The Hotel Tito

by Ivana Bodrozic

  It’s already daybreak, the mornings run one into the next, I look at Uncle Grgo’s green bag under my bed. Mama has already had her second coffee, Željka’s mother knocks softly at the door, I get out of bed, and Mama says, “No rush, there’s time, your brother will drive you.”

  I’m moving to the dorm.

  They’re still here, hanging around the entrance, Mama and my brother. He went out just now to check whether the car is still where he left it, parked across the street from the dorm where there’re plenty of spaces, it’s Sunday. Mama stands by the door, keeping an eye on my bag, I don’t want them to go, but I also can hardly wait for them to leave so I don’t have to see them anymore. I’m standing in line to report, there are a dozen girls in front of me, I have my documents in hand and I’m waiting to find out who my roommates will be. Suddenly someone peers over my shoulder and I hear a voice asking, “So you, too, have a displaced persons’ ID?” Watching me with big, smiling eyes is a girl, a little older than me, and I feel as if I’m abroad and somebody who knows my language has spoken to me. “Yes, I do. Where are you from?” I ask right away, I see the familiar booklet in her hand, we quickly understand each other. “Vukovar,” she says with our accent. “Me, too,” I say, pleased, we don’t know each other from before, but now we’re here, we each have a displaced persons’ ID, the displaced persons’ allowance, a cozy room waiting for us somewhere in displaced persons’ housing, and that’s what matters. Now, in a lighter mood, I chat with the other girls and after I’m given my key I learn I’m sharing my room with a girl who’s already finished high school, another who is new so nobody knows her yet, and a girl named Ivana, the most challenging girl on the floor, everybody avoids her and she doesn’t wash much. Mama sees me up to the room, carries my bag, I’m in number eleven, the last room on the floor right next to the TV room that serves as a study hall during the day. While we lived in Kumrovec I thought there was no way to move three beds into a room that size so I’d imagined the beds must have been there to start with, and they’d built the walls around the beds. Here they’d been even more stingy. The room was small and four beds had been shoved in, one next to the other with only narrow space to pass. By each bed was a onedoor miniature cupboard, and there was a desk by the window. The balcony was littered with cigarette butts, and across from it a large, spreading tree. I came in first so I chose the bed by the window and set my bag down. Mama stood in the doorway, I heard her heart breaking and her fingers melting, squeezing the door handle, and I didn’t say a word. She strove to strike a cheery note: “Hey, in five days we’ll be seeing each other, and in no time you’ll make lots of new friends.” I didn’t tell her I don’t want new friends, I hate new friends, all the friends I have are new because they haven’t had time to become old, I just hugged her and said, “I know, Mama.” It was already late afternoon when I saw the green car turn and drive away, and in it—everything I knew, while boys began to gather around my dorm from the boys’ dorm across the street to see the new girls.

  The girl from Vukovar was Nataša, she’d graduated from high school and was living in a barracks near Sisak. They’d moved there not long ago from Vela Luka where she spent a few years housed in a hotel. She was sweet. We didn’t have much in common except our life story and it bonded us from day one. A little like sisters, one older, one younger, who hang out together not because they’re so interesting to each other but because they share the same parents so it makes sense to stick together. It was already ten when I was in my pajamas and in bed, wondering what would happen if Igor tried to call me and reached the porter’s desk, and I didn’t hear the PA system summoning me and why was it that no one could ever reach me except through a front desk or a porter, when, without a knock, Ivana walked in. I’d heard a lot about her already, her story went like this. When she was born, somewhere in the rural backwater of Dalmatinska Zagora, her mother was sixteen and passed her off to her grandparents. Later, when her mom finished high school and met a new man, she had new kids and never brought Ivana to live with her. Ivana knew who her father was, too, because in a small town like that everybody knows everything, and her dad knew Ivana was his daughter but never, never did he even say hello to her. Her grandparents were nasty, mean, and strict, and when she finished fourth grade they sent her to a convent school in Zagreb where she stayed all year except during summer vacation. When she finished elementary school she somehow won the right to attend a normal high school, so that’s how she ended up at the dorm. She was going to a high school for agriculture, she was thick, brash, a weirdo, and she smelled bad, too. She burst into the room and dropped onto the bed. When she saw that I was there, she sized me up coolly with her dark eyes, gazing more at the window behind me, and asked: “So who are you?” I got up in my pajamas and went over to her, introduced myself, and extended my hand. I also asked her, “Would you like some cookies?” Ivana looked at me like I was from outer space and then she laughed, “You’re a baby, your skin’s perfect, Baby, that’s what I’ll call you,” took a cookie, and went out onto the balcony. “Come on, Baby, come out and have a smoke with me,” I could hear her say outside. Out I went out in my pajamas into the brisk big-city night and inhaled deeply, so deeply that it stung me where it always stung, and I coughed. Ivana burst out laughing, “Damn you!” she whacked me on the back, she was weird, sure, but, I soon realized she was the best roommate I’d ever have.

  The little clock we’d bought at the open market beeped at seven zero zero, and that was when I’d jump out of bed to make it to breakfast and then to the tram and to school. My first day. Today’s a big day for you. That’s what Mama said while she brushed my hair but that was years ago, now nobody said anything. Ivana said hey when I went to the bathroom. Hey, I said, I’m all alone, things aren’t so bad, they’re getting better, I can do as I please.

  The tram was late. School was a curved building with two symmetrical entrances, one on each side, so of course I entered the wrong one, and when I finally found the right place, it took me ages to find Room 1F. “Hello, sorry I’m late, the tram was late.” “Heh, heh.” Softly, perhaps, but still audibly, the Lanas and Bornas I’d gone to school with when I was a Vukofuck refugee were now smirking; they were from the town center. The tram here is normal transportation, it’s always late, you’re bumbling, you look stupid, sit down and shut up. “What can we expect tomorrow if you’re late the first day?” squawked a squat, frumpy woman, my new homeroom teacher, I knew she’d say that, so predictable. I sat in the first row where there was a seat by a girl whose hair was dyed blue, I felt their eyes on my back. Easy target. Introductions with an emphasis on hobbies started from the back, and by the time they’d reached the second row, I’d heard that most of the girls had been on the Zvjezdice kids’ talent show. “You, too? Amazing!!” Most of the boys skied or played tennis, and one even stabled his horse at the Hippodrome. Most of the kids lived in the center of town on Martićeva or Gajeva streets; here or there was a kid whose ambitious folks lived in an outlying town not far from the city, and then there was me. I’m from Vukovar, Zagreb, Kumrovec, Zagreb, and I live in a dorm. These were the magic words. I was instantly the dorm girl. At recess a posse of three came over and asked, “So, hey, does that mean you’ve got no parents?” No, I felt like saying, I came from outer space, they found me in a cabbage patch, are they so stupid they don’t know everybody has parents? “I live in a dorm for high school students, not an orphanage,” I smiled, I don’t know why I smiled, I felt silly. A little light bulb flickered above their heads, though not too brightly, they’d heard what they’d come for, they turned and left. I looked around, today was a big day, surely among them there must be good kids, kids who don’t own a horse, or have a perfect voice, or a perfect grade point average, or special skills and interests, hobbies, goals. A girl looked over at me, I knew who she was by her first and last name, Mama’d told me, but she didn’t come over and I didn’t go to her. Uncle Grgo’s stepdaughter, she kept to the friends she knew from before,
maybe I interested her, but there was already one doer of good deeds in her family, it wasn’t up to her to look after me. I saw another girl, for the third recess she was listening to her Walkman, she didn’t take the earphones out until the teacher came into the classroom, she was dressed all in black, sat alone, maybe it was time for me to move to a new seat. We explored each other gradually but from the start it was clear, it was something like love at first sight. Zrinka looked me right in the eye, she didn’t ask me anything, she didn’t flash an empty smile, but she had a cool sense of humor, and she always had two kunas for a salty roll. I felt better each day I sat next to her, she didn’t speak but I knew she was waiting and she cared. There was room for me in her dark gaze, for the seven operations she’d been through on her spine, for her nickname, Robot—she’d worn an iron girdle in elementary school—for her folks who didn’t understand all the pain she’d suffered though she looked like she didn’t need anybody, she could handle things herself. I held her hand, sometimes I even hugged her, and she looked at me, half-serious, and said: “Why’d you go all sappy?,” calling me only by my surname, but she didn’t pull away, withdraw her hand. We ran into each other one day on the way to school, we were amused, we walked and talked. The sun was lovely, it was late September, we walked arm in arm, she told me soon she’d be going through another operation, she hoped it would be the last, and she wouldn’t be back in school until the beginning of the next semester. Suddenly before our eyes stretched the expanse of the main square and we looked at each other in surprise, how did we get here? I thought she knew a shortcut to school and she was following me, our physics class had already begun fifteen minutes earlier. We walked into class, everybody gawked at us, they thought we’d been playing hooky, who’d even try to explain otherwise. After class the homeroom teacher called me in to the teachers’ lounge to lay out a plan. On Tuesdays I could take a Hungarian class, on Fridays, Japanese. Clearly I had too much time on my hands and too little supervision, a few more obligations wouldn’t hurt. Zrinka died laughing while I conjured for her the high tones of our (least) favorite teacher and her reprimand. I chose Japanese. After that first outing, physics became a thorn so we found the choice an easy one, we’d sacrifice yet another physics class, last period on Thursday. Though I’d have been glad to skip history after the teacher called me to the blackboard and joined the ranks of the morons who’d been at this school for years. “So, you’re from Vukovar?” He squinted at me with his beady, red-rimmed eyes. Everybody knew he drank. “I am,” I answered loudly and was reminded of how I’d stood, frozen, at the board in math class in elementary school while the teacher, Maca, tried to put me at ease, tactfully, with the words, “Why so tense? I’m not a Chetnik with a knife.” They probably had the impression that our worst nightmares were Chetniks with knives in their teeth, they thought that’s what war was. They all had something to say on the subject. “Come now, erase the board,” said the professor. “The sponge is there, or how do you say sponge where you’re from? Sundjer?” He guffawed, tickled by his own joke, and salvoes of laughter rolled across the class as they repeated the exotic word. Sundjer. “And where do your parents live?” asked the solicitous professor, and when I said my dad was missing, he asked, “Missing where?” Well if I knew where, he wouldn’t be missing, would he, I said to myself, but to him, I said, “Dunno,” and then we moved on to discuss the arrival of the Croats and everything that followed, and my face was still burning and I’d have been happiest if I could have fled. He passed me with a D, and, all smug, saw it as an act of charity, like people always do. But there it was, we fled physics, the teacher wasn’t half bad, she was strict, nothing personal, we’d make it up next time. Zrinka was leaving the next week, she wouldn’t be able to go out, so we had to skip out during the school day for a farewell drink. I had all the time in the world, I was allowed to be out till ten and once she’d gone I’d figure out where Marina’s and Vesna’s dorm was and go there after school. That was my plan. Hers was to come back after Christmas, and until then to survive and enjoy the morphine. We giggled and drank to that.

  It was so strange, on the weekends, coming back to the hotel. I felt like I was coming home, almost. Every year more of us were going off to board in student housing, and then on Friday the whole horde of us came trooping back, and the little old ladies clustered around the front desk, done up in black kerchiefs like birds on a telephone wire, and oversaw our noisy arrival. Mama was up in our room, waiting to launder two bags of dirty clothes by hand, my brother would get in tomorrow morning. Kids chased each other around the halls, the drunks perched at the bar, it was early yet, they had a strenuous night of it ahead, lots of time had passed and there was more to come. Grandparents died, younger people also died sometimes, the village cemetery was getting crowded. New children were born and no one would ever be able to erase the fact that they were native to Kumrovec, their numbers made up for the ones who’d passed on. Maybe somebody has forgotten about us here and who knows how much longer this life will flow along, unchecked. It was nice being home. “Whatever took you so long?” the barrage began at the door, what can I say in my defense, my classes at school were in the morning shift but I didn’t feel like coming earlier, I waited for the others so we could take the bus together. “But I’ve been waiting, I wait for you all week. Almost every day I go to my job and then come back to this room, alone. Alone I go to bed, alone I wake up and I’m always thinking of you two, how you’re doing and when you’ll come.” I understood her, I felt that way, too, at first. Then I got to know people and places, and I liked the ones I didn’t know yet even more, I was glad to be on my own in Zagreb. “Well, the homeroom teacher signed me up for Japanese so I wouldn’t have too much time on my hands, and the class is Friday afternoons, so I can’t catch the three o’clock bus.” “What right has she to sign you up, like you’ve no obligations and no family?” Mama was miffed. “That’s what she thinks, I guess,” I said in a conciliatory tone, I was starting to bullshit, it scared me and felt good. “Did you wash the sweater I left here last time?” This was a point of real interest, I wanted to go out tonight, Igor hadn’t called in two weeks. He called the dorm only once, maybe ten days ago, but he wasn’t at the disco last weekend. I didn’t know what this meant or if we were still together, but I did know I had to be there tonight. “I did, yes, why?” “Well I thought I’d wear it tonight,” I said, more softly. “Pardon? You’re going out? Come on, really, can’t you spend just one night at home?” She sounded disappointed, and then abruptly she stopped and said, “Go, go wherever you like, each of us lives our own life.”

  I felt bad for her, I had an impulse to stay in the room but I went out anyway, something was driving me. We assembled at the front desk, by now that was the routine, we hadn’t seen each other for five days so there was lots to catch up on. But they all roomed together at the dorm, Marina and her sister who’d begun taking us more seriously now, and Božana and Vesna, so they picked up where they left off, and I wasn’t sure I always knew what was what. We went first for a drink at Kopitar, as we called the only café here, and then we went on to the Oaza. We were already regulars there. Tonight Dumbelina was there too, though we didn’t call her that these days, we’d started treating her differently. She seldom went out, but ever since Tićo had dumped her, her sister and her sister’s fiancé took her with them to get her out. Tićo and she had gotten engaged, too, but by the time I came back from the dorm, I heard the two of them weren’t together anymore. He had hooked up with this older woman who had a son, and his mother and Nataša were frantic. Almost everybody was here, we ordered bamboos—our favorite cocktail— and Marina and her sister announced the drinks were on them tonight. We soon learned why. They were leaving. They’d been granted an apartment in Osijek and they were moving there after fall semester. We hugged and kissed, but it wasn’t over yet. They wouldn’t be leaving for another month but now we knew the day would come and there’d be fewer of us. Little Ivana had already left for Vinkov
ci, Jelena and her brother for Zagreb, and soon Željka and her mother were going, too. I tried to imagine what life would be like without them all, when we were left here alone. I finished off the last drops of my drink and said, “Let’s go! Time’s up!” It was maybe three hundred feet to the Oaza, but we staggered, sang, and stumbled, acting silly. My heart was pounding, like someone kicked me in the gut and knocked the air flat out of me.

  I’d see him, very soon. It was crowded inside, too early for dancing so we ordered drinks and waited for things to pick up. Everything was smoky and dark but I saw fine, I fixated on every walking tangle about five feet ten inches tall, I was a live sensor for the long blond hair, the cute face, the lips my life was worth nothing without. There was no one who looked like that on the horizon, for the third time I went to the restroom, soon it would be midnight, there were more people, it was smokier, but my excitement ebbed, I was sadder. I went back to the dance floor, Ivan and Miro were sitting at the bar, drunk no doubt, but they no longer looked drunk even when they were, probably a question of training. “What’s up, the high school kids don’t hang around with us anymore?” quipped Miro, and I shot back, “Never did.” They ordered me a bamboo, we clinked glasses. “You aren’t still with that local clown are you?” Ivan asked me and, without waiting for an answer, he said, “It sucks when one of our girls hooks up with one of those blockheads. Why hang out with him? Is he a boy or a girl! Just look.” I saw Ivan gazing off somewhere as he described him, and then I realized he was staring straight at Igor, who was standing by the door and chatting with a friend. I saw him, my heart pounded like crazy, he came after all, I was so glad. Looked like he’d spotted me but still he stood there, and then he came toward the bar and stopped two or three barstools away. Now I got it, he couldn’t have missed seeing me, he didn’t want to see me so I, too, pretended we didn’t know each other anymore.