“We’ll still be reading about this nightmare tomorrow. Who knows what really happened, and what the reporters will cook up next.” She gave him a conspiratorial look, and this caught his attention.
“What?” he asked, to be polite.
“What? Where have you been living?” she shot back in an almost scornful tone, a little hurt that only now was Marko interested in the important information she had to impart.
“I’m not up on the news, neighbor, what happened?”
“The mayor’s been murdered, that’s what happened. No normal life for us here.” She wagged her head, aware of her importance as the person with the breaking news.
Marko stared at her, incredulous. “When?” he asked, joining the conversation—something he almost never did.
“Last night. And a junior reporter was killed too. They’ll be coming after us, one by one . . . No normal life for us . . .” The vendor repeated her mantra.
“Thanks.” Marko picked up his newspapers and went on toward the pedestrian zone.
He sat on the terrace across the street from the café where he and Nora had spent the evening. Only then did he notice that there were more police in the city than usual. The day was cool, so he was the only customer sitting outside on the damp, bare chairs; the waiters hadn’t yet put out the cushions. He logged on to the Internet sites of the newspapers, where he learned no more than he’d heard at the newsstand, but he was almost certain that Nora was still here for now. He went a few times into the list of contacts on his phone and the same number of times out of it, downed his coffee in a gulp, shot to his feet, and strode off toward his car, which he’d left parked by his building. All this will pass drummed in his head. What mattered was to feel nothing, and if he did feel something, to do nothing, because all this will pass, regardless. He walked mechanically through the streets and reached his car in three minutes, and in another two he was at the bus station. The bus was just pulling up, and there was always somebody who needed to be driven to somewhere on the outskirts of town, because city buses were infrequent. He was lucky and picked up a retired couple whom he drove, for the cost of two bus tickets, to an outlying village. He didn’t make any money from the fare, but at least he was on the move. At least, while listening to them, he could evade his own thoughts. Docile, toothless old folks who didn’t have much time left—but that didn’t keep them from quarreling hotly over their opinions. He glanced a few times at the rearview mirror as they squabbled loudly, each looking out their window. Clearly they’d spent their life together and no longer had the need to look at each other.
“Well, for him, I’m telling you,” insisted the granddad.
“I doubt it.” The granny was unwavering.
“Where the hell did he get a house that size? Come on, you tell me,” he pressed.
“He earned it; did he go off to Germany to work, or what?”
“Earned it my foot. They’re all saying he worked at whatever; if he’d gone to Germany he’d still be there. They wouldn’t have locked him up. No, he smuggled people. And children.” The granddad was exposing the head of the village, who’d just been locked up.
“Well, a person’s got to make a living, what things you . . .” Granny wouldn’t allow anything to tarnish her picture of the world, or the image of her neighbor who had a big house, three tractors, and embroidered curtains on the windows. People always had to have something to cling to. Marko didn’t know whether he was struggling more with his thoughts or with the two of them and their vision of the world. When he finally left them out in front of a gray, unplastered house, he went to the gas station on the edge of the city. While he was paying, out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of a man at the other cash register whose face he wasn’t sure if he was seeing or not, because since the night before, the past had begun pouring in through all the holes in his subconscious, and all the dams were giving way. Only when the heavyset, smooth-shaven man, more or less his age, gazed for a moment longer than necessary at Marko’s face did he remember with a quiet chill the unopened bottle of whisky, and the life he’d saved so it could go on wreaking havoc.
18.
Room
in an empty room someone’s things
dirty love in stains
now (fall 2010)
After the first terse sentence Inspector Grgić gave the journalists in the hotel foyer, telling them there’d be no information or statements regarding the murders, the grumbling of the dissatisfied locals and two or three bigshots from national television spread through the room, just as he’d anticipated. He gestured to them to let him continue.
“We understand the public would like to know what has happened, and they have the right to be informed. We have called you here to tell you whatever we can,” he went on, shifting his weight in his chair.
Then he explained that because these were cases of special interest, he had the leeway to inform them of the victims’ personal information, which would otherwise be held back from the public, and as soon as circumstances so allowed he would be doing just that. He filled in with phrases that said nothing, because there was nothing further to say. He confirmed that both the mayor and Nikola Vrcić, junior reporter, had been killed the night before. After being called in, the police had blocked access to the areas, and today there would be heightened surveillance of vehicles and drivers.
Traces taken from the places where the murders
