“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He wasn’t particularly bright.”
“That’s not a nice thing to say.”
“Sorry.”
“Uroš sent out plenty of SOS signals. We just didn’t notice. Or didn’t care to. It’s all my fault.”
“And now your conscience is bothering you, right?”
“Those children’s suitcases…. There’s a message in them, a message we haven’t deciphered. It’s right in front of us, there are all kinds of signals in the air, and we’re blind. It’s like your putative Vermeer image. Maybe the world would look different if we all walked around with magnifying glasses in our pockets. Or if we had the gift that fairy-tale characters are given, the gift of understanding plant and animal language, or even just human language, really understanding how people talk.”
“Forget it, Comrade,” said Igor. “People don’t talk; people bullshit. But that’s enough for now. They’re closing. We’ve got to go. Can I offer you a hot chocolate?”
Igor and I were the last to leave, but I managed to buy a souvenir in the museum bookshop: an oval glass paperweight. Under the glass was a reproduction of Igor’s girl.
A light, wispy snow was falling as we came out of the museum. We crossed the small square and went into a cafeteria. We found a seat at the window and ordered our hot chocolates. Now that I had started in on Uroš’s death, I couldn’t stop.
“Maybe I’m the one who pulled the trigger,” I said.
“What trigger?” he shot back at me.
“I mean, maybe I’m the one to blame for Uroš’s death. He sent me a signal, and I failed to decode it.”
“That’s a load of crap!” said Igor. “You’ve got to stop romanticizing Uroš’s death. What’s the point? Does it make you feel any better? Heaven only knows why he killed himself. Maybe he went off his rocker. Maybe he got tired of the journey and jumped the train. Maybe it was just his way of saying good-bye, ta-ta, tot ziens, adieu, and fuck you one and all…. Tell me, why am I the one you picked to bug with all this?”
“Because there’s no one else for me to bug.”
“Pull yourself together, will you? Those tears are going to ruin your hot chocolate.”
“I’ll stop. I promise I will.”
“I wish I knew what movie I’ve fallen into. The movie of the week? Or maybe it’s a Danielle Steele novel.”
I wiped away my tears.
“There’s a good girl! I was afraid you were turning into a — squid.”
I laughed, and the laughter gave momentary relief.
“Tell me a little about yourself,” I said cautiously.
“What do you want to hear?”
“About your life. Are your parents still alive? Where do you live? Who with? Have you got a girl? Who are your friends?”
“You and your stupid questionnaires! Well, I know what you’re after, and you don’t need to worry. For one thing, I’d never kill myself for a crook like the one we saw in the courtroom. But even more important, I’m not the suicide type. I’m a player. I’m sharp as a tack.”
We didn’t talk much in the train on our way back to Amsterdam. We were each very much self-absorbed: Igor was reading a Dutch newspaper; I had unwrapped the paperweight and was running a hand over the oval glass, thinking of the pictures Mother had put in the china cabinet. They did not include a picture of my father. I didn’t remember my father. I couldn’t. I was three when he killed himself. Mother refused to talk about him. She had burned her bridges and was not about to reconstruct them for me. Not only did I know nothing about him; I didn’t have his name: she had further erased his traces by giving me hers. No wonder there was no trace of him in her china cabinet rogues’ gallery. She was absolutely certain she had “saved” me by excluding my father from my biography. Saved me from what — only she could say. She had done everything she could to fill in all cracks I might pass through, remove all threads I might grab hold of. She managed a goodly part of my past, occupying my father’s place as well as her own.
The invisible pearl in my ear was empty. I peered at its turbid surface in search of a magic picture. I could not tell whether the scene in the picture, which would emerge from a deep, dense darkness into my memory, had actually taken place or whether the man in the picture was my father, but he could have been. I am three. A man is giving me a piggyback ride, and I am holding on to his hair. The man is holding on to my shoes as if they were the ends of a scarf around his neck. We are walking through deep snow. It is twilight. There is a magic glitter to everything. Suddenly the man shifts his hand to my shoulders and collapses into the snow in slow motion. I am deliriously happy….
“You’re scratching your ear,” Igor said, looking up from his newspaper.
“I am?”
“A penny for your thoughts.”
“Oh, I don’t know…I’m not thinking anything, really.”
At the station we went our separate ways. I turned to see his tall frame, slightly stooped under the backpack, hands in pockets. In the dark, from the back, speckled with tiny snowflakes, he looked more robust, more of an adult.
“See you in class on Monday,” I called out.
He did not turn or reply; he simply raised one arm slowly to show he had heard.
CHAPTER 5
Eventually Ines and Cees did invite me over. Truth to tell, Ines and I had never been particularly close. The whole Amsterdam thing had come about pretty much by chance. A mutual Berlin friend happened to be in Amsterdam and happened to run across Ines, and while they were chatting about who was where and doing what he gave Ines my address. She and I had studied awhile together and double-dated awhile together. She had her Vladek; I had my Goran. She and Vladek had known each other since their school days and got married as undergraduates. They disappeared from Zagreb the moment they graduated. Rumor had it they’d gone to Amsterdam. Vladek had earned his way through the university dealing in Croatian naive artists, in Italy mostly. He had now opened a gallery in Amsterdam.
I had hoped Ines would have me over as soon as I arrived in Amsterdam. I had phoned her several times with proposals that we meet, but she always had a polite excuse: she was so busy, she had to be with the children, but “we’ll get together, just the two of us, and have one of our good old gab fests, okay?” I tried to recall whether we’d ever spent any time together without Goran and Vladek.
Ines was a typical Zagreb product. She was attractive and took inordinate care of herself: she had her cosmetician (“You really ought to go to her. You won’t recognize yourself!”), her hairdresser, her dentist, her dressmaker. She bought all her clothes in London (“Trieste is for peasants!”). Everyone she knew was hers, from the woman in the visa office (“Vikica got us our visas in five minutes!”), the bevy of doctors and the pedicure to the butchers and cleaning women (“Milkica is top-notch. She’s great at windows and nobody can beat her at the ironing board. Whenever you need her, just say the word”). Her intimacy with the world around her, her ability to subject it completely to her will, her absolute at-homeness with her crowd — it the butter, she the knife — her utter lack of concern for anyone who did not think as she did, the authority and efficiency with which, as if engaged in a high-salaried position, she lived the “adult life” while still an undergraduate — all this put me off, yet beguiled me as well. She had that “Zagreb girl” quality about her: a femininity one inherits from one’s mother or acquires with entry into the privileged class and a coy way of talking — a slightly nasal voice combined with high-pitched shs and chs, a tendency to stress the final syllable, and an ingratiating intonation designed to show she was on the side of whomever she happened to be talking to. But much as the voice oozed compassion and understanding, it made no commitments.