All three are sitting across from me at the table, watching me with alarm. “When did the two of you last talk?” asks Dijana, she brings order to everything. My days have gotten all mixed up, a whole lifetime has passed since we last talked. “I don’t know, maybe it’s been three or four days.” “Okay, so did you fight?” asks Olja gently. “Not exactly, maybe a little, we were downtown, I was going on about something stupid, and then this guy walked by and she thought the man was Tomislav, so then she went all pale and snapped, she said she’d had it and that she was going home. I let her go, you know what she’s like, she always needs time alone, and then everything’s fine. And I didn’t call right away, really, I wanted to leave her alone, so she could call when she was ready. And then she didn’t call any more. She never called.” Dijana asks the question: “Okay, Doks, but why are you thinking she was in an accident?” I can’t say it, I swallow back the words, I don’t want these sentences to take shape in my mouth, in my throat, in my soul. “Because I saw a car on the internet, on the news, just like hers, a Twingo . . . the last letters on the license plate—the same.” It is becoming real, I can hear the screech of the brakes and the train’s siren as it tries to stop. First the screech, then the siren, alternating. I feel the creeping skin under your blouse and the tense muscles on your back, thighs, your body so tense that you can no longer feel yourself. And your pupils, large from the dark, narrow in the locomotive’s lights, shrinking into black, terrified spots. And the blue metal of the car’s body that has wrapped itself around you, melting like butter, not from the blow of the train and the devastating heat, but from your desire to leave everything behind. I start hurting all over at the thought of your crushed legs, your soft belly in collision with the sharp metal, your arms so incredibly light that they are able to fly through the air of their own accord, of your head that I most loved to kiss, the smell of you was there in that tangle of live hair, of your face embraced by my hands, I see those cheeks, I nibble them, you are my big Lupko. Did your face bleed? I drop my head to my hands, again I can’t stop, I look down and through the water I see how Dijana is scrolling through the Accident Reports under the table and reading what she can find about the woman whose condition is still unchanged after four days. Olja’s mother shakes her head, she gets up from the table, rests her hands on Olja’s shoulders, protects her from our fate, knows her daughter was nearly lost to her, looks over at me with sympathy, and says, “This is not easy for you, child.” Then she comes over to me and strokes my head. “Everything will work out,” then she goes quietly off to her room. Olja puts coffee on the table, drops her hands onto my shoulders which are heaving and leaves them there, so I don’t fly off into the air. I know the two of them are exchanging looks, I feel a wire tightening over my head, but words die out along it and drop it into the chasm of cliché, “Did anyone confirm for you that she is there, when you were there?” asks Dijana. “They didn’t want to tell me anything, but I think I saw her, I was up on the ward. I think it was her, hooked up to machines, I saw her arm.” So what should the two of them do now? What can anyone do? “Come on, look, I’ll dig up the number of the ward and try to learn what I can. Please, lie down here on the sofa, take ten minutes to calm down and then we’ll come up with a plan.” Dijana is one of those people who comes up with ways to rescue people from prison camps during a war when nobody else can. I have no choice but to lie down on the sofa, I have no plan and I have no right, no right to anything. Not even to information. I am not family, especially not family, nor will I ever be family to anyone except those from whom I came into the world, who have been trying this whole time to understand where to lay the blame. The error in the family that bore me. I sink into the sofa and want it to cover me over on all sides. I remember floating on it before.
When I came back after the operation you brought me here first, I couldn’t stay at your place right away, too much of a risk, I was so weak, I wouldn’t have been able to crouch down behind the mattress if someone came to the door. The first few days the two of them looked after me, I slept a lot, Olja washed my hair over the bathtub, they brought me soup and fed me while it was still hard for me to move my arms, and in the evening the three of us lay here like sardines and watched movies. You’d come over after work and bring cakes, I waited for you eagerly each day, I caught sight of my reflection in the bathroom mirror when I dragged myself to the toilet and lit up with joy, it was me, as I’ve always been. I waited for you to come so I could show you. I kept imagining. There’d be nothing standing in our way now, I thought, you’ll be able to hold me proudly by the hand, we’ll be like in my dream under the tree, sipping Coca-Cola. But during those days you came to their apartment a little timidly, I noticed it right away, your voice was soft when you said, hi, you’d sit next to me and only now and then you’d rest your hand on my back, as if you felt like an interloper. Then the two of them would slip away, they always had to pop out just then to the store or see to something for a minute, and we’d be left alone. “Need anything? What can I bring you?” you’d ask me as if seeking a way out of the awkwardness. “Nope, I’ve got everything I need, I’m good.” “Enough clean clothes?” you’d ask, without looking me in the eye. “I have, darling, don’t worry, they are terrific, they’re spoiling me. Come closer,” I’d invite you from my half-mobile position so you could curl up and lean on my shoulder. Then you started to cry. “What’s wrong?” I couldn’t imagine for the life of me what was making you cry, what was going through your mind; you didn’t want me any more like this, you’d realized this isn’t what it was supposed to be, I broke out in a cold sweat. “Nothing,” you answered. Always nothing. “Please, tell me.” I didn’t mind pleading. “Nothing, it’s just that I’m feeling sorry that I’m not here with you. Instead of them. What good am I? I think about you all the time, every morning and evening, every night, I wonder whether you’re comfortable and whether it hurts when you lie down. I wonder whether you were scared when the lights went out, how it was for you when you woke up after the operation, how you mustered all the courage, how you dared do what you did, how you came to love a coward like me, how you must see me when you had to go through all this so we’d look normal and be happy, when until now all was normal, except that it isn’t normal to hide, and that’s why I didn’t bring you home to my place, there, that’s all, nothing.” I felt a stab of pain shoot under my armpit, but I straightened up and hugged you around the waist, I still couldn’t hug your shoulders. “How can you say that, why are you tormenting yourself with such nonsense, everything is finally ahead of us, my love. We just have to get through this now and everything will start to change, and then nothing will stand in our way. You’re with me all the time, as much as you can be.” Then we glued our wet faces together; we found a position in which nothing hurt anyone and fell asleep close, soft, in each other’s arms. They came back, then tiptoed into their room. They didn’t turn on the light, they didn’t talk loudly. Until your cell phone rang around midnight. You jumped up and answered. Your eyes shone darkly in the gloom, you were upright and rigid, I was pulsing under my armpits, through the dark and silence came the voice on the phone. “What’s going on, you’re out again tonight? Don’t you ever plan to come home?” “Sorry, Mama, of course I’ll come home, I’m on my way now.” “Oh sure you are—you’re on your way straight downhill.” You pulled together all your things in one fell swoop, bent over me and said: “I’ll come tomorrow, I’m with you, always.” “Always,” I say—our word.
“Doks, they called me from the ward,” Dijana came over, her lips pursed. “She’s there, she isn’t conscious but her condition has stabilized.” “How? What did they say? Is it definitely her?” I jump around the table. Dijana soothes with her voice and says only what I can bear. “I said I was a sister who doesn’t live nearby so I was calling to hear how she’s doing. She was brought in four days ago, she has quite serious injuries, apparently also to her brain, but it’s early days for predictions, they’re still running tests. They gave me the name of her doctor, visits are allowed every day but only for next of kin. We’ll come up with something.” She hugs me. We’ll come up with something. Our words too.