by A. S. Patric
“‘The next day we found that some animals had killed their young,’ the director said. ‘A female tiger killed two of her three-day-old cubs, and the other two were so badly injured we couldn’t save them. She had been a terrific mother until then, raising several litters without any problems. I can’t say whether it was the detonation or the awful smell that accompanied the bombing. I personally think it was the detonation,’ he added.
“On the same night, an eagle owl killed all of its five young, and ate the smallest of them. ‘It wasn’t because she was hungry. I can only think it was fear.’ The most disturbing case is the huge Bengal tiger, who chews his own legs. The zoo has tried to stop him but every time they put a bandage on, the tiger rips it off. The end of his legs are a hideous red, the flesh exposed.
“The grimmest spinoff of the bombing is the sight of armed guards patrolling the zoo. ‘They’re not here to keep people from harming or stealing the animals,’ Bojovich said. ‘Their job is to shoot the animals if the zoo gets bombed and some of them try to break out.’ The zoo’s animals remain trapped in an increasingly desperate world of sonic booms, air raid sirens and dwindling hope.”
Suzana turns off the radio. Walks to the kitchen and looks out the window into the backyard. Her uncle Mirko gave them the television out there on the grass when they found their first place in Australia five years ago. Their washing is on the Hills Hoist. Some of it on the dry, patchy grass and dirt below. The same washing she hung a week ago. The rosellas are gone. Jovan probably isn’t feeding them anymore and they’ve moved off to Jubilee Park again.
She read about the zoo in the newspaper yesterday. Hearing the voices on the radio struck harder. Suzana had televised images of Belgrade being bombed in her mind any time she closed her eyes. Always from a distance. So far away, even Suzana couldn’t recognise the city. A nondescript collection of lights on the darkened horizon. Enough though to have seen the missiles blazing across the black skies. That was what the telecasts were really about—the display of godlike power of Zeus lightning bolts. At a press conference, a uniformed man with the countenance of a war god, after talking at length about his surgical precision and the supreme efforts made to limit civilian casualties, states that he has at his disposal ‘enough bombs to turn Belgrade into crumbs’.
Suzana takes the three steps down into the backyard. She places the hanging clothes into the laundry basket. She picks up two towels, a shirt, singlet, socks and Jovan’s overalls, that were on the ground. Shakes them off. Drapes them over her shoulder. Walks into the house again and puts the towels and clothes in to wash. She spoons detergent in and turns on the machine. She goes outside to collect the washing basket with the clean washing that had remained on the line. Her tea mug is sitting by the steps. It’s filled with rain water now. Must have rained in the last week. She didn’t remember a downpour. Always hard to remember rain on a day as blue and wide open as today. Fine and clear. A perfect Melbourne day in autumn. Lightning flashes in an evening sky every time she closes her eyes.
The security door slams behind her. The sound of the washing machine stops as it pauses to soak. The quiet of the house. What a lovely thing it had been when ice covered the windows and snow piled on the window sills outside, a white curtain rose up the glass, muffling everything within, making the silence soft. It wouldn’t last long, so when it was found, she would fold herself within it for as long as she could. Until the inevitable noise of children waking or returning, laughing or falling. She walks to the lounge and turns the radio back on. No doubt in her mind why Jovan bought the stereo system. She sits on the couch and hears the big dog from next door half bark, half cough—barking to himself as some people talk to themselves.
The washing machine begins again. The cycle will take fifty minutes. And then she can hang the wet clothes and even if it will already be almost two o’clock in the afternoon by then, there’s a chance everything will be dry before late evening. She never leaves the washing out overnight. She could feel the groove of habit just thinking about taking out the washing and hanging each bit of their clothing. The deep trench through her time of that mundane practicality where it was easier to keep thinking only about the very next peg. The very next shirt. The handkerchiefs—there were six of them in this wash. Each one hung by two pegs and each peg had no future and each peg had no past. The simplest mechanism. Pure function. The trench of habit she had made going out there over the years, every day, sometimes many times, to feel if the clothes were still damp, fabric between forefinger and thumb, a trench so deep sometimes she couldn’t see anything else at all. Shaking her head, thinking, trench warfare in the nuclear age. Nowhere to hide. Never again. That was clear. As bright and obvious as an explosion.
When the washing machine finishes its cycle she barely notices the click. She is absorbed by a book that Jovan has been reading. Der Zauberberg by Thomas Mann. Jovan’s German is much better than hers so she can’t comfortably read the text. She’s more interested in Jovan’s marginalia. Some of it in German, mostly in Serbian. His best foreign language is Russian, and a book by Dostoyevsky or Chekhov would have comments in the language of the book. It could almost make her laugh to think how useless all his languages were to him here in Australia.
Reading his marginalia was initially of little interest. She’d been reminded of it because of the absence from her own manuscript. Perhaps he’d read her pages, searching for clues to her disappearance. She was doing the same, each of the comments revealing that the man she knew from Sarajevo University hasn’t simply vanished.
Something Jovan doesn’t know is that she knew him before they ever met. He published something in a Belgrade newspaper. No title for the poem and only the name below, Brakočević, as though they’d forgotten his first name, didn’t think he or they needed to worry about it. When she met him years later she thought he was nice enough. Not bad looking either. Too tall, and he moved around oafishly when he wasn’t playing basketball. He acquired grace only on a basketball court. He was intelligent enough. Not brilliant as a lecturer. Not a Vladimir Mitrovich. Adequate in most other ways as well. Passable.
For years, she used that word in her mind—passable. It took her such a long time to realise she loved him. It was when he was dying from that UN poison that she discovered he was no longer ‘passable’. Ana and Dejan had already been carried away in canvas. Suzana knew there was one response to the death of both her children. There were weapons everywhere and so many people had already used them on themselves. Suicides in Bosnia were a dime a dozen. So it was an easy decision and it calmed her as she took the last few steps towards it. All her grief subsided into a deep ocean of death. She was already below the water line, holding her breath for another few seconds. Watched each bubble escape her with a strange kind of pleasure. Suffering and sorrow can be sweet in those final moments before death burbles down into the stomach and then the lungs. She looked at everyone as if they were already dead as well. She saw trails of bubbles leaving their noses. She imagined flesh getting bloated and separating from bones. She saw their faces dissolve. Every one of their words nothing but underwater murmurs. Her own death was a cherished event. As though it was a birthday for a child. Every morning, getting closer, and she held off because there was pleasure in the expectation, of the special day, coming soon, of unwrapping a wonderful present, when she finally decided on a way to peel off her skin.
Then a nurse called Dragana Mihailovich came and told her Gospodin Brakochevich was dying. Using his surname like he might be unfamiliar to Suzana. Gospodin Brakochevich will be dead before dinnertime. Dinnertime, a word used when speaking to children.
“Jovan Brakochevich has been dying for a few days already. He seems to be taking his time,” said Suzana.
Dragana Mihailovich had no judgment in her eyes. She sat beside Suzana on the metal cot, so close to the ground, they were practically sitting on their heels.
“Death is a small part of life.” The nurse said it as though it was a common bit
of lore she’d learned from whichever village she was raised in. Even so, it made Suzana turn her head. Dragana had two gold teeth in her mouth. A peasant fashion. Suzana looked at those gold teeth and felt revulsion for the old crone.
Dragana said, “Gospodja Brakochevich. Please come and help your husband die. He should already have passed days ago. Maybe he needs to say goodbye.”
Suzana walked to the tent with that word in her mind again. Passable. An adequate husband. He was simply not Vladimir Mitrovich, who was filled with such genius and glory, malevolence and destruction. Mixtures of life and death that would infuse Suzana’s soul for the rest of her life. Jovan was steadfast and a moderately talented poet, who would never stir a revolution in the blood of anyone.
Suzana sat beside his cot and held his hand, deciding she could be dutiful for at least a few hours. Jovan Brakochevich didn’t die by dinnertime. He suffered through wracking fevers that wrung agonised moans from his chest. Made him whimper when unconscious. His grip on Suzana’s hand went from a crush to something that reminded her of Dejan’s distracted handholding when they walked through the supermarket.
They moved through the night in this way and by morning she saw Ana’s face in Jovan. She heard both her children in those whimpering noises of suffering and she found that the closer they got to his end, the looser that grip was, and then there was nothing but her hold on him. She found that both her hands were wrapped around that massive bundle of bones and fingernails, and that she was praying into that fist, to a God she had never believed in, for Jovan Brakochevich not to die.
She remembered that first poem and she began chanting it into her husband’s ear. Whispering it again and again. Praying to whatever remained of the soul within the poisoned body to keep listening and to stay. To not be passable.
She never kept the newspaper that poem was published in before she met Jovan, and he’d published so many by then, and there were so many to come afterwards as well. Many better poems. More significant or ambitious. She doesn’t remember that first poem, as such. She sees it. Poorly printed, with ink that had bled, blurred slightly, with uneven type, on cheap newspaper stock.
White Cloud
Over
Blue Water
_____
Red Sky
Weeping
Black Ocean
Brakočević
CHAPTER
SEVEN
The phone is ringing. He stumbles through his home with extended palms brushing the walls to guide him along the hallway and to the kitchen telephone. When it stops ringing he’s standing in the kitchen rubbing his eyes and blinking. No idea what the time is, yet a middle of the night call is an emergency and it can only mean something has happened to Suzana. Is there another possibility? Is there anyone else in his world but Suzana? Jovan takes the two steps to the telephone. He picks it up and puts it to his ear. Hears the dial tone. Places it back on its cradle and sits down at the kitchen table. Perhaps he should go back to bed now. How long had it been ringing before it woke him up? Had it been a long emergency call that finally gave up after minutes of ringing? Will they call back again? Outside the kitchen windows is nothing—not a glimmer from a street light. Turning on the kitchen fluorescent is an intolerable idea. The double tubes in the ceiling are so bright they remind him of the hospital. An examination room. Jovan sits on a chair at the table, in the darkness, and waits for the phone to ring again. The dim red glow of the oven display tells him it’s 3:45 a.m.
Surrounded by the smell of paint, turpentine and methylated spirits, a mixture of other chemicals, old and new. Breathing hard. Both of them. Tammie’s forehead is against the carpeted cabin floor in the back of Jovan’s panel van. She’s chuckling as she shudders. Each impact of bodies jolts through the sound of deep laughter, burbling up from her lungs. That noise registers every thump, rising and lowering, shifting from giggle to murmur and back again. As she approaches her climax the heat within her rises and it brings Jovan to orgasm as well. The laughter goes on a little longer. Tammie stretches out her arms as she pushes back against Jovan, extending every throb of pleasure for as long as it will last.
“What’s this?” Jovan asks.
The lights from passing cars outside move across her body in diffused beams. A truck roared by a second ago with a larger array of lights and the van was illuminated as though it was the flash for a picture being taken. When she doesn’t respond to the question, and her annoying murmuring goes on, he says more forcefully.
“I ask, what is this.”
“Oh, sweetie, you’re distressed.” She says. Mocking or playful, even she’s not sure which.
“What the fuck this thing?” He asks. A slap and push into her back. She falls to her side.
“Take it easy, Joe.” She reaches her arm out for her shirt. “Seriously. Calm down.”
“Why put this on you back?” He drops down to his arse to pull up his jeans.
“It’s a fucking tattoo, Joe. They don’t have tattoos in your part of the world?”
“But why his words?”
“And don’t push me. I won’t be shoved aside with those bear claws. Unless I ask for your hands to push and shove. There’s a fucking difference you should be very clear about in your bear head by now.”
She shoots her arms through the sleeves of her shirt. There’s some paper towelling on a roll Jovan would normally use to clean oil or paint solvent from his hands.
“I ask about this. The Trojan Flea?”
She makes a bundle and places it below her to catch his semen. She finds a place to sit by shoving a roller brush on a long handle out the way, leans back against the side of the van, pushes the hair away from her sweat-sticky face—has three goes at plucking out a strand in her mouth.
“Why put Dr. Graffito’s words into your body?”
“Why not? What am I supposed to get tattooed? A butterfly or a unicorn? The Chinese symbol for my star sign?” Tammie pulls the front of her shirt together and buttons up. “Maybe I’m supposed to get your name. Jovan. How’d that be? Maybe you’d like that better. J O V A N. And what about getting it done in Serbian letters? Cyrillic is what you call that jumble of Greek and Russian, isn’t it?”
She chucks away the wad of paper towelling and finds her knickers and skirt. She screws her stockings into a ball and throws them at her handbag by the back doors of the van. Not wanting to move toward Jovan. He doesn’t talk again. Buttons up his jeans. Opens one of the doors of the van and gets out. He closes it behind him quietly, as though she might want to sleep there for the evening.
She enjoys the smell of the paint, turpentine and methylated spirits for now. The cars shoosh by, less and less regularly. The after work rush of traffic is petering out. Soon she’ll have to go to her home in Brighton. It would be lit up from every room, glowing white light out into the cypress trees surrounding their property. For Graham and the guests he has invited over for dinner tonight. That are already there now, eating the meal that she’d organised for his colleagues and their accessory wives. Drinking the wine that she’d selected. The music of her choice playing in the background, an appropriate backdrop to the sound of their refined conversations. The modulated light delicately falling across their cultivated faces. Their mouths working through the sections of flesh cut from animal bones for them and then arranged on their plates. Their teeth cleaned off by a swipe of a greasy tongue behind their clean lips and a fold of crisp linen from the serviettes she’d also provided for them. She’d sit and perhaps she would feel a trickle of Jovan, still leaving her at the dinner table. Tammie is sure she’ll make it home for dessert.
Jovan stops at a 7-Eleven and buys two hotdogs, orange juice and milk. He drops the bag onto his passenger side seat, remembering he needs petrol. It’s all reversed. He should have already bought petrol and then the food. And yet he doesn’t want petrol on his hands before he eats and he must eat soon. The toilet within the building, so grimy, his hands would be more dirty coming out. He hasn’t washed hi
s hands since Tammie either. He walks around his van, looking at his watch and then looking at it again three times before he registers the time. 8:40 p.m. The cleaning products he has in the van are good for oil and paint; he needs soap and water to eat food. Ten minutes from home. He hasn’t been shopping. Feeling lightheaded. Disorientated. Wondering what he should be doing. Simple little choices are sometimes the hardest to make. The order things need to be done in, is important, otherwise, it all goes topsy-turvy. Food will help. Why not eat from the package? It’ll help him settle. Time to get home. Actually, it doesn’t matter what time he gets home. He glances at his watch again and gets back into the van. He eats one of the revolting hotdogs while a man drives into the fuelling bay next to Jovan. The man fills up. When Jovan is finished eating he starts his van and looks at the gauge rise and waver on empty. Enough to get home and back here tomorrow morning. He’s on the verge. Shouldn’t be driving with the black crow in his head.
He drives out onto the road abruptly, into a gap—not judging the speed of the traffic. Gets beeped by two cars. He sees the words printed into her flesh, red with the abuse of the needle that had injected the black ink beneath the surface of her skin. As though Dr Graffito has vandalised a living human body this time. The scalpel that cut the word INSPIRATION into a dead woman’s chest. The words in Tammie’s back: The Trojan Flea. A black-ink skull surrounded by roses. It had looked pretty at first glance. In the small of her back. Between those delightful dimples above her buttocks. The flowers radiating out around the skull, a red-ink nimbus, the words within the head forming the eye sockets, nose hole and teeth. Jovan didn’t realise that they were words in the skull of this pretty little image until he was spent and catching his breath. A truck roared by and the light flared through the small translucent windows in his van. The skull materialised into the message. Graffito could not have managed it better. The thought hits him hard, even now, driving down the Nepean Highway to home. Another message from Graffito—cut into the body of a living woman. For Jovan. As intimate as a kiss on his face from poisonous ink-black lips.