Every day, the television carried news of the massacre in Srebrenica. Darko tuned in to the BBC, which had more information. We watched and couldn’t believe what we saw. Since Auschwitz—according to the history textbooks, anyway—there had been no event as monstrous in Europe. Srebrenica weighed on our lives like a heavy fog. Those nights, all three of us slept as if dazed. I don’t know what Srebra and Darko felt, but I was afraid. I was frightened, disturbed, thinking of that most accurate description: man is wolf to his fellow man.
But life continued, and I don’t know whether that’s the fortune or the misfortune of the living. Collective tragedies, no matter how intense, cannot surpass individual tragedy. Or comedy. Now every night Srebra spilled three diazepam into her hand for me, and every night I felt a force rocking me in my sleep, as if I had fallen into a hole and was listening to breaths of pleasure and shouts from a distance, but they were right here in our shared bed. Darko wasn’t home during the day. He went to work in a planning office. His father had found work for him immediately and could have found work for us as well, he said, but only if we wanted it. I did not want to work in an office, and Srebra and I agreed that she would prepare for the judicial exam and no longer torment me about exams or law books; that was over and done with for me, as was, in fact, my life as an individual. During the day, when I wasn’t cooking with Srebra or we weren’t out buying something, we sat on the couch in the living room. She would have some big legal book, and I’d read an entrancing novel. Those moments were lovely. The apartment was gorgeous, comfortable; the balcony looked out over the city center. Life in this multistory building carried on in a completely different way from life in our building on the periphery of Skopje: the neighbors barely greeted one another; each person hurried up the stairs; and in the elevator, if people exchanged remarks, it was only about the weather. At first, everyone looked at us strangely, thunderstruck, but eventually, they either got used to us or pretended that they had. If someone asked us anything a bit intimate, we answered without shame that we were born this way, Darko and Srebra had fallen in love and had wanted to get married, and I had agreed in order to bring happiness to my sister. But we said nothing about our nights, letting everyone think whatever they wished.
We rarely went to our mother and father’s—only to pick up something. Our room gaped empty, bare, and our mother kept their things in our cupboards. What was surprising was that Dad began coming to our place more often. If he was somewhere in the city, or at the market or the doctor’s, he would drop by, sit awhile, drink a beer, nibble on something sweet or savory if we had anything. He would offer to vacuum for us, or take out the garbage. He leafed through the photo album from Srebra’s wedding, looking at each picture for a long time, transfixed, especially at those taken at the party at Café Kula, with his brother and sister. He borrowed the videotapes of the wedding to watch them at home with our mother, returned them, borrowed them again. We felt uncomfortable talking to him about anything other than the most ordinary things, like who was doing what. We spoke with our father about our neighbors, and with our mother about our relatives and Grandma and Grandpa. Those were our common topics. We had no others. From time to time, we would give our father the garbage to take out on his way home, or have him pick up some document for us if he was going to town. And we began to pack him a bag of things to take home, fresh vegetables or fruit, a piece of kashkaval, salami. It became the custom whenever he came; he came only in the morning, before lunch, when we were alone. He sat for half an hour, and then we would fill up the bag with food. We would give him money for the bus and he would leave, without exchanging a single word of importance with us in that half hour. Once, he handed us a small scrap of paper, and with a trembling voice he said, “Your mother has jotted down here what she needs.” It was a grocery list, written in our mother’s rapid handwriting: bananas, coffee, shampoo, two bars of soap, kashkaval, feta, salami. Srebra and I went into the bedroom. “Is she crazy? Is she crazy, or what?” Srebra whispered, but I elbowed her, saying we had to go buy the food. Our father was reading the newspaper in the living room. We went outside, and Srebra pulled me along, repeating in a loud voice, faster and faster, “Is she crazy, is she crazy?” Yes, she was, but we still bought her everything she asked for, and from then on, our father regularly came with a list, and we bought the things. We’d put everything in a bag for him, and he would leave. Mom never thanked us, not on the phone, and not when we went to visit, but sometimes, she would make comments like, “Those plums were not fit to eat,” “I don’t drink that kind of coffee, I only drink Rio,” “That hair dye you bought me—I had to recolor it; white, white as if I were an old lady—where did you find that brand?” And other comments like that. I would snatch the phone when I saw the number, because I would just stay silent and listen, but Srebra would get angry. Our father was always embarrassed when he handed over the list from our mother, and sometimes said, “Your mother, well, it is becoming intolerable.” These meetings of ours were strange, as if we were trying to get close, but it eluded us. His hands shook more than before, and his voice trembled when he spoke. Srebra and I were depressed when he left, but both of us kept silent. Srebra rarely told Darko that our father had been there.
After all those nights of diazepam and the bed shaking, it was obvious that Srebra would get pregnant, because I never saw any condoms, and there were no pills. We’d had only one gynecological exam in our lives, when we were fifteen years old and our vaginas had itched terribly. We scratched ourselves discretely and headed to the bathroom, and, ashamed or not, we washed ourselves with cold water. For a short time, the redness and itching had seemed to go away, but just for a little while. Then we itched even more, and had no choice but to go to the gynecologist, whom we told, even though she was still in a bit of a state because of the sight of us, that both of our vaginas itched. She said, “I don’t have a table on which to examine both of you. Take these instructions, and go have a swab sample taken.” We went to the laboratory, located near the mortuary. There, the nurse placed us crosswise on a bed, took swabs from us, and then we walked past the mortuary again to get the results. We both had yeast infections. The nurse told us the best medicine was to clean ourselves with vinegar and water, but the doctor prescribed tablets that were placed into the vagina, suppositories, and said we should shower regularly, ideally using baby shampoo. None of this was feasible in our house, not even washing with vinegar and water, because one bottle of vinegar had to last at minimum a half a year—we only used it for salad—and hot water was heated only once a week in the boiler, so we couldn’t shower regularly. We used the vaginal suppositories, and for a while, the itching disappeared. But when the itching began again, we simply didn’t go back to the gynecologist. So we itched, scratched ourselves, and washed ourselves with cold water. Now, when Srebra began to feel nauseous and dragged me to the bathroom to throw up—her head bent over the toilet bowl and my head bent over the stool with the velvet seat—she said she was probably pregnant, but was still not sure, and had to go see the gynecologist. Darko brought home a pregnancy test and gave the kit to her to place under the stream of urine while I sat beside the toilet on the chair bought especially for me, with its soft seat covered in red velvet, just like Srebra’s on the other side of the toilet, where she waited when I was doing my business. The small indicator window displayed a white cross. The test was positive. Srebra was pregnant. All three of us looked at that cross in awe as if in church, and Darko, in his excitement, even crossed himself as he began to cry. He cried like a small child. He hugged her and kissed her; he hugged me and kissed me as well, but I boiled in anger, seeing myself on that small white cross on the pregnancy test, seeing myself crucified on that cross, on the cross of their love. And now this? “Each child is a child of God, Zlata. Ours most of all,” he said to me. “Still,” I said, “one never knows—she should see a gynecologist.”
We went to a male doctor at a private clinic, where, in a comfortable, bright office, the n
urse had already pushed two hospital beds together, and on the bed, there was equipment for conducting the exam. Both the gynecologist and the nurse were extremely discreet; they asked no questions, as if it were an everyday occurrence to have patients with conjoined heads. “Yes, you’re pregnant,” the doctor told Srebra. In the hallway, there was more emotion, ecstasy, sentiment. It wasn’t clear to me how they could be so unaware, so clueless. Was it such a small thing that I had agreed (without anyone asking me or begging me) for them to get married and for us to live together? And now they wanted to have a child. Srebra couldn’t contain her happiness. She wanted to dance with Darko but couldn’t without me, so I had to hug him awkwardly, with my arms around both him and Srebra. We danced like a kind of sandwich, stepping on each other’s toes, which made Srebra and Darko giggle with that seductive joy of lovers that particularly annoys those who aren’t in love. Srebra was happy, but frightened. “Can I count on you?” she asked me a few days later, pulling me in front of the bathroom mirror to look me right in the eye. Her question confused me. We had never asked each other questions like out of a movie. We rarely said “thank you”; we didn’t say “please”; we didn’t wish each other “good night” before going to sleep in our shared bed; we didn’t say “excuse me” or “pardon me” if we bumped each other unintentionally or stepped on each other’s feet or jerked each other’s heads, which happened often and always hurt. We simply did not use such phrases, the ones found in the Serbian handbook The Book for Every Woman, although we knew them and used them with other people. Indeed, it was only with strangers that we acted politely, but not with our parents, who themselves didn’t behave that way. Not with our aunts or our uncle or with our grandma and grandpa. No one in our family used the words and phrases of good manners, and in fact, the first person close to us who used such words was the person closest to Srebra: Darko, who had been raised with good manners and who not only knew how to use silverware as if he had been born to it, but also never said “give me” without adding “please,” said “thank you” for every small act, and excused himself for each clumsy thing that he might do to anyone. I don’t know about Srebra, but at first, it really bothered me. It seemed to me out of a movie, and a sign that we were strangers, even Srebra and Darko, because we had always thought people who were close never had to use such phrases. It was normal to say to a close family member “gimme” and not say “thanks,” let alone “thank you,” because it was understood and didn’t need to be stated. But Darko used such words, and it was strange to him that we didn’t talk to him in the same way. Srebra had already begun to talk in that way with him. And now Srebra was asking me whether she could count on me, and her manners, that cinematic question, confused me. I was silent for several seconds before I finally said, “You can.”
Srebra told our mother over the phone that she was pregnant. The next day, we went to visit them. Our mother was dressed in her blue robe. It was the first time she had been dressed like that in front of Darko. Both of us understood. When our mother was dressed in the blue robe with the yellowish-green flowers, we knew she was sick, but the illnesses she had were never anything concrete, they were something unspecific, psychosomatic, menopausal, as our aunt would say. Our mother had stopped menstruating at forty-five and was showing early signs of menopause, but even when she had still been menstruating, her health had not been much better. Now, wrapped in her robe, she informed everyone in the vicinity that her body was weak beneath it, vulnerable, sick. We had come so Srebra and Darko could tell her in person the news that she would become a grandmother. Our father was muddled but well intentioned. He poured a glass of aged rakija for Darko and drank a toast with him, though he didn’t say, “To the baby,” or anything like that. Our mother, pale, with matted hair, said to Darko, “So now this, Darko… People will laugh. It’s not as if they weren’t talking as it was, but now, with her stomach when they go out walking…” Darko wanted to respond, but our father said, “Well, you just know everything don’t you?” Srebra and I stood, pressed against the chair in the dining room like helpless children. Our mother dragged herself to the kitchen and, most likely, lay down on the couch, but we didn’t have the courage to follow her. Instead, we went into our former room to take a few more of our things. I took some of my books, and Srebra grabbed The Book for Every Woman. She wanted to take it, but we both knew she couldn’t—it belonged to the apartment, to no one in particular, just like the other Serbian book, Natural Herbal Cures. Those two books stood on a shelf in our room and were shared among us. Our mother often looked up recipes for medicines in them, although she never made any. And she, Srebra, and I all read them, but never left them just anywhere—returning them to their place, which was an unspoken rule all of us respected, even our father, who sometimes checked something in them, too. Srebra wanted to take The Book for Every Woman, because it had an entire chapter dedicated to pregnancy, with explanations of all the phases in the life of a baby, practical advice, and even drawings showing how to nurse, how to wash the baby, how to swaddle it, and all sorts of other things. “What do I care,” Srebra said, and she took it, putting it in the bag we were filling with books, and our hands knocked together as we stood on the bed to reach the books, which, as always, creaked so much we were afraid it might break, which our mother repeatedly warned us it would. Either she heard us, or something else was bothering her. She came into the room, and we immediately jumped off the bed. Although Srebra was a married woman, our mother treated us as if we still lived at home, and she said, quietly but decisively, “You are going to be the death of me. People will laugh; they’ll shout: ‘Hey look, the one with the head has a baby; how did that happen? It certainly didn’t fall from the sky. They slept together, but I wonder who did what with whom?’ They’ll gossip about you, and won’t you be shocked: you’ll have harmed that child for the rest of its life. But that’s OK, keep playing your games, idiots.” Srebra was silent, but our temples had begun to pound, to thunder, as if the blood would burst through our heads. “How things are is our business,” I said, while inside, I seethed with anger. Insults like that turn into anger and spite: “As if we care what others think,” I said, my voice rising to a shout. “We are going to take care of this baby, and I’ll be a hundred times better an aunt to him than you were a mother to us.” I couldn’t contain myself. Srebra sobbed loudly. The shaking in her body transferred to mine. She was trembling and crying, and in the dining room, our father said to Darko, “Leave them alone—it’s women’s business.” But Darko came into our room anyway; he grabbed hold of Srebra, and the three of us abruptly left the apartment. The bag of books remained in our room.
I don’t know how we got home. Srebra cried the whole way; her tears rolled down my neck and wet my left shoulder, but I didn’t brush them away. I cried, too, but softly, without a sound. I cried for everything that had happened to us, while Srebra cried for everything that hadn’t happened. The drive seemed to last an eternity. The streets downtown were closed, the textile workers striking, so we drove down side streets, and by the time we got home, we had calmed down, and were even at peace. We went into our apartment as though in a dream. I wanted to go to bed right away, but Darko poured us each half a glass of chocolate liqueur and himself a whiskey. “A toast to the new life,” he said, and the sweet liquid slipped down our throats, awakening us, reviving us. Although I told Srebra she shouldn’t be drinking on account of the baby, she answered that this would be the last time. We were gripped by excitement, joy, and sadness all rolled into one. We picked up the bottle and drank. We drank liqueur and Darko drank whiskey, and when we went to bed that night, we weren’t conscious of anything. My head was heavy, and I felt it wasn’t my head but Srebra’s on my neck. I had the feeling that my soul was in her body and hers in mine. Darko was too drunk to lie by the wall, so he lay beside me. As I heard the sounds of Srebra falling asleep, my hand seemed to stretch itself toward Darko’s body, toward his short pajama pants, where a peak rose. I reached through the slit
of his underwear, and once I grasped it with my right hand, I couldn’t release it. I masturbated him calmly and quietly, and he stifled his moans. When he finished, he turned and poked his middle finger into my vagina, giving me pleasure like I had never experienced. Although his finger was like the tip of the clown’s cap, it was unimaginably better, moving in and out, turning around inside me seeking the most secret places of bliss. While Srebra breathed regularly in the sweetness of a dream, I reached orgasm with her Darko’s finger. Then I fell asleep.
A Spare Life Page 24