Something moved in the darkness of the passage. It was Čutura’s hat, bobbing in and out of the light behind it. Even as Blam pondered whether to wait there for him, he knew he would let Čutura down, go back on his word, but he decided for now to follow Čutura’s instructions. He turned and proceeded through the courtyard, this time walking very slowly, trying to show Čutura by the sway of his gait just how slowly. At last he heard Čutura’s footsteps approach and waited for Čutura to catch up with him.
For a few steps they walked wordlessly side by side, like friends accustomed to strolling together in silence. Blam could hear Čutura’s breath. It sounded unnaturally loud for their slow pace.
“You go ahead when we get to the street lamps,” he whispered. “I don’t want anyone to see us together. I’ll follow at a distance.”
Now Blam had the excuse he was looking for. He slowed down even more, hoping to give a credible imitation of surprise.
“No, that won’t work,” he said, carefully choosing his words to make them sound spontaneous. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I live in the heart of town now.” Then he added in a more positive tone, “I have a better solution. A place you can go without a chance of being seen.”
“Where? Who does it belong to?”
“Nobody,” he said, with an almost inaudible laugh at his own joke. “It’s a sublet. For bachelors. You know, a love nest. That’s what makes it unobtrusive.” He was on tenterhooks. Would Čutura object?
“Is it far?” came the wheezing response.
“No, not at all. A five-minute walk.”
“All right, then, take me there. But you first. The way I said.”
His caution was justified, because the lights along the street were now brighter. Blam picked up speed, while Čutura maintained his slow pace and gradually fell behind, thus giving possible onlookers the impression of a man out for a stroll who just happened to be going in the same direction as the man in front of him. Only the two men knew of the invisible thread connecting them, and that knowledge, which had been such a burden to Blam back in the Avala courtyard, now brought him a certain relief. What ran through his mind now instead of nightmarish images of shame were the words and gestures he would use to ensure Čutura’s safety. He knocked at the gate of the familiar Dositej Street house. When his former landlady appeared, as hunched and plodding as before but also as eager, he reminded her who he was and asked whether his former room was available, and although she shilly-shallied and pointed out that the bed was unmade and the stove unheated, she let him into the courtyard as she spoke. In the kitchen she removed his former keys from the steel key ring in the cupboard drawer and handed them to him, accepting a folded banknote in the same hand without a word. He then left, closed the door behind him, and went out into the street, where Čutura stood waiting behind the nearest tree. He showed Čutura in, locked the gate, and unlocked the door to the room at the far end of the courtyard.
When the light came on, he was doubly shocked: by the way the room looked and by the way Čutura looked. True, the room was unchanged externally — it had the same bulky bed piled high with the same bedclothes, the same bare table with rings all over the faded veneer, the same chair with the loop-shaped back and white washstand with the chipped edge, the same enamel pitcher and basin, the same green curtain over the window — but there was no frivolous, love-tryst glow to temper its shabbiness. As for Čutura, his face — the thin nose, jutting cheekbones, dry, wrinkled skin around the mouth — was emaciated, almost deformed, and his eyes revealed such exhaustion — even in the shadow of the broad-rimmed hat, that Blam grabbed the chair and moved it over to him.
“Sit down.”
Čutura did not seem to hear him.
“Is this going to be all right?” Blam asked.
Čutura looked around him for the first time, and Blam, following his every movement, realized that the room was freezing and the smell of mold so strong that it was hard to breathe.
“Fine.”
“Can I do anything else for you? Are you hungry? Shall I run and get you a bite to eat?”
“I don’t need anything,” said Čutura with a shake of the head. “Just some sleep.” And slowly, sluggishly he took off his hat and laid it on the table, took off his heavy overcoat and dropped it over the back of the chair, unbuttoned his jacket, took a heavy pocket watch with no cover out of his trousers and placed it on the table. He was very deliberate, as if following a routine, but so listless as to seem absentminded.
“Come back to the gate with me now and lock up,” Blam said, “and leave the key on the table tomorrow morning when you go. Will you remember?”
“I will.”
“Good. Now follow me.”
He turned to go, but then, seeing that Čutura just stood there and stared after him with a glassy, distracted look, he turned back.
“Come and lock up,” he said.
“Oh. Yes.”
Čutura shifted his weight from one foot to the other, stretched an irresolute hand to the watch, picked it up with the tips of his fingers, and rubbed it slightly. Then, realizing the futility of what he had done, put it back on the table and turned to the door.
“Take your coat,” said Blam.
Čutura obediently picked his coat up off the chair and heaved it over his shoulders as if it were a sack of grain. Then he stood still.
“Are you sure you don’t need anything?” asked Blam.
“Positive. Just some sleep. You had to pay for the room, didn’t you?”
“Don’t be silly. Think of it as spending the night at my place.”
“Right.”
They plunged into the dark and made their way to the gate. Blam groped for the lock and stuck the key in.
“Lock up now. See you.”
“So long.”
They did not shake hands: their hands would not have found each other. Blam, having moved from the dark of the courtyard to the dark of the street, waited only long enough to hear the gate pulled to and the creak of the key in the lock. Moving blindly down Dositej Street, he recalled his last impression of light: the round glass face of Čutura’s pocket watch lying on the table among the pale rings. He had never seen Čutura with the strange, old-fashioned watch before, and although he had wondered how Čutura came by it the moment he set eyes on it, he had missed the chance to ask.
AT ALMOST THE same spot where he last met Čutura — in front of the Avala and opposite the windows of the Borac Restaurant, which is on the other side of Main Square — and at almost the same early evening hour (though it was September then and the weather was milder and the war was over), Miroslav Blam stands waiting for Janja Blam. Not that he draws any parallels with that encounter or with any of the numerous others he has had here since childhood either as a filmgoer or as a passerby stopping to look at the various posters or the bustle of the crowd, though his impatient eyes do fall on the pictures of the current attraction, skim over potential filmgoers milling in the street, and dart into the lobby, of which and beyond which he knows every inch. Blam’s eyes are now a decade and a half older than they were in the Čutura days, nor is his power of concentration what it was — nothing serious, of course, though basic facts from the past have been forced into deeper layers of his mind. They are still alive there and ready — should they be stimulated by, say, the chance similarity of a passerby to Čutura or Popadić or Vilim Blam — to rise to the surface and take part in the present. But as nothing of the sort occurs this time, they simply stir mutely within him like a mist.