by Ivan Srsen
He understood she couldn’t love him anymore, he had done nothing to deserve it; indeed, in a way he’d think less of her if she did still love him. She mustn’t allow herself such a thing, he destroyed the best years of her life and no one had the right to urge her back to him, least of all himself. And now here he was, a step away from walking out of the Orhideja and never coming back. And why didn’t he? Probably because of those nightmares, the nightmares that hinted at distant catastrophe, the downfall of all the dreams they’d shared. Because of the apocalypse that was already playing out, but he did not feel and see it and for now he was holding it at bay.
The chess game was dragging on and on because Marijan was hesitating at each move; the more time passed the more nervous they became. At about ten to nine, while Keti was in the bathroom, the door opened and a man came in wearing a winter jacket and a baseball cap. They all watched him, frozen, and then he took off the cap and said, “A coffee, please, and two glasses of water.” Their heads all swiveled simultaneously to Montenegro. When Montenegro answered, “You can have three if you like,” they all stood up and went toward the door to the storage room at the back of the Orhideja.
An iron door led from the storage room to the yard behind the building. Montenegro opened it and stepped out with the stranger into the parking lot where tenants parked their cars. In a minute a sizable van pulled up in front of them and a second stranger climbed out of it and opened the back door. People began silently streaming out until they had completely filled the yard. Jagger was certain there had never been this many people in the yard before. They were all wearing heavy winter clothing and their heads were covered in caps or hoods. The driver in the winter jacket separated them into threes, and Montenegro handed off each group of three to the guys from the bar. Suhi took the first three. As agreed, he began walking toward his house with three following him one by one, each at thirty paces behind the next. In the same way Kolaković and his three went off, as did Tomo and the three who left with him, while Mate, Mijo, and Karapandža each left with four, as agreed that evening. Keti went along after them for support, her assignment was to keep watch on the street and let them know if something seemed suspicious. Marijan went out to his car. The two men in winter jackets climbed back into the van and drove out of the yard; after that the only people left were Jagger and Montenegro with six people they had never met.
Montenegro said to Jagger, “You know everything. You go first and I’ll lock up the bar and take mine.”
Jagger did what he was told and with his hands in his pockets he set off for his house. A strange feeling came over him as he walked the two blocks, at first not turning around, as they had agreed. Eventually he did turn around, hoping the phantom threesome would not be there and this was all just another nightmare. But instead he saw a weird scene: when he turned, the three who were following him froze at their thirty-pace intervals. He felt the silhouettes under the hoods and caps watching and waiting for him to show them where to go. He quickly turned back and strode on so he’d reach his building as soon as possible. When he stepped into the entranceway he did not turn on the light, but held the door open until all three had come in after him at their regular intervals. Now they stepped with his every step, still in silence, and went up to his little apartment.
He did not turn on the light and the three huddled inside the front door. He went to the window and for a minute or two peered out through the curtains to see if anyone was following them. Then in English he invited them into the living room. “Come here!” he said in his hard-edged Slavic accent. The three did what he said, taking off their shoes before tiptoeing into the living room.
All three silhouettes took off their caps and hoods and for the first time the streetlights that shone into Jagger’s room lit their faces. They were two men and a woman. The men had mustaches and the woman’s hair was covered with a kerchief. He tried to gauge their ages. The men were in their thirties, and the woman . . . he came closer to her, he thought he was imagining it. He stood in front of her. “Marina, is that you?” The woman stepped back, looked briefly over at the two men, and then replied in English, “I don’t understand your language. I can speak English. Please, don’t hurt us.”
The world shook beneath him. He dropped first to his knees, then sat on the floor. The men and woman did as he did, sitting down around him. He watched the woman who looked just like Marina, the same eyes, same facial lines, same timid, unself-conscious smile. He dug his hands into his palms and burst into tears. He felt one of the men’s hands pat him on the back. He curled up on the floor and pushed his head under the coffee table and he cried himself to sleep.
In the morning he was woken by the smell of tea. When he opened his eyes he saw the two men sitting on the floor, their backs against the wall, talking softly. They noticed he was watching them so they smiled back gently. The smell came from the kitchen that was divided from the living room only by a bar partition. The woman was preparing tea she had found among Jagger’s scant provisions. He got up, tidied his hair in the mirror, sat on the couch, and said, in coarse English: “This very fucked-up town. You stay at home, everything good. We have a deal, I drive you tomorrow to the border. You cross to Slovenia, you free. You listen to me, everything okay.”
One of the men said something to him in a language that sounded like Arabic. The woman from the kitchen brought a tray with four cups filled with hot tea and first offered one to Jagger. “He wants to express his gratitude,” she said. Jagger took the cup and nodded. He took out his cell phone and called Montenegro.
“Have they all reported in?”
“Holy shit, Tomo slobbered on the two women at his place and almost had a fistfight with the guy who is probably the husband of one of them.”
“Please don’t tell me he blew it.”
“He didn’t blow it but he called me at three in the morning, terrified that if he fell asleep the guy’d slit his throat.”
“Better if they had, but look, what don’t they eat, I forgot to ask.”
“Just pork, anything else is fine. Don’t forget, a van is coming tomorrow evening and you are driving.”
Montenegro hung up, and Jagger immediately called a nearby pizza place and ordered four margheritas. “Food coming soon,” he said. The men sipped the tea, the woman looked at him gratefully. “I call you Marina,” he said to her. She did not respond.
* * *
When the pizzas arrived, Jagger took them out of the cardboard boxes and served them with cheap Spanish olives from his refrigerator.
The men exchanged glances with the woman and for some reason they did not want to start eating. Jagger understood, so he quickly sat down with them and said, “I am not hungry, cheers! Bon appetit!” The woman nodded and all three of them began eating eagerly, though they were clearly making an effort to behave as politely as possible.
Jagger watched the woman while she bit off pieces of the pizza: even her cheekbones and muscles moved the way Marina’s had. When she finished the first slice, he took her by the hand and peered into her eyes. The two men looked at him, startled, but they did not stop eating. He mustered the strength to say: “Marina, please forgive me.”
One of the men must have thought Jagger was declaring love for their travel companion and burst into brief laughter, but the other jabbed him in the ribs and the first began coughing after a mouthful of pizza went down the wrong way.
The woman got up, wiped her hands on Marina’s old apron which she had unwittingly put on, and hugged Jagger. Then she said, “You are a very good man, sir, but I have a husband and three children back home. I am a seamstress, and I have to earn some money in Vienna to send home. Please understand.”
Jagger nodded and choked back the tears that filled him with relief. “I understand, I understand . . .”
* * *
“Hey, Jagger,” Montenegro woke him with an early phone call the next morning, “it’s a real miracle that everyone is still here. Tonight at midnight, my place,
you drive, like we said.” Then he hung up.
The two men had made themselves at home and were smoking cigarettes, sitting on the floor. They offered him some of their rolled tobacco. He took a short cigarette with no filter and realized he no longer was tormented by the desire to stop smoking. He could hear the shower running in the bathroom and he lit up with pleasure. He smoked while listening to Marina dry her hair with the blow-dryer.
* * *
A little before midnight Jagger put on his coat and the three people in his apartment dressed in the same heavy clothes they had been wearing when they arrived two nights before. In halted English, Jagger said to the woman, “Marina, please tell guys the last one out close door behind him.” She nodded and translated Jagger’s instructions.
“Okay,” said the man who decided he’d be last to leave, and then he smiled.
In the same way they had left Montenegro’s yard they went back to it now, and some twenty people were already standing there in silence. A few minutes later a van arrived and a man in a winter jacket and baseball cap stepped out. When the last group, Tomo’s three, arrived, they all climbed into the van. Jagger sat at the wheel, switched on the powerful diesel motor, and steered handily out of the yard. He drove unremarkably, taking the curves with caution; he knew the travelers were sitting on the floor in the back.
After ninety minutes of driving, the last half hour of which was down forest roads, Jagger stopped, climbed out, and opened the back door of the van. Some thirty people got out in silence, following previous instructions, and formed a line. Since Marina spoke English, Jagger gestured for her to stand at the head of the line and told her, “Follow this road half a mile, maybe twenty minutes walking, then you in Slovenia. Go more, maybe one hour, then they will pick you up.” It was an old dirt road through the woods, overgrown and unmaintained. He saw Marina’s summer shoes and remembered she wore size 41. He took off his hiking boots, size 42, and offered them to her. She quickly removed her shoes and pulled on Jagger’s. Then she hugged and kissed him on both cheeks. She set out ahead without looking back and the others followed. Jagger climbed into the van barefoot at the wheel and drove it slowly back to Zagreb.
* * *
At the entrance to the city, on the old two-lane road that runs from Samobor to the center of town, he saw an unusual sight and stopped the van. By the Podsused bus terminal where there was no traffic now at three a.m., some fifty garbage collectors had gathered on green tricycles with trash cans built onto the front. The roadblock looked like a sort of protest, though there were no police in sight; there was no one except the garbagemen in their green uniforms. Jagger lowered his window and called to them, “Hey, let me pass!”
From the crowd one of the garbagemen pulled away and drove over to Jagger’s van. Under the green cloth cap and shabby uniform, Jagger recognized Pjer.
“Pjer, what the fuck is this?”
“No worries, Jagger, my men have seen to it that all the city police points were blocked while you drove to the border.”
“But why are you messing with this?”
“You’re tired, Jagger. Go on, drive home, tomorrow is another day!” Pjer slapped the van’s hood twice, turned on his bike, and, standing on the pedals, raced back to the crowd.
“Boys, victory lap!” he heard Pjer call to the other garbagemen.
* * *
The next day, as soon as he woke, Jagger hurried over to the Orhideja.
“Espresso and a shot of bitters,” he said to Montenegro as he sat down at the bar.
Everyone except Pjer was there, sipping their drinks, reading the paper, and bickering as if nothing special had happened in the last few days.
Montenegro whispered to Jagger, “The cash has already been divvied up, I’ll give you your cut tonight after we close.”
Marijan sneered at Jagger, “Nice job, Mick! A little drive and three thousand in your pocket, not bad, eh? But one thing’s for sure: the wretches you drove are definitely not going out for Wiener schnitzels in Vienna. Like the rest of you—they are a bunch of useless newcomers.”
Jagger got up, lunged at Marijan, knocked him off his chair, and kicked him repeatedly until the man stopped moving.
Happiness on a Leash
by NEVEN UŠUMOVIĆ
Trešnjevka
Translated by Will Firth
I stood in the hall in the dark. The din outside—an explosion of bad folk music—was unbearable.
I nervously nudged my dog with the tip of my shoe and shouted to him, “Mishko, Mishko!” as if he hadn’t been stone deaf for three years. I was seething with rage. “We’re gonna beat the shit out of those fucking Ustashas! Come on, Mishko!”
Mishko stood by my leg like a good dog, but neither he nor I dared to take the decisive step toward the door. We had already done our early-morning walk that day, and it was hard for old fellows like us to go out of the house a second time. But now we heard real explosions, as if someone was throwing hand grenades.
“Mishko, you’re lucky you’re deaf.”
But that didn’t help much, and he stuck his tail between his legs. Everything was shaking, and that was enough to make both of us edgy.
“Come on now!” I whispered to myself, and finally unlocked the door.
We plucked up a little more courage as we stood in the corridor separating our apartment from the bar.
I knew very well what was going on: today was April 10, the national day of the former Independent State of Croatia, and a field day for Croatian fascists. What’s more, it was a Friday and the ideal day for whooping it up. The Tango Bar—the simple pub we shared a modest little house with in the working-class district of Trešnjevka—had been a meeting place of Ustasha-minded nimrods since the early nineties.
I opened the door of the corridor and went outside. Mishko squeezed through my legs and ran ahead. He stopped at the kindergarten fence and lifted his leg. The bar had an open terrace facing the kindergarten, so our apartment echoed the yells and screams of children in the daytime, while at night, at the end of the week, we had to put up with the rage and ruckus of teenagers and drunken singers. I didn’t see Mishko do any “business” by the fence; he was standing on one leg and shaking with fear.
Smoke was rising from the children’s playground and an acrid stench filled the air like on a battlefield. Now Mishko was glued to my leg again. I really should have gotten myself a pistol, I thought to myself for the umpteenth time.
I looked through the large, opaque window of the bar to see who was working that evening; it was Tilda, the young waitress I fancied. It was her, as well as the reverberating silence outside, that made me go into the bar, although Mishko resisted.
Tilda was alone inside, sweeping up broken glasses and beer bottles.
“What’s going on here?” I asked.
“Everything’s okay, neighbor,” she said, as if everything really was okay.
“What’s that smoke outside?” I asked, grabbing her by the arm. “There were terrible sounds, and even Mishko here got scared.”
She flinched, as if I was about to hit her. “I’m sorry, Anton, it’s not my fault. Today’s the Ustashas’ day, you know. They got plastered and threw grenades into the playground.” She swallowed. “Some of them were chucking grenades, others bottles of beer.”
“Talk about sick in the head.” I let her go. “Was that fashion model Raša leading the gang again?”
“Yes,” Tilda said in a hushed voice, as if the guy was still sitting there drinking at a table.
Raša . . . I had seen him at the bar several times, perfectly costumed in Ustasha black. Once he was even pulling an ugly, drunken accordionist along behind him on a leash. They sang ribald ballads and folk songs: “Don’t cry for me, O mother dear, I love the black Ustasha gear . . .” Raša the model cut a fine figure to go with his unseemly conduct. Delicate, long fingers; a smooth and radiant face. His only imperfection was the thumb of his right hand, which jutted out like a foreign body, burnt to the bone.
I left Mishko with Tilda and went to get a flashlight. I was away for less than a minute, I guess, but when I came back Tilda was crouching beside Mishko, patting him, and crying like a little girl who’d lost her mother. Although I’d never dreamed of having the opportunity to hug her in a fatherly way, I now sat down next to her on the floor, where some broken glass was still gleaming, and pulled her to my chest. Mishko nuzzled her in the armpit with his pointy little nose, and we stayed like that until the living sculpture we made with our bodies literally became too steamy!
We got up and spent the next hour picking up shards of broken bottles in the dark of the kindergarten courtyard, for the children’s sake. It must have looked as if we’d lost something, but none of the neighbors stuck out their heads to ask.