‘Aye.’
‘Why did she scream?’ Hans-Pieter asks. He seems to put the question to his Sprite — he is not looking at Murray, anyway.
‘I was just trying to kiss her,’ Murray says.
‘And then what happened?’
‘Then some fucker was holding me down, someone else was phoning the police.’
‘And what was she doing?’
‘What was she doing? I don’t know.’
‘So then the police arrived,’ Hans-Pieter prompts.
‘Aye,’ Murray says. ‘They arrived. And I suppose I musta given one of’m a shove or something.’
‘Why did you do that?’
‘I don’t know…The way they were treating me…’
‘I understand,’ Hans-Pieter says.
‘So then they took me to the station. With the fucking siren going and everything.’
Hans-Pieter just nods sympathetically.
‘And I spent the night,’ Murray says, ‘in a fucking cell.’
‘They let you go in the morning.’ Hans-Pieter obviously knows the story already.
‘They said Mrs Jevtovic didn’t want to make a case against me. And I thought, Who the fuck is Mrs Jevtovic?’
‘That’s Maria’s mudder.’
‘Yeah, I know. I just wasn’t thinking straight that morning.’
That morning. Not nice. One of the very lowest points. Emerging into the daylight…
‘I just tried to kiss her,’ he says, almost tearfully. ‘I didn’t do anything.’
‘Okay.’
‘What does she say I did?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Hans-Pieter says, evasively.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ Murray tells him.
Hans-Pieter says nothing. He has finished his lunch.
Murray picks up his fork and sets about finishing his own, those strings of meat in dark, sticky sauce.
His teeth encounter something. ‘What the fuck,’ he says. He spits the object, small and hard as a shotgun pellet, into a paper napkin.
‘What the fuck is that?’
Hans-Pieter peers down at the wet napkin, the tiny object.
Murray is eating again.
After examining it for a while, Hans-Pieter says, ‘Shit, you know what I think it is?’
‘What?’
‘I think…I mean, I’m not sure…I think it’s one of those microchips.’
‘What microchips?’ Murray says, with his mouth full.
‘They use to identify animals.’
‘Animals?’
‘Yeah, like dogs,’ Hans-Pieter says.
Murray, after a moment, spits out what is in his mouth.
‘What are you saying?’ he pants, distraught. ‘Are you saying I’m eating a fucking dog?’
‘I don’t know,’ Hans-Pieter says.
‘Am I eating a dog?’ Murray shouts at him. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’
‘I don’t know…’
‘Am I eating a fucking dog?’
‘I don’t know,’ Hans-Pieter says, shocked and embarrassed by the shouting, and by the tears that are so unexpectedly now welling out of Murray’s eyes, that are starting on their way down his strong, flushed face.
Preposterously he tries to hide it, his face, with a scrap of paper napkin.
‘I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it,’ he mumbles.
Hans-Pieter looks helplessly at the Chinese woman overseeing the buffet.
With his face in his hands, Murray is sobbing openly now. He says something it’s hard to make out through the sobs, the wet fingers, the fraying paper napkin.
The Chinese woman has made eye contact with Hans-Pieter. She wants him to do something, to stop his friend upsetting her other patrons.
So Hans-Pieter puts a timid hand on Murray’s shoulder and suggests, in a low voice, that they leave.
4
Knocking. Knocking.
And voices.
Murray?
Murray?
Then silence, again.
Shame.
5
They meet at Džoker. Hans-Pieter and Damjan are already there. A few weeks have passed. Murray has not been seen much in that time, though Maria has sort of forgiven him — will let him sit quietly in the Umorni Putnik, even if she is still not speaking to him. He has not seen much of Hans-Pieter either. Hans-Pieter has been painting Maria’s flat, painting out the fluorescent orange with something less oppressive, less like living inside a migraine.
Murray fetches a Pan from Matteus, and joins Hans-Pieter and Damjan at the table near entrance, under the mirror.
‘Živjeli!’ It is the only Croatian word he knows.
He takes off his scarf. A cold front is moving across the flat land, laying down frosts in the morning, frosts that quickly melt to leave everything shining wet. ‘So,’ he says, sitting.
‘So,’ Hans-Pieter echoes, his face stippled with paint.
Damjan says nothing. There is a TV showing a Champions League match, with the sound off, and he is watching it.
‘We’ve not seen much of you, Murray,’ Hans-Pieter says.
‘No,’ Murray says. ‘I’ve been staying in.’
‘Okay.’
‘End of the month,’ Murray says. ‘You know.’
End of the month, money tight. Hans-Pieter knows. He nods. He says, ‘How are you?’
The question seems loaded. Murray looks at him suspiciously. ‘Okay. I suppose.’
‘You’ve not been out much?’
‘No. I said. I’ve been staying in.’
‘Okay.’ Hans-Pieter seems tense about something. He says, ‘I told Damjan about your situation.’
‘My situation? What situation?’
‘Your…Your life situation.’
‘What’s that mean?’ Murray looks at Damjan, who is watching the football. ‘What’s this about?’
‘Damjan thinks,’ Hans-Pieter says. He stops.
‘What’s he think?’
‘He thinks that maybe…Maybe…’
‘Maybe what?’
‘Maybe you are cursed,’ Hans-Pieter says.
Murray emits a strangled laugh. ‘What?’
Hans-Pieter appeals to Damjan, who is still staring at the TV, Real Madrid against someone. ‘Don’t you think that?’
‘Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe,’ Damjan says, still following the match.
‘You had a similar problem, I think,’ Hans-Pieter says to him.
‘Yes.’
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ Murray asks.
Hans-Pieter has some sympathy for this point of view. ‘It sounds weird.’
‘I was victim,’ Damjan says, ‘for five years. Victim of curse.’
The fact that it is Damjan saying this — Damjan, the tyre-fitter, a man even now unable to tear his eyes away from the football — prevents Murray from dismissing the whole thing out of hand as total fucking shite, as he undoubtedly would if it were Hans-Pieter alone putting the idea to him.
Still, he says, ‘This isn’t some kind of wind-up?’
Damjan turns to Hans-Pieter, who doesn’t know what a ‘wind-up’ is either.
‘You’re not taking the piss?’ Murray says. ‘This isn’t a joke?’
‘It’s not a joke,’ Hans-Pieter says.
Solemnly, Damjan explains. ‘I tell you, for five years I am victim. Okay. Everything is fuck up for me. Then I go to see lady. Powerful lady.’
Murray has a question. ‘What fuckin’ lady?’
‘Here, in the town.’
‘She is quite famous here, I think,’ Hans-Pieter puts in.
‘I hear about her,’ Damjan says. ‘I go. I see her. I pay to her five hundred kuna. And she help me. She take away this thing.’
‘Ah, bollocks,’ Murray scoffs. ‘Five hundred kuna?’
Damjan seems unwilling to joke about this, or treat it lightly in any way. He seems to find Murray’s attitude disrespectful. ‘Is not expensive,’ he says, ‘to take away this curse.’