“Well, don’t stand out there, come in.” She took him into the dining room and pulled a chair out for him to sit at the table.
“I’ll be with you in a minute; have a seat.” Then she went into the bathroom and swiftly grabbed jeans and a T-shirt from the laundry basket. She tied her hair back in a ponytail, bent over the sink, and splashed her face with cold water. She glanced quickly at herself in the mirror, at her puffy eyes and a few lines on her face from her pillow. When she returned to the dining room, he was still hunched over in the chair, his schoolbag on his lap.
“Who’ll write the note excusing your absence today? You shouldn’t have come,” she sighed and turned towards the kitchen, taking her coffee pot out of the cupboard.
“I’m so sorry about this mess,” he said softly. Dejan knew that his mother, who was active on social media, was behind the attack on Kristina. She was relentless in her pursuit of Croats she saw as her enemies, always with the same fervor, seeking them near and far, but until now she hadn’t stooped this low.
“Not your fault,” said Kristina, her back turned. This child in her kitchen was no longer a child. He was on the verge of manhood, and he understood everything. She wondered how it was that he was so mature, considering where he was from, though in her thirty-four years, she’d gradually come to see that people are sometimes simply people. No matter which wringer you put them through. And he’d been exposed to good things, too, especially books. He’d already come to see her a few times to talk about what he was reading, though his mother and Kristina’s husband knew nothing of his visits. He wasn’t pushy, just determined, the way smart people sometimes are. He wanted to know, to read, to understand. Their conversations ranged across all sorts of things, bridging the age gap, the ghettos they each lived in, going beyond their formal relationship. As Dejan matured, the way he looked at her changed; his eyes dropped more often and the tenor of his voice shifted when he spoke. No one had looked at Kristina that way for a long time, and Ante probably never. In the last few years she had begun to feel in class that she was lecturing only to Dejan, adapting the teaching to what she thought would interest him. And now here he was, drenched in sweat, with a lump in his throat.
“I told her not to.” He gazed straight at Kristina, open and vulnerable. She came over and sat down next to him.
“Don’t let yourself be dragged into this; it will sort itself out.” Though she didn’t know how.
“She is not in her right mind. I want to move out; she’ll be the death of me.”
“Don’t say that—where would you go? One more year and you’ll enroll at university somewhere. As far away as possible. Until then, patience, for a little longer.”
“But I don’t want to leave here.” There was nothing he was more certain of.
“Can’t you see how people live here? Come on, please; you deserve better.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he repeated, and then he added, “I won’t leave you. I know what you go through . . . with him.”
“Dejan.” She smiled gently. “This will pass; everything does . . . and who knows, maybe I, too, will leave here one day.”
“Fine, then that’s when I’ll go.” His eyes burned as he spoke. He was wishing he could die, hug her; he only feared bursting into tears. They looked at each other for a long second, and then he shifted out of his own body and drew his chair over to hers. He took her hand in his moist hands and suddenly, almost tipping over his chair, kissed her squarely on the mouth, without parting his lips. Kristina didn’t move. Then she took his hands, gently set them down, and pulled back.
“Dejan . . .” She had a shred of composure left and hesitated between clinging to it and letting go. He slid down off the chair, knelt at her feet, dropped his head into her lap. She didn’t push him away this time; under her hands she felt him trembling, his shallow breaths. The next moment they were trembling together on the kitchen floor. A half hour later, when she handed him his backpack in the hallway, he pushed her up against the wall and kissed her for a long time. He still hadn’t reined in the chaos churning inside him, so she smiled and said:
“You’ll make it to third period.”
He shot her a glance with so much seventeen-year-old adoration in it that for a long time afterward she remembered nothing but that she was alive.
It was nearly noon when the phone rang. Their cups of coffee were still on the table, and Kristina was lying on the sofa, channel surfing. She turned down the volume and stared for a time at the unfamiliar phone number on her cell phone screen. She clicked on it.
“Hello, may I please speak to Kristina Gelo,” said a man’s confident voice.
“Speaking, and this is . . . ?”
“Kristina, my dear, this is Josip Ilinčić; we’ve met before! I am on the city council and a friend of your husband’s . . .”
“Ah, yes; how may I help you?” She was unsettled by his call and wanted him to get to the point as quickly as possible. He was a real snake in the grass; she could only guess why he’d called.
“Listen, I’ve been following what’s been going on with you, how you’re being . . . hounded, am I right?” She could hear the hint of a sneer.
“Well, I hope the inquiry will establish that everything is fine and this will die down.”
“Kristina, your actions are deserving only of praise, but let’s not be naïve—they’ll pulverize you.” He sounded malicious and ominous. She couldn’t be certain of what he had in mind, but she was alarmed.
“What can they do to me?”
“I don’t want to scare you, please don’t think I want that; everything will, chances are, quiet down, as you say. It’s just that I think you should have a word with an attorney, you know, just in case.” His offer wasn’t entirely farfetched. After a pause, he went on, “And I’m here for you, because I want to help, see . . . pro bono, goes without saying. Why not get together for coffee, Kristina?”
She said nothing. The thought of having anything to do with the man was distasteful; she found him and his world revolting. She couldn’t believe how far this had gone, and she went numb with fear.
“Fine, an hour from now, at Golubica.”
“I’ll be there. And don’t you worry about a thing; we’ll show them what’s what.”
She couldn’t bear listening to him anymore and wasn’t sure what to do. Passing by the muted TV, she saw the city, again, on the national news at noon. Again they were running the footage they’d filmed two days before as the backdrop to what the announcer was saying. A twenty-year-old woman with the same name, Kristina, had been anointed the heroine of the right wing. She stood on the city’s main square, at attention, a black beret on her head, a sledgehammer in hand. In front of her was a wooden box, and on it were words written in Cyrllic: “aggressor,” “treason,” and more in the same vein. The heroine began swinging, splintering the box, the letters, smashing them. Chunks of wood, splinters, sprayed through the air, and bald, muscular men soon joined in on the act of vandalism, kicking the box. The artistic performance looked like a scene from hell. All that mattered was to break, smash, trample as violently as possible. After they’d obliterated the box, the heroine reached into the rubble and retrieved a clay pigeon wrapped in barbed wire. A crowd that had gathered applauded. Kristina dashed into the bathroom and vomited.
5.
Be alone on the street
and I need a room
that will hold five thousand
with glasses raised,
glasses raised
now (fall 2010)
Nora walked out of the hotel, leaving behind the elegiac poet and the book he’d been foisting on her, which she left on the seat of the chair next to hers, tucked under the thick folds of the tablecloth. It was early afternoon, and she decided to stroll through the city—ghostly empty at this hour, abandoned, as if everyone who could go had already left; the city had had
no mayor for several weeks now. The high school principal, Brigita Arsovska, out of an overabundance of concern for the public good and her profound belief in the mission of the city council, had provided the media with a recording a few weeks before, during the summer break, in which the mayor could be heard attempting to buy her vote. Urging her to swerve from the right side of the aisle to the left to guarantee the passage of the municipal budget, to give him four more years of his mandate, which would mean the privatization of the port and the stretch of land in the duty-free zone that the mayor was treating as if it were his own backyard. At a pivotal moment Brigita felt he was getting much too much in return for her cooperation, while she would have to make do with nothing but a seat on an advisory board and the occasional excursion to Brussels. She was probably also worried that the leadership of her own party and cohort would retaliate, and she was learning just how rotten politics were, how bribery and corruption were rampant on all sides, and she felt compelled to expose the widespread hypocrisy to the community at large. Not long after she publicized the recording, once its authenticity had been verified, both of them were stripped of their functions. The mayor was soon replaced, and she was named as her own acting principal. Inspectors were sent to the school—this much the mayor was still able to pull off with the support system he’d rigged and the incident of the unhinged teacher—and the inspection was slated to include an in-depth examination of her work. The inspectors arrived to investigate, observed a number of irregularities in the work of the principal and the way she’d risen to her position. Brigita was not particularly concerned; she knew that soon she would be in power. Her only worries were the occasional late-night telephone calls from the almost ousted mayor that had been going on for weeks. He, clearly, was not prepared to give up so easily, especially not like this. He insisted they get together, and she was determined to avoid meeting with him. Everyone is running from someone, or from their own past.
Nora headed off toward the arcades and spotted several bilingual signs on some buildings. This time they’d been mounted several feet above the standard height for signs and were fenced off with iron-mesh barriers. Not one of the rare passersby, most of them elderly, looked at the signs; as they walked they kept their gaze trained on the ground. A small, stooped woman hobbled by several feet in front of her, leaning on a cane. The coat she wore was so old-fashioned that it could almost have been fashionable, and she carried a small clutch purse. One more detail caught Nora’s eye: the hand holding the purse was clad in a beige lace glove. She had nothing better to do, and she was dreading the prospect of interviewing Kristina’s neighbors—statements from people like them were, to her mind, the dregs—so she turned to follow the woman. Just for a few minutes, a stroll. The woman turned toward the bridges at the confluence of the Vuka and the Danube, stopping every so often and gazing out over the wall into the water. She stopped by the back of Hotel Danube, looked across the river, and sat on the nearest bench. While Nora was passing her, they made eye contact. The old woman measured her and then, at the very last moment, said, in a raspy voice:
“Hello there.”
“Hi!” responded Nora readily, remembering that people still conversed with strangers in the smaller cities and towns. “Cold?” she asked the old woman.
“Oh, no, I’m used to this. It turns nasty only when the wind blows.”
“Yes, along the river the wind is different,” added Nora, still torn between continuing her wander and her desire to talk.
“Like a seat?” The old woman made room for her on the bench.
“Sure, thanks.”
“There aren’t as many young people in the city as there used to be. The evening promenade was teeming. You couldn’t even make your way across the bridge. The boys would stand to one side”—she waved to where the two rivers joined—“and up and down we’d parade, maybe ten times.” She laughed, her lips dry.
“Are you from here?”
“From there!” Her hand was still midair, but she flipped it so it pointed toward the Hotel Lav. “But now I’m in a studio apartment. Which they gave me.”
“They didn’t rebuild your house?” asked Nora.
“Ugh,” sighed the woman. “Rebuilt it and then took it.”
“Took it?”
“My late uncle, Viktor Schwartz, when he died, why the whole city came out for the funeral, they all wept, young and old.”
“You’re from the Schwartz family?”
“I am Melania Gmaz.” She nodded with dignity. “My mother, Hedvig, married into the Kirbaums, and my uncle ran a pharmacy, the finest one in the area. Jozefina Vraga worked there, and she’s still alive; she’s one hundred and six, you can ask her anything. She used to crochet the most exquisite pieces, and the ones I managed to save I gave to the museum.” Melania nodded, descending momentarily into the past, and then rising back to the present, next to Nora on the bench.
“And who took your house?”
“My uncle, the late Viktor Schwartz, had no children, so I was sole heir. Once the war was over, the government renovated the pharmacy as a monument and then took it.” She stopped for a moment and gave Nora a penetrating glance. “Do you, by any chance, work in television?”
“No, no . . . elsewhere.”
“Well, I called them to come and have a look. At home I have five boxes of fully indexed papers. I used to work, you know, as an archivist, and I’ve kept everything in tip-top shape, but nobody’s willing to show up, nobody cares. Now they’ve moved into the building and are playing dumb, as if it’s already theirs. The fellow—you know, what’s his name, the one who peels potatoes?” Nora caught on slowly. The former agriculture minister, a high-ranking politician, was one of the people convicted of fraud for millions of kunas for selling state-owned lands; he wasn’t sentenced to prison time but to community service. Photographs had been flooding the media of him, as one of those making amends, as he peeled potatoes in a soup kitchen. His political party had apparently been using the home of Viktor Schwartz and Melania Gmaz as their headquarters. The building was a baroque edifice in the center of the city, which, according to famous Serbian and previously Yugoslav writers such as Momo Kapor, was nothing but a provincial, countrified copy of a baroque building, tantamount to an architectural slap in the face. The great Croatian patriots, however, saw it as war booty and moved their corrupt party right in, while for Melania the building had been her childhood home. No matter which of these stories Nora dug into, she found evidence of crimes, pits that could be covered over only by institutional lies.
“And I have another house—or, I should say, half a house.” Melania smiled gently. “It is up on Priljevo, near the port. They offered me a thousand deutsch marks for it—sorry, damn it, euros.”
“Who offered?”
“The people from the city, who else. They said, ‘Grandma, that’s the most you’ll ever get for it.’ Well, screw you! I showed them a thing or two. I couldn’t care less what happens once I up and die, but while I’m alive and kicking they will not get their grubby little hands on it.” Her eyes filled with tears, and on she went: “I saw them the other day hanging around my house with that Chinese fellow; there’s big money at play . . . They drove up in this big black car, and when the Chinese fellow left they were there in the parking lot. The mayor nearly came to blows with the man who has his fingers in every pie. Who knows what this is about? I wanted to call the police when I saw how he was picking the other guy up by the collar, but then they left.”
“You’re certain it was the mayor?” Nora wasn’t entirely convinced by the story about the dustup in the parking lot.
“You bet I am. . . . The other man—the one who runs the hotel; you know who I mean—lifted Mr. Mayor up and threw him against a car. What animals! He’s the one who actually runs the city anyway . . .” she added bitterly. “And then they stopped, so I didn’t call it in.” She fell silent, and after a pause, added:
<
br /> “But they’re not getting their claws on my house. As long as I’m still present and accounted for.”
“Good for you,” was all Nora could add. Melania pursed her lips and said nothing for a long stretch. She smoothed the lace on her glove, her eyes fixed somewhere deep in front of her. Nora, also, was quiet. She had no clear plans for the rest of the day. She could feel the city seething beneath the surface; why, only that morning she’d been thinking she’d be able to wrap up her assignment by nightfall, might write a few pages at the hotel and sign off on most of the story about the dragon lady. The article would be built on guesswork, packaged as presentable only thanks to the tools of the trade, and that was what was most repugnant to her. All she’d accomplished up to that point was a stuttering exchange with Ante’s mother in the doorway to her house, a meeting with the former high school principal which had been put off to the next day, a weird invitation to an evening of poetry by a poet who penned elegiac verse about a city that had been smashed and murdered while he worked on advancing his international career. Still, she might run into interesting people at the poetry reading; it was worth going purely for curiosity’s sake. On the other hand, she could always pick up a bottle of wine and spend the evening at the hotel, listening to reverberations from the deep inner life of the walls.
“You are so young, yet so pensive.” Melania’s voice interrupted her. “When I was your age I was leaping over buildings in a single bound, but that was a different time; everything has been lost . . . There’s no more joy . . .”
“Gotta go,” said Nora, feeling restless.
“Off you go, dear; don’t let me keep you. It was a pleasure.” Melania looked at her gently as Nora stood. She had already begun to walk away when she heard the voice behind her: “And go somewhere where there’s sunlight and sea! Get away from this hole!”
Nora did not turn around.
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We Trade Our Night for Someone Else's Day Page 5