The crowd began to disperse. I was left on my own between the four canisters. I picked up the two I had been carrying. Water was pouring out of them, like the stream of water from those statues of little boys in Dubrovnik. Her canisters were still intact, so I picked them up and went outside. It was a beautiful spring day and by now the sound of gunfire had vanished. I covered the thirty yards or so to our building, and then decided to go for a walk, so I turned back and went in the opposite direction. Two soldiers were running along the bank. Some boys were playing kickball on the grass by the art school. One of them kicked the ball awkwardly — and I caught it on the volley. To be honest, if I hadn’t, I think it would have ended up in the Miljacka river. I met Tadija by the Two Fishermen Café. He asked me where I’d been exactly when the shelling began. I was afraid that he’d ask me about Ivanka. We sat down on the wall in front of the restaurant and he cut a cigarette in two with his penknife. (He took the half with no filter.) Wittgenstein was afraid of going mad, I told him, and that’s why he became a philosopher. I don’t remember what he’d wanted to be in the first place — a gardener or something. Tadija shrugged his shoulders and exhaled the smoke. A cold sore was visible on his mouth, next to the cigarette.
Ivanka’s funeral was brief and rather superficial. When it was over I went to the market and found seeds for carrots, parsnips and lettuce among the old shoes and the ludicrously expensive tins of beef. I bought a few packets and went home along the back streets in order to avoid meeting people I knew. The washing Ivanka had done a couple of days earlier still wasn’t dry. I buried my head in a damp, white shirt. It’s odd — even when the sun shines nothing dries. I cooled my face and pondered: Heraclitus only cracked jokes at his own expense, but Zeno made jokes against the world. Plato was a transvestite who dressed up humanity. Somebody should have bumped off Socrates to stop him making such a performance of his death. If you want my opinion, philosophy is just a video game. I put the shirt back on the line. My face hadn’t left any marks on the fabric.
I haven’t spoken to the girls for months and I don’t know how to break the news that their mother’s dead. But it’s wrong to let them go on thinking she’s still alive, a beloved parent to whom they need to send food parcels and remember in prayers at bedtime. They have a right to know so that they can mourn — and then forget. One life and one worry less.
The water lasted for days so I didn’t go out. I sat on the table by the window and stared at the concrete slabs below. If you looked closely, you could already see blades of grass growing in the cracks. I leaned out of the window as far as I liked, without my heart beating faster. I was free and happy: I didn’t have to write messages, I didn’t have to suffer or to explain myself to anybody. The world vanishes if you don’t talk.
In the pantry I found a little bag of compost and some light styrofoam boxes, just big enough to bury a rat in. I mixed the compost with the infertile soil from the children’s playground. There was something hypnotic about touching the damp black-brown dust with my fingers. I could have kneaded and stroked the soil for hours. I scattered the seeds and marked the boxes. I placed them under the window and watered them. I think I read in a book somewhere that Wittgenstein didn’t in fact want to be a gardener but an aeronautical engineer. Does that mean a pilot or something else? I returned to the window and looked down again with a kind of resignation. All I’d have to do is persuade myself I’m a canary. Nobody would believe that I’d jumped out of the window immediately after sowing the seeds. I can already see people whispering that somebody had pushed me. Otherwise the carrots, parsnips and lettuce would never have been planted.
I don’t go to the cemetery, as I explained to Tadija, because there are too many fresh graves there. It is vulgar to visit them all one by one. He pulled out a cigarette, which he snapped in two, giving me the half without the filter. His cold sore has been there for weeks and so he can’t really manage the tiny cigarette ends any more. I put my half away in my pocket, for later. He looked at me and shrugged.
Friar Andro sent word to the girls that Ivanka had died. They asked about me. I don’t know what he told them. Whatever happens they should know that I’m ok. I flick through books, read and wait for the carrots, parsnips and the lettuce to grow. Humans live out of curiosity. That’s the best and most honest way. Anything else is just a false way of courting other people’s tears. Camus demanded and gave melodramatic explanations. For those whose death isn’t accidental, the situation is as follows: women and homosexuals slit their wrists, soldiers and boors shoot themselves in the head, actors and romantics swallow pills, the clumsy and the neurotic shoot themselves in the heart, the ignorant and the perverse hang themselves, the ambitious and the weak jump off bridges, sad cases and intellectuals jump from roofs or top floors.
The parsnip was the first to sprout, followed by the lettuce and finally the carrots. The tiny leaves are as soft as a newborn baby’s hair. I watered them before I went to visit Tadija in the hospital. The doctors don’t know what is wrong with him. He has shrunk to half his size and the cold sore still hasn’t disappeared. I offered him a cigarette as we sat on the bench in front of the hospital. He took a penknife out of his pocket, divided the cigarette in two and gave me the end with the filter. He’s got used to having the other end, he says, it doesn’t bother him any more. We sat and smoked. I told him about the parsnips, lettuce and carrots. He replied that he was now quite sure that Wittgenstein had wanted to be an aeronautical engineer.
The lettuce was the first to be ready for picking. I pulled off two heads, washed and cleaned them, wrapped them in newspaper and took them to the market. I gave them to the first woman who came along for two cigarettes. Everyone looked at me strangely. A Gypsy said that he would have given me two boxes of cigarettes for the lettuce. That’s fine, I replied, but the woman didn’t have two boxes of cigarettes. The Gypsy swore and went off.
I pulled out three small, as yet unripe carrots and washed them. I put two cigarettes in my other pocket and went to the hospital. Almost timidly, the doctor asked me if Tadija had been a relation. I said no — he was my friend.
“Yes, of course — is,” replied the doctor, extending his hand, “but I have to inform you that you will no longer be able to talk to him.”
“No problem,” I said, pulling out the cigarettes and carrots. “This is for you because you looked after Tadija.” He shivered and withdrew his hand. “Don’t be silly,” I smiled. “Take it!”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m just tired,” and he took the three carrots and the two cigarettes.
“It’ll be ok,” I said, turning away and going down the stairs.
At the bottom of the stairs I felt the doctor’s hand on my shoulder. We went outside and sat on the bench. He offered me a cigarette and put the other in his mouth. As we sat there, people were running about in blood-stained white coats.