‘Put it back, of course.’
‘Promise?’
‘Yes. Don’t be stupid. Give it to me. Before anyone gets back to the house.’
And I do. I have to collect a set of jump leads from my uncle’s house.
It doesn’t occur to me, not until late into the night: Anka would have found her diary and wondered how it came to be ruined. Somehow the not knowing, the imagining, seemed the very worst possible. Better I had destroyed it.
– mumps
– their father’s new job
– move to the house in town
– Licitar heart
– old P dead
– hunt birds in the rain
– K pisses on the dog
– diary
Where did the hatred come from? For years I sifted the possibilities, the things that had happened, the sequence of events, examining each one for clues and then the characters of Krešimir and of Vinka, for some other answer. Was Krešimir looking for an outlet for his own frustration? What of Vinka? Somehow none of it seemed enough. Maybe hatred like that is bred in the bone, or maybe it belongs to some darker and more distant place.
In a long-ago past, wolves lived in the mountains to the north-east, now some say they are back. Acid rain has stripped the leaves and killed the trees in the forests to the north and this has forced the wolves south, if you believe it. The deer have moved south and the wolves with them.
Once we went on a school trip to a wolf sanctuary. It was the height of summer and the wolves were moulting: hanks of matted fur hung from their haunches. I was disappointed: these gaunt, furtive animals were far from the majestic hunters of my imagination, the creatures I’d read about in my stories of hunters and trappers. At the sight of us they rose and began to move away, except one, which ran in the opposite direction, towards rather than away from us. On its way it passed a large female who twisted her neck and lunged, you heard the snap of teeth in the air. The lone wolf feinted but carried on. One. Two. Three. Four. A raised hackle, a lazy lunge: every wolf did the same. Go away, they seemed to be saying, I don’t want you.
The omega, who bore the brunt of the pack’s aggression and frustration. The omega wasn’t allowed to eat until the rest of the pack were finished, so this one begged for food from visitors.
Because she was the youngest, because she was a girl, because her brother had always been her mother’s favourite. Or because she shared her father’s easy temperament and now her father was gone. Or simply because she was there and there was nobody else, Anka became the last to eat at her mother’s table.
8
Anka. By the swimming hole, in the shadow of Gudura Uspomena. For both of us, the first time. In the moment Anka tenses beneath me and afterwards squats at the edge of the swimming hole to wash the blood from her thighs. I watch, angry at my own clumsiness. Anka stands and turns. It is early summer, the water is freezing. Anka’s skin is luminous, her breasts small, nipples turned to the sky. She shakes her hair and hugs herself, rubs the goose pimples on her arms. Then she comes back to me, tucks herself under my arm and kisses the underside of my chin.
In the pine plantation I make a home for us, like the dens Krešimir and I once built. I drag an old quilt and some cushions up there. Anka picks wild flowers and weaves them into the roof thatch. We lie on the quilt on our bed of pine needles, imagine a life in which we are alone in the world. I watch Anka sleeping in my arms and see how she laughs as she sleeps; when she wakes up I ask her why she was laughing and she tells me that sometimes her dreams are funny. That summer it never rains, never rains, not once, as though Perun saw us and took pity on our makeshift home. Times I take my gun, so my family doesn’t ask too many questions. We meet after school and, when the school term is finished, we meet whenever we can. That summer I take a part-time job at the mechanics’ yard. I have two more years of technical school. Some of my teachers were disappointed I didn’t go to the gimnazija. They say I could have gone to college or even university, but I don’t want that. Everything I know, everything I want, is here in Gost.
For Anka shooting rabbits no longer holds much interest, but sometimes I take a rabbit or a pigeon. At home they think I’ve lost my touch. In the late afternoon Anka gathers her clothes, dresses and leaves before me. This is not something we talk about, we know these afternoons are secret, our whole relationship is a secret, from one person, in particular – though we never say his name.
I lie back, close my eyes and listen to Anka’s soft tread as she makes her way to the edge of the woods. I wait. Then in the blue of dusk I follow the path she has taken with my eyes closed, following her scent.
Friday, four o’clock, the Zodijak: empty except for Fabjan, watching television at the end of the bar. He grunted when he saw me and returned to the television. I ordered a coffee and leaned against the bar. On the screen an African woman dressed in a long black gown sat on a chair upon a raised plinth. She wore a judge’s wig and a pair of headphones.
Now the camera focused on three men sitting side by side; each of them also wore a set of headphones. One sat with his back hunched and his elbows resting on his knees, staring straight ahead. The second leant back in his chair, his arms folded behind his head. The third appeared to be trying to catch the eye of someone in the room: he was smiling and flicking his eyebrows up and down. Behind them stood two men in blue uniforms. The picture changed again to show rows of men dressed in black gowns seated behind computer monitors. All of them were wearing headphones. The camera returned to the black woman in the judge’s chair who began to read aloud from the piece of paper.
‘Cunt.’ Fabjan pointed the remote at the television, changed the channel then stalked off to the back room.
Let me tell you about Fabjan. Fabjan was not born in Gost. He arrived twenty-two years ago and brought with him a wife and a son. He had an uncle here, who lived alone. Fabjan and his wife moved in with him and when the old man died they had the house. People said he’d made money working in Australia, in the opal mines; the truth is nobody knew. I didn’t live in Gost at that time and when I came back Fabjan was already somebody in town, part-owner of the Zodijak. His partner at the Zodijak was Javor Barac, who I’d known for years. Javor’s father was head of the post office, my father’s boss. Every year I’d see Javor at the post office Christmas party, both of us pressed into wearing our smartest clothes, in both our cases a pair of black trousers and a ruffled shirt. Different kinds of men: I’m talking now about Javor and Fabjan. Javor was as easy-going as Fabjan was flash, but they made a good team. By the time I arrived back in Gost Fabjan was driving the only BMW in town. His teeth were a whole lot better back then.
Javor looked up to Fabjan, because in that time of shortages Fabjan always seemed to be able to get hold of whatever he wanted: coffee, sugar, even a pinball machine. Later, a video, a Betamax unfortunately. All the same, no other bar had one. You needed to know somebody, or know how to work the system to do anything in those days, whether that was to become the owner of a private business, or buy a pinball machine or get hold of black market videos. I used to wonder why Fabjan needed Javor at all, but maybe he saw Javor as the quickest way to be accepted in Gost, because Javor’s father was head of the post office and an important man in the town. The pinball machine made sure the bar was full every night. Full of lads in denim jackets and flared jeans, out of fashion everywhere but Gost. They played Turbo-folk day and night, drank beer and played pinball.
Fabjan’s wife wears a fur-collared coat and heavy jewellery. She draws the shape of her mouth with pencil and smokes skinny menthol cigarettes. You could say she’s good-looking, though she’s grown heavy around the jaw and if she knows about the women Fabjan takes into the back room at the Zodijak, she doesn’t let on. She has two grown sons and a hair-dressing salon. Last year when Fabjan arranged a party for her birthday he took over the whole banqueting suite of
the hotel and hired a tribute band from the city.
People often wonder why Fabjan, with all his money, doesn’t leave Gost and try his luck somewhere else: one of the cities on the coast where he could own a bigger bar, maybe a hotel even, and then he could really be somebody. Gost is such a small place for a man of his talents. Nobody has ever asked me, but if they did I would say to them: maybe Fabjan just likes it here too much.
I asked Laura, Grace and Matthew to come and have dinner at my house, a return invitation. Too few chairs: I spent time in the morning fixing one with a broken leg. I took a haunch of venison from the outside freezer, potatoes from the store and helped myself to some more of the chard at the back of the blue house. In my store I had some ajvar I’d made with aubergines and peppers from my own beds the year before. Later I went into town for bread and wine. In the bakery, the woman behind the counter – I told you she’d been married to a cousin of mine – as she wrapped my loaf, asked, ‘Where’s your friend?’
‘Who?’
‘Engleskinja.’
I shrugged. I said, ‘I don’t know her, I was just helping out.’
She stood with her hands on her hips and regarded me through narrowed eyes, shrugged to show me she didn’t care and shifted her flat gaze to the next customer.
At home I made a caramel pudding and put it in the fridge. After I prepared everything for the rest of the meal I went upstairs to wash and change into my other good shirt. Back downstairs I put on a Johnny Cash cassette and laid the table. I have a lot of crockery. My sister didn’t want to take all this stuff to Zagreb, but my mother wouldn’t give away the serving plates, vegetable dishes and gravy jugs which had been her wedding presents, so she left them with me, to bring when I followed, which is how she gave herself permission to leave. They also left me a pair of goats, which I slaughtered in the yard three days later and froze. The meat lasted me two winters.
I remembered Laura liked flowers and was outside picking cornflowers from the verge when she appeared beside me. She wore a shirt knotted at her waist, a long tiered skirt and a pair of espadrilles. Her hair was tied back and a pale blue shawl draped across her shoulders. She handed me a posy. ‘Look, I’ve brought you some.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. I looked around. ‘Are you alone?’
‘You could say I’m the advance party.’
Inside Laura stood in the middle of the room and turned on the spot. ‘Very compact, isn’t it?’
‘It was used for pigs,’ I explained. ‘Until I made it my house. Pigs, they don’t like too much space, they like to stay warm. And I don’t need much either.’
‘I love that,’ she said, pointing to where I had set rows of bottles into the plaster of a wall, their ends out. ‘Clever. Do you think you could do that for me? Is that your family?’ Now she was looking at the photograph on the windowsill. I crossed the room, picked up the photograph and handed it to Laura. In the picture I am about ten years old and I wear an enormous pair of heavy-framed glasses. They belonged to my father and I loved to borrow them, to play the clown. My father stands behind me, his hand on my shoulder.
‘Daniela, Danica.’ I pointed to my sisters.
‘And Duro!’
‘Exactly.’
‘All your names begin with D?’
‘Family tradition. My father – Dejan.’
‘Didn’t you worry about running out of names?’
‘Why worry? Begin again. Same names, new generation.’
‘Any special reason it’s D?’
I said I didn’t know. These are the things you don’t think about until somebody else points them out. And even then, often there is no good reason, just the way it’s always been, that’s all. Laura said my family looked like nice people, handed me back the picture and carried on looking about the room. As I mentioned, it’s much the same as the blue house, only smaller: stone walls, tiled floor, wood-burning stove. There’s my armchair in front of the television. Next to the chair, a table where my father’s glasses lie (because now I have to wear them every day to read) along with whichever book I’m reading – most recently one I’d borrowed from the library about the Galápagos Islands. Like many people, I knew about Charles Darwin and the different variety of animal species he’d found on the islands, but did you know people lived there, too? Slaves, convicts, stranded sailors, pirates. Once you were on the islands it was very difficult to leave, you understand, and life there was brutal with any number of crimes committed between such violent inhabitants. There was a man called Patrick Watkins, a marooned Irish sailor, who hunted and farmed on the Galápagos and whose story was included in the book. I became very interested in Patrick Watkins. He stole a longboat and got out. There were other escapees with him in the boat, but when they arrived at Guayaquil, only one man remained on the longboat: Watkins. What happened to the others? Nobody knows. I spent some time imagining what could have taken place during that voyage. Had the other men been somehow swept overboard? Had one turned murderous, crazed by lack of water, the endless horizon, or the inescapable company of the others? Had Watkins killed them with his bare hands, one by one? What passed between them when they were down to the last three men?
Next to the table is a wooden chest where I keep my papers and where, when I have finished, I shall put this manuscript. On the other side of the room: the table where I eat my meals, laid for the first time with four plates. In the corner a gas stove, porcelain sink, wooden counter. A wooden plate rack hangs on the wall. Small pantry. Beyond that the wood store and outbuildings. On the windowsill, forgotten, the tiles I’d brought with me from the blue house. As I went to replace the picture, I covered them with my hand and slipped them into my pocket. I wiped the glass of the frame before putting it back and took a last look at my father. I remembered the smell of him – the hair oil he combed through his hair on special occasions, scented with limes, as now is Danica’s wedding and those of all my cousins, baptisms and feast days and every Christmas I can remember. Gost is beautiful at Christmas. Glowing lights around the buildings. Blazing floats on the river. Drifts of deep snow, sculpted into dunes by the wind. I told Laura this.
‘A proper winter.’
‘I suppose so, yes, but very cold. So cold the rats go mad with it. They try to come inside to where it’s warm. You have to stop them chewing their way in.’
‘How awful.’
I continued. ‘Not so much in town, but out here, yes. They cannot survive even in their nests. At night you hear them scrabbling against the walls, their claws.’ I realised Laura was staring at me, her cheeks were pale, she was no longer smiling. I stopped talking. Matt and Grace were at the door.
‘Gross!’ said Matt. ‘What do you do?’
‘Trap them.’
‘What do you use to trap a rat, like a giant mousetrap or what? How big would they have to be?’
‘Not those kind of traps. You would need too many and besides, with the dogs around it’s not safe. We use cage traps. Then you can catch a lot at the same time.’
‘Don’t you have to kill them afterwards?’
‘By morning they are frozen.’
‘That is totally gross.’ Matthew grimaced.
‘How do they die?’ asked Grace. ‘I mean slowly or quickly? What’s it like to freeze to death?’
‘Don’t be ghoulish, Grace,’ said Laura. ‘Let’s talk about something more pleasant.’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Let me get some drinks.’ I went to the kitchen and came back with a glass of wine for Laura. To Matthew I handed a Karlovačko.
‘Matt?’ Laura looked at him pointedly and with raised eyebrows.
‘I’m seventeen.’
I said, ‘One beer. This way a boy learns to hold his drink. How my father taught me. One beer for my birthday. One beer at Christmas. Plus one plum brandy.’
Laura let it go.
I went to the kitchen to fetch a Coke for Grace and she followed me in. ‘Duro,’ she said. ‘How do they die?’
‘You really want to know?’
She nodded.
‘It’s very cold, maybe minus ten or more degrees centigrade. Their metabolism slows down and they go to sleep, they die in their sleep.’
Grace looked at me. ‘That’s not true, is it?’ Normally she could barely look me in the eye, now she gazed at me steadily. It was that look more than anything that made me tell her the truth. Because Grace was not a child. And because Grace was not her mother’s daughter. Standing in the kitchen with her that evening I caught a glimpse of part of her nature I would grow to understand. Grace liked to examine every inch of her surroundings in a way that went beyond childish curiosity. Grace wanted to understand what the world was made of, the way that I had wanted to as a child. She watched and she listened. Grace asked questions. ‘How do they die?’ she said for the second time.
At first the rats huddle together. As the cold goes to their brains they become confused, stumble around the confines of the cage and into each other. The cold makes them aggressive. They fight, viciously, with what little strength remains. They try to burrow through the wire bottom of the cage. When their strength is all gone they lose consciousness, sometimes the ice melds their bodies into one grey mass. In the morning when I empty the cages, I pick them up by their tails and toss them in the river.
‘Is that what you wanted to know?’
Grace nodded slowly.
‘Does Gost mean anything? We were talking about it today.’ We’d eaten the venison and were leaning back in our seats. Grace, thinking no one was watching, slipped pieces of food to Kos and Zeka under the table.
‘It means visitor,’ I told Laura. ‘No, let me be more precise. In English you would say guest. Is that right?’
The Hired Man Page 10