And now he had to put up with this shit, people laughing at him. One day he saw schoolchildren on the tanks that stood like trophies at the entrance to the city. They were climbing around on them and making faces, taking each other’s pictures in silly poses, giving the finger, those little bastards; they had no idea what it had been like to stand in front of a tank. To soothe his thoughts a little he started leafing through the newspapers, and then he saw a statement from the veterans’ minister regarding the incident the night before. The heading read: It was the booze that knocked him down, not the Croatian cop! He closed the paper, crumpled it into a ball, and went home to his wife.
ÄÄÄ
Circle
the wind thinks
the wind knows
everything we know, you and I
it loves me
it carries me
it smashes me
What with his connections in Osijek, people in the city and in the national administration he’d found jobs for or who owed him a favor, it wasn’t difficult to come up with an inspector who’d suspend the teacher and coax this thing along. To our benefit, of course. This was, after all, for her own good. She’d be fine. For a time she’d be out of work, sure; she’d be the rallying cry for our struggle. A good thing she has an education, and then he’d find her a job in a better, ethnically pure school. One day she’d be grateful. When the suspension was announced due to her alleged irregularities and her overstepping of the bounds of her job as teacher, the Serbian parents finally went wild. They demanded her ouster, filed a lawsuit against her; the path was open for them. Through all of this, Ilinčić, indirectly, was the one pulling the strings. If the inspection had come up with a different finding, everything would have quickly died down. Kristina would have been brought back to work. But as it was, the situation veered off in a different direction. The school was besieged, teeming with journalists and representatives of nongovernmental organizations. Nikola Vrcić, the junior reporter, took down statements from agitated parents, and apparently the teacher had been systematically abusing the students for years, but out of fear that their children might bear the brunt in school if they complained, the parents had been afraid to speak up until now. She’d insulted them, mocked them, said that it was better for them to leave the city as soon as they could, that this would never be their home. The situation was pushed up to the highest level, and with it Kristina’s despair. By then she was living in complete isolation. They’d all abandoned her, everyone but Dejan. He came by regularly, they found a rhythm; theirs were the mornings whenever he was at school on the afternoon shift. He’d enter her quickly, convulsively, miserably, and afterwards she’d sob for a long time in his arms. Each of them took from the relationship what they needed; he was convinced he loved her and would give his life for her, her softness, her inner warmth, the place between her breasts where he laid his head. She had a person to comfort her, to sacrifice everything for her, to trace the shadows on her face—someone who wouldn’t hurt her. She’d completely forgotten that he was seventeen. She refused to think about it. He told her how they’d leave there together as soon as he finished high school and go somewhere far away, the Netherlands, maybe, or Sweden. When he came of age, only a half year from then. Nobody would look at them sideways there. He was prepared for anything; he wouldn’t even mind starting out with a gas station job, or, like his uncle in Stockholm, delivering furniture, driving a truck, anything, just so the two of them could be together on their own, far from all of this. Without second thoughts about leaving this shit-filled, weird city—and even his own mother—behind. The thought that he’d never see her again didn’t dismay him. He could talk about this for an hour without stopping, about how, once he’d learned the language, he’d be able to advance in every way. He didn’t need anybody but her. Kristina listened to him as if hypnotized; deep inside she didn’t believe a word he said, but she did enjoy his soothing voice, colored by hope. Those two, three hours each day were her escape from the despair tightening around her throat all the rest of the time. Then at one moment she would snap out of it, come to her senses, kick him out, unable to bear herself or him, until the next day, when she
