“I love you.”
“Don’t say that.”
“But I love you. I never felt the love like this.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Why?”
“Don’t ruin it.”
“Ruin what?”
“This.”
“What is this?”
“Just hold me and kiss me.”
Kiss.
“What is that?”
“What?”
“That sound.”
“What sound?”
“That sound like somebody digs.”
“Somebody is digging.”
“Who is digging?”
“Somebody is digging, not somebody digs.”
“What is the difference?”
“Well, one is right, the other is wrong.”
“Okay, who is digging?”
“Well, it sounds more like scratching and moving. It’s probably a mouse.”
“Can I smoke?”
“Not here.”
The floor was cold, and Pronek regretted being barefoot—he couldn’t afford to get sick. He saw himself lying alone in bed, sweating and sneezing, his head throbbing, waiting for Rachel to come back from work. The thought of being separated from her had become unbearable. He trudged into the kitchen, tiptoeing like an elephant ballerina to protect his soles from the cold. Maxwell was washing a throng of wineglasses, naked, his springy dreadlocks falling on his shoulders.
“Good morning, Maxwell,” Pronek said, but was not sure that he heard him.
“Hey, good morning,” Maxwell said, glancing at Pronek, but not turning toward him. Pronek wanted orange juice, but all the glasses were being washed by the naked Maxwell, so he sat at the kitchen table, trying not to look at him. But his shoulders were wide, the blades resembling armor plates; his biceps shapely and round, twisting toward his elbows, the morning light absorbed by their brownness; his spine curving into a shallow valley above the half-moons of his butt. He turned toward Pronek.
“You’ve never seen a black man’s body, have you?”
Pronek was terrified—he didn’t want Maxwell to think he was gay.
“No.”
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it.”
Pronek felt an urge to run out of the kitchen, toward the safety of the bedroom, but was paralyzed. Maxwell’s body was beautiful. The only move he could make was a slight turn toward the neutral zone of the blank opposite wall. The chair shrieked, stressing the ominous silence. Maxwell’s nipples were pierced, the two rings akin to door knockers. He looked straight into Pronek’s eyes and said:
“Would you like to touch it?”
He made a step toward Pronek, who leaned back, glancing around, pretending that he didn’t see and didn’t care. Maxwell’s thighs were thin, curls strewn over their curves.
Aaron walked in, naked, his penis dangling, long and thick, his skin pink. Pronek looked away, at the friendly blank wall.
“Hey, what’s going on here?” Aaron said. Maxwell raised his hands, turned toward Pronek, and shrugged.
“Are you trying to seduce my boyfriend?”
Pronek licked his lips, spotted a strawberry-shaped fridge magnet, and affixed his gaze to it. “No,” he whimpered.
“You foreigners think you can just walk in and take our men,” Aaron said. “But I understand—he is beautiful.”
Pronek blinked rapidly, as if blinking itself were to produce a witty retort. But all he could say was:
“I am sorry.”
Maxwell bent forward and burst out laughing. Aaron threw his head back and gave out a cough-like chortle. They high-fived, then hugged and kissed, their lips pressed hard—it all seemed like a well-rehearsed dance. Pronek was trying halfheartedly to laugh, still determinedly staring at the strawberry magnet, his back in rigid pain. He wanted to cross his legs, but it would have been conspicuous—they might think he was having an erection—whereupon the thought overwhelmed him that he might in fact get an erection. He heard Rachel coming out of the bathroom and she walked in, wearing a blue silk bathrobe, her hair wet, her face bright and beautiful.
“Jesus,” she said, “this is like a fucking beach. All you need is a volleyball net.”
“You’ll never understand male bonding,” Maxwell said.
Aaron filched a pomegranate seed from Maxwell’s cereal bowl. Pronek claimed he wasn’t hungry, even though he was starving, because he didn’t want them to watch him while he was eating.
“Jozef used to have a band too,” Rachel said. “Didn’t you, Jozef?”
“No kidding!” Aaron said. “What kind of band?”
“Blues,” Pronek said.
“A blues band?” Maxwell shook his head. “Wait a minute, did you come from a family of slaves?”
“No,” Pronek said, “but the Bosnian music is like the blues.”
“Bosnian music is like blues,” Rachel said.
“Oh, leave him alone,” Aaron said. “It is frightfully cute.”
“So did you, like, have a blues name? Like, Blind Joseph Jefferson or something?”
“Well,” Pronek said, and sighed, “it was Blind Jozef Pronek. That’s me, Jozef Pronek.”
Aaron and Maxwell high-fived each other and guffawed. Pronek tried to laugh too, but his throat was hoarse and Rachel wasn’t laughing. It seemed that he had been stuck in the kitchen all day long.
“Oh, boy,” Aaron said, and wiped his eyes. Maxwell examined Pronek’s face, then Rachel’s: “Blind Joseph Jefferson and Evol, love in reverse. You breeders crack me up.”
Aaron was drumming on the steering wheel with his fingers, and Maxwell was slapping his thighs along with the music.
“Do you know what this is, Jefferson?” Maxwell said.
“No,” Pronek said.
“It’s Bitches Brew, the bitchin’ Miles,” Aaron said. It sounded hysterical to Jozef, but he said nothing.
“Stop calling him Jefferson,” Rachel said.
“Hey, Blind Joseph Jefferson, the Czech blues singer, it’s no joke,” Aaron said, and cackled.
“I also was in the band that played the Beatles music.”
“Man, how old are you—sixty-seven?”
They drove through a maze of bending suburban streets—ghouls and pumpkins and plastic tombstones still strewn on dun lawns. The sky was gray, the drizzle sparkled under headlights. They could see porch lights going on and empty living rooms flickering around the TV, a silhouette moving across the window frame.
“Hundreds of serial killers are breeding in these basements as we speak,” Maxwell said.
“You grew up in the suburbs,” Rachel said.
“He just hasn’t been caught yet,” Aaron said.
“Hey, it was different, it was a loving family.”
“Sure it was. You had a green lawn and a garage, unlike anybody else,” Aaron said, and turned up the music.
There was a single plastic skeleton hanging on the lightless porch. Pronek had a vision of a body hanging, its flesh rotting and falling off in chunks, and he coming up to the door to canvass.
“I canvassed this house,” he said, to no one in particular.
“That wasn’t you,” Rachel said.
The door opened and a flood of light fell on them. A shorn-haired woman with wide hips and narrow shoulders stood in the middle of it, like an apparition. The steel ball in Pronek’s stomach started grinding his intestines.
“Hello, Mom,” Rachel said, and kissed her on the cheek.
“Howdy, Rebecca,” Aaron and Maxwell said in unison.
“Good evening,” Pronek said.
“This is Blind Joseph Jefferson,” Aaron said.
“Yes, ma’am,” Maxwell said. “Every night he gets naked with your daughter and does naughty, naughty things. Naughty.”
Rachel’s mom looked at Pronek stone-faced, her lips straight and tight—Pronek could see the sinews on her neck tensing.
“Is that true?”
Pronek gulped and glanced at Rachel, who w
as looking at Maxwell and shaking her head.
“Yes,” Pronek said, “but . . .”
“Oh, stop it!” Rachel said.
“I’m just kidding,” Rachel’s mom said. “Come in.”
“I was in Sarajevo once,” Rebecca said. “Long time ago, in the sixties. I was on my way to Dubrovnik.”
“Dubrovnik is very beautiful,” Pronek said, although he had been there only once, for half a day.
“I liked the old town in Sarajevo, those old Turkish shops and beautiful mosques. People were very nice.”
“He’s nice too,” Rachel said. “Too nice.”
“Did they have, like, little curtains over their faces?” Aaron asked.
“Oh, no,” Pronek said. “That was long time ago.”
“I met a Bosnian man there. He took me to these coffee shops and we drank strong, oh, my God, strong coffee from little cups and there was this sad music coming from the radio. He told me—very good English—he told me I must enjoy life because life is short.”
“He just wanted to get into your pants,” Aaron said.
“Jesus,” Rachel said.
“Well, he did,” Rebecca said, and threw her head back, releasing a fluttering laughter-bird toward the ceiling.
“What kind of music was that?” Maxwell asked.
“I don’t know.” Rebecca shrugged and pointed at Pronek. “Ask the native. It was very sad is all I remember.”
“It was probably the sevdalinka. It is sad, but it is so sad that it makes you free. It is like the Bosnian blues.”
“Do you know any of those songs?” Maxwell asked.
“Yeah.”
“Sing.”
“No.”
“Why don’t you sing us a song?” Rebecca said.
“No, thank you.” Pronek’s palms were sweating.
“If you do,” Aaron said, “Rebecca will let you get naked with her daughter and do naughty things.”
“Fuckin’ naughty,” Maxwell said.
“Please!” Rachel said and blushed, smiling.
Pronek cleared his throat.
Snijeg pade na behar na vo´ce;
Snijeg pade na behar na vo´ce;
Neka ljubi ko kod koga ho´ce;
Neka ljubi ko god koga ho´ce . . .
Ako ne´ce nek’ se ne name´ce
Ako ne´ce nek’ se ne name´ce
Od nameta nema selameta
Od nameta nema selameta . . .
He finished in a soft sussurous voice, allowing the last breaths to leave his lungs before he closed his mouth.
“That was beautiful,” Rebecca said, and clapped.
“That’s a beautiful song,” Maxwell said. “What is it about?”
“I don’t know how to translate,” Pronek said.
“Try,” Rachel said. “Please.”
“The snow falls on the flowers in the spring and the fruit, and it is strange time.”
“That is strange,” Aaron said.
“And one dog wants to become the wolf. He goes to the forest and is free, but some men want to kill him.”
“Why?” Rebecca asked.
“I don’t know,” Pronek said. “Because they have guns. And then it later says like this: If the dog is lucky as he is unhappy, he would go back home and be free.”
“That reminds me of a Chinese proverb,” Rebecca said, “that says: It’s better to be rich and happy for a hundred years than to be poor and miserable for one day.”
Rebecca kissed Pronek on the cheek and he could smell her perfume and alcohol breath. He wanted to kiss her too, but instead just said: “Thank you.” It was cold outside, snow flurries flying out of the darkness into the light, like moths, some of them sticking to their clothes and then melting away with a sparkle.
“I loved that song.”
“Thank you.”
“I never knew you could sing like that.”
“Thank you.”
“My mom liked you.”
“I liked her.”
“You know, Maxwell and Aaron are moving in together. They found a place in Evanston.”
“Good.”
“I’ll have to find a roommate.”
“I see.”
“My dad moved in with my mom the day they met.”
“The same day?”
“Yeah. She met him in a bus station. He had no place to stay so she took him home.”
“How long he stayed?”
“Twelve years.”
They heard Maxwell and Aaron playing their trumpets, the plaintive wails coming from the kitchen. Pronek was a little drunk and when he closed his eyes he could see flashing spirals, and he could smell Rachel’s hair, her elbow touching his ribs.
“I’m happy we are together,” she said.
Some of his cracked chairs and the shabby table he left by the Dumpster, along with cracked dishes, permanently smudged glasses, and a rotten mattress, which Pronek suspected was home to a fresh brood of cockroaches. The rest fit into five boxes, which he carried upstairs one at a time. He put the towels in the dresser, next to his underwear. He hung up his clothes in his half of the closet. He put the box of Mirza’s letters under the bed. He positioned a couple of picture frames on the TV: Pronek on stage with Dead Souls; his drunk parents holding hands awkwardly. He deployed the toy chopper on the bookshelf and the marble bowl on the coffee table. He hung up the map of the world in the kitchen and scattered other things that belonged to him around the apartment, marking his territory, like a dog pissing on trees—wherever he looked there was a trace of him. And when he was brushing his teeth while Rachel waited in bed, it exhilarated him that he was in the bathroom while she was in the bedroom.
Rachel said: “I’ll wait here.” Pronek went through a maze of walls, then through low, arched gates, and he realized he was inside a castle. He found his way to a locker room and was waiting in front of a locker for it to open, but then decided to tinker with the lock. He was sticking a graphite pen into it, when someone walked in. He quickly collected himself and with a perfect American accent, so perfect it seemed someone else was speaking, as if he were a soul-infested ventriloquist’s dummy, he said: “Do not trespass on my domain!” The trespasser was Sila the Drummer, wearing a green beret, a snare drum hanging from his neck. “This place stinks with foreigners,” Pronek said. “Damn right!” Sila said. Then Pronek was rummaging through the locker, which had a bedroom and a bathroom and a garden with an ear-shaped bird bath. He took a silver cell phone from the garden and a roll of film from the bedroom, and a condom from the bathroom and put them in his pocket. Then he was crawling along the inside walls of the castle and was out in no time. He saw people going down the craggy hill backward, everybody holding on to their own rope. It was some kind of pilgrimage in reverse—somehow he knew that at the bottom of the hill there was a bleeding saint who had tumbled down. Everybody was carrying their possessions in their hands, still managing to hold on to the rope—he saw Maxwell carrying a kite; he saw Dallas carrying a shoe box with a nuclear reactor and a banjo. He saw his father dragging a dead, rotten Rottweiler on a leash. There was a herd of three-year-old boys with hairy chests, each of them holding a swarm of flies forming different shapes in their hands: a banana, a revolver, the shape of Yugoslavia. He saw strangers carrying downhill things he recognized as his own: the guitar he had sold before coming to America; the blue UNHCR letters he had received from Mirza; a jar full of marbles in different colors. He saw a couple of Siamese twins, joined at the hip, a box in their four hands containing a soulless football; a broken-boned umbrella; some sacred scrolls; a bundle of shoes with crescent soles. One of the twins shot a vicious glance at Pronek and Pronek understood that he had broken into their locker. He got terribly afraid, he sped up running backward down the hill, faster and faster, the rope burning his palms, and he couldn’t see where he was going—all he could see was the huge rock on the top of the hill the saint had pushed up and left there.
Pronek listened to Rachel’s even breathing, tryi
ng to calm down, but his heart was pounding, the balls of his feet sore, the arches tense, as if he had just stopped running.
“Rachel, what is that sound?”
He leaned over her. Her face was calm, her eyelids relaxed, she murmured something he could not understand and for a moment he hated her because she could sleep so peacefully, so far away from him, dreaming different dreams.
“Rachel, what is it?”
He touched her shoulder and she shuddered, yelped, and snapped her eyes open. She looked at Pronek with frightened surprise as if she couldn’t recognize him.
“Rachel, it’s me.”
She pushed him away and sat up in bed, suddenly snorting and breathing heavily.
“Rachel, what is that sound?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Listen!”
There was nothing to hear. They were motionless, silent, in the darkness.
“Go to sleep, Jozef.”
“No. Listen.”
There was scraping and scuffling, barely audible, somewhere in the hall. Pronek leapt out of bed and tiptoed out of the bedroom, then turned the hall light on abruptly.
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
Rachel put on her robe and followed him out. Pronek was advancing toward the kitchen, his body taut and ready in his flannel pajamas.
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