by A. S. Patric
There was an envelope that had been sitting on a pile of papers Suzana brought with her. Sitting there on the kitchen table with them. Suzana explained that tomorrow morning she was going in for an abortion and wanted the Mitrovichs to come to hospital with her. After an hour or two she had proved herself intelligent and funny, lighting up the afternoon with her sparkling black eyes. They all genuinely liked her but her request left them cold. Vesna Mitrovich said they would help, of course they would. Suzana sat at their kitchen table, not talking, not blinking. The girl they liked so well had disappeared. It was as if a totally different woman had appeared in the room.
Suzana smiled again and explained that since it was the Professor’s baby they would be terminating, perhaps they should come and help her get through it. “Hold her hand” are the words she used, because, as she pointed out with the most believable naïve insouciance, it was certainly not for a nineteen-year-old girl to go through this kind of ordeal by herself. She admitted that she was ashamed to tell her own mother and father about her pregnancy, or rather, the need for an abortion so soon after leaving home. A close, warm family was what she needed right now.
Because while abortion wasn’t a novel idea, and it wasn’t a baby they were talking about, it wasn’t quite the same as cutting out her appendix either. There was no question of murdering new life, yet there was a bit of life nevertheless that had been bound to a man and his words, and perhaps, even if they weren’t promises, there was a great deal of hope and affection in this fragment of life, suddenly cancerous within her—that now had to be cut from her body. Which is what made her think about a close, warm family.
When the Mitrovichs said nothing, Suzana asked Natasha Mitrovich, a girl only a few years younger and still dressed in her high-school uniform, how she would deal with such a circumstance. Especially if a man as respected and accomplished as her father, the august Vladimir Mitrovich, so charming and caring, abruptly lost all feeling, became unrecognizable, inseparable from a street thug, and told Suzana to go away and ‘deal with it’. How would Natasha Mitrovich deal with it? She looked at Vesna and asked her if she’d ever had to deal with this kind of circumstance before.
Vladimir Mitrovich had since been fired from university work. It wasn’t because of the few times he’d seduced students. It was his trouble with the bottle. And afterwards he had degenerated into the worst kind of demagogue and propagandist, endlessly talking about the glories of Serbia, its pride and power. Jovan was told by Suzana, and others that had known him, that in his better days Mitrovich really had been a superb speaker, a grand educator inspiring many on to worthy endeavours. If there was a tally, then certainly Professor Mitrovich became responsible for far more damage and destruction by the end of his career.
Jovan didn’t punch Mitrovich as he’d intended. He gave him three hard pats on the back instead, making him cough up his last shot of alcohol. He left the old fool spluttering instead of gasping. There was no point in hurting him when Suzana had been far more effective than Jovan could ever be. When Jovan returned to Sarajevo from the conference he didn’t mention that he’d met her great Belgrade professor.
Jovan gets up and walks the long pier back with the dog. He enjoys the quiet company of the animal as they stroll through their neighbourhood. When he gets home the phone is ringing. He doesn’t rush to pick it up. He unlocks the front door and stops by the answering machine. There have been calls and messages from Glen and Rae Coultas. It was almost ten in the evening and they wouldn’t call so late. He doesn’t press the button to play the message, walks to the kitchen and drinks a glass of water first. The red light stops blinking when he presses the button. He listens to his wife’s voice.
Jovan has a vacuum cleaner strapped to his back for the whole afternoon. The noise isn’t loud, the hum is easy to get lost in. He could go on for hours barely thinking. A meditative drone in his mind often continued for an hour after switching the machine off.
“Good morning, Professor Brakochevich.”
He doesn’t stop. His work daze is so deep it’s as though a memory has drifted up out of his unconsciousness. He blinks as the drone goes on and raises his head. A woman is sitting on one of the moulded plastic seats in the waiting room, very near him. The head of the vacuum cleaner is close to her feet. She lifts one up as if he might want to vacuum the area beneath her seat.
She’s a patient. That’s all he sees, the generic shape of a pregnant woman waiting to see a doctor. There are always so many pregnant women in this part of the hospital.
She places her foot back on the carpet. “You aren’t ignoring me, I hope.”
“Why would I ignore you? I’m not sure I know you.”
“You don’t remember me?”
“My memory isn’t what it used to be. Don’t know if my memory ever was great, truth be told.” He turns off the vacuum cleaner. Looks at her properly. “Silvana. Was that your name?”
“It still is.”
“Yes, of course.” He straightens his posture from his vacuuming crouch and finds he’s towering over her so he sits down in one of the seats opposite her. He holds the tube of the vacuum cleaner across his lap. “Over here it feels like a different name even when it’s the same name.”
“That’s a good thing sometimes. The Silvana Pejich back in Sarajevo isn’t someone I ever want to be again.”
“Congratulations.” He says, nodding at the large baby mound she’s rubbing with one palm. “I’m guessing you’re a month or so away. You must be excited.”
“We’re looking to have our second, but it’s been difficult. I keep bleeding. I’m here for yet another check-up. Make sure the thing in here is alive and kicking.” The light tone as she says ‘the thing in here’ doesn’t match the worry in her eyes.
“Have you been waiting long?”
“Fifteen minutes. Feels a lot longer.” She glances at the clock on the wall. “Fifteen minutes in purgatory is all it takes to lose your mind.” It’s a quote, she can’t remember which book or author. Jovan doesn’t appear to recognise it from one of his lessons. Perhaps she misquoted and it should be underworld instead of purgatory. She feels embarrassed by the possible mistake.
They don’t speak for a moment. Silvana says, “I heard about what happened to your children. Sorry for your loss.”
Jovan nods. Not a flicker of emotion. As big as he is, it’d be easy to think he feels little about anything—a colossus. When he was her professor of literature she’d often been struck that despite his size, not only tall but very broad and solidly built, his personality was so light, his face mobile with his rapid thoughts and every electric surge of enthusiasm. He’d clap when a student was brilliant, yell out bravo.
“Very sorry for you and your wife.”
No sadness. No smile. Nothing. “I never taught you how useless words are, did I?” As expressionless as a death mask.
He stands up and switches the vacuum cleaner back on.
The drone continues for five minutes and then a nurse calls her name and Silvana stands up and leaves the room.
Jovan knocks on the motel room door. He waits long enough to wonder whether it’s the wrong room at the Best Western. Suzana opens the door as he’s lifting his hand to knock again.
“Sorry,” she says stepping back into the room. “I just got out of the shower.”
“I think I’m a little early,” he says, following the smell of freshly washed hair, the warm soap perfume lifting from her skin.
She’s barefoot. “No, I got caught up talking with Glen and Rae.” She’s moving easy. Lightly. “I went out to Black Rock. I thought it was about time I explained myself to them.”
“What was the explanation?” Jovan asks.
They are standing in the middle of the motel room, both surprised at how quickly they’ve arrived at the question.
“All I had was the truth.” She is wearing a white bathrobe, tied around the waist, held together at the neck by her right hand. “I spent a week thinking of elabora
te lies.”
“Were they happy with your answer?”
“I’m not sure if I know how to do that—make anyone happy.”
Jovan has a box in his hand. He places it on the small round table by the exposed brickwork wall. It’s a wrapped present that he doesn’t want to offer Suzana yet, and feels foolish holding it before himself. Her mug of pens is in the middle of the table. Her novel is progressing well—the filled notebooks are neatly stacked atop each other.
When he turns back to her, the hand that was holding the bathrobe together at her throat is by her side and the knot at her belly has been untied. Suzana’s long hair is still damp and sleek black down her shoulders. When the robe falls open it reveals skin that still has the blush of water at full force and furiously hot. Her breasts are half revealed, nipples remaining hidden within the soft white. Her pubic hair a hazy shadow behind sheer cotton. She pulls the robe closed. A blink of both eyes—a wink. She opens her bathrobe and lets it drop to her feet with a smile that jolts his heart. Adrenalin flooding through his blood, ready to run a marathon, he walks toward her with steady slow steps.
“What’s in the box?” she asks.
“It’s not a box. It’s a present.”
“Well?”
“What do you think the point of wrapping paper is?”
“It’s a surprise?”
“Not for you,” Jovan says, poker-faced.
She’s already swung herself out of bed, pads across the room to the round table.
“You might have bought flowers. A present is silly, isn’t it?”
“It’s not for you,” Jovan says.
The present is wrapped with images of lions and giraffes, monkeys and zebras. He mustn’t have realised it was wrapping paper for a child. He might have had a hard time explaining himself at the counter of whatever department store he bought this gift. She rips off the wrapping paper. The cardboard box within gives her no idea what’s inside. She pulls it open and finds a red metal tractor. The toy doesn’t look new. It explains the nondescript cardboard box. Jovan didn’t buy it from a store. She stares across at him, lying on his side in bed, his expression unreadable.
“Is this a joke?” Suzana asks.
“No. It’s not for you. I told you that twice. Why’d you open it?”
“Who’s it for then?”
“What a foolish question.”
She catches her breath. “It’s for Dejan.”
“Do you think he’ll like it?”
She can hear them arguing in the next room, fighting over Ana’s Christmas present—a complete set of a 150 coloured pencils from Paris. Ana won’t share so Dejan runs into the room, crying. He stops when he sees his mother, standing there with the red tractor in her hands. The tears instantly end in a brilliant smile. Is that for me? he asks. Yes. She holds it out and he comes to her. In another moment the dream will end. She knows she is dreaming but she gets down to a knee as her son approaches. She can feel Dejan in her arms as she wakes. She can see him so clearly in her mind. I’ve forgotten your face, my love. Those dear hazel eyes. That sweet small voice. Less than murmurs as she blinks in bed and listens to the sound of Jovan breathing beside her. She lets him sleep. Knows she can keep herself quiet, sobbing almost noiselessly.
In the morning Jovan is brushing his teeth. Suzana walks in and sits on the toilet, eyes closed. Half asleep. He finishes and rinses his mouth with water. She puts her hands under the running faucet to wash. She blinks her eyes open.
“You used my toothbrush?” she asks.
Jovan nods and Suzana leaves the bathroom with a shrug or shiver, he’s not sure which.
Jovan gets dressed as Suzana orders breakfast for both of them over the phone. She steps into her knickers and puts on her bra and then opens the curtains and a window.
The bay is rolling with waves today. Seagulls hover on currents of air above the white foam, wheel and coast to the sand, settle and peer out across the water as though waiting for something to come in on the tide. Perhaps fifty of them, all looking away from the motel and its occupants. An audience only interested in survival—the sea’s washed-up waste, or crumbs in the sand.
Suzana puts on a lilac blouse and jeans. She must have gone shopping. There were tags in the vanity unit’s bin in the bathroom and he flatters himself with the thought that she wanted to dress up for him. Jovan watches her make the bed and reconsiders. Her wardrobe was at Reservoir Road, of course, so she bought a few things.
“There’s some news from home,” he says.
“What?” Suzana asks, turning her head toward him, the sheet in her hands settling on the bed. He looks at her and realises that when he said home she had thought he meant somewhere other than Reservoir Road. He turns away from her, to an immense container ship in the distance inching toward the horizon, then returns his gaze to see her blink away the notion.
There’s a knock on the door. A young man with a tray comes in, says ‘good morning Miss Johnson’, and sets it down on the small round table. Jovan picks up the present and loops it through the air to Suzana. She catches it and holds it as though she might choose not open it. She tears off the wrapping and finds a Mason Pearson hair brush—the same one she used to own, that she used to love. She’d had it for two decades, using cheap supermarket brushes ever since.
“Where’d you find it?” she asks.
“There’s a place in the city.” He sits at the table, ready to eat.
Suzana sits down at the end of the bed. There’s a mirror on the wall opposite and it resembles a window into the next room and she’s peering in on a woman brushing her hair. She sees the surprise in her own face and smiles at the foolishness of that expression.
He pours milk over muesli. There’s a very small cup of fresh fruit he tips into the bowl as well.
“Thank you Jovan,” she says, brushing. He nods and continues to eat, blinking rapidly and unable to speak. He opens one of her notebooks and begins to read her novel.
She lets him read a page before interrupting. “What’s the news from home?” she asks.
“What?” He lifts his head, distracted.
“You mentioned news before the boy came with breakfast.”
“Oh, it’s sad news.”
“When is it happy?”
“Our neighbour died a few days ago,” Jovan tells her.
There’s a brushing rhythm to her hand movements, and she doesn’t pause. “Who?”
“Silvers. He wandered out across Cranbourne Road. A truck couldn’t stop in time.”
“That’s funny.” She’s not laughing. As far as Jovan can tell she’s still counting strokes. A habit she picked up when she was a child. It’s the counting—that’s the reason she never cut her hair. Sitting on the side of her bed and counting strokes of a hundred, in the morning and in the evening, without fail. Her eyes half closed, meditative. “And I assume Charlemagne is OK.” Five strokes. “And yet, Silvers gets run down.” Five strokes. “That monster dog gets to keep romping around the neighbourhood while his master ends up as road kill.” Ten strokes. “And what about Jane? How’s she?”
“She’s selling the house. And she’s already asked me to take Charlemagne.”
Suzana stops brushing. “No fucking way.”
Jovan can’t help himself. He’s laughing.
The rest of the day at the hospital passes quickly. Jovan drives the van out into the street and is about to head home when he notices the nurse who drew his portrait. Leni is standing in the bus shelter on Bluff Road. The bus is leaving her behind. Jovan stops and waits for the opportunity to U-turn, thinks perhaps he should keep driving when he sees the nurse waving the bus driver away. She’s not signalling the driver to leave or stay. She’s swearing at the bus and throwing a Zippo lighter at it.
She’s still in uniform and the hospital she’s employed by is twenty metres away. She’s wearing a cardigan but Jovan knows she’d get fired for this kind of behaviour. Leni drops onto the metal bench and the back of her head bumps
up against the glass of the bus shelter, large handbag clutched to her chest. Her mouth opens in an expression of surprised pain and she clicks forward again.
Jovan turns his blinker off, turns it on. When the next break in traffic comes along he swings the panel van through it and stops before the bus shelter. He doesn’t get out and Leni barely notices the white vehicle stopped there for her, let alone the man within, waving a greeting. Her mouth is chewing frenetically and her eyes are blinking as if she’s trying to wake up and losing the battle with sleep. Her head bumps up against the glass of the shelter again, and this time her eyes don’t open, her mouth does.
Jovan takes a long minute before he puts his car into gear and drives back out into traffic. He thinks it would be best not to get involved, to leave her in the bus shelter, and a moment later decides he can’t do that. He forces his car through unyielding drivers to do another U-turn. So a chorus of horns alerts the nurse. Even now it’s not clear whether Leni recognises the vehicle or its driver.
Jovan comes back around and parks in the bus shelter and honks in what he hopes is a happy sound. He smiles at her and waves her in. Then he has to get out of the vehicle and call to her. The drugged nurse with the blond hair searches his face and after staring for long seconds, identifies it as the face of a friend.
“Hey, Racket. You’re a riot, but no one’s laughing.”
She pushes off the bench and manages to make it to the van. Jovan helps her with the handle. Leni slumps into the seat and closes her eyes. Jovan winds down her window, thinking the fresh air might revive her.
“I take you to Point K,” Jovan says with a smile. The girl is too far gone, or simply doesn’t remember the Point A to Point K of their first conversation.
“Can’t stay and can’t go. Don’t want to drive but there’s nothing but traffic. They had a bed for me in there but I need to get home. Or anywhere else. Just not in there. Not in there. We need to go. Can we go? Took too much, I’m sorry. Thanks for stopping. I appreciate it. I just wish there was a way to get out of my own skin.”
