Matija Dolenčec could barely mask his alarm and the dread of losing himself in life’s bottomless pits. He’d agreed to take Gita shopping as a gesture of gratitude for her willingness to read something he was hoping would become his third book.
She was the last of three readers of his newest work before he decided whether to send it to an editor. His first two books—a collection of short stories, The Discovery of Remarkable Organisms, in 2006, and a novel, Good Morning, Phantom, in 2008—were fairly well received by critics and the reading public (meaning that the number of copies sold was just south of four digits). With this third book, things had gone differently. He’d worked on it for over a year, and throughout the process he was dogged by the smell of trash and rot. He knew the story wasn’t working. At times he was seized by paranoia that he, too, smelled bad: out of the corner of his eye, he’d see colleagues and total strangers in line at the grocery store whispering awkwardly. That whole year the story never once pulled him in; he massaged the plot in hopes that he might build a more or less coherent collage of banter and feigned pent-up emotional turmoil. The scent of garbage emanated straight from the icon for “novel_2011.doc” on his desktop. The story was about the tragic love between a young Roma man and a Croatian woman, and about a young policeman of mixed Serbian and Croatian parentage who was investigating the man’s brutal murder. Matija imagined it to be the kind of book to inspire comments like:
“Holy shit, this is the hottest stuff I’ve read in years. I wept and roared with laughter. What a scintillating imagination! I can’t believe someone I know writes like this.”
“Pardon me, you wouldn’t be Matija Dolenčec, would you? Did you write that book about the Roma man? Apologies for the intrusion, but it’s brilliant. Exactly what our country needs, give it to her straight, spit in the eye of Croatia. Would you be a guest on my Sunday afternoon talk show?”
“In his latest book, Dolenčec gives us the tragic potential of a character from the gallery of the Croatian public’s commedia dell’arte.”
“The first printing of Dolenčec’s novel sold out in a few breathless weeks. This is a moving story exploring hatred toward the Other in all its manifestations in transitional Croatia.”
“Having portrayed the impotence of the ordinary man who can be a stakeholder in, but not the instigator of, historical processes, young Matija Dolenčec is a shoo-in for an award from the European Association of Romas.”
“David Fincher has begun filming a new movie based on Matija Dolenčec’s latest award-winning novel. The plot has been adapted to prewar Berlin, the protagonists a Jewish artist and a young German woman. Dolenčec, who was recognized last week as Croatia’s best-dressed man, will serve as consultant on the film. In the photograph, from the left: Colin Farrell, David Fincher, Scarlett Johansson, and Matija Dolenčec in conversation.”
These were the thoughts that helped Dolenčec get to sleep each night after shutting down his laptop. Instead of expressing their admiration and barely repressed envy, however, his three readers advised him to set the draft aside for a spelclass="underline" there was no vibrancy or sharpness, and, ultimately, no sense of purpose. These were people who cared for him and were sincere; they considered his success their own and couldn’t be bribed.
Korina was a friend from his high school days, and for a brief time she’d worked at the same state agency as Matija and shared his convivial scorn for the job. He, however, couldn’t leave, while she could and did. She was a particular kind of millenniaclass="underline" no one knew exactly what they did for a living, but they always managed to look chic, socialize with up-and-comers, ski at middling winter resorts while sporting fancy brand-name apparel, drive a tiny designer car that matched their wardrobe, and dine in overrated Zagreb restaurants where the waiters were plagued by chronic bitchiness. By the time she was in her late twenties, she’d already had five jobs, most of them in PR, guerilla marketing, and event planning. She was good at planning events. The only problem was that she’d been hired as an accountant. She ended up working for her dad, who was in real estate on the Adriatic islands, where he sold property to Russians. He created a job that was a perfect fit for her but of no value to the company. There she was finally asked to plan an event and told she would be paid for it, but given a budget of 250,000 kuna, she spent a little over half a million.
She went through periods when she was ready to, as she said, “take on a new challenge.” She was carried along by a twisted optimism that each employer would ultimately realize how much good she’d done. No doors were ever fully shut behind her.
She was the first person to receive a hard copy of the double-spaced 350-page manuscript. Matija wanted her opinion as a representative of those picky readers who, if they read at all, read hagiographies of celebrities and success stories recommended by Oprah’s Book Club and available at better gas stations everywhere. It would be great for Matija if people like that had his book in mind, in case someone asked them what they’d been reading lately. For instance, a person who made a living commenting on other people’s shoes could let it slip that, well, literature wasn’t really her thing these days, but she did read Coelho and a few Croatian writers like Dolenčec. Korina had done something similar with Matija’s second book. Three years earlier, a weekly paper with a strong yellow bent had run a photograph of a scantily clad forty-three-year-old anchor from one of the local TV stations. She was lounging on a deserted beach sans bikini top, with Matija Dolenčec’s book Good Morning, Phantom in her hand. The photo revealed a slender wrist, the book a little thicker, and even more generous breasts—in that order. The blurred picture looked as if it had been taken quickly, secretively, from a distance. This was not the case, of course, nor was it accidental that Matija’s book was featured.
“Look, this new thing you’ve written, why don’t you let it sit for a while, let it settle. Do something else. Then reread it and start over.”
Korina thought editing a bad text might make it good, but Matija knew better. You can’t take a piece of shit and turn it into something delicious, Korina darling. I suppose there’s always the shit sandwich, thought Matija. He didn’t ask her what, specifically, she’d disliked. She hadn’t liked any of it, he could tell. She probably hadn’t even finished reading it. Maybe, thought Matija, the book called for a little more intellectual effort than she was willing to give. He wasn’t happy about that, but he was proud of writing a complex narrative, showing he knew how to load his text with a battery of nuanced observations on the current state of affairs in Croatia, genital-fecal events, and the characters’ emotional landscapes. He immediately decided his next reader would be Miljac, the smartest person he knew.
Matija had sat next to Miljac in high school. Miljac could easily have been the class bully—in ninth grade, he was already six feet tall and 180 pounds, and he had this big head and low brow. But there was no trace of malice in Miljac. He was an obedient kid and a good student. Two or three times a week, he’d get groceries for his elderly neighbor with dementia who called him Denis and gave him only seven or eight kunas for bread, milk, and the newspaper. Miljac would make up the difference with his own pocket money. Miljac had a threatening air about him, so sometimes he couldn’t avoid fights in which he and Matija were regularly trounced. Matija suspected that people were annoyed not only by Miljac’s intimidating size but by the fact that he never shut up. In high school, he’d dreamed about graduating and working in his father’s computer repair shop installing antivirus software. Two years after graduating he had his own company in which he employed, in addition to his father, four other programmers. He had his own offices, one large car and one small one, an apartment in the Sljeme foothills, and 3.5 million kunas in the bank.