“What I know about your father I overheard one evening during some so-called negotiations. Ilinčić was definitely one of the people who ordered it, and Velimirović and his crew were grateful to him for doing it. Nobody wanted to stop the war. See? Nobody who could have. He was killed by someone who was a kid like me. Washed out and fucked over. I didn’t know that at the time, and I saved the kid’s life; later he went right on doing more of the same . . . Killing. I saw him this morning in the city. It’s likely that he has something to do with what happened last night, quite likely. There you have it.” Nora dropped her head into her hands; her shoulders shook; in her thoughts surfaced the reptilian eyes and the cherry cordial, and a toast with the man who’d murdered her father. When she pulled herself together, they could look longer at each other for the first time. In the midst of the desert where they’d been sitting for years, each in isolation—roasting by day, whipped by frigid winds at night, in the middle of nowhere, hoping for nothing—now they’d met. Their hands were close, lying on the table, only inches apart, although those inches were the longest journey anyone had ever travelled. First he touched the joints of her fingers along the edge of her palm, and then he took her hand in his. The first touch in life.
ÄÄÄ
You are all my pain
you are all my pain
you are all my pain
you are all my pain
you are all my pain
you are all my pain
you are all my pain
She started awake in the middle of the night. The window curtains were parted, and a milky yellow light shone into the room; she couldn’t remember right away where she was. To the left of her body the warmth hit her, and when she turned, she saw his sleeping face. Relaxed. Peaceful. Without deep creases and tightly pressed lips, nearly unrecognizable. Momentarily she remembered everything. How she was sitting in the chair and how he reached for her. How he sat on the bed and how she sat in his lap. How the colors in the room began to melt and how they talked, from the beginning. When they were twelve and the world was different, when the clouds were white and low, and when there was promise. And how the desert was deaf and endless, and how solitude became precious. Then they did everything, from the beginning, all for the first time, they grew up together while he squeezed her around the throat till she was dizzy and then kissed her, they threatened each other, growled, sobbed, hit, and then stroked all the bruises with reverence. For hours. Nothing held back; they recast all the familiar words, took into their mouths all the banished and dirty words and tamed them and made them intimate. They overstepped, were son and daughter to each other, lovers, parents, all ways. They went back to all the places they’d met and had each other there, especially in the most terrible places, on the icy, bare ground, in the night. Grass began to grow. They went as far as they could go, to the very rim of the ravine, to a total possession that freed, and spoke of a child. In choppy sentences. So tiny, adorable, the bravest. Lively and smart. The most beloved. About a possible moment of redemption. They began resembling each other in the dark, traded eyes and mouths, mingled and fell asleep that way. She woke in the middle of the night. She went to the window and sat in the chair. In the glass she saw the reflection of her face, merging with the face of her father. Everything came back to her in a flash. How she’d given up on herself in order to be good, how she’d sobbed into her pillow, and how she filled in the hole. How, when she buried her father, she buried her mother, too, and how she had always been alone. Alone and good. And how badly she hated herself for wanting to live, and how she didn’t have the knack. For living. And how never had she been able to budge the stone slab until this evening. It was heavy and cumbersome because the pit was omnipotent. It greedily guzzled love, promises, a young and lively boy, Marko’s bottomless devotion. And nothing was enough for her; the pit was bottomless and more powerful than everything. He woke up not long after her. He rose quietly and hugged her from behind. Nora was across the river.
“Hey,” he whispered and kissed her by her ear.
“You’ll have to help me,” she said to the window.
“I’ll help you, whatever it takes; say the word.”
“He can’t—I want him gone; he doesn’t deserve another day,” she said coldly.
“Who are you talking about, Nora?”
“Please.” She knocked him down on the spot.
“Nora, no. We’re leaving here this moment. We’ll leave all this behind. We’ll be good.” He kneeled before her. “My love . . .”
“I can’t. My whole life, ours, all of it . . . you understand.”
“I understand, but don’t—you know I’d do anything . . .” His voice quavered. “I’d give you my heart.”
“Just give me the number.”
“Nora, don’t do it, please; you’ll destroy yourself. This is going nowhere.”
“I cannot do it any other way.”
He got up from the floor and began pacing back and forth around the room, his hands over his temples. He looked over at Nora, naked, curled
