‘Sorry.’
‘Wait. I’ll tell you when to start again.’ While I wait I fold my arms and stare at the hills. My mind moves away from the hair-washing and the well water and I wonder where we are heading. Nobody dares think more than one day in advance, can imagine a place in time as distant as next week, next month, next year. Nor is anyone thinking about war, or using the word. Not the newspapers, not the drinkers in the Zodijak. War is far too big a word.
‘Duro, pour!’
I begin to pour again. The water is cold, very cold indeed. I can see it in the pinched, pale ends of Anka’s fingers. For the first time I notice the back of her neck and realise that this maybe is the only time I’ve ever seen it, at least since we stopped being children, because usually this part of her is curtained off by her hair. I remember not so long ago when she talked about the back of my neck. Now here is hers, pale as the moon, the hairs raised on tiny goose pimples. I reach out my fingers and touch it. She lifts her head slightly. ‘What?’
‘Nothing. A bit of soap.’ I pour more water and when I look up, Javor is standing at the door of the outbuilding where he sleeps, barefoot, wearing a pair of jeans, smoking a rolled cigarette. Just watching us, without anger. I hold out the bucket to him and he stubs his cigarette out on the side of the flimsy building, steps forward and takes it from me. He tips the remainder of the water onto Anka’s hair and she sees it’s him, reaches behind her and briefly clasps his ankle with her fingers.
I go into the house and come back with my mother’s bottle of vinegar.
Afterwards Anka rubs her hair with a towel and leaves it to dry in the sun. The nape of her neck is back behind its veil. I go to fetch coffee and when I come back she is sitting on the edge of the well, where I had sat; Javor is behind her. He is playing with the hair at the back of her neck and occasionally, idly and without thinking, he strokes her neck with his thumb. When I hand him his coffee he removes his hand from Anka’s neck to take the cup. I don’t envy him. These people are as dear to me as they are to each other. Javor and Anka. My friends.
The image I best remember from that morning is only this, a single snapshot: Anka, bent forward, her neck exposed to the light, the filaments of fine hair standing upright on their tiny goose-pimple hillocks.
A day later I go to town, to the Zodijak, sent by Javor. When I arrive, there is Krešimir, standing in the office talking to Fabjan. The door has been left slightly ajar. I wonder if I should come back, but at that moment Krešimir leaves. He passes me at the bar. Usually Krešimir ignores me but this time he smiles, nods and asks after my mother and sister. I tell him they are fine. He leaves. That’s it. All of this is unusual, but not enormously so. Krešimir doesn’t like people to know of his dislike for me so he greets me when he sees he has no choice, this time because Fabjan has come out of the office and is standing right behind him. Krešimir likes to impress Fabjan, I’ve told you this. Maybe he wants Fabjan to back some business venture of his. Krešimir was meant to make money but never really has, well not a great deal, not as much as was always supposed, despite his job at the fertiliser factory and all the opportunities that must offer. I think it is because Krešimir is afraid of risks, would rather hang on to what he has, like all good misers. Fabjan, on the other hand, could never be accused of being afraid to take risks. Fabjan is all about business. All the same there is something about Krešimir’s smile that makes me wary, as his smiles always do.
Fabjan nods at me and goes behind the bar. I take a coffee, there are other customers in the bar. I wait for the place to empty and then I give Fabjan Javor’s message about the money. Fabjan doesn’t look up from what he’s doing, which is jabbing the buttons of an outsize calculator with his finger, but he nods as if he is listening and jabs some more. He stares at the numbers on the screen. ‘Tell Javor I’ll have something for him tomorrow. How much does he want?’
I say enough to last until this is over. I name a sum.
‘Tell him I can do better than that. The way inflation is going, he’ll need more than that. But he’ll need to hold on a few days: cash flow, you know. It’ll be sorted. How’s he doing?’
I say he’s fine. His mother left for her operation, which she’d had to put off but couldn’t any longer. She’d gone to the district hospital.
‘Tell her to take her time coming back. You know what I mean?’
I tell all of this to Javor later. He presses his lips together and nods, frowning. He’s worried about his father and wants to try to see him. I say I think that’s a bad idea, but I’ll go. Anka and I walk back down the road, she to the blue house and me to my place; Anka is quiet and restless at the same time. She tells me she and Vinka had argued on her last visit.
‘Over what?’
‘She’s drinking more. She gets into rages. I’d asked for a little money, just until Javor gets some in. She started on Javor. We argued. No, she argued. I tried to explain the situation. I didn’t want to argue.’
‘I can give you money.’
‘It’s fine. Krešimir gave me some. It’ll be sorted soon. Fabjan knows.’
‘Krešimir was there?’
‘Yes. Krešimir was there.’
The rain comes down suddenly, though the sky stays bright. It feels like a summer storm but it’s a bit late in the year for that. I am on the mountain above the tree line. The rain is so heavy that, despite the light, I can hardly see where I’m going. It’s like looking through a waterfall. With the lightning I change my mind about going back through the plantation and head in the direction of Gudura Uspomena.
Earlier the same day, as well as visiting Fabjan at the Zodijak to ask for Javor’s money, I had also been to ask after Javor’s father. The school looked just the same as before, the grey van parked outside. I approached one of the lads outside, I recognised him and he knew me by sight. He told me visitors weren’t allowed but said he’d take a message. I thanked him. I told him I’d wait in case Mr Barac had a message for me. The lad shrugged, please yourself he said and disappeared inside. About fifteen minutes passed and just when I was about to go in search of him he came back and said, ‘Barac has been released.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Isn’t that what I just said?’ he replied cockily.
‘Yes, and I asked if you were sure.’ I stared him down.
‘That’s what they told me.’ Surly now.
So then I went by the Barac house and found it closed up, as it had been ever since Javor’s mother travelled to have her operation and her husband was taken away. I’ve checked on it at intervals, to make sure it doesn’t get looted. So far nobody has dared. I banged on the door for the sake of it. A woman passing by watched me out of the corner of her eye. At the end of the street she stopped and turned to look. At first I ignored her but then I stared back at her and after a while she shuffled off, though not immediately. At first she met my gaze for a full four or five seconds before she gave a little smirk, dropped her chin and turned her back to me. Nobody had dared to steal from the house just yet, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t. What was it they were waiting for? I wondered. Was it merely a matter of time, or was there some other signal? I went back to the school, to the same guy I spoke to half an hour before, and waved at him from a short distance. He looked up but didn’t wave back. He ground out the cigarette he’d been smoking and was about to duck back inside when I caught hold of his arm. I told him the house was empty.
‘So what? What’s that got to do with me? They said he’d been released.’
‘Who?’
He jerked his thumb in the direction of the school building.
‘Well someone’s made a mistake.’ I let him go.