the moment with their grotesqueness? Did they lessen the pain? I don’t know, but we said our farewells to Roza without a kiss. But my longing to kiss her, or at least touch her, broke my heart forever. We pushed our way out to the balcony, and stood looking down at the sloping drive. We reentered the room. We went up to Roza’s mother, who was held by two women to keep her from collapsing onto Roza’s body. I don’t know if she recognized us. I wanted to tell her that the chain was mine, that I had killed Roza. I wanted to beg her forgiveness, to offer her my life, to let her kill me, beat me, spit on me. But I had no voice. Nothing came out of my mouth, not a sound. Srebra said nothing. We left and stood for a long time outside in the night, looking up to Roza’s balcony. Early the next morning, at four o’clock, our mother shook us awake, whispering, “Get up, get up, come on, we’re going.” We left the apartment silently. Our steps were as quiet as if we were tiptoeing barefoot down the stairs. Our uncle carried the bags; our mother closed the door, and crossed herself. We got in the car and set off for the village. We were fleeing Roza’s funeral. For the three days we spent in the village, Srebra and I hung out in a room with iron beds, reciting from memory “Eyes,” Aco Šopov’s poem about the death of a female partisan, our homework assignment for Macedonian class. “Three days we carried you huddled up…” The blood in our temples pounded, and I couldn’t imagine the poet’s partisan. Instead, I saw Roza lying on a stretcher, my chain around her neck hanging over her right shoulder. The small cross swung back and forth, striking the stretcher with a barely audible thud. “Auntie Verka lied to us,” said Srebra. When we returned to Skopje, our mother brought us the evening newspaper. Inside was an obituary for Roza signed by her mother, father, and sister, alongside a small pale photograph. Our entryway was quiet. The residents moved almost silently. Not a sound came from Roza’s apartment. When Srebra and I came home from school, we hesitated on the stairs, but we didn’t have the courage to knock on her door. Every night I struggled with my conscience. I was certain that the next day, I would tell Roza’s parents I was guilty. But during the day, Srebra would unravel my nighttime resolve. “I don’t know how wise it is to tell them,” she said. She didn’t know, however, why it would be unwise to tell them. We didn’t go to Auntie Verka’s anymore, although she once called to us from her balcony, “Come, let me give you charms to protect you from evil.” We didn’t go. Deep inside, we were angry that she had lied to us about Roza coming back to life. One day after school, I made Srebra turn toward the church. A powerful force dragged me there; I had to go in to find the priest who had given me the cross. We didn’t have enough money for a single candle. The priest was walking through the courtyard. He stopped when he saw us. He remembered us immediately. No one who had seen us once in their lives failed to remember us, and perhaps we even appeared to many of them in their dreams, in nightmares along with other strange beings that only vaguely resembled people. The priest stopped, blessed us, and asked, “Why are you dropping by church now, after school, where they teach you that God doesn’t exist?” He laughed, pleased with his joke, then added, “Bravo, bravo! This is how it should be; you should come to church.” “Father,” I said with the last of my strength while Srebra shook her head, shaking mine along with it, “that chain with the cross you gave me—I lent it to Roza, the girl that was with us, and she was struck by lightning that hit the chain. She died.” The priest was alarmed. He had heard about the accident, but didn’t know that the chain that killed Roza was from here, from his church. He stared at me and Srebra so rudely, his mouth wide open, his belly big beneath his frock, gasping deeply. “God keep and protect her,” he whispered, frozen, powerless, flushed. After a while, he collected himself, and with a quick gait, he nearly leaped up the church’s stairs. He disappeared inside while we stood in the courtyard and waited for him; he soon reappeared, and from under his frock he took out a miniature wooden icon, handed it to me, and said, “Here. This is an icon of Zlata Meglenska, so she can pray for you, so you do not carry your friend on your soul. What you are given in church is not to be passed on to someone else. The Devil drove you to lend her the chain. But this icon, don’t give it to anyone, not for your life. Through it alone will you be delivered from the sin that lies on your soul.” I grasped from what he said that I really was guilty of Roza’s death. I took the icon, and Srebra and I looked at it, seeing for the first time what Saint Zlata Meglenska, for whom our godfather had named me, looked like. A strange-looking saint, with a long kerchief on her head, neither tied under her chin the way our grandmother wore it, nor wound and tied at the forehead, the way other women in the village did. A kerchief-veil as if from a folk costume. She also wore traditional clothes, with embroidery on the sleeves, around the collar, and on the blouse under her dress. Her right hand held a cross, nearly identical to the one I’d had. I tucked her in my pocket, and with rapid steps, Srebra and I set off. “At least she’s pretty,” said Srebra. “Who knows what Srebra Apostolova, whom our godfather apparently liked so much, looked like?”
From that day on, I kept the icon with me always. I only wore clothes with pockets, leaving all the rest to Srebra. At night, I put it under my pillow, and was disappointed that I couldn’t sleep on my side at least once to press my cheek to it and be merged with my protectress. I felt it would bring me closer to Roza. I still could not believe that Roza was truly dead. Unable to accept the truth, and therefore unable truly to mourn for her, I couldn’t shed tears. One morning, Srebra woke with a cry—I opened my eyes at the instant her head jerked mine upward and then downward toward our toes. Her two big toes were swollen, yellowish green, with pus oozing from under the nails. I immediately looked at my own, but there was nothing amiss. Srebra shouted while wiping at the pus, which flowed like blood, with the sheet. I had never seen anything like it. It was dreadful and Srebra’s pain unbearable. Mom and Dad were already up, getting ready for work. They came into the room and saw Srebra’s toes. Our mother said to our father, “Go and tell Goran that you’re not going to work. Tell them you have to go to the doctor.” Dad left and returned ten minutes later. He was boiling with anger. “This is unendurable. We go from one doctor to another.” Mom put on her shoes and left. Dad rubbed Srebra’s feet with rakija and tied them with a bandage, and after we got dressed, only I put shoes on, then we went down the stairs, Srebra walking barefoot on her heels. Dad brought the car right up to the door and somehow stuffed Srebra inside, while I, dragged along, plopped onto the seat beside her. When we got to the hospital, I gripped Srebra around the waist while Dad supported her on the other side until we got inside. The patients looked at us with mouths agape. People stood up from the benches in the corridor so Srebra and I could sit down. One woman said, without thinking, “Just when you thought you had seen everything…” Our father returned a short time later with an orderly, a gurney, and the doctor, who gaped in surprise when he saw us. The cot was too narrow for both of us to lie on, so we sat while the orderly pushed us to the operating room. There, they pulled over a small cabinet that was the same height as the bed, stretched Srebra’s legs onto it, gave her a local anesthetic, and pulled out her toenails, which evidently had abscessed cuticles. Srebra automatically turned her head to the wall, and the two of us saw a poster that read, “Tito gives blood. Give blood, too.” Below which was written the date: January 3, 1980. We stared at that poster, which apparently had hung on the wall of the operating room a full five years. Srebra moaned the whole time, even though the doctor told her to quit faking—it couldn’t hurt with such a powerful anesthetic. After a while, he said, “All done. You can go.” Dad supported Srebra, grasping her around the waist as firmly as he could, nearly carrying her while I attempted to keep up and prevent our heads from hurting at the spot where we were joined. An older woman opened the door for us. Somehow, we got ourselves into the car, and off we went. We went to the brewery so Dad could buy himself a crate of beer. Then we picked Mom up from work and drove home. She hurried ahead to unlock the door of the apartment, and our father, breathless and worn out, supported Srebra while I bobbed up and down next to her; several times our legs nearly tangled, and we would have fallen had I not been holding firmly to the banister Roza had slid down so many times. Dad cursed, “Screw you all.” Waiting for us at home was the first postcard we ever received, addressed to Srebra and me from our uncle, who was on a trip to Ohrid. For days on end we lay on the couch in the big room where our uncle had slept. Our mother was sick again, and she lay on the other couch, dressed in her robe, moaning. Srebra moaned as well. We barely said a word for hours. I read Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers. Then Nana by Zola. And American Tragedy by Dreiser. It seemed to me that I understood everything, but nothing was clear. Srebra
