Because, having dropped the idea of not saying anything, or of sending him straight home, which would have been the end of it, I, understandably, want to know why, why, why. I want an explanation that I can accept, even though I know there isn’t any, why did he come here in the first place, and then stay, knowing that I was waiting for him at home, that I was sure to be going out of my mind, was it possible that he didn’t give me even a minute’s thought, or remember that we were here with my mother, who would be asking questions as well, even if she didn’t say anything, who would be unhappy that her daughter had to suffer such a lack of consideration, and for no reason? How could we continue our relationship after I’d seen what he was capable of doing, what I could expect? What does he want, anyway, to be alone, OK then, so be alone, let’s break up and be done with it, we each go our own way, I shout in front of everyone in the café garden, as if they’re not there, because for me they don’t exist. For me, the only things that exist are the two of us and the unresolved matter of him having gone out to buy cigarettes and ending up here. I continue shouting as we leave, and all the way home, beside myself that he has no explanation, that he says he doesn’t know. What do you mean you don’t know, I yell, shaking my splayed fingers in front of me, are you insane, if you don’t know then go to an insane asylum and leave me alone, I start repeating myself, I’m getting tired of myself, of my own voice which is beginning to crack, and of my futile questions which get no answers, just an attempt to calm me down, as if it’s me who’s crazy not him. And that only makes me even more furious; if I’m crazy then there must be a reason, it didn’t come out of the blue, we were supposed to go for a swim, and in the evening to the cinema at the Arena, and now it’s ruined. No it’s not, he says, we can still go to the cinema, if I just calm down, if I forgive him, if I realise that he didn’t mean to, he just felt like it, he has no idea why, he went into town for a glass of brandy and simply got lost.
And then I suppose he hugged me, and kissed me, and begged me to forgive him and said he would never do it again, that I shouldn’t be upset because he loves me, because he can’t live without me and that we need to calm down before we get home because my mother will be there, we have to think up some story for her, for instance that he ran into somebody and they got talking and he lost all sense of time, and we’ll have lunch, and a rest and then go to the cinema, at the Arena, just as planned.
***
When I think now about how I was heading towards certain disaster, towards him, not away from him, against all reason, I have an image of a solitary table, in an empty street, with not even a car, as if the table is in some kind of square, and a man is sitting at that solitary table, a table for one, as the song goes, the song comes to me with the image – because this is the century of songs, not of poetry but songs, which are played constantly, which are the omnipresent sound of this century – a nice song, melodic, sad, it says that all of us are alone, that’s our fate, a song full of profound forgiveness for this lonely being who can’t survive, he will die alone – and in my mind he and that song join forces against the facts, against the obvious, against the possibility of my recognising the wolf in sheep’s clothing who wants to gobble me up.
The wolf grinned at me, his eyeteeth gleaming, and then, like a phantom, disappeared, leaving me with just the poor sheep, bleating as it was being chased away from its young.
VIII.
His parents leave on a five-day trip to Dubrovnik, his father’s home town, hurray, I mentally dance with joy, an empty apartment just for the two of us, to play at being married. I’ll have to sleep at home, though, because that’s only right, an unmarried girl can’t sleep at her boyfriend’s even though she’s already slept with him. Which my father knows, because he asked me and I told him, I don’t know how to lie, and it appears I’m brave to boot.
We’re sitting at the kitchen table when he asks me, both of us are serious, it’s a serious question, especially when asked by a father who doesn’t want yes for an answer, he can’t take yes for an answer, but he asks because he suspects it, because he’s upset. He smokes Herzegovina unfiltered, and he knows that I’m also a smoker because I lit my first cigarette in front of him, when I came of age, I saw it as my right. On the table is a raspberry soda, mixed, exceptionally, with two fingers of wine, because of the importance of the occasion, because otherwise he isn’t allowed, not even one finger of wine, because his liver is disintegrating. His eyes are a murky yellow, the pupils strangely dirty and his face already has a dark tone to it, as if he’s been in the sun, which he hasn’t, it’s dark because he’s sick; he’s half-bald and the little that’s left of his plastered down hair is grey, only his Hitlerite moustache is black, because he dyes it. When he hears my answer, he immediately reaches for his glass, his face looking even deader than usual, which seems impossible until it happens, it literally collapses. And he’s breathing heavily, through his nose, in and out; he doesn’t say anything, but it’s hit him hard, to the very depths of his fatherhood. He shouldn’t have asked.
I can’t spend the night with the man I’ve already slept with, that would only confirm something that mustn’t be confirmed, it has to be covered up, denied, the exact opposite has to be proved, as if I had just been joking. Never mind, I think, the coming days are worth more than the nights, days when we’ll be alone from morning till night, something I’ve been dreaming of for a long time. The market, stalls with vegetables, yellow, red, orange, green and purple, you pick them carefully, I like wild lettuce, but his family eats butterhead lettuce, we’ll have to choose, and I like a salad of grated carrots, with garlic, which they don’t eat because it upsets Frane’s stomach, salads without garlic have no taste, I say. A bit of haggling over the price is a must, for the pure fun of it; cheese and single cream for breakfast, the peasant woman will take the cheese out of the cheesecloth and scoop the cream out of the tub with a ladle, it will all be delicious. We’ll buy the hard cheese at the shop, along with the cold cuts, some roast ham, some aromatic kulen sausage links, smoked in pork intestines, that come from Slavonia and which he loves. And for our first lunch we’ll have fish, say mackerel, which he will bake, because his father bakes them. At our house we only eat sardines, which my mother prepares and cooks. And in our shopping bag there’ll also be peaches for the wine, tradition is tradition, I think happily as we see Danica and Frane off. They’re taking two pre-war leather suitcases with them on the train. They’re calf leather, but you can see that they are old, they’re scuffed, especially along the edges, and grimy somehow, like their once-gilded clasps that are now dotted with light spots. The suitcases would join the junk up in the attic if they had the money to buy new ones.
It’s the first time Danica and Frane are going anywhere – at least since I’ve known them – the first time they are visiting the town where his father grew up, as a gentleman, a gentleman, his son keeps repeating, never having forgiven him for being a gentleman, well-born, upper-crust, with an ancestry and money and a mansion and power, somebody who wasn’t a nameless face in the crowd, part of the amorphous mob, only to become a nobody in this town, and to pass that on to his son, as if to mock him.
Frane left Dubrovnik around the age of thirty, trained to work as a hotel manager in Zagreb, and for a few glorious years was the assistant director of the Hotel Esplanade, and he married a pretty woman ten years his junior who worked for a lawyer, the world was open to him even if there was a war on, because there are those, you know, who navigate their way through war as if it didn’t exist, they don’t take sides and they don’t get involved. The Esplanade’s guests were no longer kings, or princes, or dukes, or exotic maharajas, they were no longer famous actresses, dancers, singers, writers or shoe moguls – now they wore the officer uniforms of the Wehrmacht, the Gestapo, occupiers to