Zagreb Noir

by Ivan Srsen

  “Like what time is it coming?” Jagger asked.

  “I don’t know, probably around nine,” murmured Montenegro.

  Jagger got it. He just had to sit tight until nine. He glanced at his cell. Five p.m. This would not be the first or last time he’d spent four hours at the Orhideja. Better than at home.

  Twelve years had passed since Marina had left him. One day she was waiting for him when he came home from the Orhideja, he wasn’t even drunk, and she told him that she was sick and tired of having to scrape together the money to pay for gas, to buy bread, that she no longer had any way to shift debt from one credit card to another, that ten years had been enough for him to find a decent job and she was leaving. “I’ll fuck you over,” was his answer, though he didn’t mean it. He’d just wanted to scare her so she’d stay home; it would have been better for both of them that way. They’d have found it easier being down-and-out in tandem, going to bed drunk and hungry, watching the neighbors buy a new car—all of it would have been easier if only she’d admitted defeat, as he had so long ago. They called him Jagger for his big lips and long hair, and the nickname was all he had left of his dreams of a good life. He looked at himself in the mirror behind the bar and studied his graying sideburns.

  “For years this country has been marking time, and now the imbeciles want to start taxing unfarmed land!” commented Kolaković loudly, leafing the morning paper.

  “Of course that hurts you, you inherited land out in Žumberak and you don’t know what to do with it!” Marijan always had to have the last word.

  “What good is the land to you? Sell it,” added Mate. “Instead of slogging around in the mud every winter for the sake of the vineyard and those cows, you could be strolling off like a gentleman to Vinodol Restaurant every weekend for a Wiener schnitzel and a half liter of Riesling.”

  “You peasants, you really don’t know anything,” thundered Marijan. Everyone in the café looked in their direction, and Montenegro turned down the radio so Marijan’s voice completely filled the place: “You think you can talk to me about a Wiener schnitzel? You, who have never laid eyes on Vienna and have been scarfing up foul sludge from the Jarun marketplace? Why, they could serve you thin slices of bologna and tell you it was a Wiener schnitzel and you’d be licking your lips. Fuck your ignorant mother.”

  “How can you say to me, a cook, that I’m ignorant—” protested Karapandža softly, but Marijan cut him off.

  “Shut up, wretch, anyone who ever ate anything you cooked knows it’s pathetic crap! I’d rather be a vegetarian my whole life than eat your food.”

  “Don’t speak that way to Karapandža, during the war he fed half a brigade down by the Kupa River,” said Mate, lukewarm in Karapandža’s defense.

  “Shut up, idiot, that’s exactly why the Serbs nearly reached Zagreb!” snapped Marijan.

  This exchange had Suhi and Kolaković hooting, and through his laughter and smoker’s cough Kolaković barked, “So, Karapandža, ever want to do us in? Have us over for dinner!”

  Montenegro always had to maintain at least a semblance of equilibrium at the café, so he tossed in, “Shit, talk all you like, once I saw a big black limo parked out in front of Karapandža’s house and this driver in a tux gets out, rings Karapandža’s door bell, and then drives him away.”

  Karapandža stared, flabbergasted, at Montenegro. He clearly had no clue what the bartender was talking about.

  Marijan laughed. “Must be he sold his soul to the devil for a hundred kuna and the devil changed his mind and wanted his money back.”

  Intrigued, Kolaković asked Montenegro, “So where did the black limo take him?”

  “Later that night the limo pulls up in front of the café and the guy in the tux comes in for a beer. I don’t want to stick my nose into other people’s business but the guy himself praises Karapandža. He says, You have the finest cook in Zagreb just down the street. The ambassador sent me to pick him up, to make dinner for him and his wife. The guy was the French ambassador’s chauffeur.”

  Suddenly Mijo, who always seconded Marijan, piped up, “Fuck their French mothers, they eat snails and they stole the World Cup from us in ’98.”

  Marijan steered the conversation back: “So, folks, how many of you have ever been to Vienna?”

  Then everyone stopped talking. Jagger watched them in the mirror and no way was he volunteering that he’d been to Vienna a few times. Back in the better days, he and Marina had gone to Venice, and Budapest too. In his dad’s old Zastava—they had sex in it, joking that they were proving love knows “no borders.” They didn’t have money for hotels but they were okay spending the night pretzeled up, cramped, in the backseat of the little car, and then they’d sleep another few hours on a sunny field by the side of the road.

  An unpleasant feeling of impatience was eating at Jagger. He could still call it all off, let them know they shouldn’t come; they must have a backup plan. Would the crew stick to their plan?

  Marijan went on: “Not a one of them has been to Vienna, of course, yet here they all are, talking about Wiener schnitzels! Fine, let’s have us a look-see then—who knows how to make a proper Wiener schnitzel?”

  Keti could hardly wait for the chance to show Marijan up, so, as parliamentary representative, she declared, “Cut a slice of pork loin and pound it thin with a mallet, smear it with mustard, sauté it in deep oil, and serve it up with fries!”

  Marijan watched her with a sardonic grin from the seat where he was lounging in the only booth in the café and then, turning to the others, he pounced: “So much for your know-how. Pork in a Wiener schnitzel? My dear Keti, if you were thirty years younger I’d take you to a decent restaurant and show you what a real Wiener schnitzel is like. Remember this, a Wiener schnitzel is made with v-e-a-l! I mean people, what is this? We’re talking about elementary culture here!”

  For the first time that afternoon Stankec spoke up, in a tone of both aching pity and circus sarcasm: “And what are you, Marijan, our health inspector?”

  Mate and Mijo began fidgeting; they worried Marijan might go, leaving them with no drinks for the rest of the evening, because Montenegro had stopped letting them run a tab years ago. Mate said to Marijan: “Stankec is only messing with you.”

  Marijan rubbed his chin and glanced around. “Stankec, don’t fuck with me. Go home, stagger over to your little den, throw yourself onto the ground, and snooze. Tomorrow you’ll be awake early anyway, setting up tables at the market.”

  Stankec squirmed in his seat and began gesticulating and grimacing but seemed short on words. Montenegro had the situation under control—he came from behind the bar with a bottle of grappa in hand, went over to Stankec and Keti’s table, and poured more firewater into Stankec’s shot glass.

  “I . . . c-can’t . . . pay for it,” stuttered Stankec.

  Montenegro patted him on the shoulder, Stankec tossed back the grappa, and Montenegro poured him another.

  * * *

  Jagger knew there was no going back, it would definitely be coming tonight, and now Stankec and Pjer had to be shooed away, they knew nothing about any of this. Jagger was not the kind to wait for things to sort themselves out; he turned to the tables and glared at Tomo who knew he should be sending Pjer home, but was hesitating. Jagger did not tolerate vacillating wimps so he took two small bills from his wallet and lay them on the bar; he didn’t want Montenegro cutting back on his share of the drinks they’d had. He got up, went over to Tomo’s table, took Pjer under the arm, hoisted him from the seat, and said, “Pjer, how’s about we go for smokes!” Pjer did not resist, nor had anyone ever seen him resist. He scooted by Tomo who was nervously biting his nails and went out into the cold darkness in front of Jagger who held the door open for him.

  Pjer was some ten years older than Jagger. Jagger could remember how he and his buddies used to wait, when they were kids, for Pjer on his way back from high school in the evening, and, just for the fun of it, they’d push him into the mud by the road, s
hake the books out of his backpack, kick him around a little, and run away. Pjer was the neighborhood weakness mascot, a caution to all those who thought they could get by in life easily without fighting or cursing. Pjer didn’t say a thing, he walked alongside Jagger toward the little store a block or two away and Jagger thought how he’d have walked alongside him just the same way even if Jagger had said he was going to hang Pjer from the first tree they came across. A queasy shiver ran down him from head to toe: he was no better than Pjer, in fact Pjer was better than him, by a head, by a foot, by a yard! Pjer had never attacked anyone in the dark, he had never stolen gasoline at pumps, he had never broken into kiosks, he had never brawled at soccer matches.

  He watched Pjer dogging his every step in the silence, and thought how much strength a person needs to keep his cool in a setting as tough as Rudeš was, where there’d always be a fist to punch you in the head when you weren’t on guard; fifty years of humiliation, threats, ridicule, and still he walked along as carefree as a school kid.

  Jagger bought cigarettes at the store because he didn’t know what else to buy, though he’d recently stopped smoking. They stepped out into the street again, Jagger spun the soft pack of 160s around in his fingers, finally opened it, and offered it to Pjer: “Hey, have one.”

  Pjer never refused anything, nor did he ever complain, this was his survival tactic. Who knows how many times they’d made him take a puff; he never seemed to stop and think. He slid a cigarette from the pack, held it in his lips, and waited for Jagger to light it.

  “Oh shit, I don’t have a lighter!” said Jagger.

  He’d thrown out all the lighters he had in the apartment. Since he had an electric stove and hot water heater, he didn’t need a lighter or matches to tempt him when he had a nicotine fit. To Jagger’s surprise, Pjer pulled out a lighter of his own and lit the cigarette himself. He continued holding down the valve and brought the lighter over to Jagger. For the first time Jagger noticed a spark of vitality in Pjer’s eyes; he quickly pulled a cigarette from the pack, fumbling, but Pjer’s hand calmly kept the high flame alive with the cheap plastic lighter.

  “Look at this! How long have you been smoking, Pjerinko?” asked Jagger, taking his first puff.

  “For years,” said Pjer. “Think I don’t know what’s going down tonight?”

  “Wait, wait, Tomo told you?” Jagger was wary, it made no sense that Tomo would have said something to Pjer, and it went against what they’d agreed.

  “Tomo is a moron, and everybody knows this. You should have never gotten him into this.”

  “So he told you?”

  “No, he didn’t, I found out through my guys.”

  “What guys?”

  “The garbage guys from Roosevelt Square.”

  “What fucking garbage guys?”

  “The garbage guys, the trash collectors, the street cleaners, I assume you know who the garbage collectors are?”

  Jagger laughed inside. He threw his arm around Pjer’s shoulders in a protective gesture and set off with him toward the house where Pjer and his mother lived. “You know, Pjerinko, if anyone gives you shit from here on out, including Tomo the moron, just say so and I’ll take care of it, don’t you worry.”

  * * *

  He waited until Pjer had gone into the house and closed the door behind him and then strode speedily back to the Orhideja. As he stepped back into the café he realized that the atmosphere had completely changed. Stankec was gone, and Marijan and Montenegro were sitting at a table wrangling over something in muted tones, gesticulating wildly. Suhi and Kolaković were smoking in silence. Keti stood at the door, on the lookout for anyone unfamiliar approaching the café, while Mate, Mijo, Karapandža, and Tomo were downing cognac that Montenegro had opened for them at the bar. Jagger was sure Montenegro would charge them for it sooner or later.

  “It’s only thirty thousand now?” Marijan’s voice shot up suddenly.

  Montenegro spoke calmly, placating him: “They said two days and that’s all. And a clean and clear three thousand in your pocket.”

  “Oh, no, no! Seven and a half for me, and the three of them get one and a half each,” Marijan said, pointing at Mate, Mijo, and Karapandža. “None of this would be happening if it weren’t for me.”

  “Forget it, Marijan, we get our cut or we’re out of here right this minute!” said Karapandža, emboldened by the open bottle of cognac. Mate and Mijo nodded their heads in sheepish agreement.

  Tomo, who was not under Marijan’s jurisdiction, chimed in nevertheless, “Marijan, the boys prefer not to mix business with pleasure.”

  “Nurse, I’ll wring your neck!” Marijan shot back. “Fine, so we’ll do it like this then: my three people are divvied up among you three, each of you gets one, and then you have to earn your three thousand properly. I am only here to salvage things if they go haywire. And seeing who I’m working with, they obviously will.”

  Jagger clutched his head. It was too late to either cancel or panic. They should do what they’d agreed, take the money and get through January, the worst month of the year, as best they could, when no one pays anything, when even the apocalyptic predictions that flourish at the end of the year melt away until Easter.

  To cut the tension, Montenegro went over to the bar and took out an old chess set, then came back to the table, shook the pieces out, opened the board, and said to Marijan, “We play for the take.”

  Marijan acquiesced and began setting up the white pieces. As soon as he opened the party with the queen’s pawn, a little crew crowded around the table and watched in silence as the duel progressed. Only Jagger sat at the bar, while Keti stayed on a barstool by the door and called, “Whoever loses is a cunt!”

  It was just after seven, there were still another two hours to go. Jagger remembered how he’d waited two hours for Marina at Jelačić Square—she was supposed to come from her new job as a waitress that she’d taken out of desperation. He’d waited without a cent to his name so she could treat him to ćevapčići; he was hungry and angry. She didn’t show, and after two hours he thought she’d up and left him. He’d always been afraid she might, he knew that once she’d made up her mind there’d be no changing it. He went to a guy for whom he occasionally drove a van with cigarettes smuggled from Bosnia and lied to him, saying Marina was sick and he needed a loan for an urgent medical exam. The smuggler from Herzegovina actually fell for it and gave him what he’d asked for without a word. He drank up the money over the next two hours and came home dead drunk. On the table were cold ćevaps with onion, a can of beer, and Marina, tear-stained, who had not, in fact, left him; instead, her new boss at the café where she worked had forced her to do the weekly cleaning which took her another three hours for which, of course, she was not paid. This was back in the days before cell phones, and she’d had no way of letting him know she’d be late. He flung the ćevaps at the wall, took the beer, gulped it down, went into the bathroom, puked, and without a word walked out of the apartment, to the Orhideja of course.

  * * *

  Montenegro had chased Marijan’s queen into a trap and Marijan balked at continuing. First he whined that Montenegro had caught him unprepared, but he quickly realized that any further excuses would only disgrace him, so he stretched out his index finger to topple his king as a sign of surrender.

  Mate suddenly shouted, “Marijan, don’t capitulate! Knight to A7, how could you not see it!”

  Montenegro sat up in his chair and shrugged. Marijan looked at Mate, then at Montenegro. When Montenegro said nothing, Marijan pulled his finger back from the king and did what Mate had suggested, moving the piece to A7.

  Montenegro applauded theatrically and said to Mate, “Now your take is in,” and then added, “Come on, boys, who else wants to bet on Marijan?”

  Suhi snapped, “Montenegro, you are like the government, all you do is take! You’ll do us all in. What is this wine you poured me anyway? You serve us the worst possible rotgut and we are supposed to be docile guests, choke
it all down, and then even pay you for it in the end. We’ll all be working for you one of these days—wait, who cooked the whole thing up for this evening? Boys, I was in Lipovica, don’t fuck around! Do you realize we are screwed if a cop happens to walk in?”

  “The cops already know everything,” said Montenegro.

  “What the fuck?” Kolaković rose to his feet.

  “Take it easy,” said Montenegro coolly, “you think we could pull this off without cops? Without them there’s no deal. Do the math: if we each get just a thousand and a half per person, how much are they getting?”

  “Well, why do they even need us then?” asked Mijo.

  “The hierarchy of horrors, boys, everybody does his bit. Your bit is for the shit to splatter you when it hits the fan,” concluded Marijan.

  Jagger was gripped by an inexplicable angst. He wanted to escape, run out of Orhideja, and never come back. Run until he found Marina and told her how many times he’d regretted not pleading for her forgiveness and how deformed he’d become since she left. He felt sure he’d be able to find her, though sometimes he woke up at night depressed at the dreams that were luring him in different directions, always intimating a tragic fate for her. In one she had fallen ill and was living in some distant poorhouse, in another she was working as a stewardess in China, in a third she died in the apartment above his. If he were to leave the Orhideja now, first he’d go home and pack his favorite clothes, then he’d spend the night at his sister’s in New Zagreb. Tomorrow he’d take the first bus to Rijeka where Marina’s mother lived. She would surely tell him where Marina was, she had always loved him. Although he had only met her a few times, the woman had always praised him. She said things like, “Thank you for looking after Marina.” And, “No one has ever taken care of Marina.” She herself had seemed the caring motherly type so he wasn’t quite sure what she meant by that. But he knew she would definitely help him out, and when he found out where Marina really was he’d get in touch with her, and though she probably wouldn’t want to hear him out, he’d tell her how sorry he was. After that he could live, do anything; he realized that his only ambition was Marina’s forgiveness. She would surely be able to forgive him, that was her nature, she was a generous soul.