A lattice of smoke. Skin, cracked in a webbed pattern. Crosses and crossroads. Curried leather. A cough.
‘What?’
The general stands at the window and stares out across the field. A cigar clenched between his teeth. The honey smell of tobacco reminds Kras of the brick oven of his childhood. The fields are windswept and bare. When he exhales, mists ascend. A bee slams into the window, three times, and, dejected, flies off. It mistook the aide’s red beret for a flower.
‘Wolf, Wolf, Wolf,’ chimes the general.
Kras looks at the aide. His face is expressionless. Kras ponders whether to mark him down as violent or daft. Perhaps he is both. Staring through the walls, to the end of the universe, straight into the back of his head. He came just so he’d be here. The general shakes the ash from his cigar onto the windowsill. He waits for the ash to cool and brushes it off. They’re in Kras’s study. Surrounded by wood.
Kras waits and sees. He knows the military theatre well. The aura of violence that hangs in the air and soaks through into skin like smoke into fabric. Though he’s not afraid, he’s nevertheless thankful for his lack of a tail. It might have crept between his legs. You know, just in case. His rage has subsided. He has nothing to be ashamed of. In this society they tolerate pathological outbursts from grown men. Only Grace would follow up on her threats. The rest just looked away. He threw the axe to the ground and calmly invited the guests in. Nobody let anything unprofitable linger in the air.
‘So…’ says the general and turns to Kras. Kras raises his eyebrows. ‘So, Wolf, to get right down to it, I’m ready to believe you, so long as you don’t beat around the bush.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
The general smiles grimly and the aide moves his head, while Kras sizes them up.
‘I hope that is the truth.’ He puffs out his cheeks and coils a hard curl of smoke around his mouth. ‘Because I have, on account of our friendship, stretched protocol a little. If I were going by the rules, you’d be the one coming to me, come hell or high water. So consider this a birthday present and pledge honesty. You owe me at least that much.’
‘I still don’t know what you’re talking about.’
The aide coughs into his fist.
‘Our ship is leaking, Wolf. It is leaking quite a bit and has been for quite some time. Half the agency is spinning around on its axis and constantly biting itself in the arse, and it was only a matter of time before some analyst pointed a finger at you. They’ve exhausted all other possibilities. And you could say, of course, you could be thinking that they are going to start making all sorts of accusations now, because they are in it up to their necks and will try to cast suspicion all the way up to Breivik just to save themselves from drowning, but…’
Kras doesn’t respond. Every twitch of the body counts. The only freedom lies in staying still. Anything else is slavery of character.
‘…once they started entering data the probability level skyrocketed. They’re claiming, with eighty percent certainty, that you’re the leak, Wolf. Factor in all the dead ends they were considering before and the percentage climbs to over ninety. We both know the algorithms are rarely wrong, which is why I haven’t come for your confession. Human curiosity got the best of me, so we’re not doing this in front of cameras. I’m not interested in how much. I want to ask you – why?’
Kras snarls from the depths of his lungs. The aide adjusts his stance, the general turns his head.
‘Wolf?’
‘Someone must have slandered me, Globus… I find it hard to believe you two came here to stuff my head with libel. And the damn computers can go to hell.’ He bit his tongue. Literally. ‘This has got to be some kind of RDR intrigue, no? What went wrong? And now you’ll do me for it? Like that guy, Kennedy, via Khrushchev, first you hit your predecessor, then you yourself resign. Gobec fucked something up so soon? How serious is it?’
The general spits into his palm and puts out his cigar.
‘This is not part of some elaborate intrigue, Wolf! You are up shit creek and that’s that. Everything fits. All the things that kept the algorithm incomplete were things you carried home for analysis. Our strategy was always sound and yet the Chinese always knew what we were up to.’
‘If the HRC had really read my data, then HADE would still be in the desert.’
‘Don’t belittle us! The only thing that can explain the deviations in the results is a leak. And that leak is you, Wolf. That much we know! Now stop lying, because it’s insulting to me.’
Wolf storms over to his desk and bends down to the cupboard door and the safe behind it. The aide’s muscles tense up. He’s ready to fire at any time, but the general’s raised hand stays him. The general moves over to Wolf and peers past his fingers as he turns the dial.
21 – 10 – 20 – 21
The safe opens with a vacuum sigh. It’s filled to the top with rainbow-coloured folders.
‘Everything’s in here,’ says Kras.
‘Show me,’ says the general.
Kras pulls a purple folder from the pile and offers it to the general.
‘Open it,’ he says.
Kras feels the rough cardboard against his fingers. He snaps the folder open. All three stare into it. The sheets of paper are blank, but for the outline of a head with great big round ears.
‘Are you taking me for a fool, Wolf?’ asks the general.
Kras licks his fingers and flips through the sheets of paper. They’re all the same. He flings them furiously in the air, and they glide around. The aide snatches one out of the air. He looks at it and speaks.
Up until now he’s been silent. His croaky magpie voice slices into Kras’s eardrum.
‘That’s… Mickey Mouse.’
It takes Kras all of his strength not to sink his teeth into the aide’s abnormally thick neck.
‘I know that, you bloody moron,’ he hisses through clenched teeth. The aide shrugs his shoulders, and even the general ignores this remark.
‘What is this? A break-in? Espionage? Who else knew the combination?’ asks the general.
‘No one,’ Kras says, ‘but everything points to it being… my little…my own…’ he falls silent and stares out the window. This is a feeling Kras doesn’t know. It stretches from the pain of betrayal, to disappointment, through shame at his own mistake, to a sort of pride. He’d never expected that sort of a Mitja. He dared break into his father’s most forbidden place? He’d rip him a new arsehole if he ever caught him, and even though Mitja must have known that, it didn’t stop him. But what did he do with the papers? How was it that some middling little indigenous villages put up a better defence than the headquarters ever expected? Did he warn them? How? Kras thinks of Bernard’s stunned look yesterday, just before he punched him. Where did he get Mitja’s tape? How did they communicate? If he’s going to blame his son for the leak now, they’ll throw him in jail somewhere along the equator. Does he deserve it? Would he survive? Would he find out who put him there?
‘My own brother,’ says Kras and lets indignation take hold. ‘That fucking prick stole from me, right from under my nose, and then sold it on. Business has been really good for him these past few years. He paid to get a new church built, he lent money to half the family for any stupid fancy they may have had. I thought he’d actually got himself some competence, and was even grateful for it. Bernard was always useless. I’m not even surprised, now that I see nothing has changed.’
The general’s eyes narrow. He’s smelt the gentle whiff of a lie.
‘Bernard…that dystrophic critter whose nose you busted open yesterday?’
Kras nods and smiles ominously.
‘And,’ the general asks, ‘where is he now, this Bernard?’
‘I sent him to the hills.’
‘To the hills?’
‘He’s driving my mum and the aunts to their homestead. Until…hm, until the smoke blows over.’
‘Yes, smoke,’ the general nods and motions to his aide. ‘Smoke. Good. We’re leaving now. I’ll issue an immediate arrest warrant for Bernard. We can hold off a little with your interrogation. If he’s going to drag you into this, you’d better be ready. I’ll see what I can do. No promises. But nothing’s impossible.’
Kras thanks him with a nod of the head.
‘One more thing before we go,’ says the general in a quiet voice as he makes his way to the door. ‘The 250th Infantry hasn’t seen your son in over a month.’ Kras takes a step towards him and grabs him by the shoulder. The aide puffs out his chest.
‘What?’
‘You asked yesterday. I checked the how and the what of it. He’s not at any of the posts. I asked around. No sign of him from our ships. Not from any planes either.’
‘Wait a minute, Globus. Just what the hell are you trying to tell me? Is that a threat? Are you threatening me?’
The general turns to Wolf and actually looks sincere.
‘Sorry, Wolf, but this sort of thing happens all the time. The boys can’t take it. They run off into the jungle. They get taken by some dark woman, if they’re lucky, or by some other dark thing if they aren’t. If he contacts you, tell him to get back to his damn post straight away. If he’s not back in a month he’ll be listed as a deserter. And then…’
The general motions to his aide to open and hold the door for him. Kras’s head is throbbing. His lips have dried out. He’s got no words, no strength, no possibilities. Everything is happening beyond him. His arms are dangling by his side. The general’s head disappears down the stairs. A ringing telephone cuts the heavy silence.
‘Hello?’
A sigh.
‘Hello? Kras, is that you?’
Kras grinds his teeth and considers hanging up.
‘Wolf, who the fuck is this? Say something. Bernard here. There’s been an accident.’
That makes him hesitate. He looks around. Nobody.
‘Janez is dead, Wolf. Wolf? Is there anybody there? Give me Kras.’
‘I’m here, Berdo.’
‘Why the fuck are you so silent?’
‘I was thinking about just hanging up. I don’t have the energy to deal with you. But what’s this about an accident?’
‘WOLF! Do not hang up. You have to help us. Janez fell asleep at the wheel. Well, first he took a wrong turn, then we got lost, and when we turned back he fell asleep and went over the cliff.’
‘And Mum?’ asks Kras.
‘Mum’s fine, the aunts are fine, I’m fine. We wandered around for a few hours until we came across a house. Some old guy, a loner, a weirdo, if you ask me. He’s up to something, no idea what. That’s why we need somebody to come get us.’
‘Did you call an ambulance?’
‘Ambulance? We’re fine, we just need somebody to…’
‘For Janez?’
‘Oh, yeah. Wolf, that was a cliff and a half. He didn’t stand a chance. I’ll take care of everything, don’t worry, just come get us.’
‘Me?’
‘You, anybody. Fuck! I’m going nuts every day for this family, you dumped Mum on me, then you…’ Bernard’s voice trails off. ‘There’s something going on up there,’ he says, and Kras clears his throat.
‘Bernard, I’m not in the mood to listen to some rambling explanation, but maybe you were lucky, getting lost.’
‘What? Hang on a second, I hear Mum…’
‘I said maybe you’re lucky that you didn’t make it over there. Headquarters is going to issue a warrant for your arrest anytime now. I told them where you are.’
‘Ah, for fuck’s sake, Kras…’
‘You don’t want to know why?’
‘What? No. Yes. Because of the Krpans, right?’
‘What Krpans?’
‘Fuck, Kras, can’t you do anything for me?’
‘What Krpans, Berdo?’
He can hear quiet snivelling through the receiver. Each of Bernard’s sobs produces a light honk. His nose still hurts.
‘I knew they’d come sooner or later… Aw, crap… Mitja gave me a hand. Sorry, Kras. Sorry, please, but…but…’
Bernard looks for a means of stirring the greatest degree of compassion. Because he knows who he’s dealing with, his despair sounds almost sincere.
‘…fuck, Kras, you saved the arse of that moron who killed his wife, but you can’t save the arse of your own brother? You won’t!’
‘Evan didn’t kill anybody,’ says Kras.
‘Neither did I!’
‘Mojca committed suicide,’ says Kras. He sees his friend before him. Not the one who came to ask for help, the nervous wreck of a widower, madman and weakling, but the one from back when they were still young and still had clear eyes and roars of laughter on their lips and acted like the world had signed them a contract for eternity… The Cut was their first cry of the real. It broke them apart. A hollow burial. It was as if a filter had been cast over the world. Staying friends was hard. They all had to take care of themselves. Kras managed. Evan, barely. It has been years since he’d heard anything about Zoja. Her writing was banned in Europe. A threat to the system, apparently. Kras had never been able to understand grown-ups who were afraid of poetry. As if they acknowledged that the nature of the world is sin. But whose? Does everything really hang in the balance?
‘Veronika too,’ yells Bernard. ‘Yet you’re not getting me any tickets to go East!’
‘Would you like to go East?’ asks Kras.
Bernard lets out another moan.
‘First of all I’d like someone to come get me and take me out of this wooded wolf-fuckery. I’ll figure out how to hide later.’
‘I can’t,’ says Kras, ‘I have to…’
‘Tell somebody, please, tell Alenka or…or…tell Grace! Yes, tell Grace! Tell her she can finally return the favour for that bacchanalia I paid for, no? Order her to come. White Wood, she can ask someone where to go, where the old guy with the dog lives, a huge house, she can’t miss it. Will you?’
‘White Wood?’
‘Yes.’
Kras smiles bitterly.
‘I’ll tell her, Berdo. You take care of yourself now.’
The line cuts out. Kras looks at the receiver a bit curiously before quietly setting it down.
Kras places himself between the doors, turns his mouth towards the hall so there’ll be a loud echo, and hollers like an ape: ‘Full stop!’ He tilts his head in anticipation of a response. When it comes, he nods, content. ‘Full stop,’ yells a female voice from the courtyard, joined soon by that of an old man. Another voice emerges from the kitchen, hoarse, a little quieter, also a woman’s. The voices ring out in tandem from the top floors. One, deep and sonorous, booms from behind Kras’s back. He turns around. Edgar is standing there, smiling at him, but the smile fades when their eyes meet. He hasn’t seen that expression on Kras’s face for years. Hence, full stop.
It was Raven who thought it up, when he got divorced and it looked like the family was falling apart. Back then a thousand tiny grievances suddenly found their way to expression, and life among the Wolfs became increasingly excruciating. A pinch of amateur psychology, a few handbooks on relationships, on mediation and arbitration led him to the very simple idea of shutting all the family members into a space where they would, for a moment, cast off the ballast of the body, allow themselves only ears and mouth, and throw a general amnesty over anything said. If nothing else, they’d blow off a little steam. Sometimes that’s all a person needs. This would be the fourth full stop, ever. Kras was going to do the thing his way.
He walks into the courtyard and looks up into the tree. The priest Meslier is standing under it.
‘Dad, if you don’t come down, we’ll do it without you,’ he shouts.
Raven clings onto a branch and yells, ‘So what!’ He is terribly bothered that he won’t hear what’s been going through their heads these past years, but for once in his life he wants to stick to a decision. He’s never coming down from the trees again.
Kras nods. ‘Very well.’ The priest walks towards him, but Kras’s gaze stops him. ‘What is this “full stop”?’ he asks.
‘It’s only for family,’ replies Kras. Meslier nods vaguely.
‘I’m just going to stay outside,’ he says, as if he had made the decision himself. Kras nods and goes into the house.
He finds them at the table. Edgar is sitting in a chair, scratching his nose and staring absently at the floor. His thick, black hair looks like a pile of tape from an audio-cassette. Kras looks at Mila. She has no idea what an audio-cassette is. She’s probably never even seen one. She’s avoided all the previous full stops; her face is a mixture of disbelief that something like this is really even happening, pride that her presence seems self-evident to everybody, and fear that she might hear too much. Katarina is completely pale. Kras smiles at her. He has been ignoring her these past few days. She’s completely worn out, looking more lost by the minute. No word from Mitja, the birthday stress, then all the chaos that unfolded, which now won’t stop spreading… Katarina smiles back at him. Grace avoids eye contact. Kras is, in spite of everything, satisfied with her. A sturdy conscience, an independent soul. In a top-down operation you can’t help yourself with this sort of people, but they always rise to the challenge of their destiny. Military instinct and family love converge in an amicable gaze. He goes over to her and takes her by the shoulder.
‘Thank you,’ he says. Her expression is a tired one. Eyes closed, she bows.
‘Are we all here?’ asks Kras.
From the staircase, the sound of children laughing. Stoja enters the room. Po, Mira and Mina are chasing each other around the house. Stoja’s skirt is full stop.
‘How’s Alan?’ asks Kras.
‘Ah, he’s good, good,’ replies Stoja suspiciously. She doesn’t trust Kras. Never did. He butchered her first wedding anniversary. Back then she didn’t speak the language well and before they managed to explain what was going on she’d had her nineteenth nervous breakdown. ‘A sprained ankle, but otherwise nothing. Olive’s with him. She’ll bandage his leg. Is Bojan…?’
Kras indicates that he’s still outside.
‘I’m going out,’ says Stoja. Mira is hanging off her skirt and Po squeals before running into Mina. ‘Out, brats!’ yells Stoja, a smile stretching her cheeks. Kras waits for the door to shut behind them before turning back to the table.
‘What did the cops want?’ he asks Edgar.
‘They came for Olga.’
‘Why?’
Edgar imitates the voice of the policewoman: ‘On suspicion of causing bodily harm to a minor.’
Kras frowns, Edgar continues.
‘If I had to guess, I’d say…Alenka.’
‘Do you think she called them?’
‘I would have,’ says Katarina. It slipped out.
‘That’s quite a wound she gave Voranc…’ says Edgar.
‘Ah. You still haven’t told me anything. What did they say? How are you?’
Edgar’s smile is relaxed. ‘All right.’
‘What did they say at the hospital?’
Mila takes the floor.
‘Alenka dreamt up the idea that Voranc is HIV-positive so we’d stay away from them.’
‘That’s it, basically, yes,’ says Edgar.
Kras runs his hands over his temples and looks down. A curse gets tangled up in his vocal chords.
‘What if you went to see her, Edgar? Could you go?’
‘Could you try to talk to her?’ Kras continues, ‘She doesn’t need to be convinced. Tell her that she has a family here, if she needs it, and that she doesn’t need to lie if she wants to do things all on her own. If she wants to press charges, I don’t really care. But she shouldn’t think that means she’s done with us. She’s still a Wolf, tell her that. How does that sound to you?’
They seem satisfied. Edgar crosses his arms over his chest and nods calmly.
‘It’s a deal.’
‘Ok. Good. Grace.’
Grace trembles. Kras notices this and raises a hand.
‘Calm down. I’m sorry. I wasn’t myself. Something came over me. Sorry. Can you forgive me?’
Grace closes her eyes and nods.
‘It would be easier if I had the Singing Herb,’ she says with a snarled lip and a tart tone. Kras smiles and turns to look at Mila. Her belly is in knots. She doesn’t understand what they’re talking about. Maybe they know? She stowed away the goods from the tree house as soon as they got home; she was scared to death that Kras would go that same evening to see what Mitja had left there, but he didn’t. They’d all, on edge, gone right to bed.
‘Unfortunately, we don’t have the herb,’ says Kras and again looks over Mila’s face turning pale. ‘But I still have to ask you something. Well, I won’t ask you myself. Bernard would like you to – how should I put it? – let him call in a favour?’
He repeats in brief what Bernard told him. Katarina puts a hand over her mouth and screams when she hears what happened to Janez.
‘Does Milena know?’ she asks.
Kras shakes his head.
‘Who’s going to tell her?’
‘I don’t know.’
Grace wrinkles her brow.
‘Of course I’ll go,’ she says, ‘I just hope I can find them. White Wood?’
‘Yes.’
‘You may.’
‘Anything else?’ asks Grace.
‘Thank you.’
Grace smiles at him, warmly and against her will. This disarms him. He sits at the head of the table and exhales broadly.
‘I don’t really understand where it all went. All of the sudden, I’m old. Don’t go thinking I’m getting soft for putting it like that. Well, I don’t know. How should I even know what you’re thinking? All these years we’ve been together. But I don’t know.’ He sizes them all up, with a sharp look which they all recognize for one that can persist to the point of hurt. He inclines his head. ‘Do I even know you, I sometimes, not often, only sometimes, ask myself. Are you really what I think you are, or have I just put something into my head and you, who knows why, just act the way I think you should act for as long as I’m looking at you. Who are you when you’re alone?’ The communal discomfort could feed the hungry. Nobody will open up. ‘Am I even allowed to ask that question? Because how do you know who I am? Who I am when I’m alone. You don’t know me. You don’t know anything. Am I also, in your heads, just some strange puppet jumping around on strings you think you know? You don’t know anything. You don’t know anything about me.’ Katarina is perfectly still, she doesn’t want to make the slightest movement since that would attract attention, but that is precisely what her perfect stillness does. ‘My wife knows me better than anybody, but even she knows practically nothing. Because she is not allowed to know some things, because some things I’ve hidden from her, and because other things, well, some things are just invisible as is. And if my own wife doesn’t know me, doesn’t really know me after all these years of living together, how the hell can I expect to know all of you? And yet I worry about you. I feel a responsibility towards you that I don’t feel towards anybody else. Because that’s the way it is. Because we’re a family. No? Am I right?’ For support he looks at Edgar, who’s staring at him the way one stares at a leaky roof. ‘I’m right. And if I take on this responsibility, without making demands on your privacy, that must be ok, no? But if I ever require your privacy, it’s not because I’m tortured by curiosity but because I need to trust. Because I have that need, for trust. Is that too much? Do I want too much?’ Outside, crickets. ‘I don’t want too much. I would kill for you. I have killed for you.’
‘Not for me,’ says Grace. They all hold their breath, expecting an eruption, but Kras’s voice remains steady.
‘Also for you. Also for you. You can’t avoid it. You can’t go off to some elite university in Berlin, and spend your days easing your conscience with petty grievances, and think that you’ve absolved yourself of the guilt for the shit that some have to do and that we all have to live with. There are no free zones, dammit, there haven’t been for decades. All this freedom you have…’ Grace lifts a hand and says quietly, ok, ok, ‘it didn’t come for free. And don’t delude yourself. Don’t delude yourself into thinking you’re safe. A ten-year-old boy wakes up in the middle of a minefield… A cruel God has led him out there to that meadow in the middle of the night, given him one more dream, one more dream, and in the morning, when we all see him, we all wave at him not to move, but he waves back with a smile and takes a step forwards into bang and horror. Nobody went to help him. Too dangerous. He’s writhing away there, no legs, fifty yards away from us, wailing to everybody who’s supposed to love him until he finds the presence of mind to crawl to the next mine and plunge himself into death.’
‘Why now…?’ Grace asked, horrified. All the faces are grey.
‘Because we are that little boy, all of us! Surrounded by mines. And you stretch out an arm, you stretch out a finger, dammit, you stretch out your tongue and bang. Is it an achievement of our civilization that people aren’t even aware of this now? That all of you think everything’s ok? Do you know how many people had to die so we could remain silent? You have no idea. So don’t think me a barbarian for wanting to know, for needing to know, what is going on with you. I have to trust you because I can’t trust anyone else. Do you understand me? I have to trust you because we depend on one another. We share a fate.’
Grace would prefer to remain silent, but she can’t. Eyes closed, she lifts her chin, and her cold voice cuts through the silence.
‘Kras, this is precisely what has defeated us as a society. Each family has bound itself into a bundle of kindling and if there’s one little spark, the whole thing lights up. We don’t care about anything else. That’s why things are as they are. Because we have to watch out for our children, our brothers, sisters, parents, instead of dealing with the world. Because the threat seems so close, even though the only threat to us all is always out there.’
‘What the hell is it you would like to hear, Grace?’ asks Kras.
‘Are you aware of that fact?’
‘Of course I am aware of it!’ Frustration contorts his face. ‘But what am I supposed to tell you? They won! They crammed us all into half a square inch and laid landmines all around. Seriously. What am I supposed to tell you? We won.’
Mila turns from her father to her aunt and back again. They look like each other. She’d never noticed how similar they looked. Edgar bites his lip and Katarina bites her lip. Kras stretches out in his seat and spreads his arms, as if he wanted to provoke a reply.
‘I’d like to hug you,’ says Grace. Katarina’s facial muscles relax into a kindly smile before returning to their former position when she realizes that Kras is offended.
‘Some other time,’ he says, relaxing his hands which had balled themselves into momentary fists.
‘Good. So that’s it. Now you know. Would anyone else like to add anything? You know, it’s full stop. Let’s put it all out there. Mila?’
Mila immediately shakes her head and catches Grace’s look where she can, for a second, see a trace of disappointment. Easy for her, thinks Mila, because she can run back to where she came from whenever she wants. Mila doesn’t take her father at his word – she knows full well how long he can feed off even the slightest of grievances.
‘Ok. Good. Katarina, Mila, I’d like to talk to you alone…’
Edgar and Grace understand.
‘Can you take me to the station?’ Edgar asks. ‘Sure,’ replies Grace. Katarina tosses her the keys. They leave in a curious haste.
‘When’s the last time you spoke to Mitja?’ he asks them. ‘And, please, it’s very important that you tell the truth.’
‘Why?’ asks Katarina, terrified and immediately imagining the worst.
Kras repeats the question: ‘When?’ He tries to encourage Katarina with just a look. She again returns her hand to her mouth.
‘Before he left,’ says Mila, grimly. ‘After that, yesterday was the first time I saw and heard him.’
‘Yesterday, on the screen?’ asks Kras.
‘Yes, where else?’
Kras turns to his wife. ‘And you?’ She shakes her head, convinced she’s been left without a son, that the world is a place of ugliness and pain, and that nowhere will she find any consolation…
‘Katarina?’
She snaps out of her reveries of misery and looks into the air, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know when. A month, a month and a half ago? On the phone.’
‘Did he call you?’
‘Yes. At his allotted time.’
Katarina quickly worked out that on the day the soldiers were allowed to call home, Kras, as if by some magical coincidence, was never anywhere near the house, but she wasn’t about to make any accusations.
‘What did he say?’
‘Nothing much. That he’s fine. That he misses us. That he wants to come home.’
‘He said he wanted to come home?’
‘Ah, Kras, he didn’t mean it like that…’
‘No, I know, Katarina, but do you think he was serious?’
‘Tell me exactly what this is about, please?’
Kras leans on his elbows.
‘Globus told me that Mitja’s no longer with the other soldiers.’
‘What? Well, where is he then?’ asks Katarina. Mila frowns.
‘I don’t know. He disappeared, he’s been gone for a month. That’s why I want to know if he said anything.’
Katarina bites her upper lip and struggles to remember.
‘I don’t know…nothing like that…I don’t think he did… or maybe he did, no, I don’t know…’
‘What?’ asks Kras.
‘Yes, basically he asked me if I know what it means, I don’t know, it was all so strange, some acronym, I won’t be able to remember it now…’
‘RDR? HRC? IA? MENZO? OBI-DAU? UIGOPWTSOALSSV?…’
Katarina chops the air with a finger. ‘That’s it!’
‘UIGOPWTSOALSSV?’
Katarina nods. Kras’s skin bristles.
‘What did you do with the stuff I had on yesterday?’
‘What?’
‘My clothes, from yesterday, where are they?’
‘I put them in the laundry…’ says Katarina, quietly. She knows she’s done something wrong even though she had done exactly what was expected of her. That happens to her a lot. ‘…they were all covered in blood.’
‘Did you check the pockets?’
‘Did I…?’ She’s not quite sure. Usually she does.
‘Did you or did you not?’
‘I don’t know, Kras, there was nothing…’
Kras jumps up and races to the room where the washing machine is churning. He presses button after button, but the spinning doesn’t stop. He reaches for the cord and yanks it out of the socket. The wretched sound would move some to compassion, but Kras hears nothing. He pulls wildly at the little round transparent door and swears as the soapy waterfall splashes over his feet. He extracts a soaking bit of fabric, like a soul from a child. Poor machine.
Stoja had covered Po’s ears, who had covered Mira’s ears, who had covered Mina’s ears. Meslier finds the scene a little comical, but Raven’s evident nervous breakdown has made his back itch, right in the middle where your hands don’t reach. He beseeches Raven to come down from the tree, to cut it out, this childish stubbornness is unbecoming for an adult, and he should once again assume a little responsibility for his family, but Raven just keeps chuckling away to himself and quoting lines from erotic tales to Stoja, who is blushing and barely containing her laughter at the priest’s puffed-up red face.
Po is tired of being in her mum’s arms and wriggles free. Raven’s words die on his lips. He and Po look at each other. He winks at her. She salutes him. This almost moves him to tears, but he hides his response behind a laugh. Po runs into the house. He feels a heartache in his chest. Stoja steps forwards and covers Mira’s ears. Meslier gives a muffled sigh.
‘Bend down and spread ’em. I want to see what you’ve got to hide.’
Alan fell off the roof. He got dizzy, everything turned blurry for a second, there was a dark pause, a syncope in consciousness, he remembered Borut’s seizure and got even more scared, he let go of the reins over his body for just a second and slid down the tiles to the united cries of the whole family, stopped for a bit, hung over the edge, swinging from the gutter, which bent under his weight, and then lost his grip and fell some three yards into the depths, nastily wrenching his ankle.
Now he’s in a bedroom with Olive. She has just wrapped his ankle in fresh gauze. Alan looks everywhere but at her. The poster for a dinosaur film his father once gave him has suddenly become very interesting again. The letters are losing their edges. He’ll need glasses. The shelves are sagging under the weight of never-opened books. Alan doesn’t like to read. Mila is the family bookworm. He remembers how she always complained that someone had mangled her books and looked accusingly at Mitja. But Mitja also wasn’t much of a reader.
Olive is quiet. She doesn’t know Slovenian, which is why she’s just smiling at this poor little boy and trying to catch his eye, even though (or precisely because) he’s so obviously embarrassed. His cheeks flare red every time Olive moves. He’s embarrassed, thinks Olive, and that makes him so cute she could just pinch him. Poor child, to be born into such a family. Grace was right – after getting to know the Wolfs she’d start to think her own parents were saints, even though they knew how to employ the most complex of psychological models for expressing their resentment. Brutality trumps even the most sophisticated hatred. She gets lost in thought and strokes his leg as if trying to calm him down. Alan’s pupils dilate and his heart starts beating faster. Fear or passion? He can’t tell.
There’s a knock at the door. Grace’s head appears.
‘Ah, ok, nothing major. Olive here is a master…’ Alan falls silent. In his stomach there’s a feeling of having crossed a line. He got off lightly, fairly lightly. Given the circumstances, Grace is ready to forgive him.
‘Good,’ says Grace, ‘good.’
Alan nods and smiles suavely. Grace turns to Olive.
‘I have to go,’ she says.
‘Where?’ asks Olive.
‘I’ll be back tonight.’
‘Where?’
‘To get my brother and mother. There’s been an accident.’
‘Oh my. Are they all right?’
‘They say they are.’
‘Why do you have to go get them?’
‘Long story.’
‘Is tomorrow still…?’
‘We’ll see.’
‘Ok. Tonight then.’
‘Tschüss.’
‘Tschüss.’
Grace leaves, Olive turns back to Alan.
‘Oh wow!’ she exclaims. Alan’s face is now a ruddy scarlet. The sheet covering him has risen shamelessly just below his waist. The short exchange in German was a catalyst for his desire. He’s aroused and doesn’t know what to do about it. Olive responds with kind laughter and a wink, which helps him not one bit. She’s proud that her presence can still conjure up magic, even in a boy as cute, young and innocent as Alan. The palm of her hand is still resting on his leg. At this moment, they both realize it. They look at it. An already slightly wrinkled hand and flawless nails over a boy’s nearly hairless leg. They don’t look at each other. They stare at the hand. Tension rises. They stare at the hand. They wait for it to move.
Grace had left the door slightly ajar. Po peaks through the crack. She sees Alan’s chest rising, sees him throw his head back, sees him fervently grasping the edge of the bed. She stays put.
Mila leans by the open window and takes hot, long, protracted drags from an enormous joint into which she’s sprinkled all the leftover weed. This might be her last ever. Her father’s glare might have meant something, but who knows… She sends acrid clouds skywards. There’s never anybody on this side of the house. Each puff leaves her lonelier.
She’s already all too familiar with her brain’s associative network. First she’ll work through all the traumas, the mini-traumas and the awkward memories, the relationship with her father (they will never understand each other), the relationship with her mother (she resents her weakness, her indulgence), her relationship with Mitja (negligent fucking pig, if this brands her for life, she’ll run a spear through his back), with the whole jam of family, compote, compost, squeezed and pickled, now they’re rotting… But no! You’re responsible for yourself, Mila, nobody else can do this to you if you don’t let them. That’s the most horrific part. The awareness that, in the end, you have no one to blame but yourself, that you’re alone before your destiny. When it is so alluring to say, ‘you destroyed me’. So tempting to say, ‘you sucked out all my blood’. That’s what Alenka, after she’d returned from Africa, before she left for good, shouted all through the house. Each tug broadens the abyss. Mila! You have to swear to yourself you’ll never let yourself be a victim. Martyred, murdered, massacred, ha-ha-ha… She starts laughing, the smoke goes up her nose. What would they think if they saw you now? Now that you’re crazy… But so what! Anyway, nobody’s around! She sets the remaining half of the joint on the ashtray and starts jumping around the room. Nobody’s watching you! On a rock hurtling through emptiness, in the back pocket of space-cowboy jeans, forgotten, overlooked, we dance in solitude… When you’re really alone, when you’re really alone, when nobody’s watching you, the edge of the universe stretches into infinity on all sides. Just imagine, she thinks, next time, when you’re going to close the door behind you, the vastness of the hole you’re in. And nobody sees you. She is jumping around and letting it go, satisfied with bodily existence, satisfied with an excess of consciousness…
She lifts the mattress and pulls out a thin, black, dogeared notebook. She opens it. Written on page one: ‘To Kras; to the scale of all our insanities, don’t give up on us, you know…’ In italics: ‘Self-Published, LEZK. 17.9.2008.’ Three signatures. Only Zoja’s is legible.
There’s a poem in this collection that speaks to Mila’s most remote feelings. What is passion? Not affection, love, lust, desire, want, necessity, need, craving, nothing physical, but not only psychological, and all these words, do they even mean anything on their own, independently of… What is
passion
Clouds have form. The tops of trees are roots – stand on your head. Roofs are bare backs under the acupuncture of chimneys and antennas… Magpies nest in nests. Where is
passion
St Nicholas bakes biscuits, the horizon is red, that’s what they say, although it’s late summer, the equinox will be late, it’s always late, when is
passion
The sound of a zip. My own hand slides between my legs. I’m my own puppet. I make a stranger out of my body and I abuse it. Evil. I use it. And no
fear
A young girl’s eye watching through the keyhole. She sees her, sees her belt around her knees, sees her writhing around on the bed… Mila is thinking about Borut. And a little bit about Mitja.
I don’t want to go into too much detail, but what Kras is doing with Katarina seems normal only when one is naked, focused on feeling and ripped out of time.
The washing machines tremble. Slapping sounds are echoing off the walls of the bathroom, the sloped walls of the bathtub, in the toilet bowl, in the bidet. The soap has slid down to the plughole. The squished and twisted tube of toothpaste stands upright among the brushes. A roll of toilet paper has rolled off the shelf. The floor is wet. The paper soaks up the water and swells.
Katarina is safe.
The moan takes shelter between the towels, inside the radiator grill and warms itself up there. The hole in the floor, covered with a grate, ingests the water and foams at the sides. The saliva mixes with the mucus. Flushed flecks of flesh on porcelain. The mirrors hide nothing, they keep silent about almost everything. Beyond here, there’s so little that is true.
Kras wants whatever he wants.
His jaw is unmoving. He’s trained it. He pursues pleasure with a technical dedication. Methodically. Long years of practice. He knows where he has to be, what he has to do, how. To the limit of trust. To the edge of what’s safe. A tricky tightrope-walk, a dance on a razor blade. The shaving equipment is not where he left it. Somebody borrowed it. He doesn’t know what to think about that. The epilator in the plastic bag is what allows his hands to slide over Katarina’s legs. They’re smooth.
‘Quiet!’
He covers her mouth with his hand. The cries should stay inside her. They should echo off the inside of her skin. They mustn’t escape. This landscape has its own rules. She bites his hand lightly. It’s not a real bite because right now her teeth aren’t a part of her body. The scarlet line stings, mocks. He punishes her by firmly grabbing the flesh hanging from her ribs.
‘Quiet!’
The word has lost its addressee. The body frees itself of the slavery of consciousness and becomes a thing, wrapped up in a foreign will. This pain has no roots. This pleasure has no wings. She bites him as he climbs onto her. The teardrop is not really her own. She swallows him. Teeth pressed together. Into the cliff. He slides dangerously. Everything depends on the grip. No ropes. Just faith.
The door handle declines, pointlessly. The door is locked. In the keyhole is a concealing key. Po must make do with eavesdropping. Who knows what she’s imagining as they make it to the peak.
Kras is lying on Katarina’s back. They’re sweaty. They smile absently, each in their own direction. They part a little shyly. As they drape themselves in the sounds of splashing, they laugh at each other. Kras shows her the ticket that he extracted from the inside pocket of his jacket. It was soaked but the ink hadn’t yet run.
‘I got this yesterday, you know, when that postman came.’
Katarina nods.
‘What is it?’
‘A plane ticket.’
‘What? To where? ‘
‘Seam.’
‘Seam?’
‘That’s the military designation for the buffer zones.’
‘Yes, I know, but which one?’
‘You find out when you get there.’
Kras smiles reluctantly. Mila is growing concerned.
‘Do you think it’s from Mitja?’
‘Probably, yes.’
Silence.
‘At least I hope it is.’
‘And you’re going?’
‘Yes.’
‘What if…’
Kras interrupts her.
‘Please. What if what? Isn’t it all the same? If I don’t go, I’ll never forgive myself. And aren’t all of you fed up with me here? If I do go, I’ll be mad at him for a few weeks, and then things will cool down.’
Katarina is not used to him talking about his feelings as if they were someone else’s.
‘The miserable little bastard!’ shouts Kras.
He stamps his foot on the floor. Splash.
‘I’m sorry. You see? I can’t stand not having him around. My body doesn’t know how to work this way. And now all this stuff with Berdo… I don’t even want to know what they’ll do to him.’
‘What?’ asks Katarina. When Kras explains Bernard’s situation, she moves her hand to her mouth and winces at its pungent scent.
‘Do you think it will be bad?’
‘I think that…if it was really him and not Mitja… Though I don’t know how he could do it without Mitja’s help, but still… If it was really him, we won’t see him again.’
‘So you’re just going to leave?’
Kras evades her accusatory tone by means of a shrug.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I’m just going to leave.’
When Edgar presses the doorbell, he feels something like dread in his stomach. He has no idea why. The wind blows a cloud of dust into the air. This place hasn’t changed in decades. The same cars, the same homeless people, the same pigeons circling above, creating a sense of constant vertigo for anyone underneath. Edgar has a sunny disposition, but in the midst of all this concrete it darkens sometimes. There’s a methadone clinic right nearby. During last year’s big clean-up they collected two containers’ worth of needles. How can a person keep up a cheerful face? Edgar lacks that urban courage that sucks a person dry of all the mystery, of all the solitude (but not a shred of the loneliness), of all the humility before the night sky, leaving behind just a derisive attitude towards all that is human… Inside these towers they even shit with their backs turned towards each other. The only animal here is man. Everything else is noise, error, a cheap ad for something that can’t be squeezed into the schedule. Nobody has time. He stares into the camera. Is Alenka even home?
The door screeches as it unlocks. Edgar enters and climbs the stairs. He doesn’t like lifts. The door opens even before he manages to knock. Alenka’s not wearing make-up. She looks horrible.
‘Hi, Alenka.’
‘Did Kras send you?’
The question puts him on the spot. His first instinct is to lie, but that would only have worked if he’d ever bothered to visit her before. He can’t remember the last time he was here. Ten years ago? Twenty? Is that possible? The things that have happened since then.
‘Yes. I mean, he didn’t tell me what to say. He even said there’s no need to convince you of anything. Just…how you’re doing, yeah? Is that ok? Can I come in?’
Alenka scans the flat. When she looks back at him, she resigns herself to fate. ‘Come in.’
He enters and takes his shoes off. The flat is completely soulless, he thinks, after his first glance. Everything is cleansed to the point of sterility, devoid of touch. As if for decades Alenka had been flat-sitting for the real owners, who were held up in Cambodia on a round-the-world trip, thus rendering moot any thought of pouring money into it. Even the picture frames hang empty. Her gait is broken and frail. Edgar follows her through the kitchen to the living room.
Voranc is sitting at a table and staring intensely at the cartoons on the TV. When Edgar pats him on the head, he winces and smiles through a mouthful of chocolate.
‘How are you, kiddo?’
Voranc nods and waves a bandaged forearm into the air. Edgar whistles with admiration.
‘A battle wound, you’re a right old guy.’
‘It was Grandma,’ Voranc says.
This silences Edgar. He nods grimly.
‘You, too,’ says Voranc.
‘Me, too.’
‘Come on, show me.’
Edgar turns his side towards him and lifts his shirt. All Voranc can see is a pile of white gauze, but that’s obviously fine by him.
‘Wow,’ he says.
They nod to each other as if they were the sole survivors of a difficult trial. Voranc’s head swivels back to the television. Edgar walks slowly over to Alenka and sits down on the couch right next to her.
‘Alenka…’
She interrupts him.
‘Edgar, please, you know me better than all of them and you should know how offended this will make me feel.’
‘Because…?’ asks Edgar.
‘Because you brought the family along. Because you carry it like a mask, like a shield, a spear. You didn’t come to see me because you’re interested in me as a person but because you’re following the dictates of some social scheme that is supposed to make our relationships more natural, more meaningful, more human, as if we were all aware that by ourselves we are absolutely incapable, in the long run and without faking it, of loving each other. Every family meeting, every single one, proves this to be true.’
The scars etched on her face by chickenpox have deepened over the years. On her right cheek there’s a strange red mark that makes it look as if she’d hit herself or as if someone else had hit her. Her eyes are watery, like they’ve been done in watercolour. She looks rather thin. What used to be a pretty prominent double chin is now just a fold of goitre. She’s never smoked, but her voice is raspy.
Edgar doesn’t know what to say. He’s not yet ready to speak openly. Alenka smiles.
‘Do you want some coffee?’
‘Yes, that would be lovely.’
While she’s making the coffee, Edgar makes faces at Voranc, bringing out warm and mild laughter.
‘I didn’t bring the family, Alenka. I don’t know how to put it. I’m here because…’
Voranc clangs his spoon against the table.
‘Mummy’s sick!’
Edgar raises his eyebrows. Alenka’s fingers twist Voranc’s ears for a moment or two.
‘Ill,’ she says.
‘What is it, Alenka? What do you have?’
Alenka doesn’t respond. She is staring at the slowly rising coffee vapour.
She puts the pot to the side, waits, and returns it to the heat.
‘Alenka?’
‘Nothing, Edgar. We are all mere tenants of these bodies. It’s just too bad that…’
‘What do you mean, too bad?’
‘It’s too bad that we have to share water, and electricity, and the plumbing.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘That our landlord is such a bloody prick, and that our landlady’s such a lousy whore.’
‘Alenka…Voranc!’
‘That all the renters are, without exception, complete arseholes. That’s too bad. And it’s just too bad that we…’
Edgar’s face drops. He’s not going to achieve anything here. The bonds have been cut for good, probably for years now. We delude ourselves, thinking that other people share the affection, even if we don’t maintain contact. Every step can rip us apart. If you are not constantly in view, the picture starts to develop on its own. Alenka is an unknowable girl. How is he going to tell Kras that?
‘It’s too bad that we share blood.’
Horror has a human face.
The light drizzle creates an atmosphere of unease. The clouds have dropped low, their undersides linger at neck height. The hills are flowing into the notches of gorges where they’d hid the bodies. Long rows of dead, cold human bodies in the pits of a mercury mine. Do you think a country can exist without regularly shedding its skin? And which is the real body? The strongest one? Or is it the one who is trusted? The traitor is always on the far side of the answer.
Grace turns among the spruces. These are tricky roads. Fog lights are useless here and she can barely see a yard ahead. She doesn’t slow down. Sorry, deer, but she’d like to get out of here right now. She’s got a bad feeling. She no longer bears responsibility for these people, she’s doing all this simply because she would like to help. But it’s precisely help that will entangle her again. It’s hard to find the balance between what is right and what is necessary.
At the crossroads she stops and gets out of the car. Her shoes sink into the sand by the road. The signposts are too high up to make out through the fog. ‘Dew’ or ‘White Wood’. Black letters on a yellow background. A lost bee buzzes by, laden down by drops of rain. To the right, then. She can hear talking in the distance.
‘…so we now have this, you’ll understand, an ideology, an ideology, right? It’s nothing special, but it’s ours. Kras’s people wrote it, yes. Yeah, it’s not exactly Tito’s…at least not to the letter…but in terms of meaning they’re, either way, all the same in the end, you know – this is mine. And then they start competing over who can put it in a more complicated manner, until they get sick of all the blabbering and shoot each other. What’s the need for all the claptrap, then? Take what you can keep, then keep quiet. God understands. You can spin whatever tale you want, he will not give up on you. In the end he will take you.’
Headless figures are staggering along the road. Grace bends down and whistles.
‘Mum?’
‘Andreja?’
Olga’s ear recognizes the children and can tell them apart just by their breathing.
‘I came to get you! Are you all right?’ yells Grace.
They reduce the distance between them to a few steps. The aunts cling to each other. Mother’s face is all sweaty. Wrinkled like bark. Dark grey curls cling to her forehead, and she’s out of breath. But her gaze is sharp. That gaze of hers. If Grace appreciates her father as much as she pities him (his heart is as good as it is weak), and if she’s always been at least as fearful of Kras as she has been grateful to him, the feeling she has for her own mother is like nothing she feels for any other living being. Olga introduced her to the rituals of religion, as if she were passing along the flame of some ancient wisdom that she had to guard against the vulgar fingers of the uninitiated; she was her priestess, her shaman, and yet also an ordinary mother, a worker, a wife, three times broken by a man’s hand, three times avenged, with a fate that, in terms of tragedy, did not differ essentially from the average of all those who found themselves in this world without the consolation of a congenital insemination machine. The break with her mother gave Grace enough experience to live a carefree life. Freedom doesn’t owe anything, but neither is it innocent.
‘So he managed to call…’ says Olga.
‘Where is Bernard?’ Grace asks.
The sisters look at each other.
‘We escaped,’ says Svetlana.
‘Escaped,’ nods Magda.
‘Bernard stayed behind at Šink’s,’ says Olga.
‘At Šink’s?’ asks Grace.
‘Šink Lovro has him locked up in the basement. He says he’s not letting him out until he gets what he’s been waiting for, for twenty-five years.’
Grace is baffled.
‘And what might that be?’
‘How should I know?’ says Olga, upset. ‘Maybe he wants me in his bed, maybe he wants to strangle me… I didn’t hang around long enough to find out. As soon as I sensed what was in the air, we were off.’
Magda and Svetlana smile. Olga looks at them.
‘Well, what to do with you two now? I suppose Grace wants to go fetch Bernard? This is Kras’s jeep, right? Good. If it’s ok with you, I’ll go with her. Will you two come with us? If not, walk. You know where you are, don’t you?’
‘We’re heading home,’ ‘home, Olga,’ ‘we’ve been walking all day,’ ‘give or take an hour,’ ‘it’s not far,’ ‘not far.’
‘Good.’
They embrace almost without awkwardness. They wink goodbye to Grace.
Olga squeezes herself into the car and Grace follows her.
‘Did you walk along the road?’
‘Yes?’ says Olga, fastening her seatbelt.
‘You’re lucky I stopped. The way I was driving I could have mowed you down like daisies.’
‘I was walking beside it.’
‘Let me out! Let me out! Let me out!’
Bernard is despairing at the top of the stairs behind a closed, barred door.
It’s light brown, freshly lacquered, and when he pounds on it with his fist no splinters burrow into his skin. Can nobody hear him? Where’s Mother? He has no courage, never had it, no shame in not having it, and there’s no need to have it put to the test… If you ask him, he’ll admit it. Without hesitation he’ll admit that he’s a coward. Doesn’t that admission mitigate anything? Or should he just keep quiet, lie, pretend? Would that make him better off?
The basement is totally bare, except for the rickety desk with the telephone. The phone went silent, as if someone had cut the cable. The weak light bulb consumptively sputtering under the ceiling outlines the cinders heaped up in the corners. Who knows what this space was used for. The ghosts are silent. Not because they would be afraid, or because they would be ashamed, but simply because to talk you need a mouth. So much that is human can accumulate in the basements of the world that will remain forever without expression, without influence, entirely without consequences…
‘Let me out!’
He’s settled into a rhythm. Three bashes with the fist, then a shout. Wait. A dozen beats of the heart. Order takes the edge off the terror. Slaps at least a pinch of sense over the anxiety.
He has no detailed visions up his sleeve. Anytime now, adrenaline will drag him into a state of shock. Claustrophobia. Tense expectations of change. Slim chance of it turning out well. Kras told him he’d most probably lose his freedom, but he didn’t expect that to happen so soon, so suddenly. When he heard the creaking of the bolt, he took it to be the synaesthetic experience of Kras’s words. But sometimes things get caught up in reality. Knock. Knock. Knock.
‘Let me out!’
When he hears the snarling dog on the other side of the door, he jumps back and almost tumbles down the stairs. He struggles to catch his footing. He retreats with slow, tentative steps. The musty smell of sticking soil, openings of white light caught under the ceiling, a stone on the tips of the toes – all sensory perceptions pass unnoticed, everything in Bernard’s head is focused on the large steel door handle that will go down any second now, and the iron sigh of the bolt that will allow the door to open… He knows that’s his only hope.
He must throw himself out of the hole like a bullet from God, rely on surprise and alarm, on old age and the dog’s tameness, but… No starting gun had told him when it was time to run. Life yawns. The dog’s head pushes through the steadily widening crack. The old man is holding the dog on a leash and containing its thrusts with fierce yanks, so that the dog’s front legs are mostly dangling freely in the air. Bernard retreats. His lips are trembling. Sweat drops from his forehead. He can’t speak.
He’s blinded by a reflection that finally draws at least some sound from his lungs. The old man is holding a long kitchen knife.
‘Sir!’
‘Don’t you sir me, Wolf.’
How did he find out? Did Mum tell him? Was he listening in?
‘Can you please tell me…’
His voice breaks into a stretched-out peep.
‘I’ll slaughter you like a pig, Wolf.’
‘What did I…what did I…’
‘You were born to the wrong brother, Wolf.’
‘I wasn’t! I’m not a Wolf!’
This stops the old man for a second, then he smiles bitterly and continues to make his way towards Bernard, who has now arrived at the bottom of the stairs, the floor, the cold floor, and is retreating with his back facing the corner that’s farthest away.
‘I’ll do you for Lovro Jr, for Suzana, for Marjana, and I’ll do you for Mihaela and for Evgen…’
‘I had nothing to do with it! I had nothing to do with it!’
Bernard is yelling hysterically and pounding his chest. The old man opens his mouth and presses out the names of the dead. The dog is strangling itself on its collar.
‘For the Gričars, for the Krajcons, for Milč and Trudi I’ll slaughter you two times…’
‘Please…’
‘For…, for…’
‘ ’
‘You know the police came looking for you?’
‘The police?’ Olga’s baffled. ‘What do the police want with me?’
‘Alenka,’ says Grace.
‘Alenka what?’ asks Olga.
They’re driving. It’s not far now. The fog won’t let up. There’s no visibility.
‘Because of Voranc.’
‘It’s high time that child learnt what the world is really like. And she’s a ditz if she thinks she can hide him away from it.’
‘Mum, still…’
‘Don’t call me Mum!’
Silence. Grace takes her foot off the accelerator. She can’t see a thing. Olga looks at her.
‘What… Are you crying? Andreja! What have you got to cry about? Don’t cry now. Don’t cry!’
Grace is trying to hold back her tears, she catches her breath to calm down, but she fails. The jagged crying issues from her lungs in jerks, and for a moment you can see little saliva bubbles on her lips. Olga raises her nose.
‘Andreja, come on…’
‘It’s not fair!’
Olga folds her hands over her chest.
‘It’s not fair…’ repeats Grace between sobs, ‘that in the end I’m the only one who can’t call you that…even though all the others were ruthless, not me, even though the rest of them didn’t give a shit about what was going on, they just wanted peace, just so that Kras could lock himself in his room, so Bernard could laugh at you both, so Alenka could…whatever Alenka was doing… I’m the only one who cared about you, about the both of you, I’m the only one who cared about what was going on… I’m the only one who tried to…’
Olga has had enough of the accusations. She smacks her hand against the dashboard.
‘What did you do! Go on, tell me what you did!’
‘…only I knew… Why did I hit myself with the belt then? Who traded away our land for the bottle? Who beat you all of those days? That’s why I did it…so you wouldn’t be alone. That’s why! And it’s not fair!’
‘Oh, please, Andreja, spare me the who owes what to whom. I am finally at peace. I’ve finally reached a state of equilibrium. I don’t owe anybody anything and nobody owes me anything. It took a long time,’ her snickering is unusually dry, ‘God knows it took a long time, but now I’m finally here and I have to tell you I feel great. At some point you have to say – enough. Enough was enough.’
Grace’s crying does not lessen.
‘But…then why can’t I…?’
‘What can’t you what, Andreja?’
‘My name is Grace!’ she yells. In the fog in front of them appears, for a second, a dark silhouette of a figure, just for a split second, not long enough for them to react other than with a momentary dilation of the pupils and an embryo of a sigh on the vocal chords, before the silhouette, with a loud bang that they feel through the seats, unites with the front bumper and bounces off. Grace instinctively hits the brakes. She manages to keep the car on the road.
‘What was that?’
Olga looks over her shoulder, but immediately waves her arm.
‘Probably a deer or stag.’
‘I don’t think—’
‘Who cares what it was,’ interrupts Olga. ‘Drive on so that bastard doesn’t abuse our Bernard. It’s not far.’
Grace looks at her in amazement. Olga motions for her to drive on.
‘It looked like Berdo’s Janez.’
Olga rolls her eyes.
‘Give me a break,’ she says, ‘I’ve already seen him die once today.’
Grace drives on and before a minute has passed Olga squeezes her shoulder and yells for her to stop. Grace strains to see through the fog but all she can see are the hints of shapes. She doesn’t know what Olga can see. They stop.
‘Open the trunk, please,’ says Olga. ‘Left button, at the bottom.’
Grace searches for it, Olga gets out. She presses it. Coolness crawls into the car as Olga is opening the trunk, lifting the cover of the spare-tyre well and extracting a silver revolver. She opens the drum, checks whether it’s loaded, spins it, and closes it again. Hearing this, Grace gets out of the car and goes to see what her mother’s up to.
She turns speechless when she sees her there with purpose on her face and a gun in her hands.
‘What is it, Grace?’ asks Olga in a dead tone, ‘Did you think it would really be so simple?’
With her foot Grace traces a line in the sand on the ground. She shrugs. Her gaze does not waver. They each seek courage in the other’s eyes.
This damned life gives you no peace. It doesn’t matter how much you give, how much it takes, for sacrifice, for a joke, for a bit of time… It doesn’t stay around long. It always finds something to interrupt it, so that it can get back to its old hurdygurdy, now, now, now. The possible worlds are disappearing. The real world is turning into a different one. It can’t find equilibrium, and it never will. It’s not just things that change form in the stomach, it’s also content, and desires morph into the means of struggle. Life is a tank tread. An insatiable beast. It constantly pulls itself by the arse and pummels onwards. But you don’t know… You don’t know, is it driven by birth or by death? Are the thousands of upset explosions in its digestive tract what’s pushing it, or is it being pulled forwards by the gravitation of entropy, the final collapse of all things? Do you always have to persist, create, even destructively, in order to, if nothing else, remain at the outset, or do we have to leave and let others set new points where equilibrium will be balanced? What’s my life called? Hey! What’s my life called? Abraham? Fuck that. In half? That sounds more…fitting.
Because we killed half of all the politicians, half of all the bankers, half of all the craftsmen, half of all the industrialists, half of all the directors, half of all the managers, half of all the shareholders, half of all the priests, half of all the generals, half of all the soldiers, half of all the secretaries, half of all the workers, half of all the poets, half of all the postmen, half of all the drunks, half of all the writers, half of all the bakers, half of all the pirates, half of all the high-school kids, half of all the students, half of all the hunters, half of all the believers, half of all the artists, half of all the nudists, half of all the waiters, half of all the dressmakers, half of all the tailors, half of all the hungry, half of all the full, half of all the cows, half of all the dogs, half of all the cats, half of all the horses, half of all the pigs, half of all the innocent, half of all the guilty, half of all the good, half of all the pesky, half of all the women, half of all the men, half of all the adults, half of all the children, and expelled all foreigners.
The family idyll had never seemed so close to the touch.
And if the schemer, life, is now again setting them in motion, and they will soon again find themselves on spiral orbits whose paths will never again cross, and will fly off from the solid core of idea into space – does that in any way diminish their meaning? It’s true. Everything falls apart. But what about that which was never put together?
Kras had already tied his tie when he looked at himself in the mirror and laughed at his own vanity. He stuck a finger into the knot and unravelled it. He took off the tie and threw it to the floor. He doesn’t have much in his suitcase. An extra pair of shoes, a few shirts, underwear, socks, pants. If his path leads him north, or very far south, he’ll buy a coat at the airport. There’s nothing he really needs. Definitely not a tie.
He has no intention of saying goodbye. In any case he won’t be away from home for long and he doesn’t want to answer questions. Their presence is still alive in his head, gathered as they were in celebration the day before, a family snapshot in living colour. Now they are once again dispersed into their frames, which is why he won’t visit them just to make sure before he leaves… Why does it seem like he’s running away? He’s never run away from things. Not even when he probably should have. When the world became unhinged and when dangerous oaths were taken and hatred called for its pound of flesh. Nowhere was it written that he would be the one to succeed, that he would be the one to survive, and if back then he’d found himself on the wrong side, there would be nothing but silence from him. So he is not running away. He’s just going for his son, wherever he is. Just for his child. Though he’s no longer a child. He’s as old as Kras was when he still had a choice.
The sound of a suitcase zipper. The shudder of doubt on his face. When he still had a choice. He made a choice for himself. He also made a choice for everyone else. How could he leave a free path for his son, if he was born of a choice that set out and closed off the path for Kras? Fathers are selfish. Kras is well aware of this. There are some things a man must hold on to. Those are not just words. Those are not just memories. And freedom means nothing if you have it only in order to avoid what was chosen – for you.
In the courtyard a taxi honks. Kras heads down the stairs, goes outside, where he glances up to his father, way up there, and snarls at the priest who comes running over to hear confession. He’s not interested in what’s going on here. He and his father dealt with it a long time ago. Everything else was just a dull variation on a theme. Kras inherited the desert. To make something grow, he had to water it with blood. The truth of history presses down on the sense of justice. It bends it in the strong, it breaks it in the weak. Nobody can see innocence, which is good, since there is none.
He sits in the back seat and doesn’t look at the driver. He stares out of the window as they drive. A few drops of rain disturb the cover of dust. The clouds are flaunting their fatness. There’s no sun. Evening is a long way off. Everything is captured here. His restless knees jump up and down, the leather heels and the rubber mat squeaking each time they come into contact. Everything is captured here. Kras won’t let his eyelids interrupt the view, so his eyes begin to water. The landscape curves over the edges of teardrops.
‘Is there something…’ he mumbles, and though the driver hears him, he has enough common sense to remain silent. ‘Is there something here that’s larger than me?’ asks Wolf. The fields bend. The forest at the edge merges into the sky. ‘All this and something more, at least something, at least a little over it?’ The colours of sand and blades of grass blend into a dirty green. ‘Or is there always a hole,’ he clenches his fist and presses it slowly and deliberately against the glass, ‘which sucks and sucks and does not let the world be filled? And no matter how much you throw into it, it still wants more and always takes away the fullness of things…!’ He bashes his fist against the glass. The driver shifts in his seat but remains quiet.
‘What should I fill it with?’
‘Come again, sir?’
‘I said, what should I fill the hole with?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’
Kras nods, crosses his legs, loses sight of the horizon and closes his eyes.
‘Mr Wolf. Before we get to the airport, we have to cross the checkpoint. I can tell you right now that you will have to take your shoes off.’
Kras bends down towards his laces.
‘Will we be there soon?’
‘In a minute, Mister Wolf.’
Just one more minute.