Marković had been absent at Café Rubin the week before, and this Saturday, too, the other men waited anxiously to see if he would show up. They waited a long time; the sun disappeared behind the clock museum and cast a broad shadow across the square.
He did finally arrive: on his moped, unshaven, and wearing camouflage gear and oversized sunglasses. Knević ordered a fresh round. Marković lingered for a chat with the newspaper vendor before sauntering over to them, helmet in hand.
He looks like an actor in an Italian B movie, Josip thought.
“Have a good weekend?” Mario asked jovially, sliding him a glass.
“Oh, yes,” Marković replied, “I’ve been to visit my daughter. She studies in Dubrovnik, as you all know.” He took a sip but set his glass back down immediately, as though his thoughts were elsewhere, and leaned back.
Poseur, Josip thought to himself.
“Economics, isn’t it?” Knević asked, smiling. “So you didn’t hear anything? About the attack?”
“What attack?” Marković asked absently.
“Come on,” Mario said. “We’re all friends here.”
“Gentlemen,” said the pharmacist, “not everything can be discussed publicly. Not yet, anyway. But here’s to Franjo Marković, a true Croatian patriot! Na zdravlje!”
“Na zdravlje,” the other men repeated solemnly.
Josip was the only one who did not raise his glass.
The next time he took Laika walking along the Zrinskog, Josip gave in to an urge: he picked up that cursed concrete block with both hands, lifted it high above his head, and hurled it with a loud grunt down the hillside. It rolled and rolled and bounced off other rocks and stones before—to Josip’s satisfaction—coming to rest far below among the rubble and weeds. The nightmare was over.
Except that at his feet waited, utterly unexpectedly, another white envelope.
Despite the garish Las Vegas postcard, he did not believe for a single moment that the bastard had ever been in America, for there was no postage stamp—but one thing was for sure: it could not have come from Schmitz. Josip had scared the daylights out of him and moreover it was simply not his style. Just like the very first letters, now that he thought about it.
He had accused the wrong man.
Josip took the negatives out of the envelope and held them up to the light. He already knew which photos the blackmailer had saved for last: the one with Jana kneeling in front of him, his uniform trousers crumpled around his ankles. sorry mate put 3000 dinars in a plastic bag and seal it good because i might not get to it right away i don’t live here anymore you’ll get the last negative when i get the money. It had been a fatal mistake to seduce her, or let her seduce him—this was a moot point now—during his shift. He was now more afraid of the management of the funicular than of his wife.
He tied up Laika and made his way down the steep hillside to retrieve the concrete block. He had been foolishly presumptuous, he realized as he dragged the block back into place.
Schmitz had indeed used the butterfly photos, and for a full calendar at that, called The Pride of Croatia. Each of the twelve months featured one of Andrej’s photos. To celebrate, Schmitz had invited Andrej for dinner. Andrej didn’t much feel like it but realized he couldn’t very well refuse. Schmitz lived in a small apartment on the boulevard that he had inherited from an aunt, not directly above his shop, but a few doors farther down.
He had gone to a lot of trouble: candles, classical music, čevapčići; and he wore a white dress shirt and purple woolen vest Andrej had never seen before.
“Take a seat, my boy,” Schmitz said as he tied on an apron. “Dinner will be ready soon.”
While he was in the kitchen, Andrej had a look around the apartment. Shelves full of books and small display cases of knickknacks. It was as though the old auntie still lived here. As in his own home, there was a vase of flowers on the table. He did not feel entirely comfortable, and the reason gradually occurred to him: if he was still alone when he got old, this is how he could end up.
It irked him that Schmitz hardly sat at the table during the meal, but continually dashed back and forth to the kitchen for food and drinks, and that he kept his apron—pink with light-blue flowers!—on the whole time. The combination of Schmitz’s nearly bald head and his thick glasses, which made his eyes bug out like a frightened fish’s, unnerved him even more.
“Guess who came to see me,” Schmitz said after dinner, his pursed lips blowing over a cup of mocha.
“Tudjman?”
“Right. He brought back that money he’d taken from me.”
“And did he apologize?”
“Hardly. He insulted me and called me a disgusting racist who was capable of anything.”
“He’s very principled,” Andrej said earnestly. “And don’t forget, he saved my life after that accident. He and Mario. I won’t hear a bad word about Josip Tudjman. I respect that man.”
“I know you two are more or less friends, my boy. That’s your right, even though I have to say he’s getting a little doddering. That’s why I didn’t press charges. But you know, I think I’m your very best friend. That is … I never mentioned it to anyone.”
“Mentioned what?” Andrej asked harshly.
“That banknote in my cash drawer. It came from you. We both know that, right? You bought the camera and the telephoto lens with it.”
“Why do you bring it up now?”
“No reason at all, my boy. I would never do anything that wasn’t in your best interest.”
“What do you want from me, Papa Schmitz?”
“Maybe I’d appreciate it if you visited me more often. Just the two of us, like tonight.”
“I’m busy,” Andrej replied, as aloofly and blandly as possible.
“I know that,” Schmitz said hastily, fidgeting with the knot in his apron string. “You’ve got your mail route … and you’re a member of the Serbian union.”
“Yugoslavian union,” Andrej corrected him.
“You don’t really believe that, do you? Belgrade is behind it entirely. You’re letting them take advantage of you, Andrej, without even realizing it.”
“What am I supposed to do, then?” asked Andrej, who wouldn’t mind being told again how dashing he’d look in an Ustaša uniform.
“Great things are happening in our city. In all of Croatia. We’re going to throw out that Serbian riffraff once and for all. You know the grocer Kostić?”
“Yes, but I don’t really care for vegetables, and especially not pumpkins.”
“Have you had enough čevapčići, by the way? Shall I fry up a few more? No? Well, tomorrow evening there will be a little gathering, just to let Kostić and his family know they’re no longer welcome here. Take this phone number,” he said, and jotted it down on a light-green slip of paper.
“I can’t tomorrow,” Andrej said. “I’m going night fishing with Tudjman.”
“Oh, Andrej,” Schmitz sighed.
His wife did not object to his plan to go night fishing. Even she would be hard pressed to imagine nymphomaniac mermaids climbing over the edge of his sloop to seduce him, or Sophia Loren pursuing him in a speedboat.
“I’m taking Andrej with me,” he said. “We’ll be out until morning. Don’t wait up.”
“With him? With the great grenadier?” she had replied in disbelief. “Doesn’t he have anything better to do?”
Andrej had been looking forward to this undertaking for weeks. Tudjman had postponed it several times due to the weather, but recently Andrej had seen plenty of lights from other fishing boats far off the coast. Maybe Tudjman was ruffled by that last blackmail note. He needn’t worry, Andrej thought, because he had no intention of collecting the money from under the concrete block. That was behind them now. He regarded Josip Tudjman as a friend, and friends did not do such things to one another. He asked what he should bring with him, what kind of clothes to wear.
“Dress warmly,” Tudjman had said. “I’ll take care of the res
t.”
Tudjman’s boat was a blue-and-white wooden sloop with an outboard motor. As soon as they left the harbor, he fastened two long poles crosswise, on which hung the large carbide lamps, and readied the fishing rods. Andrej held on tight to the seat he had been assigned, surrounded by coolers and an assortment of fishing tackle.
“So where are we going?” he asked once Tudjman finally took the helm and they left the coast behind them.
“To Pag. That’s the best spot. Almost no one knows it.”
They passed a few other, apparently less well-informed, night fishermen and began crossing the dark strait that separated them from the island.
“It’s about forty minutes,” Tudjman said.
The boat kept its course over the still, black water, and now Andrej dared to let go of the plank and look around him.
As the lights on the coast faded, more and more stars appeared; he had never realized there were so many.
“Now we’ll head between those rocks,” Tudjman said, lowering his speed. “I’ve got to look sharp here.”
“Is it dangerous?” Andrej asked.
“Nah. I know the way.”
A short while later he turned off the engine and dropped anchor.
It was as though thousands of new stars, lured out by the sudden stillness, emerged above the pale limestone and the lightless sea; Andrej thought it threatening, as if the firmament was out to crush him. He saw more and more suffocating swarms of stars.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Tudjman said, and sat down across from him. “Soothing.”
“Yes, nice,” Andrej replied.
“I’ll turn on those lamps soon. Then we have to sit absolutely quiet for a while, while the fish are drawn to the light. The least sound will scare them off.”
“Okay,” Andrej said.
“We’ll fish with two poles each. If you catch anything big, I’ll give you a hand. There are some real monsters here.”
“All right,” Andrej said, trying to block out the thought of monsters.
Tudjman got up and lit the lamps, which hung just above the water’s pitch-black surface. Four immense ovals of light now flanked their boat; in these new conditions the heavens seemed to recede, and Andrej felt more at ease.
They extended the rods. Andrej asked what kind of bait they were using.
“Fish,” Tudjman said. “Fish are attracted to fish.”
But not tonight, apparently, Andrej thought after an hour and a half had passed without a nibble.
“They’re not biting,” Tudjman said with regret.
Andrej thought that this was perhaps the moment to open up about his troubles, man to man.
“I’m in a real pickle,” he began. “Have been for some years now.”
Tudjman glanced over his shoulder and raised his chin questioningly before turning his concentration once again to the motionless bobber.
“Someone is blackmailing me.”
“Really?” Tudjman asked, after a brief silence. “Have you done anything wrong?”
“No … well, yes, once. But that was long ago.”
“We all step out of line once in a while,” Tudjman said. “But at a certain point you have to let bygones be bygones.”
“But that’s just it—it’s not a bygone,” Andrej replied. “The bastard has been harassing me for years, relentlessly. I’m supposed to make a payment almost every month.”
“How?” Tudjman swished his rod out of the water to re-bait the hook.
“I have to put it under one of the transmission towers up the hill.”
“Clever,” said Tudjman. “It’s completely deserted up there. I know where you mean, to the north of the upper cable car station.”
“Yes. Of course he’s clever. But he’s a bastard all the same.”
“Maybe he’s desperate for the money.”
“So what? He should get a job, then. I’ve also got a demanding profession.”
Delivering the mail, Josip thought to himself, is hardly a demanding profession.
“People can mean well,” he said, “but ill, too. And the hard part is that you never know for sure which to expect. You remember I told you about Jana?”
“Of course.”
“She’s in a fix, too. She has a heart of gold, and people sometimes take advantage of that. So now she’s in debt. And heart of gold or not—if she’s pushed into a corner she can, how shall I put it, insinuate things.”
“Like what?” Andrej asked, after Tudjman had said nothing more for several minutes.
“Like how anxious I must be that my wife not find out about our relationship. That it was clear I would never leave her, mindful of my reputation and our daughter, but that she, Jana, had after all given me the best years of her life, without any benefit to herself. That I had to realize she, as a woman, also had her rights.”
“The best years of her life?” Andrej asked. “I thought she wasn’t so young anymore.”
Tudjman seemed to take offense at this.
“Jana is young and beautiful, on the inside and on the outside,” he said, “and I can only hope you find such love one day.”
“Yes,” Andrej conceded, “I hope so, too.”
“You know, if a woman really loves you … if you only knew what she does for me. Nothing beats true love.”
That may be, Andrej thought, but if you ask me, she’s got you by the balls.
Even if the light of the carbide lamps did shine into the depths, all he saw was the bright reflection on the water’s surface. And if the underwater beam of light did attract any fish, they sure weren’t planning on getting caught. Thinking he might never get another chance at such a confidential exchange with Tudjman, he dared to ask: “And your wife … was that true love, too, when you got married?”
Tudjman took his time, and meanwhile put new bait on Andrej’s hook.
“Yes and no,” he said at last. “I was eager to marry, build a house, start my own family. I think I was in love with her. But you know the saying: the first woman in your life makes a hole in your heart, and all the others slip through it … You’re only young once.”
Then I hope it’s not too late for me, Andrej thought. I’ve never been in love.
“But it could have been another girl,” Tudjman continued. “Her sister, for instance. Most times when people do one thing, they could just as well do the other.”
“So we just settle for whatever comes along?” Andrej asked.
“That’s what it boils down to, I guess,” Tudjman said. “Unless you’re lucky enough to meet the love of your life, like I did.”
Andrej thought he had a nibble, but the moment passed. It was already half past three; in another hour or so the sun would come up. The sky above the Velebit looked a little lighter than it had earlier, but around him it was still pitch-black.
Suddenly he saw them: at first a double, then a triple row of illuminated dots bobbing slowly up and down. Sometimes they shifted positions among themselves.
“Josip,” he whispered, “look over there … what’s that? Is it dangerous?”
It looked as though the bright-yellow lights were about to surround their boat.
Josip did not answer, but shifted to the other end of his seat; and because the boat tilted to one side, the ovals of light shifted toward the mysterious, threatening apparition.
“Pelicans,” he said.
There were dozens of them, and they were all observing the boat. With the light now shining on them, they made Andrej think of a tribunal of floating inquisitors. Most had their bill tucked against their chest, the large throat pouch like the jabot on a judge’s robe. Others held their head up, so that the throat pouch hung freely and the large mouth, with the sharp hook on the upper bill, shone brightly in the light. They all kept their wings above their back, as if at the ready.
“Horrible creatures,” Andrej said.
“What are you talking about,” Josip replied, and he returned to his spot, bringing the lamps back to their original
position. All they could now see of the birds was the bobbing formation of beady, glowing eyes.
“They’re beautiful animals. They often spend nights here in the bay. Do you know what they symbolize in Christianity?”
“No,” Andrej said.
“Self-sacrifice and resurrection. In the old days people thought they fed their young with their own blood from their breast. Truth is, the young ones just gorge themselves from the throat pouch … but anyway, that’s how it became the symbol of blood donors. I know because I was a donor myself.”
“Me, too,” Andrej said.
“Really? Well, then you’re sort of a pelican, too.”
“I only did it for the money.”
“Yes, that was part of my own motivation, too,” Josip admitted. “But it’s for a good cause, of course. Without a blood transfusion, you wouldn’t have survived that accident.”
“Without you I wouldn’t have survived the accident. Those damn pelicans don’t have anything to do with it. I still think they’re creepy.”
Josip caught a wayward little fish, no bigger than his hand. He removed it from the hook and tossed it back in the water.
“Has Schmitz said anything to you?” he asked, after a brief silence.
“What about?”
“You would know, if he had … I did him a bad turn. I accused him of something that in the end he had nothing to do with. It’s painful to have to apologize to a bastard like him. Sorry that I say it like that, I know you and he are friends.”
“Well, ‘friends’ … ,” Andrej said evasively. “He’s always looking out for me, that’s true. I don’t know why.”
The Pelican Page 11
