We Trade Our Night for Someone Else's Day by Ivana Bodrozic (books to read to improve english txt) 📗

“Pardon me! Pardon me!” she called as the two of them strode hurriedy to his office. Grgić did not slow his pace; he rolled his eyes and snarled:

“That woman’s going to be the death of me . . .”

Melania would not relent; she kept yelling after him. “I don’t think I told you everything! I’ve more proof! I saw . . .” Her voice faded as Grgić banged the door shut behind them. He practically shoved Nora into the chair across from him. With his left hand he rubbed his eyes.

“Quick and to the point,” he repeated. Nora nodded.

“I ordered Ilinčić’s murder,” she said, enunciating every word. Grgić froze. His eyebrows knit, his mouth sagged open.

“Come again?”

“I ordered Ilinčić’s murder,” she said with the same quiet.

For a time Grgić stared at the floor, then he sighed and looked up.

“Why?”

“Because he killed my father,” she answered with complete self-control.

“Good god . . .”

Nora sank into the chair and let all the weariness of the world wash over her.

ÄÄÄ

Boy from the water

water falls

on your eyes the color of honey

I’m the boy from the water

with track marks under my arm

The building of the bridge, celebrated with pork cracklings, brandy, and a circle dance on the muddy ground, had begun six years before; the ground was broken by the communications minister at the time, who announced that this was a vital traffic artery and a crucial part of the government’s plan for the accelerated construction of a network of ring roads and interchanges connecting the state roads, highways, cities, airports, and commercial zones throughout Croatia in an effort to give the country a competitive edge. Three years later, the work on the one-thousand-foot-long four-lane colossus was completed. The builders could only access it on ladders, right up to their last day on the job. The bridge had not yet been opened to traffic because there were no roads leading to it in either direction, as if somebody from outer space had plunked it down over the river, hedged in by meadows and brambles on either side, as precise as a blunder. Fifty million kunas had been poured into the concrete structure. And to make any sense of it, with roads leading to it and from it, they’d now need five times that much. Nobody had a clue about any plans for the future. Meanwhile, instead of roads, mountains of construction waste piled up on either side of the bridge, dumped there, mainly asphalt but also other types of rubble. The high-priority project had turned into a scrap heap, and nobody except scavengers ever went there anymore: a few years back they’d harvested all the drainage grids and the copper grounding wire. The people living nearby complained that their houses had been flooded three times that year because of the bridge. The backstory to the bridge to nowhere included, among others things, the Golubica restaurant, owned by Ilinčić’s sister, since the highway exit ramp was supposed to run right by it. There was also a vacation community where Ilinčić had arranged a weekend cottage for himself—all part of the plan for a modern artery that would link the city to the highway for Zagreb. The work was halted because a new minister took office. The investor ran short of funds, and the bridge was abandoned, suspended there magically between heaven and earth.

He left the car, with the key in the ignition, on the path by the meadow. Night was falling as Marko made his way through the brambles. His feet were soaked, and he tripped over holes in the soggy soil, while the bridge kept seeming farther away. After a half hour’s trudge he finally reached gravel, stepping around large chunks of rubble. He climbed up onto the bridge over which no car had ever driven, onto the asphalt that shone in the moonlight, mirroring the dark, star-studded sky. Partway across the span he sat and lit a cigarette, stared into the black water beneath him, and remembered a summer’s day at the pool many years before. He recalled his friend and his friend’s younger brother, Dražen, who went missing that day. The first day of the end of the world as he knew it. He suddenly saw the figure of the scrawny little boy that muggy afternoon; all that was left behind were his wristwatch on the towel and his gnawed peach pits. They searched for him till morning, draining the pool dry, they split into groups and for days scoured all possible places around the city, suburbs, woods. He was also at his friend’s house when the police came to the door a few days later and their mother’s wails rang out from the living room. Something was crushed in them then. Individually, as a generation, universally. They gawked at each other, baffled by life and the forces arrayed against it. Every warm and carefree image of their shared childhood, from the community around them, the innocence they shared was seared on that day, never to return. Not long afterward, the war began. Then an endless nothing. And then Nora, and a past that never ends, then Ekatarina Velika, the music he always returned to, then the song “Love,” one more magnificent ruse of life after his existence in the safe haven he’d built for himself by giving up. And in the end, the black, black water, like the beginning and end of all things. A circle. He stubbed out the ember of his cigarette onto the thousands of grains of sand encased in the concrete of the bridge to nowhere, breathed deeply once more, thought about the boy, then about himself, then her, and dropped into the water.

23.

This is the country for us

this is the country for us

this is the country for all our people

this is home for us

this is home for all our children

now (fall 2010)

“Darling . . . my little darling . . .” she whispered, squeezing her fingers in her own, “my little