“It did not.”
“Are you with the UN itself or with the Yugoslav delegation?”
“I am a very minor and very junior member of the delegation, primarily because of my fluency with languages. Our embassy in Washington naturally informed us immediately that you will serve as the intermediary in the exchange.”
“I don’t see how this could be an official call then.”
“It is entirely unofficial, Mr. St. Ives.”
“I see.” I didn’t, of course, but it was a comment that would help fill the time before the drinks arrived.
“Pernik’s granddaughter is to accompany him,” he said.
“So I understand.”
“Do you know her name?”
“Yes.”
That didn’t stop him from telling me anyway. “Gordana Panić,” he said, making the a in Panić broad and pronouncing its c like the ch in church. “Pernik is her maternal grandfather.”
The drinks came a few moments later and I noticed that Sid had even salted the rim of the Margarita glass. I offered Bjelo a cigarette, but he shook his head in refusal and drank half of the Margarita. I don’t think he noticed the salted rim.
“What’s she to you?” I said.
“We were to be married.”
“I see,” I said again, this time because it’s a useful enough phrase when you wish to indicate a sympathetic ear, but not an overactive curiosity.
“We were engaged.”
“Mmmm,” I said.
“A month ago she tore it off.” He looked up quickly from his glass. “Tore is not correct, is it?”
“Broke.”
“Yes, broke,” he said and finished his drink. “She broke it off.”
I couldn’t think of any more comforting phrases so I asked Bjelo if he would care for another drink and when he nodded that he would, I signaled to Sid.
“There is another man,” Bjelo said.
Ah, Killingsworth, you sly dog.
“An older man,” he said.
About twenty-five years older than you and a few million dollars richer. It had to be Killingsworth’s money; it couldn’t possibly be his personality.
“A friend of yours?” I said.
“No.”
“Sometimes it is.”
“No, if it were a friend of mine, I would know his name. And if I knew his name, I would kill him.”
I studied Bjelo for some indication of sardonic humor or even the hint of overdramatization. There was none. He gazed at me steadily with eyes that I could almost match in color, but not in resolution. He could kill a rival all right, if he got the chance. I decided that it was his Balkan heritage.
“Well, maybe when Miss Panić gets over here you can run down to Washington and patch things up.”
Bjelo didn’t reply until the second round of drinks was served. “It would be a pleasant world, Mr. St. Ives, if things were so simple.”
“They’re not, I take it.”
“No. I am returning to Yugoslavia shortly — within the week. But I am afraid Gordana will already have gone.” He paused. There was nothing for me to say.
“Days are important,” he said, frowning into his new drink.
I had nothing to add to that either.
He quit staring into his drink and swallowed half of it. “She would not be coming to this country unless it were for that old fool who is her grandfather. That one lives in the past. Have you read him?”
“Not recently,” I said.
“He is the only poet who improves in translation. He is unreadable in Croatian.”
“Well, they did give him a Nobel Prize.”
“Politics,” Bjelo said, almost spitting the word. “He boasts of having tried to make peace between Mihailović’s Cetniks and President Tito during the war. But he was a Croat and Mihailović hated Croats worse than he hated Communists. Besides, Pernik was a Royalist and Tito and his Partisans despised Royalists. So the old fool was rebuffed by both sides and because he had nothing else to do, he wrote that disaster of a poem.”
“It was called an epic,” I said.
Bjelo snorted and used both his mouth and nose to do it. “If ten thousand lines of doggerel can be described as an epic then, yes, that is what it was. But its imagery was fatuous; its narrative redundant; its meter impossible; and its theme naive to the point of mawkishness.”
“Apparently, you’re something of a critic,” I said.
He shook his head slowly. “No, Mr. St. Ives,” he said and there was nothing but ingenuousness in his tone, “I am something of a poet.”
Over the years I have met a number of persons who have described themselves as poets. Some lied when they did it. Some boasted. Some murmured it a little dreamily, some blushed, and some mumbled it as if they hoped I wouldn’t hear. But none said it matter of factly, as did Bjelo, and I almost believed him.
“But you’re not here to discuss if poetry should be, not mean,” I said.
“I’m here to make a request, Mr. St. Ives,” he said.
“All right.”
“First, I must ask a question.”
“All right.”
“When will Gordana and her grandfather be ex-changed for your ambassador?”
“That’s up to the kidnappers,” I said. “I have no idea.”
“I am going to make a strange request.”
“Go ahead.”
He looked at me and that hint of resolution was back in his eyes. “I am going to ask you — no, that is too weak a word. I am going to implore you to delay the exchange for one week.”
“To stall it,” I said.
“Yes, stall it.”
“Why?”
“I must see Gordana.”
“Write her a letter.”
“I have written her dozens. There is no answer.”
“Call her.”
“She refuses to answer.”
“I’m sorry I can’t help you,” I said.
“You refuse?”
“Yes, if you want to put it that way, I refuse. I’m a go-between, Mr. Bjelo, not Cupid. A man has been kidnapped and you’re asking me to postpone his release while you patch up a lovers’ quarrel. You don’t have a good enough reason. In fact, you don’t have much of a reason at all.”
“You won’t reconsider?” he said. “I ask only for a week.”
“No.”
He nodded and played with the stem of his empty glass, moving it this way and that. “Then,” he said softly, “I have some bad news for you.”
“That’s the kind I’m most familiar with.”
He looked up at me and I realized why I didn’t quite believe him when he said he was a poet. Poets don’t have eyes like that. “The news is this,” he said. “If you go ahead with the exchange without granting me the week’s delay, then neither Gordana Panić nor her grandfather will leave Yugoslavia.”
“That’s not news,” I said. “That’s a warning.”
He nodded thoughtfully and then rose. “Yes,” he said. “It could be called that.”
I rose too. “That’s all?”
He picked up a tweed topcoat from a chair. “That’s all, Mr. St. Ives, except that I believe this is your coat.” He handed it to me and picked up the other one which could have been the twin of the one I held. “Yes,” he said, “see — yours does not have this rip in its neck.” He put the coat on, buttoned it, and looked at me. “I’m sorry if you expected something more dramatic.”
“Not at all,” I said. “I thought you were swell.”
He smiled slightly. “I wish I could thank you for your time, but—” He made a small gesture.
“That’s quite all right,” I said, damned if he’d win the politeness prize.
“You can reconsider.”
“Yes. I can, but I won’t.”
“That’s a pity,” he said, turned and walked from the bar. I followed him into the lobby and because I had nothing better to do watched him push through the revolving door, duck his head at the snow, and then pause at the curb before jaywalking Forty-sixth Street.