That Sunday I really paid attention to the sermon, probably for the first time. The priest talked about how we don’t have the right to take our own life, because it was given to us by someone else, and we must never lose hope. He said we must pray for our brethren who had died so tragically, and not be selfish but make an effort to help Croatia and Croats. I was the only one who knew that none of this had anything to do with Mario, or Zdravko, or the village.
5.
“Worraps!”
“Klim!”
“Egattoc!”
“Oknovz Ycracomed!”
Now I was no slower than Franz, and the game developed new rules. I’d say a word backward, and Franz had to point to the thing or pantomime it. When I said, “Klim,” he spread his legs and arms and gestured like he was milking himself. He was really fast, so I began reaching for longer, harder words.
“Lerrab gnub!” Franz immediately wrapped his arms around a huge invisible barrel, made an invisible plug with his fingers, and bunged the container. While he was grinning, I was plotting what to say next.
“Rotcart worrah!” He just rolled his eyes and settled importantly into the seat of the invisible tractor, glancing over his shoulder once in a while to check on the depth of the harrows. I was wild with envy. Nobody could hold a candle to him. And then I found a sticker out on the road, and on it were the words 1,4-butanediol with a black X on an orange background.
“Loidenatub!” I said, and won. Franz squinted, then bugged his eyes wide, then shook his head. He mumbled something in protest, and I stuck the sticker in my pocket and, with hands raised, turned to walk to school, saying over and over, “Loidenatub. Loidenatub, my dear Franz.”
When I heard between fourth and fifth period that Trezika Kunčec had been found hanged, I was relieved because I hardly knew her, so her death couldn’t possibly be my fault. Several hours later I learned that right there on the dresser in her bedroom, next to where she’d tied her apron to the ceiling lamp and made it into a noose, lay three of my drawings. On one of them I’d written about how I didn’t want people to die because of me, and my first and last name. I have no idea why I did that, when the person I had been writing to knew my name. Trezika had been behaving oddly for some time, spouting all sorts of nonsense to our neighbors—for instance, that I was her favorite boy in the village because I was growing up without a dad, and she thought I was lonely.
“He leaves what he draws and writes to his daddy and thinks his daddy will come back. I know nobody likes him. I feel sorry for the boy,” she said.
She’d been taking my drawings from the grave and bringing them home when my mom and sister would miss one. They took the drawings so I wouldn’t be seen as even weirder, while Trezika probably did it because she reckoned it was a good deed.
Franz and I were on our way home from school just as the police drove into the Kunčec yard. While spitting out and choking back spit, he tried to explain how they were giving him shots in his tongue with a needle as thick as a finger and how he hadn’t been able to taste anything for days. I understood him only because he mimed it to me—what came from his mouth was just a mishmash of unformed sounds and sprayed spittle.
Medics and police swarmed in the yard, and bystanders gathered around the entrance to the basement apartment where Trezika had lived since her son married and, with his wife, moved into the house. Her son and his wife stood there, motionless; they didn’t look sad or upset, but slightly sheepish. As if a bizarre dark family secret had been exposed by Trezika’s death. One of her granddaughters, a high school student, sat on the front stoop wearing Walkman headphones, staring at the ground. I was happy because I was physically present, yet absent of responsibility. And then I heard my name. Trezika’s neighbor Anika said the crazy old woman had told her she’d dreamed of me several nights in a row. I had wings and flew over the village wells dropping flowers into them, like a fairy-tale bee. That she’d said anything about her dreams was enough for the neighbors to spread rumors that Trezika was off her rocker.
“What kind of crazy is that? Who else goes around talking about their dreams?”
Anika wiped her tears while she talked with a chubby man in jeans and a leather jacket, not realizing that Franz and I were standing just a few feet from them. When I heard my name mentioned in her story, I tapped Franz in the belly to let him know he should follow me down our street. Then the chubby guy turned, noticed me, and nodded my way. When I put together his slanty smile, tufts of hair, and not-so-handsome face, I recognized Stankec, the policeman. He was holding a walkie-talkie and a notebook. He came over, said he remembered me—wow had I grown—and asked me if I’d been to see Trezika and had I given her any drawings. Though I knew Stankec was a nice man, I was scared shitless and said I’d never in my life so much as spoken to her. Franz was standing next to me, staring blankly at the medics loading the body into the ambulance. He was the only person there not interested in me. Everybody else was staring at the cop questioning the kid. I could hear them whispering:
“That boy is an odd one. I get the shivers whenever I see how he stares into space, silent.”
“My oh my. There wasn’t a soul Mario rubbed wrong, but Zdravko, now that’s another story altogether—he went too far with that boy.”
“Did he now?”
“When the kids were signing up for soccer that day. He mocked the boy—people say it was downright cruel. Picked on that boy and Franz Klanz, too.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“I’m telling you. And now he’s dead. And Trezika, too. You tell me. What are his drawings doing on the dresser at her place?”
“Oh pshaw! How could that boy be responsible for them killing themselves? Or did he tie them up and hang them all by himself? Come now.”
“I ain’t saying, but… he tried to push little Dejan Kunčec, Đura’s boy, clear into the Mura two years back—we all remember that. And that ain’t nothing. Are we supposed to keep quiet about it?”
The village was watching the same scene for the third time that week. The same mustachioed coroner smoking a cigarette, the same medics waiting for the same police—who now wore the Croatian coat of arms on their caps—to leave the house. The cops were taking pains to write down statements when a chubby boy rode up on a bike, went over to the medics, said, “Pardon me, sirs,” and announced politely that Mladen Krajčić had killed himself.
“Would the law enforcement officers and the doctors see to him, too, now, seeing as they’s here, so they don’t have to come twice from Čakovec? It’s not far, down the street a ways and by the chapel, to the right. His folks are waiting for you there, by the gate, you’ll see.”