Nowhere Man

by Aleksandar Hemon

  “Listened to them.”

  “It’s kind of noisy, a lot of guitars.”

  “I used to play the guitar.”

  “Well, this is different.”

  “What do you do in you life?”

  “In my life? What is this? Do you Balkan boys always ask questions like that?”

  “I am sorry.”

  “I do photography in my life.”

  “Oh, I like photography.”

  “Let’s work now. We gotta make some money.”

  They avoided the dark houses, going only to the ones that had lit porches and windows, shadows gliding along the inside walls. She moved from door to door quickly, employing always the same serious, deep voice. Pronek marveled at her resolute moves, at the tautness of her muscles, at the determination in her stride as she hurried between houses, although she once tripped on a hose snaking on the lightless pavement, her clipboard spinning up, then falling and skidding along the pavement.

  “Fuck,” she said, sitting on the ground. Pronek offered her his hand, and she snorted furiously, but then accepted it. “I just learned to walk last week.”

  “I love Greenpeace,” the man said. “Greenpeace is the greatest.”

  “Well, then you can give us a lot of money,” Rachel said.

  The man laughed. He had a dark wart resembling a blackberry on his cheek.

  “Go get your checkbook. You know we need your support.”

  “I’d love to,” the man said, “but I spend all my money on the wolves.”

  “On the what?”

  The man was smoking. Pronek wanted to ask him for a cigarette, but instead surreptitiously inhaled the smoke coming out of the man’s nostrils and wafting toward him.

  “You know, they want to shoot them in Wyoming, wipe them out.”

  “Wolves are beautiful animals,” Rachel said. Pronek was grinning and nodding, joining in the wolf appreciation. He remembered the story his father had told him about their Ukrainian ancestor so bent on killing the wolf that had slaughtered all his sheep that he tied his wife to a tree in the middle of winter to lure the beast. But the poor woman wailed and wailed, her toes freezing, and the wolf stayed away.

  The man was describing a dying wolf, running wounded from those choppers packed with armed assholes in cowboy hats, running until all his blood was drained and then just dropping down.

  “Wow,” Rachel said, and lowered her clipboard to her stomach, crossing her hands over it. Pronek noticed that the man checked out her breasts, and it was the first time that Pronek looked directly at them—they were bulging, stretching her Daydream Nation T-shirt.

  “Do you want to see my wolf? I got him in the garage. I’m driving out to the UP tomorrow, we’re going hunting together.”

  The wolf’s fur was gray and linty and he looked lachrymose. When he saw the man, he started pacing frantically back and forth in a humongous cage in the space next to a pickup truck. The man put his hand inside the cage and the wolf stepped rapidly toward it. Pronek had an instant vision of the man’s hand being snapped off, blood spurting from the wrist veins. He imagined explaining the situation to paramedics who wouldn’t understand him because of his accent. But the wolf put his snout into the man’s hand and the man scratched it. “Look,” he said to Rachel, paying no attention to Pronek. She shook her head, her mouth agape in admiration.

  “You can do it too.”

  Rachel slowly put her clipboard on a lawnmower and offered her hand to the wolf’s nostrils—he sniffed and looked up at the man. Pronek was paralyzed—now he could envision both of Rachel’s hands torn off, and he noticed a full moon in the sky hovering over the thick darkness of the street. Rachel held the wolf’s snout, sticking out between the bars with one hand and stroked it with the other. She leaned over and kissed the wolf on the lips. She extended her lips symmetrically, like a flower opening, and the wolf showed his dagger teeth to Pronek. Pronek whimpered, and the man turned toward him and grinned, as if some sinister plan were being fulfilled.

  As they were walking away from the house, Pronek decided he needed to busy Rachel with himself in order to make her forget the wolf.

  “I like dogs,” he said.

  “That wolf was so sad, the guy should just let him go.”

  “I had a dog. His name was Lucky.”

  “That wolf had some meat rotting inside him,” Rachel said.

  Back in Chicago, they walked down Jackson, neon and street lights comfortingly glaring, Pronek half a step behind Rachel, as if trying to catch up. She had her hands in the back pockets of her jeans, so her elbows stuck out, like pool-ladder handlebars.

  “Where are you living?” Pronek asked.

  “Where do I live? No woman in this lovely city would tell a complete stranger where she lives. Don’t ask a single woman that question.”

  “I am sorry,” Pronek said, looked down and fell another half step behind.

  “But you’re a stranger no longer. I live in Uptown. Where do you live?”

  “Rogers Park.”

  They crossed Halsted. A policewoman, her chest encrusted with Kevlar, was frisking a man facing the wall, his left hand up, his right one gripping a walking stick. In the window of Zorba’s they saw a gyros chunk like a misshaped planet, slowly revolving.

  “When did you come here?” Rachel asked.

  “Nineteen ninety-two, just before the war.”

  “Is your family there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are they all right?”

  “They are old.”

  “You watch it on TV and feel nothing but numb helplessness. It just makes me angry.”

  “I know.”

  “It must have been hard for you.”

  Pronek nodded, but he didn’t want her to pity him, yet he liked that she paid attention to him. She talked to him over her shoulder, her head twisted, and Pronek imagined her turning into a pillar of salt.

  They took the same train. It sped underground, producing apocalyptic, isolating noise, as if everything above ground had just collapsed. Rachel was in the seat in front of him, next to a black woman grasping a tiny Bible in her hand, breathing heavily and mumbling between the breaths. The only words he could make out were “weeping for her children.” Rachel scratched her neck, her index finger coming down from her right ear toward the collar, leaving ruddy curves.

  Pronek lay supine in the darkness, pressing his eyelids tight together, determined to force himself to sleep, feeling tension in his facial muscles, as if his face were ossifying. The man was screaming: “You ain’t gonna get me, motherfuckers!” A train rattled by, and Pronek felt anger rising in him—he wanted silence, no crazies bellowing, no trains screeching, no sirens warbling maniacally. His kneecaps were sweaty and sticky—he turned sideways and put the blanket between them. He imagined walking Rachel home—strolling down her linden-tree-lined street, rich scents in the air, then sitting on her stairs and talking, then going upstairs and making love.

  “You ain’t gonna get me, motherfuckers!”

  Pronek jumped from bed, his hands curling into painful fists, and looked out: a preppy-white businessman in an orderly dark suit, holding a briefcase close to his chest, was stomping his feet, pointing his finger toward the sky every now and then. Pronek’s tension transformed into a clean, simple hatred of the man. He opened the window and glared at the man as if his hateful fury could be carried through the ether of the city.

  “You ain’t gonna get me! Fuck no! I don’t fucking think so!”

  Pronek wanted to think up a killer sentence, something that would make the man shut up instantly and think about his behavior. He juggled the words in his head, stressing them differently, inserting and re-inserting necessary curses, ascertaining the voice-power necessary to crush the man’s demented will. He huffed and puffed and finally, with the anger stuck in his throat, he opened his mouth and hesitantly shouted:

  “That is not polite!”

  The man stopped hollering, shook his head as if he had re
ceived a punch, and stood petrified for a moment. Then he slowly looked up at Pronek, pointed his finger at him, and thundered:

  “And you ain’t never going to get me, because the Lord is with me, in all his might!”

  Pronek retracted inside and stood near the window, afraid to move or look outside, the darkness throbbing around him, his knees giving way.

  “Just be relaxed and look them in the eye,” Rachel said.

  Pronek knocked on the door, once, then twice, although there was a buzzer in clear sight. A gaggle of croquet mallets was leaning on the fence and a family of wooden raccoons huddled on the porch. Pronek closed his eyes, because when he closed his eyes, there was an instant of hope that he was dreaming all this and that it would all vanish when he looked out again. The door opened and Pronek opened his eyes and there was a woman wearing sunglasses, her dark hair coiled up, wearing an oversized Hawaiian shirt, her face pallid, as if she were a vampire.

  “Hello,” Pronek said. “I am Joseph and I am from Greenpeace. We like to talk to you.”

  The woman said nothing.

  “And this is Rachel. From Greenpeace too.”

  It was unnerving not to know where the woman was looking. Perhaps she was blind.

  “How are you?”

  “I’m just dandy peachy,” the woman said, her voice coarse. “What can I do for you?”

  Pronek wanted to look at Rachel to get a signal of approval, he didn’t know whether he was doing it right. But he didn’t dare take his eyes off the woman’s face, as if she should disappear if he did.

  “We like to talk to you about envir—enviro—environment. Maybe you can help us.”

  “Where are you from?”

  She opened the door wider. Pronek could see the TV—a pair of hands was building something in silence.

  “From Greenpeace.”

  “No, what country are you from?”

  Above a gas fireplace with flimsy flames flickering, there was a portrait of an Indian in profile with a huge feather, sunset orange the dominant color.

  “I am from Bosnia.”

  “Bosnia is far away,” the woman said, slurring the words. “But I like your accent.”

  “Thank you.”

  “So what can I do for you?”

  “We like to talk to you?”

  She pointed at Rachel: “Is this your girlfriend?”

  “No. I don’t know. No.”

  “Ma’am, we come out here to talk to you,” Rachel said, “and ask for your support.”

  “You got my support.”

  “Financial support.”

  “Hey, I can give you a drink or a massage, but dough—no! I am a single woman.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. Sorry to bother you.”

  “Thank you. Sorry,” Pronek echoed.

  “Come back any time,” the woman said, and stepped out on the porch, as they were walking down the driveway. “Any time.”

  “One day,” Rachel said, “I am going to bring my camera and take pictures of these people. They are unbelievable.”

  “I like them,” Pronek said.

  “Okay, advice: don’t let them suck you into babbling. There are a lot of lonely people out here, you know, housewives, senior citizens, perverts, unemployed fratboys. They got nothing to do all day long.”

  “It is hard. My English is bad.”

  “Just be relaxed. If you speak English with an accent, you speak at least two languages and that is twice as many as the people in this godforsaken place. People who like you will give you money, and people who don’t won’t.”

  It started raining again, reactivating the puddles on the street, raindrops shattering their surface.

  “You know,” Pronek said wistfully, “I think that everywhere there is the home, you have the puddle where you see when it rains.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you look through the window when you don’t know if is it raining and you have your puddle where you can see the rain.”

  “Yeah, I see. That’s nice.”

  “I had one in Sarajevo, in front of my home.”

  “I like that,” Rachel said.

  “Hello,” Pronek said, “my name is Jozef and I am from Greenpeace. Do you care about the dolphins?”

  The old man was sitting on the porch wrapped in a checkered blanket, with earmuffs pressing on his temples and wool-mittened hands gently deposited in his lap.

  “Nope,” he said. “I couldn’t care less.”

  His face was splattered with dun dead-skin blotches.

  “Okay. Do you care about the rain forests?”

  “Nah.”

  Pronek noticed a little oxygen tank lying next to the chair, like a steel pet.

  “Do you care about the clean air?”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Bosnia.”

  “Bosnia? It’s hell there.”

  “Not now. The war finished.”

  “I see. So why are you here in America?”

  Pronek looked for Rachel down the street. The street was littered with stray, soaked brown leaves stuck to the asphalt. The man took off his mittens.

  “Because it is better here.”

  “It sure is. Land of the free, home of the brave.”

  “Anyway, sir, we come here to talk to you . . .”

  “So what was that war all about?”

  “I don’t know. Many things.”

  “Wasn’t it religion? Muslims fighting Christians?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “Are you Muslim?”

  Pronek didn’t want to answer this question, he hated this question.

  “No. But I know many Muslims.”

  “I killed a Muslim once.” The old man took off his earmuffs and pressed his thumb between his eyebrows. “But it was a car accident.”

  “I am sorry,” Pronek said.

  The old man banged the wall behind him with his knuckles, startling Pronek.

  “Have you ever killed a Muslim?”

  “No. I never killed nobody.”

  “But you were fighting in that war, weren’t you?”

  “No.”

  “I fought in a war. I was a sharpshooter. Forty-six successful terminations.”

  He banged the wall again, until a young woman came out, with a towel turban on her head and crescent pads under her eyes.

  “What?” she asked peevishly through the screen door. She wore a black bra and panties; a rose was tattooed around her navel.

  “Give this young man ten bucks. For the dolphins.”

  “What dolphins?” She snarled and looked at Pronek.

  “Just shut up and get the money.”

  The young woman went back in. Pronek grinned stupidly, glancing around: a wizened juniper tree leaned against the porch; a dog chain was coiled in the corner; a flag pole with a wet black flag fluttering in the wind stood in the center of the lawn.

  “Dolphins, no dolphins,” the old man said, “one day we will all tumble down into the pits of hell.”

  To a young couple in Evanston who sat on their sofa holding hands, Pronek introduced himself as Mirza from Bosnia. To a college girl in La Grange with DE PAW stretching across her bosom he introduced himself as Sergei Katastrofenko from Ukraine. To a man in Oak Park with chintzy hair falling down on his shoulders, the top of his dome twinkling with sweat, he introduced himself as Jukka Smrdiprdiuskas from Estonia. To an old couple from Romania in Homewood, who could speak no English and sat with their hands gently touching their knees, he was John from Liverpool. To a tired construction worker in Forest Park who opened the door angrily and asked, “Who the fuck are you?” he was Nobody. To a Catholic priest in Blue Island, with eczema and a handsome, blue-eyed boyfriend, he was Phillip from Luxembourg. To a bunch of pot-bellied Christian bikers barbecuing on a Walgreen’s parking lot in Elk Grove Village, he was Joseph from Snitzlland (the homeland of the snitzl). To a woman in Hyde Park who opened the door with a gorgeous grin, which then transmogr
ified into a suspicious smirk as she said, “I thought you were someone else,” he was Someone Else.

  THE SECRET CITY

  Black-tar rain glittered on the highway, soaked cars plowing through puddles. They passed forlorn warehouses brandishing billboards announcing happy sitcoms and talkless radio. They passed desolate stripped lots with herds of bulldozers and diggers, and cranes roosting on the edges. They saw impenetrable business buildings, encased in glass, reflecting nothing. They passed devo houses hiding behind tall fences, then strip-mall neon lights blinking irksomely under a sky crisscrossed with endless wires. They a saw lonely car disappearing into a lightless tree-lined street, then exposing the middle-class waste like lightning: mowers and rakes and footballs and plastic ghouls and solitary papers sitting on the stairs and swings hanging from a tall tree shuddering under the wind slaps. The car slowly penetrated the garage, the embers of its brake lights inhaling for the last time, fading out under the ashes of the night.

  They left Chicago while it was still dark. Their van stopped at the Skyway toll booth, no other cars were around, then it ascended across the bridge. Casino billboards announced the loosest slots, fortune waiting in Indiana. Nobody said anything, except for an excited radio broadcaster blurting out nonsense about depressed porn stars. When they reached Indiana, the sky was clear, the last few morning stars barely twinkling.

  “You know,” Pronek said to no one in particular, “some of those stars maybe don’t exist.”

  Rachel looked at him askance.

  “You know,” she said, “it is too early in the morning for ontological doubts.”

  “Sorry,” Pronek said.

  They passed steel mills looming against the dawn, their squareness ominous, their smokestacks spewing tongues of fire and plumes of smoke. Vince coughed when the stench of liquid steel reached them. On the steel-mill parking lots there was an occasional, solitary pickup truck coated with dew, waiting for its master.

  “Not to mention the stars you cannot see anymore and that don’t exist,” Rachel said.

  “Yeah,” Pronek said.

  “How can you see stars,” Dallas grumbled, “if they don’t exist.”