Yalta Boulevard (28 page)

Then he felt a soft hand on his shoulder.

Dijana took the seat beside him. Her skirt was short, and she looked, he thought briefly, very bourgeois. In an exceptional way. She kissed his cheek and whispered, “I hear you will to be. Here.”

Brano felt an easy warmth fill him, as if he’d known all along that she would arrive and both of them were merely fulfilling their roles. “I’m glad you came.”

She placed a finger over her lips and looked up as Lutz enumerated the various corners of the world to which the Soviet Union had sent its troops and advisors in order to create wars, rather than end them. “Vietnam, Korea, Africa … the list goes on.”

She leaned close to his head. “You are liking this?”

“No.”

“Well, maybe it’s not bad idea we go.”

Lutz spread his arms to show just how much evil the communists of the world had committed.

“Pa da,”
said Brano.

The Oskar Bar lay on the ground floor of a large, modern office building facing the Concordiaplatz car park. It was dark and empty, and when they settled at the bar Dijana grinned. “We don’t see no one what we know here. Is good?”

“It’s great,” he said, then placed a hand on her knee. “Have we waited long enough yet?”

She nodded seriously. “I sorry. But was something what I had to do first.”

“What?”

“You want to know?”

“Of course.”

“Okay.” She pursed her lips, then opened them and sighed.
“Well
, I had to say bye for someone.”

“Bye?”

“Da
. Good-bye. A man what was my lover.”

“Wolfgang?”

“Wolfgang?” She thought that was funny. “No, I like the old men. Was Abel, a friend for Wolfgang. He also own the club what I work at, is his name. The Jazzklub Abel.”

“You were sleeping with your boss?”

Dijana started laughing.
“Da da da!
Is funny, no?” Then she tilted her head.

“What?”

“I think it’s not bad idea we go home now.”

The number 38 tram took them north along Nußdorfer, and though Dijana held on to his arm, they did not speak. That pressure on his arm, the fingers she sometimes tapped against the inside of his wrist, and the blank smile she gave the passing street—they all helped to make the silence an ideal thing. It was different from the silence of the Bóbrka countryside, different from the silence of an empty apartment. He remembered their walk last August, which had been loud, because she had been loud. Now she wasn’t drunk, and she showed no signs of nervousness. And he, surprisingly, felt none.

For a few moments, he even forgot about Vienna—he forgot about Ludwig and the sunburned shadow; he forgot about the Committee and Andrew Stamer, even Yalta Boulevard and poor Sasha Lytvyn; he forgot that he was an exile here, just like everyone else.

11 APRIL 1967, TUESDAY
•

Brano Sev
was not a young man. He’d had half a century to acquaint himself with the other sex, and when he was younger he put much effort toward that. Those years just after the war, when he was building his career, he’d had brief affairs with women he met in bars. They were often a little older than him, war widows who knew what they were looking for when they sat alone at a bar. He’d go home with them and perhaps stay until the next morning. A few of these affairs stretched the length of a week, until the cold sexual calculation began to wear on both participants, and they would quietly call it quits.

He’d never lived with a woman, and this was something he regretted. He’d had one yearlong relationship, when he was forty-two, with Regina Haliniak, who still worked the Yalta front desk. That relationship, like this one, was prompted by the woman’s forthrightness. Three months into it, he suggested they move in together, and Regina laughed at him.
Do you think I’m going to fallfor that?
He never quite understood what she meant, and by the end of the year it didn’t matter. In the canteen of Yalta 36, she informed him that she’d begun sleeping with a lieutenant named Zoran, and she thought she might be in love. That word had never crossed her lips in the last year. Brano had looked at the gravy-smothered bread on his plate and shrugged.

Since then he’d stopped trying, settling for the brief, cool greeting of prostitutes living in the Canal District. Brano was self-aware enough to realize that he was no woman’s ideal. He was neither particularly attractive nor virile. He spoke too quietly, and when he was entertaining, it was by accident. He wasn’t even particularly loving—he knew this. He had learned the techniques of coldness because without them he wouldn’t have survived for this many years, but they had also assured that his many years would be spent alone.

Which is why he never quite trusted Dijana Franković. A young woman, even one with a fixation for older men, would be a fool to choose him. There were far more accomplished men in this city, more entertaining men, rich men. So even when he followed her up her stairs that second time, eyes on her skirt, he was still far from believing. He half expected to find that young man with his long hair sitting in her chair, or her boss, Abel—for these had to be her real lovers, and Brano was a game, something to pass the time. Or perhaps it was more sinister, and Wolfgang would attempt to strong-arm Brano out of his meager Raiffeisenbank account.

But the apartment was empty, and once they were inside her youth came out as she tore off his clothes and tried to take him there, on the floor. Later, in bed, she cried once, and apologized. “I don’t want you to thinking I am strange. Impulsive, I know this. I am. But,
da
, just what I know. This is the right thing.”

And when they lay there afterward, her head fitting so well against his chest, he asked her, because he still wasn’t sure. He knew what kind of man he was, he said, and maybe she didn’t, but he wanted to tell her, because someday she would realize this and leave him. He told her he was an old man who had spent years dulling his emotions until they were almost nonexistent.

“But they exist?”

“Yes, somewhat.”

“For me they exist?”

“Da.”

She nodded into his chest and said that she understood his doubt and knew the kind of figure she cut. “People, you know, they not always trusting for my … honestly?”

“Your sincerity?”

“Da
. My sincerity. But this is because I am too much sincerity too much of the time.”

He said he could see that.

“I am not blind,” she said. “I can to see your faults. And the future … what knows? Maybe we can to be together only one week, maybe five years. Maybe we cannot to live together. I don’t know. All what I know is this, Brano Sev. When I am with you, it feels like correct. And when you is not here, I want you to be with me. You understand?”

He took a breath. “Yes. Yes, I understand.”

“Was not like that with Bertrand. And for certainly not with Abel. Good men, but…” She shrugged. “Maybe it just pheromones.”

“Pheromones?”

“Da,”
she said. “Smell. Maybe only you have smell what for me is very good.”

He liked that theory, because it was biological and felt unchangeable. But when he slept, the doubt returned, making him restless, and when he woke, he kept his eyes shut, listening. He heard her steady, quiet breaths. Then he turned his head toward the sound and opened his eyes. The morning light lit the dribble of saliva that had drained from her lips into the pillow.

He made his way quietly across the creaking floor to the bathroom. He urinated and brushed his teeth with her toothbrush but avoided looking into the mirror. He didn’t want to compound his overwhelming doubt. What he wanted was to leave, so he crept back into the bedroom, where she still slept, a calf sticking out of the sheets, her toes curled tight. He put on his underwear and brought the socks into the living room, where he gathered the rest of his clothes. He put on his shirt, buttoned it, and pulled on his pants. Then, as he was tying his shoes, he heard her.
“Dragi?”

He looked down at the shoelace knots he’d been mishandling. “Yes?”

“Dragi
, where
are
you?”

He went to the bedroom doorway. She was wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Why you have on your clothes?”

“I always get up early.”

“Come here.” He walked over to the bed and sat beside her. She looked up at his face. “You are going?”

“Just getting breakfast for us,” he lied.

She stretched her arms high over her head and yawned. “That is not bad idea. But wait,” she said, and unzipped his pants. She stuck her fingers inside, tugging on him. “I want we make more sex now.”

He was naked again, and back in bed. His flight instinct had dwindled to nonexistence during their sex, so that now he couldn’t imagine leaving. They smoked using an ashtray balanced on Brano’s stomach. “You know, I knowed this. I knowed at Ersek Nanz’s party. I can see we will be together.”

“You mean you could smell it?”

“Da,”
she said, letting out a little laugh. “I could smell it.”

“Do you want breakfast now?”

“Coffee,
da
, and cigarettes.” She lifted her pack from the bedside table and showed it to him; it was empty.

“I’ll get some more.”

“Then I will make for you coffee. You like?”

“Da.”

He dressed, then trotted down the stairs and out to the street, unable to control his grin. He didn’t see Ludwig’s men around, though he knew they were there. This, finally, was something worth reporting. Where the road split just past the tram station was a tobacco shop, and he bought cigarettes and the day’s
Kurier
. When he returned, he found Dijana in the kitchen, naked, preparing coffee. He settled on the couch and opened the newspaper but watched her. She was not shy with her body, and sometimes she glanced over her shoulder to smile at him, or to slap her own behind then laugh. He watched her arch over the counter to reach for the sugar, and at that moment he felt sure that she had been right all along. Because,
da
, it was the right thing.

“I can read the paper?”

“Of course,” he said, and brought it over to her. She lit a cigarette and began reading on the counter while he reopened the personals. As he did every day, he scanned them quickly, but this time one caught his eye.

Franz F, «Gedicht-I»

Franz F, “Poem-1”:

Lieb + Ebenbild sterben in Kampfgas.
Warte ich auf Lawinen? Schlau … hab dich!
Acht Jahre! 00 Leute, 0 Reich!

Love + image die in War-gas
.
Do I wait for avalanches? Sly … gotcha!
Eight years! 00 people, 0 empire
.

He didn’t understand the poem, and that made sense. This was written not for a surface meaning but for a hidden one, the small grammatical blunder of the first line—
in
instead of
im
—helping draw his attention. And the code was simple. Brano looked at the date on the newspaper—11 April 1967.11-4-1967. Poem, minus one. 11-4-1966, or 1-1-4-1-9-6-6.

“You are finding a lover?”

Brano could feel himself reddening. “No,” he said. “Just reading poetry.”

She smiled, rocking her head as she returned to the world’s headlines. “So my Brani like
poetry …”

Brano got up after a while and, on her bedside table, found a worn pencil. He took it, with the newspaper, to the toilet, closed the door, and began underlining letters based on the code 1-1-4-1-9-6-6.

Li
eb +
Eb
enbild st
e
rben i
n
Kampf
gas
.
War
te
ich auf La
w
inen? S
c
hlau … h
ab
d
ich!
Ac
ht Jahre!
0
0 Leute,
0
Reich!

L-I-E-B-E-N-G-A-S-T-E-W-C-A-B-D-A-C-0-0

The first part made sense: a meeting place—Liebengaste WC; the bathroom of the Liebengaste, a restaurant north of Mariahilfer, on Neubaugasse. But the rest—ABDAC00—did not. Which meant they were numbers. He transformed the letters into numbers, based simply on their alphabetic order, and found 1241300. A date and time—12 April, 13:00.

“You will live in there?”

He looked up at the door, and when he spoke he found he had little air to work with. “No, Dijana. I’m coming.” He tore out the poem, dropped it between his legs, and flushed the toilet.

12 APRIL 1967, WEDNESDAY
•

He returned
to Web-Gasse the next morning, with the excuse that he needed to bring over clean clothes. Dijana frowned when he said he’d rather go alone. “But why?”

“You want me to get tired of you?”

She punched him in the stomach. “You better not.”

He loaded some clothes into a small bag he found at the back of his wardrobe, then followed the old routine, sitting in Eszterházy Park, trying to read the last pages of his French Marxist tract. A different man watched him read—a little fat, with a blond crew cut—until, at a quarter to one, he followed Brano up to and across Mariahilfer Straße.

The fresh spring weather was apparent in the Viennese women’s freshly pressed short skirts, showing off their tapered legs and high heels as they strode to lunch meetings and offices. He wondered what Dijana was wearing right then; he wondered if she was wearing anything at all.

Neubaugasse was choked with little eateries, clothing and junk stores, and parked cars. He paused outside the Liebengaste, a small traditional restaurant on the sunny side of the street, then found a table inside, where he placed his bag beside his chair. There was only one other guest, a large man with a thick gray mustache buried in a newspaper. Brano didn’t recognize him. It was five until one. He asked the waitress for a beer and schnitzel, and the location of the toilet. She smiled and pointed to the back of the restaurant. As he got up, he noticed the man with the crew cut through the front window, hands in his pockets, as fast-moving Viennese passed him.