The Polish Boxer

by Eduardo Halfon

  Ghosts

  Why do you want to find him, Dudú?

  I was nearly finished packing my suitcase, and Lía, in her sky blue doctor’s outfit, was still lying on her back on the floor, riffling through all the postcards.

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t have an answer. I still don’t. I still don’t know why I wanted to find Milan Rakić. Nor am I altogether sure when or how I decided to travel to Belgrade.

  Perhaps the idea began to germinate in my mind because of all those postcards, through all those stories that I somehow began to think of as my own. And perhaps it continued to incubate during the whole year I hadn’t received any news at all from Milan. And perhaps it ended up taking its obsession-like shape when I came across the perfect little bow for my Balkan parcel by the name of Danica Kovasević, a very beautiful, very Serbian girl who had been living in Guatemala for more than a decade.

  I met her at a trendy nightclub. Before introducing me to her, a friend whispered to me that although she claimed to work as a publicist, she was actually a very high-class prostitute. One of those really top-end ones, compadre, he said with a smell of artificial tequila on his breath, staring out at some distant mountaintop kingdom. That night, in the midst of all the commotion and the noise of some kind of electronic music, I told Danica (stressed on the middle syllable, not the first, she said, correcting me) that I wanted to travel to Belgrade, though it’s also quite likely that after two or three whiskies I actually told her that I needed to travel to Belgrade, since whiskey, as we all know, as my Polish grandfather knew particularly well, tends to sharpen the notes of necessity. She smiled and said oh, right, evidently skeptical. But the following day, I phoned her and told her again that I wanted to take advantage of an invitation to Póvoa de Varzim, in Portugal, to travel to Belgrade and that I also wanted her help in getting my bearings and perhaps finding somewhere to stay. I’ve even bought my plane ticket, I told her, lying. Danica said to give her a couple of days, that she’d call me back. She called two weeks later. All set, she said. A friend of mine, Slavko Nikolić, will pick you up at the airport, and he’ll take you himself to an apartment on Nedeljka Cabrinovića, and I immediately pictured a dirty, dark little room used as a base for underage whores and human trafficking. I said nothing, just weighing up my stupidity. It’s very cheap, she said, don’t worry. Slavko’s a good guy, she added. In the background I heard a rough male voice saying something or asking for something, and Danica hung up without saying goodbye. Giving plenty of notice, then, I informed the university that I was going to be taking two weeks’ vacation, accepted the invitation to Portugal entirely as a pretext (I wrote my “Speech at Póvoa” a few days prior to leaving, after an endless night of Bergman and insomnia), and without giving any of it too much thought I bought myself a complicated plane ticket that included a stay in Belgrade. Simple as that. Irrational as that.

  But I nearly didn’t go. Ten days before the trip, I got in touch with the Serbian embassy in Mexico (there isn’t one in Guatemala) in order to obtain a tourist visa. Right away, they sent me a checklist of requirements, a pretty ridiculous and pretty long checklist that included, besides photocopies of bank statements and a record of my credit history, a letter from the person in Belgrade who was inviting me, signed and authenticated by a notary. We need the original letter, a girl from the embassy told me over the phone. Sorry, no scans, do you understand? she insisted in a thick accent and a paranoid tone of voice, but I thought I’d heard her say: Sorry, no can do, you understand? I immediately called Danica and she said to send Slavko Nikolić an e-mail explaining the situation. A few days later, he replied in ratlike Spanish to say he was sorry but that it would be impossible to procure the letter—that was the word he used, procure—and I imagined an endless line of Serbs trying to get their hands on a bit of hard bread and tinned sardines and, with any luck, a roll of toilet paper. He said that he was very sorry, but the previous week he’d slipped on a patch of ice and was now in bed with a broken leg. Just about ready to toss my ticket in the trash (in a manner of speaking), I sent another e-mail to the embassy in Mexico, explaining the situation to them, and the following day they replied that I needn’t worry about the letter, that it wasn’t a problem, that they’d make an exception in my case. That they’d what? An exception? Sometime later, I learned that the Serbian ambassador in Mexico was Mrs. Vesna Pesić, who had been a political activist at the time of the fall of Milošević, and was the wife of an American economist who, mysteriously, fortuitously, was also a professor and a colleague of mine from the university in Guatemala. I never found out for sure whether that had anything to do with the sudden and merciful waiving of the visa, but three days before leaving I already had my passport back with a firmly stuck-on Serbian decal, which said, in ancient-looking typed letters, Turisticki.

  Why do you want to find him, Dudú? Lía had asked me again, now out of her little doctor’s outfit, while she was putting all the postcards—along with the photo of a very serious-looking Milan Rakić that we’d cut out of a Guatemalan newspaper—into an old yellow envelope.

  I never answered her. I don’t know whether one single answer existed. I don’t think so. There’s always more than one truth to everything, Milan had written in one of his postcards. The why of an action is a kind of intellectual crossword, it occurred to me then or it occurs to me now, in which you try to fill in the little empty boxes that get tangled up with one another, that mix and lean into one another, in which no one answer is worth more or less than any other and also where each answer might on its own seem irrational or even downright crazy. But when they are brought together, they complement and strengthen one another. Or something like that. I felt seduced, I guess, seduced by his music, seduced by his postcards, seduced by his story, seduced by the revolutionary tremors of his spirit, seduced by a smoky, erotic image that I wouldn’t be able to make out clearly until the very end of my stay in Belgrade. And a man seduced doesn’t measure anything the same way, not time, not the force of gravity, and especially not distances. The only thing I understood, really understood, was that I was obsessed with the idea of looking for him, that I needed to look for him perhaps in the same way that a curious, morbid, slightly fearful child needs to look under the bed for ghosts.

  The Pirouette

  Like I was drugged right there in Barajas airport, like I was floating in a dream dreamed by someone else who was surprised to see me but also found it pitiable and let me just carry on floating, I took a Swissair flight from Madrid to Belgrade.

  I prefer a window seat, but I got the aisle. Two kids of about nine or ten sat down next to me. Little brothers expatriated during the war, I thought, now going back to visit their uncles and cousins and grandparents. Both of them were nervous. I tried to say something to them in French, but I don’t think they understood me at all; I just made them more nervous. On the other side of me, across the aisle, a beautiful girl of about seventeen sat down. Slim and blond, her fingernails painted scarlet, she wore huge dark glasses with white plastic frames that looked like they were left over from the seventies. She took off her shoes and socks. Her feet were dirty. Suddenly, one of the kids next to me started crying and his brother scuttled off to tell the flight attendant. I tried to offer him a stick of gum, but he just hugged tighter his purple elephant. He told the flight attendant he had a stomachache and the flight attendant brought him a room-temperature Coke. His little brother knelt on the floor and, using the seat as a table, started drawing soccer players in a huge notebook. The blond girl said something to me in Serbian or maybe Russian—I don’t know—that sounded like the swishing of a bunch of magnolias, which is, of course, pretty implausible, given I’ve never heard the swishing of a bunch of magnolias. I smiled the forced smile of an idiot.

  I could have sworn the immigration officer at Belgrade airport was a character out of a Tarkovsky film. Maybe Andrei Rublev himself. He sat there smoking sternly and looking at me as if the night before I’d fucked his virgin daug
hter. I said I was sorry, just in case, and put my passport through the gap in the thick bulletproof glass, and without looking up he started to bend it, scratch it, tug at it, rub the laminated pages with his greasy thumb. Another officer was standing just behind him, watching the whole thing over his shoulder. The officer in the seat showed my passport to his friend, who grabbed it and bent it and scratched it and then went off somewhere with it. Maybe to some other supervisor who was watching it all from an even greater height, so that he could scratch it too. An ominous and infinite pyramid of Serbian scratchers, I thought. The first officer stayed in his seat, smoking. In English, his eyes fixed on my mouth, he asked me why I’d come to Belgrade, and for how long, and could he see my return ticket, and how much money did I have with me, and also was I carrying any plastic (that threw me, maybe because I was nervous, until he said credit card), and where would I be staying, and where was my letter of invitation. My what? Your letter, he repeated through the bulletproof glass, his cigarette clouding everything with smoke. My knees grew weak and I felt a gust of cool air in my stomach and I was convinced that in the airport of the former Yugoslavian capital you could clearly feel the earth’s rotation. My what? Letter, he shouted at me for the third time. But Vesna Pesić, the ambassador to Mexico, I stuttered, like a frightened little rabbit. I regretted it. The guy frowned and looked even sterner and in my mind I saw him pulling his stone-age revolver on me at any minute, then I imagined a small room, my body tied to a chair, the injection to make me tell them all my truths. The other officer came back with my passport and said something to his colleague in the chair. They both laughed. I felt a faint urge to cry. The officer stubbed his cigarette out in an ashtray already full of butts, and without a word he handed my passport and money and credit cards back through the gap in the bulletproof glass.

  I came out of the airport, and I don’t know why—since Slavko Nikolić had told me about it in his last e‑mail—but I was surprised to see everything covered in white. I was overcome by a deep sense of peace, of well-being, of harmony, a feeling that snow only arouses in people who live in the tropics. I opened my backpack for my hat and scarf. It was getting dark.

  Just then, a pale woman with straw-colored hair said my name. I’m Zdena Lecić, Slavko’s girlfriend, she said in English, and held out her hand with a charming smile. And this is my father, Marko Lecić, as she indicated a short and stooped and cheerful man who immediately made me think of Bela Lugosi at the end of his life, or rather of a very cadaverous Martin Landau playing Bela Lugosi at the end of his life. I’m the driver, he said with a smoker’s voice and in an appalling English accent, and between chuckles and nasty coughs he clapped me hard on the back.

  We got into a red Yugo that looked like it was about to collapse but that still worked pretty well, notwithstanding any tempting Yugoslav allegories. From the backseat, Zdena told me we’d go to her house first so we could all have dinner with Slavko, and that later her dad would take me to the apartment. The chauffeur, joked Marko, raising his hand. I was exhausted by the journey, but what could I do? Zdena explained to me that since her boyfriend had broken his leg, he’d decided to move in with them, as her dad’s house was a lot more spacious. It’s better for everyone, she added. I asked what Slavko did for a living, but they both stayed oddly quiet. Marko said something in Serbian and then said in English that before we did anything else we’d have to stop in at the police station. I thought he was joking. You have to register, he said seriously. Zdena laughed. How do you mean, register? All tourists have to register with the police when they arrive in the country, said Marko as we crossed a vast white bridge that reminded me of Milan’s last postcard. And all tourists have to register again before they leave the country, he added. Check in and check out, like in a hotel, I thought, but I didn’t say anything. We passed by one bombed-out building, then another, and another. I asked why they left them like that, why they didn’t knock them down. Supposedly, said Zdena, there are unexploded bombs inside. And there’s no money for it, said Marko as he parked the Yugo next to a pink building, a real bubblegum pink, a tutti-frutti pink: the only pink building in an utterly gray city. Is this the police station? I asked doubtfully. There was no sign outside. You need to show them your passport and plane ticket, Marko told me as he opened his door. I’ll wait for you guys here, said Zdena, still smiling. And so, documents in hand, I started walking toward the pink building, and it occurred to me, rather melodramatically, that the whole thing reeked of a goddamn ambush.

  The inside of the police station was dirty and crumbling. It stank. Just like a Latin American police station, I thought. Marko asked a policeman something and the policeman pointed to a door at the end of a long corridor. Savski Venac, said the little label on the door. Suspicious, I asked Marko what it meant and he replied that it was the name of that area of the city. We went in. A policeman with a sour face got up and immediately, instinctively, put his hand on the revolver in his belt. Marko explained everything to him. The policeman took my documents. We have to wait outside, whispered Marko, and we went back out into the corridor. When we were sitting down, he told me not to worry, that everyone from the old regime was high-strung and grumpy. They still believe in intimidation, he added. A woman in pearls and an ostentatious white fur coat was also waiting outside. She looked downcast. She looked worn-out. I noticed that her makeup had run, as though she’d been crying or sweating or something. And I felt like I was in a Tarkovsky film again. Or even better: in a Fellini film—not the Fellini of tangos and flaming tridents, but the Fellini of every man for himself, gentlemen, galloping off on a sea horse. After a while, the same policeman came out, gave me back my documents, and off we went.

  The Lecić house—a welcoming little homestead of clay and tiles built at the beginning of the last century—was on Puškinova Street, in an area of Belgrade known as Topčidersko Brdo. The apartment where they were going to put me up, Zdena told me as we got out the car, was very close by, just ten minutes away by taxi, in a neighborhood called Banovo Brdo.

  That’s my dad’s studio, explained Zdena, pointing to a small building to one side of the house. We’re both painters, she said. Through the studio window, a few dogs started barking unenthusiastically, out of pure habit.

  Slavko Nikolić was lying back on a sofa, his leg in plaster, a pack of Lucky Strikes in his hand. He was a big guy, maybe six six, with long, disheveled dark hair and a face that I thought was halfway between conceited and affectionate, like a piping hot rice pudding without enough cinnamon.

  Sorry I couldn’t come and pick you up at the airport, Eduardo, he said in very broken Spanish, holding out his hand (a cyclops’s hand) and with a curious accent that was part Serbian and part Catalan. I told him this. Yeah, I lived in Barcelona nearly three years. In the Barrio Gótico. That’s where I learned Spanish. During the bombings. Sit down, sit down. Marko asked him for a cigarette and then, in English, said he’d go and see how dinner was doing. Slavko poured two small glasses of a light coffee-colored liqueur. It’s called Stomaklija, he said. Welcome, he said. Živeli, he said, and we downed it in one gulp. It tasted a bit like a mature rum, but not as sweet and with some sort of herb added. Rosemary, perhaps. I took a cigarette out of his pack. You a friend of Danica’s, then? he asked me, pronouncing Danica in such an odd way (all the syllables at once) that it took me a while to reply that yes, well, I didn’t know about friends, since I’d only met her recently. Unusually nervous, I asked him what he did for a living, but Slavko just gave a slightly patronizing, mawkish smile. She’s a good girl, Danica, he said, and then he was quiet. We smoked for a while in silence. This is for you, I said, and I handed him an envelope of money for the rent. Taking it, Slavko suddenly started lamenting the country’s economic situation, and the country’s political situation. Making a huge effort, I managed to follow for a minute or two, and then, as always happens when someone launches into some speech about politics and politicians and politicking, I started thinking about naked women. I don’
t know why. Maybe just out of habit, maybe to keep myself occupied, maybe because I associate acts of power with sexual acts, maybe it’s got something to do with being Jewish.

  For dinner we had a salad with tomato and cucumber and spicy paprika, then something called gibanica, which was like filo pastry with spinach and cheese. While we ate, Slavko carried on pouring me shots of the light coffee-colored liqueur and Marko talked to me about his grandfather or maybe his great-grandfather who was one of the most famous painters in the country. I wanted to ask him what country, as the geographical situation still had me pretty confused, but I decided it was inopportune, and besides, I wasn’t in the mood for more conversations about politics. Yugoslavia, I whispered, half-drunk now, but I don’t think anyone heard or maybe they did. Marko said that afterward he’d show me a book with some of the famous painter’s works. Hvala, thanks, I said, and everyone laughed. Slavko got out another bottle and, pouring me out some transparent liqueur, said try it, try it, it’s called viljamovka. It tasted of pear. And without asking, he poured me another. Zdena had prepared a pot of coffee, four cups exactly, and we all started to smoke and drink coffee in silence. A delicious silence. Marko suddenly belched, loudly and without the slightest bit of embarrassment, and as though that were some sort of signal, I told them that I loved Gypsy music, that I loved the music of Serbian Gypsies, and wondered where I could hear some live. Well, on the streets, said Marko, that lot are always going round begging and playing trumpets and violins. And no one said anything else.