We Trade Our Night for Someone Else's Day

things, too, especially books. He’d already come to see her a few times to talk about what he was reading, though his mother and Kristina’s husband knew nothing of his visits. He wasn’t pushy, just determined, the way smart people sometimes are. He wanted to know, to read, to understand. Their conversations ranged across all sorts of things, bridging the age gap, the ghettos they each lived in, going beyond their formal relationship. As Dejan matured, the way he looked at her changed; his eyes dropped more often and the tenor of his voice shifted when he spoke. No one had looked at Kristina that way for a long time, and Ante probably never. In the last few years she had begun to feel in class that she was lecturing only to Dejan, adapting the teaching to what she thought would interest him. And now here he was, drenched in sweat, with a lump in his throat.

“I told her not to.” He gazed straight at Kristina, open and vulnerable. She came over and sat down next to him.

“Don’t let yourself be dragged into this; it will sort itself out.” Though she didn’t know how.

“She is not in her right mind. I want to move out; she’ll be the death of me.”

“Don’t say that—where would you go? One more year and you’ll enroll at university somewhere. As far away as possible. Until then, patience, for a little longer.”

“But I don’t want to leave here.” There was nothing he was more certain of.

“Can’t you see how people live here? Come on, please; you deserve better.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he repeated, and then he added, “I won’t leave you. I know what you go through . . . with him.”

“Dejan.” She smiled gently. “This will pass; everything does . . . and who knows, maybe I, too, will leave here one day.”

“Fine, then that’s when I’ll go.” His eyes burned as he spoke. He was wishing he could die, hug her; he only feared bursting into tears. They looked at each other for a long second, and then he shifted out of his own body and drew his chair over to hers. He took her hand in his moist hands and suddenly, almost tipping over his chair, kissed her squarely on the mouth, without parting his lips. Kristina didn’t move. Then she took his hands, gently set them down, and pulled back.

“Dejan . . .” She had a shred of composure left and hesitated between clinging to it and letting go. He slid down off the chair, knelt at her feet, dropped his head into her lap. She didn’t push him away this time; under her hands she felt him trembling, his shallow breaths. The next moment they were trembling together on the kitchen floor. A half hour later, when she handed him his backpack in the hallway, he pushed her up against the wall and kissed her for a long time. He still hadn’t reined in the chaos churning inside him, so she smiled and said:

“You’ll make it to third period.”

He shot her a glance with so much seventeen-year-old adoration in it that for a long time afterward she remembered nothing but that she was alive.

It was nearly noon when the phone rang. Their cups of coffee were still on the table, and Kristina was lying on the sofa, channel surfing. She turned down the volume and stared for a time at the unfamiliar phone number on her cell phone screen. She clicked on it.

“Hello, may I please speak to Kristina Gelo,” said a man’s confident voice.

“Speaking, and this is . . . ?”

“Kristina, my dear, this is Josip Ilinčić; we’ve met before! I am on the city council and a friend of your husband’s . . .”

“Ah, yes; how may I help you?” She was unsettled by his call and wanted him to get to the point as quickly as possible. He was a real snake in the grass; she could only guess why he’d called.

“Listen, I’ve been following what’s been going on with you, how you’re being . . . hounded, am I right?” She could hear the hint of a sneer.

“Well, I hope the inquiry will establish that everything is fine and this will die down.”

“Kristina, your actions are deserving only of praise, but let’s not be naïve—they’ll pulverize you.” He sounded malicious and ominous. She couldn’t be certain of what he had in mind, but she was alarmed.

“What can they do to me?”

“I don’t want to scare you, please don’t think I want that; everything will, chances are, quiet down, as you say. It’s just that I think you should have a word with an attorney, you know, just in case.” His offer wasn’t entirely farfetched. After a pause, he went on, “And I’m here for you, because I want to help, see . . . pro bono, goes without saying. Why not get together for coffee, Kristina?”

She said nothing. The thought of having anything to do with the man was distasteful; she found him and his world revolting. She couldn’t believe how far this had gone, and she went numb with fear.

“Fine, an hour from now, at Golubica.”

“I’ll be there. And don’t you worry about a thing; we’ll show them what’s what.”

She couldn’t bear listening to him anymore and wasn’t sure what to do. Passing by the muted TV, she saw the city, again, on the national news at noon. Again they were running the footage they’d filmed two days before as the backdrop to what the announcer was saying. A twenty-year-old woman with the same name, Kristina, had been anointed the heroine of the right wing. She stood on the city’s main square, at attention, a black beret on her head, a sledgehammer in hand. In front of her was a wooden box, and on it were words written in Cyrllic: “aggressor,” “treason,” and more in the same vein. The heroine began swinging, splintering the box, the letters, smashing them. Chunks of wood, splinters, sprayed through