They did see their masters again. When at dawn on the fourth day a lineup began to form in front of the synagogue, the dogs rushed up and filled Jew Street with joyous yelps and fawning whimpers. The people tried to restrain their children, who wanted to throw their arms around their beloved pets; the guards shouted, but to no avail. Shooting was out of the question — though it had been suggested — because the march to the station took in the dark to keep it from drawing attention. The only recourse was to set the lineup in motion as soon as it was ready.
The dogs had a last moment of glory while their masters were waiting at the station: they could nuzzle them and wheedle a hidden morsel. But soon they were alone on the tracks. For a while they ran after the train, but they stopped when their noses lost the familiar smells. They stared in wonder at the fields and ditches where they found themselves, their long, red tongues hanging from their mouths, and started back, one after the other, in the direction of the city.
*
“Look who’s here!” Krkljuš calls out, pushing Blam toward the door as it opens a crack.
The door does not open wider; it pauses, almost shudders, while a pair of narrowed eyes peers out of the dark.
“Come on, let us in,” Krkljuš says reproachfully, but then adds in a cheery voice, “Can’t you see? It’s Blam!”
The door opens, but the effect Krkljuš was hoping for when he asked Blam home is lost. He is impatient, even rough, pushing his friend into the entrance hall. “Go on in,” he grumbles.
Blam plunges into the semidarkness and bows to the minute figure of Krkljuš’s mother, who steps back to give him room.
“You may not remember me,” he says, apologizing more for Krkljuš than for himself. “I used to visit when you lived near the park.”
“You did?”
She sounds dubious.
“Of course he did,” says Krkljuš, stepping forward and closing the door. “He was a school friend of ours. Of mine and Slobodan’s both. We used to study together.”
“So you were a friend of Slobodan’s.” Her voice brightens in the dark. “You’re not with the courts, are you?”
“Really, Mother!” Krkljuš is annoyed. “The courts! That’s not why I brought him here! Blam works at the Intercontinental.” He pushes his mother aside and motions to a strip of light at the other end of the entrance hall. “Go on in.”
Blam does as he is told and steps into the bright daylight of a room with little furniture — a bed, a wardrobe, a table and chairs — but full of miscellaneous objects scattered about. He sees a guitar propped in a corner.
“Sit down,” Krkljuš says, offering him a chair with a gray sweater draped over the back. “No, take your coat off first. You can put it…” He turns and notes with a frown that there is no place for Blam to put it. “I was in a rush this morning,” he mumbles, taking Blam’s wet raincoat and tossing it over the bed frame. “There,” he says, turning back to Blam, satisfied.
“Did the workers ever turn up?” Krkljuš’s mother asks suddenly. She is standing in the doorway.
Krkljuš says nothing for a moment, as if caught unawares. Then he rubs his haggard, blotchy face with his thumb and index finger and answers reluctantly, “Not Stevo.”
“Did you send for him?”
“No. Janko was too busy.”
“You could have gone yourself.”
“I had customers.”
She sighs. “Where’s the money?”
He digs into his pocket unwillingly, almost disgustedly, and tosses a wad of crumpled thousand- and five-hundred-dinar banknotes onto the table. The wad swells, as if there were a toad inside it.
“Did the Popović woman pay up?”
“No.”
Sighing another loud sigh, Mrs. Krkljuš goes over to the table, gathers the wad of banknotes with her thin fingers, and leaves the room.
Krkljuš shakes his bowed head in despair. “The damned shop.”
“It’s a lot of trouble?”
“Trouble? No. It’s a plague, a catastrophe,” he says, rolling his tormented eyes. “It’s dragging me down. I can’t concentrate on anything. I can’t do anything of my own.”
“You mean compose?” Blam asks cautiously.
“That’s exactly what I mean!” says Krkljuš, moving closer to Blam and overwhelming him with the stench of alcohol. “I have all kinds of ideas, but never time to sit down and sort them out.”
“Some time ago, I can’t remember exactly when,” says Blam, recalling only that it was a long time ago, long before the last time he saw Krkljuš, several years, in fact, “I heard a song of yours on the radio. It was sung by a woman, a local.”
“Oh, it must have been ‘Return to Nature.’ ”
Blam spreads his arms to show he is at a loss. Krkljuš goes over to the corner, picks up the guitar, presses it to his stomach, and plays a melody that soars through the air. “Is that it?”
Blam nods.
“It’s one of my last pieces.” He drops the guitar on a pile of crumpled clothes on a chair. The strings twang softly. “It made it to the Opatija Festival. I was with the radio at the time, and they backed me.” He purses his lips.
“Why did you leave?”
“Come off it, will you? They fired me. I was one of Carević’s protégés. You know Carević, don’t you? You don’t? Well, he’s an idiot. A bureaucrat. One day I turn up at the studio slightly tipsy, and the first thing he says is, ‘I’m docking you.’ As if I couldn’t have stayed home and called in sick. I was so mad, I got plastered the next day and kept it up, day after day, until he fired me. But he didn’t last long himself. The Comrades got rid of him.”
“Couldn’t you go back now?”
“Now I have the shop to worry about. Mother takes care of the old man, and we’d never be able to live off my salary, so it’s out of the question.” He rubs his wrinkled forehead and closes his eyes for a moment. Then he looks over at Blam. “How about a drink?”
Before Blam can find an excuse to say no, Mrs. Krkljuš comes into the room, her tiny face twitching suspiciously, her eyes darting between her son and his friend, then alighting on the guitar, in the hope there is some business plot in the making. Disappointed, she settles her eyes on Blam.
“Do you live alone?”
“No. I’m married.”