Our Man in Iraq

by Robert Perisic

  “Is it serious?”

  “They don’t know.”

  We drove toward our new neighborhood. Stopped at a traffic light I stared at a blue building under construction. A lot of buildings like that were going up, the shares of construction firms were rocketing and people flocked to the stock market. It seemed everyone was on the winning end apart from us.

  “How can they make such ugly blue monoliths? Are there no building regulations?” I said.

  “There are much more important things that are unregulated, and you’re worrying about aesthetics? How are you going for money?”

  “Broke as usual.”

  “What are you up to then?”

  “Some writing.”

  “You too?” he said disappointedly. “I need you to pay me back some of the money I gave you. My loans have dried up. I gave my old man the sack.”

  It all happened very quickly after parking the car: as Markatović was getting out, two shapes emerged from the semi-darkness of the parking lot and grabbed him. There was one on my side who grabbed me from behind, but I managed to slip from his grasp before he could tighten his grip. I pulled back, and he struck me with something on the shoulder. I saw Markatović being beaten, and my huge attacker came at me again.

  I ran behind a car. The guy didn’t know which direction to come at me from. Other parked cars blocked my view of Markatović but I saw the gorillas kicking him as he lay on the ground. Behind me was a little park, where a neighborhood gang liked to hang out.

  Like a flash of lightning I started yelling, “Joe! Hey Joe! Help!”

  The guy who was chasing me stopped and glanced around.

  A Joe appeared out of the shadows of the park.

  “Help, Joe, help!”

  Then Joe was joined by three or four more Joes.

  The gorillas who’d attacked us weren’t taking any chances; they ran off to a black BMW that was idling with its lights off, got in, and quickly slipped away.

  Markatović was a mess. His lip was burst and bleeding, his face red, and one eye half shut. He held his ribs and could hardly breathe.

  “Who were they?” the Joes asked.

  “No idea,” I confessed.

  I called an ambulance. One of the Joes asked, “You fr’m the block here?”

  “I’m not here all the time, but you probably know my friend Tosho.”

  He nodded conspiratorially as if he remembered me now.

  “You sure saved us,” I said. “I owe you a round when I see you next.”

  “Microregionalists,” Markatović moaned from below.

  One of them laughed for a second. They thought he was delirious. Only now did I notice that Markatović was missing one of his front teeth.

  “They lost the elections,” Markatović groaned, “but I made the most out of them.”

  I rode to the hospital in the ambulance.

  “Are you in debt to Dolina?” I asked.

  “They count every damn kuna.”

  At the hospital, before being wheeled in by the medics, Markatović gasped, “You try doing business in Croatia.”

  “Sorry?” the medic asked.

  Markatović waved to me sentimentally, as if we’d never see each other again. The doors closed behind him, and I gazed about, disoriented. I was probably in shock too. I couldn’t get “microregionalists” out of my head.

  Then I noticed a blonde sleeping on a chair in the hall.

  She was holding her handbag on her lap with both hands and her head was drooping to the side: Silva.

  I sat down next to her and stayed there and felt safe for some time. It would have been a pity to wake her. Her skin was pale and revealed her exhaustion.

  Smoking was prohibited there, so after a while I got up. At the exit I texted her: “They’re sewing Markatović up. I’m going home to write the love story.”

  At my bedsit I opened a beer, sat down at the table, and started leafing through an old copy of Today, looking for “It Takes Two to Tango.”

  I sat there for a long time, wondering what to write. What could I say? A man and a woman loved each other but their love was eroded by external circumstances, the world of work, social pressures, and the system none of us could escape?

  The genre of romance doesn’t acknowledge love that fails like this. It looks at the system aloofly and pretends to be above it. But I knew that genre lies.

  I read yesterday’s love story, by a Ružica Ružica from Biograd, it said. Ružica worked as an au pair in Rio de Janeiro, where she fell passionately in love, only to return to Croatia in the end with her Brazilian beau.

  So that was the scheme: a girl goes away to an attractive destination that evokes romance, falls in love there, and then returns home—because it wouldn’t be politically correct for a story to promote emigration?

  The story in Saturday’s issue was almost the same, except that Ljerka Mršić from Osijek was an archaeologist, and the guy a rich Neapolitan, who, as she discovered by pure chance, happened to have Croatian roots.

  I started writing:

  It began in Mexico, where 25-year-old Milka Radičić from Vrbovec went to work as an au pair. She’d been in a relationship with Borna who promised to wait for her and marry her when she returned. But in Mexico Milka’s life was turned upside down . . .

  My mobile tore me away from the story. It was Silva; she’d woken up in the waiting room and got my message. Her son was better—they’d got his temperature to come down, and they’d sewed up Markatović’s lip, although they wanted to keep him for another few days because he appeared to have two broken ribs.

  “I’ll visit him tomorrow,” I said.

  She asked how the love story was going.

  “I’m looking at yours and copying.”

  “That’s the best way.”

  I got back to writing: When she arrived in Mexico at the property of Alex Castillo, whose children she was to mind, Milka was surprised to find that it lay at the foot of a mountain whose peak was wreathed in smoke. Alex’s younger brother, Eduardo, explained to her that they were beneath the volcano Popocatépetl. Everyone in his family always had a suitcase packed with basic essentials ready under their beds. Every Castillo, practically from birth, kept a travel-ready suitcase, which in turn reflected on their family’s character and attitude about life, Eduardo said. Although no Castillo had ever needed to go away, they were always prepared to leave everything at the drop of a hat and set off into the unknown. “Such is life under the volcano,” Eduardo told Milka.

  Milka took to Eduardo at first glance. And he to her. She was the first au pair who hadn’t been frightened by Popocatépetl. Eduardo realized straight away that Croatia was a land of brave women. Soon love flamed up between him and Milka. But six months later Milka had to return to Croatia. She and Eduardo said goodbye beneath Popocatépetl, thinking they’d never see each other again. Just then, she almost wished the volcano would erupt and Eduardo would get his suitcase.

  She felt pangs of guilt for her thoughts because that would be a catastrophe for Eduardo’s family, and her desire for him was so strong that she feared it might really happen. On her homeward journey she prayed to God that it wouldn’t. She thought of the worst scenario: of the volcano erupting and Eduardo not managing to flee. It was with these thoughts that she arrived home in Croatia only to find out that, in her absence, Borna had started going with Lana, who, to make matters worse, was also Milka’s cousin. Poor Milka, no one understood her in those difficult moments. People added insult to injury by telling her she shouldn’t have gone away to Mexico in the first place.

  A week later, Eduardo called and said he was taking his suitcase and coming to Croatia. In fear, Milka asked him if the volcano had erupted, but that wasn’t the reason. Eduardo said he was coming because of the love in his heart, and Milka broke into tears of relief and joy.

  Around noon Silva called me. She was satisfied.

  “Do you think it sounds authentic?” I asked.

  “It sounds lik
e a love story,” she said.

  She told me she would help me earn some money with stories like that, at least until I found myself something else. She could place such things in Violeta, PEG’s women’s magazine. These stories figured prominently in that publication and were signed with foreign, female names because readers didn’t like romance authors with domestic names—they didn’t sound elegant enough.

  “Plus,” she added, “no one would know it's you.”

  Soon after we met up for a beer in a secluded bar full of mirrors. She brought my money, and told me, with the flavor of that staffer’s frustration I’d already forgotten, about Charly, who’d been made editor in chief after Pero got canned. “He’s not chasing after me anymore,” Silva said and involuntarily glanced at herself in the mirror. Dario had also ascended the ladder: he now followed Charly like a shadow, thereby displacing Secretary, who was pretty exhausted with party field work, plus his cholesterol had gone through the roof, and they could just about pension him off. The big boss, I knew, had become president of the Croatian Tennis Association.

  More stories as we drank till closing time, and when the waiters asked us to leave I said, “My place? We could get a bit more booze.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “I don’t think.”

  We laughed and gadded down the road. We ended up in bed. After sex she fell asleep, and I lay beside her on the foldout couch. She woke up an hour and a half later—the first rays of light found their way in through the blinds—and she saw me sitting at the table with a beer.

  “Are you OK?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I just can’t sleep.”

  “Just give me a moment,” she said, searching for her bra.

  “No no, please, you should sleep.”

  “I have to go home.”

  I didn’t say anything. I thought I should stop her so she’d stay, but I was hardly capable of conversation. She got dressed in the half-light. Then she came up to me, bent over a little and looked me in the eyes.

  “Hang in there.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “She’s still on your mind, I can tell.”

  “It’s got nothing to do with that.”

  “In any case, it’s got nothing to do with me,” she said, gathering her things from the table. “I’m cool. I’ve had so much shit, you wouldn’t believe it. I’m resilient. I’m just telling you, for your sake. You have to get that story out of your head as if it never existed. Believe me, I know firsthand.”

  I thought how good it’d be if I loved her.

  “You’re probably right,” I said. “Want me to make you coffee?”

  She agreed to stay a while longer.

  “Silva, I admire you so much,” I told her as she sipped her coffee.

  The wrinkles around her eyes danced in a smile of irony. “Don’t be so direct.”

  “They’ve lifted it!” Markatović yelled over the phone.

  He’d woken me up.

  “Turn on your computer. Check the shares, they’re moving again.” His ribs had healed admirably. His bottom lip was still a bit thick in the middle but it kind of suited him, and he’d had a crown put on his front tooth.

  I did as he told me and finally I saw the ticker working. RIJB-R-A. Right at the start it’d gone up eight percent.

  “This could be my rescue.”

  “It’ll get even better. It has to. There’s still some way to go to my price, but it’ll make it. It has to, it’ll saunter its way up!”

  “I’m sure it will.” That impulse to be heartening was automatic, just like it had been in the past.

  We’d known for some time that the situation with the bank had to be resolved because the government had taken over the majority share and bailed out the debts. The incident was no cause for jubilation, but the Rijeka region heaved a sigh of relief, as did Markatović and I. We’d just been waiting for them to lift the ban on trading so we could recoup the money we’d invested—back when we were other people.

  Now things came full circle.

  “I only want to get my money back—that’s my target. When I make it to zero, I’m getting out,” Markatović vowed.

  “You’ll make it to zero, take it easy.”

  “If I make it to zero—you’ll make a packet, fuck a duck.”

  “We’ll see,” I said. I didn’t want to take the wind out of his sails, but I had no intention of waiting till the shares reached his price. I was dead-set: I didn’t want to get into that game. I remembered that drunken, coke-ridden night.

  “Keep me posted, will ya? I have a meeting and can’t watch,” Markatović said.

  I stayed at the computer. The stock market and all its numbers kept changing, and I watched the RIJB-R-A transactions. The sale price kept rising.

  Just a bit longer and I’d exit that game.

  The shopping center at the edge of the neighborhood was no different from any other. They all looked like small medieval towns—a castle and several narrow streets.

  Here you finally had the right to stare emptily. Some people went to yoga or meditation to reach out into emptiness; I came here. I walked around slowly, peered at the shelves, touched a few things, and stared into nothingness. There were people here too, but it felt as if there weren’t.

  Finding a cart at the entrance, which resembled a triumphal arch, someone patted me on the shoulder and I heard a female voice: “Hey!”

  Sanja.

  She raised her dark glasses. I’d probably looked apprehensive, because her face was apologetic.

  We held perfectly still for a moment, as if we didn’t know what to do with our bodies. Then we kissed each other on the cheeks, not getting too close. I stepped back from that familiar scent of her perfume.

  “Where did you come from?” I asked.

  “Oh, you know.” She looked as if she was both glad and uncomfortable to see me. “So how are you doing?”

  “OK. And you?”

  “OK.”

  I got the impression she didn’t want to say things were great so it wouldn’t seem she was doing wonderfully without me. But that’s how she looked—great.

  “You look different,” she said in a gentle voice, with an insecure smile.

  She shouldn’t have said that, I felt. I’ve got over that persona. It can’t be reconstructed.

  “It feels strange seeing you,” I said.

  “You know, I’m in a hurry,” she said.

  “Sure, ok.” I started to turn away when she stopped me.

  “You can come with me if you want.”

  She checked her phone. She had a strange new hairdo.

  “Where to?”

  “You’ll think it’s crazy. But look over there, at checkout number six. Do you see?”

  I nodded.

  “At 4:00 we’re going to do something. Me and a few girls. You can join in. It’ll only take about twenty seconds.”

  Twenty seconds? What girls? She seemed to be alone.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “We’re going to shout, ‘We are the cham-pi-gnons”,’ she laughed.

  Once, this probably would have made sense to me.

  “We are the champions? Like in the song?”

  She saw that I didn’t understand, and I saw a trace of anxiety that she tried to cover up with a smile. I could read every grimace and gesture on her face; that was bound to be mutual.

  “Champignons!” she said

  “As in the mushroom? Why?”

  “There’s no sense in it. None at all.”

  We were standing slightly stiff, taking care not to make any false movement from the past.

  “I’m just shopping.”

  “I just thought. Never mind,” she said and looked at the time again. “I’m off!”

  She vanished among the shoppers. I pushed the cart and set off behind her to see what would happen. She was close to checkout number six when she turned around and saw me. She winked.

  Girls converged from various dire
ctions. Ela was among them. Doc and Jerman.

  I let go of the cart.

  It came suddenly and thunderously loud. “WE ARE THE CHAM-PI-GNONS!”

  People were staring. I joined in and we yelled a second time: “WE ARE THE CHAM-PI-GNONS!”

  Suddenly the others dispersed. I also got a move on. I pushed my cart as if nothing had happened.

  My heart was beating hard. I looked back toward checkout number six. We'd escaped them.

  One checkout girl was showing another where we’d been standing.

  There was nothing where we’d been except for the shiny floor.

  I felt a strange flux of happiness. We’d simply disappeared.