The Hired Man

by Aminatta Forna

  Laura was waiting for an answer. I looked up but the sun struck my eyes, I couldn’t meet her gaze. Blood pounded in my temples. The conversation bothered me. The heat bothered me. Laura’s new hairstyle. Everything bothered me. Something said in the Zodijak, it had bothered me too, ever since I got back from town. The jug-eared man – I don’t mean him – the man he was talking to, his words whirled around the back of my brain, like a tune half remembered that you can’t quite catch. It happened every time I looked at Laura. And now, in that moment I remembered what it was he’d said. He said something like, ‘There are lots of our people living there.’ He’d been talking about England.

  ‘Even after last night? You still like it here? You still like Gost?’ I asked Laura.

  ‘I’m certain you’re right. They were just drunks.’

  I didn’t know what else to say. What I really wanted to do was go away and think. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I said, ‘Okay.’

  Laura put out her hand. I shook it.

  Time spent working on the blue house meant I was behind with my tasks at home. In the afternoon, after my conversation with Laura, I went home and freed Kos and Zeka from their pen. After greeting me they ran into the road and began their routine of sniffing around the hedgerow and pissing on parts of it. Normally I am very clear-thinking, but that day I felt very far away from my usual self. Hard to describe it. I think I was unused to so much company, so much talking. I often went days without speaking to anyone. I’d gone on the same way for years. So had Gost. There had been few changes. People went about their lives, did up their houses and planted their window boxes; this was how we had learnt to live, you understand, had kept on living. We made sure we were left alone.

  If I could go hunting it would clear my mind, as it always had done. I could take a problem out hunting and by the time I came home it would have been resolved. But it was still too early in the day, so I unravelled the hose and watered the vegetable bed. I’d taken some of the young chard from the blue house and replanted it here. I thought about the plant, how it had self-seeded year after year; this plant was the offspring of the plants that grew there sixteen years ago. Next I cleared out the dogs’ pen and after that I finished turning over the soil in the last bed. Later as I stood in the kitchen peeling onions for my supper, parts of the conversation with Laura replayed in my mind. Looked at in another way, of course, her suggestion presented opportunities anyone else would have been grateful for. I could make money, become as rich as the people who came to buy houses. How did people make money anyway? The only person I knew who’d done so was Fabjan. Laura and Conor had money obviously, and this was their plan to make more. I tried to think what I was feeling, became confused, struggled and gave up.

  The edge of the woods up by the ravine. A silver light cast doubt on the shape of things. All was quiet. No wind. No sign of the roe buck, which at this time of the day were usually to be seen grazing beyond the tree line. Even the birds were still, silence except the smoker’s cough of a single woodpigeon. Zeka stood a few metres ahead, his nose in the air. Kos, by my side, stared sightlessly into the trees. None of us moved. We were waiting, though I cannot say what it was we were waiting for. Without warning an owl flew overhead, pursued by a flock of pigeons. The owl swooped and dived, turning its great head to one side and then to the other, mobbed by the pigeons, who took turns at it, but lacked the courage to strike, like dogs baiting an oxen. They were driving it away from their nests. Kos trailed the arc of sound with her nose.

  We moved into the woods. Neither Kos nor Zeka had yet picked up a scent. Every thirty paces I stopped and looked around. In time we reached a small clearing where I expected to see the herd, but it was empty. No flash of movement between the trees. There were still one or two places where they liked to gather: the opposite side of the trees, where the ground dipped and where there was a small pond. I kept the dogs close. Zeka moved forward at a steady pace, Kos kept her nose close to the ground, practically touching the leaf bed. At a certain moment she sniffed rapidly several times, darted forward only to turn back on herself. Then she moved forward in tight zigzags over the same ground. Zeka ran towards her excitedly, practically prancing. Kos ignored him. Now she had the scent she started to trot and Zeka and I fell in behind her. The herd must have been in the trees, where they went if they felt threatened. Possibly another hunter had been this way. I kept close watch for any sign of movement. Now Zeka had caught the scent too and he rushed ahead of Kos, only to lose it and circle back behind her. Kos trudged on, never raising her muzzle from the ground. She stumbled on a tree root, kept going. We were moving faster, both dogs had the scent again. All at once Kos stopped dead. She raised her head and scented the air, then she stood quiet and still. Ahead Zeka braced his legs and barked. He began kicking up a fuss, bouncing on his paws, tail stiff, barking warnings. By now it was nearly dark. I quieted him, I searched through the darkness. I hadn’t yet raised my rifle. My eyes are good, I told you. If they weren’t I doubt I would have seen him, because he stood without moving, his head held low, he didn’t stamp or huff, as though he had no intention of dignifying our presence with a charge or even the threat of one. Great pale tusks grew from his bottom jaw. Zeka whinnied and retreated by several steps. Kos stood her ground. Then came the gleam of an eye as the great beast turned.

  Together we walked back through the trees, towards the ravine, down the valley to the road. In the years since I returned to Gost I had scarcely seen a boar. Once they were quite common, but then the animals had been hunted to near extinction. Men from Zagreb. Men from overseas. Men with pale hands and expensive rifles. Then came the chaos, when men turned to hunting each other.

  Now, like the wild flowers, the boar had returned.

  The boar’s flight had carried with it the mood to hunt and besides too much of the light had gone. As we rounded the last bend towards the blue house I saw Krešimir’s car, a black Saab a few years old, parked with two wheels on the grass verge. As we passed it Krešimir himself came walking back towards his vehicle, keys in hand. He had come to look at the fountain for himself, no doubt. I remembered him coming by here when the mosaic was first uncovered, waving his arms at Laura, and Laura, oblivious to his outrage, imagining he’d come to exchange pleasantries. The thought brought a smile to my face. And now here he was again. He didn’t acknowledge me, but lowered his head and with his next step placed his foot forcefully on the ground as though bracing himself to knock me down. I said, ‘Good evening, Krešimir.’ He raised his chin as if surprised to be addressed, pretending he hadn’t noticed me there.

  ‘Good evening,’ he muttered. He glanced at the rifle in my hand. Kos, having scented him, arced around him, a low rumble deep in her throat. Zeka, missing the point as ever, excited after the sighting of the boar, bounded towards Krešimir. Krešimir took a step back.

  I could have called Zeka off, but I didn’t feel like it. Under his breath Krešimir cursed. ‘He likes you,’ I said.

  Krešimir sucked his teeth.

  ‘How are your new people settling in?’

  ‘What do you know about it?’

  I replied, ‘I pass from time to time, much as I see you do.’

  If I haven’t told you, I should mention Zeka has a habit, like others of his species, of taking the hands of certain people into his mouth. He does this gently and his teeth have never so much as dented the flesh of anyone, let alone broken the skin. He took Krešimir’s hand and held onto it as we spoke. I’ve always read this behaviour in dogs as friendliness, though of course there are those people who are less comfortable with it. Now it was my turn to pretend I hadn’t noticed. ‘How are your plans coming along?’

  ‘What plans?’

  ‘To move to the coast. I hear the property down that way is very expensive now, even more than before. Very popular.’

  Krešimir snatched his hand away from Zeka and folded both hands out of rea
ch over his chest. ‘Yes, well, I’ll worry about that.’

  ‘What about your own house? Are you selling that, too? Where will your mother go? How is she, by the way?’ I was annoying him. When we were young I would find I’d suddenly stepped over some invisible line between his good humour and anger, without knowing what I’d done. Then he might sulk or even hit me. Don’t forget how much taller he was than me. These days it pleased me to push Krešimir’s buttons. I am still a great deal smaller than him, but he doesn’t dare raise a hand to me. Krešimir looked at me. Though he’d crossed his arms to free himself of Zeka’s attentions, he somehow managed to convert the pose into one of superiority; his face wore a sneer and he lifted his chin, exaggerating his need to look down on me. He was clean-shaven. Dark smudges on each cheek just below the bone. Lines travelled a curve from his nose to the sides of his mouth. He gave a phoney laugh. ‘Very funny, Duro.’

  I’d been wrong if I thought Krešimir could no longer get to me. I felt a trickle of anger between my shoulder blades. I shook my head and shrugged, whistled to the dogs and walked away from him. After a few seconds I heard the sound of his car door, the engine starting.

  We were sixty, seventy metres or more ahead. Zeka had crossed into the field for one last rabbit run. We reached the gravel, just a few metres from the house, and Kos began to drift across the road towards the house, ready for her supper. As soon as I heard the speed of the car’s approach I called Kos back. She hesitated, confused by a command that didn’t make sense. As far as she was concerned we were home. Her hearing was going, she didn’t trust it. Instead she obeyed her instincts and turned back towards the house. And Krešimir, approaching, didn’t brake. Kos’s hip was struck by the Saab’s front bumper. She was knocked up and sideways by the impact. For a moment she hung in the air, head skewed, then she dropped to the road.

  14

  The first shell lands on a house near the playground. No one is killed. The kids who were playing scream and flee, then return to stare in silence at the damage, as if they are worried they’ll somehow get the blame. In the second week a shell blows one of my father’s huts apart. My father is inside. Daniela is standing at the door delivering a meat paste sandwich sent by my mother. My father is fixing the roof, which will be blown away a few minutes later. Afterwards, in the other huts (where none of us had been allowed) we find broken coffee grinders, an inflatable paddling pool, electric bar heaters, a wooden clothes horse, pots without handles, a box of my old toys, two beehives and many pairs of old rubber boots. In the smallest of the sheds we find cardboard boxes of tinned food, mainly green beans, and sauerkraut. In another hut: car batteries, still serviceable. The last shed is stacked with wood: planks, sawn logs and kindling.

  My father, who unknown to us was in the earliest stages of dementia, will thus spare us the worst of the siege weeks.

  A Wednesday, I think, the days have begun to blend. All those things that once helped make one day different from the next: school, church, work, newspapers, the opening of a new film at the cinema, basketball games and football matches – these things can’t be relied on any more. I am on the far side of the ravine. On the other side, above the woods, is the soldiers’ camp. It is close to five o’clock in the morning and still pretty dark. At this time the soldiers are asleep in their tents. In a few hours: awake, shaved and breakfasted, they’ll begin to lob shells at us, and we, on the cue of the first whistled warning, will run home to dive into our cellars. When I was a kid I kicked an anthill once and watched the ants, each carrying a glistening torpedo, scrambling to carry their eggs to safety. I watched and wondered if they could see me, the giant in the sky who’d just wrecked their world. These days whenever I see a woman running down a road with her child in her arms, I remember the ants.

  Two pigeons tied to my belt. I must be back before the soldiers wake up. The sound of the shotgun doesn’t bother them; so far Gost has offered little resistance, because all we have are shotguns and hunting rifles and they have 120 millimetre mortars, and because they are out of range and out of view, hidden in the trees in the old concrete bunker at the top of the hill.

  A colony of crows is rousing, stirring and squabbling in the branches, a convention gathers on the grass below, thirty birds or more, facing west into the wind. I wait, wanting to make the best of a single cartridge. When one of the crows on the ground crosses in front of another, I fire. The flock take to the sky, two birds remain on the ground. Ten minutes later I leave the pigeons in a bag at my mother’s door and head to the blue house. These days the door is sometimes locked, so I knock and after some minutes Anka appears. ‘Hey, Duro.’ She makes coffee as I set to work on the birds. She wears an old cardigan and has pulled a crocheted shawl from the back of one of the chairs around her shoulders; flat-footed, her face sleep-smudged, the imprint of the pillow on one side of it. She fetches two cups and sits at the table to watch me. I split the breast of each bird and pull out medallions of meat. The remainder of the carcasses I toss into the bucket by the door to boil for Kos. Meat is scarce. People trap rabbits, but the deer are too far up the hill, too close to where the soldiers camp.

  ‘Only two pigeons today,’ I said. ‘I gave them to my mother. I’ll bring you the next one.’

  Anka smiles. ‘Give your mother the pigeons. Don’t worry about us.’

  ‘She can only eat so much pigeon.’

  ‘But we like crow. We love crow. Come over later. We’ll have it with thyme and tomatoes. I don’t understand why it doesn’t catch on.’

  ‘In Paris they ate elephant.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘The Parisians, during the siege. They ate elephant. They ate rats and cats, too. And dined on elephant steaks.’

  ‘Liar. Where would they get elephants from?’

  ‘From the zoo.’

  ‘They ate the exhibits? What did it taste like?’

  ‘I have no idea. Like pork, maybe.’

  Anka pulls her chin in and tilts her head to one side. She draws the shawl around her shoulder and shakes her head slowly in disbelief.

  ‘Where’s Javor?’ I ask.

  She jerks her head towards the staircase. ‘Asleep,’ she says. ‘We’re only being bombed every day. Not enough to lose sleep over. I’m the one who doesn’t sleep.’ She laughs and I do, too. Javor always loved his sleep. At that moment he appears rubbing his head and sits down at the table. ‘Talk of the devil,’ says Anka.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she says and helps him to coffee, leaning into him as she does so, pressing her belly against his back.

  ‘Hey, Duro, heard the one about the refugees and the dumper truck?’ says Javor. He tells a story about a group of refugees from the east who fled in the back of a dumper truck. One of them was a pretty girl and the driver of the truck invited her to sit in the cab with him. The two got along very nicely. The driver impressed the girl with details about his truck, its size and load capacity, the purpose of various levers and buttons. At some point the driver made a piss-stop. He went to the back of the truck to open the tailgate so the people could get out. But he must have failed to apply the hand-brake properly because the truck began to creep forward. He called to the girl still sitting in the cabin. The girl, who had been paying only slight attention to the driver’s talk, pulled the wrong lever: the one that operated the hydraulics to raise the dumping bed. She dumped the refugees on top of the driver.

  You see, even then we could laugh, though my father and sister were already dead.

  Anka says, ‘I want grapes and cheese. Green grapes and Greek cheese.’

  ‘Feta,’ says Javor.

  ‘Feta,’ repeats Anka softly.

  ‘Maybe I can get you some cheese, it will be just like feta, you’ll never know the difference. We can ask Fabjan.’

  ‘And grapes?’

  ‘That might take longer.’r />
  Anka throws her head back and groans. ‘I’m sick of eating everything from a jar.’ By now we’ve eaten the contents of our kitchen gardens, we are eating the bottled fruit and vegetables we have put aside for the winter. They’ll last a good while, because in this part of the world we treat every winter as though it is the last.

  In the evening I return with a bag of cherries. Anka is in the outbuilding removing a pot from the kiln. It is a deep bowl with an inwardly curving rim. The road south has been closed for weeks now; the trips she used to make to the coast in her Ficó to fill her orders with the tourist shops are no longer possible. There are no tourists. The coast is another country again. Behind me: stacks of wooden crates stuffed with decorated dishes, ashtrays, fridge magnets, all packed in straw. Anka has given up making these things. War has given her a kind of freedom and her work provides a place of refuge from the craziness. She sets the bowl on an old lead-topped table. When she sees me, or rather the cherries, she squeals and swoops, grabs a handful and rams it into her mouth. Juice spills from the corner of her lips; she looks like a young and healthy vampire.

  ‘Oh Duro, where did you get these?’

  ‘A wild tree.’

  She stops and eyes me sideways with suspicion. ‘No, Duro. I don’t want them.’ She picks up the bag and pushes it into my chest.

  ‘Take them, it’s fine.’ I push the bag back at her.

  ‘I know where they come from.’ Takes a step back and wags a finger at me.

  ‘Well then don’t tell my mother.’

  Anka laughs. She steps forward and snatches the bag, stuffs more cherries into her mouth. Afterwards she wipes her mouth and grows serious. ‘You can’t do this, Duro. You think I don’t remember where the tree is? This is the last time.’ Suddenly she hugs me. She smells of ceramic dust, vinegar and sweat.