Marco had been working in the Zeppelin for a year and a half now, but he still didn’t understand a strange phenomenon: whereas yesterday people had been knocking back one gin and tonic after the other, today they were drinking prosecco like it was going out of fashion. Diana and he had once speculated whether there was a link between the music they played and the drinks they served – somebody who loved free jazz drank gin, soul meant they should put the prosecco on ice, techno led to vodka with Red Bull, while pop music tended to go with the ladies’ favourite, a Buck’s Fizz. But in all likelihood it was far simpler than that, like tomato juice on aeroplanes: someone orders one and then other people follow suit. Marco placed the glass upside down to let it dripdry and blew a strand of hair out of his face.
The guy with the dress handkerchief had of course ordered a Bloody Mary, after first slapping his fancy leather gloves down on the bar. Typical foreigner. Nat – the name he introduced himself with – spoke perfect Serbian with a refined accent and asked after Goran in such a smarmily friendly way that Diana immediately marked him down as a creep and later rechristened him ‘Mr Natty’. Marco especially remembered his spotted handkerchief and the fact that he played tennis. But the significance of the business with Goran can only have dawned on Marco after this woman had come round enquiring so persistently after that twat.
Diana used a short break to key something into her smartphone. The singer on stage had closed her eyes while performing and the people in the audience were swaying along to the rhythm. Marco dried his hands and glanced at his watch. It was too early to tell whether the programme would end with this set or whether there would be a couple of encores. Marco tucked his shirt into his trousers, leant against the bar and crossed his arms.
Tomorrow morning he’d have to go to the Office of Registration and ask about his passport, a monthly ritual. They would make him wait – two hours minimum – before informing him that the matter was in hand. It had been the same story for over a year now. When he enquired after the first three months they’d told him that he had submitted the wrong photographs. Then the official who was dealing with his application had gone on holiday, for an eternity, and apparently no one else in this shitty office was capable of dealing with his application. Finally they told him they’d had a burst water pipe and that everything had been destroyed, sorry. He’d had to resubmit all his papers, have new photos taken and fill out all the forms again. He had no choice. Kosovan Albanians were treated by officialdom as second-class citizens but, even so, he had a right to a Serbian passport. How much longer would that be the case, though? The fact that his application had been dragged out endlessly was quite deliberate; this system was corrupt and paradoxical and he was caught in the middle of it, at the mercy of these bureaucrats, with their arbitrary abuse of power and their harassment.
‘Hey Marco, could I stay at yours for a couple of days?’ Diana said, putting down her telephone. ‘From Tuesday to Thursday?’
‘No problem.’ Marco took the sieve out of the sink and emptied it into the rubbish bin. ‘Are you subletting?’
‘I’m pissed off.’ She took a sip. ‘Goran stole from me. I mean, what’s wrong with the guy? If he needed money he could have asked, couldn’t he? Maybe I’d even have given it to him.’
‘The guy’s off his trolley.’
‘I can absolutely understand how he’d be freaked out at the moment.’ Diana pulled the hairband off her ponytail and straightened her hair. ‘That horrific story with his parents and the fact he has nobody to unburden himself to… But I can do without him taking the piss myself.’
‘Where’s he living now?’
‘No idea. In his car, maybe?’
Marco thought for a minute. ‘That woman earlier, with the Old Fashioned, the one who said Goran had a sister. Did you know that? Perhaps you should talk to her.’
‘Forget it. That one only thinks about money and how she can make more.’ Her eyes lighted on the little business card, which was still lying on the bar. ‘That’s it now. I’ve had it with him. I’m changing the locks, then I’ll get a new phone number and he need never darken my door again.’ She pushed the card into her trouser pocket, picked up the tray and started serving again.
Marco watched her collect glasses and take new orders, and saw how her ponytail bounced with every movement. He knew full well that she would let Goran back into her life, every time. He only had to turn up at her door, with those puppy eyes, and she’d open her purse and offer him a space in her warm bed. And that was fine; after all, Goran’s parents had been murdered, slaughtered by Kosovan Albanians, Marco’s fellow countrymen. The whole thing was completely sick, totally fucked, utterly unbelievable. Marco drank and then put away his glass.
He hated it, being an Albanian from Kosovo. He wanted nothing to do with the people who roamed the inner city begging, who lived in corrugated-iron huts on the outskirts of the city, stole cars and murdered Serbians back home. He personally had never had any problems with Serbs, quite the contrary: his first friend came from Novi Sad, and Belgrade had always been the greatest where he was concerned.
Diana put empty glasses on the bar and handed the new order to him. Marco scanned the piece of paper: two beers, two white wines, one OJ and – bingo – seven glasses of prosecco! With a grin on his face he flipped the towel over his shoulder and went to work.
A crack had developed in his view of the world only since that business with Pascal, the Frenchman with the curly black hair. He caught his first glimpse of the guy in the Grade, exchanged glances with him in the Interim; they had met up again in the 2044 and became inseparable thereafter. The weekend had been perfect until, on the last evening, on Skardar Street in the middle of the nightclub district, they had been abused, spat on and called gay foreigners, and ultimately almost beaten up for it. Marco pushed the cork back into the bottle.
He should have kept a wary eye out and seen those guys – standard-issue straights – coming. Instead, Pascal had blamed himself for being so rash as to hold Marco’s hand in public. But how could he have known what people here were like? He was at home in Paris, in Marseille and other places where no one had to hide from anyone else. Even at the airport, when they’d said goodbye, Pascal had been completely beside himself, so Marco hadn’t bothered to ask whether he’d ever come back. It had been the saddest of farewells. Angered by recalling it now, Marco flung his empty juice box into the rubbish bin.
Without a passport, he was a prisoner. He couldn’t book a flight and go after Pascal like any other normal human being would have. His life’s happiness depended on some officials in cardigans who didn’t see fit to issue him with a piece of paper that he was entitled to by law. As a Kosovan Albanian, he was a piece of shit as far as they were concerned. He wiped the tray and put the drinks on it.
What if he gave the guy with the dress handkerchief a bit of lowdown about Goran? That might be a possibility. He should check what the information would be worth to the guy. It wouldn’t do anybody any harm, and he could immediately pass the cash on to the officials at the Registration Office. How much would he have to put into the envelope and surreptitiously push across the desk in order to finally get the damned thing issued? He pulled the drawer open.
The piece of paper with the telephone number was still there. He shoved it into his trouser pocket. Calm down, now. One step at a time. He took a glass, one of the big ones, poured in mineral water and added the juice of half a lemon, just the way Diana liked it. He set the drink down in front of her and asked, ‘By the way, do you know what he’s got in mind?’
She didn’t react, but went on keying something into her smartphone.
Marco wiped the surface and polished it with a cloth. He tried again. ‘I mean, after all this has happened – is Goran going to go back to his job now and carry on as if nothing’s happened? I can’t see it myself.’
She drank, put down the glass and muttered, without once taking her eyes off the display, ‘Honestly, I don’t even want to know.’
‘What don’t you want to know?’ he insisted. ‘That he’s going to go down there and sort those people put?’ He poured some more fresh lemon juice into the glass. ‘Does Goran still have his gun?’
‘What?’
‘His service pistol. Or did he have to hand that in?’
‘As far as I know, he’s only on gardening leave. Why are you so interested all of a sudden?’ As she was drinking she was checking him out. Marco shrugged his shoulders and threw the squeezed lemon into the waste.
Diana went off to serve again, and Marco starred at his phone. He’d never done anything like this before. But what had he got to lose? He just had to keep it vague to start with and, most importantly, make it clear that this information wasn’t for free.
He pushed open the door to the toilet cubicle, locked it, closed the seat lid and sat down. In one hand he held the piece of paper, and in the other his phone. He keyed in the number, found he’d misdialled and started again. He was nervous. But why? If the worst came to the worst he’d get the brush-off, but at least he’d have tried.
He pressed the green button – dialling, signal and then it went to voicemail. Perfect. Marco cleared his throat.
‘Hi, Nat? It’s Marco here. Remember me? The bartender from the Zeppelin. We spoke the other day.’
He tried to give his voice a firmer, manlier tone. He had to speak up and not think of Goran or of Diana. He was someone who had something to sell, and he knew what he was doing.
He said, ‘It’s to do with Goran Valetić. I’ve got something that might be of interest to you. You can call me back – any time.’