‘I told you. I’m visiting a friend.’ He leered at Laura a second time, let his eyes travel down the front of her body. She lowered her hand from her neck and pulled her dressing gown further across her breasts. Fabjan pushed his face close to hers and flicked his tongue against the back of his teeth in a suggestive manner. ‘What’s it to you? Unless you’re fucking her. Or maybe you just want to.’ He no longer spoke in English, he turned towards me.
‘She doesn’t want you,’ I said. ‘So what are you doing here?’
‘I’ve come to find out what the fuck’s going on.’
‘Meaning?’
‘I want to know who’s playing games.’
‘No one’s playing games.’
‘Yes, they are. And people are talking. And they’re talking now about this house, about the red car. About this stupid bitch. Because of this stupid bitch.’ He swung his head round to look at Laura. This time she flinched and looked at him and then immediately back at the spot on the floor.
‘Don’t look at her,’ I said. Then in English, ‘Laura, go to my house. Grace is there.’
Laura rose and left the room, pulling her dressing gown tightly around her, her head down. She went without a word, as though she was afraid of being called back. Once outside she began to run, I listened until her footsteps faded. I reached for one of the kitchen chairs and sat down, the gun between my knees.
‘Put that thing away, would you?’ said Fabjan. ‘You’re not going to shoot anyone.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not if I don’t have to. But I’m close enough here to take your foot off. Or blow away your face. Have you ever seen a gunshot wound? Probably not. I forget you don’t hunt. You were never in the Army either, of course. Well, at close range the pellets haven’t yet fanned out, they enter the flesh in a wad. The cartridge opens like a flower, it’s made of plastic, you know. The cartridge follows the shot into the flesh and it leaves a wound the shape of a flower. Very pretty. It would kill you of course. But then I wouldn’t shoot you at close range, nothing to make it worth going to hospital for — what with all the explanations about what you were doing here. No, you’d prefer to ask your wife to pick pellets out of you for the next week.’
He looked me in the eye, some seconds passed. ‘This is crap,’ he said after a bit. ‘I’m fucked if I know what’s going on.’
‘You know.’
I didn’t say anything else. The years of silence spoke. Fabjan half opened his mouth and stopped, his narrowed eyes held my gaze. He didn’t want to risk saying anything else. He shrugged as if nothing mattered. ‘If you say so.’
‘Go,’ I said. ‘Don’t come back.’
Fabjan rose and walked towards the door, stopped, his hand on the door knob, and turned to me. ‘What do you want anyway?’
‘Krešimir says he’s leaving Gost.’
Fabjan was silent. He pursed his lips. ‘So?’
‘I’ll miss him,’ I said. ‘And so would you.’
For a few seconds Fabjan considered my words. He didn’t add anything. We understood each other.
When Fabjan had gone I sat for a few minutes and thought about what to tell Laura. A sound made me turn. Matthew: standing on the stairs. I’d completely forgotten about him. ‘Duro.’ He rubbed an eye. ‘What are you doing here?’
We walked over to my house. I boiled water, made coffee. I told Laura that Fabjan was a businessman with many interests in Gost, a thug who operated outside the law. He and Krešimir had a falling out over money, I said. Krešimir owed Fabjan money and Fabjan wanted to be repaid from the sale of the house. I said I didn’t know more details but I supposed that’s what it had been about. Fabjan was used to getting what he wanted with threats. Laura didn’t pretend to understand; she was still stunned. If she had questions they’d come later, by which time I would have thought up more answers. For the time being the explanation I’d given was good enough. Matthew had slept through everything and his questions about what had happened prevented the need for further analysis, rehearsing the sequence of events from Grace being surprised by Fabjan when he walked in without knocking, frightening the life out of her where she stood in the kitchen, to Laura coming down the stairs in answer to her daughter’s call, Grace running to fetch me.
I walked them back to the blue house and stayed there the night. I lay on my back on the couch. I thought about Fabjan’s question. He asked me what I wanted, a question to which he already knew the answer and had known it for many years. It was why we were still here, we three in Gost, when so many had left.
I wanted everything the way it had always been.
Along the edge of the field: a dense scattering of pink pimpernel, the flowers came up at this time of the year in the farmers’ fields. The day was hot, cloudless, the trees shimmered behind currents of air in which a pair of kestrels hovered. The heron passed overhead on its way to the river. No wind. Dust in the air. The darkness of the trees came abruptly and I had to slow down until my eyes adjusted to the change. I’m getting old, I thought. Once or twice I heard the sound of other living things in the woods, but I hadn’t come to hunt, I’d come to escape the house. I carried nothing and had left with no particular destination in mind, but now I found myself headed for Gudura Uspomena.
In Gost talk about the blue house continued. People knew about the paint attack, though not about Fabjan’s visit. I imagined eyes following Krešimir wherever he went. I didn’t go to the Zodijak, I thought I’d give Fabjan a day or two. Anyway his car wasn’t parked outside. When I went back to the blue house the doors, which had stood open so much of the summer, were closed and Laura answered my knock warily, her hand at her throat as it had been last night. Inside the house was slightly altered: no vase of flowers on the table, the throws on the chairs, the cushions, these things were missing. Put away, I supposed. Laura was preparing to leave. We drank coffee at the kitchen table and she said she’d spoken to Conor who’d offered to fly out, but she’d told him they were OK. He’d asked her to give me his thanks. It seemed to me the full extent of what had happened the night before was just beginning to be felt.
‘What about the police?’ I asked Laura.
‘Conor says we might have to stay on if there’s an investigation.’
I told her that was likely to be true, that I was there if she needed me. ‘But he won’t be back,’ I’d promised her. ‘He was drunk. It’s over.’
Below me the water level in the swimming hole was low and the water barely moved. Shades of green, white rocks visible beneath the surface. Downstream the waterfall had narrowed to a spout, which spilled evenly into the pool below. The sound rode upwards through the still air. For twenty minutes I stood and stared at the view. I’d known it all my life and it changed every hour of every day.
A noise behind me made me turn. Something moved in the trees. The footfall, too heavy for a deer, belonged to a person. I waited with my back to the ravine. A figure appeared: Grace. She walked towards me, the sweat shone on her forehead and she was breathing heavily. A few metres out of the trees she stopped, looked at the sky and then out across the ravine, shading her eyes. She came over to where I was standing. ‘Isn’t it amazing? You never brought us up here. I found it by myself.’
I turned away, to look out over the ravine. ‘What do you want?’
‘I wanted to talk to you about the man who came last night.’
‘His name is Fabjan.’
‘And he runs the café where Matt went to use the Internet. Mum told me. She couldn’t remember his name. Is he a friend of yours?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Do you have any friends?’