We immediately phone his cousin, who is adamant – operate, and the next day my darling’s name is already on the board in the entrance hall, I shiver when I see it, he’s having surgery the day after tomorrow, and that may be the end of it. I call Danica in Krk and tell her to come to the hospital to see her son, perhaps for the last time, I think, although I don’t say that, because she knows, to come for us to wait together, to support him, and each other, I say. But that day the weather suddenly turns and a strong northern wind starts blowing, so I wind up wearing my overcoat, which I had started to think I shouldn’t have brought, and Danica calls to say she can’t come, the only way off the island is by boat and she gets seasick, she’d throw up like crazy, she says. She’ll come when the weather calms down, forgive me, I can’t come now.
I don’t forgive her, I don’t forgive her for not coming to see her son for what’s maybe the last time, to embrace him for the last time, I’d swim the ocean if my son were in the hospital, never mind dismissing a bit of vomiting. What kind of a mother is she, I ask myself horrified, a stepmother not a mother, where were my wits when I felt sorry for her, it’s him not her I should feel sorry for, him for having such a mother. But he has me for a mother now that his own mother has let him down, me to support him in life, and no, I don’t forgive her, I don’t... because I don’t understand.
Morning dawns dark and grey and still windy, the wind whips through the chimney, the shutters, the treetops, the clothes; the northern wind in tandem with clouds, the worst possible combination, the northern wind is supposed to chase the clouds away, and the southern wind to bring them in, not the other way round, they tell me. The wind, with a splattering of rain, has literally blown me off to the hospital, to his room, where he is waiting, ready. He doesn’t even mention his mother, which I find a little odd, but I don’t say anything. Minutes go by, then an hour, both of us have empty stomachs, mine is knotted, and so is his, and anyway, you don’t eat before an operation. We wait and wait, I smoke, which makes me nauseous, he doesn’t even smoke, he doesn’t think he’s allowed to, he just bites his nails. And we’re surprised that nobody has come to shave his head and do all the other horrible things that need doing before an operation, such as being given an enema, which he’s already been warned about. Finally I say: I’m going to check the board to see if anything has changed; and it has changed, it has changed, I can’t believe my eyes, his name has been removed again, and this time it’s for good.
Because the doctor has changed his mind. I guess the best doctor in the Balkans and beyond knows what to do better than the anaesthesiologist cousin, he and I decide, he happy that he can finally go home after four months of hanging around in the hospital. True, he’s not healthy, but he’s no different from the way he was, he feels fine, he’s eager to get back to his life as soon as possible, tomorrow, in his mind he’s already there.
You know that kind man in whose house I’m living, who’s allergic to garlic just like your father, I tell him, as if this means something, as if it is an important connection because I’m looking for an excuse for what I’m about to do, I’m going to borrow a pair of trousers from him, a shirt and a cardigan, you’re the same height and size, so that you have something to wear when you go home. He was taken by ambulance to Rijeka in only his dressing gown and pyjamas, he brought some underwear with him but nobody thought about the rest, it had all been so sudden, and afterwards it was too late. While you’re saying your goodbyes to the hospital, the other patients and staff, and waiting for your discharge papers, I say, I’ll go out and buy you a pair of shoes, size forty-five, I check, planning for tomorrow morning’s train trip home. We’ll spend the night on the sofa where I sleep, it’s a tight squeeze but big enough for the two of us, I say, he likes the idea of squeezing on the sofa and he’s got nothing against wearing somebody else’s clothes, he’s just happy to be going home. I’d even go in my pyjamas and slippers, he says, when we’re all together in our hosts’ house, having a good laugh.
No need to mail the clothes back, says the wife after we’ve dressed him, she’ll send the kids to stay during the school holidays so that they can finally see Zagreb, they can bring the clothes back when they come home, she says; the girl will take a few days off so that she can go with her brother, they’ve already arranged everything and are looking forward to it.
I’m slightly taken aback by the speed of this trade-off, this express repayment of debts, and I say to myself it’ll never happen, they’ll forget about it... But no... They came the first day of the boy’s school holiday and stayed for a week. I didn’t know what else to do with them except take them around Zagreb until our feet almost dropped off, and feed them until they burst, cold cuts, meat, side dishes, and since we weren’t into baking I bought ready-made cakes, except that twice my mother made strudel, once with apples and the second time with cheese, and I lugged tons of candies and chocolates home, stuffed them as if I wanted to kill them with sugar, and finally, not noticing that I was stuffing myself as well, I gained back all the pounds I had lost while he was in the hospital; I wanted to kick myself.
XVIII.
Something’s missing, something’s missing. Let’s get a cat.
I realised that something was missing when we were at the seaside, we had paid for the trip with part of the unpaid bribe, my money and what his parents had contributed, we just returned what we owed Filip. Go ahead, kids, get some rest, Danica and Frane said, and my mother said so, too, so we went. I was in seventh heaven, as they say, because at home he was depressed, almost apathetic; he could sit for hours staring into space. And if I asked him what was the matter, he’d say nothing, what did he mean nothing when I could see it was something, I just couldn’t figure out what that something was, it was there but invisible.
The sea will restore him, I think, but it doesn’t, it doesn’t, he lives with me but is lifeless, like a doll you have to wind up, I make him move, he eats, he walks, he swims, he doesn’t sunbathe because it’s bad for the angioma, and anyway he has a fair complexion, he doesn’t like the sun, but he drinks, the red wine has been on the table since lunch, he sits, smokes and sips his wine, gazing out at the sea from the shade, and I’m next to him reading, because what else is there when all the joy has gone. There’s a huge gulf between us and nothing to fill it, it swallows everything up and remains what it was, an absence of something, I wonder if I didn’t produce that absence because his illness scared me, because now there is a cautiousness that didn’t use to exist, that bomb inside him hasn’t been removed, it’s still there like a threat.
When we were at home I could barely wait for this trip and now we can barely wait to go home, to stop this torture of emptiness closing in on us. When we get home, we have to get down to the books for our exams, but that’s another story, that’s a clear objective with all the tasks that go with it, it’s a different way of being together. Maybe he’ll start to write those radio pieces that he signs, it would be only fair if he wrote them and earned some money. I’d worked my tail off to write those articles and cover the three weeks we were going to be away at the seaside, it had been hard, and he had to be catered for as well. But he never said: let me help you, let’s share it, no he watched TV, read the newspaper, went out to buy cigarettes, to visit his parents, he met up with Leon, and all that time I was writing his articles for him. Sometimes he would come home after midnight and be surprised that it upset me, but you were working, he’d say, raising my blood pressure, especially when he’d add: I thought you’d already be asleep. As if he’d been waiting for me to fall asleep! Because he knows that I don’t stay up late, that I’m a morning person, I get up with the sun. But I’m still not angry, memories of the hospital are still fresh in my mind, I’m still afraid of something happening to him, I’m still glad that he’s alive and breathing and moving, that everything still exists.
Home at last!
I’ve been planning to renovate the kitchen for some time, to move it into the pantry and turn the kit
chen into a dining room on the southern side of the flat, where there’s more light, because the hall is steeped in semi-darkness no matter what time of day, unless we turn on the light, and the only natural light there is comes from the rooms, if the doors are open.
There is still enough money left for the renovation from the money we’d collected for the bribe, it would have been frittered away anyway, he just keeps asking for more, but never asks where it comes from or how long it will last, so let him get involved a little, I say to myself, thinking about the renovation, let him do some work, he can’t just laze around all day. He’s not allowed to carry anything, nothing heavy, not even the luggage, so I’m the porter and he trudges along beside me, that’s an upsetting image – a porter for the rest of my life! – it’s like being diminished, I hadn’t counted on that, I had counted on the opposite, but then I chase the thought away... It’s not his fault, I tell myself, I mustn’t be like that, what can’t be, can’t be, but there are things that can be, for instance, we can plan the renovation and go around the shops together. And he can help out with small jobs, or at least supervise the work. Danica and Frane send us a man to give him a helping hand, he’s old and cheap, he’s known him since childhood, and if nothing else he’ll have somebody to sit beside him and drink with. But I have to do the run of the shops with my mother, he’s too tired for that.
Leave him alone, the poor man is unwell, my mother would say whenever I had a go at him to get off his ass, to do something, but she would say I’ll do it, I’ll do it, she was retired and had the time and the energy, she and I were enough. Not for me we’re not, I thought, had you been enough for me I would never have married, but how can I say that to her when we’re living in her flat, though it’s true that when my father died I took over as boss, because she never knew how to be a boss, and somebody had to do it, but it is still us who have invaded her life, not she ours. I’m not obsessed with the thought, I have resolved to live with her, I’m not going to leave her, but it does cross my mind now and then that everything would be different if we lived on our own, that he wouldn’t be able to get out of things on the grounds that my mother is helping, or use the fact that we’re not alone as an excuse to disappear from the house, an increasingly frequent occurrence.
He needs something to tie him to the house, I think to myself, children are out of the question, we’re both students and he’s sick, and anyway, we haven’t planned for them, no we’ll get a cat! The black cloth cat with the red bow around its neck, and its cute whiskers, is sitting on the shelf but now I want a real, live cat to prowl around the house and to play with. I’d rather have a dog, I’ve already had one, I prefer dogs, they are more loyal and sweeter, but they’re also more work, you have to walk a dog, whereas a cat practically takes care of itself, just give it a litter box and food and that’s it. He agrees to the idea, but not just any kind of cat, not, say, an alley cat from the courtyard, where there are lots, when it’s sunny they stretch out on the roof of the shed, it was once a barn built by the previous owner for his dairy cows, a crazy story, he died in a madhouse a long time ago but the shed with the nice flat roof remained, it’s like a terrace without a railing for the neighbourhood cats that don’t belong to anybody, as far as I know, though everybody feeds them. They mate all year round and at night they yowl like babies, crying and wheezing, you’d think it was a massacre.
We don’t want that kind of cat, or its kittens, even though they come free, we’ll buy a cat, not an ordinary one though, a Siamese cat, he says, but they look nasty and mean, I say, however, he won’t let it go, it’s either a Siamese cat or nothing; well, alright then. So we look in Večernji list under “pets”, cats, cats, not ordinary cats, aha, there they are, Siamese cats, with the phone number, address, Martić Street, not exactly around the corner but not too far away either, we can walk there. It’s an Indian summer, and I’m skipping by his side, because it’s warm, it’s a riot of colours, not grey, because I’m young and because we’re going to get a pet, a cute kitty will come into the house, for us to look at and cuddle, to add something to our lives, to bring us together.
On the way, there’ll be lots of shops and window displays for us to see, because we’ll be walking down Ilica, the longest street in Zagreb, a street of shops and display windows, of clothes, shoes, hats, appliances, newsstands, cinemas, bistros, pastry shops, lottery ticket vendors, all full of people, of shoppers, strollers, no matter what the hour, everything full of colour, the trams running in two directions towards the outskirts of town, one eastwards and the other westwards, the route armies take on their way in and out. The north is reserved for the elite, for doctors, lawyers, politicians, and in the south new housing projects are mushrooming for the new poor, for blow-ins as we natives of the city centre call them, we who got here first and think that makes us privileged.
At the radio station, an old building that has seen everything, all sorts of comings and goings, and still managed to survive in one piece, we run into Leon with his goatee and hawkish eyes, stocky, short, slightly hunched, wearing a dark blue suit and dark red tie, we’re journalists, we’ve got to maintain a certain standard, his clothes say, hey, you two, he says, where’ve you been, where are you going, let’s go for a drink. And he immediately reminds me that I owe him two articles, he reminds me, not him, his Rile, who is here right beside me, and who is still signing them, his name travels through the ether into the listeners’ ears, he’s already famous, you’ll get them, I say, you’ll get them, when I’m late with something I always keep my word. But my darling says nothing.
We’d love to go for a drink but we have to pick up the cat, we say explaining the inexplicable, the cat, he says in surprise, he can’t believe that with so many stray cats around somebody was actually going to buy one. And what do we want a cat for anyway, what will we think of next, he says; Rile probably can’t chase pussies anymore because you’ve nabbed him, he says laughing, and suddenly I remember what he said at the beginning of our relationship, that “if that guy ever saw Italy, I’m the pope”. It had upset me because I didn’t want to believe it, so I accused him of lying, of wanting to break us up, who knows why, maybe he was jealous because he felt he had lost a friend. But now I suddenly think that he had been telling the truth, Leon, not my darling, or his parents and cousin from Rome, all conniving in this lie; impossible, I’m going crazy, I fight the suspicion that has buried itself in my heart but I can’t get rid of it. My darling is here to dispel any doubts I may have; embracing me, he tells Leon that he’s leaving all those pussycats for him now, enjoy, he says, see you around, he adds, and everybody laughs but there’s a frown above Leon’s hawk eyes and he shakes a finger at him as if to say: be careful; we leave with our arms around each other.
And now we’re in the flat of the people who own the Siamese cats, an elegant and spacious flat like the others in Martić Street, built before the war, not during the war like mine, or after the war like his, and we’re in the living room with the owners and the cats, its big French windows and balcony overlooking the street, the southern sun bathing us in its light. Mama cat and her kittens peer out of the basket, curious, raising their heads with their little brown noses and brown pointed ears, their fur the colour of café au lait, their eyes as blue as blue can be, so sweet you want to eat them up. The owners are sitting next to each other on a sofa the same colour as the cats, and invite us to sit in the armchairs. They tell us how active the cats are, how energetic and cute, what fun they are, and we stare at the scratch marks and tears on the sofa, which looks as if it had been taken off the street, and at the ragged curtains. As if they want to show us what they can do, all three kittens jump out of their basket, tear around the room and sharpen their claws on the sofa, and then one of them leaps onto the curtain, hanging and swinging on it like a kitten out of a cartoon, they really are lively, my darling laughs sardonically, lighting up a cigarette, because he’s spotted an ashtray on the table.
How much for your kittens, I ask, since
I’m in charge of the finances; our hostess stares at the carpet, which is oddly undamaged, and then her husband speaks up, saying, well there’s the birthing, the vaccinations, the food, he waffles, not mentioning the damage to the flat though he’s included it in the price, I realise, when he finally comes out with it; that’s too much, I say, because I’m not one to equivocate, and with those words the two of us are on our feet, we’ve got no dilemma, thank you, it was nice, thank you, goodbye.
On our way home we decide to get a dog, a cocker spaniel, a bitch, I say, because it’s my turn to choose now, and I’m thinking of Lady in Disney’s Lady and the Tramp, those sweet eyes, those floppy ears, and of taking revenge for the Siamese cats, I say, and we laugh our heads off thinking of the Siamese kittens, especially the one that dug its claws into the curtain, so it’s back to looking at the “pets” column in the newspaper, and before you know it there’s a dog in the house. Out of habit, we continue checking the ads and a few days later there’s the name of the owner of the overpriced Siamese cats imploring Mr. so and so, his only buyer, in big bold letters, to come and pick up his kitten.
I chose the breed and he chose the name. Tanga, he said, let’s call it Tanga, which is the name of a seductress in a Peter Cheyney detective story – he probably masturbated just reading about her, I realised, when I got over my romanticism.
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