Back when groups of hooligans started roaming through these shopping streets and smashing the windows of the sweet shops and bakeries, some pensioners demonstrated their solidarity by organising so-called ‘sweet rounds’, pointedly meeting for their chats in Albanian cafés. But there was no great outcry from the population at large. Almost surreptitiously, this Albanian minister was relieved of his post, that internationally renowned professor was prevented from doing his research or carrying out his teaching duties and Albanian pop singers were banned from their television and radio performances. Some Albanians chose to emigrate, others to end their lives. The legendary Bekim Fehmiu, who had been so impressive in the role of Odysseus at the National Theatre, decided to hang himself when he was forced to rip his heart into two by declaring his allegiance to either Kosovo or Serbia.
Milena pulled the weekly newspaper from the letter box, walked past the lift and took the stairs. With the disappearance of the Albanians, the memories began to fade, followed by mutual respect between different ethnicities. The owner of the sweet shop, the boza seller and the professor gradually transmogrified into the car thief, the drug dealer and the illegal arms trader. The Albanian had become a shady person, a dark figure without a face, driven by the most base instincts. People now gave him a wide berth, and protected themselves as best they could.
Milena pulled the door shut behind her, locked it twice and put it on the chain.
‘Hello!’ she called out. ‘It’s me!’
Fiona, the cat, emerged from the living room, walked a few paces towards her and then turned into the kitchen.
‘Get a move on!’ came Vera’s voice. ‘Dinner’s on the table already.’
While she was washing her hands, Milena contemplated how neatly everything fitted together concerning the atrocity in Talinovac: a remote house in the woods, two defenceless Serbian pensioners, a group of hate-filled Albanians and, in the end, two shots to the back of the head. And the motive? Maybe fanaticism or nationalistic delusion, and possibly so irrational that it would come as no surprise if the crime were never solved.
She hung the towel on the hook and put on her slippers. It was so easy to file away all the things she’d heard and seen, the whole horror, into the relevant pigeonholes, and then just shut the door on it. To simply maintain a front of being outraged for a little while longer before moving on.
‘Sit down.’ Vera was busy lifting pan lids, and a delicate citrus aroma filled the kitchen. Adam picked at his chicken fricassée, fishing out all the peas and asparagus heads and pushing them to the side of his plate.
Milena planted a kiss on her son’s soft hair. She was living on an island, barely seventy square metres in size, where she pretended that nothing bad would ever happen. Where she made out that she had the capacity to prevent Vera ever falling ill or even dying, or to stop Adam from mixing with the wrong crowd or taking the wrong path in life. Where she pretended that she could stop the political situation deteriorating, the institute being wound up and her job disappearing. Where, looking back, she could make herself believe that all this time they’d spent together in the kitchen had been more than just a brief, happy phase. All this in spite of being keenly aware that her power to keep external events from encroaching on this kitchen was actually so limited that it momentarily caused the ground beneath her feet, the scratched artificial tiles, to shift.
‘Do you need a special invitation?’ Vera heaped rice onto her plate and made an indentation in the middle with the spoon. ‘Did you give the plasters to Sister Dunja and tell her how to use them?’
‘All done.’ Milena tried a mushroom, nudged Adam with her elbow to make him sit up straight and then, glancing at a piece of paper with splotches of colour on it next to his plate, asked, ‘What‘s that going to be when it’s finished?’
‘Colour samples’, he replied.
‘For his new room’, Vera explained and, raising her eyebrows, put a small wine glass beside Milena’s plate.
‘New room?’ Her eyes followed her mother, who was rummaging in the fridge. ‘Did Philip phone?’
‘They spoke for almost an hour, and now the boy’s com- pletely antsy.’ Vera pulled the cork out of the bottle. ‘Adam, please put that pen away.’
‘I’ll be allowed to paint the walls any colour I want,’ he said. ‘Literally anything. Dad and I, we’ll do it together. Really cool.’
‘Some news,’ Milena murmured, taking a sip of the rosé.
‘Grandma thought dark red,’ Adam said, doodling. ‘But maybe blue’s better – what do you think?’
‘Blue’s nice.’ Milena heaped a piece of chicken and some rice onto her fork. The new flat in Altona, in Hamburg. So Philip had decided to present them with a fait accompli. What if he then went and cut the maintenance payments? She was sick of the whole business. She was always being cast in the role of spoilsport, always the person who kicked up a fuss and who laid down rules, while Philip cruised around the DIY stores with his son, made him newspaper hats and then let him get paint all over himself, to his heart’s content. And Jutta, his buxom girlfriend, most likely brought along Coke by the gallon and pizza from a box to the happy party. That thought was the one that irked Milena the most.
She swiped a pea from the side of Adam’s plate and asked, ‘What about your room here? Don’t you like that anymore?’
‘Why?’ he asked, grabbing a turquoise felt-tip.
‘If you like, we can pick out a new colour here as well and paint it together, you and me – really cool.’
‘Really?’ He looked at her with surprise.
‘Out of the question!’ Vera picked up Adam’s plate and dropped it rather noisily into the sink. ‘You can do that kind of nonsense in Hamburg. Here, the walls stay the way they are.’
An hour and a half later, Adam had bathed, Dr Pavlović’s cream had been applied to his arms and legs, and he had drunk a glass of lemon-balm tea to calm him down. As she kissed him goodnight, they agreed that a strong light blue would probably be a very beautiful colour for Hamburg.
When calm had descended over the flat, Milena got herself a glass of mineral water from the kitchen, went to her room and turned on the computer. She was not going to start a fight with Philip. She’d rather stick to the facts and illustrate with a simple calculation the cost of living here in Belgrade – yes, even in a backwater like the Balkans! She pushed Fiona aside, took out her glasses and opened her email. With a cigarillo clenched between her teeth, she hammered on the keyboard. ‘My dear Philip!’
Under the desk lamp, Fiona purred and closed her sleepy eyes. Milena leant back. Why was her stomach so knotted with anger? Two weeks ago, Philip had informed her about his flat and moving plans and had tried to start a conversation about it – or at least what he considered a conversation. By his standards, he had attempted to communicate. She, on the other hand, had bottled things up, stayed silent and hoped that the whole matter might just resolve itself in the end.
She put on her glasses and typed, ‘Congratulations on your new flat! Please book Adam’s flight as soon as possible, maybe over one of the next couple of weekends, so you can put your plans into action.’
Milena took a sip of water, ignored Fiona’s stare and continued, ‘If you’re planning to cut your maintenance payments in the process, please don’t forget to explain to your son why there will be no guitar lessons in the future (which he won’t mind too much) and why his membership of the basketball club will have to be cancelled. We can decide in the summer about the art school.’ Her mobile rang.
She looked at the phone display and pressed the green button. ‘Siniša’, she said absent-mindedly. ‘I tried to call you.’
‘What are we doing wrong? We keep on missing each other.’
‘Ah, Siniša.’ She clasped her phone between her chin and shoulder and clicked ‘send’. ‘It’s good to hear your voice.’
‘Because I couldn’t get hold of you I had to get the lowdown from Enver.’
‘I haven’t heard f
rom him. Did he get home all right?’
‘He told me that you bumped into Goran when you were wandering round that house.’
Milena leant forward. ‘That reminds me, I wanted to ask you: have you found out yet what will happen to the property in Talinovac?’
‘Well, I’ve tried to, and frankly it’s not that easy. You can’t imagine the arrogance of these bureaucrats in sending you all round the houses and trying to pull the wool over your eyes at every twist and turn. Plus, the legal position’s somewhat confused.’
‘What does that mean, exactly?’
‘Allegedly, the property reverts to the state.’
‘To Kosovo?’
‘No, to Serbia.’
‘A house in Kosovo gets returned to the Serbian state?’
‘We could lodge an objection, of course. After all, the house was granted to the Valetićs, and if it was legitimately their property then I see no reason why it shouldn’t form part of their estate after their death.’
‘So it should go to their children.’
‘In equal parts. Unless their last will and testament states otherwise. But before I take on the case, I’d like to have another conversation with Slavujka.’
‘I’ve been trying to get hold of her this whole time, but no joy.’ Milena clicked on her inbox. ‘All I get is an automatic out-of-office reply.’
‘And what does that say?’
‘That she’s going to be back on Monday.’
‘OK.’ It sounded like Siniša made a note of that. ‘Then we should get together next week and look at what documents and deeds there are.’
‘That could get difficult.’
Milena pulled the dark blue leaflet she had purloined at the State Chancellery from the pile on her desk.
‘Why? Has everything disappeared?’
‘A Serbian couple, friendly neighbours of the Valetićs, salvaged all the personal papers, but all that stuff ’s with Goran now. And Goran has disappeared.’
‘Maybe he’s got in touch with his sister in the interim. Or we’ll ask at this security firm; he has to show up at his place of his employment sometime, right? The guy can’t vanish into thin air, can he?’
‘There’s something else bothering me, though.’ Milena opened the leaflet. It had a map of Kosovo on the cover, with symbols liberally dispersed across it, like Monopoly houses.
‘Just to make my position crystal clear,’ Siniša interrupted her, ‘we shouldn’t faff about for too long. I’m sure we could establish a precedent here. Are you listening to me?’
Milena leafed through the booklet. ‘Here it is.’ She turned the corner of the page as a bookmark. ‘Listen to this: “The houses that are made available to the returnees will be built on time, fully repaired and made ready for immediate occupation.”’
‘Where does it say that?’
‘Page seventeen, paragraph three. And a bit further down it says: “Until such time, they are to be protected from looting, vandalism and squatters.”’
‘I don’t understand a word.’
‘In this report from the State Chancellery, it says that there’s money available – we’re talking two or three million here. And that’s for the houses alone.’
‘Two or three million for the houses destroyed in Kosovo? Sorry, darling, that’s peanuts!’
‘Maybe that’s true. But to me it still sounds like a lot of money.’
‘First NATO bombs the place and flouts international law, and then a couple of million euros are supposed to make everything all right again?’
‘Listen to me. The house in Talinovac is nothing but a roof and three and a half walls. There’s no electricity, no running water – nothing. Why wasn’t it secured against looting and vandalism? Or was it never built for returnees in the first place?’
‘Why are you suddenly so interested in the technical details?’
‘I’m interested in whether the bureaucrats at the State Chancellery actually know where they sent the returnees. Whether they know the place, and have the slightest idea what the situation on the ground there is like. And whether Talinovac is ultimately replicated right across the region.’
The other end of the line had gone quiet.
‘Hello?’ Milena asked. ‘Are you still there?’
‘I’m not sure whether we should open that can of worms.’
‘Why? Are you afraid?’
‘Of course not.’
Milena closed the flyer. ‘Then we ought to look into it.’
20
Marco put his foot on the projecting wall, reached up with his arm and felt around in the gutter for the torch. After having almost fallen into the shaft that they had started to dig here in the past few days, he didn’t want to take another step without the thing.
‘Hurry up!’ Diana yawned and, feeling the chill, wrapped her arms around herself. ‘I’m dead tired.’
Marco shone the torch into the courtyard. The plank that he had placed across the ditch that morning was still there. ‘Take care.’ He offered his hand to Diana. ‘There’s quite a steep drop here.’
‘By the way…’ Diana balanced on the plank and then leapt across. ‘I’ve found a job for you. A private function, middling size. There are three of us girls doing the waitressing and they also want a bloke. I told them I’d ask you.’
‘How much?’
‘Fifty euros.’
He pushed open the door to the staircase and pointed the light at the well-trodden steps. ‘Where?’
‘Up in Dedinje. Košutnjak.’
‘Some VIP event?’
‘A politician. Celebrating a milestone birthday.’
Marco shot her a glance. ‘Not the baldy, the guy who passed you his number at the do in the Sava Centre the other day?’
Diana shrugged her shoulders. ‘What if it is?’
‘I don’t get it! Be honest – is there something going on between you two?’
‘Look, compared to the rest he really is in a different league. He’s got something… what do you call it? I bet he’ll be president one day.’
They climbed the staircase side by side and Marco put his arm around Diana. ‘The guy’s a pig,’ he said. ‘What do you want with him?’
‘He’s got connections; he knows people, including some directors and film producers. Look, love, it’s just how these things work. If you constantly play by the rules, you shouldn’t be surprised if you miss the bus.’
Marco didn’t reply. When Diana set her sights on something, she could be really ruthless, whereas he hesitated and prevaricated. The story with Nat was a case in point. The man wanted concrete information: where was Goran? What were his plans? And Marco produced… nothing. He did everything to ensure that Nat would lose interest. And yet all he had to do was tell the guy what he wanted to hear! Marco unlocked the apartment and switched on the light.
‘Will you be there on Thursday? Shall I tell them you’re up for it?’ Diana threw her bag on the sofa and picked up the CD lying on the kitchen table.
‘Yep.’ He yanked off his tie, opened the fridge and uncorked a bottle, while Diana pushed every button on the old CD player.
A moment later, a cacophony of voices could be heard, making nasal-sounding announcements like in an airport. Sounds fell like drops into a water glass, interspersed with a chirping sound as if a cricket were in the room. Diana turned up the volume.
A synthesiser kicked in, then a saxophone established the beat. In the distance, a strange rushing sound could be heard, like a comet. Its arrival into the soundscape was greeted with sacred chanting. Diana closed her eyes, stretched out her arms and tipped her head to one side in expectation. Marco took a gulp and put down the bottle.
They danced, abandoning themselves to the rhythm, that framework within which there were no questions, no standing still, only the rolling wave motion, which swelled, broke and then started to build once more. Marco forgot that he was penniless and alone, and that life was complicated and the future unclear. There was o
nly the here and now, this room, and in the middle of it two bodies, Diana’s and his, in harmony with the universe. Marco’s kitchen, on the fourth floor of a building earmarked for demolition in the east of Belgrade, was the best dance floor in the world, and for a few minutes life felt great.
As the music faded and the rhythm morphed into another, they collapsed exhausted onto the sofa. Marco passed Diana the bottle; he watched her drink and then reach for her mobile phone.
Marco flung one leg over the armrest and rested his head against her shoulder, felt her warmth and tried to think about nothing, especially not about Pascal and how he was most likely partying relentlessly in Ibiza. He knew he oughtn’t entertain such thoughts, but he mused bitterly that his family had scraped together eight thousand euros for his brother back then. Eight thousand! To pay the people smugglers who had got him across the Hungarian border and over to Germany. His father, mother, uncles, aunts and cousins – the whole clan had chipped in, in expectation of a good return. Yet in the interim his brother had been returned, put on a plane by the German state, and the money was gone for good. Marco could have told his brother and the whole rotten clan: the idea that a Kosovan Albanian would be granted asylum in Germany or anywhere else was absurd. But he hadn’t been consulted or involved in any way in this decision. His views and his way of life counted for nothing with his family.
A sudden flash of light jolted him from his reverie. Diana looked at her mobile screen, laughed and wordlessly handed him the smartphone. Marco zoomed in on the faces in the selfie she’d taken of them. ‘This politician bloke’, he asked, ‘what’s his name again?’
Peony Red Page 17