“Please.” She knocked him down on the spot.
“Nora, no. We’re leaving here this moment. We’ll leave all this behind. We’ll be good.” He kneeled before her. “My love . . .”
“I can’t. My whole life, ours, all of it . . . you understand.”
“I understand, but don’t—you know I’d do anything . . .” His voice quavered. “I’d give you my heart.”
“Just give me the number.”
“Nora, don’t do it, please; you’ll destroy yourself. This is going nowhere.”
“I cannot do it any other way.”
He got up from the floor and began pacing back and forth around the room, his hands over his temples. He looked over at Nora, naked, curled up by the window. Without her, in any case, nothing had meaning.
21.
Dum dum
I will hate icy cold
with a heart cased in seven skins
I will shoot straight in the back
I am born to rule
now (fall 2010)
The pressure nearly thrust his eyes from their sockets. His tongue went blue and sagged in the corner of his mouth; his spit swung from his chin to his neck when the metal bar with weights on the ends pressed him across the throat. It stopped the flow of oxygen, first to his lungs and then slowly to his brain, and the internal organs, all the way to the tips of his fingers. The last to go was his sense of hearing. He heard the thrum of the ventilation system, the radio jingles over the loud speakers, tambura players, festivities, shrieks, then silence, thrum, why, who, Kirin, Plavno, the bells, calls for help from the garage, Mariška’s jeers, the crackling of the flames, wind in the high tops of poplars, the dark. He was as strong as a horse, and Schweppes strangled him on his weight-lifting machine for an eternity. The dirtiest job of these last years. Everything had been urging him to leave as soon as he took care of the mayor, but he’d stayed a day more, hoping to see her. Meanwhile, after almost twenty years, quite by chance, at the cash register of a gas station, he ran into the reservist who’d saved his life back then. They recognized each other the same millisecond, pretending they’d never seen each other before. The next night, before dawn, just as he was getting ready to leave on a long vacation, Marko summoned him over the Spanish network. He’d accessed it the evening before while making arrangements for his return to Madrid. He hadn’t expected Marko would contact him, and even less that he’d ask for a favor. He owed it, and he couldn’t refuse; that would be beneath him. They got together early in the morning at the Štrand, along the riverbank, where Marko had gone fishing as a boy. The boats rocked in the shallow waters, enveloped in mist and dark, half submerged, the paint peeling, rusty. Schweppes’s car was parked on the access path, its lights off. Marko went down to him on foot, and when Schweppes saw him coming he got out of the car and lit a cigarette.
“Hello.”
“Well, finally.” Schweppes nodded.
“Yes, finally.” Marko glanced at him out of the corner of his eye.
“You’ve been here the whole time?”
“Yup. And you? What brought you back to these parts?”
“A gig. I should have been long gone by now. Yes?”
“Ilinčić.”
“Ilinčić?” Schweppes was quite surprised, and then, barely visibly, he smiled.
“I have ten thousand, no more.”
“This is me paying back my debt. We’re good.”
“He’s alone at the gym, six a.m., every morning.” Marko glanced at his watch. It was exactly five. Schweppes nodded, bemused.
“Ilinčić . . .” While he said the name pictures came back to him of his mentor, the man who brought him into the profession, who was responsible for his initiation, for his first murder. The killing of Kirin, the Osijek policeman, which released the genie from the bottle. When the accusations began raining down about adhesive tape and garages, doubting his loyalty and knowing that only Schweppes knew everything, Ilinčić thought the time had come to get rid of him, but Schweppes was too adept and had an animal’s nose for caution. By then he’d already matured and had spun his own network of people and spies and he learned, in time, of what lay in wait. He found a way to twist the man’s arm and save himself. He didn’t hold this against the man, not much; he might have done the same thing himself, but still this burned him. Ilinčić had been the father he never had—the father he’d killed for, but still, a father, better any father than none. The king was now old, and too many people nursed grudges against him, and now it was up to Schweppes to do him in. There was something poetic in this, almost archetypically just.
“Well, okay, old man . . . I have a flight at noon. That does it, I hope, and we never have to see each other again.”
“As far as I’m concerned,” said Marko. Everything in him wanted to run from that place. “So, take care . . .” he added.
“Oh, I’d like to ask”—Schweppes stopped him—“what were you thinking then?”
“Then?”
“Yes, when you saved the convoy.” He’d never been able to understand.
Marko stood, half facing him, staring pensively at the water. “It was pointless for you to be killed . . . so much senseless death.” He turned away, and Schweppes watched his back. Marko lifted an arm as if in greeting, or farewell, or absolution, but Schweppes still didn’t understand.
An hour after he parted ways with Marko, when he walked by the front desk into Ilinčić’s gym, when Ilinčić spotted him, the expression on his face was a mixture of fear, surprise, disbelief, and a confused smile. Already panting, he was sitting, legs sprawled, at the weight-lifting machine. Schweppes came over to him, arms flung wide, a smile on his face; it had been more than ten years since they’d laid eyes on each other. They’d killed so many people together, done so much evil that neither of them could remain indifferent. There was something warm in the encounter. But something told Ilinčić this was a little early in the day for a visit, that Schweppes was no longer a kid, that he hadn’t found Ilinčić just to say hi. The only thing he couldn’t detect by intuition was why, or rather, why now?
“Hey, old man.” Schweppes was the first to speak. “How long has it been?” Ilinčić was still holding the weight. He didn’t react fast enough.
“To what do I owe the . . . ?” he asked, genuinely surprised.
“Let me help you.” Schweppes stood over him and, straddling him, took the weight from his hands and abruptly pressed him down. Ilinčić struggled fiercely, but Schweppes was younger, stronger, more motivated. He pinned him down quickly and gave him no more wiggle room. Except for one question between the two so distant breaths.
“Why? Who?” Ilinčić gasped several moments before he died.
“Nora Kirin,” was the last thing Schweppes said. He didn’t hear the gunshot, all he felt was warmth gushing from his neck and down his back, his knees buckling, and a sudden lightness in his head. The waiter-receptionist clutched the pistol and through his small, yellowed teeth, hissed:
“You filthy piece of shit! And you would like to rule!”
ÄÄÄ
Platforms
today is tuesday
nowhere left to go
She’d never crossed over to the other side of the cemetery. Killed a few months after the end of the fighting in a drunken brawl, her father was buried as a fighter along what was known as Šajkača Avenue, named for a style of Serbian military cap, in a cemetery laid out in 1994 where seventeen demolished houses had once stood. After peaceful reintegration, the local authorities kept doing what they could to move the cemetery, explaining that it had not been set up according to regulation and was an affront to the victims. The huge cap-shaped šajkača symbols that had ornamented the gravestones were taken down, the graves redone, and the cemetery was annexed to the older, adjacent Orthodox cemetery. The owners of the demolished houses were compensated. The accounts
were settled, but the hatred a constant. Olivera placed a rose by her father’s name, and then, for the first time, went through the dense darkness over to the other side. She walked by 938 white stone crosses and stepped into the memorial burial ground of the defenders. She circled around and lost almost an hour looking for him. There were fresh flowers, a message, a candle with the tricolor Croatian flag and the red-and-white checkerboard. On the monument there was a photograph of him, with young face and broad shoulders in his uniform. Her son’s visage decked out in enemy regalia. Back in those days there was a lot of drinking and madness, euphoria and nausea were part of everyday life, but her nausea, that morning, was different. After that, the sickness was like clockwork: as soon as she opened her eyes her stomach would turn inside out, and only then could she continue with her day. She soon confessed this to her father, she had no choice; her nose bled from the slap he gave her, she was barely able to keep her balance, and the next day she left for Mladenovac. She spent the days there shut up in the house, in a city where there was not the slightest hint that only an hour and a half away by car there were thousands of fresh corpses and concentration camps. The reality normal for the people in the city seemed monstruous. This was the weirdest part of all. She gave birth a few days after her father was killed—stabbed in the back during a saints’ day celebration. Her aunt grabbed the baby with her big hands, wrapped it firmly like a mummy in a diaper, tore it from Olivera’s arms, and urged her to go back to the city alone, without the child. Dejo didn’t cry at all; his big dark eyes peered everywhere, and he made sounds only when he was hungry. The two women clashed more and more often. His aunt was always claiming he was hungry, until once they both grabbed for the little bundle at the same time and it slipped softly off the ottoman. Olivera leaped up, appalled, and lifted him from the floor, pushing the huge woman away with superhuman strength while one bare breast full of milk shone white, flopping over her shirt. She boarded a bus that day and went home. With her baby. She quickly found her footing, started her work with the butcher shops and made her way as a single mother.
Life in the city in ruins limped along. Only the most essential things were repaired; all the poverty-stricken people from the regions devasted by war in central Bosnia, Republika Srpska, SAO Krajina, Knin poured in like rivers. All the people who couldn’t make a go of it anywhere else ended up here, and with their joint efforts they changed the faces, spirit, and atmosphere of the city. And they quaked in fear of vengeance, deeply aware that someone else’s house could never become their own this way. The turning point didn’t come with guns and trumpets but with ordinary signatures on a piece of paper. Hence the bitterness and vengeance didn’t run rampant; instead they were left buried deep beneath the layers of consciousness, foundations, earth in amounts large enough to smolder for decades to come. She came across him in a photograph in the local papers. He was standing with several defenders and members of the housing commission in front of the entrance to the building where she lived, holding keys to the apartment he’d been awarded. When they ran into each other one morning in the parking lot while she was taking Dejo to school, he didn’t recognize her straight away. She walked by him, and when she turned, her back rigid, she saw that he, too, had turned. His gaze struck her like lightning. She spent that night smoking by the window, thinking to write to her brother in Stockholm. She didn’t. He looked straight through her each time until they’d walled off the past. Tacitly and irretrievably. They never greeted each other, behaving like people who are capable of separating from themselves and their past. For that very reason it never occurred to Ante that the brown-eyed gentle boy was his son, the offspring of those long-ago sessions of interrogation and drunken brawls in Begejci. The boy who would fire two or three shots into him and was deeply in love with his wife. Olivera placed the second rose on the gravestone and turned to find her way out of the cemetery. Not far from the tall iron gate stood two figures in the dark. Uncle Stanko, her father’s colleague and war buddy, was leaning in close to a lithe, petite woman. They were deep in heated debate, not expecting there’d be anybody at this time of day at the cemetery. Brigita and Velimirović were discussing the terms for a joint coalition or collaboration, the constituting of the new city council if Brigita’s party, as was more than likely, won control. Now that the mayor had been eliminated, the money from the lease of the port could be doled out to help them secure the votes they needed for their own unprofitable ventures, for them to reap the most and the city to receive the least. This was a bigger handout than what had come before. Velimirović was prepared to agree to everything, as long as he was part of the ruling platform. The greatest challenge and the most difficult piece from his side was to weather the shitstorm over the Cyrillic signage. This had to be handled as prudently as possible. They’d divvy up the city: we get the cemeteries and the halo, you get a few street names and the experience of being part of Europe. Play dumb and leave the hogs to devour each other; toss in the occasional media spin and soothe the dogs that were straining at their leashes. To pick up where they’d left off and insure more decades of hatred. In the darkness of the cemetery by the gate they began looking more and more like each other, their talons and fangs mingled.
22.
Weary
inhale me, exhale me
relax me, release me
bring me, take me
place me, leave me
leave me
now (fall 2010)
When he shut the door behind him she knew where he was going. Without a goodbye. He’d been texting before he left, perched on the edge of the bed, while the whole time under the skin of his face his jaw was tensing and releasing. She saw herself go over to him, stroke his hair, tuck her knee between his legs and take away his cell phone. She saw herself do this from the chair where she was sitting. But she did nothing, she didn’t move, though she knew that only one tender gesture would have been enough for the earth to spin off on an entirely different orbit. She didn’t have the strength for it, even if in her deepest self she wished she did. She had to keep her grip and do nothing; this was the easy way out—let him go so far away that he’d never come back. Once she was alone, she made the bed, tidied the desk, washed the dishes. Dawn. She folded his clothes and buried her nose in his shirt sleeves. For a long time she inhaled his scent; it took her back to a street, years ago, where chestnut trees bloomed, to the smell of her gray terrier’s wet fur and roasting corn, and it made her think of all the shades of green of the river in August. In a flash she could see herself lying on a sofa, wearing his shirt, while outside a soft gloom settled, and his hand was resting on her belly, which was starting to swell. Even thinking this, risking so much, was unbearable. They’d have to take on the entire world. Sooner or later something would happen to one of them, and the rest of her life would be reduced to remembering and waiting. Plan B was more bearable; she’d chosen Plan B in advance. Now all she’d have to do was to live out the rest in a blur, and an end would come, as it always did. The amount of torment in life was always proportionate to the amount of earlier happiness; for happiness one needed courage, a touch of madness, and at least a small reserve of faith. But she’d long since spent whatever reserve of faith she had. She took a shower and dressed, opened his laptop, and went online. On YouTube she typed in “Ekatarina Velika, ‘Love,’” pressed pause, and watched the words scroll up on the screen:
I’ve always slept
with your name on my lips
you’ve always slept
with my name on your lips
and wherever I go
your hand is in mine
and when I wish to speak
I say we
She walked out of the apartment. Slowly, to the police station. The city was stirring; children were going in their separate groups to their separate Serbian and Croatian schools, nuns were gathering out in front of the hospital again, meanwhile up on the second floor the doctors were sterilizing their
instruments, on the bench at the bus station a drunk was dozing. Everything was the same as it ever was. At the entrance to the police station Inspector Grgić bumped into her, nearly knocking her down. When he saw who it was, he seemed to wake up.
“You, again!” he snapped. “Not now, I’m in a rush; I’ve had a report of a murder! Come back this afternoon.” She stepped in front of him, blocking his way.
“I know,” she said, looking him straight in the eye.
“Look, I’ve no time for nonsense right now!” He was irritated.
“I did not come with nonsense,” she said quietly.
“Ma’am, the laptop can wait. Meanwhile it seems like everybody in the city is getting killed!” he shouted.
“Ilinčić. I know.”
“What? What do you know? How?” he asked.
“May we step inside for a moment so I can tell you?” she asked in a low voice.
“Ohhh . . . wait.” He took his cell phone from his pocket and swiveled away from her. “Go to the hotel; I’ll be there in ten.” Then he swiveled back:
“Right this way, but please, quick and to the point. Please.” He was at his wit’s end. Nora nodded. While they passed through the station waiting area, Melania Gmaz shot up out of one of the plastic chairs as soon as she spotted them.
“Pardon me! Pardon me!” she called as the two of them strode hurriedy to his office. Grgić did not slow his pace; he rolled his eyes and snarled:
“That woman’s going to be the death of me . . .”
Melania would not relent; she kept yelling after him. “I don’t think I told you everything! I’ve more proof! I saw . . .” Her voice faded as Grgić banged the door shut behind them. He practically shoved Nora into the chair across from him. With his left hand he rubbed his eyes.
“Quick and to the point,” he repeated. Nora nodded.
We Trade Our Night for Someone Else's Day Page 16