly. “If you turn up again like that, uninvited, I’ll call the police, and complain to Jurković to boot.” She locked the door, drank some wine from the bottle, and lay down. The encounter had been too abrupt, it had come nowhere near satisfying her, but had shaken her up and left her moist. She vowed never again to give in to that kind of weakness. She ignored the secretary, who waited for her in the corridors of the Post Office with humble, imploring eyes, and turned an angry face to her other suitors.
But news of her indiscretion rippled through that swamp of collective lust. One evening, the dispatch clerk knocked on her door, a strong, mature man, and, without a second thought, she did with him exactly what she had done with the secretary. Then it was Voja’s turn, who held her timidly, embracing her awkwardly with his one arm; then the handsome postman, tall and slim, with whom she happened to have shared a table at lunch; and finally her boss, with whom she had hardly ever exchanged a word, a clever man who had been a banker before the war. She was not worried about not knowing them better, but let them come in the evening, when drink and boredom had prepared her for weakness. All she asked was for them to keep silent, not to ask for an explanation or for the light to be turned on, or for her to show herself naked.
Afterward she felt remorse, disgust, but she was accustomed to that, and decided it was an inseparable part of sexual coupling. And again she would wait, sometimes in vain, if no one came. That made her happy, gave her the feeling that she had escaped something ugly; it was not unlike those days in the camp house of pleasure with no visits, when she pretended that she was free, in a town where no one knew her. But then someone would knock, and she came to terms with that, too. Men she didn’t know swarmed around her now that they found out she lived alone and was available. They waited in the street near her house, approached her with a deep bow and flattering words, and if she so much as nodded in reply, they knocked on her door at twilight and begged her to let them in. Occasionally one of the strangers would bring a bottle of wine, or cigarettes, or a length of material for which one needed coupons as well as money to obtain. She accepted. She even took the money they placed on the table in the darkness after she had given herself to them, though they waved it in front of her eyes beforehand, so she would know who it came from. But these visits left
her cold, disappointed, and she began to drink more and arrive at work late because of her hangover and the sense of futility.
On a few heavy, rainy days in autumn she didn’t go to work at all. Jurković called her in for another talk, this time harsh. The absences of a person morally upright, Jurković said, could be pardoned, but she no longer intended to make allowances for Vera. The threat was carried out one December morning, the third in a row that Vera had lain around at home: the Post Office messenger, smiling as he surveyed the disorder in her kitchen, delivered a thin, folded paper on which were typed legal clauses, numbered, and, beneath the notice of her right to appeal within eight days, in large, widely spaced letters, her dismissal. Vera no more than ran her eyes over the document. She offered the messenger some slivovitz—she drank brandy now, liking it better than wine—and smoked a cigarette with him. The fingers of his right hand were missing, blown off by a mine, he said, in his Partisan days. They talked on, but his tongue ran away with him and she grew bored. Besides, it was too cold to sit in the unheated kitchen, so she stood up and saw him to the door.
The Use of Man Page 15