The Hired Man

2

The buddleia had taken hold both in the guttering and in the pointing. It came free with a shower of powder masonry. Laura, standing at the bottom of the ladder, applauded. I threw the buddleia to the ground and climbed down the ladder.

‘Do you have a bucket?’ I asked. ‘Two even better.’

She disappeared and returned with a pair of old metal pails. I climbed back up and began to clear the guttering.

I’d arrived early in the morning and ready for work, but Laura had made coffee and offered me a pastry. The pastry was stale and Laura apologised. ‘I need to get to the supermarket.’

‘There’s a baker. They make pastries of all kinds. I’ll show you.’ I had finished my coffee and rose. ‘I’ll get started.’

Now she stood below, watching me as I ladled rotten leaves and twigs into the bucket. When the first bucket was full I climbed down and exchanged it for the empty one. In this way and with her help I worked my way from left to right across the front of the house, repositioning the ladder every metre or so. Once I looked through one of the upper windows: there were no curtains — and saw asleep on the bed the boy I’d seen two days before. He was naked, lying on his back with one hand on his chest and the other holding his dick. Nothing, not the sound of our talk, nor the scrape and clang of the ladder, had interrupted his sleep.

Around eleven with the job finished Laura made us both another cup of coffee. I said I wanted to fix the tiles next and, since people often kept a stack of spares, I’d take a look, if that was OK, otherwise we’d have to buy them. Laura’s son appeared, wearing only a towel about his waist, his eyes slitty with sleep. In silence he went to the sink and poured himself a glass of water. Laura stood up and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Good morning, darling.’ He put his glass in the sink and Laura picked it up and rinsed it. He opened a cupboard and looked inside and she asked if he was hungry. When he took down a packet of cereal, she fetched a bowl and a spoon and the milk from the fridge. I saw our conversation was over and stood up. Laura turned. ‘Thanks, Duro. Let me know about the tiles.’

I stood on the slope at the back of the house and surveyed the roof. Typically steeply pitched, for the snow as I expect you know. From where I stood I had a decent view of the damage: worse than I thought, but not much more so. Heavy snow and frost take their toll and six months ago we were in the depths of winter. Lichen and moss had a hold. Fixing roofs is a year-round job, as I told Laura. An overgrown hawthorn hedge bordered the courtyard on one side, on the other three: the house and outbuildings. A walnut tree had cast two decades of its offspring on the ground. The grass had grown and fallen for sixteen summers. An old sink, a rusted rat trap and a small wagon: flotsam pulled down into it. In one corner, the outline of several raised beds, where I found rocket, flowering yellow and black-striped blooms. Fennel, grown taller than I stood. Loops of raspberry canes. A parsley pot had overturned and its spilled contents grew in a puddle of bright green. I picked up the pot and placed it upon a windowsill. Against the wall of the house I found a pile of bricks but no tiles. The door of the second outbuilding was wedged shut and I gave it a kick. Again no tiles but a quantity of tools which I sorted through for anything that looked useful. I came out and stood in the sun.

The blue house: I wonder if anyone but me called it that. To most people it was the Pavić house, the first Pavić house, because later they moved to a house in town. I circled it with a critical eye, ticked the jobs off on my fingers: gutters, roof, paintwork: the woodwork of the windows was in a poor state, the stonework needed whitewashing. The building was in reasonable structural shape. The dead tree of course, it needed to be taken down, and there was everything to be done inside, starting with the wall of the front room. I took a trowel to a windowsill where the wood was soft and splintered, I checked another and found it sound. I went back inside and said to Laura, ‘We’ll need to get some tiles, wood filler and paint, a blow torch.’

She blinked. I added, ‘For the windows. The wood is rotten. A few more winters and you’ll have to replace them all.’ I turned and addressed myself to the boy, who was eating at the table. ‘Duro. Pleased to meet you.’ I put my hand out.

Laura covered her mouth. ‘I’m so sorry. I forgot to introduce you.’

The boy looked up and seeing my hand offered his own, though his grip lacked any kind of enthusiasm. ‘Hi,’ he said, withdrew his hand and dropped his gaze back to his bowl.

We drove into town in Laura’s car. Outside the bakery was a queue, the latecomers getting in before lunchtime closing. ‘You need to come into town early for the best bread,’ I told Laura.

She craned her neck to see beyond the line of people. ‘There’s hardly anything left,’ she said. ‘Let’s go to another shop.’

‘This is the only one.’

She looked at me and laughed. ‘Really? Somebody needs to open another one. They’d make a fortune.’

‘There used to be another one.’

‘Don’t tell me it closed for lack of business.’

‘The people went away.’

She glanced at me and shrugged. ‘Oh well, nothing to do but wait. I expect you have things you need to do.’

In the Zodijak I drank an espresso. No Fabjan. After fifteen minutes I returned to the bakery where I found Laura at the counter talking loudly and pointing with fluttering hands. The woman behind the counter faced her squarely, blankly refusing to join in the game of sign language. I stepped past the waiting people.

‘Duro. Thank goodness.’

‘What would you like?’

‘I’d like a loaf of bread. Can you ask if there is any wholemeal?’

I doubted there would be such a thing but I translated anyway. The woman, who had been married to a cousin of mine for a while, replied in Cro. ‘No.’

‘No,’ I repeated. ‘There is only white bread.’

‘Can I order some wholemeal, maybe for tomorrow?’

I translated.

‘What do you think?’ replied my cousin’s ex-wife, again in Cro, which of course was all she spoke.

‘She apologises,’ I said to Laura. ‘Unfortunately they’re too busy to take special orders. You can only have what’s here. As you see, they have a lot of customers.’

‘OK, well I’ll take one of those.’ Laura pointed at a large loaf and the woman put it into a bag. ‘What’s in those pastries? Is it jam or chocolate?’

‘Gold coins,’ replied the woman. She pointed at the three types of pastries. ‘Gold coins in here. Lost treasure in this one. The last one’s chocolate, we ran out of treasure.’

Somebody behind tittered.

‘Custard,’ I told Laura. ‘Like sort of crème patissière. Not so good. The last one is chocolate. They’re the best.’

‘Then I’ll have three chocolate. What would you like, Duro? Have one on me.’

‘Thank you.’ I gave the order.

‘Lucky you,’ said the ex-wife. She raised an eyebrow. I ignored her.

‘How much?’ Laura asked, glancing between me and the woman.

‘800 kunas.’

Laura turned to me and shook her head slightly. ‘Sorry, what did she say?’

‘8 kunas,’ I said, and helped her with the coins.

We were back in the car. Laura apologised. ‘Thanks, Duro. I don’t think she was being very friendly.’

‘It’s just her way.’

‘I thought I’d offended her.’

I said, ‘She is an angry person; her husband left her.’

‘I’m not surprised. Is that the hardware shop?’ She slowed the car.

‘No, there’s another shop where the prices are better. Turn left here.’

We entered the shop and went to the back where the tiles were stored. I picked up two packs of ten. The prices in both shops were much the same, but Fabjan was part-owner of the other one and I had no interest in making any more money for him. I took a few other things we needed and said to Laura, ‘What colour paint do you want — for the windows and the door?’ When Laura hesitated I said, ‘Can I make a suggestion?’

‘Of course.’

‘Simplest if you choose the same colour. Makes the job easier. Where the wood is sound I rub it down, no need to burn the paint off.’

‘OK,’ agreed Laura. ‘It’s a beautiful colour. Almost the colour of cornflowers. You never see it in England, the sky’s too grey, I suppose. You need the sun to bring out hues like that.’

‘People say the colour keeps insects away, mosquitoes especially.’

‘That’s the second time I’ve heard that. In the southern states of America they have a very similar shade of blue, haint blue, it’s called. You see it everywhere, especially on verandas and porches. They say exactly the same thing, that it repels mosquitoes. Then in Savannah somebody told us that the real reason for the blue was that it kept away restless ghosts and spirits, an old slave superstition, apparently. That’s why it’s always on the outside of the house.’ She laughed.

I said, ‘Here in many villages we have a festival where the men dress up in masks and animal skins to chase the evil spirits from the woods. If you are here in February, you will be able to see it.’

Back at the house I spent twenty minutes sorting the tool shed and storing the things we had bought. When I went back inside Laura’s daughter Grace was cleaning the windows. ‘Dobar dan,’ I said and startled her. Her head jerked up, she glanced at me and quickly away.

‘Hi,’ she said. A tiny squeak accompanied the word and an odd little humming, like the sound of a tuning fork.

Outside I heaved the ladder into position and climbed onto the roof. To make each repair I had to slide the flat bars into position, descend to fetch a tile, climb back up to fit it. I threw the broken tiles down. It would have been a help to have somebody with me, to pass me the tiles, and the obvious candidate was Laura’s son, of whom there was no sign. Even with the hindrance of going up and down the ladder, I got on with the job. Solitude suits me. I am not given to the camaraderie of the building site with its undercurrent of aggression and where, if you choose to work rather than shirk, you are asking to be picked on by the others. I’d worked enough sites not to let it bother me; I got on with the job and I could take care of myself. But given the choice I’d rather work alone. I often thought I would like to be a writer, alone in a room. But for that I would have needed to go to college. I was good at history, languages. But my father dissuaded me: no jobs, unless you came from certain families and even then — did I know how people lived in the cities? So-called professionals, three generations in the same small apartment, endlessly partitioning rooms into smaller and smaller spaces. Work with your hands, he said. That way you will be your own master, hold onto your destiny and always eat. My father was right.

‘Where did you learn to speak such good English, Duro?’ Laura asked while we sat together over the kitchen table. She handed me a beer. Earlier in the afternoon a fridge had been delivered and now it was the end of the day the beer was almost cold enough.

‘I worked for a while on the coast,’ I said.

‘What did you do there?’

‘Many things. I was a waiter. Once I was a handyman in a hotel. Mostly I worked the boats.’

‘Did you travel?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘It was not so easy then as it is now. And besides I had little money. What of you?’

‘A bit, yes — on holiday mostly. The furthest I ever went was to Pakistan, to visit a friend who was working there. People stared at me the whole time. We went to a restaurant one evening and I was the only woman in the whole place. Their women aren’t allowed out, and then even when they are they have to be covered, you know, their faces. White women attract a lot of attention.’

I didn’t know about Pakistan. I asked, ‘Is this your first time here?’

‘I came here when I was little. It must have been the late ’60s or maybe early ’70s. I came with my parents. I fell in love for the first time.’

I told Laura she looked too young to have been in love as long ago as that.

Laura laughed, a proper laugh, not the titter women give when they think they’re being flattered and which Laura produced every time she felt awkward. ‘I was just a kid. Not much more than five or so. I know it sounds ridiculous, and of course it wasn’t really love — but it was the first time I felt that kind of emotion, something that was different from the way I loved my parents or my sister, something far more thrilling. I can remember the exact moment, the place, what it looked like, smelt like. rosemary, lavender and thyme — all those herbs that grow wild, mixed with dust and salt from the sea. The heat. Even what I was wearing, which was a swimsuit with a big yellow sun on it. I was standing on a beach with my sister, my parents were in a boat offshore. I don’t know how we came to be separated like that, but we were and probably it wasn’t that far to swim, but to me it seemed a very long way. Everyone in the boat was calling to me, even my sister tried to encourage me into the water, but I panicked and started crying. I’d only just learned to swim and I still used my rubber ring; trouble was the rubber ring was on the boat. I refused to get into the water without it.’

‘Didn’t one of your parents bring it to you?’

‘No. The boat boy, the son or nephew of the man who owned the boat, he’d come with us to help out for the day and was completely at one with the water, he grabbed it and dived in. I worshipped him for the rest of the holiday. I guess he’d have been about nine. I still remember the sight of him diving from the prow of the boat. It made me feel special. He was my hero.’ Laura laughed again, softly.

At sundown I walked the dogs on the hills. The lights of Gost separated me from a vast darkness: the sea, two hours’ drive away. Zeka picked up a scent and ran ahead with her nose to the ground, Kos behind. I left them for a short while, to see where they were headed, and then called them to heel before they could disappear into the pine plantation. Together we entered the trees. Inside it was closer to night. The pine needles were soft underfoot, soundless. There is a place where the deer gather on the other side of the plantation and the trees give way to a clearing. At about fifty metres from our destination I told the dogs to go down and wait for me, which they did, sinking slowly to their haunches. They liked to pretend they didn’t care, Kos and Zeka, but under the skin every nerve and muscle twitched. I moved slowly forward, balancing my weight on the outside edges of my feet; every ten steps I stopped and listened. In the silence of the forest I counted on hearing the deer before I saw them and so it happened: a group of eight grazing at the edge of the clearing. A young doe lifted her head at my approach. I froze. She glanced about nervously before she lowered her head again. Seven does, two bucks. The bucks were younger, less than a year old, probably. The doe who’d raised her head was closest to me and perhaps three years old. I lifted my rifle, set my sights on her and released the safety catch. She grazed on, her body angled away from me. I watched and waited. She might have sensed me, for she lifted her head a second time and looked to the left and right and then in my direction. An ear twitched. Neither of us moved. Then she relaxed and lowered her head; reaching for another morsel she shifted her footing and presented her broadside to me. I placed the cross hair at her temple, took a breath, exhaled, squeezed the trigger and watched her drop.

At the sound of the gun the rest of the deer fled. Kos and Zeka were at my side, ready to follow the blood trail if there was one. But I didn’t need them today: she’d fallen exactly where she’d stood. The sky had turned to a deep blue and it was too dark now to dress her in the woods, so I hoisted her onto my shoulder and headed in the direction of home. For two days my thoughts had been crowded by memories of Krešimir and of Anka. It felt as though I had been lifted up and set back in that time, the events of which I’d found a way to live with. I’d had no choice, none of us had, though some were better at it than others. Now I remembered how here, where the ravine meets the pine trees, we’d seen our first boar.

Anka, wearing yellow pop sox, stands upon a rock, showing off her balance: on tiptoe, her arms above her head, like a dancer in a musical box. Slowly she extends one leg behind her, an arm in front. She is wearing a yellow skirt which matches her socks and it ruffles in the breeze; otherwise she is impressively still. I have opened my mouth to cheer, when I see her expression and follow her line of sight to the first row of trees. There, in the no man’s land of shadows and sunlight, a boar: huge. Slowly I raise my gun and take aim. I miss, thank God, because the gun is a pea shooter and would doubtless only have made him mad. The bullet ricochets off a tree. The great beast shudders, regards us a moment longer and is gone. Anka jumps off the rock and into my arms.

We walk home exultant. Nobody bothers to mention that I really shot a tree and not a boar. Krešimir and I are fourteen and Anka is ten. The year is 1975.

I stood and inhaled the cold scent of the pine, the base note of leaf mould, made all the more powerful by the darkness. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine 1975 and then opened them before a picture could come. I whistled for Kos and Zeka and we returned by way of the road. Light flared between the shutters of the blue house. I stood on the road facing the house, the warm corpse of the deer over my shoulder, the dogs silent by my side. Somebody (Laura?) crossed in front of an upstairs window. I stood there for some minutes more until Kos spoke, a soft whine, and we turned towards home.

I lay awake, thinking about the past, things I hadn’t thought about for years. Somewhere nearby the vixen called, an awful sound. I’d seen her, she came some nights, circling the houses to search for scraps to take back to her half-grown cubs and drawn that night by the scent of the deer I’d dressed in the yard a couple of hours before. She taunted the dogs and the dogs answered, racing up and down their pen, barking and howling, clawing the wire mesh.

Next morning, the Tuesday, I arrived early at the blue house. In my hand I held a chisel. A few years after the house first became empty somebody had plastered and whitewashed a section of the façade. The job had been hastily done. I checked nobody was around and then I scraped at a layer of the plaster, loosening a portion, which I pulled away with my fingers. I stood there for a few minutes scraping and tossing lumps of plaster into the tall grass. I stopped and stood back. Now you could see a part of what lay beneath: a patchwork of small blue and green tiles made of glass and clay, the same as the ones lying on my windowsill.

Inside Laura was talking on her mobile phone. The day was clear and the sky pale blue. On many days the mountains blocked the reach of the mobile networks, but that day the invisible force field that seemed to surround Gost so much of the time had lifted. Laura pointed to the phone in her hand and mouthed something to me, then waved a hand at the coffee pot on the table next to a single cup. She left to finish her call upstairs. No sign of either the son or the daughter. I carried my coffee outside and set to work removing paint from the windowsills.

An hour on Laura came out to see how I was doing, then left to go into town. When she came back I set down my tools to help carry the groceries from the car. More coffee, which we carried outside again. Laura turned her face to the sun, closed her eyes for a few seconds and then opened them again to take a sip of her coffee; her eyes roamed the front of the house. When she noticed the place on the wall where I had scraped away the plaster she stood up and went over to inspect it, running her fingertips across the tiles. I watched her for a bit and then I said, ‘What is it?’

‘There’s something under here,’ she replied. ‘It looks like a mosaic.’