ly I ended up buying everything they foisted on me. The only way to defend myself was to get away, so I turned in the opposite direction and moved quickly along the cemetery fence, but the hawkers also sped up, and their shouts reverberated in my ears, brief cries offering all kinds of flowers. Keep walking, a man said to me suddenly, as a woman shoved bouquets under my nose. When we come to the corner, continued the man, stop. I did. I stopped and said, What now? Now you buy the flowers, said the man. What you're looking for, said the woman, is in the bouquet. She lifted up the bouquet: carnations wrapped in damp paper. I asked, How much do they cost? The woman and the man looked at each other. Give what you want, the woman said finally. You wouldn't actually take his money, would you? asked the man. In case someone is watching, I interrupted, it must all look authentic. Fine, said the woman, then give me a piece of paper, give me anything. I dipped my hand into my pocket and pulled up a crumpled receipt for a registered mail package. The woman took it with the tips of her fingers, as if the paper were burning hot, dropped it into her pocket, and pushed the bouquet of flowers into my arms. They turned and walked to the cemetery gate, where other sellers were bustling with flowers and candles, and I stayed at the corner with the bouquet resting on my chest. And what, I later said to Marko, should I have done: gone back into the cemetery or kept walking, as if I had just decided this bouquet was for the living, not for the dead? Marko said he would have gone back, and he would not have neglected to see what was in the bouquet. A key, I answered, or actually, I added, a small plastic bag with a key in it. Good, said Marko, but for what? I'd like to know that too, I said. I showed him the key: an ordinary, smallish key of the kind used for a mailbox or a cupboard door. Marko was disappointed. He had been expecting a key to a safe, a key with an unusual mark on it, something to signal the complexity of any attempt at opening. If that's what the key looks like, he said, there is nothing of value hidden there. Shouldn't we first figure out what this key opens, I said, and then talk about what's there? You're right, said Marko, and suggested we smoke a joint of local grass. The grass, he claimed, was from Montenegro, and it had a nasty aftertaste and caused coughing, and that was the way it hit too: a sideswipe, slow, bitter. After some time, mostly spent staring at the ceiling, I wondered out loud how I would find the lock for the little key from the bouquet. Where do I start, I said, where should I look? Maybe there's something written on the little bag it was in, said Marko. It's a clear plastic bag, I said, there is nothing on it. Are you sure? asked Marko, sometimes it is hardest to see stuff that's in plain sight. I sighed, rose with effort, and weaving gently, went over to the wastepaper basket by my desk. When I knelt down, the entire room knelt with me, and when I bent my head to peer into the basket, I felt my brain touch my forehead on the inside. The basket was full of crumpled sheets of paper; the plastic bag was lying on top. I picked it up between my thumb and forefinger, and waved it triumphantly at Marko, and in that gesture toward Marko the bag was lit by a ray of light from the lamp by the sofa, and the letters KRSQ and the number 13 were clearly visible. I hadn't noticed them before because they weren't written with a ballpoint or a marker, but rather scratched on the inside surface of the bag with something sharp, perhaps the tip of a scalpel. Karađorđe Square, number 13, shouted Marko when I showed it to him. He suggested we go there immediately. He was shivering with excitement and some of the shivering affected me. I was barely able to tie my shoelaces, and my expression in the mirror wavered, as if I were shaking all over. Not bad, this Montenegrin stuff, said Marko as we stepped out into the street. He felt, he said, that he was trudging through layers of wool, that the soles of his feet never rested on solid ground. Maybe that is why it took us so long to walk to the high-rise. The entrance was dirty, buried in torn newspapers, plastic bags, and wrappers from wafer cookies and chocolate bars. The walls were scrawled with messages and scribbles. The mailboxes were on the right-hand side, many were broken open, some scorched with fire, some painted in different colors. Marko looked for box 13, but it was wide open and the door was dangling on a half-broken hinge. Someone beat us to it, said Marko, and I could do nothing but agree. Who knows how long we'd have stood there, alert to the despair we were feeling, had I not raised my eyes again to the mailboxes and studied them carefully until we found the one that had the right kind of lock. It was number 22, and the little key slid in smoothly, with no resistance. In the back of the opened box lay another key. This time there could be no doubt: unlike the first, the second key was clearly for unlocking and locking the door to an apartment. I looked at Marko and he nodded. Just in case, we went back to the front door and surveyed the area. We decided the apartment was on the fourth or fifth floor and Marko suggested we take the elevator, but I insisted we walk up, claiming that additional caution was not a bad idea and that the elevator might be more dangerous. Marko relented, though he did it because of a woman who had just entered the building, not because of me. We climbed quickly, skipping two or three steps at a time, and when we stopped on the fourth floor, we were both out of breath. Leaning against the banister, we waited to catch our breath and then went to the door with the number 22 on it. I looked at Marko; he nodded again. I put the key in the lock, turned it once, once more, and turned the knob gingerly. The door swung open to a dark front hall. Marko went in first, I followed. I closed the door, leaned on it, and wiped the sweat from my forehead. You entered an apartment when the owner wasn't home after all, said Marko, not hiding his sarcasm, as he felt the wall by the door in search of the light switch. He flicked it, and, with a crack that echoed like the sound of a rifle shot, light poured into the front hall. Our faces were reflected in an oval mirror. The two doors that led farther into the apartment were shut. One of them, the first one we opened, was the door to the kitchen, spotlessly clean and tidy, as if no one ever used it. Marko went over to the refrigerator and pulled open the door: empty. We stood a little longer before the open fridge and stared into its interior as if it held the answer to all our questions. Marko shut the refrigerator, we returned to the front hall and opened the other door. That led into the dining room, which gave access to two other rooms. However, at the doorway to the dining room we were startled by what we saw: all the walls, from floor to ceiling, were covered with shelves crammed with books. There were books on the fl oor stacked in uncertain, wobbly piles. The same was true in the other rooms: shelves with books, nothing else. In the larger room were a small desk and an office chair with a seat that swiveled, that was all. Incredible, said Marko, just like that novel about the man who lived in an apartment full of books. He couldn't remember what novel, nor could he recall the writer's name, but he knew that it all ended in a big blaze, a fire that mercilessly devoured the books. I also didn't know which novel he had in mind, though for me, I said, the scene in the apartment evoked descriptions of the apartment where Salinger's heroes lived, the Glass family, or whatever their name was, they also had books lying all over the place, on the shelves, on chairs, the floor, even in the bathtub. It is always like that, said Marko, you put one book down somewhere, and two or three days later it's a pile, as if books get there by themselves. That had happened to him so many times, he said, that he decided to keep books in his apartment in only one place, otherwise, he said, they spread like mold, nothing can hold them back. You shouldn't compare books and mold, I said, but Marko rebelled, asserting that there are good molds and that everything that gets moldy needn't be thrown away. We were standing in the dining room again, not knowing what to do next. I didn't want to talk anymore about molds. Marko went over to the desk and looked into a side compartment, then he slid open one of the two drawers. There is nothing here, he said almost gruffly, then pulled open the second drawer and found an envelope with my name on it. I took the envelope and sniffed. I don't know what I was expecting, but it didn't smell like anything in particular, though I was convinced that my name had been written by Margareta, whose fragrance I would have recognized. Marko insisted that I open it immediately. I refused. He was startled, he pressed his lips together, said nothing. My refusal surprised me too, though I could have anticipated it after my decision not to tell him about the encounter with Margareta. Just as books attract other books, so confidences not shared attract other confidences not shared, and after the initial silence, others follow ever faster. Marko was, most certainly, my closest friend, someone whom I had known my entire life, but sometimes one should be cautious even with such friendships. In other words, there are moments when it is better to be alone, and I wanted such a moment for reading the letter from the desk. Marko made a last stab at changing my mind and offered me a joint, which he pulled out of his shirt pocket. A little more of the Montenegrin stuff, he said, and everything will be different. No, I said, and added that he should not be smoking grass in a strange apartment in which there were no ashtrays and someone might show up at any moment. Marko lit the joint anyway, and I went to the kitchen and opened a window. The kitchen looked out on the Danube and the path that stretched to Hotel Yugoslavia, and which, probably because of the clouds that had gathered over Belgrade, was almost deserted. Not far from the high-rise several boys were playing soccer. I heard Marko whistling behind my back, then a chair creaked and he coughed. Then I noticed that on a grassy slope by the hotel, where pillars were left standing from the old Zemun railway station, a group of people had gathered in an uneven, jagged circle, or so it looked from where I stood, and they were listening to a person who stood in the middle of the circle. Something is going on, I said, and called Marko over. Marko looked out at the scene on the slope, stubbed out the joint on the metal frame of the venetian blinds, and said that to him it looked like the meeting of some ecological party. No point, he said, in wasting our time. Besides, he went on, there's nothing for us to do here. At least for some of us, he added, and later, after we had left the high-rise, he said he had to run, said goodbye, and took off toward the center of Zemun at a fast clip. I watched him walk away and suddenly found myself thinking he was leaving forever. The thought was so awful that I nearly ran after him. Instead I called out his name. He didn't hear me, or pretended not to, and continued walking, zigging and zagging among the pedestrians and parked cars until I lost sight of him. I touched the pocket where the folded letter was. The paper rustled soothingly. I thought I ought to read it, I even started reaching into the pocket, but then I turned and headed toward the hill by the hotel. I walked past the boys playing soccer and cursing. A little dog was tied to a lamppost serving as the goalpost, and the dog whined and wagged its tail each time the ball flew by. I came out on the path and walked by a kiosk selling food and juices. The fragrance of frying fish wafted my way. Two pregnant women walked slowly by, holding hands. One mentioned the