The Pelican

by Martin Michael Driessen

  Andrej bought another ice-cold cola and ambled among the cars parked randomly on the open field, in order to be alone and gather his thoughts.

  Johnny Cash blared from the loudspeakers. Andrej was almost out of money, and what he had done with it left him unsatisfied. Betting on greyhound races was not a good idea; you had to be an insider with know-how. A casino offered a more level playing field. What was stopping him from hitting up Tudjman for one more payoff? After all, he had already taken the first step; a follow-up claim would make no difference at all, morally speaking, and he could once again enjoy that blissful feeling of independence. A trip to Monte Carlo was naturally out of the question, but he could certainly have a go at the roulette tables in Rijeka. How much should he demand? At least as much as the first time, for sure. Tudjman could afford it, he had his pension and the income from the cable car. And what’s more, last Saturday he had spotted him at the bus stop again, this time not holding a bunch of flowers, but a valise. Later, Andrej had checked the timetable and had reached the conclusion that Tudjman was waiting for the bus to Zagreb. And with a wife and half-witted daughter at home, at that. His warning had apparently not yet had its desired effect: Tudjman continued to carry on with his adulterous affair.

  Above the blue hills in the distance, he could see the white trails of the airplanes heading to Athens.

  He had a sudden brain wave. It was unconscionable that so much money was being spent on an over-the-hill, bleached-blonde slut from the big city while he, Andrej, could spend a fraction of that amount—he thought of what cash he had left—on something sensible and beneficial.

  He went over to the shed and pulled open the sliding door. Inside, it was dark and stiflingly hot, and stank of dog excrement and gasoline. The fat man had taken off his leather jacket and was holding a baseball bat; another Gypsy held on to Laika, her skinny torso clamped between his legs and her forelegs pulled back so that her head lay helplessly on the hitch of an open trailer, in which Andrej saw four dead greyhounds. It was, simply, a chopping block.

  “Stop!” he said. “I’ll buy her from you.”

  The fat Gypsy looked up suspiciously. “This one?” he asked. “Why?”

  “Just because,” Andrej said. “For my little girl.”

  “They’re valuable as pets,” said a woman in the background, who sat breastfeeding a baby on a stack of car tires. “Good natured and affectionate. I’d give a thousand dinars for one.”

  Laika’s bugged-out eyes were now fixed on him, but that was perhaps only because she had heard a different voice. He did not think she realized the danger she was in. He knew so much more than she did.

  “All right, then,” Andrej said. “A thousand dinars.”

  Laika lay feebly in the crate above the front wheel of his bicycle, too weak to brace herself against the bumping and jostling as they rode down the country road past the salt ponds. In the end, something good came of his so-called unlawful deed after all. He had taken a helpless creature under his wing. It was, moreover, a fancy animal, the only greyhound in town—of this he was certain.

  He cycled excitedly through the deserted streets of the outskirts and looked forward to the splash he would make as he rode through the town center with his greyhound up front. He waved to the women who stood chatting under the awnings of shops and kiosks, and made an apologetic gesture as he passed, as though to say he would explain later how he came to own such a fine dog. He was, as it were, taking Laika on a victory lap, and therefore chose a longer route home, first along the boulevard, where he stopped to chat with the ice cream vendor, and then across the People’s Square, where he paused in the shadow of the former archducal palace, not only for the shade but because a group of tourists had just gathered there, and the children might like to pat Laika on the head.

  When he passed the clock museum, he raised his hand at the men sitting across the street at Café Rubin, where, he knew, Josip Tudjman was a regular.

  The second letter, too, was postmarked in Rijeka. The envelope contained a postcard of the casino, with the message typed on the back; judging from the ink smears from the roller on either side of the text, it had apparently been done on quite an old machine.

  LIFE IS EXPENSIVE. ESPECIALLY THE NICER THINGS. NEED 3000 DINARS 1 MORE TIME OTHERWISE YOU KNOW WHAT WILL HAPPEN JOSIP TUDJMAN. NEXT TIME YOU’LL GET THE NEGATIVES. UNDER SAME BLOCK SAME TIME MONDAY.

  Josip read the note while transporting his first clients of the day, an elderly German couple, to the top. The husband had the look of an ex-military man.

  Josip put the note in his inside breast pocket and stared at the second, oncoming car.

  There were only three rails, the middle rail being used by both cars except at the spot where they passed each other halfway up the hill. Here, for a length of twenty-four meters, the route branched into a full-fledged double track. Usually he explained this example of technical ingenuity to his passengers, which often resulted in a tip. But this time he had other things on his mind.

  He did not have another three thousand dinars to spare. And even if he did manage to scrape together that sum, maybe by borrowing it, this would not be the end of it. The whole tone and style of this new letter showed that the extortionist felt empowered and imagined himself invincible: this was only the beginning. That postcard of the casino was a deliberate taunt. He saw no way out. Even if he were to give up Jana, the light of his life, this would not stop. Those snapshots of them at the base of the monument would be his downfall. There was no way on earth he could explain this to his wife. The blackmailer undoubtedly knew how pathologically jealous she was; the entire town knew. The consequences did not bear thinking about. His wife would not only go at him tooth and nail, she would destroy his very existence. Katarina in a mental home, divorce, disgrace, alimony. War veteran or no, he would lose his job at the funicular, as he could no longer claim to be a “comrade of virtuous character.”

  He also knew that Jana, as loving and passionate as she was, had no desire to establish a life with him. She had said as much at the very beginning of their relationship. “We share the golden moments, my darling. I look forward to them and love making myself beautiful for you and being with you—because you are such a fascinating man and a war hero, too, and I have such respect for how you care for that difficult wife of yours and that poor child. But I have my life here in Zagreb, and you have yours …”

  He had to prevent, at all costs, the bomb that had been placed under his life from exploding. Even if it cost him another three thousand dinars.

  A few scrawny rabbits were scavenging in the gravel between the rails and froze when they were suddenly closed in by the passing cars. This was a daily occurrence, but they never did seem to get used to it.

  “You see, Traudl? This is the Ausweichstelle—the passing loop,” the uptight German passenger said. “Just like in Wiesbaden!”

  This had also impressed Jana, how the two cars passed each other at the midpoint, and then proceeded on their shared tracks. She had said: “We’re like this, too, Josip. We meet each other halfway, and then carry on, each in our own direction.”

  Jana was an extraordinary woman. Ever since the day she had ridden the cable car with him, he saw his work in a new light.

  He would have to borrow the money before it was too late. And then take measures to safeguard his situation in the future.

  “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” the passenger asked when Josip opened the door. They had bought a return ticket, of course; there was no other reasonable way to get back to town from the top of the hill.

  “A bit,” Josip answered.

  “I fought up there in those hills, 1943,” the man said. “Wehrmacht, you understand?”

  “Ja,” Josip said.

  “Those were the days. But you still understand German. It wasn’t so bad after all, was it? Culture! Liberation from der Serben.”

  “Jawohl,” Josip said.

  “Hush now, Erich,” the woman said, leading him in the direction of th
e monument. “You don’t know if this gentleman …”

  He refilled the water tank. No more than a cubic meter, for the other car had automatically drained its ballast as soon as it reached the lower station and would not carry any new passengers on its way back up. It was only necessary to fill it to its seven-cubic-meter capacity if the downward car was empty and the upward car was conveying its maximum capacity of twenty-four passengers. This happened only rarely, however, mostly on Republic Day in November, when hundreds of party leaders would gather at the monument to lay wreaths. After the ceremony there was, of course, no water ballast necessary, the descending car being sufficiently heavy with its full load of passengers wanting to go home. Josip sometimes had to exercise his authority to prevent the party functionaries from crowding into an overfull car. The braking system was fail-safe, but rules were rules.

  While he was waiting for his passengers to return, he re-examined the postcard. Three thousand dinars. And that ominous, shameless sentence: NEXT TIME YOU’LL GET THE NEGATIVES. This only meant that after this payment another demand would be coming. And besides, those negatives didn’t mean a thing: the man could have already made a whole batch of prints to use in the future.

  Josip fantasized about what he would do to this bastard if he were to manage to unmask him. He imagined his blackmailer as a small, ratlike man, whom he could overpower despite his age.

  After disconnecting the water conduit, he straightened his back and looked out over the blue sea and the town.

  Somewhere down there, he was convinced, his adversary lived; for he knew about Josip’s marriage, his work, his daily routine, and he knew the town. In his mind’s eye Josip went through the lineup of small, ratlike men who might fit the bill. Antić, the shoemaker. Old Vucović, who worked as a waiter at the Hotel Esplanade. And that garbage collector, a Bosnian, he thought, but he did not know his name. Antić was so skittish and withdrawn that he hardly ever ventured outside the dark basement vault where he had his workshop; you would never associate him with the brazen message on the back of the postcard from Rijeka, let alone with the casino pictured on the front. The Bosnian was a primitive fellow, maybe even illiterate; that’s why he worked as a garbageman. An unlikely candidate, although he might well be the type to come up with the idea of that concrete block at the side of the road. Vucović, now there’s someone he might want to keep an eye on. After all, it wasn’t much of a jump from a luxury hotel to a casino, and perhaps having contact with foreigners had sparked strange notions in him. But how was he to tackle it? Go to the bar on the esplanade, order a drink, look the old man in the eye, and make a threatening comment hinting the jig was up?

  And he did not even know for sure if the blackmailer was a small, ratlike man. It could also be a fat slob. It could be anyone.

  Josip mounted the front platform of the car, awaiting his passengers, and looked out over the town and the sea.

  He had been born here. And here he had always lived, with the exception of the last years of the war. The three-rail track at his feet pointed like an arrow at the core of his existence, at this small city on the coast. He knew everything like the back of his hand: the domes of the Church of Saint Anastasia, the white statues on the archducal palace cornices, the TV antennas on the tile rooftops, the Turkish fort around which the ring road curved, the concrete apartment blocks on the gray hillside, the power lines, the long rows of boats moored along the boulevard, the elegant forest of masts in the marina, the bay with its two uninhabited rocky islands, the expansive sea where, in the distance, container ships and cruise ships regularly passed.

  This was his city, it was where he grew up, and thanks to Jana in far-off Zagreb he was strong enough to endure the hell of his own household. He wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. But somewhere in that labyrinth hid a monster who was out to ruin his life.

  His passengers returned, and Josip set the funicular in motion. The German couple seated themselves on the bench directly behind him. They must be rich, he thought, for the woman’s jewelry looked like real gold, and the man wore an expensive wristwatch with a link band.

  While the man read to his wife from the free brochure—track length, elevation change, average gradient—Josip alternately fixed his gaze on the passing rails and stones, on the empty ascending car, and on the tree crowns and rooftops that rose toward them. The town closed around them until the only view was that of the approaching eaves of the lower station.

  The Luftwaffe had bombed the town during the war, as the German seated behind him was well aware. As Oberleutnant he had seen the relief Stukas, the Luftwaffe’s dive-bombers, fly over the mountains where his battalion had been stranded for days and had suffered substantial losses. The bombardment had so badly damaged the funicular that the Yugoslavian units could no longer be supplied with heavy weapons, and this had eventually led to the German breakthrough toward Senj.

  “And during your very first furlough, we got engaged,” his wife said.

  “Ja, so war’s, Schatzi.”

  Josip brought the car to a halt and opened the door for his passengers, studiously avoiding all eye contact. When they had alighted, the man, holding an apparently preplanned gratuity in his left hand, said, “But that’s all water under the bridge, nicht wahr? Now we’ve come to your fine country as guests. Traudl, machst du bitte ein Foto?”

  The woman, familiar with her husband’s wishes, already had her modern compact camera at the ready. The German extended his right hand and exclaimed, “Today, we’re friends! I thank you for the enjoyable trip.”

  Josip refused. No photos of him in uniform shaking hands with a former Wehrmacht officer.

  “Ne, hvala,” he said.

  “I beg your pardon?” the German asked.

  Josip said in Croatian that a bomb dropped by a Stuka had hit his mother’s house, and that she was burned alive.

  “Pardon?” the German asked again.

  Josip said in German that a bomb dropped by a Stuka had hit his mother’s house, and that she was burned alive.

  Then he left the platform and closed the kiosk door behind him.

  He hung the OUT OF SERVICE sign in the window, lowered the blinds, removed his jacket, and sank into the wooden swivel chair. He lay the postcard in front of him and stared at it, his head in his hands.

  He had friends, but borrowing this kind of money from a friend meant you owed them some sort of explanation, and this, he felt, even if he did not mention her by name, would sully the love between him and Jana. And besides, how could he borrow money without knowing how or even if he could repay it? He did not want to be indebted to anyone.

  He opened the bottom drawer of the desk. Behind the carton of Ronhills was a bottle of slivovitz. Josip held the first swig in his mouth for some time, as though the brandy’s proximity to his brain might help him think more clearly.

  What if he were to put a note under the concrete block, asking for an extension? This was at most a stopgap measure and could have catastrophic consequences. He took his keyring and, the brandy still in his mouth, pulled open a higher drawer, the one with the cashbox. But this was insanity. If he pilfered from the cash drawer—and anyway, its contents would fall far short of what he needed—he would lose his job for sure. He swallowed with his eyes closed. When he opened them he saw, through a gap in the blinds, the German couple sitting on a cement bench across the street in the shade of the plane trees. That chic gray Mercedes parked farther up must be theirs. The man sat hunched forward, his hands between his knees; Josip did not see his face, only the top of his old-man trilby hat. He appeared to be unwell. His wife had one hand on her purse and the other on his shoulder.

  Say he were to enlist the Bosnian garbageman to keep an eye on the concrete block next Monday. He could inconspicuously pick up trash in the shoulder of the Nikole Zrinskog and make a note of any suspicious behavior. But the blackmailer would most likely wait until the coast was clear. That spot in the curve in the ring road had been well chosen: out of view from th
e monument and even from the surrounding buildings. Post someone at the Turkish fort, and ask him to take down the license plate numbers of every car that drove down the Zrinskog? And then what? Besides, the cheat could also approach the spot on foot, from another direction, for instance by climbing up the hill from the slums down by the salt marsh.

  He had to pay, at least this time.

  Behind him there was a tentative knock at the door. He bent forward and peered through the gap between the slats. The bench was empty, and the chic Mercedes was still there.

  Josip put on his uniform jacket and opened the door.

  It was the German couple.

  “Yes?” he asked gruffly.

  “Bitte,” the woman said gently. “Erich would very much like to …”

  The man removed his lightweight hat and looked at him. His thin lips quivered.

  “Jako mi je žao,” he said. I apologize. They must have looked it up in their Langenscheidt Sprachführer.

  Josip did not reply, in part because the slivovitz had made him quite dizzy.

  The German, tears in his light-blue eyes, launched into an explanation that Josip did not understand. He cast a woozy but stern glance at the woman, who at least spoke clearly. The matter became clearer when the man held out an envelope. The flap was open, revealing a thick wad of banknotes.

  “Please accept it,” said the woman. “It would mean a lot to us.”

  Josip hesitated, leaning against the doorframe, and struggled to process his bewilderment and conflicting emotions.

  “Erich has a generous pension,” the woman insisted. “Bitte.”

  He took the envelope, nodded, and said in Croatian, “Just this once.” This was a strange answer, but he assumed they did not understand it.

  He saluted, even though his uniform cap still lay on the desk, and quickly shut the kiosk door, cutting off the German man’s thanks.

  Eventually the Mercedes drove off, slowly and cautiously, spotted like a panther in the shadows of the plane trees.