A Little Joke
After A. P. Chekhov
Brane Konstantinović works in construction for a boss named Zeytinoglu. He hauls bags of cement on his back and sings two brothers born on the death wall, you wouldn’t believe your own eyes. The bricklayers and laborers, mainly Turks and Germans, think he’s a bit of a doofus because he sings while hauling cement, and always the same song, and always in a foreign language, but because he’s a hard worker and never complains, they like Brane. They don’t know anything about him, except that he’s a Bosnian and that he once studied architecture, but not everyone believes that one; there are those who doubt studying could turn so sour you’d end up hauling bags of cement.
Brane doesn’t work Sundays. Saturday night he trawls the precinct around the Hauptbahnhof, doing the rounds of the nudie bars, catching a peep show. For five German marks he watches the beautiful Emina who is now called Susanna, and he always meets someone he knows and they go to Serbez’s bistro for a beer. At half past one the girls stop by after their shifts, tall blond sex-shop assistants and gloomy Balkan pickpockets with permanently shot nerves. Brane thinks them all good people, and really they are, because at Serbez’s they never do anyone any harm, they never fight, they don’t even cuss like other people. In the wee hours they try to be like angels to each other, to make Serbez’s bistro a place they can transport themselves from the harshness of their lives back to the dreams of their childhoods. Every man and woman on earth can fall asleep like a child, but it’s not easy for a whore, or a pimp, to every day become a child.
Everyone needs Brane and a Saturday without him would be too much to bear, because he’s the only one who doesn’t belong to their world, he comes from someplace far away, from a life they all believe is better, one they all know about, though none have lived. But how can one not believe there is a life where mothers send their children to the store for bread and milk, where days begin with the morning and end with the evening, where postmen bring letters and packages, and where flags everyone believes in flap in the wind, just as one believes in the good fortune of others.
The story Brane tells for the tenth time is set in his former life. It’s one they have all already heard but request anyhow, translating it for each other into all the languages of their world: I’d always loved motorbikes. When I was seven my old man asked me what I wanted to be in life, and I told him a Kawasaki, what do you mean a Kawasaki, kid, his cigarette almost falling out of his mouth, easy, Dad, if there’s any way I can be, I’ll be a Kawasaki, and if I can’t, then I’m going to ride a Kawasaki. The old man said, fine, kid, so long as you’re happy and healthy, you can be a donkey for all I care. I bought my first bike in my first year of college, an ancient Bugatti, it didn’t last six months before falling apart. Then during the summer break I went to Germany for the first time, as if I knew it would one day have its payoff. I got a job in construction and earned the money for a good bike. It wasn’t a Kawasaki but a Honda; I drove it nights from one end of the city to the other, giving it hell, and I thought nothing in life could ever be as great as sheer speed, nor anything ever more beautiful than when you become the wind, no longer a body or a soul, just pure air, like a storm wind on the sea. And there was this girl, Lejla, a wholesome blonde, barely eighteen, a normal kid from a good home, a kid who when she heads out the front door looks to you like a nurse who got lost down a mine and got herself all dirty, but she doesn’t see it because she doesn’t know anything about any kind of filth. So this Lejla girl says to me: oh, Brane, I’m so scared of motorbikes, I could never do that. I shrug my shoulders, and I’m like, fine, you shouldn’t then, who cares, and head on my way. But then she’s there again the next day, we talk about some stuff, and I ask her: so, Lejla, how’re things at school, and she says: they’re good, how else should they be, and I ask her if she’s doing her homework, and she says: yeah, of course, and even when I haven’t, I just pretend I have, and I tell her: lucky for you, Lejla, when I haven’t studied enough for an exam, it’s as if everything I don’t know is written on my forehead, and that’s the stuff the professor always asks me. That’s because you don’t know how to hide it, she says. How would I know when I’m always scared. But you’re not scared on a motorbike. No, I’m not, otherwise I wouldn’t ride one, I tell her. Then her again: oh, Brane, I’m so scared of motorbikes, I could never do that. And nothing. A week goes by, and there she is again, just after there’d been that earthquake in Montenegro. I say to her, those people jumping out their windows, nothing would have happened to them if they hadn’t jumped. I’m not scared of earthquakes, says Lejla. C’mon, how come you’re not scared of earthquakes, everyone’s scared of earthquakes, everyone normal. I’m not. I wouldn’t jump, but when I see you, my heart stops. And again: oh, Brane, I’m so scared of motorbikes, I could never do that. And something clicked in me, that little bad guy who tickles you when a chick is scared of something, so I ask her: you know, Lejla, do you want to go for a little ride, we won’t go fast, I’ll take good care of you. Jesus, no way, I’d die. Every time when I’d see her after that, I’d say, c’mon, Lejla, just one time, just a lap, and she’d shake her head like a kid when mom tries to get a spoonful of spinach in his mouth. The more she refused, the more I wanted to see her and talk her into it. This went on for I don’t know how long, half a year at least, then the spring came and everything was green and sweet-smelling, and girls who back in the winter were still kids hit the streets, one more beautiful than the next, and the most beautiful of them all was little Lejla. I’m sitting on the bike out in front of Café Promenade, and there she is, always one foot in front of the other, she doesn’t see me, she doesn’t see anyone, she’s taking her beauty out for a walk, conscious of it for the first time in her life, and nothing else matters. I call out to her: c’mon, Lejla, let’s take a ride. She stops, bowing her head a little, like a kid who’s embarrassed. It’s hard to know what she is anymore, or who she is, but I think she’s funny, like little girls in bloom often are, in the season of their lives when just this once they are neither woman nor child. C’mon, Lejla, don’t be like that, I try and persuade her, and she just stares down at the bike’s wheels, then at my shoes, and says: fine, but just one lap. I tell her, sit close behind me and hold tight. She doesn’t want to, she’s scared she’ll fall off. Fine, sit in front of me then, and lo and behold, Lejla sits down. We scoot down Ðure Ðaković, then off toward Bare, as fast as the bike will go. I can feel her trembling like a bird, her heart pounding like it’s going to stop, and it’s like she’s somehow shrinking there in my arms, like she’ll soon be a doll. And when we hit top speed, I whisper to her: I love you, Lejla. We stop, she looks at me, like she wants to ask me something, she opens her mouth, wants to say something, but nothing comes out. I think it’s funny, I see her all messed up, not knowing if I really said what I said or if that’s just what the fear was telling her. She’s there again the next day and says: c’mon, Brane, just one more lap, but slowly, please. I know what she wants, she wants to check that thing from yesterday, and I like that. I sit her on the bike, fire up the Honda like it’s a plane, she trembles and shrinks, I think it’s worse than yesterday, and again when we hit top speed I joke: I love you, Lejla. You know the rest, we stop, she looks over, like she wants to ask, like she doesn’t want to ask, but nothing happens, we go our own ways. I don’t need to tell you what happened the next day or the one after that, Lejla found me or I’d find her, I’d smile and say nothing because I knew what she’s going to say. And we’d do it all again. At top speed I’d tell her: I love you, Lejla. This went on the whole summer long, through the fall too, right up until the winter. A day didn’t go by that I didn’t take Lejla for a ride and whisper to her that I loved her, and she just trembled every time like it was the first time, her heart pounded, her soul wanting to escape out of blind fear, and when we’d stop, she never knew whether I’d said what I’d said. In February I saw the war was on its way and thought to myself, c’mon, Brane, Germany calls, save your head, show them your back. Your back can haul cement, but your head, hell your head can’t take a bullet. So I left, and Lejla stayed. I locked the bike in a garage, an idiot thinking the war would pass and that I’d ride again, but the war didn’t pass, and I didn’t ride again, and Lejla never asked me for another lap.