shoulders. He’s got the cinder blocks on his feet, and the rope around his waist, and it’s been hours. I am on my feet, but I am very quiet. Gavran Gailé’s hat is dripping over his ears, and he takes it off and shakes the water out of it. Then he bends down and unwinds the chains from his feet. He does this like he is taking off his shoes, and then he undoes the knot of the rope around his waist and lets it fall back into the water.
He turns around, and it is really him, really his face, as smiling and polite as ever, as he says to me, “Remember your pledge, Doctor—for next time.” He waves to me, and then he turns around and disappears into the woods.
THE FIRST NIGHT AT BARBA IVAN AND NADA’S PLACE, I slept for three hours, and after that my dreams filled up with the music of the cicadas and I woke up stifled by the heat. My bed faced the window that looked out over the vineyards behind the house, and through it I could see an orange half-moon falling down the spine of the hillside. Zóra, facedown and prostrate, had kicked off the covers, legs hanging off the end of the bed; her breath was caught in a tight whistle somewhere between her arms and hair and the pillows. Downstairs, the little girl was coughing again, and her coughs were sticky and unfinished; she was trying to sleep through them. Somewhere among layers of noise was the sea, dragging foam up the beach on the other side of the house.
Months later, long after the forty days were over, when I had already begun to piece things together, I would still go to sleep hoping that he would find his way into my dreams and tell me something important. I was always disappointed, of course, because even when I did dream of him, he would inevitably be sitting in an armchair we didn’t own, in a room I didn’t recognize, and he would say things like, Bring me the newspaper, I’m hungry , and I would know, even in my sleep, that it didn’t mean a fucking thing. But that night, I hadn’t learned to think of him as dead yet, hadn’t processed news that seemed too distant to belong to me, not even when I tried to bring it closer by thinking of his absence from our house.
I thought about our pantry. It was an enormous cupboard built into the kitchen wall opposite the sink, ceiling-to-floor egg-shell doors, the plastic bags from Zlatan’s bakery swinging from the door handles as you opened it. I could see my grandma’s big flour tin, white and blue, with a little cheerful baker in a chef’s hat smiling from the front of it. The bottom shelf with its plastic bags and cereals, the salt tin, mixing bowls, the orange and brown coffee bags from the store down the street. And then, higher up on the center shelf, four glass bowls in a neat line across the middle of the cupboard. Almonds, sunflower seeds, walnuts, and cut-up squares of bittersweet baking chocolate. My grandfather’s snack regimen, always ready ahead of time. There for thirty-five more days.
The diggers were back in the vineyard again; I couldn’t see them in the darkness, but they were there, long shadows moving in the faint beam of a single flashlight that seemed to shift constantly, except for a few minutes here and there when whoever held it put it down to continue digging, and the light shone into the vines until they tightened and drowned it out. Every so often, one of the diggers would cough; and while I was watching the vineyard, the little girl kept coughing, too.
Around four in the morning, I got dressed and went downstairs. Bis was nowhere to be seen, but his likeness, face slightly twisted by an unsteady hand, peered down at me from a sketch above the umbrella pot by the back door. There was an antique telephone on the living room desk, a rotary dial with a heavy brass-and-bone receiver, the numbers in the wheel worn away to nothing. I took the crumpled receipt with the Zdrevkov clinic number out of my pocket and dialed. At first, I got a busy signal, and it raised my hopes; I could
He turns around, and it is really him, really his face, as smiling and polite as ever, as he says to me, “Remember your pledge, Doctor—for next time.” He waves to me, and then he turns around and disappears into the woods.
THE FIRST NIGHT AT BARBA IVAN AND NADA’S PLACE, I slept for three hours, and after that my dreams filled up with the music of the cicadas and I woke up stifled by the heat. My bed faced the window that looked out over the vineyards behind the house, and through it I could see an orange half-moon falling down the spine of the hillside. Zóra, facedown and prostrate, had kicked off the covers, legs hanging off the end of the bed; her breath was caught in a tight whistle somewhere between her arms and hair and the pillows. Downstairs, the little girl was coughing again, and her coughs were sticky and unfinished; she was trying to sleep through them. Somewhere among layers of noise was the sea, dragging foam up the beach on the other side of the house.
Months later, long after the forty days were over, when I had already begun to piece things together, I would still go to sleep hoping that he would find his way into my dreams and tell me something important. I was always disappointed, of course, because even when I did dream of him, he would inevitably be sitting in an armchair we didn’t own, in a room I didn’t recognize, and he would say things like, Bring me the newspaper, I’m hungry , and I would know, even in my sleep, that it didn’t mean a fucking thing. But that night, I hadn’t learned to think of him as dead yet, hadn’t processed news that seemed too distant to belong to me, not even when I tried to bring it closer by thinking of his absence from our house.
I thought about our pantry. It was an enormous cupboard built into the kitchen wall opposite the sink, ceiling-to-floor egg-shell doors, the plastic bags from Zlatan’s bakery swinging from the door handles as you opened it. I could see my grandma’s big flour tin, white and blue, with a little cheerful baker in a chef’s hat smiling from the front of it. The bottom shelf with its plastic bags and cereals, the salt tin, mixing bowls, the orange and brown coffee bags from the store down the street. And then, higher up on the center shelf, four glass bowls in a neat line across the middle of the cupboard. Almonds, sunflower seeds, walnuts, and cut-up squares of bittersweet baking chocolate. My grandfather’s snack regimen, always ready ahead of time. There for thirty-five more days.
The diggers were back in the vineyard again; I couldn’t see them in the darkness, but they were there, long shadows moving in the faint beam of a single flashlight that seemed to shift constantly, except for a few minutes here and there when whoever held it put it down to continue digging, and the light shone into the vines until they tightened and drowned it out. Every so often, one of the diggers would cough; and while I was watching the vineyard, the little girl kept coughing, too.
Around four in the morning, I got dressed and went downstairs. Bis was nowhere to be seen, but his likeness, face slightly twisted by an unsteady hand, peered down at me from a sketch above the umbrella pot by the back door. There was an antique telephone on the living room desk, a rotary dial with a heavy brass-and-bone receiver, the numbers in the wheel worn away to nothing. I took the crumpled receipt with the Zdrevkov clinic number out of my pocket and dialed. At first, I got a busy signal, and it raised my hopes; I could
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