Belgrade Noir Page 3

  When she went to the kitchen, the apartment remained oddly silent. Kozma started digging through the boxes behind us and pulled one out. The label on the box showed that it had once contained a video camera. I sat down on the closet floor and Kozma slid down next to me.

  “We’ll never get out of this one,” I whispered.

  “Let’s wait a bit, then go for the door,” he replied.

  “You’re not scared?”

  “No.”

  “How come?”

  “Everything I dreaded in life has already happened to me.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know how you survived.”

  “Life goes on,” he said. “It’s just that afterward . . . Well, there’s always sadness underneath everything. Like a river.” He smiled.

  His answer didn’t surprise me. He probably didn’t know I would take his river of sadness over mine anytime, though he might’ve suspected it. Maybe that’s why he put up with me in the first place.

  Peering through the crack, I watched the woman enter the room. This time I clearly saw that she was wearing a green army jacket, while on her head there was an army cap with a red five-pointed star. She was followed by a gray-haired man in a long coat.

  “The loudmouth,” whispered Kozma.

  It was the politician we’d seen the day before, a patient in the clinic connected to this apartment. He managed to drop his pants down to his ankles before she pushed him onto the bed. He tried to get up, but she wouldn’t let him. She pulled out three different-sized lashes from under the bed and tried them all out in the air. He screamed after each swing although she did not touch him.

  “More,” he said, panting. “I need more. You’re crossing all my boundaries.”

  The woman swung once again, this time hitting him. He moaned.

  Kozma and I looked at each other in the dark. We sat back down and listened to the lashings and shouts for some time. Despite worrying about my bladder, I eventually dozed off.

  * * *

  I came to sensing a light on my face, and when I opened my eyes, I saw Kozma’s eyes were shut too. The politician stood in the open door of the closet, his face purple and his body red all over. He only had on leather underpants with spikes.

  “Didn’t I tell you I heard snoring?” he said to the woman.

  When Kozma and I fell out of the closet, the woman was standing in the middle of the room slapping the lash against her palm.

  “Who are these people?” the politician shouted.

  “Nobody,” the neighbor said from behind him. “Annoying old nobodies.”

  The neighbor had come out of the next room with a small black gun in his hand. It seemed to me it was pointed more at me than Kozma.

  “And who the hell are you?” the politician said.

  I gestured toward the mirror hanging on the wall opposite the bed. “You think you’re just having some perverted fun, but they have you on tape. They’ll squeeze you dry before the elections, for money or something else.”

  “Don’t listen to them,” the neighbor said.

  “Stop waving that under my nose or I’ll shove it up your ass,” the politician said, but then he frowned at the mirror.

  “All right,” the neighbor said. “Listen to them, then. You don’t want us talking to your electorate. We recorded everything you two did. Just remember.”

  The politician turned to the woman. “Pandora!”

  “Do what you’re told,” she said, holding his gaze.

  “I’ll tell the authorities!”

  Pandora snapped her gum. “Give me the gun,” she said to the neighbor.

  The naked apartment suddenly became too crowded. The dominatrix playing a kinky partisan, the politician caught with his pants down, the psycho whose eyes I still couldn’t see.

  And us, two jinxes. I thought they’d kill each other off, and that Kozma and I would just have to sit back and wait it all out.

  No such luck.

  The politician burst into tears. He cried his heart out while collecting his clothes from the bed. Wiping his face, he asked, “What do I have to do?”

  “First, get rid of these two,” the neighbor said. “Then we’ll talk.”

  “I have my man downstairs,” the politician mumbled. “All my men are former police or military.”

  “Good for you,” the neighbor said, then turned to Kozma and me. “Why are you two spying on us?”

  While I was wondering if we should tell him anything, Kozma’s eyes moved to the woman.

  The neighbor caught it. “Ah, I see. She thought if she disguised herself she’d be inconspicuous. I begged to differ. But she also likes it.”

  Pandora blew him a kiss.

  “You would have gotten away with it, if it weren’t for him,” I said, pointing at Kozma, who seemed at once ashamed and proud. “By the way, how did you get into my apartment?”

  “I have your keys. Not only yours, the whole building’s. I have cameras in each apartment.” The neighbor laughed when he saw the expression on my face. “C’mon now, everybody out. I’m tired of you.” He turned to the politician. “You too.”

  While we all obediently marched to the door, Pandora entered the room with a camera and started packing what looked like a bunch of video cassettes. I assumed they weren’t, because technology did not wait for old farts like me. It was probably something you could store a lot of video recordings on, though.

  At the door, the politician started to say something, but the neighbor cut him off. “We will get back to you. We have to tidy up here first.” He wiped the handle of the gun with his handkerchief, dropped the weapon into the politician’s hands, and slammed the door in our faces.

  The three of us were left standing in the hall. The politician glanced at the gun in his hand, put his coat on, and waved for us to go.

  “They’ll probably go out through the clinic,” Kozma said. “You could still wait them out in the next building.”

  “Shut up,” the politician said. “The things we did to avoid my wife and the press, all for nothing. There will always be spies.”

  “You’re just the one who got fooled,” I said over my shoulder.

  He whacked my ear with the butt of the gun. I moved forward, massaging the sore spot.

  The dark limousine was waiting for us in front of the building. The politician motioned for us to get into the back, while he took the passenger seat. The driver looked at once confused and like someone who regularly witnesses these kinds of events. “To the summerhouse, chief?” he asked.

  The politician nodded. “Up the riverbank.”

  We glided by the buildings on one side and the walkway on the other. I saw a girl stand up from a bench and start walking toward us. My ear was still ringing.

  Kozma sighed. “Now we’re done for. And I will never find out why you didn’t marry her.”

  “What?” I said. Another girl was running toward us from the direction of the dumpsters on the right.

  “I always wondered.”

  “You did?” I thought I saw someone standing in the middle of the road in the distance. “What can I tell you? I was afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  “Arguments. Children. Family life. Everything.”

  “And you’re not sorry?”

  “Shut up!” the politician snapped, but he didn’t sound very convincing. He suddenly noticed the figure standing in front of the car. As we approached, I recognized Gigi. Girls on our left and right started sprinting toward us.

  “What are these crazy bitches doing?” the politician shouted. “Step on it!”

  The driver floored it, but a girl on the left managed to get close enough to throw something at the car. A balloon filled with black liquid splashed across the windshield, blocking us from seeing where we were going. The driver panicked and swerved. We crashed into something solid, and the driver and politician were immediately engulfed in airbags. While they were trying to disentangle themselves, the door on Kozma’s side opened. Gigi pee
red inside.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  Kozma had a cut above his eye. My shins throbbed from hitting the front seat. We both nodded as she helped us out.

  Once outside, we watched the politician and his gun fall out of the car, which was bent around a pole. Gigi’s girls played soccer with his weapon while he tried to stand up, his coat failing to conceal his spiked leather underpants. The girls had more balloons with thick black liquid inside them, but they chose to shower the man with flashes from their camera phones instead.

  Gigi smiled at the sight, then turned to us. “They’re not allowed to bother you,” she said. “Only we are.”

  * * *

  Two days later, I woke up in the afternoon. I didn’t think sleeping so late would become a habit, but it felt good. My ear and my shins were still pulsing. I’d gotten off easy, I knew.

  I continued some of my old habits. I swallowed a handful of pills and read chess books.

  I gave up my hobby, though, of trying to figure out the meaning of my asymmetrical ceiling. I stopped studying the history of the place I lived in, and just lived.

  I started by going out to buy a newspaper. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done so, but they’d printed some interesting photographs of our friend the politician. Maybe it was like that for him too, the river of sadness running underneath it all, but at least now he had something to be genuinely sad about.

  On my way back, I found Kozma in front of the building talking to his former colleagues. They had come to unofficially interrogate him, but this time they did not shout or threaten. The criminal ring that acted as a BDSM cell was broken. Celebrities and people who had something to lose had been coming to the cardiologist and entering the next apartment, thinking they were free to do what they pleased. When the blackmailing started, they’d had no one to turn to for help. The only thing missing from the whole story was the ringleaders. When Kozma’s former colleagues said goodbye, he and I set off to the park.

  “Nothing?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  They hadn’t found the neighbor or Pandora. With so many people in New Belgrade, they could easily move to another building and no one would know. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d done just that. I knew they’d been hurt by the publishing of the politician’s pictures. I only hoped they hurt like hell.

  I didn’t believe the neighbor about duplicate keys, but then again, how had he unlocked my apartment without breaking in? Instead of ceilings, I was now occasionally studying corners in search of hidden cameras. They tell me today’s technology in that field is cheap, available, and efficient. I found nothing.

  “Here they come,” Gigi said, smiling, when we got to the park.

  She sat down with me, put a tablet in front of us, and pulled up a virtual chess game. Choosing the white pieces, she played her first move.

  Beside us Kozma set up the folding chair he’d started carrying to the park, and lay down in the sun. He said he would take a break from the game for a while.

  “That thing with me being in a gang, that was funny,” Gigi said.

  “Hilarious,” I said.

  We agreed that the winner had to win two games. I was telling her about the Slav defense, but I somehow got the feeling she already knew all about it.

  AN AD IN VEČERNJE NOVOSTI

  by Kati Hiekkapelto

  Fontana, New Belgrade

  Translated from Finnish by Aleksi Koponen

  It’s all Mom’s fault. I’m lying in a big double bed with a tall, squiggly iron headboard. That’s the only furniture in the entire apartment. Nothing in the living room or in the kitchen. Windows without curtains. The sky outside looks the same as back home in the village, the fluffy gray clouds float by, heavy with rain, water pours down the windowpane. Everything’s quiet and I feel like I’m about to cry.

  The bed’s covered in satin sheets with a bit of a sheen. Or they had a sheen, but not anymore. Mom chose them from the ones in her chest, saying she’d only used them a couple of times. First time away from home and in a new place, won’t hurt to have something that smells of home, she’d said. It will help you sleep.

  I can’t move. If I try to lift my head, the fog comes down with a terrible pain that rips and burns everywhere. I can’t feel my hands but I can see them above me, dripping with blood. They’re cuffed to the iron headboard and my mouth is stuffed with some type of leather gag. It’s difficult to breathe. Every part of me is broken. Mom’s fine sheets are rumpled, doused and dappled in brown and red blood and feces and other bodily fluids.

  It’s the morning after my wedding and my wife’s gone, having left me tied to the bed. She told me as she was leaving that she was never coming back. She said it with an evil laugh. I know Mom would save me, but she can’t because she doesn’t know where I am. I can’t call her with a gagged mouth and tied hands, and besides, I don’t have a phone. Mom wouldn’t let me have a mobile phone. She told me I’d get brain cancer from any radiation near my head.

  This was all Mom’s idea. It wasn’t me who wanted to get married. I was happy with my quiet life in our village. She became obsessed with marrying me off. Yesterday was the same, she was fussing outside the courthouse where we got married, having packed three bags full of food so that I’d last until the morning. She told my wife that I’ve always liked to eat. And made us swear that as soon as we were awake we’d return home so that she could make us a proper breakfast. She saw I was nervous and said I’d be all right, nothing would change, except now I had a wife and she’d live with us. Only one night away from home and we’d see each other in the morning as usual. Oh dear, did she get that wrong? I haven’t had a single bite to eat. My wife started torturing me as soon as we got here. It’s likely that before starving I’ll bleed to death or my wounds will get so infected that I’ll die of blood poisoning. There’s no one who knows where I am and I doubt anyone will come until my corpse starts to smell. It’s not my wife’s home and the marriage ceremony was just an act. That’s what the woman said before she left.

  * * *

  I’ve slept next to Mom every night until now. She wouldn’t let me go on class trips or to church camps even though we did go to church regularly. When I turned eighteen I asked her for a room of my own but she just laughed and pooh-poohed me, reminding me how scared I am of thunder. She said that somebody had to make sure I didn’t masturbate, pour my seed into the ground. She made such an awful face that I didn’t mention my own room again. I was scared she might really get angry. And, of course, I knew she was only thinking of what was best for me. She’d always told me I was very sensitive, not like other people, that I need to be protected from the evils of this world, from temptation and sinful thoughts. How did she not see this coming? The first night away from home and this happens.

  * * *

  I’ve had a nice life with not too many worries. Mom’s looked after things. I wasn’t keen on leaving the village or home, things have been peachy. I’ve had enough to eat and clean clothes. That’s everything a man needs, Mom told me. Once one Friday I did want to go into the city to go barhopping but Mom wouldn’t give me money for the bus, so that took care of that. I wouldn’t have known when to press the button. Would’ve gotten lost. So I stayed home to watch television as usual and it wasn’t too bad. We kept a tally of how many questions each one of us got right. Mom said it’s far easier to stay at home and she was right. She never went into the city. There’s nothing there for people like us, she told me.

  When I turned forty a couple of years ago, Mom changed her mind all of a sudden. She started nagging and braying and was always in a foul mood, especially when she was cooking or washing my socks or underwear or sweeping the front. Just find a wife, she’d say. Get married. Good to have a daughter-in-law. Find one. And so she went on. I did answer back once. Where am I going to find her? I said. You don’t even let me go to the shop on my own, someone might lure me into the kafana to drink and smoke. It was brave of me to say that.
Usually, I just listen to her in silence, because she does lose her temper and that’s what happened this time too. She boxed my ears and started weeping, telling me I was blaming her for my own uselessness, an old woman who’s given me everything. And how could she look after me if she got worse? I’ll be seventy soon! she shouted, as if I didn’t know. And you need a wife! One who does your washing, your shopping, keeps a tidy house, and feeds you. Young, strong, and modest.

  I realized she was right, I could see she was old and ground down by her rheumatism. She was thinking of what’s best for me, but it did make me anxious. A wife. What am I supposed to do with a wife? I asked her. I wouldn’t know what to do. All sorts of slightly shameful thoughts started swarming in my head. Phooey, she said, and told me she’d give me advice. I’ll look after you and won’t let her treat you badly. It’ll go without a hitch. Just find the right one, she said, looking worried.

  * * *

  Some years passed with her asking around, putting out feelers, telling people that her son was looking for a wife. He’s a good man, she said, who doesn’t drink or fight or run around. But there was no one really suitable for us. The ones she had in mind had left the village a long time ago. The remaining few weren’t good enough for her. They went out in the city, their faces thick with makeup, looking for someone richer and smarter. And I don’t know how to dance. They wouldn’t understand, she said with huffy contempt. Whores, the lot of them, thinking they’ll get ahead and don’t realize that if someone’d have them, they would’ve snapped them up a long time ago. Past their sell-by date, sour and off, she complained. I didn’t like her speaking ill of others even though she didn’t really say nice things about anyone. There was one, a divorced lady who returned to our area, who Mom was interested in. I faintly remembered that she was one of the few who’d left me alone. I thought that I could build a marriage on that basis, but it all fell apart. Apparently, she was already going out with somebody, about to be engaged. Mom was furious. The bitch is lying! she shouted with her eyes ablaze. How could no one have seen anything in the village? Somebody would have known because there are no secrets here. That evening she calmed down and told me she wouldn’t have wanted a divorced woman for her dear son, that something must be wrong with the bitch since the previous husband up and left. There was nothing to add. I was happy that we couldn’t find anyone.