The priest is worried about her relationship with her dad and asks her if she dislikes him.
“I think my father is more interested in God than his own children,” Gunholder strikes back, unusually hostile, while she cleans the table with a wet rag, head wagging like a sistah.
“Well, we are all God’s children. Sons and daughters of the Holy Father,” I respond, all Friendly.
“Holy Father, holy shit. Where is the holy mother then? She’s a virgin. Wow. Great. The church is good only for stupid white men,” she spits out. She leaves with her cloth and tray. I have to say that I’m pretty impressed, but Father Friendly thinks otherwise. When she returns with his latte, he says, “Your parents are holy people and I think they deserve your respect.”
“They’re not holy. Not committing sins for some years doesn’t make you holy. An inactive alcoholic is just as much an alcoholic as the one who’s drinking.”
Wow, this one is way too deep for me. I concentrate on her lips instead. Behind the heavy church gates of my priestly exterior, I keep a crazy Croatian army dog. Sooner or later he will break out of this fucking dog collar and start licking those glistening strawberry lips.
I’m supposed to be back at the holy house by six. I usually travel by cab, even though I could fly from New York to Boston for the same amount. Igor can afford it. Money’s never an issue in our game, though Friendly’s American Express Gold card probably has a higher limit. But using his pious plastic would be like sending an invitation to the Feds.
At 6:30 PM we eat a modest meal prepared by Sickreader. Her food always makes me think of Jerry Seinfeld. The table setting is very tasteful, but the food has almost no taste at all. By 8.00 PM we’re at the studio. Sickreader lends some of her own makeup to the two gentlemen who start their broadcast at 8:30. The funny thing is that I’m getting into it. I’m starting to like it. I’m almost looking forward to it. I even bought a copy of the King James Bible. Preaching makes you powerful.
“For I am his Word! His Word is me! Word up!”
I almost regret that we take Saturday off. “It’s because Eurovision,” Goodmoondoor says. The annual European Song Contest will be on tonight, with Iceland taking part for the twentieth year, Croatia for the eleventh. Apparently this is the TV event of the year. “It has no purpose to be preaching tonight. Ninety-nine prósent of all the people are watching Eurovision. The streets are empty when it is. We will just have some old show in the air tonight.” And it’s also family reunion time; Gunholder and her brother Truster are both coming for dinner. Sounds like Thanksgiving.
Truster is quite different from his sister. If she’s a swan, he’s a sparrow: A shy-eyed, thick-breasted fellow who is small and round, though one would call him strong rather than fat. He’s got working man’s hands and his strong fingers dwarf the needle and thread. His face is smooth save for white down that covers his upper lip. Still, he must be around twenty-six or twenty-seven years old. He hardly says a word and never looks up from his meal, but still I find his mere presence strangely soothing. I realize I would have a hard time following orders if they told me to take him out.
“Truster is the name of a very nice Icelandic bird. He brings the spring,” says the woman of the house as she passes me the white, and very holy-looking, sauce.
“It’s not Icelandic,” her daughter protests with heavy eyelids.
“What do you mean? Truster?” Sickreader says with a big surprise. “It’s one of the most Icelandic birds. We even have a poem about him.”
“Yeah, but Mom, it doesn’t mean it’s Icelandic. The bird’s only here for the summer. Most of the year it’s in France or Spain. Doesn’t that make it more Spanish than Icelandic?”
“Spanish? How can you say such a thing? Truster is the most Icelandic bird we have.”
“It spends more of its time in Spain.”
“But his…his kids are born in Iceland. They are Icelandic citizens, and he must also be. He was also born in Iceland!”
“Icelandic citizens? You speak like a racist, Mom,” Gunholder says.
It’s hard to tell whether her parents understand the word, but her mother closes her eyes and purses her lips. Goodmoondoor rises from the table and walks over to a bookshelf and pulls out a volume. Sickreader tries to smooth things over by turning to Father Friendly:
“I don’t know what you call this bird in English, but…”
“It is ‘redwing’,” her good husband calls out, looking up from a slim dictionary.
She thanks him and explains to me that the redwing is a “travel bird.” Gunholder rolls her eyes, but Truster just sits there, like a deaf sailor the family found on the beach this morning. His virgin cheeks are stained with a soft blush, as if they are trying to help me picture a redwing.
“Or is it traveling bird?” Sickreader continues. “What do you say? What do you call the bird that lives in two…”
“I don’t know. Migration bird?” is my wild guess.
Gunholder picks up on it with evil-eyed sarcasm: “Immigration bird.”
We eat in silence. Truster has finished his meal and our eyes meet. Poor guy. When his parents introduced him to me they had strangely added that he was in love, like he was a retard.
“Oh? And who’s the lucky one?” I asked.
“Yes. She’s very lucky. And we also,” came the answer.
I have to admit that all day long I’ve been looking forward to watching that stupid Eurovison Song Contest. It’s been six whole years since I’ve been able to see the program that saved my life. We gather on the big corner sofa, and Goodmoondoor turns on his flat screen. It’s live from Athens, Greece, and the atmosphere is not unlike that of a televangelist mega-mass: ten thousand people screaming with joy at the end of every song. Except after the Icelandic one. A trashy girl in a hooker’s outfit gets nothing but heavy booing. The song seemed OK, but her arrogance is definitely not going down with the Greeks. Actually, she reminds me a bit of Gunholder. I look at my hosts. Of all the secular acts, this one was probably the least godly, the singer wearing a devilish grin, as if she’d just slept with the producer of the show. Goodmoondoor looks at me with a complicated smile, as if he were a UN delegate and his prime minister had just peed at the podium.
“It’s just a joke,” Gunholder explains. “This singer…She’s just making fun of the whole fucking thing.”
The f-word quietly explodes in the room, like a silent but serious fart. Her father kindly reminds her that such a word is not accepted in his house, and even Toxic is thrown off guard, remembering how “the fucking thing” saved his life.
We go through ten or so more songs—most of them falling into the Slavic techno category, or Technoslavic as we say—until my dear Croatia appears. Good old Hrvatska. Tomo almost pees in his underpants as he watches the national goddess walk on stage. It’s Severina. Good old Severina. Severina Vuckovic. To the boys of Split she was the most beautiful girl in the world. She was four years older than me, and I didn’t even dare dreaming about her. I once saw her walking down Marmontova with her mom, and got those terrible heart-hiccups. Though I haven’t seen her in years—not since her sex tape went viral on the Internet and got every Croat peeing tears for a week—but she still looks like the most beautiful woman in the world. She’s wearing a long red dress, open at the front, showing off her perfect legs. She’s backed by some funked-up folk band. “Jer još trava nija nikla.” I get all homesick; I feel it in my stomach. Ah, this is terrible. “Tamo gdje je stala moja štikla.” Man, this is too much for me. I can’t help it, but watching her dance on the screen creates a deep feeling inside me. It’s like seeing your parents’ foreplay, the prelude to your conception, the very reason for your existence.
I get a very homesick hard-on.
And somewhere deep inside, I feel like crying. But my tears of stone won’t return to liquid form. They should make Viagra for crying. I hope they don’t notice my misty eyes, my sad mouth, or my heavy-duty hard-on saluting my homeland. It’s my
language. The girl of my childhood dreams…It hits the lonely man in exile like a man being run over by a NYC truck full of tabloids (with Tony fucking Danza on the front page). Oh. Moja voljena domovina…
They look at me. I must look like a lone puppy longing for his mother. I have to say something.
“It’s the memories…,” I manage to stammer. “…of Yugoslavia.”
They turn their heads back to the screen, ignoring the heartbroken priest sitting on their sofa. Severina keeps on screaming: “Moja štikla! Moja štikla!” That would be “My high heel! My high heel!” Suddenly the doorbell rings. It has the sound of church bells. Goodmoondoor goes to the door, and I hear two men talking to him.
This is my cue.
I excuse myself and get up, pretending to go to the bathroom, but continue through the dining room, all the way to the back of the house. I open the door out on to the veranda and hesitate for a very brief moment. The icy spring air in my face, I face the fact that I’m not wearing any shoes, only my NYC socks. In the background, Severina howls on about her stilettos. I let them be my shoes as I step out on the cold veranda and quickly close the door behind me. Then I run like a crazy man out in the garden and through the next.
CHAPTER 11
TADEUSZ
05.20.2006
Running on Icelandic asphalt in summer-thin American socks is hard on Croatian feet. Still I’m not going to cry about that. I’m a hitman, not a priest.
I let the cold be my whip as I run up the street, heading deeper into this suburb of mini-mansions. Luckily no one sees me. Everybody’s watching Severina’s štikla dance. High heels are the woman’s pedestal. You just have to worship the girl who wears them. In fact, you can measure a woman by her shoes. The more feminine she is, the higher her heel. Severina’s heels are usually as long as the barrel of a 9mm. One of our friends said he spent a night with her on his father’s boat, right in the harbor. “Making waves until the morning light.” We didn’t believe him, but of course we couldn’t prove him wrong either. True or false, he built his whole reputation on the story and ended up in fucking Parliament. Every time his face pops up on HRT, I automatically reach for my gun.
I don’t see any police cars around. No SWAT teams or secret agents with woolen caps jumping over hedges. I think the two men spoke to Goodmoondoor in Icelandic. The local police department is working for the Feds. All small nations suck up to the USA. Everybody wants their Hollywood moment. I wonder if the Icelandic police would ever do the same for the Iranian equivalent of the FBI.
I turn right at the next intersection, spotting a small delivery van from Domino’s Pizza. The engine is running. I duck behind the car. The pizza boy is standing on the porch of a nearby house, with his back turned towards me, delivering his hot pies to some hot chick with naked shoulders, a Day 6 type. I jump in the car and drive off. He comes running out on the street as I drive away. I see him waving goodbye to me in the rearview mirror. Icelanders are polite people.
I do some fast-as-a-bullet thinking as I drive the empty streets. I must not go far. The pizza van is like a bell around a bull’s neck. And Javor always told us:
“When you need to hide, you shall hide in the heart of the enemy. It’s the one place he will not search.”
All the mansions come with a double garage. Some of them are almost as big as the house itself. And in front of each one there’s parked a huge SUV beside a smaller one: his and hers. A Super Duty Ford Truck next to a Porsche Cayenne. Those people keep cars like the Bedouins keep camels. They all look brand new, their roofs shining in the white spring night. Yet those vehicles are never put inside the garage, the holy couple told me the other day. The flatroofers are only built as shrines to the golden calves resting in front of them. Goodmoondoor told me his neighbor polishes his Lexus every other week. He probably makes love to it the other week. At least many of those SUVs have been tricked out, with huge tires, putting their exhaust pipe at the ideal height for such an operation.
One of the houses has no cars in front of its double garage. I drive past it and five other houses. Then I stop, park the pizza lemon, jump out, lock it, and throw the keys into the next yard, before making a quick run for the empty-looking house. (You would probably like to see this in slow motion: the chubby priest running sock-footed on the sidewalk, like a lottery-addict too late to buy his ticket.) There is no light in the windows. At least no visible light. It’s quite hard to tell, though, since the night is bright as a prom in hell. I walk the short walkway and up three steps to the front door. I ring the bell. A dog barks in the distance. I wait a good while in the freezing cold, catching my breath. I ring again. The doorbell seems to be connected to a dog some two blocks away. Otherwise it’s dead silent. The whole neighborhood is glued to the TV. Even the trees stand motionless with excitement. I wonder if Severina will win?
A car can be heard on a nearby street. The FB-eyes must be on their way. I bring out my knife and open the door to find the barking dog inside the house. I find some slippers in the entry-way and take a quick tour of my new home. Two hundred square meters of pretty square people. An unused fireplace and some more of those lunar paintings, heavy duty stuff in heavy golden frames. Some obese sofas and a treadmill. The dog seems to be in the basement. I find the staircase and let my ears lead me to the laundry room. Once I’m inside it, I find a small, hairy dog that we used to call “a walking wig” back home in Split. The small barking machine goes into a fit until I unplug it with a quick turn of its neck. It’s as easy as breaking a chicken leg at the joint.
On the clothesline I find some silly pants, a tacky shirt, and freshly washed man’s underwear. The holy man strips and donates the collar to his fellow dog—his fellow dead dog—and says goodbye for good to Father Friendly. I put on the funny pants and shirt and quickly find my way to the no-cars-allowed garage where I begin looking for a can of paint or something close. In a messy corner, I do find some house paint. I open the can with my army knife and smear some of the white paint on my clothes and in my face. This is pure genius. I get all excited. My heartbeat goes from Bolero to Bossa Nova. I bring the open can with me inside the house and find some newspapers in the kitchen. I spread them on the floor in the hallway—some sixteen photos of the trashy girl singing for Iceland—and put the can on top. In the kitchen I find a radio and turn it on. Phil Collins screams he’s been waiting for this moment, all his life. I used to cry out loud with him when my Hanover girlfriend dumped me like an empty paper cup in a garbage can. It’s a great breakup song.
I’m just about done with everything, and completely wet with head-sweat, when the doorbell finally rings. I wait a minute and let it ring again. The sound is very luxurious, as if designed to remind the owners about their money. I then go to the door and open it. Heartbeat is Disco now. Two policemen are standing out on the porch. Black jackets, white hats.
“Hallo,” they say in pure Icelandic.
“Hchello,” I say with a thick Slavic accent.
“Oh, sorry. Do you speak English?”
“Hchyes…a little.”
“Is Christian home?”
Is this a Christian household? That’s a strange question. Maybe they’re not the police. Maybe they’re just two priests on hood patrol. “Hchyes, I think is Christian home. But I no live here…” I say in my best immigrant English.
“Can we speak to him?”
“Hchim?”
“Yes. We want to speak to Christian.”
Their accent is strong, like a wrestler on cocaine.
“Ah, I see. No. Christian no home now. No.”
“Who are you?”
“I am Tadeusz.”
“Polish?”
“Hchyes. I work in hchouse. Christian no home,” I say with wet white paint on my nose.
“Okay. We are looking for a bald man in priest clothes. Have you seen anyone running around here?”
“No. Zorry. A bald priest?”
“Yes. He has no hair on his head and is wearing a pr
iest uniform. He is a very dangerous man. A criminal. We are looking for him.”
“Criminal priest?” I ask them, remembering Dikan and his “Stupidity is the best disguise.”
“Yes. He is wanted in America.”
“I think they hchad enough criminal priest in America?” I say.
The two Icelandic policemen give away gentle smiles, beg me good-bye, and wish me luck with my painting job.
CHAPTER 12
MR. MAACK
05.20.2006 – 05.21.2006
I have never lived in such a big house. I quite like it, I have to say. Suddenly exile is excellent. Escaping the holy house was a big relief. Now I don’t need to put on a stupid smile in the morning or walk the shiny floors like Christ on water. Getting Friendly off my back was like dumping a loud girlfriend with a Texan accent and a cell-phone addiction.
The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning Page 7