“That was the worst moment in your childhood? When you kicked a soccer ball and hit your coach’s head and they wouldn’t let you play anymore? Well, listen to mine: I was this cute little girl, flower in my hair and a pretty dress, but when I was at school I simply wouldn’t wipe my ass. I was disgusted by the idea of being near it with my fingers, so after I pooped I’d just pull up my underwear. My folks went nuts. At home after school I’d put off getting undressed, but after going all day like that there’d be this, y’know, itching and burning in my butt, and everyone knew I hadn’t wiped again.”
“Wow! So how did you get over it?”
“I still haven’t! Ha ha. One day my dad’d had it, and he said he’d rub my shitty pants all over my face if I didn’t wipe my ass. ’Nuff said.”
She spoke elatedly, choking back laughter. But he was more interested in the other part, the part she was withholding from him. Sometimes, when they’d walk around Zagreb, she’d stop for no apparent reason and stare straight ahead, and then start walking again. It seemed random, like how the elderly cruise through town like ships, never speeding up or slowing down. But sometimes their bodies creaked, and they’d drop anchor and come to a halt. Matija believed this was left over from when she went for walks with her grandmother. Her grandmother was a Zagreb grand dame, and he knew this though Dina’d never said a word about her. Dina had adored her and imitated her in every way, and—he knew this, too—she’d instructed the other kids at school to sit up straight, keep their elbows off the table, hold their cookies between two fingers, and eat over a plate to keep from dropping crumbs on the floor.
Even in their first days together, Matija saw that Dina rarely clashed with people, but she frequently ran into objects. In the morning, when her movements were still partly in the world of dreams, unadapted to reality, she collided with her surroundings. Matija left for work later than she did, so he’d lie in bed and watch her get ready. She tried to resolve her collisions with the world of things as quietly as possible, but didn’t always succeed. One rainy morning she yelled at the door handle after bumping it with her elbow; the next day she argued with her iron, said it was a stupid cow and she hated it. This happened because, when she was running late, she’d dress first and then iron her clothes while she was wearing them. Her iron—it had to happen sooner or later—fell onto her foot and ripped her nylons. Matija could no longer pretend to be sleeping so he laughed out loud, and she cheerfully explained that everyone does their ironing like this, nothing weird about it, and besides it feels nice in the wintertime because, you know, it’s so toasty. She limped over to the bed and kissed him, and then he kissed her foot where it hurt, and then slid his finger into the nylon tear and went ahead with what was bound to happen anyway. They were both late for work. And from that day on, they called the iron Stupid Cow. Dina’s company car was Stupid Horse. The remote at Matija’s apartment was Asshole; Dina sometimes whacked it against the table when it wasn’t working. They renamed half the world, and there was always the danger that one day no one would understand them anymore.
She was a true sucker for marketing ploys (this reminded Matija of Nabokov’s Lolita), even though, with the nature of her job, she knew them inside out. She’d fall for a lie if it seemed worthwhile. She bought Q-tips because the package said half a kuna from the purchase price would go toward building a school in the Punjab, where the cotton came from. Sometimes she’d speculate aloud about how construction material in the Punjab cost so much less than it did in Europe, so her half-kuna every three weeks was not a negligible contribution. This led Matija to call her the Savior of Punjab. And he never tired of discovering the snowy peaks and verdant dales, sacred sites and industrial zones of that imaginary country on the irregular surfaces of her skin. Sometimes, while sipping her bottled water as Matija drank a glass of tap water, she’d smack her lips and announce that bottled water was purer and tasted better than tap water. She was capable, as she sipped, of envisioning herself atop the very mountain depicted on the label. She could almost hear the designer spring water burbling over the cold rocks. She truly believed the water came from the heart of a thousand-year-old glacier. In some things she was a true-blue do-gooder. So he called her Bleeding Heart.
These perfect asymmetries of her personality echoed the asymmetry of Dina’s breasts, which contradicted each other. One nipple pointed straight ahead, and the other gazed sideways, so they reminded him of a lazy-eyed cow. When they fucked, he’d use a hand to right the wayward breast. He found it especially intriguing that Dina, when she was climaxing, slowed, which was the opposite of what he’d experienced with other women. She’d close her eyes or look to the side, go very still, arch her back, and press her belly up to his. And she’d finish with five or six deep, brusque movements, as if they came straight from her heart. Here, too, climaxed Matija’s inability to understand Dina. He asked her once why she never talked during sex (because he sometimes felt like asking why the fuck she wouldn’t give him head till he finished when she was such a slut, and other dirty things like that, but he didn’t like talking when there was no one to talk to), and she asked him if that would turn him on. Well, he said, once, at work, totally at random, just surfing the net, you know how it goes, he’d watched—so what?—this little movie, in which two young people, how should he put this, in which two young people were—okay, okay, let’s say making love. So, whatever, it was like, y’know, so… intriguing, he thought, how the woman was talking. First, in this commanding tone, she told her boyfriend (maybe her husband, the father of their two adorable kids—who knows) to fuck her harder. Just like that, she actually shouted it, hotly, loudly, as if daring him. This young wife and mother, while they went from missionary to anal, something Matija found even more interesting, dropped the first-person singular and began referring to herself as if she were someone else (fuck this bitch, yes). She mentioned parts of her own body as if they weren’t hers and commanded him to fuck those, like, parts (fuck this pussy, fuck it harder, fuck it, fuck it, harder, then fuck this asshole, fuck it, yeah, yeah, yeah, and finally smack these tits, smack them). He wondered whether somehow—not every time, of course—maybe Dina might give it a try, because sometimes she seemed to enjoy a sideways glimpse of herself when she was fucking. He’d catch her eyes reflected in the framed etching hanging in the bedroom.
On one Rumpled Saturday (this, in their intimate vocabulary, was when they’d stay in bed until noon, then go out for coffee without brushing their hair), when he finally came out and said she was free to go ahead and talk while they screwed, Dina burst into peals of laughter, and Matija pronounced her Bleeding Heart and pounced on her. They wrestled on the bed, he between her legs, while she chanted in as monotonous a tone as she could, staring past his head into the air: “Oh, oh, yes, here, yes, bang, straight in, noodles, ho, bang, into me, like an animal. Your glans is in my vulva. This is so thrilling. Oh. Oh. I wish you’d do that quicker.”
He tickled her, she wriggled free, and without meaning to she kneed him in the balls. He whimpered like a puppy and dropped to his side, turning his back to her. She thought she’d really hurt him and tried to apologize with a kiss. He didn’t react to the first or second attempt, so her voice went serious, and she said, “Are you okay? I’m sorry. What should I say now?”
He flipped over, climbed onto her, and grabbed her by the wrists, and then she began chanting again in a monotone: “That, that, ah, ah, there you go, stallion, oh yeah, oh yeah, you’re a king, a legend, bang, harder, yeah, punish me, punish, I deserve it, thank you, thank you, for fucking me, thank you, I don’t deserve you.”