Where’s Astor? she asked, heading to the living room. A black cocker spaniel lay in an armchair, already a fourteen-year-old, watching this strange woman on her approach with her grimace ever shriller, who is she and what does she want, strangers never grimace at him like this, he took a long look at Marina, she looked at him and knew he didn’t recognize her. At that moment she wasn’t hurt Astor didn’t recognize her, nor was she when she was telling Him about it later, but she couldn’t be sure it wouldn’t one day hurt, so she tried not to give it much thought, just said her dog hadn’t recognized her, not a hint of sadness in her voice, but it brought a sadness out in Him.
She had been fourteen when Astor came into her life. Today she is twice as old, making her as old as a little girl plus an old dog. That’s about how she had felt in Belgrade at her parents’ side, in a different life, one neither frenetic nor euphoric, but gentle and slow, so you felt the pain all the more acutely the second it drew near. Astor had been the end result of the deepest grief, perhaps still the deepest she keeps. The grief ’s name was Hefest, a brown cocker spaniel that had been hit by a car in Grbavica and had spent the night dying in her room, in her lap. It was then she made a wish that she would never again get close to death, that she might run from everything precious and dear before it disappeared. Her father buried Hefest in the yard of the Viktor Bubanj barracks, and it was then for the first and only time in her life she saw her father cry.
I’m going to take him for a walk today, she said, grabbing Astor’s collar and leash, noticing they were new, and leading him out in front of their building. It was something she’d done a thousand times in her life, and now she had to do it again, to feel like it was no big deal and that she could live without it, that it was something she didn’t need to remember, something she had to forget, and the only way she could do so was to again, after so much time, take a dog that no longer recognizes her, because it’s already much older than her life, for a walk in the park, which isn’t actually the same park, but that doesn’t matter. The park too was so full of dust you had to sneeze it out, to give yourself a good shake before boarding the plane, shake loose all excess; dust, walking the dog, whatever. Astor, she shouted, the dog didn’t turn around, Astor, he waddled on like an old man, one leg in front of the other, but still fast enough that she had to break into a jog to catch him. Astor, Marina screamed, fuming mid-park that not only did the dog not recognize her, he held her in contempt. It was a sudden strange reflex from a former time, Astor was again her business, again her dog, and he shouldn’t behave like this because what good is a dog like this, what’s the point taking such a dog for a walk if this is how it’s all going to end. In that instant Astor shot a random glance back, saw Marina’s scowl and furious waving, turned around, and again, slowly, step by step, like a good little doggie, returned to her knee.
Uff, I forgot to tell you he’s stone-deaf, it’s been more than a year now, said her mother, busy fixing a lunch that would today nourish Marina’s skinny limbs, and together with the next five to come would be a message to the world where her daughter was returning. Astor was again in his armchair, his head resting on his paws, looking at Marina with that senile sadness, one full of miscomprehension of those who would so constantly and so animatedly explain something. She could still feel traces of rage; in fact it seemed that this time her anger was moving slower than its source. She needed to change something urgently but didn’t know what. It would be best to go now, to get on a plane today and disappear. But of course she won’t. It’s only right to stay another five days, and then take off among the angels and onward to a world where she wasn’t beholden to anything, anything good or anything evil, where not a single one of her deaths existed.
Marina lived in Vancouver. She had gotten her Canadian passport a month ago and could now travel wherever she wanted. The process of becoming a Canadian citizen had lasted three years. As the Canadian authorities see it, that’s how long you need to forget everything you might call home and accept that home no longer exists or at least that home isn’t where you were born.
She worked in a shoe shop and once a month had an appointment with the caseworker responsible for her resettlement and integration, a Vietnamese woman who repeated over and over how she knew life under communism was tough, offering only a handful of rice a day. Marina would nod her head, smile in confirmation, yes, a handful of rice and nothing more besides. The Vietnamese woman was quickly convinced that Marina’s integration and socialization would be perfect, and that soon she wouldn’t even remember the many a horror of a system that forced everyone to wear the same uniforms.
She lived alone, she tried falling in love three times, every time she said I love you, I love you, I love you, it was like she was saying oh, that’s so great at a dozy rest-home tea party. Not obliging her to anything, that’s about what it sounded like. Then she would take off with barely an explanation, leaving behind confused young men lifting pairs of foggy glasses with their index fingers as if it were a rainy day.
In the free world you can live completely alone and never feel like something’s missing. And so Marina ended up alone in Vancouver, surrounded by a mountain of shoes, like a Cinderella who after midnight had realized that not even a prince was much of a win in life, at least not in this country.
A few nights before the trip to Belgrade she’d had a dream in which someone was missing; one of the three, Astor, her mother, or her father, was absent, but in her dream she couldn’t work out who. One moment Astor and her father were there, the next her mother and Astor, the next her father and mother, the next Astor, her father and mother, but as a pair, not as a threesome. She desperately tried to account for all household members, but there was always someone missing. She phoned her sister in Los Angeles and tried to tell her about the dream; she didn’t understand it, she said my kid has a cold and I gotta go to work. Marina put the receiver down guiltily and looked at the clock, in Zagreb it’s four in the morning, she wanted to call Him, but how do you call someone in Zagreb at that hour to tell them about a dream from Vancouver.
Since arriving she’d heard her parents’ breathing, seen the age spots on her father’s hands and his choking at lunch. Her mother’s face had an unhealthy complexion, or that’s just how it seemed to her; do you have any prescriptions, she asked, sweetheart, what’s with that, we’re not sick, her father replied, surprised. Astor was still lying there, his head again resting on his paws, looking sadly ahead, his eyes only flickering when someone made a sudden movement.