Nowhere Man

by Aleksandar Hemon

“Okay,” Pronek said.

  Owen was watching him, probably expecting him to get up, shake hands and leave, but Pronek’s body was suddenly heavy and he could not get up from the sofa. Nothing in the room moved or produced a sound. They could hear the ill cooing of the pigeon.

  “Okay,” Owen repeated, as if to break the spell.

  Pronek stood at the corner of Granville and Broadway, watching his breath clouding and dissolving before his eyes, waiting for Owen. The picture-frame shop across the street had nicely framed Halloween paintings in the window—ghosts hovering over disheveled children, ghouls rising out of graves. The shop window was brightening as the sun was moving slowly out of the lake, most of it still underwater. A man with a rotund goiter growing sideways on his neck was entering the diner on Granville. Pronek thought that the man was growing another, smaller head and imagined a relief of a little, wicked face under the taut goiter skin. Across Broadway, they were tearing down a Shoney’s: what used to be its parking lot was just a mud field now. The building was windowless; floors ripped out; cables hanging from the ceiling like nerves. Just in front of Pronek, a throbbing car stopped at the street light, inhabited by a teenager who had a shield of gold chains on his chest. He was drumming on the wheel with his index fingers, then looked up, pointed one of his fingers at Pronek, and pretended to shoot him. Pronek smiled, as if getting the joke, but then the teenager turned east and disappeared down Granville. Pronek was cold, Owen was late. A Chicago Tribune headline, behind the filthy glass of a newspaper box, read THOUSANDS KILLED IN SREBRENICA. In the distance, Pronek saw a boxy Broadway bus stopping every once in a while on the empty street, sunlight shimmering on its windshield.

  Owen pulled up, materializing out of nowhere, brakes screeching, right in front of Pronek. He drove an old Cadillac that looked like a hideous offspring of a tank and a wheel cart. Before Pronek could move toward the car, Owen honked impatiently, and the sound violated the early morning hum. Pronek opened the door, and an eddy of cigarette smoke and coffee smell escaped into the street. Owen said nothing, put the car in gear and drove off—a bus whizzed by, barely missing them. He drove with both of his hands on top of the wheel, alternately looking at the street and frowning at the tip of his cigarette as it was being transformed into its own ashen ghost. Finally, the ash broke off and fell into his lap. Owen said, as if on cue: “Damn, it’s early. But what can we do? We gotta get this guy while he’s home sleeping.”

  Pronek was silent, mulling over a question that would not require too many words. They were waiting at the light on Hollywood. The car in front of them had a bumper sticker reading: IF YOU DON’T LIKE MY DRIVING CALL 1–800–EATSHIT.

  “Who is this man?” Pronek asked.

  “He’s a character, lemme tell you. He’s Serbian, I believe. Been here for fifteen years or so, married an American girl, had a child, and then split after years of marriage. He’s a runaway daddy, is what he is. Couldn’t find the sonovabitch, wouldn’t show up in court, the lady couldn’t get child support. I gotta get him to accept the court summons, so if he doesn’t show up in court, we can get cops on his ass. Are you all like that over there, sonovabitches?”

  He put out his cigarette in the ashtray already teeming with butts, a few of them falling on the floor. Pronek imagined himself snorting up all those ashes and butts: it would be a good way to exhort a confession under torture. He coughed nauseatedly.

  “What are you?” Owen asked. “It’s Serbs fighting Muslims over there, right? Are you a Serb or a Muslim?”

  “I am complicated,” Pronek said, and retched. The car was like a gas chamber, and Pronek felt an impulse to rise and breathe from the pocket of air just under the roof. “You can say I am the Bosnian.”

  “I don’t give a damn myself, as long as you speak the same language. You speak the same language, right? Yugoslavian or something?”

  “I guess,” Pronek said.

  “Good,” Owen said. “That’s what we need here. That’s why I called you. You get the job done, you get sixty bucks, you’re a happy man.”

  Owen lit another cigarette, snapped his Zippo shut, and inhaled solemnly, as if inhaling a thought. The hair island had developed into a vine growing out of his forehead, nearly reaching his eyebrows. He drove past Bryn Mawr, where a crew of crazies was already operating: a man who kept lighting matches over a bunch of cigarettes strewn on the pavement before him, muttering to himself, as if performing a recondite ritual; an old toothless woman in tights with a wet stain spreading between her thighs; a man with thick oversized glasses hollering about Jesus. They drove past the funeral home: a man in a black coat was unlocking the front door and adjusting the welcome mat, yawning all along—there must have been an early death. They stopped at Lawrence, then turned right.

  As they were moving westward, Pronek felt the warmth of a sunbeam tickling his neck. The windshield had thick eyebrows of dirt and a few splattered insects under them. As if reading his mind, Owen said:

  “Lemme ask you something: what’s the last thing that goes through a fly’s head as it hits the windshield?”

  He glanced sideways at Pronek with a mischievous grin, apparently proud of his cleverness. “What is it?” he asked again, and slammed the brakes, honking madly at the car in front.

  “I don’t know,” Pronek said. “I should have gone the other way.”

  “Went,” Owen said.

  “What?”

  “Went. You say I should’ve went the other way.” He slammed the brakes again. “But no, that’s not what it is. Think again.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s the ass. The last thing that goes through a fly’s head as it hits the windshield is its ass.” He started laughing, nudging Pronek, until his guffawing turned into coughing, and then nearly choking. They stopped at the Clark light and he thumped his chest like a gorilla, his vine of hair quivering, his throat convulsing.

  Pronek realized that there was an entire world of people he knew nothing about—the early morning people. Their faces had different colors in the morning sunlight. They seemed to be comfortable so early in the morning, even if they were already tired going to work: he could tell they had had their breakfast, their eyes were wide open, their faces developed into alertness—in contrast to Pronek’s daze: the itching eyes, the tense, tired muscles, the crumpled face, the growling stomach, the pus taste in his mouth, and a general thought shortage. The six A.M. people, the people who existed when Owen and his people were sleeping: old twiggy ladies, with a plastic cover over their meticulously puffed-up hair, like wrapped-up gray lettuce heads; old men in nondescript suits, obviously performing their morning-walk ritual; kids in McDonald’s uniforms on their way to the morning shift, already burdened with the midday drowsihead; joggers with white socks stretched to their knees, who seemed to be running in slow motion; sales associates in black stockings, freshly made up, dragging screaming children into a bus; workers unloading crates of pomegranates onto a stuck-up dolly—they all seemed to be involved in something purposeful.

  Owen completed his coughing, cleared his throat confidently, and asked:

  “You still have family there?”

  “Where?” Pronek responded, confused by a sudden change in the communication pace.

  “Phnom Penh, that’s where! Wherever you’re from, you still have folks there?”

  “Yeah, my parents are still there. But they are still alive.”

  “Now, who’s trying to kill them? I can never get this right. Are they Muslim?”

  “No,” Pronek said. “They are in Sarajevo. Some Serbs try to kill the Muslims in Sarajevo and Bosnia, and also the people who don’t want to kill the Muslims.”

  “You probably gonna hate this sonovabitch then.”

  “I don’t know yet,” Pronek said. What if, he thought, what if he were dreaming this. What if he were one of those six A.M. people, just about to wake up, slap the snooze button, and linger a few more minutes in bed. Owen hit the brakes again, and Pronek slapped the
dashboard, lest he go through the windshield. They were at Western: a Lincoln statue was making a step forward, worried as ever, his head and shoulders dotted with dried pigeon shit. “That sonovabitch lives around here,” Owen announced. He crossed Western, almost running over a chunky businessman who was hugging his briefcase as he scurried across the street.

  They parked the car on an empty street with two rows of ochre-brick houses facing each other. Owen adjusted his curl, adhering it to his dome. He was looking in the rearview mirror, his hump breathing on his back, his eyes shrunken because of the fuming cigarette in his mouth. The houses all looked the same, as if they were made in the same lousy factory, but the lawns were different: some were trimmed and orderly like soccer pitch; some had strewn litter, little heaps of dog turd, and wet leaves raked together. Owen pointed at the house that had a FOR SALE sign, like a flag, in front of it.

  “What I want you to do,” he said, handing him a stern envelope, “is to go to that door, ring the bell, and when he asks who it is, you talk to him in your monkey language and give him this. He takes it, you leave, I give you sixty bucks, we all happy and free. How’s that?”

  “That is fine,” Pronek said, and wiped his sweaty palms against his pants. He considered getting out of the car, passing the house, and running away—it would take him forty minutes to walk back to his place.

  “You all right?” Owen asked. “Piece of cake, just do it.”

  “What is his name?” Pronek asked.

  “It’s Branko something. Here, you can read it.” He pointed at the envelope.

  Pronek read: “Brdjanin. It means the mountain man.”

  “Whatever,” Owen said, and excavated a gun from under his armpit—two black, perpendicular, steely rectangles, the nozzle eye glancing at Pronek. He looked at it as if he hadn’t seen it for a while and offered it to Pronek: “You want it?”

  “No, thanks,” Pronek said. He wondered what would be the last thing going through his head.

  “Nah, you probably don’t need it,” Owen said. “I’ll be right here, caring about you.”

  Pronek stepped out of the car and walked toward the house. The number on the brass plate next to the door was 2345, and the orderliness of the digits seemed absurd against the scruffy house: blinds with holes, dusty windows, a mountain of soggy coupon sheets at the bottom of the stairs, blisters of paint on the faded-brown door with a red-letter sign reading NO TRESPASSING in its window. There was a squirrel sitting in an empty bird bath padded with damp leaves, watching him, with its little paws together, as if ready to applaud. Pronek walked up the stairs to the door, clenching the envelope, his heart steadily thumping. He pressed the hard bell-nipple, and heard a muffled, deep ding-dong. He looked toward Owen in the car, who looked back at him over the folded Sun-Times, with an eager pen in his hand. “If this is a detective novel,” Pronek thought, “I will hear shooting now.” He imagined going around the house, jumping over the wire fence, looking in, and seeing a body in the middle of a carmine puddle spreading all over the floor, a mysterious fragrance still in the air. Then running back to Owen, only to find him with a little powder-black hole in his left temple, his hand petrified under his armpit, too slow to save him. There was no doubt that he would have to find the killer and prove his own innocence. Maybe Mirza could come over and be his partner, they could solve the crime together. He rang the bell again. The squirrel moved to a better position and was sitting on a tree branch, watching him intently. “Dobro jutro,” Pronek muttered, rehearsing the first contact with Brdjanin. “Dobro jutro. Evo ovo je za Vas.” He would give him the envelope then, Brdjanin would take it, confused by the familiarity of the language. Piece of cake.

  But then he heard keys rattling, the lock snapping, and a bare-chested man, with a beard spreading down his hirsute front and a constellation of brown birthmarks on his pink dome—a man said: “What?” Pronek stared at him paralyzed, his throat clogged with the sounds of dobro jutro.

  “What you want?” The man had a piece of lint sticking out of his navel and a cicatrice stretching across his stomach.

  “This is for you,” Pronek garbled, and handed him the envelope. The man snatched it out of Pronek’s hand, looked at it, and snorted.

  Should’ve went the other way.

  “You no understand nothing,” the man said, waving the envelope in front of Pronek’s face.

  “I don’t know,” Pronek said. “I must give this to you.”

  “Where you from?”

  “I am,” Pronek said reluctantly, “from Ukraine.”

  “Oh, pravoslavni brother!” the man exclaimed. “Come in, we drink coffee, we talk. I explain you.”

  “No, thank you,” Pronek uttered. “I must go.”

  “Come,” the man said growled, and grabbed Pronek’s arm and pulled him in. “We drink coffee. We talk.”

  Pronek felt the disturbed determination of the man’s fingers on his forearm. The last thing he saw before he was sucked in the house by the man’s will was Owen getting out of the car with an unhappy, worried scowl on his face.

  As Pronek was walking in Brdjanin’s onionesque wake, he saw a gun handle—gray with two symmetrical dots, like teeny beady eyes—peering out of his pants, which were descending down his butt. Brdjanin led him through a dark hall, through a couple of uncertainly closed doors, into a room that had a table in its center and five chairs summoned around it. On the lacy tablecloth, there was a pear-shaped bottle of reddish liquid with a wooden Orthodox cross in it. There were five shot glasses and a platoon of crushed McDonald’s bags surrounding it.

  “Sit,” Brdjanin said. “Here.”

  “I must go,” Pronek uttered, and sat down, facing a window. A fly was buzzing against the windowpane as if trying to cut through it with a minikin circular saw. There was an icon on the wall: a sad saint with a tall forehead and a triangular beard, his head slightly tilted under the halo weight, his hands touching each other gently.

  “Sit,” Brdjanin said, and pulled the gun out of his ass, only to slam it on the table. The five glasses rattled peevishly. The window looked out at the garden: there was a shovel sticking out of the ground like a javelin, next to a muddy hole and a mound of dirt overlooking it. Brdjanin sat across the table from Pronek, and pushed the gun aside. “No fear. No problem,” he said, then turned toward the kitchen and yelled: “Rajka, kafu!” He put the envelope right in front of himself, as if about to dissect it. “We talk with coffee,” he said.

  A woman with a wrinkled, swollen face and a faint bruise on her cheek, like misapplied makeup, peeked in from the kitchen, pulling the flaps of her striped black-and-white bathrobe together, and then retreated. There was a din of drawers and gas hissing, ending with an airy boom.

  “You Ukrainian,” Brdjanin said, and leaned toward him, as if to detect Ukrainianness in his eyes. “How is your name?”

  “Pronek,” Pronek said, and leaned back in his chair.

  “Pronek,” Brdjanin repeated. “Good pravoslav name. Pravoslavni brothers help Serbs in war against crazy people.”

  Pronek looked at Brdjanin, whose beard had a smile crevice in the middle, afraid that a twitch on his face, or a diverted glance would blow his feeble cover. Brdjanin was staring at him enthusiastically, then pushed the envelope aside with contempt, leaned further toward Pronek, and asked fervently:

  “You know what is this?”

  “No,” Pronek said.

  “Is nothing,” Brdjanin said, and thrust his right hand forward (the gun comfortably on his left-hand side), all his fingers tight together and his thumb erect, as if he were making a wolf hand-shadow. His thumb was a grotesque stump, like a truncated hot dog, but Pronek was cautious not to pay too much attention to it.

  “You must understand,” Brdjanin said. “I was fool, budala. Wife to me was whore, was born here, but was Croat. Fifteen years. Fifteen years! I go see her brothers, they want to kill me.” He made the motion of cutting his throat with the thumb stump, twice, as if they couldn’t kill him on th
e first try. “They Ustashe, want to cut my head because I Serb. Is war now, no more wife, no more brothers. My woman is Serb now, you brother to me now. I trust only pravoslav people now. Other people, other people . . .” He shook his head, signifying suspicion, and pulled his thumb across his throat again.

  Pronek nodded automatically, helpless. He wanted to say that Croats are just like everyone else: good people and bad people, or some reasonable platitude like that, but in this room whatever it was he used to think just an hour ago seemed ludicrous now. He wanted the woman to be in the room with him, as if she could protect him from Brdjanin’s madness and his cutthroat thumb stump. The room reeked of coffee and smoke, stale sweat and Vegeta, a coat of torturous, sleepless nights over everything. The woman trudged out of the kitchen and put a tray with a coffee pot and demitasse between the two of them, and then dragged her feet back, as if she were ready to collapse. Pronek looked after her longingly, but Brdjanin didn’t notice. “This Serbian coffee. They say Turkish coffee. It’s Serbian coffee,” Brdjanin said, lit a cigarette and let two smoke-snakes out of his nostrils. Pronek imagined saving the woman from this lair, taking her home (wherever it may be) and taking care of her, until she recovered and regained her beauty, slouching somewhere in her heart now—and he would ask for nothing in return. Brdjanin slurped some coffee from his demitasse, then reached behind his chair and produced a newspaper. The headline said: THOUSANDS KILLED IN SREBRENICA.

  “Killed?” Brdjanin cried. “No killed. Is war. They kill, they killed.”

  He threw the paper across the table and it landed right in front of Pronek, so he had to look at it: a woman clutching her teary face wrapped in a colorless scarf, as if trying to unscrew her head.

  “Hmm,” Pronek said, only because he thought silence might be conspicuous.

  “You know what is this?” Brdjanin asked, and spurted out an excited flock of spit drops. “You know?”

  “Nothing,” Pronek mumbled.

  “No, is not nothing. Is Muslim propaganda.”