Our Man in Iraq (19 page)

“I’m in the car on my way home but I haven’t turned on the radio. Have you not heard anything else?” I asked.

“I heard what I heard—and you didn’t,” she said.

“That’s not what I meant, but never mind. Have you just got up now?”

“Come on, don’t phone while you’re driving. See you soon.”

“Oh, by the way—I’m tanned.”

“And I’m in heat,” she purred and hung up.

It was bulk waste collection day in the neighborhood. Everyone was clearing out their cellars, and a jumble of oddments rose in front of the building: old mattresses, washing machines, ravaged furniture, stoves, and unidentifiable sponges. I looked at the scene and felt like sitting down on the armchair with the missing armrest or lying down on the sagging greenish couch—and being taken away with all the junk.

Romany lads dressed in tracksuits and secondhand uniforms from the war were hanging around, sifting through the stuff and calling out to each other. “Djemo, come and give us a hand with this.”

As I was backing in beside the heap, Djemo in his half-sporting, half-military gear showed me how much room I had. Then he signaled me to stop.

Djemo probably mistook me for one of his people, tanned as I was, and when I said “thanks” in Croatian he looked at me a little surprised. Then a girl walking past in a miniskirt and high heels caught his attention. Djemo whistled quietly, long and drawn-out like wind across the plain. He then launched into song:
Here comes the sun, little darling
. . .

How I envied him.

“Come on, Djemo, stop fucking around,” yelled his friends, who were loading a pickup. He went over to them along a green and shining tree-lined path.

A lady came out of the building carrying a battered picture of a shipwreck in a massive frame. She looked at me askance.

As I was getting out of the elevator, Charly called and launched straight into a confused spiel. “Know what? You’re right.”

He’s just got up too, I thought. Man, am I the only one around here who works?

“What are you talking about?” I said.

I’d already rung the doorbell for Sanja to open.

“She’s not bad at all.”

“Who?”

“Ela. Who else? She slept here and made breakfast. She’s gone now. I can tell you, it was a really pleasant morning. And the night kinda wasn’t bad either. You’re right, if she lost a bit of weight she’d be cool.”

While he was talking, Sanja opened up for me in her dressing gown, with a cigarette in her mouth. She acted as if I was a stranger. Then she casually turned, went to the couch, sat down, pulled up one leg and opened me a view of her pussy.

“Yes, yes. Look, I have to go now.”

“Good you came along, mister,” she said, as cold as Sharon Stone. “My husband’s not at home.”

I gave up the idea of telling her about my day. I just stood and watched her smoke. That was our sex-theater. We liked to play raunchy scenes.

“You sure have got a bit of color,” she said, fighting back a giggle.

“I’m coming in from the desert.”

“Oh, it’s very hot here too,” she said, stroking her finely shaved pubes.

I told her to put on the costume from the play.

“So you’re the photographer who said he’d be coming?”

She went into the bedroom and came back dressed. White miniskirt, push-up bra, and little white boots. Cute little slut. She strutted in front of me like a catwalk model. Then she went to the hi-fi and upped the music. Massive Attack.

I grabbed her bum under the miniskirt. “You’ve forgotten your panties.”

“You’ve got the wrong impression of me, mister,” she replied in that feigned, uppity voice.

I had an acute erection. We kissed. She nibbled my lip a bit. I moistened my finger and gently pressed her clitoris. I crouched down. She parted the folds with her fingers and bared her clitoris, inviting me in.

“Gawd, you’re a photographer with a sense for detail,” she said in the timbre of a lady who admired artists.

“Uh-huh,” I confirmed with a mumble.

She moaned. Her legs began to tremble.

She pulled back. “Fuck me!”

I stood up. She shifted to the couch and got on all fours. I smacked her on the bottom.

“Are you a singer?”

“Uh-huh,” she moaned.

“A proper singer or a little stage slut?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted bashfully.

“Sing a bit and screw around a bit?”

“Yes.”

I slid into her.

“Like that?”

“Yes.”

“Where do they screw you?”

“Grab my ass.”

I gripped her firmly, raised her a bit and lowered her onto my cock.

“Are you filming all this, mister?” she asked after we'd both been panting for a while.

“Uh-huh.”

“Will I look good in it?”

“A bit vulgar,” I said.

“I’m so, I’m so ashamed,” she grunted.

“Why are you ashamed if you’re a little bitch?” I raised and lowered her faster and faster, breathless, incandescent, emitting the mania of that day.

“I’m. I’m a good girl,” she gasped and then howled, jolting, as her orgasm overcame her. “Come on, just a bit more,” she begged.

I thrust into her hard a few more times. Afterward I collapsed beside her. I kissed her shoulder and closed my eyes. She stroked my hair. We just lay there. I didn’t want to fall asleep, so I opened my eyes every now and again.

“That was a good fuck,” she said. “You like the costume?”

I put a cushion under my head as I nodded. “If I drop off, don’t let me sleep longer than an hour. Don’t turn down the music. It’s just right.”

“I’m going to the theater now. I’ll set the alarm clock for you.”

“OK.”

“By the way, that review is a must. It’s on the web,” she mentioned.

“I’ll read it. Did you know they’ve caught on to the business with the guy in Iraq?”

“No, you’re kidding. What happened?”

“I’ll tell you later. I’m too tired now.”

Up to Date
was a political and cultural talk show with universal appeal and a studio audience. The host was a skinny woman with a shrill voice who could cut off every guest with that vocal cleaver, so there was no straying from the topic: the Croatian reporter missing in Iraq. It was to be the final showdown between me and Milka, on the TV battlefield, like in an epic folk song.

I was frightened, but they called me a hundred times on my mobile, threatening me to make sure I attended. In the end the big boss himself called me. By nature he was perhaps even more perilous than Milka. I tried to convince him that it would be better for someone else to go in my stead; but no, he fiercely insisted that I was the one. He told me that he would do everything in his power to make my life worse if I didn’t go. So he ordered me to go and tell my tale and make a stand against her with arguments; she couldn’t make accusations without evidence, he said, whoever’s mother she was.

So there I was finally—
Up to Date
due to begin any minute. I was sitting in the studio, my nose powdered, in the black blazer I wear to premieres and funerals and which people in
my village recognize me by. Beside me sat Pero the Chief in a Versace suit and glasses; he was there to stiffen my spine and protect the firm as the second line of defense in case my first line was breached, or I fled. With us sat GEP’s running dog, the little guy who penned the article (they called him Gruica), as well as two neutral commentators who’d have to make up their minds whose side they were on: the president of the Croatian journalists’ association, and a bearded sociologist, who’d written some book. And there, arriving with some delay, was a government representative, a chargé d’affaires from the Foreign Ministry. The Chief told me that if Boris had really disappeared the government would now officially have to search for him, so that would no longer be my job.

That was the first piece of good news for me in a long while. And so we sat there, confidently manning our defensive position. The lawyer said we were squeaky clean in legal terms because we hadn’t forced anyone to go to Iraq; Boris had signed an employment contract like everyone else. Our mistake—which we were only to concede if they cornered us—might have been that we didn’t raise the alarm soon enough; in other words, if they really cornered us, our mistake would be mine. But here I had a counter-argument, namely that Boris could still get in touch: the deadline hadn’t yet expired, and all the fuss was based on speculation, although we too were worried. Our PR lady assessed that we were in a relatively good position; we just had to avoid engaging in spats with Milka because she was a mother and that would not go down well. We all agreed that Milka should be given a wide berth, and our PR damsel continued that we had to be sympathetic with his mother, smooth over the misunderstanding, promise her hills and valleys, offer help and legal protection for our employee’s family so as to win it over to our side. She also told us to come out straight away and say that GEP wanted to destroy us, so
that later everything would be interpreted in that vein, and change the conversation to that topic—say what the foes had done to us so far because they hated a respectable paper like ours; in that way we could do a little advertising as well.

But alas, as soon as I saw Milka in the regional studio via videolink I knew that the jig was up. She was sitting there in berserker mode; her head thrust forward like a dog straining at its chain. It was clear that she couldn’t sit still in the camera’s glare: she squinted and could hardly wait to start. She’d prepared her tirade without solicitor or PR consultant, her head was full, and you could tell she was bursting to vent her fury.

As soon as the host had greeted the viewers and briefly outlined the problem, she swiftly gave the floor to the missing journalist’s mother, naturally, and Milka struck at me via videolink. She addressed me as “wee Toni.” This confused the host, who requested Milka not to call me that, irrespective of the situation, to which Milka replied that she’d always called me that. From there our whole plan went pear-shaped.

“I’ve known ’im since ’e was knee-high to a grasshopper,” Milka said. “Of course I can speak to my snotty-nosed nephew like that.”

“Just a minute—you mean to say you’re related?”

“We sure are,” Milka replied.

The host glanced at me and couldn’t contain a taunting laugh. “Is that true? You sent your own cousin to Iraq?”

At that point everything went to pieces.

The president of the journalists’ association laughed loudly.

The system of nepotism had had a stranglehold on the country for a whole decade; war had created openings for the hill tribes to enter the system; warriors and outlaws infiltrated it, brought along their relatives, created networks, and built up para-structures. Our urbane intelligentsia had been combating the hill tribes for a decade already, mocking
their clannish culture and kin-and-kith morality because they were a millstone around our necks, a mafia in government. We’d never have a modern state until we civilized them. They had to realize that the world was not about relatives. They had to refuse the call of the tribe and become individuals.

“Let’s be perfectly clear,” the host said. “This journalist you employed—who then disappeared—he’s your own cousin?”

I’d long pretended to have become civilized, emancipating myself from the call of the tribe, but this was it: now they’d seen through me. There I was on prime-time television.

The Chief looked at me, bewildered. Everything we’d discussed in the briefing fell through.

“He is my cousin,” I said, “but he knows Arabic.”

It was no use. My words sounded ridiculous even to me.

I must have phased out because for a while I didn’t even follow what was said; little pictures went round and round inside my head and I saw the flat I’d been to see that morning. I knew the show was now on TV there and everywhere, it was going all round the world via satellite, and, I don’t know why, I thought of Charly watching me on the screen, gaping at me with a bottle of locally-grown olive oil in his hand and cooking his slow food that he wouldn’t invite me to eat.

After a while someone in the studio audience asked to be able to speak. They passed him the microphone.

None other than Icho Kamera.

“I ’appen to know Milka, an’ all. I know the situation an’ I can say it ain’t all black and white, like. Milka oughta realize that they found ’im work, after all ’e was unemployed an’ wanted a job. An’ this guy, the journalist, found work for ’is cousin. I reckon that deserves a bit’a respect!”

Bloody hell, he spoke as if he’d been briefed by my old ma.

A short round of applause from the studio audience. The host then gave the floor to the sociologist with the beard, who
proceeded to deep-end the audience into the phenomenon of tribal relations, of regional differences that were extra-institutional. They hindered the functioning of institutions by creating a parallel system. That was our particular problem, he stressed. The strongest states were those that had destroyed tribal relations and weakened the extended family. “The stronger the family, the weaker the government,” he concluded.

The host called on me to comment. I said I agreed with the gentleman from the audience, and with the sociologist.

“Only you don’t get on with your aunt?” she asked with irony.

“No, I can’t get on with her.”

After that they switched back to Milka in the regional studio. First she replied to Icho Kamera, saying that everyone knew he was crazy, and as well as slamming me she also came down on the sociologist for what he’d said against the family. Basically, Milka had been poorly briefed and seemed to have forgotten to cry and talk touchingly about Boris, so in the viewers’ telephone voting she received a much smaller percentage of support than expected. We had thirty percent, just like my old ma said.

After the show, everyone instinctively edged away from me; only Icho Kamera came up in his somber old jumper. “I see ya’re gettin’ popular, kid. I remember you.”

“I’m gettin’ anti-popular.”

“’T’s all the same: popular, anti-popular.”

“You’re in Zagreb pretty often.”

“I got me sons to look after the crop,” he said. “I sell a bit at the market ’ere, an’ I also go to things like this. Livin’ down south is borin’ for me—this ’ere is the center of things. I mean, what can ya do down there?”