19

AFTER THEY’D INVENTORIED the new shipment of material in the storage shed, Branoš and Erol sat in the sun on the front steps with beers, looking out at the mountains. Branoš wanted to find out as much as possible about Ragan’s gang, which prompted Erol to tell his story, and while he was telling it he stopped at one part, then continued, only to return to the same moment again.

“There was something in the conversation with Ragan in the apartment. When he said I reminded him of someone and then, the way he looked at me when I said I had my mother’s last name. . . . The way he asked about my father. . . . I can’t figure him out.”

“You can’t figure him out?”

“It has nothing to do with this situation. But there was something about that conversation, something unclear, which keeps bugging me. Later, when I was reading the play, Hamlet, that feeling kept coming back. I have that book, Sobotka gave it to me. I’ve read it every now and then ever since.”

“Hamlet, eh?”

Erol nodded and drank his beer.

Branoš looked at him sideways and shook his head. “You should have told that to the reporter. I wonder what he would have written then.”

“Please tell me, how did you manage to get your university degree?” Erol asked Branoš, as if he’d always wanted to ask him that. “How come the war didn’t get in the way?”

“Long story.”

“So, brother, shorten it.”

Then they noticed the watchman circling the factory’s grounds.

He yelled, “Aren’t you two leaving?”

“Want to grab another beer at the Lagoon?” said Branoš.

“Let’s go,” said Erol.

“My old man, Arman, he was against the war, but he wasn’t like all those others who didn’t see it coming,” Branoš said as they settled onto the barstools. “He used to say, ever since the war began up north: this disturbance is moving toward us. That’s how he used to talk, he didn’t say ‘war,’ but ‘disturbance,’ because the only evening news he followed closely was the weather report—we had to keep the noise down for that part. Oh yes, I remember now, he also favored the phrase ‘major disturbance,’ like when they say, ‘Later this evening a major frontal disturbance will move across the region.’ He would, supposedly by chance, watch the political parts of the news as well and say, ‘There, you can see what a major disturbance is. . . . Soon it will be frontal.’ Those last days before the war, he said to me, ‘Go pack your things, son, say your goodbyes, I worked it out with our cousins up north.’ I protested, the war wasn’t at its worst at that point, just a few skirmishes. Everyone else thought the same until the last second, and he told me, ‘Don’t think this shit will pass just because you want it to.’ That’s my last memory of him.

“And so, okay, I go to my cousins in a town, not a city, not a village, in the plains. The war is partway there, but the major frontal disturbance has already passed them by, and my cousins take me in as their own; they take care of me, and they enroll me in school as a refugee, and one way or another I finish my senior year of high school, and then comes summer. I start thinking what I’ll do now, because the war is in full swing here, so I couldn’t come home. Then one day they tell me, ‘Cousin Benjo’s building a new house and we’ll be lending a hand.’ So I tag along and they work all day, and so do I, of course. I work hard, because my cousins are all I have and I want to show them I’m part of the team. . . . I didn’t even know Benjo before this, because he was my cousins’ cousin, and I’m feeling good about how my network’s expanding, this helps me feel safer. Benjo slaps me on the back, he likes me, and when the time comes to leave, my cousins say, ‘Why not stay at Benjo’s tonight?’ What could I say? ‘Sure, I guess.’”

“I figure I’ve overstayed my welcome. But Benjo is glad to let me stay.

“I already know the work on the house will continue at Benjo’s. And so it does the next day, and the day after, and the day after that, because it’s a sizable house he’s building. He’d slap me on the back, tell me he doesn’t know what he’d do without me. My mother’s cousins’ cousin, Benjo offers me food and drink, and so we work in the heat every day like two friends, like father and son, only his son is over the border, working, and I’m not his friend or his son. I’m just there. So Benjo sends me here and sends me there, do this, and this and this, then we eat and drink, and Benjo marvels at how strong I’ve become while helping him. No wonder, I bust my ass all day long, and those cousins of mine never show their faces again. I understand that I’m Benjo’s project now, and Benjo is in charge of me. That’s why Benjo sometimes gets mad if I rest a bit too long, and the house is getting built too slowly. We work from one day to the next. This could go on for a year, I figure. This is the summer when I turn eighteen; then, luckily, one day Benjo says we’ll stop for a bit, because he doesn’t have the money for building material, I hang out there in the plains for a few days, because Benjo has given me a little pocket change, but only when I ask him for it—because he’s short of cash. I spend it all in a flash, although I manage to save a bit. I just lie around in the plains, don’t have money even for coffee, much less to go out with a girl. No money, no nothing. I become quieter without money or anything of my own, and one day one of Benjo’s neighbors comes over and asks Benjo, ‘Can you lend him to me tomorrow?’

“He doesn’t ask me, he asks Benjo, and Benjo stands there for a moment, looks at me, and ways, ‘No can do, let him rest.’

I see on Benjo’s face that he thinks he’s being gracious, such a big man. He looks over at me as though I should be thanking him. But I just look at him from my body like a cat. I want to call my mom and dad and cry, but I know the phone lines are down. Then I realize my dad will say the disturbance won’t pass if I just wait, so I pack my things and leave Benjo’s that night. He would later say how he was absolutely baffled that I’d left without a goodbye. . . . That’s what my cousins told me when I called them later from a refugee center, which took me a day and a night to reach on foot. They were disappointed with my behavior, too, and they’d been worried about where I could have gotten to and said, ‘Okay, that’s your choice, if you prefer living at the refugee center over being with us.’ I’d offended them, but their door was still open to me. . . . This was all very upsetting, and I even thought about going back, but something stopped me: the image of the man asking Benjo if he could borrow me, and me being afraid Benjo might just say yes—and that little spark in my brain, my little spark of rebellion—because things around you are lining up, so it looks as if your rebellion will come across like a slap in the face and bad behavior, because your servitude is now somehow normal, and inch by inch, you’ve gone along with it, and you’ve fallen into an altogether different logic and status, you must be living with a different status if someone can ask your host to borrow you. If you were to stand up at that point and say, ‘What the fuck is this?’ you’d be starting a small revolution, but you can’t be so rude, and especially if you’ve been good and silent and obedient till then, this would be a little impolite.

“So that’s how it went down, and when I hear someone’s a slave or a servant somewhere, I know how these things go.

“But never mind, I had a little of the spark left in me, so I fled to the refugee center, although things weren’t coming up roses there, either. They made me work there, too, unloading this or that. I carried my fair share of coffins as well, because every time a grandmother died in the camp, they’d grab me and three Gypsies to carry the old woman and lower her into the ground. We became something of a team for that, so even now, when I see a death notice for a grandmother taped to a streetlamp today, it gets to me, and at night I dream they want me to carry the coffin and I’m back in that life as if nothing ever happened after that. In short, I was at the cemetery a lot. I noticed bands at other funerals, and I started to go to the funerals on my own, silently singing along with them until I learned the songs. Then I came with a guitar once, which I’d borrowed from someone, and I told them, ‘I know the songs and I can play the guitar.’ Because I’d had a band in high school, a punk band, the metal kids got on our nerves, but fuck it, it was the times. . . . One of the graveyard singers told me, ‘Good, we thought you were from the tax ministry, checking up on how much we earn, or that you were a disgruntled customer for whom we didn’t sing nicely enough.’ They were regular jokers—because when you’re at the cemetery all the time, you have to joke around. So they told me they’d call me if one of them couldn’t make it. And, it just so happened they were a man short. Little by little, I began to sing with them—I was paid less than they were, but that was fine, too. First, I sang with them for a year, I bought a guitar, and then I made some connections and went to the big city, figuring that there had to be more customers there. I was right, although there were also more singers, but I continued to put in the effort, got books and sheet music, learned some old songs, not many folks made such an effort, so I really was sought after and popular. A year or two passed. . . . Those cousins of mine helped as well with some paperwork. They were glad I’d made it, and when Benjo died of a stroke just after having finished the house, they called me to sing for him.”

“Really? Did they pay you?”

“You can’t ask your cousins to pay!”

“Ha ha, but wait, I asked you about the university.”

“Well, those were my preparations for the university, Erol. First, I had to not become a slave, and then I had to realize I didn’t want to sing in graveyards all my life. Only then did I enroll in engineering school, while working. I was still preparing for my last exams before graduation when I worked in Afghanistan.”