When Heaven Weeps (12 page)

“Come on, Janjic. Is it really such a secret?”

“I don't know. But changing a few things on the surface doesn't remake the man.”

“No. I wasn't referring to your skin. I mean your heart. Where do your affections lie, Janjic?”

“My affections are with God. And my affections are with Karen. You may not approve, but it's me, not you, who'll marry her.”

“What I'm saying has nothing to do with Karen! I'm speaking of Christ.”

“You're too strong, Ivena. I've written a book on the affections of Christ, for heaven's sake! Give me some credit.”

“You witnessed a dramatic expression of affection between God and man, and you've committed your observations to a book. Just because you saw the love of the priest does not mean that you've learned how to love in the same way.” She paused. “Perhaps the fact that you have been unable to write since the book tells us something.”

She'd never spoken quite so plainly about the matter, and he looked at her with shock. “You say that with such conviction! I also spent five years in prison for opposing Karadzic. Still you question my love for God? That it has given me writer's block?”

“You understand the love in ways most do not. But still, have you loved him that way? Loved Christ? Or have I, for that matter? And I'll tell you something else: Until we do, we'll never find peace. You've seen too much, my dear Serb.”

Traffic hummed by on the street. Janjic waved at a yellow cab that veered toward them. “Yes, maybe I have seen too much. And you as well.” He faced her. “You're right, one day we'll find our way through this. In the meantime, please don't rob me of the love I have for Karen.” He smiled and opened her door. “Give me at least that much.”

“Don't be so sure that I don't approve. You mustn't confuse caution with disapproval, my dear Serb.” She climbed into the cab. “Call me soon, Janjic. Come for supper when you can.”

“I will. Thank you for coming.”

“It was my pleasure.” She shut the door.

She left him standing there alone, watching her go. All dressed up in the wrong clothes, but so handsome nonetheless. Famous and now engaged to be married. So very wise and so very tender, yet in his own way lost without knowing it.

Her Janjic.

CHAPTER EIGHT

IVENA'S WORDS burned a hole in Janjic's soul that night. He was newly engaged, for goodness' sake—singing the song of true love—and Ivena had the audacity to suggest that his words were louder than his life. The ringing truth of her suggestion tempered him.

The next day started no better, and he decided to take an hour to sort out his mind at the park before Karen returned to the office after her morning meeting. She was evidently neck-deep in discussions with their publisher over the next edition, and as always she preferred to handle the details on her own. This time the publisher had come to Atlanta and Jan didn't even bother to suggest he attend the meeting. He was a writer, not a businessman.

It was then, sitting on a bench in Piedmont Park, that he first saw her. She was still a shimmering figure at the park's perimeter, a faceless ghost in the midday heat. She looked small and frail under the massive weeping willows that swayed with the wind. He didn't know why his eyes were drawn to her—his mind certainly wasn't. It was busy grappling with the growing dilemmas that seemed to have infected his soul since Ivena had graced him with her words. Maybe it was the woman's direct approach that drew him; or perhaps it was the intensity with which she walked, swinging her arms barely, but hustling along at a good clip nonetheless.

Jan shifted his mind back to Ivena's words.

The people had bought
The Dance of the Dead
in a feeding frenzy, desperate for meaning in a changing world. It was as if a generation had decided en masse to reflect on its past sins and had chosen this one book in which to look for absolution. The story of the young Serbian soldier who had found meaning through the brutality of war and his imprisonment following that war. There was a soul to his story that drew them. Like curious onlookers at a Big Foot exhibit.

He'd told them in bold terms at every university campus and every book signing and every radio show that
The Dance of the Dead
was a story first and foremost about the martyr's desperate love for Christ, not Jan Jovic's redemption. They would mostly nod their heads with glazed looks and ask about the girl or his ordeal in war crimes prison after that fateful day. He would tell them and tears would come to their eyes. But they were not falling to their knees and begging forgiveness as he had. They weren't throwing away their lives for Christ as Nadia had done. They weren't climbing on their crosses and laughing in delight as the priest had.

Therein lay part of the problem, he thought. His life had become a spectacle. An exhibit. But in the end they all walked away from the exhibit, shaking their heads in wonder, unwilling to climb in to join Big Foot in his lonely search for identity.

And now Ivena's little tidbit of truth: Perhaps he himself had peered at the exhibit without climbing in. Maybe he himself hadn't learned as well as he expected his audience to learn.

The woman still approached steadily. An American woman hustling her way through a park, dressed in black pants and a white shirt, going nowhere fast, as the cliché had it. He leaned back and watched her absently.

The Dance of the Dead.
In the priest's village it had been a dance of rapture, begging to be joined by those who watched. A great awakening to the other side. But here in America it was inevitably different. They were more interested in having their ears tickled than their hearts changed. Perhaps he could write another book after all, one that characterized these new steps taught in the churches here. He could call it
The Death of the Dance.
That would have the publishers scrambling.

Jan leaned over and rested his elbows on his knees. His mind fell back to that day. It had been the love of Christ that had pierced his soul in the village. The sentiment swelled in his chest and rose to his throat. Dear, precious Nadia. And
Ivena!
He still couldn't imagine the grief of her loss. It was a part of his insistence that she come to America with him and he supposed it was a good thing. She alone really understood.

“Hi, there.”

He jerked upright, startled by the voice. It was the woman! In his quandary she had walked right up to him and now stood not five feet away, trying to smile.

“Yes?”

She glanced behind her shoulder and he followed her look. Nothing but empty park and an old couple walking a dog. She sniffed and turned back to him. A small shiver seemed to work its way over her body and she tried to smile again. A flat grin pulled at her pale lips. Her eyes twinkled bright blue, but otherwise her face appeared void of life. Dark circles hung under each eye and her cheeks looked powdered white though he could see that she wore no makeup. Her blond hair lay in short, stringy tangles.

Jan couldn't help his slow gaze over the woman. The plain white T-shirt rode up her arms, too small even for her delicate frame. Her blue jeans hung past flip-flops to the ground where they were frayed.

She lifted a hand to her lips and bit at a worn nail. Now, half hidden by her hand, her smile took up life. “I'm sorry. I hope I'm not too much of a shock for you,” she said. “If I am, I could go. Do you want me to go?”

She said it with a tease in her voice. If he wasn't thoroughly confused, she was a junkie, strung out or coming down or doing whatever drug addicts did. He almost told her to leave then. To get lost. To find her pimp or her pusher or whomever she was looking for someplace else. He was a writer, not a pusher. He almost told her that.

Almost.

“Ah . . . No. No it's all right. Are you okay?”

“Why? Don't I look okay?”

“Actually no. You look . . . strung out.”

“And you have a cute accent, mister. How old are you?”

He glanced around. The park was still empty. “I'm thirty-eight.”

She reached out a hand and he took it. “Glad to meet you, Thirty-eight. I'm Twenty-nine.”

He smiled. “Actually, my name is Jan. Jan Jovic.”

“And mine's Helen.”

“It's a pleasure to meet you.”

“The same, Jan Jovic.” She shot a quick look behind her again, and Jan saw concern flash through her eyes. But she recovered on the fly and looked at him, wearing that deliberate smile again. She tilted her head back, closed her eyes and ran fingers through her hair. It struck him then, while her chin pointed to the sky, that Helen was a pretty woman. Even in this anemic state she bore a faint angelic quality. She walked a few steps to the left and then returned to the spot directly before him, as if pondering some deep question.

“Are you sure you're okay?”

She eyed him, still wearing her mysterious grin.

Jan shrugged. “You look like you have something on your mind. And you keep looking back.”

“Well, to be honest, I am in a bit of pinch. But it's got nothing to do with you. Boyfriend problems.” She shrugged apologetically. “You know how love is— one day on, the next day off. So today it's off.” She sniffed and glanced behind.

“I wasn't aware that love turned on and off so easily,” he said. “So why did you come over to me?”

“Then you haven't had a lover lately, Jan. And I came over because you looked like a decent man. You have a problem with that?”

“No. But women like you usually don't walk over to men like me because we look decent.”

“Women like me? And what kind of woman's that?”

She had a quick mind—the drugs hadn't destroyed that yet. “Women who are having boyfriend problems,” he said.

“Hmm. You haven't, have you?”

“I haven't what?”

“You haven't had a lover lately.”

He felt heat wash over his face and he hoped it didn't show as a blush. “Actually I've never been married. But I am—”

“And no lovers?”

“I'm a minister of sorts. I don't just take lovers. If there's a lover in my life it is Christ.”

Her eyebrows arched. “Oh? A minister. A reverend, huh?”

“No. Actually I'm a writer and a lecturer who speaks on the love of God.”

“Well, holy cripes. The pope himself!”

Jan smiled. “I'm not Catholic. And what do
you
do, Helen? I take it you aren't a nun.”

“Pretty observant, Reverend.”

“I'm not a reverend. I told you, I'm a writer.”

“Either way, Reverend, you are a man seeking to save lost souls, am I right?”

“I suppose so. Yes. Or at least to lead them to safety. So what do you do?”

She took a deep breath. “I'm . . . I am a lover.” She smiled wide.

“You're a lover. A lover who throws love on with a switch and flees her boyfriends? You are a . . . What do you call it? A woman of the str—”

“No, I'm
not
a hooker! I'd never stoop that low.” Her eyes flashed. “Do I look like a hooker to you?”

He didn't answer.

“You probably wouldn't know a hooker if one crawled up on your lap, would you? No, because you're a man who peddles the love of God. Of course, how silly of me.”

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you.”

“No offense taken, Reverend.” She used the title deliberately, with a slight smile, and Jan thought that if she'd been offended, she had already let it go. “You're as pure as the driven snow, aren't you? Probably never had so much as dirt under your nails.”

“If you knew my life story you would not say that,” he said.

She blinked, not quite sure what to make of that comment. The air of defense deflated about her. He shifted his gaze past her. Two figures entered the park from the direction she had come, walking fast. Helen saw his look and turned. She spun back and clenched her jaw.

“You know, maybe you could help me.” She bit her lip and a shadow of fear flashed through her eyes. Jan looked at the men again. They strode together, dressed in dark suits, clearly intent on crossing the park.

“What's wrong? Who are they?”

“Nothing. No one. I mean, I don't want to involve you.” She looked back to them quickly. Her fear was rising, he thought.

Jan shifted to the front of the park bench. They were after her. He could see it in the attitude of their heads and the length of their strides. He'd seen men brimming with ill intent a thousand times in his homeland; had come to recognize them with a casual glance. These two now approaching with long strides meant Helen harm.

She spun back to him and this time her resolve broke. Helen dropped to one knee, in a proposal posture; her eyes wrinkled, pleading. She grabbed his right hand with both of hers. “I'm sorry! You have to help me! Glenn swore he'd kill me the next time I left. They've been following me all day. I swear they'll kill me! Do you have a car?”

Her hands were cool on his and her face begged. Hers was the face of a victim— he'd seen a hundred thousand of them in the war and they haunted him still.

“Glenn?” he muttered, standing. But his mind was not asking about this Glenn of hers. It was weighing the world in the scales of justice, balancing the touch of this lowlife against an obscure sense of correctness that had taken up residence in his mind.

He could hear Karen at the office now.
You did what?

He blinked
. I rescued a junkie from two hoodlums today.

“Glenn Lutz,” Helen said. “Please! I've got nowhere to go.” She twisted to see the approaching men. The snappy, confident woman had dissolved into desperation.

They were no more than thirty yards off now, angling directly for them.

You did what?

I rescued a junkie from two hoodlums today, and it made me feel alive.

Jan bolted from the bench, pulling Helen stumbling behind him. “Come on! Are they armed?”