At first life continued with a semblance of normalcy. They’d wake every morning at six, he would unfold the wheelchair, lift her out of bed, and say soon you’ll be able to do this by yourself. She’d wheel herself to the bathroom, him trailing a step behind. He walked with slight pangs of remorse, almost hoping he’d be able to trick her, that Rajna wouldn’t notice there was any difference between walking and wheeling. But in the bathroom a ritual began where nothing could be concealed. He removed her underwear, sat her on the toilet seat, and waited.
Wait outside, she told him after a few days. From then on, every morning he smoked his first cigarette of the day slouched down against the closed door. It could be worse, he thought, at least she can control her bodily functions. Ten minutes later, she’d shout Kosta, and he’d go in. She had never called him by his name before, she’d said darling, or used his surname, Ignjatović, but with things having changed so much, little terms of endearment when summoning the man whose help she needed to perform what she was no longer able to do for herself, well, that just seemed inappropriate.
Their life together reduced to one of home help, she never called him darling or Ignjatović again.
After the bathroom they went into the kitchen. Breakfast would bring a kind of calm. She was silent, and he’d talk about his plans for the day. He spoke fast and loud, trying to outrun every silence. It was silence he feared more than anything in those first few months, like a nighttime DJ who knows he can’t stop talking, that at the core of every silence slouches the darkness of the abyss.
Stepping out into the street, he would breathe a sigh of relief. At the newsstand in front of the Landesbank he would buy a newspaper and then head off to work. Asked about Rajna he kept his responses brief; his voice cold to the secretary, not hiding that he wished she’d stop talking, and polite to the manager, to whom he gave a good dose of self-pity. She’s brave, she’ll get through it all; I don’t know about me though. That’s what he’d say. The manager would tap him on the shoulder and walk out.
Kosta would then sit at his desk and begin reading the paper. He read everything, from business and share market updates to the sports section, from the obituaries to the classifieds and inserts; not a scrap of news escaped him, none of it of any relevance. He read and remembered without any obvious sense or purpose, as he had done when his father was dying and he had waited in the park in front of the hospital, so the final word of the day would be one not to cause him pain, a word from the newspaper.
He didn’t work a whole lot, generally only toward the end of the day when he’d finished reading the paper and the fear of going home had caught a good hold. He knew what Rajna was going to say, what he’d say in reply, their movements, when they’d head to the kitchen, and when they’d leave the room; he knew everything that was going to happen between now and tomorrow, until the moment he again would shut the door behind him, sigh, and head to the newsstand.
Life’s a grind, he said as the closing credits of a Partisan film played on TV. Life is beautiful, Rajna replied, her mouth curled up in a cynical smile. He thought of a perch he caught long ago, when he was a kid on the Danube, on a school trip when the teacher showed them how to hook freshwater fish. Fish are dead creatures, they don’t feel anything, they don’t know anything, and they’re not scared, that’s what the teacher had said with a smile, a perch struggling lazily on the end of his line. The smile seemed to have more to do with the hooking than feeling.
He put Rajna to bed and went into the kitchen, lighting his last cigarette of the day. The water puled in the pipes, the poplars creaked below the window, somewhere in the valley there was the clang of a tram. Kosta sensed that none of it was part of his story anymore. The world, as it does before a journey, had split into two parts: the part left behind, foreign, reduced to sounds that soon would longer be heard, and the part that was opening up before him, predictable and gray, every day the same as the next.
One day you’ll leave and never come back, she said to him as he lifted her from the toilet seat into the wheelchair. Where would I go? he sighed sulkily. After the first month he was no longer capable of being constantly chipper and polite. You’ll find another woman, and you’ll leave me on the toilet. . Right here on the toilet, huh?. . Yeah, with a dirty ass. Stunned and speechless, he looked at Rajna, or rather, at the crown of her head. Her face and eyes were on the other side; like a toy, he only saw her on the side from which he’d set her down. Words are sometimes uglier than what they mean, he wanted to sound cold. Rajna had become a talking doll.
There was a note fixed to the front door of their building: “Dear residents! As you know, on the twenty-fifth of August the heart of Osman Megdandžić stopped beating, he was our neighbor and long time president of the homeowners’ association. So that our environs, stairwell, laundry room, and attic remain as clean and tidy as they were under the mandate of the sorely missed Osman, a new president needs to be elected. A meeting will be held at half past six this evening. Please show your communal spirit and come along. Signed: Ivan Pehar, retired ensign.” Kosta read every word of the message slowly and carefully. Even though they lived next door, he’d never met the sorely missed Osman, he’d never taken a peek in the laundry room, nor had he even been in the attic. But that’s okay, sometimes there are things a man doesn’t have to know, he thought as he headed to get the paper and went on to work.
There’s a homeowners’ association meeting at half past six, he told Rajna as soon as he walked in the door. And you’re going of course. . Yeah, I have to. The president of the homeowners’ association has died. . Interesting. He must have been very young if he was president, she tried to be ironic. Well, you know, the building has to be to looked after, no one wants rats breeding and drunks pissing in the stairwell. . So you’ll be leaving me. . Yes, just for half an hour, he replied, agitated. Since she’d come back from the hospital he hadn’t spent five minutes out of the apartment. Except going to work, but surely there’s no way that counts.
Sitting on a wooden school chair, Ensign Pehar was alone in the laundry room at half past six, on his knees a black diary and ancient wooden coloring pencil, the kind where both ends are sharpened, blue at one end and red at the other. After fifteen minutes of waiting Kosta lit a cigarette. He sat on a low three-legged stool. That’s a milking stool, said Pehar after a long silence. Kosta gave a start and automatically turned toward the door. The ensign raised his index finger: It’s a milking stool! You’re sitting on a milking stool.
They sat there in silence for half an hour. Kosta smoked. Pehar drew blue five-pointed stars on the tabletop. Kosta looked at the clock, Pehar put his pencil and paper down. It’s decided then. There’s nothing else for it, you have to be the new president of the homeowners’ association. I’m the other candidate, but that won’t work — given my delicate past and all, said Pehar, sweetly stressing the word delicate as if it were a nougat praline and not a word. So what does the president of the homeowners’ association do? Kosta asked. Organizes and chairs the meetings. Everything else is up to us, Pehar replied collecting his notebook and pencil and offering Kosta his hand: congratulations!