Diary of Interrupted Days by Dragan Todorovic

hope?”
    “No,” said Johnny.
    “Good. If this is true, my friend, we shall take a trip to Belgrade, the two of us. I have some high-level talking to do.”
    The rest of the day dragged by. After leaving the orange house, Johnny went for a walk. As the wind lifted the fog in long, slow waves, the village appeared—two rows of serious houses on the sides of the wide road with several short cross streets leading nowhere in particular. Why do people live in such places? He had been through villages with gardens, orchards, wells, beauty, and had always been able to understand their attraction, but this was a mutant. It was as if its inhabitants’ rationale was simply to outdo their neighbours, building ever larger, uglier buildings. This was the germinating seed of an ugly town, and—after he stumbled upon that thought in his head—the violence from the previous night suddenly seemed understandable. Not understandable, he corrected himself, but logical. Ifyou decide to build several ugly houses together with the idea that they will grow into an ugly town, why not expect violence? Ugliness oozes aggression.
    He passed a bar already full of soldiers and paramilitaries and went into a small place on one of the side streets. Two older men were sitting at a corner table, drinking coffee and shots of brandy, and a serious-looking woman tended bar. He ordered some eggs and bacon, sat in the opposite corner from the men, and took out his notebook. He ate his breakfast slowly, and then drank a coffee, without being able to come up with a single word. Anything he put down on paper would fortify this place in his memory and he did not want that to happen. Finally, he closed the notebook and put it back in his pocket. One of the old men, in a red-checkered shirt that looked like a member of the family of tablecloths, had been glancing at him every so often. Now that the bridge was open, he said, “Where are you from, son?”
    “From Belgrade, grandpa. How is life here?”
    “Why, are you thinking of moving?”
    Johnny saw the mischievous shine in his eye, and smiled. “Everything’s possible.”
    “Not now, it isn’t,” the man’s companion said. A pair of glasses protruded from the breast pocket of his ancient jacket, and his bushy eyebrows connected above his nose.
    “Join us,” said Tablecloth Shirt.
    Johnny took his cup and moved to their table. “How did you sleep last night?”
    “Like the princess on the pea,” said Tablecloth Shirt. “There must have been a bullet under my mattress.”
    He and Johnny laughed. Eyebrows remained serious.
    “This looks like a rich village,” Johnny said.
    “People here are hard-working, son. Almost every house has someone in Germany or Austria. They intend to come back when they retire.”
    “Are there mixed marriages?”
    “A few,” Eyebrows said. “We used to live nicely with one another before this started. Then the idiots came to power. When fools are riding, everyone turns into an ass.”
    Tablecloth Shirt moved his legs under the table.
    “Don’t give me any signals,” Eyebrows said. “This is my place and I’m free to speak as I wish.”
    “Don’t worry, I’m not one of them—I’m here by mistake,” Johnny said.
    “See? He’s here by mistake,” Eyebrows said. “No,” he said to Johnny,
“I’m
here by mistake. I was against this deal. Yeah, there were some fools with guns here, some Croatian boys, but they weren’t doing any harm—this is one of the villages where Serbs are in the majority. Then that idiot Marko decided to bring you in so we can sleep well. I sleep well anyway. I’ve never harmed anyone in my life.”
    “No incidents before we got here?”
    “None,” Eyebrows concluded, offering this as definitive proof.
    “I was told that the Croatian paramilitaries killed someone two nights ago.”
    “Not in this village, son,” Tablecloth Shirt said. “Perhaps somewhere else.”
    “What will happen,” Eyebrows said, “is that now that