Our Man in Iraq (20 page)

I listened to him with a tad of admiration. Icho Kamera talked like young people who don’t want to squander their life in a backwater where nothing was going on. He wanted to be in the flow of things. In the focus. If he could speak English he’d definitely be off to New York. If he wasn’t such a pleb, no one would notice he was mad, I thought.

Pero the Chief came up to us. First he spoke to Icho and shook his hand. “I think we ought to thank you. Your support means a lot to us.”

“As a man in the street I had to say something’,” Icho Kamera said.

Then the Chief turned toward me. “The boss called me just now. You’re fired.”

“Fucking hell.”

“That ain’t right,” Icho Kamera said.

“I get the impression he’s going to sue you as well.”

“Ooh, that ain’t nice,” Icho Kamera commented as we headed for the bar. “To sack someone like that—to jus’ toss ’em out.”

“It’ll raise the motivation of the others,” I said.

“That’s why I never wanted to be employed. Just farmin’ and a bit’a TV—I’m me own boss!”

While I was drinking with Icho in the bar, Sanja called me. She had three minutes before she needed to be back on stage. She’d seen the beginning of the show and a bit near the end.

“After rain comes shine,” she said awkwardly.

“Get on with your stuff, don’t worry about it anymore,” I said.

Afterward I went to Limited. Everyone looked. Markatović arrived to console me with the story that he was doing even worse: Dijana was gone and the bank’s shares were still falling.

“I’ve heard reliable information that the Germans are giving up. They’re offering the bank to the government for one kuna,”
he said. “But, on the positive side, Dolina rang today and he’s angry.”

Dolina had apparently also seen me on TV. He was convinced I’d tarnish his image and demanded that Markatović, who hadn’t started on Dolina’s campaign yet, find someone else.

“He says you’re compromised,” Markatović said, imitating Dolina to try and sound snappy.

I didn’t have the strength to smile, so Markatović stared at me hypnotically. “That pretender of yours is going to come back alive and well.”

“That’s the drugs talking,” I said.

“No, really: it’s always like this when it’s to do with someone else. With these shares I have, if someone else had them I could predict without error. He’ll come back, really—we can bet on it.”

“Let’s not. You’ve gambled enough already.”

Then Markatović started talking about his old man, who’d turned to drink soon after entering his son’s employ. “He probably feels humiliated. He’s spiteful all the time. In his head, I probably represent capitalism. It’s the same with your guy. They both feel we’re on the other side: we’re part of the system, in their eyes, and they need someone to blame. Since they don’t have a political agenda they take it out on us via the family.”

We boozed till closing and then went back to his place. If nothing else, Markatović finally had the apartment to himself.

I sent Sanja a message that I was going to Markatović’s and that I might sleep there. I sort of wanted to avoid her, as if I felt ashamed in front of her.

We sat there in the mortgaged flat. It really was a super apartment. I took the remote and turned up the volume a bit when I saw the Rolling Stones on TV. It was a press conference prior to a concert in Munich.

“Look at them,” Markatović said, hunched slightly and staring at the screen with open mouth and bloodshot eyes.

“What’s the secret of your timelessness?” journalists asked them. Keith Richards, still looking like he'd grown up too quickly, answered, “That’s a secret,” and roared with laughter.

“Just look at him, will ya?” Markatović said.

“He must be sixty already,” I said.

“He drinks the most expensive wines, models line up to get into bed with him, and he still manages to be a rebel,” Markatović marveled. “Man, he'd go mad if they put him in a down-market hotel.”

“Yes, when he’s rebellious,” I said, and sniffed a line of coke from the chess board.

“Two hundred thousand people were there, and tomorrow all of them will be going to work,” Markatović said.

“Of course, they work.”

“Every day they repress what they admire about Richards. Every single day they repress everything they admire.”

“Of course.”

“It started way back with Jesus.”

“Do you also get a strange feeling when you mention a big word like ‘Jesus’ or ‘revolution,’ like a weariness comes over you?”

“I don’t know.”

We fell silent.

Footage of people who’d been to the Munich concert was now being shown. They claimed the Stones were the same as before. Indestructible.

Markatović and I were destroyed. We’d grown up in strange Eastern European systems and placed too much hope in rock’n’roll. We lived with that therapy for years and thrived on hope. Just let things settle a bit, we thought, and we’d all be like Keith Richards.

“Hillary Clinton isn’t bad either,” I suggested.

“Just think of little Eminem,” Markatović said. “I saw a documentary about him. The guy grew up in a trailer park and was really fucked up. He rapped around in a few sheds, but then he recorded an album, sold a few million copies, and got rich! And what’s he going to do on the next album? Y’know, he’s gotta be rebellious and have that face for another fifty years.”

“Yeah, he’ll have to get pretty drugged up so they don’t see through him.”

“First you’re fucked because you’re fucked up, and then you’re fucked because you’re not fucked up. That’s the life of a rebel for you.”

“There’s no going forward and no going back.”

“You’re not allowed to sort yourself out,” Markatović said.

“Why would you want to sort yourself out?”

“I don’t know, that’s just the way things go. You sort yourself out, and along come the problems.”

We laughed.

The Stones played on, indestructible. Markatović snorted more coke.

“Did you really want to get yourself sorted out?” I asked. “Or . . .”

“Or what?”

I shrugged.

“Hey, I got married, bought an apartment, had kids—When did you ever do any of that?”

“OK, so you’re more forward-looking,” I conceded. “And you stayed a rebel.”

“Right. Even Iggy Pop goes to the gym. Red Hot Chili Peppers go to the gym. Not me.”

“I used to go before I had a bathroom, to use the showers.”

Markatović puffed up his chest proudly, making no attempt to hide his beer belly.

Who knows what it means to be rebellious nowadays.

“Now I’ll be going without a bathroom too,” he said, referring to the steep drop in RIJB-R-A shares.

It might sound nasty, but I felt better being with Markatović. The whole problem with Boris didn’t seem so terrible to him. He was knee-deep in shit himself. I assured Markatović that everything would be OK and that he’d get out of it in the end. I told him it was good that he was waiting because the government would intervene sooner or later and sort things out. He just needed to be patient a bit longer.

“It’s different when it’s your own dough that’s inside and when it’s about saving your own neck,” he sighed. “Then you’re not so sure of things.”

I don’t know how things got to this point of me having to reassure him all the time. I mean, he’d been expecting that of me from the beginning, so why was he now opposing so vehemently? Now I had to be even more convincing. That’s how it works. Someone gives you a role and you do your best to hold onto it. You forget how things began.

“Come on, man, Rijeka will be going up tomorrow. The government has to intervene. It’s as clear as daylight if only you look without fear.”

“OK then, you’ve consoled me,” Markatović said.

I snorted another rail of coke.

“Life is a song,” I said, breathing deeply through my nose. “The song creates feelings. Words in your mouth take you over.”

I woke up on Markatović’s couch; my mouth was dry, my legs were stiff, and my head hurt like hell. The TV was still on and two psychologists were talking with children about good and evil.

“Bad is when one kid builds a sand castle and another comes and knocks it down,” a boy said.

The coffee table resembled a waste dump. We’d polished off the hard stuff by the looks of it. I leaned my elbows on my knees, put my head in my hands, and tried to be wise after the battle by accessing the damaged parts of my memory. A little bird hopped along the balcony railing. It didn’t sing. The children went on about good and evil, they understood that in the morning. On the evening program everything looked more complicated.

I got up and inspected Markatović’s shelves, opened the
drawers, and peered into decorative bowls full of knicknacks until I found a tablet and took it.

I looked at my mobile: 11:21.

A text message from Sanja: “Had a roaring night out? Take it easy. Call me when you wake up. xoxo”

I called her to say that everything was OK except that my head hurt.

“Come on, take a tablet or two and make some coffee. Have you got a lot of work today?”

“I got the sack.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. It’s as real as it gets.”

“When?”

“Last night after the broadcast.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, as if I’d broken some rule.

“You were at the play. It’s all the same whether I told you last night or today.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“I don’t know, I’ll see. I don’t know. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.”

I felt I’d let her down. There were probably a few expectations of me somewhere in the cosmos of our relationship. I think it was taken for granted that I’d move up in the world and not go down. “Sorry.”

“Oh no, no,” she said. “I’m sorry. I don’t know, I’ve just got to the theater. Go home now. Don’t keep drinking.”

“What would I do at home?”

“Don’t keep drinking now, OK?”

“I'll be OK. Don't worry.”

I made myself some Turkish coffee, went out onto the balcony and sat in the wicker chair. It was a nice day, I looked at the greenery and the city far below. Fresh air. A
little blue tram skimmed along down below. People were driving places. I had no idea what to do. The day lay spread out before me.

Should I keep drinking? Or go home? Into town? For a walk? Should I go to the zoo, perhaps? Take Markatović and go to see the elephants?

I opened Markatović’s bedroom door a crack. He was lying diagonally in the double bed. He blinked his eyes.

“Sorry, just you sleep,” I said and closed the door.

My mobile rang. Unknown number. It was a journalist. She asked if she’d reached me.

“I hope so,” I said.

She wanted me to comment. She began by launching into long-winded, treacherous flattery, which I interrupted.

“I’m to blame,” I confessed, and hung up.

Markatović opened the door a little and stuck out his head. I didn’t know why he was being so cautious. A remnant of his married life, I supposed.

“I’m not going to throw anything at you,” I said.

He came in. “Fucking hell.”

He dragged himself to the coffee table and slumped into a leather armchair. He sipped the coffee and we spoke in incomplete sentences. We were listless and disgusted by our own hangovers. He recalled a nightmarish dream: Dijana and the twins, each at the wheel of a steamroller, had been pursuing him across an incredibly large parking lot in front of a shopping center he wanted to reach the entrance of, but it kept receding.

“Congratulations,” I said. “I dreamed I was puttering around on the internet, there were some passwords—and I don’t remember the rest.”

“You didn’t dream that.”

“How do you know?”

“You were on the internet last night. You placed an order on the stock market. Don’t you remember?”

“No!”

“You bought Rijeka. I was telling you not to. Don’t you remember?”

I turned on the computer. I looked at my mobile—12:40. The stock exchange started at ten. It depended on the price I’d offered; perhaps the order didn’t go through.

“If this happened it’s your fault,” I said.

“My fault? I kept telling you not to. You were so adamant I assumed you had some insider information.” I went to my brokerage firm’s site. He was right. I’d bought 3,000 shares in a failed bank. Since the market had opened RIJB-R-A had already fallen to 43.30 kunas. I’d lost 21,600 kunas while sleeping on that shitty old couch.

“I only claimed everything with Rijeka would be OK to make you feel better. I do such a good job I start believing my own bullshit. Bloody fucking coke!”

I swore and cursed for a full ten minutes, pacing furiously from wall to wall. Markatović, still sleepy, sat in the armchair watching me.

“This is your fault,” I carped.

“Come off it! I told you last night . . .”

“Why the fuck did you make me say everything would be OK?” I moaned. “Why did I have to run into you in this stupid life?”

“Bloody hell, Dijana said that to me all the time!” The veins on his neck strained and his voice screeched bitterly. “A friend comes over, sleeps here, gets up the next morning and takes over where she left off. I’ll throw you all out of my life, head over fucking heels. Got it?”

I left that unlovely, odious house amidst its accursed greenery and went around to the foul-smelling parking lot.

There was my car.

I got in and stared at the wall I was parked in front of, wanting to drive right through it.

The city perspired in the midday sun. Trying to be European, it wore the most modern rags and expensive labels. Sunglasses and street cafés sought to invoke the flair of Milan and Vienna. It was the brainchild of girls from marketing agencies, urbane press officers, and unemployed spokeswomen, different permutations of Markatović, literature editors who were starting to forget classics, and screenwriters of domestic sitcoms. It was full of future plans and plots.

I went in search of a daily paper. GEP’s
Daily News
was selling well. I had to go to three different kiosks before I could get a copy.

AL-QAEDA SILENT ABOUT THE FATE OF CROATIAN
REPORTER
. It sported a photo of Boris and the sub-heading: “Boris Gale, whose employers concealed his disappearance, was last seen in Baghdad six days ago.”