Girl at War: A Novel

by Sara Novic

  “I take it that doesn’t happen often, then?” I asked.

  “You often get knifed by hoboes in New York?”

  “Well, no.”

  “I’m going to buy a gun,” he said. He was breathing like we had run farther than just a few meters. The spot on his face where the man had pressed the knife was scratched, but he hadn’t broken the skin.

  “It wouldn’t help anything,” I said.

  The tram was going the wrong direction, and we rode it three stops before we noticed.

  —

  The economics college was the modern, windowless cube I had imagined, an exemplar of everything that was dismal about Communist architecture. I stood in the lobby while Luka circled between offices in a bureaucratic shuffle. I spotted a computer kiosk and waited for the dial-up, then checked my email. One from Laura, who, unaccustomed to email, had written the entirety of her message in the subject line: Are you there yet? Are you safe? Love, Mom.

  Hi, Mom, I wrote. I’m here in Zagreb. Staying with some family friends. I thought of the man on the subway platform. Safe and sound, don’t worry. Will write again soon.

  Nothing from Brian. We had been in contact only a few times after our fight, via perfunctory text message: U doing okay?; Can I come get my copy of Bleak House?; Good luck w/finals. The night of my flight I’d written him an email to say that I was going to Croatia, that I was sorry for hurting him and hoped we could talk soon.

  I opened a new message. Hi. How was graduation? Just wanted to let you know I got here safely and am thinking of you. I closed the window without sending it. Maybe he hadn’t written because he didn’t want to talk to me anymore.

  I went to the bathroom and was met with the kind of public toilet I had conveniently forgotten, a ceramic basin recessed into the floor. I adjusted my stance, engaged in the awkward reallocation of clothing, but it was a skill set of balance and willpower I seemed to have lost, so I resigned myself to waiting until we returned home.

  “Would’ve been easier if you had a skirt on,” Luka said when I mentioned it. His words were steeped in a masculine dismissal I found startling.

  “When have you ever seen me in a skirt?”

  “I’m sure you got new clothes at some point.”

  “Why are you being like this?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Different.”

  He slowed his steps as we left the college. “Sorry,” he said. He veered close to the edge of the curb, and I took hold of his elbow and pulled him back onto the walkway. “I guess I’m a little overwhelmed.”

  “By what?”

  “You’re back. It’s a lot of shit.”

  “It’s my shit.”

  “It’s not just your shit,” he said. “You don’t get to claim the war as your own personal tragedy. Not here.” I watched his eyes flicker like he was deciding which cards to play in a hand of poker. “What’s the family like?”

  “They’re nice,” I said. “They’re Italian. I mean, they’re American, but—”

  “I get it.”

  “Rahela’s eleven. She thinks she’s American. Everyone does. They call her Rachel.”

  “Rachel,” he said, testing it out with his accent, a heavy rolled r. “She doesn’t really think that, though, does she?”

  “She knows,” I said. “But she doesn’t feel it.”

  “Hey! Luuu-kaaa!” A thin voice punctured the quiet between us. “Wait up!” I heard the click of heels, and we stopped as the girl approached. Her black hair, smoothed and straightened, swayed in just the right rhythm as she walked. The pointed patent-leather toes of her shoes protruded from the cuffs of her jeans. She seemed to belong to a decade I could not pinpoint.

  “How have you been?” she was saying to him but looking at me. I looked down at my flip-flops.

  “Danijela, this is Ana. An old friend, from primary school.”

  “Drago mi je,” I said, and felt a fake smile stretch across my face as she planted a kiss on each of my cheeks with unnecessary force.

  “Ne, zadovoljstvo je moje,” Danijela said, and I recognized the same smile reflected back at me. She and Luka talked about registration for fall classes while I studied her olive skin, the kind my mother and Rahela had. I thought of the school yard girls who had made fun of my hand-me-downs and teased me for inheriting my father’s fair, freckled complexion, calling me Czech or Polish. I wondered if this girl had been one of them. I was relieved when she flipped back her phone to check the time and said she had to go. She and Luka made vague plans to meet for coffee, and she winked at him as she left.

  “What was that all about?”

  “What?”

  “That,” I said, fluttering my lashes.

  “Girl I used to date,” he said, suppressing a smile at my impression. “She’s not that bad. She’s actually kind of smart.”

  “Used to?”

  “Yeah. As in don’t anymore.”

  “She looks smart.” I pushed out my chest.

  “What’s it to you?”

  What is it to me? I thought. She was annoying, yes. But maybe I was just jealous that he was not as lonely as I had become.

  “What about you? You got a boyfriend?”

  “There was a guy. But I’m taking a break from dating.”

  As we neared the tram stop, I said, “You all right to get on the tram without your AK?”

  “Let’s get some ice cream first.”

  I submitted to more questioning over a shared bowl of chestnut gelato. I told him about the Uncles and how I’d learned to pass as American.

  “But I don’t get it. Why didn’t you just tell people the truth?”

  “A lot of reasons. Mostly because they didn’t want to hear it. But also because I couldn’t figure out how to get over it without getting rid of it.”

  “That’s crazy,” Luka said. “I’d never be able to hold it all in for ten years.”

  “I got used to it.”

  “Then why’d you come back?”

  “All right, Freud,” I said. I dropped my spoon into the bowl for emphasis and hated him, briefly, for being right.

  Back at Luka’s house we sat in front of the TV—there were two new channels, bringing television networks to a total of four—soaked in a Mexican soap opera that Luka’s mother forbade us to change, and waited for the sun to go down. But it had only gotten muggier as the day wore on, and I began to remember why the residents of Zagreb always fled the city in the summer.

  “Just wait,” said Luka’s mother as she ladled servings of vegetable soup over shallow bowls of mashed potatoes. “I heard there’s going to be a heat wave.”

  “This isn’t the heat wave?” I said. Luka’s mother looked at me and smiled, a smile that seemed to say You’ve been gone quite a long time.

  “What about a portable air conditioner?” I said. “In New York people get little window units.” But the suggestion was met unanimously with looks of horror.

  “Air-conditioning will give you kidney stones,” Luka said. I was gradually recalling those mundane moments—the ones that had until now given way to more traumatic memories—of a childhood governed by collective superstition: Never open two windows across from each other—the propuh draft will give you pneumonia. Don’t sit at the corner of the table; you’ll never get married. Lighting a cigarette straight off a candle kills a sailor. Don’t cut your nails on a Sunday. If it hurts, put some rakija on it.

  I tried to think of a singularly American superstition. I’d learned a few from the Uncles—something about not letting one’s shoes touch the kitchen table—but those were all imported from the Old World. Perhaps a country of immigrants had never gotten around to commingling the less desirable pieces of their cultures. Either that, or life there wasn’t difficult enough to warrant an adult’s belief in magic.

  Finally, after nightfall, it was cooler outside than in the house. At around nine Luka’s father came home, finished off the leftover soup, and promptly fell asleep in front of
the television.

  “Do you want to go out?” Luka said.

  I was eager to feel the night’s breeze and started toward the closet where I’d traded my shoes in for house sandals, a requisite of Bosnian households.

  “Don’t you want to change?”

  “Oh, you mean, out out?”

  “There’s a new disco that just opened up by Jarun,” he said. “I haven’t even been yet. I mean, if you want—”

  “Let me just change my shirt or something.”

  Luka went out to the garage and pumped his mother’s old bike tires fat with air while I dragged my suitcase into the bathroom and tried on all my shirts, assessing which would look best under black-light strobes. I looked in the mirror, and another rush of self-consciousness ran through me. Maybe it was because of Luka’s ex, her mascara and pointed shoes. Or maybe I was just tired of looking sweaty. I piled my hair on top of my head, securing it with my entire supply of bobby pins in an attempt at a humidity-proof hairdo.

  “You drown in there?” Luka called through the door. I swung it open too fast, nearly clipping him in the side of the face.

  “Fancy,” he said when I emerged into the kitchen. “Let’s go.”

  —

  I hadn’t been on a bike in years, and whenever I changed gears the handlebars jerked crooked in my grip. At first Luka laughed when I nearly crashed, but by the time we got to the club I was frustrated and he looked at me with something approaching shame. What was the matter with me? I thought as Luka locked our bikes to a tree. I had spent half my life on a bike, on these streets, and now I could barely steer the thing.

  “Let’s get a drink.” Luka grabbed my wrist and pulled me toward the door, bypassing the line.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Show them your passport.”

  I handed my passport to the bouncer, who studied it like it was an archaeological artifact, running his fingers along the indented national seal on the cover and examining the pages to see what other stamps I had procured. Then he gave it back and waved us into the club.

  “Tourists have money,” Luka explained.

  Inside, the club was tinted purple and filled with cigarette smoke and the pounding rhythm of some remixed hiphop song that had been popular last year in America. Overhead, industrial fans tilled the sweaty air through the room and out the back patio doors.

  We pressed through the crowd onto the terrace, where it was calmer and we could actually hear one another. Behind the outside bar, the bartender stood shirtless with his back to the counter, hunched over a blender. He glistened as if he’d been oiled.

  “Hey! Tomislav!” Luka called.

  “Hey.” Tomislav turned and grabbed Luka in a backslapping man-hug over the bar. He was sporting a giant gold hoop in one ear. “How you been? What can I get ya?” Luka ordered a beer, and Tomislav cracked the cap off against the side of the counter and handed it to him. “And who’s the pretty lady?”

  Even in the dim light I could see Luka redden. “It’s actually, um, Ana,” he said, taking a swig of the beer. “Jurić.”

  Tomislav stared, then a flash of recognition passed across his face. “Ana? Like from primary school? Are you shitting me?”

  We exchanged perfunctory how-are-yous, each of us assuring the other that we were, despite the odds, totally fine.

  “What are you drinking?”

  “I’ll have the same.”

  “I’ll get some more from the back,” he said, disappearing behind a black curtain.

  “I heard he was working here,” Luka said. He wagged his head slightly. “It’s fucked, what happened to him.”

  “You mean his brother? Getting killed like that?”

  “That’s not the worst of it.” After his brother’s death Tomislav’s parents were inconsolable, even forgetting to feed him at times, Luka said. Then, a few years later, after the war was over and things seemed to be returning to normal, Tomislav came home from school to find his father lying faceup in the bathtub. He had stabbed himself three times in the chest and his eyes were still open. The note was wet and illegible, and the only thing investigators could agree upon was that a man must be filled with an exceptional amount of rage to opt for that method of suicide. But more than the mystery, it was the eyes that changed him; in that instant of discovery Tomislav had seen his future in the gaze of the dead.

  By his first year of high school, Tomislav’s mother had moved across town to stay with her boyfriend, and he and his sister were left to live alone with the decidedly angry ghost of their father, their rent paid by his pension. It was fine, he’d insist, whenever Luka or any of the other guys at school asked, good even, because he could have girls over whenever he wanted, and he had become quite the chef if he did say so himself.

  “But he’s not okay?” I said.

  “Of course he’s not. He was one of the smartest in our class and now he’s a shirtless pirate bartender.”

  Tomislav reappeared with a case of beer and was loading the bottles into a fridge beneath the bar top.

  “Sorry it’s a little warm,” he said, thrusting a beer into my hand. “On the house. Welcome back.” He winked, and I chalked another line on my invisible tally of “orphaned by war.”

  Tomislav poured three shots of vodka, and we clinked glasses. Then, called into service by a pair of giggly bleach-blondes, he left Luka and me alone to nurse our beers. I could feel the vodka bubbling at the bottom of my stomach and reddening my cheeks.

  “Hey, do you—” Luka paused, looking uncertain. “Want to go dance?”

  I followed him back inside to the dance floor, and for a moment I missed Brian. I hadn’t danced with anyone but him for a long time. Now Luka and I were taking care not to touch one another, but the room was packed and we were pressed together by the swell of the throng. The first time I jerked away. Despite the crowd and the dark I felt exposed, too aware of my body, unsure what to do with my arms. I had never been a very good dancer and usually tried to make a joke of it. Now I was finding comfort in the fact that Luka was even worse than I was—he was biting his lower lip in concentration, always half a second behind the downbeat. Still, the next time we touched we lingered for a moment. There was something pleasant about the feeling, but, when I looked up at Luka, I could not read his face. I wondered what he was thinking, then remembered Brian again and felt guilty.

  Luka leaned in, his face close to mine. “Want another beer?”

  “Definitely.” He pressed his way back toward the bar, and I stood alone swaying to the music. When he returned he slapped me on the back like one of the guys, and I took a slug from the bottle and felt the old Luka again.

  —

  In the dead of night I woke on the couch short of breath. Luka and I had come home late; judging from the color of the sky I’d only been asleep for an hour or so. I crept into the kitchen and searched the desk until I found the address book. I located Petar and Marina, their details in Ajla’s slanted script. Next to the entry she’d drawn an asterisk, with no other markings beside any other entries on the page. I’d never paid close attention to their address when I was young, but the street name was familiar. I started to dial their number, but hung up halfway through. I pulled on jeans and sneakers, slipped sideways through the front door, and set out on Luka’s mother’s bicycle.

  I’d never been out in Zagreb alone at this hour. The sky was navy blue and the roads were empty, the desertedness both tranquil and eerie. Occasionally I passed a bakery—the only storefronts with their lights on—and caught the scent of tomorrow’s bread.

  The cool air swept my hair back, and I felt more at ease on the bike. Petar and Marina’s building was a few miles away, but the road was flat and I pedaled quickly, stopping only to check the address I’d written on the inside of my wrist. They lived on the second floor, so I left the bike in the lobby, hopeful that no one would be awake to steal it, and took the stairs.

  When I reached number 23 I began to get nervous. Why had I thought this was
a good idea? I tapped on the door, lightly at first, then more forcefully. Finally I knocked so loudly a man wearing only slippers and underpants appeared in the adjacent doorway.

  “Cut the racket.”

  “Excuse me, sir,” I said, employing the most formal language I could muster. “Sorry to wake you, but do you know if the Tomićs are home?”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m Ana. I’m an old friend.”

  “Well, they haven’t lived here in ages! Kovačs live there. Three kids. Noisy fuckers.”

  “How long have the Tomićs been gone?”

  “About ten years now.”

  “Do you know where they went?”

  “Moved back down to someone’s grandfather’s place. Mimice or Tiska or something. Well, I don’t know about Petar. He was in the war. Who did you say you were again?”

  “Well—”

  “Fucking hell, forget it,” he said, and went back inside.

  Downstairs I pushed the bike out into the street and sped down Ilica, where the early risers were just waking up.

  7

  The next afternoon it was so humid we barely moved.

  “I don’t understand how you’ve managed to import Walker, Texas Ranger but not air-conditioning,” I said, gesturing at the television. Luka looked for an instant as if he wanted to throttle me, but he didn’t reply. It was too hot to fight.

  Luka and his father wandered the house in their underwear. Luka was lean and lithe, understated muscles rippling as he paced the living room. I looked him up and down; he was about Brian’s height. Thinner legs, but broader shoulders. Darker skin. It was a good body, desirable even, and I liked looking at it, could feel my eyes lingering on his abs as he passed. But there were the other parts of Luka—the small smile, the wiry black hair standing on end—that had stayed the same. In those parts he was ten to me.

  Miro’s stomach hung low over the band of his briefs, a tub of pasty flesh in stark contrast with the deep tan of his forearms, which his summer police uniform exposed. He was sweating from places I didn’t know one could sweat, and it was gathering in creases of parts that shouldn’t have been creased. The house was filled with the tang of bodies.