I’ll wait for you, it doesn’t matter how long, but I’ll wait for you, and you’ll come for me when you finally tire, he told her after their kiss, and she laughed, she laughed long strolling down Tito Street and on into the night, she laughed so hard the shop windows trembled and women came to the windows to see why someone was laughing so at this hour and in a world where nothing was that funny, where no one had a belly laugh like Gita, who wasn’t from this world in any case, and who not a single woman thought of as competition because she lived a life bestowed with a thousand lovers and a lone kiss, and come tomorrow she might be dead.
Lotar believed Gita would come back to him and that until her return he must defend her honor. In company, if anyone ventured to say something about her, Lotar would always cut in shut up, I’m here. And miraculously, everyone did shut up, even though no one really thought Lotar might use his terrifying strength. This is how things went until Gita chewed up Dino Krezo, a hothead and ex-jailbird who had marauded his way around Italy for years, returning to Sarajevo only to show off and spend a bit of money. So anyway, this Krezo was beside himself with rage, and to add insult to injury, someone told him about Lotar, probably warning him in jest about mouthing off about Gita in front of Lotar. Krezo immediately demanded you’re going to show me this guy and tore over to the medical school. They say he waited two or three hours, which only served to enrage him further, so when Lotar finally came out, Dino Krezo no longer registered the size and kind of man he was talking to but just went up to him, grabbed him by his coat collar, pressing himself up under Lotar’s face and saying in the quiet voice of a man who had a pistol tucked in his belt, fuck you and your fucking Kike whore.
What happened next is almost not for the telling, but they say Lotar grabbed Krezo by both ears and ripped them off, and the poor bastard collapsed, Lotar smacking his head in as he lay there on the ground. When the police arrived, there was nothing left of Krezo’s face. Four cops jumped Lotar, but he tossed them off, walked toward the street, sat down on a low wall, lit a cigarette, and from three or four meters away the cops cocked their pistols, not daring come any closer. It’s all over now, he said, I killed a man. It was then they hurled themselves on him, pounding him viciously with their fists, legs, and the butts of their pistols. Somehow they knew Lotar would never defend himself. Perhaps they had experience with this sort of thing, though I doubt they had ever come across a man like Lotar.
He was sentenced to fifteen years for a “particularly brutal murder.” Lotar sat a whole twelve years in the Zenica prison, just long enough for the city to forget him and for a new generation to appear on the streets, one that would never know anything about him or Dino Krezo. But Gita, no one could forget her. Through the years her beauty and laughter had not diminished in the slightest, nor had she quit driving men crazy with her lone kisses. Her lovers were now some fifteen years younger than her, but nothing had changed, and a man was yet to come along who could resist Gita giving him the eye, nor was there anyone in the whole city smart enough to work out that a story repeated for the hundredth time must always end the same way.
That summer when Lotar got out of prison, Miss Edita Burić, the owner of a workshop for pleating skirts, and Mr. Moni Danon, the oldest pharmacist in the city, both died on the same day. Two days later they were buried at the same time in the Bare Cemetery. One procession set off from the Catholic chapel, the other from the Jewish one. Lotar followed behind one coffin, Gita behind the other. The processions marched one beside the other, right up to the fork where the paths leading to the Catholic and Jewish plots veered off. Gita didn’t even look at Lotar, but instead of following his mother’s coffin, Lotar went after Gita. It was a terrible scandal. The crones in black made the sign of the cross, the priest said extra prayers, the Catholic procession appalled, the Jewish one afraid. Nobody knew what Lotar might do to Gita.
But he didn’t do anything to her, just said hello, Gita, yet she didn’t respond to his greeting, he said Gita, I’m waiting for you, and she looked at him as if she was going to smile, he said Gita, this is forever, and she took him by the hand and said sweetheart, that in front of me is forever, and pointed to the coffin.
After his release from prison Lotar started up his drinking. He drank with discipline and according to a set calendar, every seventh of the month, you could see his father was a Kraut, that’s what people in the neighborhood said, and not without respect. This is how it went: Lotar would find some dive and order a liter of rakia, the guests would start making tracks for the door, and Lotar’s husky no would stop them dead. They’d all fall silent and wait to see what would happen next, you could hear the buzzing of a fly and, every three minutes, the neck of the bottle touch the glass. Lotar needed exactly fifty-five minutes to drink a liter of rakia, not a minute more, not a minute less. Then he’d order another liter, dutifully pay the waiter and then thunder everyone out! and they’d leave all right, the owner and the waiters too, without even a word to Lotar. Fifteen minutes later the police would show up, Lotar would rise to his feet, and say hit me before I fuck you up, you, Tito, and the Party, and they’d give him a thrashing, he wouldn’t defend himself, and afterward they’d take him down to the station, he’d sleep it off in the pen, and wait again for the seventh of the month. For five years Lotar took a beating once a month, and tongues were already talking about how much longer he could survive, how many more sevenths of the month the police might need to kill him.
And then the war began, and one September morning during the first siege Lotar found a note under the door: “If you want to know. I’m in Madrid. Gita.” She’d probably been scared of the war and had left Lotar a message, anxious as to whether in Madrid too there would be someone to desire her lone kiss. Gita was already fifty years old, which Sarajevo eyes didn’t notice but maybe Spanish eyes would, and Gita wouldn’t be Gita without a kiss; she’d never make it alone in a world without her humiliated men.
So now, whether Lotar hoped his waiting was finally over, that Gita had tired and exhausted herself and was waiting for him in Madrid with her love, or he simply couldn’t imagine staying on in a city where Gita wasn’t, it’s hard to say, but from that day on Lotar began planning his escape from the city to Spain. He didn’t have any money, nor did he have a passport, and didn’t know how he might acquire one or the other either. A giant alone in his own city. He started to skip sevenths of the month, his kidneys and ribs hurt, and with every day that passed following Gita’s message, Lotar aged more and more. His hair turned white, his muscles no longer smooth and taut, more and more people would pass him by, blind to his strength. Only one thing remained as monumental as Trebević: his will to go to Madrid, to his Gita, for a second kiss.
Two and a half years after the war started, Lotar vanished from the city. Before leaving he’d tried to borrow money for the journey, but no one wanted to lend it to him; people were sure that there was no returning from such a journey. He tried to get a passport, but they didn’t want to give him one of those either, he was still strong enough to fight and his love held no sway with the authorities. No one was surprised that Lotar left in spite of all this. People knew that when it came to getting to her, what existed between he and Gita allowed no obstacle, even when she was as far away as Madrid.