Come on, he calls looking down at me.
I throw my bag down next to his and start slowly climbing up behind him. My bare feet smack against the bark. I have no idea how long it’s been since I last climbed something. Strange that you just stop climbing, and you can’t really remember the moment when you stopped doing it. Adults always know when they quit smoking or drinking or when they stopped nursing their baby, but you’re younger when you quit climbing trees or playing with marbles or Barbies and you don’t remember when it happened, you forget long before you’re an adult.
The little heart-shaped leaves of Amir’s linden tree get denser up near the top of the tree and the branches are thicker and darker. I see Amir sitting on a thick branch above me.
Here, he says pointing to a spot next to him on the branch, here’s the proof.
I can’t see it, I say.
Amir rummages in his pocket and pulls out a phone.
You got another one, I say.
It’s Tarik’s old one. It was in my room when I came home, says Amir aiming the light from the phone’s display at the branch.
Crazy, I say looking at the short piece of thread hanging down from the branch. The bark looks weird, like an arm that’s been bandaged and the skin has grown back around it. I look out through the leaves at the city. It’s already dark up here in the leaves but the rest of the city is still lit up, off in the west you can see the radio tower and it looks like it’s on fire because the sun is setting behind it.
You can’t be angry at Jameelah, says Amir.
I’m not, what do you mean?
Because she didn’t want to go to the police, that’s what I mean.
Oh.
She didn’t want to get involved you know.
I know, I say, but if it wasn’t for Nico you’d still be sitting in jail right now.
Tarik’s there now, which is just as bad.
But Tarik is guilty.
Yeah, says Amir, I know, but still. Do you still have the box?
No, I threw it away like you said.
Good.
How long will Tarik be in jail?
A long time, says Amir, and when he gets out he’ll go directly from jail to the airport and then off to Sarajevo and then Visegrad.
I pluck a leaf and rub it between my fingers.
Have you ever been there, I ask.
Stop that, Amir says taking the leaf out of my hand. He looks past me, off toward the east through the leaves and shakes his head.
Tarik was born there, he says, they lived there, Babo, Majka, and Tarik. Tarik had a red bicycle, there’s a photo of him riding a red bike in his bathing suit, the sun is shining like today, can you picture it, he was riding a bike normally, with two healthy legs, says Amir, but then the war came. Babo went to the army, nothing got better, things just got worse and more dangerous. Majka took Tarik. There’s a bridge in Visegrad, a very old bridge from the middle ages, and the river runs beneath it. Majka wanted to cross the bridge. There were Chetniks on the bridge. She turned around but they followed her. Tarik screamed and wanted to help her and one of them shot him in the leg.
Amir rips the leaf in his hand and then rubs the pieces between his fingers.
They raped her, he whispers, then they tied Tarik to her body and threw them into the river. Tarik told me the night everything happened. I went straight to the police. On my own. Tarik didn’t pressure me at all. Neither did Majka, nobody pressured me, everyone just thinks so because they want easy answers to everything, they want to understand things right away, things that don’t have anything to do with each other. But the truth isn’t like mathematics, it’s always something singular and it’s never logical.
The red orb in the sky disappears behind the radio tower, it’s nearly nighttime up here in the tree.
Visegrad, I say, the sound of the word is nice. Like a combination of vitamins and ice and grass and glad.
Yeah, says Amir, people think so. But it’s always the case that places where bad things happen sound nice, well, either funny or nice, did you ever notice that?
Yeah, I say, I thought that about Fukushima.
Or Auschwitz, says Amir, Auschwitz sounds like Slivovitz, don’t you think? It makes everything that much more awful you know, it’s like poetry, that combination of tragedy and comedy, life seems to love that sort of thing.
You think so?
Yeah, says Amir, definitely. That’s the way life is. When things are going too well something has to come along to mess things up, otherwise it wouldn’t be life you know.
Night has descended on his face, just the whites of his eyes, four half moons, glint at me.
Where was she lying, he asks.
I look down at the ground, at the dry dirt around the trunk.
There.
Where exactly?
There, I say and point down to a spot next to where we used to play marbles.
What did she look like, Amir asks.
What do you mean, I say.
I mean at the end. How did she look?
I stare at the spot where Jasna had lain. Her tight white t-shirt, blood running out of her left side and soaking into the ground, pinkish yellow puke in the corner of her mouth and her eyes like in that YouTube video where a group of men hunt down a woman and kill her in the street in some hot country.
Go on, tell me.
Peaceful, I say.
Really?
Yes. Very peaceful.
Rainer’s taxi is standing in front of the building. I go through the courtyard and up the stairs and look for the key to the apartment but I’ve barely stuck it into the lock before the door opens. Mama grabs me by my hair and yanks me into the apartment and the next second I get smacked in the face.
Do you know how late it is, she screams, you shouldn’t be roaming around like this, how many times do I have to tell you!
I duck out of the way.
First and second period are cancelled tomorrow, I say.
I do not care, Mama screams, after everything that’s happened. We get worried.
Rainer comes out to the hall.
When it’s dark you are at home, that’s what we agreed, he says, and as long as you are living under my roof you will stick to it.
I look him up and down. The way he’s standing there in the greasy coveralls that he wears at home like other people wear bathrobes, his thin grey and blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. I can’t help thinking of his porno collection under the floorboards, the way he loves to sit in front of the TV and pick at his toenails, that for him is what it means to be home, the same way he stares at the toilet paper after he wipes his ass, what is there to say to someone like that. Without saying a word I turn around and go into my room. I undress, open the window, and let my legs dangle out the window and smoke a cigarette.
There’s a quiet knock at the door.
Nini, whispers Jessi and I can hear in her voice that she’s crying.
I just wanted to go to the bathroom and then it happened, says Jessi pointing at a blood stain on her underwear. I flick the cigarette out the window and hop down from the windowsill.
Come here, I say and pull her onto the bed, it’s not so bad, are you in pain?
Jessi shakes her head.
No but I don’t want Rainer to find out, he said that when I get my period I’ll get a white jumper as a gift and have to eat tomato soup, that’s what they do where he’s from, that’s how they celebrate it. I don’t want that, I don’t want tomato soup, I hate tomatoes.
Come with me, I say and take her hand.
Quietly we creep to the bathroom. I search in the cabinet.
Here, I say handing her a tampon, put one leg up on the toilet seat like this and then you stick it into yourself.
I’m scared, says Jessi.
No need to be scared, it’s easy.
No, I’m scared of getting that shock that you can get.