Not a word. But that’s not as terrible as your smile, its sarcastic pre-eminence, and the yawning chasm it opens between us. Not even the blackest nightmare could create a horror equivalent to the reflection I see mirrored in your eyes, something like a sarcoma or a dung-beetle.
I climb to the top of the building. Fourteen storeys–call it overkill. Washing is drying on lines strung between the chimneys: sheets and children’s T-shirts with printed balloons, butterflies and little birds. The tar paper beneath my feet is covered in guano-bird droppings. I climb up onto the concrete fence. I breathe deeply, close my eyes and slowly raise my arms until I assume the shape of a human cross. If anyone happens to view the building from the perspective of Zagreb zoo in this instant, I must look like the twin-spired cathedral to them. Various sources concur that my magic lantern now ought to show the highlights of my existential chef-d’oeuvre, nostalgically revisiting the most moving sequences. Instead, only the noise of traffic makes it through to my consciousness. Down below, endlessly patient trams crawl from left to right and back again, cars crowd up against one another, mopeds drone in between them, all in the unquestioned faith in some destination, at least as bona fide as necessary to avoid a gridlock. All of a sudden, a gust of wind throws me off balance. I wave my arms in panic to regain it back. My heart wants to leap out of my throat. I get down from the fence and sit with my back against it until the pulses die down.
Aimlessly, like a boat loose from its moorings, I drift along the footpath towards Maksimir Park. Smells of spring in the air interweave with those from the bakery, exhaust pipes and girls now in almost summer clothes. I stand at the traffic lights vis-à-vis the park’s entrance. Popcorn and helium-filled dalmatians are on sale there, and a boy is being lifted onto a pony for a ride. A truck with a trailer comes rumbling down the street. The moment it enters the intersection I take a step. Its sign Horto Fruktić–Potting Soil / Peat / Fertiliser stays beneath my eyelids forever…
Cottony balls of poplar fluff fall on the car, then yellow birch leaves, then snowflakes. The old Peugeot has a lean and is rickety, and one tyre has gone flat. And the door creaks. But a man’s home is his castle, how true is that old adage! Every Christmas Eve I decorate it with branches of fir. There’s no longer a caretaker, but the children from the building help me; they bring baubles and little angels from home. I help them with their homework. Almost all of them are lovely. They show me newborn kittens and introduce me to their girlfriend or boyfriend. Having firecrackers or rotten eggs thrown under my car is now a rare occurrence. I made friends with some of them before they started school, and I’ve just received a postcard from the eldest who’s away on military service. Now I have a dozen of them on the windscreen and windows, showing different places on the Adriatic coast…
* * *
Today is 20th March 2006. Tomorrow will be the first day of spring. Tomorrow I won’t live here any more. I won’t open this notebook again. If I had a little more sense of the theatrical, I’d burn it.
The desire must have been creeping up on me for days. Then, on Christmas Eve, I just snatched my coat and rushed outside, went all the way through the city by tram and then three stops with the bus. I had a lump in my throat when I got out, but the familiar scenes brought not only bitterness but also a pleasant tingling all over my body. The multi-level fountain surrounded by garden gnomes. The terrier which stuck its snout through the bars and waved its stumpy tail as if it recognised me. The crucifix with a dozen lanterns glowing at its base. Just the palm tree was missing from the courtyard, probably the work of last winter’s frosts.
A heartbeat away from the house I was abruptly slowed by the question of what exactly I was doing, as if I’d been out of its range until then. The idea of ringing you had seemed wrong. After all, it wasn’t based on real desire or feelings. It was a whim, the fruit of curiosity and a long period of loneliness. But what I would say when you opened, and what pain I would perhaps cause you with this frivolous gesture, didn’t enter my consciousness even in the last few metres.
It’s easy now to claim that I wouldn’t have rung at all and would have got exactly what I needed by simply walking past the house. All I know for sure is that I stood thunderstruck, staring at the man who was hanging up little light bulbs on the stunted pine tree out the front. From the top of the ladder, without rudeness but also without much kindness, he asked me if I needed any help. He was balding, with a big moustache, around fifty. Nor could he give me even the vaguest idea where you’d left for after selling him the house.
It was probably that shock and the sudden emptiness it created which impelled me to write. I began that same evening, in a hurry to set down all I hadn’t said to you. Not that there was any spark of life in the deadness of our relationship. Ever since I aborted it, the desire for a fresh start with you couldn’t be reborn. But coming to terms with that total and evidently final disappearance did stir my vanity somewhere deep inside. Had it really been that worthless? And had it become so obnoxious for you that you needed to flee? Or was that all just a hallucination of mine?
I wrote and wrote for two months, extracting everything, maybe in the hope that I would see things more clearly on paper, but it didn’t lead to any great enlightenment. What’s more, I then forgot about the notebook and didn’t return to it for weeks. After all, there were real things which demanded my attention: two exhibitions, for example, one of them abroad. I was also awarded a prize. Now my pictures are being sold. The galleries want more and more every day, and the prices are going up. It seems I can sell anything. As an experiment, I tried making pieces as rubbishy as possible and interspersing them among the others: the gallery sold them all within three days. But let’s not worry about that. It’s taking its course, wherever it leads.
Hardly a week after I stopped writing, Ines came to see me. She brought along her problem, hoping it would become mine too. I hadn’t seen her in such exaltation for at least decade, ever since she got off the dope. Was that it?
‘No, I’m in love,’ she exclaimed.
‘Wow, that’s great news–,’ I said, ‘I guess it was time for a new life after cluttering this one up so much, what with a gaggle of kids up to your eyeballs.’
‘Hey, thanks for your sympathy. But do you know what the trouble is?’ she sighed, and went on to tell me of her quandary.
Just when her therapy had really started to work and her world began to look acceptable and she really felt she belonged to it, just when Marko had been approved a loan for a flat and Dora had stopped wetting the bed, she went out for coffee with this guy she’d met a few times in the waiting room of the psychiatrist they both went to–without any particular intention, out of pure curiosity–and it clicked.
‘You can’t believe what spiritual kinship we’ve discovered. No one else can imagine the feeling born when we spoke: like we’ve always known each other and are kindred, twin spirits. I can’t say I didn’t love Marko in a certain way, we had our moments, but now I’ve discovered a completely different dimension. Now I know what it means to be in love.’
‘How about you chill out a bit? Have you really weighed things up?’
‘You think I haven’t? It’s just that I’m afraid it’s too late, that life without it is no longer possible, that I wouldn’t survive the return to earth…’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Then you should do what you have to in order to stay alive.’
‘Oh, if only it were like that if I split up with Marko. But I think that would pretty much kill me.’
She sat there mutely, entrenched in the armchair, not releasing me with her gaze, which was at once imploring, red-hot and despairing.
‘Can’t you help me make this decision–,’ she pleaded, ‘or at least tip the scales in one direction…’
‘Talk about a tall order!’ I grumbled. ‘Look, don’t be angry, but I’ve got a meeting and I’m running late.’
That didn’t pass through me as smoothly as I described. But Father was due in for surg
ery a few days later. His cataracts didn’t permit any further delay. Although there’s no great danger in that operation, the very thought of going under the knife must have prompted him to hold a confessional. And what was the deeply buried thing which absolutely had to be revealed before the operation in case something happened? What realisation could I not live without? He beat around the bush for fifteen minutes before I learnt that I’m ‘probably’ not his biological daughter. ‘Probably’ was a euphemism because there had been a time when he and Mother didn’t live as husband and wife, while her episode with another man lasted. He said he’d tell me who it was if I wanted to know–he was still alive. I declined. In brief, Mother ended the extramarital adventure and was forgiven. Father accepted the fruit of that affair as his own.
The fruit didn’t produce the desired results. After a week, it was indisputable that he saw less than before, in fact almost nothing. Allegedly it wasn’t their fault–his eyes simply didn’t respond well. Another operation was scheduled, although they warned us not to get our expectations up. In other words, we would probably have to get used to the idea of him being blind.
Since then I’ve spent most of the time with him; I virtually only come back here to sleep. Now I’ve decided to put an end to the toing and froing and am moving back. What awaits me is barely imaginable. It took so much time and energy to get his suffering out of my system. But I have no doubt that I’ll get used to it again. I’m sure it looks worse than it really is, like going to the dentist’s. The pain in the dentist’s chair hurts less than the mental picture of that chair.
* * *
In the autumn I approached the Boss and requested that he find me a job in Germany–any job–I just needed to leave and would be grateful if he didn’t ask any questions. I went to him as a friend, which he’d been for all those nine years, and told him frankly that I had no one but him. And that I thought I’d worked more than diligently and given all of myself. Now I asked him for that favour; I couldn’t express how much it meant to me, and with the reputation he’d acquired over the many years of doing business in Germany it ought not to be a big problem for him.
He flinched, reflected for a moment and muttered that he hadn’t expected this. A silence followed, obviously levelled at my resoluteness, intended to enlighten me as to how insulting the very thought of betraying him like this was, and also to make me repent while there was still time. Since nothing of the kind was forthcoming, he attacked once more with an intensive gaze and the question if I was sure, and for an instant he cloaked himself in regret for the bright future which had been in store for me at the firm. Then he almost shoved me out of his office with a semi-promise: ‘We’ll see. I haven’t been to Germany for a long time and the old friendships are gone.’
For two weeks I went to the office on edge until he announced to me, reluctantly, scrutinising me for any signs of me coming to reason, that the acquaintance of an acquaintance, who he’d never met in person, was willing to take me on probation in his trading firm in Canada. That was all he could to offer. Great, I said, I was eternally obliged and hoped I would be able to repay the favour one day.
The house proved much easier to sell than its condition had led me to expect. I had several substantial offers, but they were all from entrepreneurs who looked through the house it as if it wasn’t there; they were purely interested in the block, which would be cleansed and would soon sport a beautiful multi-story building. Sentimentality was the current enemy, that truculent demon; the vision made me feel most uncomfortable and became an ongoing thorn in my conscience. I decided in favour of a machinist and his family from Travnik in Bosnia, who judged these climes to be more beneficial, above all for the children’s sake. So it was that they and I each made a modest contribution to global migration trends, evacuating the South and East to the benefit of the North and West.
So there would be no lack of the random and incidental, in the middle of the conveyancing period a phone call came from my paternal uncle, who I didn’t even know I had. But I learnt straight away that I wouldn’t have him for much longer. That was the real reason for the respect he accorded me by getting in touch: the doctors had announced that his life had entered the finishing straight. Did he therefore want to meet me before reaching the tape? So as to enhance his luggage for the Other world with the knowledge of what his 33-year-old nephew looked like? Moreover, he also wanted to give me letters his brother had sent him from abroad, among them one addressed specifically to me, in a separate, unopened envelope. My father (he stopped for a second, doubtlessly smarting from the acoustic fiasco of that word) had asked him to give it to me when the time came. I was overwhelmed by my father’s touching attentiveness. But how did Uncle know the time had come? Did the took the news fairly stoically. Although the realisation put something of a dent in my genealogical mythology. But what was the goal of that confessional? For whose benefit was it intended if not to arouse in me the consciousness of his sacrifice and the gratitude he deserved? The altruism of the elderly is notorious.
Father survived the scalpel, but it envelope mention a date of maturity? Or had Father finally given him his blessing? Actually, and much more understandably, he’d since fallen out with my father (also by correspondence–we’re a very epistolary family) and lost all track of him. And I knew how it was: work without end at the farm, one worry after another… To be honest, he’d forgotten the letter.
That gentle uncle, today probably six feet under, lived in the country. Unlike my cosmopolitan father, he stayed in the house our ancestors had built a good many generations ago. Following his directions, I found the village at the end of a track leading off the country road where the bus dropped me. Just a few muddy metres’ walk were enough to make me long for my old car (I’d flogged it off to a snotty-nosed kid for almost nothing), and after several hundred steps my soles were most unwilling to be separated from the ground; the track wound in between wooded hills sodden by the autumn rain. And now it drizzled something more like liquid mould, smelling strongly of mushrooms, rotting leaves and millennial decay. Distant generations of my family hunted wild boars here until they were taught to keep them in sties. Porcine dwellings took up a significant part of every farmyard, along with a barn and dungheap as their necessary complement, adorned with chickens scratching around. Our farmhouse didn’t deviate from that model in any way; it was pointed out to me by a man who turned up on the doorstep of the next-door house, cleared his throat loudly and emptied the contents of his nose on the ground.
Although riveted to his bed, weak and yellow, my uncle was visibly and obviously moved by our meeting; a tear even rolled down his swollen, unshaven cheek. He too had an only child, about ten years older than me, who was also a bachelor–it looked bad for our line. My cousin and aunt showed endemic conversational restraint and didn’t let my presence distract them much from their daily preoccupations. When my uncle and I were left alone to talk in confidence, he fell to evoking his childhood and youth: he emphasised the deeds and character of my father, skipping his short-lived marital episode, and succinctly touching on later stages and the countries where he’d lived and worked. Although he was at his strength’s end, he even wanted his wife to get out the old photographs. I declined, promising to come again; the main thing was that we’d found each other. I said goodbye, took my father’s letter, and threw it into one of the dungheaps on the way out of the village.
One more interesting thing happened before I set off across the ocean, although perhaps I’m seeking meaning in it which it doesn’t have: Goran, my childhood friend and walking landmark of the neighbourhood, winked at me in passing the same day as I bought my ticket. He winked like you do at a kid or a younger colleague as a sign of sympathy and support. Although he didn’t look back when I called his name, I’m sure it wasn’t just my imagination.
In my first Canadian home, Toronto, I was taken in as part of the family and even went on family excursions. Ante Grmusha, my Croatian host and sponsor, had come to Canada in t
he mid 1980s after high school with a three-month visa, which he promptly upgraded to a permanent one by marrying an emigrant’s daughter. First he got a job as a car salesman and a year later he was a self-employed businessman, whose activities rapidly spread. He mentioned some of them in very general terms, and I needed no telling that it would have been imprudent to ask more. After all, I was a complete stranger and he’d been kind enough to sign the sponsorship form for my visa and provide me with food and lodging. I was given a bed in a room which served as a store for merchandise, between Korean sneakers, Indian shirts and German vacuum cleaners. In return, I proved myself to be readily utilisable labour, cheaper than local workers. He couldn’t pay me more because he was already exposing himself to a great risk–he’d really be in hot water if they caught me working off the books. He felt pretty awkward about it, but needlessly so; I didn’t really care how much I was paid.
Sunday breakfast with the Grmushas, without exception, was an overture to going to Mass. Belonging to the family had to be confirmed by participation. Missing out on the patriotic sit-togethers which took place at their house at least once a week was out of the question. These were attended by very picturesque figures; some of them, enfeebled with old age, were actually carried in and laid on the couch. Everyone wanted to make my acquaintance and hear the news from back home, and I made superhuman efforts not to disappoint them, either in content or interpretation. They tried hard to speak some kind of Croatian, broken and confusing, until they got stuck and switched to English, to everyone’s relief. They found it hard to follow my descriptions, even when vastly simplified; their eyes would soon wander off to the mythical picture of the Croatian Fatherland sealed in their soul, an image which no current events could displace or challenge. Occasionally the concept of going back would flit through the room, unburdened by sincere intent: it was an incantation to arouse the spirit in the lamp, but only for domestic use. They didn’t demand anything more of the old country than that it stay where it was. The evenings typically ended with the murmuring of old songs; when they were all sung, they put on cassettes with ballads by Ivo Robić or Thompson’s nationalist refrains.
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