Our Man in Iraq (2 page)

She waved dismissively as if she wanted to take a rest from it all.

“Is there anything in there for us?” I asked when I saw the classifieds lying open on the coffee table.

“There are a few we could call.”

She read out loud about refined apartments with charm. I closed my eyes and listened to the square footage and the location of the flats, the descriptions of amenities and neighborhoods. Peaceful, quiet street, air conditioning, lift.

And soon we were climbing up into the clouds, up above that quiet street. We imagined that life, looking down at everything. But it wasn’t one hundred per cent definite that we needed that peace and quiet. Or amenities like close to the tram line and schools. That made us think of our children growing up too quickly, moving from kindergarten to high school and then onto university.

Refurbished attic flat, right in the heart of the city center, with parking space.

Immediately we saw ourselves coming down from that penthouse, going from café to café with everything close by, like when you go out to get cigarettes and meet a whole load of people and breathe in the tumult of the street, with its boundless life.

We did this every day. Hovering in weightlessness and reading the listings, we felt life was light and variable, and we thoroughly understood people who added the word “urgent” after the description of the flat.

“Come on.”

“You do it.”

“I called last time,” I said

“Give me the phone then.”

It was nicer to read those descriptions in weightlessness than
to descend into the lower levels of the atmosphere and talk about actual places with actual people, hear their business-like voices. There was something draining about those conversations.

Still, we had to ring that number. The one with “urgent” next to it.

We’d been in our flat for a bit too long, that was for sure, and were starting to get sick of the furniture, which the landlord had dumped there. My friend Markatović and his wife Dijana had bought an apartment on credit and furnished it futuristically: it was spacious and spacy. When we visited they cooked slow food for us, we drank Pinot Grigio from Collio Goriziano and in that light, roomy designer apartment felt part of a new elite. Each time we returned from their place our rented flat looked like a charity shop. They had boldly moved into a new world, while we dwelled among the dark wardrobes of aunts long dead.

We didn’t talk about that openly, but I sensed the disappointment in the air. I even found myself wondering if I was successful in life. I mean, what sort of question is that? I’d only just begun to live after the war and all that shit. I’d only just caught my breath again.

But there we were, one time when we’d returned from Markatović’s and that fatal organic food. It was heavy in my stomach and I couldn’t sleep, so I got a beer out of the fridge and looked around at the cramped ugly flat. Why don’t you take out a loan too, whispered a bewildering voice. Just look at Markatović, the voice said, he’s your generation, and he’s got such a fancy place, and even twins. Why couldn’t you have that too?

Hmm, me and a loan, a loan and me.

At my age, my old man tells me every time, he’d already . . . .

And at my age my ma had already . . . . What can I say when
I think how they lived back then? They didn’t have enough money to buy shoes, but they still had children and even built a house. So, naturally, they wonder what Sanja and I are thinking. I looked at our Bob Marley poster on the wall. What does a Rasta think? But he just holds his joint enigmatically between his lips. We have Mapplethorpe’s black male torso on the other wall, which motivates me to do sit-ups regularly. That’s what we’ve invested in.

When I slept here the first time, Sanja’s rented flat seemed quite chic: situated on the fifteenth story of a tower block, above a tram loop. Standing by the window, the view was so good that I was afraid of falling out of it.

Of course, we came back drunk that first night. We were careful not to be loud because of her flatmate. I couldn’t come. She tried to give me a blow job. It was nice that she tried, although her teeth scratched. We kept on screwing; the condoms dried out quickly and kept bunching up around the head of my dick. I finally came in the third round.

I dropped by again the next day, but skipped it on the third day so it wouldn’t look like I’d moved in. I tried to stick to some kind of rhythm, so my moving in was never officially confirmed. I’d visit in the evenings, spontaneously, as if I’d heard there was a good film on TV. I haven’t organized anything and I don’t have any expectations, I wrote to her on a postcard that I sent from Zagreb to Zagreb just for fun. She liked that. She liked everything I said.

At breakfast I made jokes, as fresh as morning rolls, and also entertained her flatmate. It wasn’t hard to make Ela laugh, and it seemed she didn’t object to a guy hanging around the house in undies. So she slept in the bedroom, while Sanja and I curled up on the couch in the living room. When we made love we’d
lock the door with a quick, quiet turn of the key. Later we’d quietly unlock it and run to the bathroom.

For the first year I kept on paying rent for my basement bedsit in another part of the city so as not to lose my independence. My things were there, I’d say. When I went there I’d lie on my back, all independent, listen to my old radio and stare at the ceiling.

Once Ela found a little pile of my laundry in the washing machine and said with a look of mild disgust, “Aha, so you two are in a serious relationship then.”

I said to Ela by way of apology, “I haven’t got a machine, you know.”

They both began to laugh. They laughed long and hard.

“He hasn’t got a machine,” they repeated, started giggling again, and were soon hooting with laughter.

But Ela soon found herself a new flat.

Our sex became louder. The ladies down in the shop started calling me “neighbor.”

It all ran by itself, without any particular plan. We enjoyed that experiment. We went on our first summer holiday together, then there were autumn walks in Venice, the Biennale, Red Hot Chili Peppers in Vienna, Nick Cave in Ljubljana, a second summer holiday, a third, Egypt, Istria, and so on. Mutual friends, parties, organizing things. Everything rolled along nicely as if nature were doing the thinking for us.

Now and then I asked myself: What now?

Now she was calling about flats. She was trying hard to make a serious impression.

“Yes, I know where the Savica market is. Yes, I know we
need to come and look at it, but could you please tell me the price?”

She just wanted to finish the conversation.

“We’ll probably drop in. I’ll have to see when my boyfriend gets back from work.”

“Say ‘husband.’”

“What?” she cocked her head as she put down the receiver.

“Why did you lie that I was at work? Do you think it makes us sound more serious?”

“I don’t know.”

“If you’re going to lie, say ‘my husband’s at work.’”

   From: Boris <
[email protected]
>
To: Toni <
[email protected]
>

   Baghdad is burning, the Allied bombing has begun, yoo-hoo!

   You saw it, and what can I tell you, the Allied bombing tore us out of our depression, life has become sportive, dynamic, everyone is fighting to get a word in, everything is in motion.

   The Allied bombing, like when you pour sugar into coffee, night and white crystals, attractive images you see again and again. I watch the Allied bombing from the Sheraton Hotel in Kuwait City and am looking for a way to attach myself to the troops, to be embedded, but for some reason they don’t trust me, which doesn’t surprise me. I don’t trust myself. They can probably see it in my eyes: I emit it like radiation or it comes out of me like bad breath.

   I hear the alarm sirens, in Kuwait City they take them seriously, you know how it is at the beginning: people call their families, all the lines are busy, suddenly
everyone hurries home, and the traffic jams cuz, long lines of waiting cars, and all in big cars, everyone honks their horns from inside, out from everyone’s metal box, the windows are rolled right up, everyone is afraid of poisonous gas, people just breathe the air in their vehicles, they sweat and stare out like fish, and I don’t know what to do with myself, so I go out roaming in the gloaming in that city of tall, shining towers by the light of the silvery moon.
OK, it’s not silver, but never mind.
Everything here now depends on which country you’re from, and Croatia’s decided to be against the war, so Lieutenant Jack Finnegan, the officer liaison with journalists, doesn’t believe me when I say I’m on their side, he won’t give me a press ID card because in his eyes I represent Croatia. So I go out walking around Kuwait City in the name of Croatia; I look at the shop windows in the name of Croatia. They say several missiles came down in the sea, and the government has closed the schools for seven days.
On TV kids yell in the streets, they party in front of the American embassy somewhere in Europe, I see them as they enter the public eye, they present themselves, everyone has a chance to be someone as long as the Allied bombing lasts. Gravity increases, everything gains weight, your voice gains character, and character means enjoyment.

   Otherwise I guess I’ve become punked in Kuwait
City—I’ve lost weight and developed dark circles under my eyes. Do you remember the first sirens? You think something’s going to happen up there, right at that moment, things will be resolved, you think it’ll soon be over and last no longer than a war film. But it turns out more like a boring TV show. You dash down to the shelter, stand around until the episode’s over, later you run there a second time, and wait for it to happen. Here people rushed to the shelters three times today, nothing’s happened and they’re crazy already.

I read these emails on my laptop and kept things to myself. Sanja concluded another conversation and hung up the phone.

“Renovated attic, in the city center, 55 square meters. Now he mentioned there are sloping walls. I don’t know, we have to see it. I told him we’d come tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow is your dress rehearsal,” I reminded her.

“I have a break, and it’ll do me good to get out and stretch my legs.”

“OK,” I said.

In those days, guys who cook were coming into fashion so I bought a book by an English cook who had his own television show. I opened it on the counter as if I was about to chop it up. I read and leafed through the pages with knife in hand: so many recipes, so much food. I put down the knife because I’d decided to make spaghetti.

But, all the same, I kept muttering in a nasal-twanged English while I spun around the kitchen. “Itts veri fasst. Veri fasst. Naw wee edd sum beens.”

The spoken instructions didn’t match the cooking of spaghetti carbonara but helped create atmosphere.

“Itts not big filosofi. Poteitous, poteitou chipps. Itts simpl, itts fantastik.”

I left a mess wherever I went.

“It’s a disaster,” Sanja said through a laugh.

She joined me and made light work where I’d been clumsy; then I hovered around her like an overeager apprentice. Although she took over everything, I kept playing the part of the guy who was cooking. I liked it when we were a good team, when we supported each other, regardless of the reality.

“I bumped into Ela today,” I said.

She looked at me quizzically. “Really,” she said, forking spaghetti into her mouth.

“Nothing special,” I continued, “she just asked how you are.”

“Actually, I rang Ela today.”

“Really? Why did you ask me then?”

“I didn’t ask you anything.”

“Didn’t you?” I said, taking some more spag.

“No, I didn’t.”

“Want any more?”

“No. I invited her to the premiere. She was very happy.”

“Sure, you have to invite your old friend.”

“How does she look? I haven’t seen her since I don’t know when.”

Ela had been through periods of depression in recent years, and Sanja told me, after I swore secrecy, that she’d also been having clinical treatment.

“Was she fat?” Sanja asked.

“She hasn’t lost weight.”

“It’s a disaster,” Sanja sighed. “First she punishes herself with diets, then she screws someone and falls unhappily in love, then she binge eats again and ends up getting depressed.”

I don’t know why we became such Ela experts. We weren’t actually in touch with her anymore. But we often talked about people that way; we harmonized our opinions and felt we were an organized entity.

Sanja turned her focus to the TV, which was on with the volume down low. I looked too: it was an afternoon talk show with a whole battery of columnists from women’s magazines.

“Look, look, turn it up!” I said. “Icho Kamera!”

Icho Kamera, with his rugged Balkan face, his dark moustache and grizzled sideburns, was in the audience, holding the microphone and asking a question. The popular
host blinked charmingly as if wondering whether she’d missed a joke. The columnists were all looking at one another.

“The remote, Sanja, the remote!”

“Over there somewhere,” Sanja said.

By the time I climbed over the couch and found it, Icho had already sat down.