And I remembered how at one point I thought I didn’t want to hear it all but quickly forgot and could no longer summon the thought, so I went on listening until I stopped hearing altogether or until the words turned into creatures of weird shapes and sizes. The beginning of the conversation could be said to be ordinary, as Daniel Atijas immediately agreed. We spoke of language and exile, multiculturalism and life on the plains. Ivan Matulić’s grandson said he was proud to be a western Canadian of the second, in fact, third generation, for that was special in a region where white people had been dwelling for only some two hundred and fifty years. From there the conversation touched briefly on the question of the rights of Aboriginal peoples and the tragic fate of Native Americans, but Daniel Atijas showed no interest in this. He declared that he’d had it with all of the Balkan natives back where he was from, he’d had it with depressing stories, and added that there are some who cannot adapt to the demands of civilization, and some cannot adapt to life in a multiethnic community, but as far as he was concerned, both of these were deliberate decisions, made, he said, not as a manifestation of powerlessness, but, to the contrary, as a way of gaining power. Ivan Matulić’s grandson went on talking for a while about tragic episodes in the history of relations between whites and Aborigines, particularly about epidemics, some deliberately sowed, that devastated the First Nations in but a few years. We were speaking of that, I am absolutely certain, at The Coyote’s Den, for I remember when Daniel Atijas said that he had never seen a coyote, to which Ivan Matulić’s grandson responded by holding forth on the role of the coyote in the folklore of North American Indians, particularly those living in the endless expanses of prairie.
In this first part of the conversation, especially when there was talk about the features of western-Canadian identity, Ivan Matulić’s grandson spoke mostly to me, expecting, probably, my understanding, or at least my readiness to understand, which Daniel Atijas apparently was not willing or able to show, but once we got to The Sailor’s Pub, things changed. This might have had something to do with the beer, the mood at the pub, perhaps the Irish music being performed by a group of young men and women, or perhaps Daniel Atijas deliberately pushed aside whatever had made him so distant in the previous restaurant, but regardless of why, we all became more talkative, we all gestured a lot, shouting over one another and everyone else, pounding our feet to the rhythm of the music, whooping now and then, and guzzling beer, while the whole time, and this is the most interesting part, we were conducting a fragmented yet interlinked conversation about human destiny. Daniel Atijas had struck me from the first as the type who was good at adapting to circumstances even when the circumstances seemed to be adapting him. The talk of destiny, as one might expect from a conversation in a tavern, careered along in free association, reeling from pithy philosophical quotes and paraphrases of literature and artworks to long, free-ranging meditations on the lack of predictability or the predetermined nature of destiny, depending on who was doing the talking.
Sometimes the three of us spoke at once, just as we all stopped talking at once a few times. Then I felt an almost-tangible discomfort, for I was convinced that I could see forming between Daniel Atijas and Ivan Matulić’s grandson a subtle thread of rapport, something which had never begun, let alone formed, between Daniel Atijas and me. Then we were quite drunk and none of us could say with certainty how many beers we had had. Daniel Atijas claimed we’d downed eight bottles, meaning eight each, of course, but then he shrugged that off, saying that this meant nothing, because numbers were mere conventions; every person, he said, can define numbers for themselves, and he, for instance, he said, might speak of eight empties, all the while having, for instance, sixteen or twelve in mind, or not even one, which would be particularly strange, because zero is not actually a number, since it signifies nothing, and nothing, as everyone knows, he said, cannot be counted. Perhaps things would have been different, said Ivan Matulić’s grandson, had we been drinking from steins, though then, he realized, it would have been harder to keep track, since steins, he said, hold more beer than fits in a bottle yet less than fits in two. This shows, said Daniel Atijas, that the differences in the systems of education don’t count, because even though there can be no doubt that the European system is more rigorous than the North American system, he said, none of us is able to do arithmetic properly, so it’s best, he said, for us to order another round, which will, he was convinced, refresh us and perhaps spur us on in such serious endeavors of thought. The noise at The Sailor’s Pub had become really unbearable by then, and for us to hear one another we had to shout into one another’s ears, which I had never liked, especially when Daniel Atijas’s lips touched the whorls of Ivan Matulić’s grandson’s ear.
He was shouting into my ear from a greater distance, I was sure of it. So I was the first to say that it was time for us to go, not meaning that we should go off somewhere together but that we each go our separate way, though it wasn’t late and the night, as we saw when we went outside, wasn’t quite dense enough yet; the darkness was more a dark blue than a black. Only when we were out in front of the restaurant, when the freshness of the night made us feel first more sober and then more drunk than we actually were, Daniel Atijas suggested that we all go to his place, to his room at Lloyd Hall, for he had something there, he said, which would make us happy, and happiness, he said, is not something to dismiss out of hand, with which Ivan Matulić’s grandson and I agreed. All three of us were swaying, though there wasn’t even the lightest breeze, and when we finally made it down Beaver Street to Buffalo and went into the back alley that was paved in gravel, every little stone, even the smallest, was a nearly insurmountable obstacle. Like mountain climbers, we negotiated the steep path that led by the cemetery, one by one, with pushing and shoving, occasional curses, and assertions that the time had finally come for us to seek a place for our eternal rest, for every honest person, said Daniel Atijas, has already lain a long time in his grave, while we, he said, like these phantoms, are flailing about on mountain peaks. When we reached the top of the path, we caught sight of the three little mounds in the dark, and just in case, convinced that they were slumbering elks, we made a large detour around them, which took us to the entrance of Lloyd Hall.
While we were going up to the third floor in the elevator I felt as if I were in a boat. Everything rocked and lurched so much that I said so out loud, and Ivan Matulić’s grandson replied that perhaps this was Noah’s ark, a comment to which Daniel Atijas added that mankind would not have much to hope for if the three of us were the last to survive on earth. Furthermore, he said, Noah’s ark had moved along a horizontal axis, while we, he said, were moving vertically; and while Noah’s ark conquered space and time, both were inaccessible to us, he said, because in essence, we were standing in place. Neither Ivan Matulić’s grandson nor I had anything to say to that, the grandson because he had dozed off, his face pressed into the corner of the elevator, and I because I was thinking that if I were to open my mouth even a little, I would throw up. I relaxed only when the elevator stopped, the door opened, and we stepped out onto the carpeted floor, though I was still pressing my lips tightly together. Daniel Atijas groped for his room key in his left pocket, then remembered to look in his right, where the key actually was. Ivan Matulić’s grandson was the first to go into the bathroom, Daniel Atijas went after him, and I after him. Two or three droplets of urine glistened on the floor in front of the toilet bowl, a crumpled sheet of toilet paper floated on the water, a soft hum came from the pipes, and the toilet was groaning like a human being when I pressed the little lever that protruded from the side. When I went back into the room, Daniel Atijas opened his suitcase and produced the bottle of whiskey.