Belgrade Noir

Underneath It All Runs the River of Sadness by Oto Oltvanji

Block 45, New Belgrade

“If I win, you’ll help me spy on the neighbor on the fourth floor,” Kozma said. Not waiting for my answer, he moved his bishop.

Not the bishop, I thought.

We sat at a concrete table in the children’s park squeezed in among three four-story buildings. If nothing else, in the blocks you were protected from the wind. When you get old, the wind becomes your greatest enemy.

Kozma and I lived in Block 45, the last one in the row beside the riverbank. After us there was only the end of Belgrade, but it could easily have been the end of the world. At night, the darkness on the other side was that deep.

Before us stretched Block 44, which was kind of logical, but it was preceded by number 70, while on the other side of the wide avenue sprawled blocks 63, 62, and 61. Someone had had a lot of fun with numbering them.

All of it was part of New Belgrade, over 200,000 souls in the country’s largest dormitory. That’s what they used to call it anyway, but now big business had found its way here too. Car dealerships, shopping malls, private hospitals, a lot of eradicated green areas. Our little park was among the few resisting rampant urbanization.

Blocks and their history was my hobby, because retirees need to have one. Well, they don’t have to, but if they don’t, they quickly go mad. It started with me wanting to know who’d built the uneven ceiling in my apartment. Every morning, I would try to imagine heroes of the socialist labor of the sixties draining the surrounding swamps, as part of the Yugoslav postwar reconstruction. I had trouble imagining it.

Just as I had trouble coming up with a defense against Kozma’s bishop. Checkmate in two moves. When I looked up, Kozma was smiling at me.

I sighed and toppled my king. “I didn’t agree to anything.”

“But you will, won’t you?” He raised his eyebrows. “Now you have to.”

I didn’t have to do anything, and he knew it. At our age, everything happens voluntarily. That’s why I loved this oasis of ours, where we hid from the world, too-frequent elections, pension cuts, and uncollected garbage. That’s why I loved this block, this park, this table. Our table.

“Didn’t I tell you not to come here anymore?” shouted the girl with restless eyes as she hurried across the park.

Kozma and I rolled our eyes. Not everyone agreed it was our table.

They called her Gigi, nobody knew why. Nicknames don’t always have rational explanations. She was between fifteen and eighteen — it was hard to say. Somewhere along the way I’d lost my sense of youth. Didn’t matter, she was far too young to be shouting at the elderly.

All the girls she dragged along with her wore torn jeans and baseball hats. They all carried phones and beer cans in their hands even though it was only two p.m. (since they were probably underage, the time of day was, in fact, a moot point). One of them rolled a spray can between her fingers

Gigi stepped up onto our table, kicked over our chess pieces, and climbed down on the other side as if walking across a pedestrian bridge. “Mom and Dad think I’m in a gang, the school thinks I’m in a gang, the police think I’m in a gang.” She was virtually growling at Kozma. “All because of you.”

She swung her arm but only tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Kozma twitched and closed his eyes anyway.

I stood up. “Now that’s enough.”

“Shut up, Grandpa. You’ll get yours too. Being tall won’t save you.”

I remained standing and the moment passed. The aggression fizzled out of her. She seemed to realize it too.

“I’m watching you,” she said, backing away. “If I see you after dark, you’ll be sorry.”

We watched them go. The last one gave us the finger as they disappeared toward the river. I turned to Kozma, who squatted down to collect the pieces.

“Almost getting beat up by little girls doesn’t bother you?” I asked, while he stood up and started arranging the pieces. “Are you dragging me into one of your failed projects again?”

“So, you want to do it?” he asked quietly.

I sighed. “What have you come up with now?”

“It’s not like with the girls, Ranko, I swear. This one’s the real deal. I think he’s killing women. New ones come to him twice a week, but no one ever sees them leave. They come in, they don’t come out. I’m worried. Why are you looking at me like that? Here, you can be white this time.”

In his former life, Kozma was a policeman. During his career he sat in an office, a pencil pusher. Maybe that was the problem: too much paperwork, too few actual cases.

So his retirement hobby was quite different than mine. He wanted to solve a case for once in his life, to see how it felt. That desire was stronger than any realistic possibility of him actually succeeding, and it was certainly against the law. Officially he did not represent any authority in any capacity anymore.

And he had already made some blunders. Because he reported their daughter to the cops, Gigi’s parents were even more unpleasant to us than she was, if that’s possible. Kozma’s former colleagues had to warn him on several occasions, and they even threatened me. They asked what I was doing the whole day instead of keeping him on a short leash.

But Kozma was my best friend and my first neighbor. You don’t say no to either.

After our second chess game — Kozma won both — I reluctantly looked up when Kozma whispered, “Here he comes.”

He pointed to a balcony on the fourth floor where a pale young man wearing John Lennon glasses stood. He scowled at the yard below, his gaze not reaching our park, flicked a cigarette butt into the air, and went back inside.

“What do you say?” Kozma asked.

“He doesn’t look like trouble, if that’s what you mean. Or crazy. If you’re so sure, why don’t you report him?”

“He could be innocent.”

“Ah. You’re not so sure then.”

Kozma smiled. “But what if the police don’t find anything? He’ll become cautious, and then they’ll never catch him.”

“How do you even know women don’t leave his apartment? They might just sleep over and leave later.”

He made a circle around his eye with his thumb and index finger.

“You look through a spyhole? The whole night? You’re crazy, not him.” I shook my head. “What do you think he does with them if they don’t come out?”

He started sawing his forearm with the side of his palm.

“And stuffs their arms and legs into suitcases? C’mon! How come no one sees him removing the suitcases?”

“From now on we’ll be watching for that too. That’s why I need you.”

Glancing impatiently down at the board, I noticed Kozma’s rare oversight. I had an open passage to his queen, and after that his king was for the taking too.

“So, you have a plan?” I asked, mostly to divert his attention, and moved my knight. He seemed not to notice the threat since he responded with a pawn. His queen was mine.

“A new one is coming tonight, first time this week.” He looked at his wristwatch. “Speaking of which, we have to go. I’m taking the first shift.”

He stood up and started packing away the pieces, and with them the triumph within my reach. I sadly watched him close the wooden box and put it under his arm. He marched off not bothering to check if I followed.

I did follow. What else could I do?

We went around the building to the front entrance. We both lived on the ground floor, my apartment next to his.

In front of the neighboring entrance, virtually another building merging with ours through a double wall, there was a black limousine waiting, blocking us and cars from both directions. A robust, gray-haired man in a long coat exited the vehicle and hurriedly entered the next building. The limousine waited for one of the other cars to move and only then backed out of the street. Our neighbor Mira was sitting on a bench across the street smoking a cigarette. I asked her what was going on.

“Some big shot,” she whispered. “Goes to see the cardiologist on the fourth floor.”

“I know him,” Kozma said. “The loudmouth threatening everyone in Parliament.”

I didn’t really know what he was referring to because I didn’t read the newspaper, but it was enough information for me. A cardiologist on the fourth floor of a building without an elevator was quite the joke. A patient was prepped for the exam before even reaching the doctor.

If you wanted to truly disappear and never be found, the blocks were the perfect spot. Hiding in plain sight, inside the concrete beehive. Our labyrinth was a constant nightmare for the so-called real Belgradians from across the river, spoiled by conventional names and arrangements of streets, and for the couriers delivering stuff to people who behaved as if they did not wish to be found.

And you could make others disappear. Who knew if anyone would ever notice. What if Kozma was actually onto something? This predator could have been operating right under our noses for years.

“What did you mean about taking the first shift?” I asked.

“Just like in the army, two hours. The women usually arrive around eight, so we still have a little time left.”

Did I expect anyone to come tonight? Not really, but I was ready for Kozma’s game. We entered his apartment, the layout of which was the mirror image of mine, if we ignored the additional seventy-five square feet his had, another mystery that was probably the result of the builder’s negligence.

Kozma set up a folding chair in front of the door. I spotted numerous grease stains around the peephole, probably from his forehead. Next to the doorframe, a notebook was hanging on a string. I had one just like that, but in my kitchen. I used mine to write down every penny I spent, keeping track until my next pension payment arrived. I doubted Kozma had his for that purpose.

I asked him how long he’d been spying on the young man.

“Four girls,” he said. If they came twice a week, it meant Kozma had been active for at least a fortnight. All that time I’d failed to notice he had a new project. What kind of a friend and neighbor was I? I wondered.

We sat mostly in silence until we heard the heavy front door open or the buzzing sound of the intercom, and then he’d spring to his feet, peer through the peephole, declaring, “Baby,” or, “Dog.” He would write it down in his notebook. During Kozma’s shift, we welcomed two babies and three dogs back from their walks.

When the front door opened for the first time after eight, he got up again to take a look. I knew he saw something interesting because his back stiffened.

“It’s her,” he said.

“Let me see.”

I had enough time to catch a quick look before she disappeared to the left toward the staircase. Deep slit skirt, strong calves, assured walk. Black hair hiding her face. I listened until the clatter of her heels died down, then I unlocked the door and stepped out.

“What are you doing?” Kozma hissed.

While I was sneaking out into the corridor, I felt his disapproval behind my back, but despite this he followed me. We stood by the handrail listening to her footsteps, counting floors. She stopped on the top floor and knocked on a door. Someone opened it without any greeting. The door slammed shut behind her.

Kozma dragged me by my collar back into his apartment. He peered at me intensely in the darkness of his hallway, as if expecting me to admit defeat, but the fact that some woman had shown up on the fourth floor did not necessarily mean anything. I said nothing.

“Now you’re waiting for her to come out, or not come out,” he said. “Wake me up at half past ten.”

I fought the urge to go to the toilet frequently. Whenever I ran off to the bathroom, I left the door open so I could hear any sounds from the hallway and I hurried back as soon as I squeezed out those few precious drops.

During my shift, two students from the first floor arrived home from their night out. I watched a drunken neighbor from the second floor fail at unlocking the door and eventually took pity on him, buzzing him in. “Thank you!” he shouted into the air, to no one in particular, unaware as to who had let him in.

Then it got quiet in the building, with no one coming or going.

I listened to Kozma snore. I listened to planes flying over us, a noise I’d gotten used to. Part of the problem was that we got used to everything.

When no one went in or out for a long time, I started nosing around the apartment. On the kitchen wall I studied framed photographs of Kozma’s family. He lived alone, just like me. It’s probably why we got close so fast. But it was not by choice that he lived alone, as it was in my case. His wife and daughter were no longer with us, and his son acted as if he weren’t — living in Canada and refusing to speak to his father. All the pictures looked yellowed as if from another, more ancient time. They probably were, especially for Kozma.

The black-haired woman did not come back down. At least not by eleven, when I woke Kozma, having let him sleep an extra half hour.

He looked at me quizzically and I shook my head. Getting up without a word, he moved over to the chair, while I lay down on the couch, covering myself with his blanket.

I was woken by daylight. I didn’t immediately realize something was wrong, but I slowly became aware that I should have taken over well before sunrise.

Kozma shrugged. “I didn’t have the heart to wake you. You were sleeping so soundly.”

He was right. I hadn’t slept that well in a long time.

“Nothing much happened anyway,” he added. His eyes were so red I did not doubt he’d stayed awake the whole time.

We heard steps outside. “People going to the market,” he explained, yawning, and struggled to stand up in time to see who it was. “It’s him!” he whispered loudly, although no one could hear us.

“Is he carrying a suitcase?” I asked.

He shook his head, frowning. “If he’s headed to the market, this may be the perfect time to get into his apartment. To see for ourselves what’s going on up there.”

“What do you mean, get into his apartment?”

“Well, I have the keys.”

“What? Where did you get them?”

Kozma could not hide his conspiratorial smile. “It’s a long story.” He opened a locker in the hallway and took a bunch of keys off a hook. “Mira found his keys left in the lock of his mailbox one morning. She took them for safekeeping and tried to return them, but he was gone for the whole day. She told me all about it over coffee. I offered to return them for her because she had to go to her mother’s. Eventually I did, but not before I made copies.”

“I can’t believe it. How long have you had them? Why didn’t you go into his apartment sooner?”

“I needed a lookout.” He dangled the keys under my nose. “Coming?”

I came because I had no other choice. Over seventy years old and this was the first time I was about to break into someone’s home. But I didn’t feel guilty, maybe just a bit excited.

I prayed that we wouldn’t run into anyone, because we would have had a hard time explaining what two retirees from the ground floor were doing upstairs. Not even the roof would serve as an excuse since it was sealed off.

It was smooth sailing till the third floor when we heard a door open one level below. We flattened ourselves against the wall and waited for that someone to leave. When we arrived at the apartment door, instead of immediately putting the key in, Kozma knocked. He wanted to be sure no one was home. But if he was right, there would be no one alive in there anyway.

We both took deep breaths and entered. Inside, there was a long, naked corridor. The apartment did not look so much abandoned as not lived in. That’s why the voices we heard from the next room caught us off guard.

Behind closed doors, two men were talking. I could pick out a few words, “turnout,” “electoral roll,” and “polling board.” My knees buckled as I completely panicked. I ran straight for the door, colliding with Kozma who reached it first. He darted into the hallway as if launched from a circus cannon and tumbled down the stairs. I followed close behind him, as always.

On the stairwell between the fourth and third floors, he whooshed past a man who was climbing up, while I ran straight into the guy. I felt as if I’d hit a lamppost and fell at his feet. He grasped me by the shoulders roughly as he helped me up, and only when I lifted my head did I realize it was the neighbor whose apartment we’d just broken into. I couldn’t see his eyes behind his glasses, only my own reflection. An empty garbage can was dangling from his left hand.

Kozma was long gone. I wrestled out of the neighbor’s grip and hurried down the stairs. He shouted after me, but I paid no attention. I didn’t stop till I got into my own apartment, where I slammed the door and leaned against it. I was sure my pulse would never slow down. I was so out of breath I almost didn’t hear the knocking.

Through the peephole I saw Kozma nervously glancing around the hallway. I quickly let him in.

“Are you insane?” I shouted. “He didn’t go to the market! He went to throw out his trash!”

“We have a bigger problem now,” Kozma replied. “Do you know what we forgot? To lock the door!”

I slept until late afternoon, tossing and turning, waking up even more tired. I was studying the ceiling, wondering how it could even be possible to be that uneven. Which construction company did it? Who approved it?

I dragged myself to the kitchen, stepping around a bunch of chess books which were not helping me much. I swallowed a handful of pills. Routine was routine, it didn’t matter if I’d gotten up six hours later than usual.

Like Kozma, I too had a framed photo from another time, only I kept it in an old suitcase under my bed. I would take it out every morning, wipe off any dust, and wonder how she’d look today, if she were alive, before carefully putting the picture back in the suitcase.

I opened a chess book to delay going outside. I read a section about the Slav defense, when the opponent declines to respond to the sacrificing of a pawn in a Queen’s Gambit. The purpose was to narrow down the opponent’s maneuvering space in the middle of the board. Too bad I probably wouldn’t have a chance to use it.

Eventually, I came out with unbridled trepidation. The thing I was afraid of most was that Kozma was right about our neighbor, that he would jump me in the hallway, push me back into my apartment, and torture me for hours.

Outside, the sky was grayish, but it was still too light for me. Smog, humidity, and concrete often raised the temperature by several degrees. Kozma was sitting at our table in the park when I arrived, staring into his lap, failing to notice me. Soon I realized why.

UNDER 70 ONLY was spray-painted in black across the table. Dog owners and young parents were frowning at us as if we were the ones who wrote it.

I don’t know what made me look around, but it seemed logical that they’d stick around to see our reaction. I spotted the girls sitting on a bench just outside the park fence, in two rows, on the seat and backrest, just like soccer players posing for a picture.

Gigi grabbed her chest as if in pain from an imaginary heart attack and keeled over the back. When she got up, she and her friends laughed at us. They had every right to. They’d scored a strong point on their home turf.

I wanted to go, but I couldn’t leave Kozma behind, so I sat down.

“What are we going to do now?” Kozma said.

“You’re asking me? It’s easy for you, he probably didn’t even see you. It’s always me who ends up bearing the brunt of your nonsense.”

Gigi and the girls lit cigarettes as one, losing interest in us. Triumph sometimes has that effect on people. Without a real challenge, it becomes boring. Our challenge was on the fourth floor, but his balcony was empty.

“Nothing’s going on,” Kozma said. “I’ve been watching the whole time.”

“You’re not giving up, are you?”

“The conversation we heard in the apartment? Why would anyone talk like that? When I think about it, he may have left the radio on in order to warn off accidental snoops or burglars, because when you hear the radio through the door, you assume someone’s home.”

“Where did you get that idea?”

“Well, sometimes I do it myself.”

“And does it work?”

“I don’t know, but no one has ever broken in.”

We watched the balcony until it got dark. After that we squinted at it.

I don’t know what made me drop my gaze four stories to my ground-floor terrace, but when I did, I spied a movement through the windows. At first I thought I’d imagined it. Then it happened again. A shadow moved over from the kitchen to the living room. From my kitchen to my living room.

I turned to Kozma. “Did you see that?”

He gave a wide-eyed nod.

“You know I just shit my pants,” I said.

“Me too.”

I got up, but Kozma grabbed me by the wrist. “If you go through the yard, he will see you. Let’s go in through the front.”

My head was humming, the vein in my neck throbbing. When she saw us leaving, Gigi started rolling her clenched fists under her eyes as if crying. I let Kozma take my hand and lead me around the building. Smoking on the bench across the road, Mira looked at us as if we were old loonies. She was probably right.

The door to my apartment was slightly ajar, but there was no one inside. I found my garbage can emptied out in the middle of the living room. Everything else seemed intact.

“He’s screwing with us,” I said. “Now he’s broken into my apartment. But where did he get the keys? The lock doesn’t seem broken.” I shook my head, overwhelmed by a feeling of anger that replaced fear. “You know what this means, don’t you?”

“War,” Kozma said.

Kozma turned me into a kibitzer, voyeur, spy. I waited in my hallway until after seven, when he knocked on my door three times. It was a signal that he saw the neighbor leave, this time hopefully farther than our dumpsters.

While we climbed to his floor, I didn’t care about running into anyone. When Kozma unlocked the door, I heard the voices again, one male and one female, and recognized the words “sonata” and “philharmonic.” I instinctively wanted to turn away, but Kozma smiled and walked into the room, calling me over. He pointed to a radio sitting on the windowsill.

We had no trouble searching the apartment because not only did it not contain any women — or suitcases or saws — but it was nearly empty. In the middle of the living room there was a double bed with clean sheets; a large mirror hung on the wall across from it.

The view from the window so high above my own was totally different. In the park, I made out a shadow of someone who looked like one of Gigi’s girls looking up, as if watching this particular apartment. Over the roofs you could see the river, black and swollen.

“Something here isn’t right,” Kozma said absently.

The room next to the living room was locked. None of the keys matched, but this didn’t stop my friend. He went on searching until he found a door in the kitchen. We looked at each other. It should not have been there on the apartment’s outer wall.

This door was unlocked. We carefully peeked inside, mustered up the courage to enter, and stepped into a completely different apartment. It was covered in bathroom tiles, like a hospital. We passed a reception desk and in one small room found a bed and ultrasound and EKG equipment.

“The cardiologist from the next building over,” I said.

“They drilled a hole through the double wall and made a passage. I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve fallen into Wonderland.”

“I think we did fall into Wonderland.”

When we returned to the neighbor’s apartment, Kozma went on knocking on walls and wooden screens. Knock knock knock. Thump. In the living room he found a hidden closet. Two panels, floor to ceiling, hard oak boards, painted white just like the walls. It was not simple but we eventually found an indentation where we could fit our fingers in and slide the panel open. In one compartment there were stacks of cardboard boxes. It looked like the boxes had once contained an assortment of A/V equipment, but now appeared mostly empty. In the other, we found a wardrobe full of women’s clothing, from doctors’ coats and leather corsets to wigs of all colors. On the closet floor there was a similarly wide selection of footwear, from high heels to flats.

“What’s going on here?” Kozma asked.

Instead of a reply, someone opened the front door on the other side of the apartment. In the empty space it sounded like a gunshot.

“Hello?” a woman’s voice said.

Kozma started flapping his hands as if trying to fly. “This hasn’t happened before!” he croaked. “They never come two days in a row!”

I interrupted him by pushing him inside the closet with the boxes, barely squeezing myself in. Pulling the panel after me, I left a narrow crack to watch through. Kozma leaned over me hoping to see something too. We probably looked like a twisted totem pole, two sorry old men peering from their hidey-hole. I wasn’t sure we were completely hidden from the outside.

A tall blonde in a business suit entered the room. I’d say I had never seen her before but for two minor details: her skirt slit and those strong calves. She peeked into the kitchen, snapped her bubble gum, and took off her hair in a single practiced motion. Underneath, she had short black hair. Now I was certain she was the woman from the night before.

She opened the other wing of the closet and threw her wig inside, then pulled out a leather corset. She took everything off, white jacket and skirt, black bra and panties. I managed to count three tattoos: a scorpion on her shoulder, a crescent moon on her stomach, and a whip on her thigh. She squeezed herself into the corset, her waist becoming so small I wondered how she could breathe. The two of us did not breathe, did not swallow, did not dare look away.

When she went to the bathroom and we heard her turn on the tap, I whispered to Kozma, “This is where all your women disappeared. Into this closet.”

“I can’t believe it,” he whispered back. “She’s the same one. But that doesn’t explain—”

I shushed him. The front door opened again.

“I’m in here. Will be out in a sec,” the woman called from the bathroom.

We heard someone turn off the radio and then our neighbor entered with a paper bag in his hand. He took out a hamburger and bit into it. He had his mouth full when the woman entered the living room.

“Sorry,” he said between bites. “I’m sick of just snacks.” He wiped himself off and they kissed on the mouth.

“How come we’re working tonight?” he asked.

“He begged me for an extra day.”

The neighbor nodded. “I’m going to get ready.” He unlocked the next room with a little key from his pocket and closed the door behind him before we could see anything more.

The woman started rummaging through the closet, taking out more clothes. She draped herself with something and put some kind of cap on her head.

A sound system crackled. Over invisible loudspeakers we heard the neighbor’s voice: “You look stunning, as always.”

She leaned forward and pointed her bottom toward the mirror.

We heard him chuckle. “He rang the bell in the other apartment. Go get him. You know he doesn’t like to wait.”

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 peered 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

Translated from Finnish by Aleksi Koponen

Fontana, New Belgrade

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.

Then one day everything changed. It was one of those hot days where the air moves slowly, the cornfields breathe heavily, and the sun’s your enemy. I’d stayed in all day. Mom had gone to the shop and I was waiting for her to come back with sweet treats. I was sitting in the kitchen listening to the radio, without a care in the world. As soon as Mom came back I knew something had happened. Her hands were shaking as she spooned coffee into the džezva and she had a big smile across her sweaty face. I’ve got a great idea, she said, putting a cup on the plate.

Mom had heard the shopkeeper gossiping with Jovanka next door, telling her about going to her cousin’s wedding in the city that weekend. I kept munching on my šampite and said nothing even though I was getting slightly worried. Guess how this cousin found her husband, Mom said to me, her face glowing and red. I couldn’t guess, I had no idea how to find a husband. I knew something was up. The woman replied to a personal ad in the paper, Mom said, nearly shouting. The man, her future husband, put an ad in the paper looking for a wife, and she read it and felt in her heart that this was the one. And now they’re getting married! Just think about it. Pastry crumbs were flying from her lips as she excitedly told me the story. We’ll do the same, she said. My dear boy, we’ll run an ad. I’ll write it so you don’t have to worry about mistakes. Think! All the women of Serbia are going to read it. Your wife won’t be someone from our tiny little circles who could end up being a distant relative, yuck. The whole of Serbia will see our ad and there’ll be someone who realizes right away that this is her man, the only one for her. This is how we handle it. This is how people do things now.

She wrote the ad and I didn’t object. I couldn’t, even though I had a bad feeling from the start. I should’ve paid heed to that feeling. Maybe she would’ve listened to me if I’d protested enough. I could’ve stopped eating. That would’ve shown her how serious I was. But I couldn’t. And I thought to myself, Mom is wiser and more experienced and knows what’s best for me. Plus, I don’t like to starve myself.

The ad ran in the July 15 issue of Večernje Novosti.

And that’s how we found a wife. She was from Belgrade, short and compact, like her name, Una. She called us two weeks after we’d posted the ad. I knew Mom was already worried after no one called even though she tried to hide it and pretended to be cheery and hopeful. We’ll find you a fine wife, my dear boy, she said every night as she tucked me in. There’ll be a call tomorrow, I just know it. A week later I felt secretly relieved. That’s when I was sure I wouldn’t find a wife, neither a fine nor a bad one, and was happy. I didn’t want one. I wanted to be left alone with Mom. And then one night Una called. It was after my bedtime. Mom was watching a crime show she wouldn’t let me watch. I heard the phone ring and Mom getting up from her chair.

They spoke on the phone for half an hour. I couldn’t properly hear what Mom was saying but I realized something was going on. After the call, she was full of energy. She rushed into the bedroom, switched on the light, and told me with a shaky voice that it was my wife who called and that she’d be here tomorrow. She wasn’t even angry that she’d missed some of the crime show. She started cleaning the house in the middle of the night, like a crazy woman. She rummaged around so that it was impossible for me to sleep. After she calmed down and laid down next to me, she proudly declared that it was now time for me to have my own room. For me and my wife, that is. You’ll move into the sewing room, we’ll make a nice nest for you, she said. I started worrying and wanted to cry. I didn’t want my own room anymore, and I definitely didn’t want to sleep with a stranger in a stupid nest, and besides, where would we put Mom’s sewing? She told me to be quiet. She told me we’d just rearrange things, a bed by each wall and the sewing machine between them, where the window is. That’s not my own room then, is it? I was about to say, but I didn’t have the nerve. You can always sleep in my bed if you feel like it, she said before she finally fell asleep. I didn’t sleep at all that night.

Una arrived the following morning. Mom opened the door as we’d planned and I peered through the curtains in the kitchen. I tried to be careful not to brush the curtains. Mom had told me to wait in the kitchen and only come into the living room when she called for me. Sweet suffering Jesus, Una was pretty. She and Mom talked for a long while on the steps and at times she’d glance at the kitchen window as if she knew I was there. She swayed around very slowly, and her long dark hair swayed too. I’d never seen anything like her. Her clothes were special, not at all what other people wore. Her shiny dress was skintight, like someone had doused her in oil. Her eyes and lips were painted black. No one in the village looked like that, not even in the magazines I sometimes secretly skimmed in the shop. As I saw her swaying on our doorstep, I started to think it wouldn’t be too bad to have a wife of my own. My little mickeybob, which is what Mom called it when she was washing me, started to swell inside my pants and I became short of breath. I had to rub myself through my pants when they went into the living room and continued talking. I did feel a bit ashamed and dirty. Mom would’ve thrown a fit if she’d seen me like that, but I couldn’t show up in front of my fashionable wife with bulging pants. She would’ve thought I was a fool and Mom had warned me time and time again that I shouldn’t look like a clown. Hair combed, no staring with an open mouth, no picking your nose, and whatever you do, don’t fart, is that clear? she’d shouted at me repeatedly that morning. Best to keep my mouth shut and let Mom do the talking. I said I’d try my best.

After Mom and Una had chatted for a while, Mom came into the kitchen and put the džezva on. She told me in a low voice that after the coffee was ready I could join them and that it seemed promising, she was really interested in me. Mom was not pleased that Una was forty. She wanted me to marry somebody much younger. But then again, she said, best not to quibble when you’ve got a good one. An older woman could be better than a young thing, might have seen the world and wouldn’t be after something impossible, would understand how the world works. Well then, she said as she was putting down the sugars next to the cups and biscuits, now it’s time to meet our Una.

Una said nothing to me and I was pleased because I was so scared my stomach was doing somersaults. She kept staring at me with her black-painted cat’s eyes, and my cheeks started to flush. She looked at my crotch and I saw a flick of her wet, red tongue. Thank Jesus I’d sorted out my mickeybob, I thought, and remembered to shut my mouth. I felt sweat starting to run down my brow but I didn’t have the gall to wipe it off because my hands were shaking something awful. Sweet Jesus, they were already planning for a wedding and life after that. Yes, yes, Una nodded, and promised to do Mom’s washing too, and of course let the poor guy go sleep with his mother if ever there was a thunderstorm. It was okay with her that Mom would be in charge of cooking, no one else would understand what my appetite was like, but Una would help her with the chopping and peeling and slicing when needed. And wash the dishes. Una didn’t seem to mind that I wasn’t very talkative, she said she liked quiet men who weren’t always blabbing. No, she didn’t seem to mind that Mom would live in the room next to ours and would occassionally use it to sew in. Yes, she’d pull her weight when it came to living expenses like electricity and gas and water and could even pay Mom some rent. That’s when Mom started to smile very broadly and asked Una if she wanted more coffee.

The earliest possible date was set for the wedding. Papers wouldn’t take longer than two weeks and the ceremony would take place in Belgrade with official witnesses. Mom and Una agreed that there was no need to organize any sort of celebration, much less invite guests.

What a find, Mom said when Una excused herself. Una didn’t sit back down but told us that for her it was all settled. Her lifelong dream was about to come true, and all she needed to do was go back to the city to sell her apartment and organize a few other things. Then she’d return for the wedding. She only had one condition: she wanted to spend the wedding night in her old apartment in the city. She wanted to have one last fond memory of the place where she’d thought she’d die an old maid. Mom didn’t agree freely. I don’t know, she said. The poor boy hasn’t even seen Belgrade during the day. He won’t be able to sleep there. Would be best to come back right after the wedding.

That’s when I opened my mouth. I don’t know what possessed me to make that mistake, I was so taken by Una’s clothes and hair and cat’s eyes and tongue. Please, Mom, let me do it this once, I said. Since we’ve found such a good wife at last. Mom stayed quiet for a long time and I could nearly see the steam coming out of her ears as she was thinking. Una did the correct thing with Mom. She didn’t start pleading or reassuring. She just waited patiently, calmly looking out of the window. It took a long time until Mom finally agreed, this once. Una started laughing and sounded so happy that I couldn’t help but laugh too. I had to clap my hands and jump up and down a couple of times, I felt so good. Fine then, said Una. She promised to take good care of me and to bring me back the following morning when she would also move in. She said that she’d drive Mom to the shop or even into the city if Mom wanted. No more schlepping heavy bags. That sealed the deal for Mom.

As I said, we were married yesterday. Mom took the bus home from the courthouse and Una and I came to her apartment. I thought about how my life had changed completely, and so suddenly. The day before I’d never even been to the city and now I’d spent a whole day there with my wife. My head was swimming from all the cars and crowds and noise and the closeness of Una. Outside the courthouse, she took my hand and kissed me so hard that my lip bled a bit. Don’t worry, she said, I’ll take you home tomorrow. I love you. It must be real love, this, I thought — I’d never felt anything as lovely even though my lip was awfully sore. I wanted to tell her I loved her too but I didn’t have the nerve.

This apartment must be far from where we got married because we drove for a long time — at one point we even changed cars. I was nervous because I’d never been alone with a woman except for my mother, but she didn’t count, and hadn’t been in a car that often. But then on the side of a wall, I saw a large painting of two men whom I recognized from the news, probably presidents, and somehow they made me feel safe. I thought nothing bad could happen if those two were watching. We drove around until it got dark and started raining. The city lit up with a thousand lights. I saw tall houses pass outside the window, one after another, one street after another, the windshield wipers made screeching noises and puddles reflected the streetlights. Finally, we stopped in front of this building and took the clanking elevator to the sixth floor. There was no name written on her mailbox and I wanted to ask what her full name was, but I still didn’t have the courage to speak.

When we were inside the apartment my anxiety took over. My little mickeybob was dead stiff and achy in my pants. I did know what you’re supposed to do on your wedding night, and that’s what made me so nervous. Maybe I wouldn’t know how and she’d lose interest in me. I started making the bed with Mom’s sheets to give me something else to think about. Una stood in the doorway of the bedroom. She was wearing a black sheer lace dress and tight red boots. She was so devastatingly beautiful I could barely put the pillowcases on the pillows — I was so distracted. My wife!

After I finished making the bed, she told me in a low voice that it was time for us to start, that for years she’d dreamed of this moment. She told me to lie down on the bed and clicked my hands into the cuffs and then to the headboard. Then she took out an ugly rubber mask from under the bed, I’d seen them in old war films, as well as a long, thick whip and knives wrapped in soft velvet. She licked her lips with her red tongue, smiling and breathing heavily. She told me again that she loved me, then she put on the mask and began.

How To Pickle a Head of Cabbage by Vesna Goldsworthy

Knez Mihailova Street

The temperature had been hovering around freezing for days, dipping below for a few hours at a time, just long enough to turn relentless rain into milky, snotty sleet. Even at midday, it was so dark you might believe that Belgrade was somewhere above the North Pole, and not in so-called Southeastern Europe. People bolted out of doorways and scurried along under the eaves like wet mice. It was the sort of weather that would drive an Islamic holy man to slivovitz. The few fools who bothered to open their umbrellas found them instantly turned inside out, like black flowers, unfurling only to be broken by the icy gusts of košava, the worst of Serbia’s meteorological horrors. There are many more destructive winds around the world, but none that can match its malignant squall.

I spent my spare time smoking, feeling even more claustrophobic than usual, and daydreaming about Olga’s demise. All that black ice, a town full of slippery slopes, and who could guess where her osteoporosis might take the two of us? A broken rib, a pierced lung, acute pneumonia, then goodbye world: mission accomplished. Or, days of changing smelly adult nappies and wiping her shriveled little ass while she smiled quasi-apologetically and I thought of a plan B.

This particular contract was taking its time. Three years into it and dear old Oggy was beginning to seem indestructible, while I edged toward two packs a day, hypertension, and permanent irritability. Every sound she made infuriated me — even something as quiet as the shuffling of cards, an activity she indulged in for at least four hours a day — yet I had to pretend I enjoyed her company. That was the deal. My line of work, looking after old crones in exchange for an eventual right to their property, consisted of a species of tantric prostitution for hors d’oeuvres, and death and housing for dessert. In this impoverished city where the distressed elderly had only their homes to offer, lots of people dabbled in the business. Very few were my equals.

Olga owned an apartment in Belgrade’s epicenter, three floors above Knez Mihailova Street, on a block situated more or less diagonally across the road from the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Her building was pretty enough on the outside, with a faux-Habsburg yellow facade and chubby cherubs holding garlands of flowers above each window, oozing Central European ideas of grandeur. Inside, it was a honeycomb of crumbling passages and Dostoevskian courtyards inhabited by geriatrics who had known each other since they were toddlers, long before the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans. I am exaggerating, but not by much. You have to see the funny side when you are dealing with Dracula’s little sisters.

The Knez had once been the best street in Belgrade, but it had lost much of its sheen when it was pedestrianized in the 1980s. Yokels started circling, munching popcorn and eyeing up contraband for sale in improvised cardboard stalls. No one had the money for the expensive shops whose pastel racks of cashmere and silk glared emptily over the wet sidewalks.

What passes for today’s Serbian elite had abandoned the Knez soon after the death of socialism. The nouveaux riches want their properties detached and surrounded by bulletproof walls, and their drinking dens accessible only by armored vehicles. Nonetheless, there were still suckers moving in from the suburbs, or retiring to Belgrade after decades abroad, in numbers sufficient to keep property prices around here high enough to merit my three years with Oggy Schmoggy. A peach of an apartment, you could say, a fine salon with all the original features intact: I am speaking about quality workmanship which predates the shoddy half a century of the Yugoslav workers’ paradise. But no feature could justify a fourth year with the wretched babushka. I was beginning to feel restless.

During that third autumn on the Knez, I spent more and more time in bed, watched over by myriad photographs of the old hen’s family. Olga represented the narrowest point of a vast familial hourglass opening back in the mists of nineteenth-century Serbia as it emerged as an independent kingdom and then widening again in the global diaspora of the current century as those who could abandoned our Marxist paradise for opportunities abroad. Her World War I general father was executed by the Communists more or less as they entered Belgrade in 1944. Her mother lingered on in widow’s weeds for another forty years. That’s where the crow got her genes from.

Her twin sister escaped the country with the first Western diplomat she managed to meet and seduce: the fourth secretary of the Swiss embassy. There was something in that undistinguished catch that made me relate to the sis. When I smoked — and I had to blow the smoke through an open window, forty times a day, košava or not, or I’d never hear the end of Olga’s nagging — I used the sister’s photograph, in its silver frame, as a makeshift ashtray. I meditated on the winds of fate. The twin looked almost indistinguishable from Olga, but there was a slutty touch around the curled upper lip which made all the difference. You could see that the mouth was bloodred even in black and white.

Meanwhile, my Olga never married because no man would have been good enough for her and her mommy. So there were no direct descendants, or I would not be here, but the twin was fertile enough to compensate for Oggy’s celibacy. There were grandnephews and grandnieces in numbers sufficient to populate a dozen picture frames. The sis and the Swiss had hatched a vast opportunistic brood which proliferated across the globe as though bent on some Darwinian world domination: half-Serbs, followed by quarter-Serbs, followed by eighth-Serbs, et cetera. They smiled at me from Boston, Cologne, Perth, and Vancouver. They loved Olga sufficiently to mail photographs as tokens of hope that they might inherit the property, but not enough to visit or really care. They wouldn’t know what hit them until they read the will, silly fools.

And the will, signed by my dear little Olgica and witnessed by two of her neighbors and her cheapskate lawyer, Stanojlo Stanojlović, stipulated that her dwelling, with all its contents, down to the last silver frame, would one day soon — and I do mean soon in spite of everything — belong to the girl from the provinces. Me.

I know. I am less provincial than any of the brats on the walls. I am Belgrade born and bred, which is more than anyone could say about Olga’s wider family, in their second- and third-best Western cities. But in the business of offering care in exchange for lodgings, one has to pretend that one is from some godforsaken Serbian hovel five hours on a slow train from the bright lights, or the gig ceases to make sense. I’ve done it before: thirty-six years old, and on my third property. An annual income to beat Boston salaries if you work out the hourly rate as spread over three years — but never four, let alone five.

And it’s not as though I am short of job offers in a town chock-full of fossils with émigré children. Instead of doubting my nursing skills, whenever I mentioned my past “ladies,” old biddies took me to be a woman of experience, an angel of mercy: so much so that I could pick and choose my real estate. They did not care about property. They were old enough to know that they couldn’t take a square meter of it with them. So long as there was company willing to don a pair of rubber gloves when necessary, they chose not to worry that the angel might speed them along on their way to hell. Belgrade is a trusting sort of town, in spite of everything that has befallen it this side of the fourteenth century.

“Katya!” Olga shouted. “Katyusha! Would you be so kind as to…?”

I pretended not to hear. It was four a.m. and the hag could not know that I was awake. Gusts of the košava rattled the windowpanes with a force gathered from as far east as fuck knows, in squeals almost as high-pitched as Olga’s. Knez Mihailova sits on the brow of the highest hill between here and Russia, at the rim of a vast Pannonian plane. We’re talking about a hundred meters above sea level, but you’d have to hit the Ural Mountains before you found anything to rival the Knez in terms of altitude.

As the shutters shuddered and the curtains billowed in spite of the double glazing, I carried on pretending not to hear Olga’s clucking: a couple more minutes, just for fun. I opened the window a centimeter, shook the ash off the photo, and flicked the butt sideways, in the direction of the university building where I would teach a class, beginners’ Russian, later that afternoon.

That was my other occupation, my cover if you will: an adjunct lecturer, with a decade’s worth of waiting for a permanent teaching post, working four hours a week at a rate barely sufficient to buy a pack of cigarettes. Most people around here held two or three jobs, and often in combinations much odder than mine. A medievalist whose desk I kept borrowing for my office hours drove a taxi at night, while his tax-inspector wife moonlighted as a babysitter. My academic speciality was Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky: there was no money in FMD, not enough for a pack of cigarettes. Even Russian language was a tough sell, now that English killed all others like a giant rhododendron sapping the life of any plant that comes near it.

“Katya, Katinka…” Olga called me by a selection of Russian diminutives in implicit affinity with my academic interests. A vicious Serbian nationalist in most respects, she also fancied herself Russian and saw no contradiction in that. Her father had studied in St Petersburg long before the revolution, and he brought her Russian mother back to the Serbian sticks, along with his diploma from the military academy.

“Would you be so kind as to give me a hand here, KA-TA-RI-NO-CHKA…?” she yelled from the kitchen. I finally got out of bed and shuffled over in my nightshirt as slowly as I could.

She was wiping her greasy claws on her pinafore, having already deboned a large chicken. The skeleton was sitting on the sideboard waiting for me to wield a meat cleaver. She believed that bones had to be broken in order to add a je ne sais quoi to the broth. She thought chicken soup a cure for all known ailments, possibly including all those I had ever had in mind for her. And she liked to cook at dawn on the lower nighttime electricity rate. We had performed this act before.

I tied an apron over my nightshirt. It was a birthday present from Olga, which had the English words Take That written on it. She’d purchased it from one of the contraband pop-ups in the street below. Have I mentioned that she was a cheapskate?

“Thank you, Kitty,” she cooed as she watched me drop bits of carcass into the large cauldron of boiling water. Carrots and parsnips floated in the liquid like amputated fingers. Kitty — not quite a Russian diminutive, but a Tolstoyan one nonetheless — that’s what she called me when she was trying to use her dusty charm on me. She was too transparent to be efficiently manipulative, but it never stopped her trying.

She switched the lights off as soon as there was a faint promise of gray dawn outside. In the Serbian Academy building across the street, one or two windows were still — or already — lit: an early cleaning job or a sleepless geriatric trying to save the nation. I am not sure which is deadlier in its dotage, the male or the female of the Serbian species.

I took my apron off and shuffled back to bed. Olga turned the burner down, put the lid on the pot, left the soup to simmer, and followed me into my room. Annoyingly, she proceeded to lift the blanket and squeeze in next to me, fully clothed and without asking my permission. We had been here before too, in bed together, and not in any improper, sick way, but just her wanting to talk. I never knew which was worse, her cleaving to me like a barnacle, or hovering above me by my bedside, with her bony little bat shoulders and her straggly hair all messed up, while she rabbited on and I pretended to be half asleep. The woman had no notion of privacy, insofar as the concept even existed in the Serbian language. Privacy was for those who had something to be ashamed of, and she was shameless.

“And then the gate opened and on the other side was my father in full dress uniform, holding his ceremonial sword right up in front of his face… What do you think that means, Katinka?” She tended to describe her dreams so intricately that it was possible to fade out for three or four minutes and still catch her drift. The sword, in all its gem-encrusted glory, was worth a pretty packet. She kept it tucked away under her bed. I am not sure if she was hoping to protect her inheritance or her virginity from nocturnal intruders by hiding it there.

“Money?” I tried feebly.

She was not pleased. One-word dream interpretations were blatant shortchanging. My analysis should have been at least as detailed as her account. Was I not a literary critic of sorts? And the linking of her dearest daddy with something as vulgar as money was inappropriate, the very opposite of noblesse oblige. She kicked me in the shin with her dry hag-hoof.

“Do be a dear and fetch that Sanovnik from my bedroom, Kitty darling.”

She possessed a six-hundred-page dream dictionary precisely for occasions such as this, and she studied it every morning, while the images were still fresh in her failing mind, with all the fervor of the most dedicated yeshiva student. Variants of father dreams alone, I knew already, had a dozen pages to themselves. Swords, four pages. All of it fortune-telling, not Freud. This could take several hours. The shorter her future became, the more she wanted to know about it in advance.

And she was equally interested in my dreams. I never remembered any but I occasionally indulged her by inventing one. Making a wreath of marigolds, for example: I came up with that only last week. I have no idea where the marigolds came from, but I was pleased to catch a glimmer of greed in her little eyes when she found, in her dream book, that these flowers portended a large fortune. She seemed almost jealous that she had not dreamed of marigolds first.

“Unless,” she went on, “unless the flowers were wilted, in which case, Katyusha, your dream means exactly the opposite. You will lose a fortune. Except,” she giggled with childish pleasure and jabbed me in the chest with a bony finger, “you have nothing to lose, do you?”

I left her searching for dead fathers and silver swords and got out of bed to sort out her medication. Olga consumed her medicine by the kilogram and religiously, the way vegans munch their granola. She had a pillbox from Switzerland consisting of sixty-three chambers: nine largish compartments for each of the seven days of the week, their names inscribed in three languages. The damn thing was bigger and, once loaded, heavier than the stone tablets Moses received from God on Mount Sinai. Some of the medication was Serbian and cheap, some Western and expensive. The list of her health conditions was long — what can you expect at ninety-two?

One of my regular weekly duties was to place the pills in their proper sections and ensure that they were taken at appropriate times. I always had to find a good moment to complete the task of sorting, an occasion when Olga would be distracted and preferably elsewhere in the apartment. What she got from me were placebos, if that indeed is the proper word. Placebo means something pleasing in Latin, I believe, and I hoped my pills would have the opposite effect.

I had long collaborated with a chemist in Mirijevo, one of those suburban hells which cluster around Belgrade like cold sores and in which a house built with official permits was rarer than a lottery jackpot. The man was a sort of illegal legal drug dealer, whose business, based in the garage of his concrete suburban house, was flourishing amid medical shortages. He was happy to sell off the genuine stuff, particularly the Western kind, so long as it came in its original boxes. If she knew what I was doing, Olga would have admired my entrepreneurial spirit. She was all for waste not, want not.

The replacement capsules I doled out contained harmless substances. I was too good at my job to risk imprisonment for poisoning. I made her take camomile extract, essence of chrysanthemum, yeast, bicarbonate of soda, natural cake dyes — whatever looked right, happened to be approaching its best-before date, and was available at the Chinese supermarket amid the tower blocks of New Belgrade.

I had assumed this regime would have killed her by now, this non-taking of crucial medicines for chronic conditions, as it had finished off my previous two ladies — each within a couple of years, give or take a few months and a few extra nudges from me. Olga, however, seemed healthier than when I moved in. More than that, she appeared to flourish.

“You have a magic touch, Kitty,” she cooed as I returned with her morning pills: a fig-based laxative, a couple of beetroot compounds, and a milk-thistle lozenge. She opened her mouth and extended her bird tongue toward my left hand which held the capsules, and then to my right which proffered a glass of water. A gust of the košava rattled the window.

“That silver sword, Katya, it’s no good, I found. No good at all,” she said. “Double betrayal. Someone is plotting against me. I am thinking of missing my mah-jong party this evening.”

“You shouldn’t read too much into your dreams,” I said.

She shouldn’t have, perhaps, but she did, and then I started reading into them too. The more impatient I became to see her off, the more meaning I found in the messages Olga received from the other side.

I began planning a weekend away after the old fowl had told me about a dream in which she and I were engaged in pickling cabbage on her balcony — an activity her social standing and her low salt diet made most unlikely in real life. And anyway, we were hardly going to keep a barrel for just the two of us, adding to the briny smell which pervades Belgrade’s inner courtyards in the six months of the year between the last grapes and the first strawberries.

The Sanovnik suggested that Olga’s sword dream meant losing one’s head, and in ways which seemed less and less metaphorical with every interpretative permutation she read out loud. She chose to ignore the warnings: she wanted sauerkraut and she wanted it homemade, not store-bought. Appetite so often seems to be the last form of lust to survive.

Strangely enough, given its ubiquity in Serbia, there was no mention of pickling cabbage in the dream book. A flicker of an idea lit my neural pathways.

“I know what we’ll do,” I said. “My parents! They produce the silkiest, palest pickled cabbage in Serbia. I will take a weekend off and bring a few heads back with me. I haven’t visited my people since, what, April? As for having days off, I’ve forgotten what that even means.”

Oggy shrugged. She never thought of what I did for her as work. On the contrary, she was such a peerless narcissist that she sometimes came close to suggesting that I should pay her for her company. But she liked the idea of free cabbage: organic, grown in fine Serbian soil, pickled by the witless peasants who had engendered me.

My reference to April was a lie. I hadn’t visited my parents in fifteen years and had no plans to do so anytime soon. They were a couple of misery guts who did not deserve to be visited and they lived nowhere near a cabbage patch — if they were still alive, that is. Their stinginess was epic: it made Olga’s nighttime activities in the kitchen seem extravagant by comparison.

Thereafter, I encouraged her to imagine the magnificent lunches we would prepare with our home-brined leaves: goose on sauerkraut, sauerkraut with dumplings, every variant of choucroute known to woman, and, above all, our Serbian sarma, those majestic cabbage rolls. Normally short of conversational topics, Olga and I spent hours discussing the exact proportions of rice, mince, and smoked meat we might fold into the leaves as soon as I got hold of a properly brined head of cabbage.

When I first offered to bring the cabbages from home, I had no plans other than taking a short break from Olga’s claustrophobia-inducing company. If I let this continue, I realized, I’d be with her in a decade’s time, an old crone myself, still dropping harmless lemon-balm supplements or whatever into her pillbox. And she would be getting more and more youthful until there was not a whisker of difference between us. Apart from those few hours I spent teaching, she and I were so welded to each other that I was beginning to find her unfailing mean-spiritedness a touch simpatico, in a way that made me understand the Stockholm syndrome.

I found myself complaining about her oppressive good health to my chemist in Mirijevo. I cited her robustness as a reason for divesting myself of her medication while secretly wondering if my strategy was not in fact counterproductive. The pills Olga was meant to take might have been more harmful than my substitutes.

“I’ve decided to leave her on her own for a couple of days next weekend, Živorad,” I said. “Let her taste life without me. Let her see how much I do for her each and every day.”

Živorad shoved his hand into the front of his tracksuit bottoms and scratched himself pensively.

“I see your point, Kaća, but you should not leave an old woman all alone overnight. Belgrade is full of opportunistic scum, keeping tabs on people like her, always ready to rob or burgle. Those old folks are like fruit ripe for the picking. They mistrust the banks. They have mattresses stuffed with money, don’t they, Jovo?”

He turned to his Montenegrin assistant who was sitting quietly in the corner, sucking a cigarette propped in the gap left behind by a missing molar, and packing what looked like multicolored aspirins imprinted with smiley faces into plastic pouches. Živorad’s business was clearly diversifying.

Jovo emitted a croaky laugh. “You should give the lady one of these just before you leave.” He laughed some more, then snorted through his broken nose.

“She does sleep on one of those mattresses,” I said. “Full of Swiss francs. But I’m not worried about her safety. She has a gem-encrusted saber under the mattress. There would be slaughter if anyone tried to enter the property while I was away.”

Jovo and Živorad winked at me in unison. I did not at first think they believed a word I was saying, yet halfway through my little speech I saw a glint in Jovo’s bloodshot eyes.

I felt guilty about all that laughter after I left Mirijevo. And I almost shed a tear a day or two later, as I wheeled my small suitcase along the Knez. I turned back to see Olga in the kitchen window, still waving at me, rocking what appeared to be an imaginary baby in her bony arms, but what must have been an ethereal, golden head of cabbage.

I wasn’t going very far. I owned a small apartment some fifteen minutes’ walk away, just below the Kalemegdan citadel which stood between the Knez and the Danube, and so close to the zoo gardens that you could hear lions roar if you kept your windows open on a summer’s night. I had bought the place from the proceeds of my previous property sale. Indeed, I had been planning to retire when Olga appeared on the scene, scared of the big nine-oh alone and practically begging me to take her on. Just one more lady, she said. She had seen a glowing report from my long-deceased first employer.

“Katya, my dearest child, I hope you will consider me,” she pleaded at the end of the interview as though I was about to hire her and not the other way around. “I am sure we will get along very well, and you will want for nothing. And I am very easy to get along with,” she added, with an absence of self-awareness that was beyond spectacular. The memory of our first meeting is almost touching.

I managed to shed more than a few tears in Olga’s apartment when we gathered there to hear her will. It was the morning after the forty-day memorial service in the family crypt at the New Cemetery, Belgrade’s oldest burial ground. The Orthodox believe this to be the day when the soul of the departed finally leaves the earth, but Olga’s presence among us was still palpable.

The assembled company included Stanojlo Stanojlović, eleven of the twelve grandnephews and — nieces, a total of three nephews and one niece, and a couple of Olga’s fellow crones who had served as witnesses when the final version of the will was signed two years previously and who were also, as it happens, the first to find Olga dead. Stanojlo was wearing his best, grotesquely ill-cut brown suit with his best green tie. The young were in denim, the old in black.

The crones got the crochet collection. The nephews and niece got the sword, split four ways. The youngest generation got nothing. Do I need to say who got the apartment?

The way Olga had met her maker was as dark and violent as the weather that autumn. Two elderly women had found her spread-eagled on the terrazzo floor of her vast hallway just an hour before I returned to the apartment. She was still lying there when I stepped in, looking small and deflated in her quilted dressing gown, like a chalk outline on the site of her own murder. Her head was turned to one side, a semblance of a wry smile on her lips and a meat cleaver in the back of her skull, the same cleaver I had often used to dismember those chicken skeletons at dawn.

The two elderly women had known that I was away and they hoped to entice Olga to attend the evening prayer at the old cathedral down the road. She had failed to open the door on either Saturday night or Sunday morning, and she wasn’t answering her phone. They became convinced that she had suffered a fatal stroke and were about to call the police to force open the door when they tried it again and found it unlocked, and Olga just a few feet beyond it.

“Like that,” one of them said, nodding toward the corpse as though Olga had rammed the cleaver into the back of her own head and arranged the dressing gown to reveal her skeletal knees when she fell.

“And she had not seen a priest in years,” the other added, sobbing. “Her mother would have been appalled.”

They had called the police, and they knew enough from watching endless whodunnits on television not to touch anything at the crime scene. For there was no doubt that it was indeed a crime. One of Olga’s checked house slippers sat accusingly next to her hip, like a failed weapon of defense. I was holding a plastic bag containing three smelly heads of cabbage in my left hand, and the pull-out handle of my suitcase in my right, not quite knowing what to say or do. The poor thing looked awful with that cleaver in her head. I did want her dead, I admit, but this was a touch too dramatic.

The policeman seemed nonplussed. He had unbuttoned his thick blue winter coat and just stood there, speaking into a walkie-talkie and waiting for reinforcements. It was an emergency, obviously, but not that much of an emergency any longer.

“Bloody Montenegrins,” he said. “I bet you it’s them.”

One of the old crones crossed herself. She looked as though she might faint. The scene before us represented every Belgrade old lady’s nightmare. Cases like it were reported in the popular press all the time, or so it seemed. Serbian hacks loved milking the drama. The country may be going to the dogs, but that story is not nearly as vivid as a nonagenarian meeting a violent end, however timely that end might be.

There was always a brutal man, or a whole gang of them, keeping an eye on your movements, and then, the moment they knew you to be alone… whack. It was a meat cleaver in this case but it could equally well have been a Black & Decker drill. They threatened and prodded you until you told them where the money was. Most of their victims talked sooner rather than later, but Olga was a general’s daughter, made of sterner stuff. Dear old Oggy, in cold blood, lying on the cold floor, murdered, robbed, and God knows what else.

Finally, as if coming out of a delayed shock, I let out a little shriek and dropped the bag. The policeman turned toward me as though he hadn’t noticed me before. The cabbages fell out and bobbed along the floor wetly until one of them rested between Olga’s dead feet, as though she had just given birth to it. Like something in one of her dreams, I thought.

You may complain about the Serbian police as much as you like, but they can be scarily, even brutally efficient when they want to be. And a little bit of criminal thoughtlessness goes a long way in these parts. They caught up with Jovo barely a week after they found Olga’s body, on the Serbian — Montenegrin border. He was on his way to Podgorica with that sword and with two buckets of top-grade Colombian powder in the trunk of his Benz. He was either unbelievably blatant or unbelievably stupid, the hacks reported, leaving no one in any doubt that the latter was more likely.

There is nothing as cute as a handsome, well-spoken Montenegrin man in a finely tailored suit, with an expensive watch on his wrist. Jovo was not one of those. I can’t say that I felt guilty about the fool.

Živorad will have to find a new assistant, but I won’t be going to Mirijevo again. I have other plans, businesswise. A woman knows when to stop tempting fate.

Anyway, here we are. The paperwork is a nightmare, as it always is with property in central Belgrade. The lease changes hands with every war and revolution, and there is no shortage of either, so you never know what lurks in the land register. I’m not worried. I’ve been here before and I have a lawyer much better than Stanojlo. I stand in my kitchen and I watch the lights at the Serbian Academy go out.

Undermarket by Mirjana Đurđević

Translated by Genta Nishku

Vračar

Hari drags herself through the market like a beaten cat. From each stall, the lively colors of the Indian summer scream at her — hills of red peppers, small cucumbers, purple eggplants, all sorts of greens, big and small, with names she doesn’t even know, fifty shades of screaming green and orange pumpkins. All that’s missing is something blue.

It should be a magical sight. But it all just makes her want to vomit. She trips on a box and stumbles. Grapes. Aha, here’s that blue, or, rather, more of a plum. She clutches the edge of the stall with both hands, catching her breath, pretending she’s just looking.

“Are you okay?”

“Everything’s fine,” Hari mutters, turning her head. Standing next to her in the stall is a gray, withered old woman, her gaze worried and hard. With a straw hat on her head, a too-wide summer dress — ha, wait, bablje leto, what in America they call Indian summer, we call “old woman’s summer” in Serbia. God, the things that come to my mind. Or maybe she is not an old woman at all?

“Want some water?” comes a faint voice from across the stall. A young peasant, dressed in the latest fashions from the Chinese markets, extends a half-filled plastic bottle with a calloused hand.

“Go ahead, I’m not sick.”

Hari barely shakes her head no and stares at the peasant, who appears to be in her early thirties. Missing a front tooth, she gives her a half smile. Cynically, or is she tripping?! And — wait — she’s wearing a wig — a cheap synthetic nest, the color of hazelnut — in this heat?! The wig has shifted to one side. A woman with no hair, not even one visible strand.

“Wait, I have a full one,” the straw hat digs through her canvas bag, her harsh voice matching her gaze.

The straw hat underneath which there is no hair, nor a wig? Am I hallucinating or has the illness spread to my head? Hari now shakes her head no to both women, as well as to herself, but does not let go of the stall edge.

“We know each other,” the straw hat says, like she’s making a statement, not asking a question.

Hari throws her another look. A real ghost.

“I don’t think so. I remember faces. Excuse me, I need to go. And thanks.”

“You’ll be fine. I’ll walk you out,” declares the straw hat. Turning to the peasant she adds, “Mara, I’ll see you tonight.”

That authoritative tone! There’ll be no escorting, sister, fuck off. Hari gathers enough strength to turn and walk faster, at least up to the market gate.

But at the gate of the hundred-year-old house on Petrogradska Street, a new wave of weakness comes over her. She is unable to insert the key into the lock. And there is no one to call. The owner of the house, Laki, her best friend and partner in their failed business, has taken his wife to the mountains for two months. They’re saving their marriage. They left Hari to take care of the house. For Hari it is conveninent. With her chemo treatment coming up, she can easily walk from Laki’s house to the hospital in ten minutes, instead of having to drive from New Belgrade across crowded bridges. She’ll also avoid the stress of having to find parking around the medical complex. Frazzled after her surgery, she did not object too much when Laki pointed all of this out.

She finally manages to get the key to work, locking the gate behind her. Once in the garden, she tears off the colorful bandanna from her head, wiping away the sweat from her bare scalp, convinced she’d imagined what just happened.

Harijeta, Hari to her friends, fifty-plus, former chief inspector with the Serbian police in the homicide and sexual crimes division, former chief of security in a large department store in Chicago, former returnee to Belgrade. Soon she will be the former co-owner of the private detective agency Lucky Charm, which she started with her friend Laki, this she has firmly decided. Soon she will also be a former oncology patient, at least so she hopes. She needs to make it through her last round of chemotherapy, which is hitting her especially hard. Damn chemo brain… Everything is in a fog. But this, too, will pass. Provided that she does not die in someone else’s home, in this elite part of town.

Weekend. Two days without a needle. Harijeta keeps her eyes closed, reclining on the antediluvian lounge chair, in the shade of the old cherry tree, and pretends to relax. That is what they told her — she needs to rest. They also told her, though, that she must eat. Did someone say food?

The bell at the gate is ringing. Harijeta looks at the time on her phone. Quarter to ten, Saturday. She’ll play dead.

Like hell she will!

“Juhuuuuu! It’s me! Open up!” Nađa. Laki’s wife Lila’s friend since childhood. Who will not be satisfied with the pretense that Hari is dead, but will march into the yard even if she has to jump over the fence. Every Saturday, at exactly quarter to ten, the voice is heard: “Juhuuuuu! It’s me!” and there is Nađa with her cart, crammed with the entire damn market, and with small Tupperware containers of cooked food in her bag.

Reluctantly, Harijeta gets out of the lounge chair and opens the gate.

“Why do you even lock it? My whole life, this yard has been open,” babbles Nađa when she passes Harijeta as if she doesn’t exist, walking right into the house, then into the kitchen, where she opens the fridge and unpacks the containers.

“You will eat all of this later, do you understand? You have to eat! And now, go put something on your head. I’m taking you to the Story Café. Well, you don’t have to wear anything, you’re great just like this too. When someone has a nice skull—”

“They can even go through chemotherapy without fear of ruining their beauty,” Harijeta interrupts. “I am not going anywhere.”

“You’re going. I need you. For tonight’s theme.”

The café is some twenty meters from the house, on the corner of Petrogradska and Topolska streets. It’s a prewar, one-story, witchy-looking house, surrounded and covered by vines, with a wonderful garden.

Every Saturday at ten in the morning, Lila meets her two friends from elementary school at the Story Café. When they’re all together, they are a real trio. They cling to the idea that they are all committed intellectuals — Lila is a lawyer, one friend is a doctor, the other a journalist. Naturally, Nađa is the journalist. And every Saturday when they meet, they tackle a different sociopolitical topic. And some commitment it is! A meeting of the minds, at least according to Nađa and Lila.

Laki had told her all of this. He also has a best friend, Hari. But the two of them guzzle beer and don’t give a fuck about politics. At least that’s what they did when Hari was healthy. How happy she would be to have a beer now, but she fears the nausea that she feels with every bite or sip of anything other than water. Hari is afraid! Fearless Hari has been terrified for months.

Shit! Squeezing behind Nađa, the first thing Hari notices near the table under the purple wisteria flowers is a straw hat balancing on a bare neck and thin shoulders. That straw hat. She cannot turn around and leave now.

“Let me introduce you. This is Vera, our doctor.”

Two bald women look at each other and shake hands somewhat reluctantly.

“We know each other,” announces the straw hat.

“From the day before yesterday,” Hari retorts as she sits down.

Vera’s face is expressionless.

Nađa is impatient. “Harijeta is a guest. It would be great if she could join us on future Saturdays, of course, but today she is here on a mission.”

Harijeta gives her a confused look.

“I told you I had a topic for our Saturday discussions.” Nađa looks at them intensely. “You read about the events at the oncology clinic?”

If she expects some type of reaction from the two bald women, she is wrong.

Harijeta and Vera are silent. Disappointed, Nađa stares at both of them.

“I don’t read the news. I’ve had other concerns lately, in case you haven’t noticed.” The last thing Harijeta wants to chat with these women about is the oncology clinic.

“You don’t read the news either?” Nađa is persistent, calling on Vera now. She pulls out the cover of the Vračarski Glasnik from her bag. “‘Corruption Club Unraveling!’ ‘Bribery Scheme Uncovered.’”

“I read that, but if you’re looking for an insider, I can tell you that nothing much happens in the chemotherapy department.”

“You didn’t hear what the nurses were talking about when—”

Vera shook her head.

“But here we have an ideal situation. I looked into it — all the corruption cases the newspapers mention happened at the exact same time the murders were recorded.” Nađa takes out another cover. “‘Fourth Doctor from Oncology Murdered. Police Closing in on Murderers.’”

Closing in, my ass. The old Hari would have jumped on that piece of news. This new one, with chemo brain and a desire to forget, hardly even remembers her doctor Milošević.

“It’s suspicious that no one connects these two things. And you and Vera had your surgeries just then,” Nađa blabs on.

We were there? Hari examines Vera’s gray, tortured face. Didn’t she say that we knew each other, the other day at the market? And again now. Vera purses her lips and shoots a glance at Nađa. Those eyes… Harijeta’s brain feverishly scans images from her memory, images she is vigorously trying to delete, with varying degrees of success. No, they still don’t know each other.

“We were there together, so what?” Vera comments dryly.

“I wouldn’t say so,” Hari counters.

“Well, it turns out that here we have at our disposal a true detective, and two eyewitnesses, so to speak. So we can solve the murders. Imagine how it would be—”

“You don’t have anyone at your disposal,” Hari cuts her off, and readies herself to leave the garden.

“And there were no eyewitnesses,” replies Vera, showing no intention of leaving.

“Come on! What’s with you today? With all our talents combined, and the help of a professional, we have the opportunity to find the serial killer of these corrupt doctors! And to finally do something that matters, something this rotten state is never able to accomplish.”

Hari leans over the table. “Nađa, let me explain something to you. As a professional. And then I’m off. Look — never, ever, has one individual solved a crime in real life. Or a group, even if they were idle merry wives of Vračar. That only happens in crime novels. Go and write one, it’s your job to write, whatever it is you write about. And let the police do their job. And let me do my own work, getting cured, if that’s possible. All right now, goodbye, I’ll see you if you ever drop by the New Belgrade blocks with regard to some new topics…”

She gets up, sets a crumpled banknote on the table, and hurries out of the Story Café, and out of their story too.

She succeeds in eating something green and tasteless — let’s say some broccoli puree — and doesn’t throw it up. She succeeds in taking a shower without looking at the open red wound around half of her left breast. She succeeds in getting into bed — who cares if it’s noon? The one thing she doesn’t succeed in is napping. Or she almost does. But a tap on the glass of the open windowpane startles her. And frightens her. From the bed she sees only a bent index finger tapping.

“What now?!” says the former Harijeta, who jumps from the couch and marches up to the window, carrying a heavy crystal ashtray in her hands that she grabbed from the bedside. The intruder is wearing a straw hat that reaches the sills of the ground floor’s high windows.

“Why did Nađa send you?”

“She didn’t.” Vera raises her head to Harijeta. The hat dangles backward precariously, she holds it so it won’t fall off. “Open up. We can also talk outside, if you don’t want me inside the house.”

Against her wishes, Hari leaves the old yellow house.

“Wait a second.” She stiffens and turns around. “How did you get inside the garden at all? I locked the gate. I’m sure of it.”

“I came in from the back.” Vera motions to the back entrance of the house. Next to it, for as long as Hari has known this yard, some rusty metal sheets have been propped up against the tall wooden fence. Finally, the purpose of that trash becomes clear to her, since there were three boards missing from the fence behind her. Just enough to let a child, or this skeleton of a woman, squeeze through.

Stunned, she peers into the neighboring yard, right into the foundation pit of the construction site on Topolska Street. Where, until recently, there had been a very beautiful old house, maybe even older than Lila’s, certainly more decrepit. Now, a white four-story monster will rise up, let’s say the nouveau Vračar baroque style, with an underground garage for SUVs…

“Hey, you out of your mind? You could have been crushed there, fallen into the hole, had cement poured on you. They would never find you inside that hole. Why didn’t you ring the bell like a normal human being?” Feeling tired, Hari settles on the lounge chair and points Vera to a wobbly bamboo chair, possibly older than both of them combined. “So, what do you want from me?” she asks, already annoyed, but with no desire to move again.

“I need your professional help,” Vera declares, then goes quiet, taking off her hat.

Huh, I suppose I really do have a beautiful skull, thinks Hari. An urge comes over her to get her phone and take a selfie, because Vera—

They look at each other.

“Lucky Charm is closed. My last client was the first killed in the series of oncology clinic murders. He was sitting in the exact same chair you are now sitting in when he told me that I had cancer. There you go, you can have fun at the Story and then go chase after the murderers.”

No reaction comes from Vera at first. Then: “Doctor Milošević? I know.”

The reaction from Harijeta is visible, her eyes popping out of her head. “How do you know?”

Vera takes a moment to think. “I saw him come in here. I was walking down the street, from the market. And I read the news. A few days after I saw him, the news was that he was gone. What did he want from you? Money?”

“That’s a trick of the trade,” Hari snaps, intending to stop this insane conversation. “And I don’t believe that Nađa didn’t send you here to get some dirt.”

“She didn’t. I told you, I need help.”

“C’mon, woman, how can I help you? I can’t even get up from this chair. If I could, I’d throw you over the fence right now. And how can you, when you’re so—” She was about to say cadaverous. “How do you even have the strength to run about, move metal sheets, sneak around, and harass—”

“I’m sorry. I have to.” Vera’s facial expression doesn’t change even when she apologizes. “Mara has disappeared. I’m begging you to help me find her. It’s urgent.”

“Who the fuck is Mara?”

“The peasant from the market, from the other day. I have to find her.”

“Then get yourself to the market and find her.” Harijeta has really had enough. For the umpteenth time this morning.

“She’s not there. The day before yesterday I insisted that she move in with me. She didn’t show up. She wasn’t at the market yesterday, nor today. Her phone is out of service.”

“Insisted? To move in with you? What right do you have—”

“What right do I have?” Vera barks. Then she goes silent, thinking for a few seconds, and continues, “Okay, I’ll explain it to you.”

“Just be quick, I need to lie down soon.”

“I’ve been buying fruit from Mara for five or six years. We got to chatting, almost became friends. I was already alone at home at that time… And so we made an agreement that on Mondays, when the market is closed, she would stay in Belgrade and clean my house.”

“Wait, you were already alone? You divorced?” Hari is unaware that she’s entering the standard routine. Interrupting the client with more questions.

“No, I never married. I don’t have children. My father left us when I was a child. My sister died. Mother before her. Before Mother, my aunt. The four of us lived together ever since I can remember. And they left, one by one. Breast cancer. Now me, it’s genetic. I won’t be long now… That’s not important, but Mara…”

Harijeta is speechless. And her scar burns, it burns terribly. It’s the nerves, she thinks to herself, staring at Vera. Genetics? There was this woman who was in the same room with her during pre-op, deeply sedated and babbling about genetics, murders. There was chaos in the hospital that morning, the body of Dr. Milošević had been discovered, already decomposed… But she can’t remember anything clearly!

“Mara’s family ordered her to leave Belgrade, they needed her to work in the village. Then she appeared at my door, with a lump in her breast the size of a child’s fist… just around the same time you and I were running into each other in the hallways of the oncology clinic, waiting for surgery.”

“I don’t remember you,” is all Hari can say.

“And it’s better that way. But I remember you, it was hard not to notice your red mane. Sorry, you’ll grow a new one. Anyway, I wrote her first referral to a specialist, and somehow I expedited her surgery.”

“You bribed someone? Someone from the newspaper?”

“No. It doesn’t work like that with doctors — bribes are taken from patients, rarely from colleagues. Doctors are a mob.” She goes silent and then corrects herself: “We are a mob.”

“I figured that out on my own even without your help, a long time ago. What you’re saying doesn’t absolve you from—”

“I didn’t come for forgiveness, I came to look for Mara. She’s had her surgery. She has a chance, chemo started on time, but those criminals—”

“You doctors?” Hari brazenly interrupts again.

“No, her people, from the village, they solved the problem of her chemo by sending her to the market, to sell grapes. Between treatments. No wasted time. That’s why I insisted that she move in with me — I see you’re frowning at my interference. As if I care. She’s only halfway done, but soon she’ll feel sick. She needs to rest, she needs to eat, and not be like you.” Vera waves her off, as if Hari is a lost cause.

“And you think you’ll look after her? Look at yourself, woman, you’re like a twig.”

“And do you know where the sellers from the market sleep? I’m not talking about wholesale merchants, but peasants, the ones who lure half the city to Kalenić Market. Authentic, I heard one nouveau riche cow say in passing, how she only buys from authentic peasants. Do you know where all the boxes and carts of vegetables and fruit that can’t remain in the stalls disappear in the evening? They move to Vračar basements, along with the sellers. Have you ever walked around here at twilight? Or at six in the morning?”

“Frankly, no. Or I don’t remember. Neither did I look around. Sometimes Laki and I drink beer at Kalenić… Is it okay to drink beer, doctor?”

“You can, if you’re able to. Mara. She sleeps in a basement with her grapes. Half of the old buildings around the market stay standing by renting basements to peasants. That’s how they supplement their budget. Maintaining these houses has become too expensive. People sell them and leave Vračar. Lila might do that too, someday. Who knows what they could build in this spot then? A spa. A casino. A villa for some criminal, a villa even older and more beautiful than the one they demolished.”

“If you thought we’d go around nearby villages and look for her, forget it. I can’t drive.” And you even less so, you phantom, Hari thinks to herself.

“No. I wanted us to look for her together down below. In the basements. To be honest, I’m afraid to set out alone, maybe something has happened to her, she got sick or—”

“Which one of them is her basement?” Hari makes an effort to get up and look for her bandanna. She’ll take the skeleton to the fucking basement and be done with her.

“I don’t know. They all hide their burrows from each other, because somebody will come and pay more, for a bigger basement, closer to the market.”

Fuck, Kalenić under Kalenić seems to be the business center of Belgrade, Hari thinks while dragging herself off the lounge chair. “So what’s the problem? Afraid you’ll see a corpse, doctor?”

“No. I’ve seen plenty of them. But I don’t know my away around in the dark. And I don’t know how to get past the door buzzers. I’d have to lie so they’ll let me into the buildings. You probably know some tricks.”

“True, I got a degree in ceiling and basement navigation, and a doctorate in buzzer deceit. Idiot…” Hari is now up, unlocking the door. “C’mon. We’re going, and after that you are getting out of my life.”

The two bald women, one with a straw hat, thin like a ghost, and the other with the colorful bandanna on her head, in jeans that were always too baggy, visit eighteen Vračar basements around Kalenić Market in total, posing as mail couriers, godmothers who came for a birthday and forgot their glasses, pizza delivery…

Hari hasn’t done this before, but her imagination flies when she’s in action. They couldn’t get into some basements because their doors were locked. In others they found nobody alive, or dead, luckily.

Their flashlights reveal hills of potatoes, crates with apples, large plastic bags containing carrots purchased in some supermarket — which are obviously repackaged and sold as homegrown — two inflatable mattresses, an occasional pillow, one camping bed, a decommissioned couch, pears, imported cauliflower left to wither and appear organic, a mirror next to a basement window, blankets — some folded up but more often thrown over a makeshift bed — sneakers, plastic canisters with water… and no grapes anywhere, or any trace of Mara.

Vera stops by the fence of the gray one-story house where she lives, the one with a peeling facade, and pets the two cats stretching on the wall. She opens the metal gate with a creak and enters the yard. A few crates of grapes lie by the open basement door. Mara comes out, looks at her, and cracks a toothless grin. Definitely cynical.

“Where have you been, doctor? You scared me shitless! Are you done? I was afraid. All I could think was, She’s stronger than you, maybe she even knows karate…”

“Nothing is done,” Vera answers tiredly, and sits on the steps by the back door. “The spots you picked were stupid. And we ran into at least five people who knew me. You can’t plan a murder willy-nilly. There’s nothing I can do for her, she was at the wrong place at the wrong time. My fault, I shouldn’t have told her that I killed all those corrupt doctors, scum profiting from others’ suffering. But we were sedated, waiting for surgery, you remember how it is. For a second I had my doubts, I wasn’t sure if she’d heard me, if she really understood. But the way she looks at me. And how she refuses to admit that we know each other. And some things she says… Besides, she gave me a better idea. But this time you have to pull your weight too.”

“That won’t be so hard for me. Now you’re father and mother to me, may they both drop dead! I only have you. If they lock you up, I’ll end up six feet under too.”

“Stop your blabbering. You’ll live, I promised.”

Mara goes to the basement with two crates of grapes in her arms. Vera digs into the canvas bag. She takes out a bottle of chloroform, a cloth, an old metal medical box with syringes in it. At last she finds her cell phone.

“Hello, Nađa.” She is silent for a long time. Nađa is monologizing. “Can you check when the construction is scheduled to start at the house on Topolska Street? They’d know in the municipality, because of the traffic. So let’s organize a protest. Peaceful, of course. This is Vračar, after all, we’re not savages, we’ll let them work, but we’ll stand in the street with banners. They’ll respond better to that, it’s more publicity…”