Kunicki looks on with envy. He’d like to leave the shadows and join in with them. He’s never experienced that intensity. He is more familiar with the north, where masculine society is shyer. But here in the south, where wine and sunshine open bodies up faster and more shamelessly, this dance becomes really real. After only an hour the first body pushes back from the table and holds on to the armrests of the chair.
Kunicki’s back is slapped by the warm paw of the night-time breeze, which pushes him toward the tables as though urging him on: ‘Come on, come on now.’ He would like to join in, wherever it is they are going. He would like for them to take him along.
He goes back down the unlit side of the boulevard to his little hotel, making sure not to cross the line of darkness. Before entering the stuffy, narrow stairwell, he takes in some air and stands still for a moment. Then he climbs the stairs, feeling out for each step in the darkness, and he falls instantly into bed with all his clothes on, on his stomach, with his arms thrown out to either side, as though someone had shot him in the back, as though for a moment he had contemplated that bullet, and then died.
He gets up after a few hours – two, three, because it’s still dark, and blindly he goes back down to the car. The alarm whoops, and the car flashes understandingly, like it’s been lonely. Kunicki takes their bags out of the boot at random. He carries their suitcases up the stairs and tosses them onto the floor in the kitchen and the bedroom. Two suitcases and a ton of packages, bags, baskets, including the one with their food for the road, a set of flippers in a plastic sack, masks, an umbrella, beach mats, and a box with the wines they had bought on the island, and ajvar, that spread made of red pepper they’d liked so much, and then some jars of olive oil. He turns on all the lights and sits now in this mess. Then he takes her purse and delicately empties out its contents onto the kitchen table. He sits there and takes in that pile of pathetic things as though this were a complicated game of pick-up sticks and his was the next move – extracting one stick without moving any of the others. After a moment’s hesitation, he picks up a lipstick and removes its cap. Dark red, almost new. She hadn’t used it often. He smells it. It has a nice aroma, hard to say of what exactly. He becomes bolder, taking every single object and putting it aside. Her passport, old, with the blue cover – she’s much younger in the picture, with long hair, loose, and bangs. Her signature on the last page is blurry – they often get held up at the border. A little black notebook, shut with a rubber band. He opens it and flips through – notes, a drawing of a jacket, a column of numbers, the card for a bistro in Polanica, in the back a phone number, a lock of hair, of dark hair, not even a lock, just a few dozen individual hairs. He puts it aside. Then he examines it all more closely. A cosmetics bag made of exotic Indian fabric, containing a dark green pencil, a compact almost out of powder, waterproof green mascara, a plastic pencil sharpener, lip gloss, tweezers, a blackened little torn-off chain. He also comes upon a ticket to a museum in Trogir, and on the back of it a foreign word; he brings the little piece of paper up to his eyes and manages to make out: καιρóς, which he thinks is K-A-I-R-O-S, although he’s not sure, and he doesn’t know what that would be. It’s full of sand at the bottom.
There’s her mobile phone, which is almost dead. He checks her recent call log – his own number comes up, mostly, but there are others, too, he doesn’t know who they would be, two or three of them. There’s only one text in her inbox – from him, from when they’d gotten lost in Trogir. I’m by the fountain on the main square. Her sent messages folder is empty. He returns to the main menu, and a kind of pattern lights up for a moment on the screen and then goes out.
There’s an open pack of sanitary napkins. A pencil, two pens, one a yellow Bic and the other with ‘Hotel Mercure’ written on the side. Pocket change, Polish and Euro cents. Her wallet, with Croatian bills in it – not many – and ten Polish zlotys. Her visa card. A little orange notepad, dirtied at the edges. A copper pin with some antique-looking pattern, seemingly broken. Two Kopiko sweets. A camera, digital, with a black case. A peg. A white paper clip. A golden gum wrapper. Crumbs. Sand.
He lays it all neatly on the black matte countertop, every thing equidistant from every other thing. He goes up to the sink and drinks some water. He goes back to the table and lights a cigarette. Then he starts taking pictures with her camera, each object on its own. He photographs slowly, solemnly, zooming in as much as possible, with flash. His only regret is that the little camera can’t take a picture of itself. It is also evidence, after all. Then he moves into the hallway where the bags and suitcases are standing, and he snaps one image of each of them. But he doesn’t stop there, he unpacks the suitcases and starts photographing every article of clothing, every pair of shoes, every lotion and book. The kid’s toys. He even empties out the dirty clothes from their plastic bag and takes a picture of that shapeless pile as well.
He comes across a small bottle of rakia and drinks it down in a single gulp, with the camera in his hand still, and then he takes a picture of the empty bottle.
It’s already light out when he sets off in his car for Vis. He has the dried-out sandwiches she’d made for the road. The butter had all melted in the heat, soaking into the bread, leaving a glistening layer of oil, and the cheese was hard now and half-transparent like plastic. He eats two of them as he leaves Komiža; he wipes his hands off on his trousers. He goes slowly, carefully, keeping track of either side of the road, of everything he drives by, keeping in mind he has alcohol in his blood. But he feels dependable as a machine, strong as an engine. He doesn’t look back, although he knows that behind him the ocean is growing, metre by metre. The air is so pure that you can probably see all the way to Italy from the highest point on the island. For now he stops in the coves and scans their surroundings, every scrap of paper, every piece of rubbish. He also has Branko’s binoculars – that way he surveys the slopes. He sees rocky rises covered in scorched mulch, faded grass; he sees immortal blackberry bushes, darkened by the sun, clinging onto the rocks with their long shoots. Spent, wild olive trees with twisted-up trunks, little stone walls from before the vineyards had been abandoned.
After an hour or so he heads up into Vis, slow, like a police patrol. He passes the little supermarket where they’d got their groceries – mostly wine – and then he’s in town.
The ferry has already docked at the quay. It’s huge, as big as a building, a floating block. Poseidon. Its great doors are agape already, and a line of cars and people half asleep has formed and is about to begin to advance. Kunicki stands by the rail and checks out the people buying tickets. Some of them are backpackers, including a pretty girl in a brightly coloured turban; he looks at her because he can’t look away. Standing next to her there is a tall guy with Scandinavian handsomeness. There are women with children, probably locals, no luggage; a guy in a suit with a briefcase. There’s a couple – she is nestled up into his chest, eyes closed, like she’s trying to top off an interrupted night’s sleep. And several cars – one of them loaded up to the gills, with German plates, and two Italian ones. And the island’s vans, going off for bread, vegetables, mail. The island must survive somehow. Kunicki peeks discreetly into the cars.