“But why me? Why would he come with me and not with you?”
“Because you’re in real estate, because you were the agent for the sale of Vilim Blam’s house, the house this man was living in when he committed his crime. You can introduce yourself as the only living witness of the transaction and promise him a reward if he goes to a nearby village with you and makes a statement. He’ll agree to it because he needs the money: he drinks. He won’t tell his wife about it so she doesn’t find out about the money.”
“You’re asking too much of me. What makes you think he’ll trust me enough to go with me? And how can I get him to a nearby village without being noticed?”
“I’ll show you a tavern to go to, a place where no one will notice you. You have a way with people. He won’t think twice about going with you. He’ll be attracted by the reward, and his guilt feelings will do the rest. You’ll invite him for a little spin — to Kać, say — and provide the car and driver. I’ll be the driver. That’s all you need do. I’ll make sure that the man who has a score to settle with him — Vilim Blam’s son, that is — is on hand when we drop him off. If nothing else, you’ll see justice done. After so much injustice. It’s time, don’t you think?”
Chapter Fourteen
IT RAINS ALL day. The raindrops fall from the clouds, now tepid, now cold, now straight, now at an angle, in thick jets or one by one and big as bullets. They fall, splattering on roofs, walls, gates, and windowpanes, singing in tin gutters, drumming on roads and pavements, watering the earth, filling its invisible crevices, finding faulty joints between tiles and bricks, seeping into walls and leaking into cellars and basement flats, whipping faces and necks under umbrellas, soaking, drenching, dissolving form and meaning, people and things.
Or the wind blows, biting and dry, mean as a lynx, sweeping dead debris — dust, trampled refuse — from cracked earth and faded asphalt into windows, under doormats and doors, down noses and throats, making people cough and choke, tearing posters from poles, bending trees in parks, and rattling the craftsmen’s tin signs till they squawk like frightened poultry.
Or it is a magnificent summer when nothing moves, neither air nor earth nor azure sky, neither the burning sun nor the shadows it casts on the streets, and the people walking, the cats stalking the pavement, the ants crawling through grass seem unreal and unnecessary in the general torpor of heat and fecundity.
Or it snows, a blinding blizzard, rooms heated desperately hot, people rushing down streets, shoulders hunched and teeth chattering, slipping, falling, breaking bones, but then the clouds disperse, leaving a sugar-white cover, smooth as silk, pure as milk, soft as wool, until frost grabs and chains it, turns it into a wrinkled gray skin that stops outstretched fingers from piercing warm earth, tree roots, flowing waters, until the south wind and the thaw take pity and steam rises like a heathen prayer from the earth, dissolving the cold weight that rests on the streets, squares, houses, and people and planting on them and in them new strength and new colors.
And because rain, wind, sun, and snow all take place in the city, the city seems created to accommodate the seasons, to serve as a retort for testing the fiber of man and material under varying conditions of pressure and temperature. The city is not an element in the broad scheme of change, no, it is a discrete granule, a richly variegated granule, and while the same might be said of the sea, the woods, or the mountains, the city is unaware of belonging to a whole, even the whole that is existence, so when city people say to one another, “It’s hot” or, “The wind is blowing,” what they mean is that it is hot or the wind is blowing here in the city and that they have revised their image of the city — the streets on which they live and the people with whom they live — accordingly.
WHEN THE DEFEATED conquerors left Novi Sad in October 1944, they left not only with the jewels, furs, and rugs they had plundered but also with hundreds of accomplices who, suitcases in hand, stole out of the back doors of the apartments and houses they had confiscated. Predrag Popadić was not among them. Had he forgotten to reserve a place for himself in one of the military vehicles, as people later speculated, or did he simply go on believing in his luck and perhaps in favors for services rendered to the underdog? Or was it that he could not bear to part from the city that had afforded him so comfortable a routine, so beautiful an apartment, a standing window-table reservation at the finest coffee house, a multitude of women he had bedded and intended to bed, and so many suits of expensive material and silk ties and soft terrycloth robes that not a tenth of them would have fit in a refugee’s suitcase? The fact remains that he had published Naše novine as long as the paper supply lasted, and that the days immediately before the Soviet and Partisan troops entered the city he had spent indulging in the other side of his life — paying visits, giving and taking advice, making new acquaintances and deepening old ones, holding dinner parties and keeping amorous assignations — the side of his life he had always considered the more important.
On liberation day — liberation from his superiors and therefore from himself — he had sense enough to remain alone at home, sending the custodian’s younger son out twice for provisions and looking out his large windows at Main Square, which was now packed with crowds of people hugging and kissing, waving flags, tossing flowers to soldiers, singing, firing cannon salutes, dancing the kolo, and cheering. Cheering in Popadić’s native tongue, which for three and a half years had been condemned to whispers, lamentation, or lying. Perhaps it was the cheers — so innocent in their exuberance, so of a piece with his pleasure-loving nature — that overcame the voice of fear the very next day and led him among the people. Or perhaps he was made bold by the lonely night after that lonely day, a night of bitterness and temptation, a night without human contact, without warmth, without conversation, without news, yet within arm’s reach of all these ingredients of life so essential to him.
In any case, the next morning he bathed, shaved, put on his Sunday best and a light gray overcoat and hat, and stepped out into the street. He made his way to the curb, mingled with the crowd, felt on his face the breath of the cheering men and women, watched the People’s Army parade past, the jubilant young peasants in carts drawn by spindle-shanked horses decorated with banners and foliage. Soon acquaintances started turning up in the faceless throng. When Topalović, a wine and cheese merchant with a goatee and suspicious little eyes, to whom Popadić had given his business, sidled up next to him, all moroseness and concern for his shop, Popadić tried rousing him with a smile and some words of praise for the hale and hearty youth all around them. Topalović rewarded him by bleating the latest gossip into his ear, namely, who would be heading the municipal council, whose wives had agreed to take in which officers, and, incidentally, the fact that Popadić’s former underling, Većkalov, had been seen at city headquarters hobnobbing with the high command. This piece of information led Popadić to make a fatal move: even though Većkalov had worked at the paper as a proofreader for only a month and a half, having lost his job as a teacher with the coming of the Occupation, Popadić assumed he would be grateful to the man who hired him in his hour of need, so he took his leave of Topalović and headed straight for Town Hall.
There, amid the whirl of men and women sporting uniforms, cartridge belts, and five-pointed stars, doors opened surprisingly fast before Popadić’s anomalous appearance, the military authorities responding to his queries politely though not quite knowing what to make of him and therefore sending him from room to room. Popadić came upon Većkalov in a small office on the third floor. Wearing a uniform, a partisan cap, and a new, dark handlebar mustache, Većkalov was attended by three men in mufti scraping and bowing before him. Većkalov gave a start at the sight of Popadić and immediately cut short his conversation with the civilians, who eyed the newcomer inquisitively as they filed out.