We Trade Our Night for Someone Else's Day

that there really was something else beyond the sound of the buffeting gale winds. Now there was very little for him to lose. His wife had left him some time ago, she’d been living in their summer cottage over the last months. Their daughter was living abroad, and throughout the madhouse she’d only called her mother once to ask how they were doing. He was politically done for, although he found this difficult to acknowledge. When he pleaded with a colleague whose close family friend was the minister of the interior to find him something, he was told there was a photograph of a scantily clad woman, crouching, blindfolded, holding a wooden bat, while a large animal rocked her balance. Brigita was not easily recognizable in the picture, but if one studied it closely for a long time—and considering her biography, or so his colleague claimed—this had to be her. Younger, nimbler, and far more wanton, but her. Getting his hands on the photograph from the secret file wouldn’t be easy; he didn’t have the money nor was he owed a big enough favor, but even knowing that such a photograph existed was of inestimable value. The mayor hadn’t made plans for exactly what he hoped to extract from her. Eating crow in public, a retraction, an admission of incompetence, anything that might reinstate him to at least some share of the power he’d enjoyed, although he’d relinquish it all just for the opportunity to throttle her with his bare hands. She had disgraced him, humiliated him, and this is what stirs the basest feelings in a person. Murders are motivated most often by feelings of shame and humiliation provoked in the murderer by the victim; all other motives rank far below these. He changed the shirt he’d worn for the last two days and nights and, checking his watch, he realized he didn’t have to be anywhere in particular until the next evening. And nobody cared. He paced around the apartment, remembering the apes in cages at the zoo that were always laughing; he couldn’t bear looking at them for too long. They knew full well that there was no way out for them, and there was something maniacal about their every movement, even when they were playing their usual games to see which were the stronger and which were the weaker apes.

8.

Into darkness we run

the stars hid from us

winter picked apart our bones

the wind howled loud

now (fall 2010)

Early autumns by the seaside were something entirely different; you could see the air was warmer; even the Zagreb fall was milder, monotonously subdued between the slightly chillier mornings and evenings. Although the evening wasn’t yet fully dark when she left the hotel for the second time at dusk, Nora pulled the collar of her coat up to shield herself at least a little from the icy wind blowing off the river. The wind here was different from the wind along the coast, the bura, that used to chill her to the bone. Here, it chilled her head, numbed her skin, fingers, and cheeks, drew tears from her eyes. She set out for the Hotel Lav; the poet had written down the address of the place where the reading would be held. The words Gundulićeva 19, Reading Room were scribbled on the back of the business card. While at the hotel she’d checked on the Internet to see how to get there; Google Maps said it would be a ten-minute walk, the same as for any destination within the city. But there wasn’t anything at the address resembling a reading room; the building had a deceptively mundane appearance. It was set apart by the huge flag hanging down its facade. Inside it were the consular offices of the Republic of Serbia, as well as a consular reading room where Serbian cultural events, performances of folklore, and commemorations were held. The building had belonged until recently to the son of city councillor Velimirović, who sold it to the Republic of Serbia and was given in return a three-bedroom apartment in the center of Belgrade, thereby permanently resolving several of his problems. Before this the consulate had been housed in a far more pretentious-looking building, its greatest failing being that it was built without proper building permits during the period of Serbian occupation; earlier buildings on that site had been leveled, along with their tenants. A group of a dozen or so people was gathering in the courtyard of the white three-story building, clustering in little groups; they all knew each other. Nora had the impression that most of the guests were eyeing each unfamiliar newcomer with suspicion, and were communicating among themselves with gestures and glances that were meaningful, precise. She tried to gauge the profile of the average poetry lover who’d come for a dose of aesthetic exorcism, or perhaps some of them regularly frequented the consular reading room. Through her mind flashed the thought that they all had something gray in their auras, and just then the poet spotted her, having leaped, literally, out from the shrubs next to the building. “I cannot believe it!” he exclaimed, elated. She wasn’t quick enough to stop him from pressing her hand, again, to his lips. “Though I am a believer, and you must know I was hoping! Still, we’d met only once,” he halted. “I won’t disappoint you this evening.” He did not drop her hand.

Nora simpered politely, feeling relief—after the poet’s gushing performance and his mistaken impression that the two of them enjoyed a special relationship—that the people standing around them had returned to their regular consular conversations. The poet ushered her into a broad hallway and tried to wrest her coat from her, but Nora wrangled with him for several minutes and held on to her coat and purse. Meanwhile the reading room filled; when she peeked around the door she saw that all the seats had been taken. The poet was already sitting at the table