The Pelican

by Martin Michael Driessen

  She’s out of her mind, Andrej thought as he entered the house. He had little time to take in the surroundings, although he was curious as to the private life of the man he was blackmailing, and at once realized that the hideous antler ceiling lamp, the peasantish chest of drawers, the faded print of the Eiffel Tower belonged to the man who had perhaps saved his life.

  “They’re in there,” she said, shoving aside a plastic laundry basket with her foot and resting her hand on the door handle. “Do you know what my name is?”

  “No, Mrs. Tudjman.”

  “Everyone’s forgotten it. No one calls me by my name anymore. It’s Ljubica. Just so you know.”

  His dog was not sitting as a dog is supposed to sit, but on her backside, her hind legs spread wide, her hairless pink underbelly exposed. He saw at once that she had gotten far too fat. Her belly, with its small nipples, was grossly distended.

  “Laika!” he cried out buoyantly, because he had so looked forward to this reunion.

  She gawked at him in panic and did not budge.

  Half an hour later Andrej was still sitting cross-legged on the rug of Tudjman’s bedroom, putting together a jigsaw puzzle with Katarina.

  Of course he had heard that the daughter was mentally disabled, but he’d expected worse. She slid the puzzle pieces together more deftly than he did. When he entered the room, she had shaken his hand and asked what she should call him.

  “Just say Uncle Andrej,” he had replied.

  While they were playing, he looked furtively around the room. There was a steel file cabinet and a small writing desk, but he couldn’t very well go rifling through the drawers with Katarina there. Yet another half hour later he felt it was time to go, for he did not want Tudjman to come home and find him here.

  “Laika, here!” he commanded, holding up the leash.

  “No, no!” Katarina cried. “We still have to do the foal. First the foal!”

  “All right, then,” he said, and he put in more effort than previously, so that the pony’s tail took shape in no time at all, as did the yellow flower that it held in its mouth.

  But when he picked up the leash again, Katarina flung her skinny arms around Laika and asked with a little-girl voice if she couldn’t stay until his next visit.

  “Who says there will be a next visit?” he asked.

  “Me, me!” she exclaimed. “I have another big puzzle. Of Rome!”

  When he shook his head and stood up, she held on tightly to Laika, who began whining pitifully. It was hard to tell whom she feared more: the girl or him.

  “Just two weeks, Uncle Andrej, a week, a day …”

  “I’ll come get the dog another time, is that okay, Ljubica?” he said as he made his way to the front door by way of the kitchen.

  “Yes, yes,” she sang back, “as long as you’re wearing your uniform next time!”

  In the week prior to the national holiday it was, as usual, busier than normal in town; moreover, as the Socialist Federal Republic was celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary, the funicular enjoyed peak popularity. Young Pioneers from the surrounding villages were already quartered in the youth hostel, the pensions were fully booked with veterans, and Josip’s assistant conductor, Ante Dragović, an elderly man with a droopy mustache and oversized ears whose forty-some years as a Party member got him the job, now manned the second car. Ante had no uniform of his own, and wore Josip’s spare cap. He was deaf and mute.

  Every quarter hour, Josip’s and Ante’s cars passed midway, but the two men never greeted each other, unlike their passengers, who waved enthusiastically to one another.

  These were glorious, clear spring days, and lines even formed at the ticket booth.

  Ante’s face, aided by the droopy mustache, was as ill humored as always, but Josip, too, looked gruff and stiffly ceremonious; it in no way betrayed the immense pride he felt inside. The passengers might laugh exuberantly, chat among themselves, and point to features of interest—the Turkish fort, the domes of the Saint Anastasia church, an oil tanker—but he stoically held the brake handle and kept his eyes glued to the rails. For the passengers, this was an exciting excursion, but he mustn’t let on that packed cars and constant action meant anything special to him. No one could know that outside this festive period he was, sometimes for weeks on end, the only passenger on the trip up the hill to eat his lunch at the heroes’ monument, and on the way back down an hour later. And that, at the beginning or the end of each workday, he would have to climb and descend the steep path to fill the upper car with water ballast. Josip was pleased to be observed by so many people in his function as chief operator of the funicular. He opened and closed the doors, decided who could board and who had to wait until the next car; he deftly attached and removed the water hose and reveled in the amazed admiration that the ingenious water ballast technique, introduced more than a century ago, still elicited from the younger riders.

  Although his uniform was, strictly speaking, no longer that of a civil servant, he still wore his Order of the People’s Army medallion. The older veterans, whom he always gallantly offered the seats with the best view—at the back on the way up, at the front on the way down—were often decorated with medals. He always saluted them while opening or closing the doors, and the ones who were not too old or blind to notice his modest award responded in kind.

  These were marvelous days indeed. How he would have liked to invite Jana to see him in his full glory, but he did not dare. She was, for all her delightful qualities, not the kind of woman who could resist publicly flaunting her intimacy with the chief operator; and as a mondaine lady from Zagreb she would naturally stick out in a crowd like this. What if she wore net stockings? He wouldn’t put it past her! But he had no objection to Schmitz, who did a roaring trade taking snapshots of the visitors—they paid him in advance and picked up their photos the next day at his shop—offering Josip prints of the shots in which he appeared at his most flattering. He looked forward to sharing these with her.

  According to the weather forecast, there was a chance of rain later that afternoon, but to Josip’s relief the skies remained clear and the jagged ridge of the mountains contrasted sharply against the immaculate blue. Among the last group—the sun was already low and cast a wide, blindingly glistening streak across the sea—was Mario. Now, more than ever, Josip was relieved he did not invite Jana, for Mario was an incorrigible womanizer and would undoubtedly have pestered her.

  In that same party was their former commander, the legendary Colonel Nicola Modrić, under whose command they had fought in the mountain passes above Senj. Schmitz joined them as well, tripod and all, for this VIP visit was begging for a photo at the heroes’ monument.

  Josip’s heart raced when the colonel invited Mario and him for a group photo on the marble steps. Wait till Jana sees this, he thought.

  Mario, who was wearing a tailored dark-blue suit but no necktie, borrowed Schmitz’s and quickly knotted it.

  And there they were: three stiff older men posing before their own monument, all three wearing sunglasses due to the low-lying sun that cast a shadow of the photographer at their feet.

  When the car, on its descent, approached the passing tracks, the only thing that bothered Josip was the envelope of money in the inside pocket of his uniform, which he soon had to deposit under that cursed concrete block on the shoulder of the Ulica Zrinskog.

  The cars made their customary elegant divergence, each momentarily on its own track. Ante did not wave; nor did Josip.

  In the other, ascending, car sat Andrej.

  He had intentionally waited until it was Ante’s turn to man the upward car and took a window seat on the north side to minimize the chance that Josip would spot him.

  In his inside pocket was an envelope of money, which he was, according to the blackmailer’s instructions, to deposit at the base of a transmission tower in the hills.

  That April afternoon in 1988 marked the beginning of their mutual dependence.

  PART 3
<
br />   Andrej had resumed his work as a postman and had been given a new bicycle. Josip visited Jana every six weeks and took comfort from the thought that his daily climb to the heroes’ monument to refill the upper car’s water ballast was at least good for something: it kept him in shape for his lover, who, while not so young herself anymore, was still a far sight more youthful than he.

  In the first months of that year the political unrest in the country reached a head, not only in Kosovo, where the resistance to Serbian domination grew, but also in Croatia itself; this was exacerbated by the fact that the incoming chairman of the presidium, which was chaired by each federal republic in turn, would now be a Serb.

  Both men gradually became less bothered by the blackmail to which they were subjected. They had gotten more or less accustomed to the monthly payments, and they put themselves in the clear by demanding a new amount each month from their respective victim. Thus they unwittingly created, one could say, a kind of circular bookkeeping. It was likewise perfectly normal that the amount they demanded of each other was adjusted for inflation. In a sense it was even reassuring, as though each considered the other a reliable and realistic business partner.

  Andrej still frequented the casino in Rijeka, and he made a point of lodging in a three-star hotel, a definite step up from the first time, back when he’d had the photos developed. To be on the safe side, he stopped opening letters, so he was set back financially. All the more so because he had taken up a new, costly hobby: luxury malt whisky. He had drunk those small bottles he had planned on giving to Mario and had acquired such a taste for it that he bought a full bottle of each brand every time he was in Rijeka. All told, the best solution was to keep demanding more money from Tudjman. He did not take any pleasure in this, because, after all, blackmailing Tudjman had never been anything personal, and moreover the man had likely saved his life. It was really the fault of the criminal who was blackmailing him for missteps he had made in the past, but no longer committed. Andrej even got written up in the union magazine: he had been named Worker of the Month for having returned to his route so shortly after his accident. It infuriated him that some dirty rat would take advantage of his vulnerability while he lay injured in the hospital.

  He never did identify the culprit. When he went to Café Rubin on Saturday afternoon to thank all those Good Samaritans and offer a round of drinks, the accounts of the accident were so garbled, so peppered with self-praise, so contradictory when it came to who did what, that he left no closer to the truth than before. The men were not even all that interested in the details. They had all been his rescuer and helper, naturally with the leading roles for Tudjman—who wasn’t even here; Andrej had seen him waiting for the bus to Zagreb—and Mario, who had stopped his arterial bleeding. Now he, who had never been to their local hangout before, had been more or less welcomed into their circle, a club that most likely also included his Judas. They asked his opinion about the soccer league and the Eurovision Song Contest, and he was invited to join them on a regular basis.

  An encounter couldn’t be put off forever, although they both dreaded it, if only because Laika was still staying at the Tudjmans’ and this required making certain arrangements. It happened differently than expected.

  Andrej had gone to visit Laika and Katarina, certain that Tudjman would, as usual, be seated in his kiosk. But the heroes’ monument and the upper station were cloaked in a thick, low cloud, and as Josip did not expect even a single passenger to show up, he closed early and went home.

  His wife was in the kitchen, making an enormous racket with pots and pans. This show of domesticity surprised him, for she did not cook.

  Katarina and the postman were seated on the bedroom rug, putting together a jigsaw puzzle. She was wearing his cap, which covered the better part of her face. The dog lay on its back on the bed, baring her sharp teeth.

  Andrej looked up, taken aback, as was Josip, who could not find the words for the touching sight of the young beanpole being so fatherly with his daughter. The idea that he was blackmailing this good-hearted young man cut him to the quick.

  Fortunately Katarina leapt up and rescued them from the awkward silence. She performed an enthusiastic dance, holding the oversized cap on her head to keep it from falling off.

  “Papa, look what Uncle Andrej and I are doing! Look!”

  Grateful for the distraction, he glanced at the puzzle on the rug and blinked, confused.

  Nothing about it was right. The hindquarters of a white mare stuck out of the dome of Saint Peter’s, and somewhere down at the bottom, a fragmented foal chewed on half a yellow flower. Other bits of the puzzle were just white, because the pieces had been put in face down.

  “Pretty, huh? Pretty, huh?” Katarina squealed.

  Andrej stood up, straightened his jacket, and, smiling apologetically, said, “Now there’s a new one for you: these puzzles come from the same manufacturer, and the pieces are identical, too.”

  “Ah, that explains it,” Josip said.

  Andrej pulled himself together and stuck out his hand.

  “Mr. Tudjman—may I thank you for taking care of my dog and for saving my life.”

  “It was nothing, Mr. Rubinić—anyone would have done the same,” Josip replied and shook his hand.

  In this way the two men, both in uniform, cemented their acquaintance.

  “Papa, Papa!” Katarina screeched, hanging on to his pant leg. “Puzzle! Puzzle!”

  “I’ll just take the dog out,” Josip said, and snapped his fingers. Laika slid off the edge of the bed, sluggish as an overfed alligator.

  “Would you be able to keep her awhile longer?” Andrej asked.

  “Of course,” said Josip. “My daughter’s crazy about her.”

  “I’ll reimburse you for her food, naturally.”

  “No problem at all, Mr. Rubinić!” Josip laughed. “We’re glad to have Laika stay with us. Take your time with the puzzle. I’ll be back in half an hour.”

  Andrej felt that he weathered the confrontation admirably. And he felt sympathy for Tudjman. The man had a kind of dignity, despite his terrible domestic situation. If he could skip a visit to the casino once in a while, he might be able to give Tudjman a break in the future.

  The debates at Café Rubin became more and more heated, although Knević did his best to maintain a degree of impartiality. Most of them agreed that Croatia should become an independent nation. Yugoslavia was dead and gone ever since the demise of the great leader. The controversy regarding the autonomy of the provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina flared up again, and Marković was in favor of forming militias comprised of men like him. Those who were acquainted with war, such as Mario and Josip, were more restrained. The men grudgingly put up with old Schmitz’s anti-Semitic tirades; he tarred the Serbians, Jews, Muslims, and Gypsies with the same brush and insisted that “Ivan the Terrible” Demjanjuk was a martyr. Everyone, Schmitz included, had the right to his own opinion, but the rest of the townsmen were not much bothered by Jews. There were, after all, none left.

  Josip’s wife had locked herself in the bathroom and refused to open the door.

  He rapped on the door with his knuckles. “Open up. I need to use the toilet.”

  She switched on her blow-dryer.

  “Open up! You’ve been in there for half an hour!”

  “I’m making myself beautiful for the great grenadier!” she yelled back.

  “Don’t be so foolish. Open the door this instant!” But this time his tried-and-true method—using a stern tone of voice—did not work.

  “He fancies me! You can’t stand that, can you? Now you know what it feels like!”

  “How what feels like? I have to use the toilet!”

  But first he had to go to the kitchen, because a pungent smell told him that she had once again put a pair of rubber gloves in the oven. He had, for safety reasons, put a modern electric range alongside the old coal furnace, but this was hardly an improvement, because usually all the burners were turned on, a
nd she put everything imaginable, except pots and pans, on them.

  Now Katarina banged on the door as well. “Open up, open up, I have to go, too!”

  Inside, the blow-dryer was switched to its highest position, and at the same time, the toilet flushed, and she started singing at the top of her lungs, an approximation of the melody from Carmen.

  “Ljubica!” he shouted, above the din.

  “Who is that?” Katarina asked.

  “Your mother,” he explained.

  “But isn’t her name just ‘Mama’?”

  She flushed the toilet again and opened both bathtub faucets as well. The pressure on his bladder increased.

  “Damn it!” he bellowed.

  “Damn it!” imitated the girl shrilly, and then she broke into fits of laughter.

  “I’m going out with the dog,” he announced. “Andrej won’t be so happy about that, if he drops by!”

  “The great grenadier is coming, and he’s coming for me!” she shrieked.

  “No, for me! For me!” Katarina screeched.

  Josip clipped the leash onto Laika’s collar and hurried out of the house.

  He opted for their “long walk” along the Zrinskog and then back via the boulevard, more or less circumventing the entire old town center. The sky was uniformly gray and the sea as smooth as a paving stone, but it was not chilly, so he hardly needed his jacket. He gradually regained his composure. He would have to learn to live with the fact that his wife was insane. Flare-ups such as these were, fortunately, seldom. Perhaps he could have her committed. It would have to be a decent asylum, where inmates were treated humanely and with compassion. In spite of everything, Josip felt responsible for her. Life, he thought, was unfair: his friend and brother-in-law, Mario, who was born on the very same day and, if you believed in astrology, under the same constellation, had married her sister, a healthy, vivacious woman, and their children and grandchildren were all sane and healthy. He, on the other hand, had Ljubica and Katarina. And little Mirko, who had only lived for six months.