“Yes, my darling, but I don’t always feel like it. Look, we’re nearly there. Are you up for a short walk once we get there, to take in the view?”
“Oh, yes, sure. My hip is like new.”
The Neroberg station resembled that of his own funicular, although it was more decorative, with all that filigree woodwork. Their carriage came to a halt smoothly and at exactly the right spot.
They ambled up the path, Jana supporting herself on his arm and her elegant walking stick, and they sat on a park bench near a colonnaded pavilion.
“What a city. I’m so happy we could do all this together, Josip.”
Wiesbaden was large, even larger than Zagreb, but most of all it was far prettier. They looked out over the vineyards, the glistening Rhine, and the blue ridge of the Taunus mountains.
“An Orthodox church,” Jana said, reading from her guidebook, “with five gilded domes. A duke named Adolf had it built for his deceased wife and child … apparently she was a grand duchess from Saint Petersburg. Isn’t that romantic?”
Josip remembered that a Russian Orthodox church had once stood on the hilltop above his own funicular, on the spot where they later erected the heroes’ monument, of which nothing was left except the base, and which was now used by hang gliders as a takeoff spot.
“It’s a few more minutes’ walk. Do you want to have a look?”
Josip remained silent and tried to put his hands into his coat pockets, but discovered they were still sewn shut.
The church on his hilltop did not have spires, as far as he could recall. He must have visited it as a child, because he still clearly remembered his first ride on the funicular; it was with his father, and he was madly in love with a girl from kindergarten. He could not remember her name, but she had freckles.
Whether he had gone inside it back then, he did not remember, either.
“No,” he decided. “I’ll stay here with you.”
Jana put the guidebook back into her purse and took out a small stack of postcards.
“Shall we? Look here, I’ve already stamped and addressed them.”
The stamps, commemorating the tenth anniversary of a unified Germany, were emblazoned with little black-yellow-and-red flags.
“To Mario? Why?”
“Why not? He’s your oldest friend.”
“But not my best one anymore. We haven’t spoken in years.”
“What of it? I think it’s a good idea that he sees we’re in Wiesbaden together, even if he’s never invited us to that great big house of his with those ostentatious eagles in the driveway. Come on, Josip, just a few words and then our names.”
She clicked on the ballpoint pen they had taken from the hotel room. He could not very well refuse. He wrote: Hello Mario, greetings from sunny Wiesbaden, also from Jana and to your wife and family. Your old friend Josip.
“There,” said Jana. “And now this one.”
“To Katarina … that’s nice of you.”
“I do care about her, Josip, you know that. Even though I don’t much like going to that asylum with you. Go on, let me send her a greeting.”
“You can write it yourself, then,” Josip said and handed the card back to her.
Jana pouted, heaved a deep sigh, and started writing. Josip fixed his gaze on the Kurhaus, where the casino was, and thought of Andrej.
“There we are,” Jana said. Josip did not read what she had written, but just added your loving father at the end.
When they got back to the Neroberg funicular station, the young woman with the blonde curls was filling the ballast reservoir. She was bent over, her feet spread, and wore dark-blue trousers that at least somewhat resembled a uniform, which you couldn’t say for her modish psychedelic blouse.
Josip inquired how many passengers were waiting at the bottom.
She answered by holding up a mobile telephone with two large yellow numbers on the display.
Josip looked at the needle on the water meter and said, “Then that’ll be enough.”
“Really?” she asked and detached the hose. “This is just a vacation job. I don’t really know that much about it.”
They slept for nearly two hours on the hotel bed, having removed only their coats and shoes. Jana woke up first and switched on the lamp above the headboard.
“Wake up! It’s already dark! Time for dinner!”
“Not hungry,” Josip mumbled and pressed his face into the pillow.
“You’re the one who wanted half pension. We’ve paid for it, so get up, you!”
But Josip stayed in bed while she turned on all the lights and slid open the sheer curtains in order to look out over the shopping street. He knew she would need at least half an hour before she was ready to go downstairs.
“Look, there’s a Zara right across the street! Had you seen it already?”
He did not give a reply, which was not expected from him in any case, and she went into the bathroom. She left the frosted-glass sliding door half-open, for she still believed he found it titillating to watch her perform her ablutions. It was a gesture of intimacy he did not much value anymore.
“What do you think?” she asked, showing him a leg clad in black nylon. “With my new patent leather pumps?”
“Beautiful. Very elegant,” Josip said.
She retreated behind the frosted glass without a word. He sat up and rolled his legs out of bed. Where had his shoes gotten to?
Life, on the one hand, had gone by too fast; on the other hand, it dragged on.
What would have happened if he had married the girl with the freckles, whose name he couldn’t even remember? And what if there hadn’t been a war?
Jana was the love of his life, of course; nothing could ever undo that, and it would be poor form to have regrets now. She was sixty-four, an old woman in fact, certainly after the hip replacement; but he had aged remarkably well, physically at least. Aside from a mild form of diabetes he was completely healthy and he felt as fit as, say, fifteen years ago.
Why, he thought, am I always the one who looks after others—Ljubica, Mirko, Katarina, Jana—and no one has ever looked after me?
The only exception he could think of was during the war, in February 1945.
It was a landscape like none they had ever seen. No one came here, and rightly so: it was barren, inhospitable, well-nigh lifeless terrain. Modrić had a topographical map that promised more variety than what they experienced on a daily basis: there were at least a few numbers, and the curves of the contour lines gave them the sensation they were in another world than one they traversed, which was monotonous and, at the same time, all but impassable. Rain or shine, everything was gray.
The landscape consisted of bare, rocky ridges and deep ravines overgrown with thornbush; in order to follow their compass routes they were constantly fighting their way through the crevices, and after four interminable days of trekking, they were all exhausted.
What a fatherland, Josip thought. Is this what we’re fighting for, this wasteland? I hold God responsible.
But they had to press on, because the Germans had captured the entire coastline, and their only chance of survival was to locate the units farther inland. Sixteen men against an enemy army of thousands that was continually reinforced. Fifteen men, actually, because one of them, a reticent cabinetmaker from Split, had shot himself in the head that morning. No one knew why. They lost half an hour looking for loose stones and rocks with which to cover his body, but in the end, the effort being too time consuming, they gave up.
“Leave him there,” Modrić had said. “He was a deserter, after all. He betrayed us. That bullet could have been used on a German.” And so they left him behind. Josip, despite himself, looked back several times; the buzzards were already circling the spot. They were better informed than the Luftwaffe. Modrić was his commander and therefore he obeyed, but he was troubled by the thought that a person didn’t just take his own life for no reason. What could it have been? Maybe something that didn’t have to do with
the war. The war made you forget that there were other sources of desperation.
But what gave him equal cause for worry was that the sole of his left boot was starting to come loose. If your footwear gave out in a situation like this, you were a goner. The men had the greatest difficulty keeping their balance on the narrow ridges, which offered no foothold to speak of, and which they often had to follow for many kilometers just to cover a few hundred meters as the crow flies. Josip was gripped by panic at the thought that he would not be able to keep up, that he would impede the others, that he would be a liability.
The sole of his boot held out, but his body did not. He realized this when they had to leave the ridge so as not to be spotted by the German reconnaissance planes, and he was unable to clamber back up again. He saw ten meters of thornbushes and ten meters of steep rock face above him and was certain of one thing: he would not make it. His neck suddenly swelled up, as unexpectedly and inexplicably as his member when, as a small boy, he had his first erection. And as frightening, too. He pulled his shirt open to make room for the bulge under his chin that felt like a pelican’s overfull throat pouch. He was extremely thirsty but could not swallow. His limbs stopped obeying him.
Mario, who had already reached the top, turned and shouted to him, “Hurry up, Josip! They’re gone!”
But he could not. Mario put down his rucksack and rifle and scrambled back down to him. Their commander returned partway and screamed at them.
“Come on,” Mario panted, pulling him to his feet.
Josip began coughing hoarsely and collapsed. He soon came to the conclusion that he was no longer a soldier, but a patient. Mario, though, wouldn’t accept this.
“Goddammit!” he shouted, close to tears. “Get up, get up!”
He’s afraid he’ll have to go on alone, without me, Josip thought, and gave it one more try.
There followed a strange, drawn-out procedure; Josip alone in the bushes with nothing more than the blank sky above him, then Mario who returned, Modrić who called him away again, then, as before, nothing but thornbushes and fading shouts, one of which he recognized as Mario’s, and finally Mario and four other men who hauled him up the hill.
They carried him over the ridge in a tarpaulin; the path was so narrow that the men had to find their footing lower down, and dragged him along the rock like a sleigh across snowless ground. He was in great pain and lost all control, the cloudless sky offered nothing to focus on; all he saw were the four dark-brown canvas corners of the tarpaulin in which he was cradled, like in a crib, and he was ashamed. They should have left him there, he should have followed the example of the cabinetmaker from Split and done himself in; now his unit was sacrificing manpower and time on his behalf.
Mario knew he could not swallow, and he appeared now and then with his dented canteen and poured lukewarm, valuable water over his face to cool him. Josip saw him as an angel with curly brown hair and large, heavenly eyes who appeared and vanished, but was constantly at his side.
Leave me here, he thought, right now you’re only doing the Germans a favor.
But he could not speak, and apparently it had been decided he should be saved.
When he spotted the evening star in the empty sky, they had come upon a place that was more than just rock and thornbush; it was the remains of a barn and a sheep stall consisting of concrete foundation blocks, partially charred beams and slats, and, most importantly, scattered corrugated metal sheets with which his comrades quickly improvised a shelter. Now he lay on sleeping bags embedded in a pit and had a roof over his head for the first time in weeks.
Modrić came to see him and removed his cap to be able to crouch under the corrugated metal roof without banging his head.
“You all right, Tudjman?” he asked.
Josip could not speak, but opened his eyes wide and gestured vehemently with two fingers, as though repeating the horizontal half of the sign of the cross, that no, he was not all right, and they should leave him behind.
“Forget it, Tudjman. You just get better and fight. You won’t shake us so easily.”
Modrić was not a kind man, and Josip understood all too well that he would have left him behind had it not been for Mario.
“Do you know what this is?” he asked, holding up a small, well-thumbed book. “Das Feldlazarett, the field hospital. We found it in the wreckage of that German ambulance we shot up above Gospić, you remember?”
Josip’s hand rested on the clammy sleeping bag. He felt like a man who had been given a life sentence and was now waiting to see if he would be given another three life sentences on top of it.
“I’m no doctor. I am—or was—an engineer, as you might know. But your symptoms tell me you’ve got diphtheria. And this,” he said, showing him a small cardboard box, “are injection syringes with penicillin. A miracle drug from America.”
It probably lasted no more than two weeks, but afterward it felt like he had spent seasons, years even, under that low corrugated roof where the sun beat down in the morning, and from which gushed parallel streams of water when it rained; a long, long time during which he did nothing but lay there and suffer while his comrades tended to his every need.
Mario was ubiquitous, maintaining a caregiver’s aloofness to spare his friend needless shame. Josip was grateful to him.
Even more so because Mario also kept telling him dirty stories, assuming that Josip was still a man, or would be one again soon, instead of a stinking wreck with bloody eyes.
“That Ljubica and her sister, you know, we’ve got to get our hands on them. They’re the sexiest broads in town. Unless we take Berlin and I can get Eva Braun, I’ll marry her, and you her sister. What do you think?”
“Fine, it’s a deal,” Josip said as Mario jabbed the syringe into his thigh. “You get Ljubica and I’ll take her sister.”
He had a fever and recalled his first infatuation. That was long before those first, worrying erections, because he knew for sure he was still in kindergarten. It was the first time he had gone up on the funicular. She was with her parents, Austrians who were in the diplomatic corps. They were only there for that one summer, his mother had told him, and that’s why the girl with the freckles went to the same kindergarten as he did, even though she spoke only German. This made her, in his eyes, all the more desirable. A girl who lived so far away must be something very special indeed, he fantasized. He was convinced that she was the love of his life and thought up a plan to win her over.
He was lucky, because on a seat in the cable car he found an advertising brochure for gleaming white steamships and palm-lined beaches. He stuck it under his shirt while no one was looking.
And when their parents went into the dark church, which the children had no desire to do, he took her behind a small wall with the promise of showing her something very beautiful.
“What, then? What?” she asked, beaming.
She let out admiring squeals at the very first photos, and Josip mustered up the courage to turn the pages one at a time. He would ask her to marry him when he reached the color photo where cheering natives in dugouts surrounded a ship with red smokestacks.
Why that never went through, he couldn’t say.
Whenever German reconnaissance planes approached, his comrades took cover underneath the corrugated shelter with him, at close quarters, and he regarded those moments as the happiest in his life. He was afraid and he was grateful and he could hardly believe that they were there with him and had not left him behind.
After that time in the mountains, when he had recovered, it felt as though his life had become infinitely more worthwhile than before, because his comrades had sacrificed so much to rescue him; he felt obliged to repay them in some way and volunteered for the most dangerous missions. But they would not hear of it, and likewise Modrić always kept him behind at the base camp or in the back lines, as though he had become a sort of company talisman. As the months passed, the effect wore off, both with him and with the others, and before long he consi
dered himself just as unexceptional as before, and simply hoped to survive. And survive he did, thanks to the fact that the hand grenade he had thrown through the embrasure of a German bunker on the last day of the war, and which was promptly thrown back and landed at his feet, did not explode.
He was still sitting on the edge of the bed when Jana came out of the bathroom.
Erika, that was the girl’s name.
“What’s wrong?” Jana asked.
“I can’t find my shoes,” he said, somewhat despondently.
“You don’t fool me, Josip,” she said. “I know you. You’re just a bit down in the dumps again, that’s all. Have you been thinking about her?”
At moments like these, Jana always assumed he was thinking about his late wife.
“Yes,” he replied sadly. It might be a barefaced lie, but it was still the easiest way out.
Erika with the freckles returned to Vienna with her parents shortly thereafter, and he never saw her again.
Jana stroked his bald head and said, “Ach, darling, don’t. It really is better this way. She simply couldn’t cope with life. And I’ll be with you always.”
“Nur einen Kaffee für mich, bitte,” he said after dinner.
“Oh, Josip, only a coffee? Are you sure? No after-dinner slivovitz?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” he said gruffly. “I know what I do and don’t want.”
Extras like that won’t be included in the half pension, he thought to himself. She lowered her eyes bashfully and he noticed, not without a certain satisfaction, the surprised and respectful expression on the face of the young waitress when he handed the menu back to her.
Jana reached over to him, and he felt obliged to let her hold his hand.
Her eyes had never really done much for him; in all those years it was more about her expression as a whole, and about her body, of course, her scent, and her stylishness. They were reassuring eyes, to be sure, attractive but not threatening, unlike Ljubica’s, which had always been the eyes of an enemy. Jana’s look was receptive, searching, expectant, and even her theatrical makeup could not change that. But now she gave him a penetrating look and squeezed his hand, as though to lend weight to the words she was about to utter. He hoped she wouldn’t get too emotional. He would listen, of course he had to listen, but he did not expect to hear anything that would add to his happiness; they had been lovers for too long for that. She was his ally, she had earned her place, but he had to be on his guard.
The Pelican Page 15
