I never answered her. I don’t know whether one single answer existed. I don’t think so. There’s always more than one truth to everything, Milan had written in one of his postcards. The why of an action is a kind of intellectual crossword, it occurred to me then or it occurs to me now, in which you try to fill in the little empty boxes that get tangled up with one another, that mix and lean into one another, in which no one answer is worth more or less than any other and also where each answer might on its own seem irrational or even downright crazy. But when they are brought together, they complement and strengthen one another. Or something like that. I felt seduced, I guess, seduced by his music, seduced by his postcards, seduced by his story, seduced by the revolutionary tremors of his spirit, seduced by a smoky, erotic image that I wouldn’t be able to make out clearly until the very end of my stay in Belgrade. And a man seduced doesn’t measure anything the same way, not time, not the force of gravity, and especially not distances. The only thing I understood, really understood, was that I was obsessed with the idea of looking for him, that I needed to look for him perhaps in the same way that a curious, morbid, slightly fearful child needs to look under the bed for ghosts.
The Pirouette
Like I was drugged right there in Barajas airport, like I was floating in a dream dreamed by someone else who was surprised to see me but also found it pitiable and let me just carry on floating, I took a Swissair flight from Madrid to Belgrade.
I prefer a window seat, but I got the aisle. Two kids of about nine or ten sat down next to me. Little brothers expatriated during the war, I thought, now going back to visit their uncles and cousins and grandparents. Both of them were nervous. I tried to say something to them in French, but I don’t think they understood me at all; I just made them more nervous. On the other side of me, across the aisle, a beautiful girl of about seventeen sat down. Slim and blond, her fingernails painted scarlet, she wore huge dark glasses with white plastic frames that looked like they were left over from the seventies. She took off her shoes and socks. Her feet were dirty. Suddenly, one of the kids next to me started crying and his brother scuttled off to tell the flight attendant. I tried to offer him a stick of gum, but he just hugged tighter his purple elephant. He told the flight attendant he had a stomachache and the flight attendant brought him a room-temperature Coke. His little brother knelt on the floor and, using the seat as a table, started drawing soccer players in a huge notebook. The blond girl said something to me in Serbian or maybe Russian — I don’t know — that sounded like the swishing of a bunch of magnolias, which is, of course, pretty implausible, given I’ve never heard the swishing of a bunch of magnolias. I smiled the forced smile of an idiot.
I could have sworn the immigration officer at Belgrade airport was a character out of a Tarkovsky film. Maybe Andrei Rublev himself. He sat there smoking sternly and looking at me as if the night before I’d fucked his virgin daughter. I said I was sorry, just in case, and put my passport through the gap in the thick bulletproof glass, and without looking up he started to bend it, scratch it, tug at it, rub the laminated pages with his greasy thumb. Another officer was standing just behind him, watching the whole thing over his shoulder. The officer in the seat showed my passport to his friend, who grabbed it and bent it and scratched it and then went off somewhere with it. Maybe to some other supervisor who was watching it all from an even greater height, so that he could scratch it too. An ominous and infinite pyramid of Serbian scratchers, I thought. The first officer stayed in his seat, smoking. In English, his eyes fixed on my mouth, he asked me why I’d come to Belgrade, and for how long, and could he see my return ticket, and how much money did I have with me, and also was I carrying any plastic (that threw me, maybe because I was nervous, until he said credit card), and where would I be staying, and where was my letter of invitation. My what? Your letter, he repeated through the bulletproof glass, his cigarette clouding everything with smoke. My knees grew weak and I felt a gust of cool air in my stomach and I was convinced that in the airport of the former Yugoslavian capital you could clearly feel the earth’s rotation. My what? Letter, he shouted at me for the third time. But Vesna Pesić, the ambassador to Mexico, I stuttered, like a frightened little rabbit. I regretted it. The guy frowned and looked even sterner and in my mind I saw him pulling his stone-age revolver on me at any minute, then I imagined a small room, my body tied to a chair, the injection to make me tell them all my truths. The other officer came back with my passport and said something to his colleague in the chair. They both laughed. I felt a faint urge to cry. The officer stubbed his cigarette out in an ashtray already full of butts, and without a word he handed my passport and money and credit cards back through the gap in the bulletproof glass.
I came out of the airport, and I don’t know why — since Slavko Nikolić had told me about it in his last e-mail — but I was surprised to see everything covered in white. I was overcome by a deep sense of peace, of well-being, of harmony, a feeling that snow only arouses in people who live in the tropics. I opened my backpack for my hat and scarf. It was getting dark.
Just then, a pale woman with straw-colored hair said my name. I’m Zdena Lecić, Slavko’s girlfriend, she said in English, and held out her hand with a charming smile. And this is my father, Marko Lecić, as she indicated a short and stooped and cheerful man who immediately made me think of Bela Lugosi at the end of his life, or rather of a very cadaverous Martin Landau playing Bela Lugosi at the end of his life. I’m the driver, he said with a smoker’s voice and in an appalling English accent, and between chuckles and nasty coughs he clapped me hard on the back.
We got into a red Yugo that looked like it was about to collapse but that still worked pretty well, notwithstanding any tempting Yugoslav allegories. From the backseat, Zdena told me we’d go to her house first so we could all have dinner with Slavko, and that later her dad would take me to the apartment. The chauffeur, joked Marko, raising his hand. I was exhausted by the journey, but what could I do? Zdena explained to me that since her boyfriend had broken his leg, he’d decided to move in with them, as her dad’s house was a lot more spacious. It’s better for everyone, she added. I asked what Slavko did for a living, but they both stayed oddly quiet. Marko said something in Serbian and then said in English that before we did anything else we’d have to stop in at the police station. I thought he was joking. You have to register, he said seriously. Zdena laughed. How do you mean, register? All tourists have to register with the police when they arrive in the country, said Marko as we crossed a vast white bridge that reminded me of Milan’s last postcard. And all tourists have to register again before they leave the country, he added. Check in and check out, like in a hotel, I thought, but I didn’t say anything. We passed by one bombed-out building, then another, and another. I asked why they left them like that, why they didn’t knock them down. Supposedly, said Zdena, there are unexploded bombs inside. And there’s no money for it, said Marko as he parked the Yugo next to a pink building, a real bubblegum pink, a tutti-frutti pink: the only pink building in an utterly gray city. Is this the police station? I asked doubtfully. There was no sign outside. You need to show them your passport and plane ticket, Marko told me as he opened his door. I’ll wait for you guys here, said Zdena, still smiling. And so, documents in hand, I started walking toward the pink building, and it occurred to me, rather melodramatically, that the whole thing reeked of a goddamn ambush.