Belgrade Noir Read online

  “If only they’d had cigarettes in ancient Rome,” said Neda. “Thank you. You know I—”

  Goran made a gesture to stop her. Knowing that she was completely broke, he didn’t expect money for the cigarettes. They had known each other for quite some time and he helped her when he could. It was all part of their friendship, which endured despite their differences in life philosophy. Goran was practical. He always knew what he wanted from life and would find a way to get it. Neda was a seeker. The only thing she knew for sure was what she didn’t want, or that what she wanted was rather more complex than the university-marriage-children recipe. Although in her late thirties and despite all her problems, she still hoped to tumble into the right path eventually, one that her “own blood whispers to her,” as her favorite writer put it.

  “Now buy me a drink and I’ll forget about the fact that you brought me here to exploit my feminine charms,” she said, lighting a cigarette and inhaling with unconcealed pleasure.

  “Who else if not you?” said Goran, smirking. “You are the only Swede I know, and I have no better ideas, even if this one’s kinda wicked. Besides, you have better chances than me. I could only hope to worm my way in.”

  Neda smiled, thinking of the nickname “Swede” someone had given her a long time ago, on account of her being a natural blonde. In her experience, most men reacted to strong statements, so in addition to her main allure—her long blond hair—tonight she wore a short red dress, an Olé! for the rich bull.

  “So where is this friend of yours?” she asked.

  “An acquaintance of an acquaintance,” Goran quickly corrected her, slightly offended.

  Said “acquaintance of an acquaintance” was their last hope at finding a job. The weekly newspaper Goran used to work for had been forcefully shut down by the regime and now he generated his income by selling smuggled gasoline and cigarettes on the black market. But those days were quickly coming to an end, partly because of the bombings, partly because a monopoly on smuggling seemed to be changing hands.

  “Whatever, as long as he’ll pay for a round.”

  “I think he’s coming,” said Goran, looking over the terrace’s metal fence at the silver BMW pulling into a parking spot. “Charm him from the start and we could get ourselves a nice dinner. For him, it’d be pocket change.”

  “How did he get his money?” Neda inquired, taking a long look at the corpulent man in black jeans and a red polo shirt approaching their table.

  “These days you don’t ask questions like that,” whispered Goran.

  “A criminal?”

  “Quiet. It’s all relative, isn’t it? As long as he doesn’t ask me to smuggle drugs or people or be a professional assassin, it’s okay with me.”

  Neda shook hands with Viktor Marković. He was in his early forties, bearing the wide-set, dark eyes of a shark. Eyes that didn’t reflect his thin-lipped smile, yet in a second had likely rated her and categorized her somewhere in his mind. He could be called handsome—or at least interesting, with that air of self-confidence and his velvet baritone. Yet, something about his face looked wrong, as if someone had disassembled it and then reassembled it, but made some sort of a mistake along the way. She couldn’t describe the fault, but it was definitely there. A fault that made Neda want to avert her eyes.

  August 30, 1999

  I understand that in a way, I betrayed myself. I guess it was the result of weariness. Fatigue and struggle without rewards quickly exhaust one’s mind. But my situation needed a solution, and it came down to an attempt to balance my needs and the price I’d have to pay.

  In all honesty, it’s not like you’d have had to bend my arm for me to sleep with him. He’s one of those men who radiate power like body odor and, as much as it confuses me, his power pleases me in some primal way. I let the woman in me out—nota bene: a rather lonely woman—and let him take the lead. I let myself enjoy it: being just a woman, “the weaker sex.”

  Speaking practically: besides giving me a job and a more-than-decent salary, through his connections he acquired the medicine my father needed, making my parents’ lives easier. Instead of taking from them, I’m finally able to help them. God, how good it is not to feel guilty anymore.

  Yes, I am perfectly aware that he is not somebody I can talk to about the universe and freedom. But isn’t that something people like me contemplate in solitude anyway?

  No, I’m not lost, I am still me. This arrangement is a temporary solution, just one little bump obstructing the right path of my life.

  September 30, 1999

  At Vimark Consulting, where she officially worked as one of the secretaries—though it was clear that her more significant role was serving as a hostess at the business lunches and dinners Marković often organized—Neda got wind of the existence of his children. But she never asked him, not about children nor his marital status; not even during their intimate meetings in the small private hotel owned by one of his friends.

  Actually, the answer wasn’t important: what was happening between them was not a relationship but a trade, a transaction in which, for the first time in her life, she used her looks and her body as currency.

  Marković was a skilled but uninspired lover and it suited Neda. At first, she had expected something different. She often had a feeling that “different” was there—some small move, the way he grasped her, the expression in his eyes would almost reveal . . . what? Neda couldn’t finish the thought, or maybe she was afraid to do so. Making her curious and excited at the beginning, “different” was starting to scare her.

  Then things happened and she didn’t know what to do.

  “I have a problem which I have to solve fast if . . .” said Marković, standing naked by the window of the hotel room with a glass of cognac in his hand. He was relaxed in his nudity, as a man who knew very well that power is a substitute for most flaws. “Actually, that part is none of your business. What’s important is that our friend from the Ministry of the Interior can help me. You’ve met him. I think you are aware of what he wants in return.”

  He took a small sip of his cognac, and looked at her, tilting his head as if to better focus on her reply. “I’ve heard he has a somewhat specific taste, but you are an experienced woman, aren’t you?”

  At first, Neda was not sure if she had heard him properly. Then she realized she wasn’t that surprised. No matter how much she wanted to believe she was special to him, not just one of many, she was actually prepared for something like this.

  He came closer, slid to the edge of the bed, firmly took her ankle in his hand, and looked her in the eyes. Behind the darkness of his gaze, there was no room for discussion.

  “Life is an expensive adventure, Neda. We all pay a price. What we get depends on what we pay. Simple economics. Do we understand each other?”

  Neda swallowed hard and averted her gaze from his wrongly assembled face.

  October 30, 1999

  What did I expect? To be honest—I have no idea. I jumped into the water and waited to see if I was going to float.

  The first time I said I simply couldn’t do something like that, a nightmare descended on me, something horrendous and yet unreal, like a monster in a child’s dreams. Loose teeth, cuts inside my mouth, and a wide range of bruises unequivocally confirmed the reality of it.

  Thinking of all this now, I realize it wasn’t the physical abuse that frightened me the most. It was the silence in which it happened. Can such a methodic manifestation of rage be categorized as rage at all? I don’t think so. I believe the wrath of Viktor Marković is a much more complicated animal, something that draws its black energy from a deep source older than time. Sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if I hadn’t escaped, if I hadn’t, without a coat or any of my belongings, hawked a cab and given the driver Goran’s address.

  Goran was fired the very next day. He wasn’t upset—he was already sick of driving around drunken idiots and taking care of the vomit and other nasty stains from the company’s Merc
edes.

  So, calling it all an unenviable situation is a euphemism for the deep shit I’m in. But I didn’t have a choice, right? I tried my best, but when it comes to sex, we all have our boundaries. And once the precedent was set, who can say what the other creatures from Marković’s powerful circle would ask me to do?

  But at this moment, I am only concerned with whether or not I want to keep the child growing in my womb. One part of me still obstinately desires the life I promised myself, a life with much more freedom and space for seeking than single motherhood can offer. Yet I feel instinct overcoming me. It is a frightening but powerful force, more powerful than any obstacle, be it of philosophical or practical nature.

  Yes, I know that my freedom has just been incarcerated by the solid walls of impending day-to-day duty. But I am an almost-middle-aged woman living in Serbia, not a Greek philosopher strolling through the groves of Aristotle’s Lyceum.

  What do I live on? Mainly on a creative mix of hormones and dreams of revenge.

  October 21, 2007

  Occasionally, usually when she had to borrow money to buy Milena something “all the other kids have,” Neda wished she had Marković’s private phone number so she could send him a picture of his daughter. Maybe the snapshot from her first day of school, with her famous broad toothless smile. Milena thought she looked scary when she smiled that way, and she absolutely loved it.

  School was a new expense, which Neda’s underpaid jobs in boutiques and corner stores, or the occasional instruction of German, couldn’t cover. Employers were afraid of single mothers, and the school was full of children with parents who thought that jealousy-inducing clothes and gadgets were important enough to sacrifice a good part of a family’s budget for them. Neda’s little house stood like a relic from an ancient time among the modern buildings springing up around Lekino Brdo like mushrooms in the forest. Selling it would resolve some of her financial problems, but her father, who grew more senile by the day, refused to do so, passionately talking about his intention to plant an apricot tree, the one he had actually planted forty years ago. Neda didn’t argue with him. She didn’t want to point out that her father was incapable of proper reasoning. Besides, it was the last house on the street with climbing roses hanging over the fence—living proof that, in spite of everything, she and her world were something separate, something special.

  Last year, Marković had founded the Vimark TV station and he became a media personality. Thanks to his new public face, Neda developed extensive knowledge about his family—the photogenic TV hostess who was not the first Mrs. Marković, the daughter who studied design in Italy, and the son who owned his own business of an undefined nature.

  “Mommy, my friend Sara says that in Greece—they always go on holiday in Greece, you know—there was a stone statue of a naked woman.” Milena put her little hand over her toothless mouth and giggled. “That is one of the goddesses, you know. Sara stood in front of her and made a wish and it came true.”

  The girl stirred her cornflakes around in the bowl, while they waited for the arrival of their neighbor, who took Milena to school every day along with her son. She was late, so Neda was late for work. She hoped her boss wouldn’t threaten to fire her again. She desperately needed money to pay the bills, which were piling up quickly.

  “Did you put on new panties?” Neda asked, looking at her watch. She still couldn’t forget the shame she had felt when Milena went to an unexpected annual physical at school wearing old, faded underpants.

  “Yes, but I wish you would buy me the ones with little frills like Sara has. Do you know what I would wish for if I visited the stone woman?”

  Neda hoped Milena wouldn’t wish for knowledge of her father. For her, Daddy was someone who lived far away and, No, he won’t come see them soon. Neda further embellished the story in accordance with Milena’s age. Whenever she considered telling her the truth, she always concluded that she didn’t want to traumatize her daughter with a very certain turndown from her father.

  “What would you wish for?”

  “A pot of gold,” Milena said.

  Neda wasn’t sure she liked this answer any better.

  “So what would you do with all that gold?”

  “I would buy . . .” Milena paused, considering her options.

  “What?”

  There was a sly look in the girl’s eyes—the very same black, opaque eyes of her father.

  “Everything!”

  Neda felt guilt overwhelming her. Milena wore cheap clothes bought in thrift stores. She couldn’t afford fancy sneakers or other luxurious objects important to the children of the new age. Neda always wanted to explain to her daughter that having material possessions was not the most important aspect of life, that it was sometimes better to be different from everybody else, to be unique and special, but she warned herself that it was too early to introduce that kind of thinking.

  January 21, 2018

  Milena’s tattoo was not a butterfly, a heart, or the name of a boy she was in love with. No. Above her shoulder blades spread a pair of midnight-black wings.

  Neda put her hand over her mouth to stop herself from gasping. Ever since Milena had become a teenager, Neda had made sure to never enter her room without knocking. But for some time now, the girl had been refusing every attempt at communication and Neda was worried that her daughter was turning into one of those problematic adolescents who easily lose their way. What she wanted most was to build a different world for her child. Yes, she was aware that instead of Neda’s need to “understand Buddha,” Milena had taken after her father and his materialistic spirit. But she was still a child. There was still time for Neda to change her spiritual viewpoint, and give her a chance to look at life from a different angle.

  “Stop staring,” said the girl. “I know what you’re thinking, but I don’t care. Besides, you didn’t pay for it.”

  For the first time in her life, Neda wanted to hit her child. To let the Evil in, and beat her senseless. Instead, she burst into tears.

  “What do you want, Milena? What is it that you want?” she asked when she was finally able to stop sobbing.

  As Milena tilted her head and carefully dissected her mother with those dark eyes, Neda realized the strength of Marković’s genes.

  “What do I want? Everything I don’t have, Mother. Everything. I. Don’t. Have. Isn’t it logical? Don’t all people want that? Not you, of course. Oh, no. You have to be special, even if you are starving. Go read your books and give me a break!”

  October 30, 2018

  Neda had never watched reality TV. Her brain simply couldn’t understand the purpose. She asked people who couldn’t miss an episode what attracted them to these shows. She didn’t ask what was on the tip of her tongue: how could they watch uninteresting people talk about uninteresting things, peppering it with all sorts of equally boring exhibitionism? She had never gotten a satisfying answer. Either those she asked didn’t have the inclination or capability to dive into their inner self, or maybe they intuitively knew they wouldn’t like what they’d find there.

  So she ignored the whole phenomenon, that plastic, toxic package of basic instincts and vulgarities that made headlines in the media.

  So the information that her daughter, who was legally a minor, had become the youngest participant of Vimark TV’s Commune—the newest and, according to newspapers, most expensive reality show in a sea of humiliating circuses aimed to make people forget about more important things—was something she couldn’t believe at first. And once she was forced to believe it, she couldn’t really feel it. It was just like all those tsunamis and massacres in distant parts of the world that make you sad but are too far away to break your heart the way one crippled beggar child in the street you see with your own eyes can.

  Milena used the name “Millie Wow” on the show. She was reportedly seen fucking one of the male participants in front of the cameras.

  So for the first time, Neda sat down to watch Commune. She poured v
odka into a highball glass and watched Milena showing off her thong while kissing some simpleton with a strange haircut who used vulgar language. Neda couldn’t help remembering her daughter’s faded underpants from the annual physical at school. Was that the event that led her to where she was now?

  As she refilled the glass, Neda wondered how Millie Wow would feel if she knew that her bare butt funded the jet-set lifestyle of the TV station owner’s recognized children. While sadness replaced every other feeling in her, a single spark of rage began to burn within her broken heart.

  Maybe it was finally time to reset things. Maybe it was finally time for a bang in her life, something that would completely rearrange it, even if, along the way, it first broke it into a thousand pieces.

  November 15, 2018

  After some time, Neda’s plan was in place, complete with logistical support: Goran could certainly get her a weapon. Swearing like a sailor whenever he heard Marković’s name, he clearly felt quite good about it.

  As Marković was a man who loved control, Neda knew that he would be there early, just in time for Vimark TV’s morning show. So it was still dark outside when she resolutely entered the main building of the television studio just after him, passed by his still-smiling secretary, and opened the padded doors of his office.

  The room was full of tasteful pieces of art and books—a declaration that the father of carnal entertainment was a spiritual person who was above the audience paying for all of it.

  Looking at her with his impenetrable eyes, he slowly put his cell phone down on his antique writing desk.

  As always, Neda had the urge to avert her eyes from his face. But she knew she couldn’t do that. Not this time. Her hand slowly reached into her bag. She saw Marković gripping the edge of the desk. She almost chuckled, but she just smiled instead and pulled from the bag the newest edition of Flash, a tabloid with the largest circulation in the country, where Goran had made his living for several years. In a few minutes, readers who wanted to know who was screwing whom, literally or metaphorically, would be able to buy it themselves on their way to work.