The Hired Man

5

I advised Laura to hire contractors to fit the electric pump to the well and offered to oversee the work. I chose a company from out of town. The lining of the well needed some repairs and to be cleaned; the cracks and crevices were full of moss. Various tests for bacteria were conducted, even though most of us around here had been drinking water straight from the ground all our lives. When the men were gone I tested the turbidity of the water myself and in my own way: holding a glass to the light and drinking the contents.

How different the house looked already. I’d nearly finished painting the windows, the new tiles stared out from among the old ones on the roof. For some reason this pleased me, evidence of my labour, I suppose, a sign the house was being cared for again. Laura looked and shrugged and said no doubt no one would notice after a year or so and I didn’t disagree, but the truth is the new tiles

wear differently from the old ones, which were made by hand. There are houses in the town where most of the roof has been replaced and they still stand out among the rest after more than a decade.

I stood at the back of the house and viewed my work. The glass of the windows reflected the sky, the hills, the branches of the nearby tree. I thought of the one dead tree on the roadside at the front and reminded myself it needed bringing down. So much to be done. It’s true I’m happiest when I have a project, but all of this meant more to me than just the weekly rate Laura was giving me. Something that had been neglected and left to wither was being restored and if that bothered people, if it bothered Krešimir, then so be it. I raised my glass again, this time to the house, and I drank.

Later that evening, standing on the slopes of the lone hill, I saw the lights of the car as Laura arrived home. The family had left in the morning to spend the day at the national park, riding the boats up and down the rapids. The drive was two hours there and back. I watched the lights of the house go on one by one as they moved through its rooms, imagined Laura’s pleasure at finding the water pressure doubled. Somewhere nearby a nightjar started up. Whirr. Pat, pat. Whirr. By my side Zeka and Kos sank to their haunches to wait for me, the minutes passed but I didn’t move. Even in the dying light from where I stood I could see everything: the river and the town: in the forefront the grain stores on the riverbank, beyond them the coppered steeple of the church, the tiled roofs of the taller buildings, the roads and the cars upon them. I enjoyed the feeling of being there, able to watch over the family. But the dogs were hungry and became restless until Kos stood up and let go a long, low howl that reached out into the darkness and touched the blue house.

Laura’s husband had to delay his plans to come out. She’d been hoping he would come this week, but now he’d called to say it wasn’t possible. Laura picked up the message on her way to the national park yesterday. While she said this she ran her fingers across the surface of the table, backwards and forwards. Then she stopped, pushed her hair away from her face and sat up very straight.

I said, ‘Grace and Matthew will be disappointed not to see their father.’

‘He’s not their father,’ Laura replied very quickly. She’d been divorced from Grace and Matthew’s father, married again eight years ago. Grace got along well with the husband, but the same couldn’t be said of Matthew, at least not any longer. These days he answered back, there were rows, the rows ended with Matthew saying he didn’t have to listen to this man who wasn’t his father. ‘The trouble is Matthew’s right. I left their father and I feel very bad for them about that. It’s my fault.’ There were confrontations between Matthew and his stepfather so Laura made the decision to take all matters of discipline into her own hands, which hadn’t pleased her husband, but Laura said that she was Matthew’s mother and the responsibility belonged to her. This was how she explained it to me anyway. I didn’t really understand but I said nothing. If it wasn’t her husband’s place to discipline a boy who lived under his roof and ate the food he paid for, then it wasn’t my place to comment. Instead I raised the matter of the tree at the front of the house and we stepped outside into the sun to look at it.

‘We’ll have to bring in a tree surgeon,’ said Laura. ‘I expect that will cost a bit.’

‘I can do it. Easy.’

‘I don’t know what I would do without you,’ said Laura. ‘I can’t even think how to go about looking for a tree surgeon and even if I did I wouldn’t understand what they were saying to me.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t mean I’ll find a tree surgeon, I mean I’ll bring the tree down myself.’

Laura and I stood on the road facing the house. A few metres away Grace was busy excavating the fountain. She looked just like an archaeologist with a red polka-dot scarf around her head. She’d finished work on the mosaic on the wall of the house, the giant bird taking to the wing behind her. At the bottom of the fountain a terracotta-coloured fish entwined in emerald weeds was being revealed.

‘Duro?’ said Grace.

‘Yes?’

She stood up heavily and crossed to the mosaic and I followed and stood next to her. She smelled faintly of raw egg. Something about Grace prompted my pity and yet, though she was plain, much plainer than her mother and brother, she was a cheerful girl who’d at least found a way to occupy herself, whilst her pretty brother slept until noon and roamed the fields with wine stolen from his mother. ‘You know some of the tiles are missing, well I’ve put back all the ones that fell off. And then there were some other gaps, but I’ve replaced most of them with the ones we found in the outbuilding. the green and blue ones. They’re the same, you know. The problem is these ones.’

She pointed to the tail of the bird where several of the deep red glass tiles were gone and then to the body of the bird where the tiles, also red but a paler red, looked like they were made of quartz. ‘And these ones too. I can’t find any replacements about the house. There are others, the wing tips have a couple missing, but you don’t really notice. I was wondering if you could help me, if you knew where I could get some.’

Before I could reply Laura interrupted. ‘Don’t bother Duro, Grace. He doesn’t have time to help you look for tiles.’

‘Oh, OK. Sorry.’ Grace pressed her lips together and hummed her little tune.

Laura had already turned away. ‘What kind of trees are these anyway? Do we need to plant another one?’

‘Almond,’ I said. ‘They’re almond trees. They’ll fruit in another month or so.’ I turned back to Grace who was once more bent over the fountain. ‘Of course I can help,’ I said. ‘I know where we can find something like this. There is a town on the coast where you can buy crafts. We would have to take a trip, it’s about two hours away, but I’d be happy to show you.’

‘It’s too much trouble,’ said Laura.

‘Not at all,’ I insisted. ‘I’d like to go myself, it’s a long time since I went to the coast. Perhaps one Sunday when I have a little more time. They have excellent ice cream.’

Grace grinned. ‘That would be so cool, Duro.’

I turned to Laura. ‘OK, Laura?’

Laura shrugged and raised her eyebrows. ‘It’s OK with me.’

That evening I decided to go to town for a drink. I went to the Zodijak where Fabjan commented on my new sociability.

‘Just looking for company,’ I replied pleasantly. As I spoke I looked deliberately at the waitress. Fabjan grunted, took a long draught of his beer and set the heavy glass on the table in front of him; he stared over the top of it and cracked his knuckles.

I decided not to sit with Fabjan and chose a table near the railing which separated the Zodijak’s terrace from the road. As far as I was aware nobody in Gost knew I was working at the blue house. Nobody had seen me there, and that included the drivers of the cars that had passed by (I had been up the ladder each time); Laura couldn’t tell anyone even if she wanted to. Ever since he became the sole owner of the Zodijak, Fabjan has been busy getting his fingers into every pie in Gost; he rents out several properties and is part-owner of various other ventures: the hardware store, for instance, and a building company which also took care of wells: pumps, refits, that sort of thing. That’s why I’d chosen an out-of-town company for Laura’s well.

I drank my beer slowly. Fabjan’s BMW was parked on the other side of the road. I decided that when the summer was over and I’d made my money I would buy a car, something to replace the old Volkswagen I was driving. Behind me the waitress stared at the road, switching her gaze back and forth between the phased movement of the cars like a sheepdog eyeing sheep. I signalled for another beer. When she brought it over I asked her name and how long she had been in Gost. In return she told me her grandparents lived here, she had come to visit and ended up getting a job at the Zodijak.

‘What of your parents?’ I asked.

‘They left here when I was five.’

‘And how old are you now?’

‘I’ll be twenty-one soon.’

‘Congratulations,’ I said.

She smiled and squirmed, tilting her head and rubbing her chin against her shoulder. I invited her to sit down and saw her eyes flick in the direction of Fabjan. I gestured at the chair. She shrugged and was about to pull it out, when Fabjan said, ‘Go and wash the glasses at the back.’

‘They’re all done.’

‘Then put more beer in the fridge.’

Fabjan spoke without once turning to look at her, or indeed moving his head at all. The girl disappeared. I took the exchange to mean Fabjan was sleeping with her, which was a shame. She was pretty and it would have been pleasant to spend some time with her, all the more so if she was one of Fabjan’s. In the end it was all too much effort. It had been my pleasure just to irritate him.

I wandered home through the streets of Gost, the avenues of chestnut trees, the immaculate houses with their wooden balconies, window boxes full of geraniums and dark, gleaming windows. Front gardens full of roses: very popular this year, along with lilies. Lions on the gateposts; some people painted them yellow with brown manes. Green stone frogs crouched in the flower beds. Through the windows the blue flicker and drone of TV sets, from behind a pair of curtains: the sound of a man’s voice raised. The hotel, which had a stuffed bear in the entrance hall and a new wing, was open for dinner in the evenings. The eight-page menu included: Regional Specialities and International Dishes as though the hotel was, at any moment, expecting a large delegation from the United Nations. Outside was parked a big tour bus. The tourists spend the night in Gost on their way to the coast from Zagreb, though never more than one night. And to my knowledge they never leave the hotel, but stay inside behind a wall of pink and white oleander. Other than the few businessmen who also pass through as quickly as they can, nobody has any reason to come to Gost.

Unlike the hotel and the houses, the municipal buildings in the centre of town were pockmarked and dirty. On an abandoned building at the corner of a road, an ardent football fan had scrawled Volim Croatia Hajduk and scrawled a heart with an arrow through it. I passed the bakery. The other bakery, long gone now, had been on this same street, just a hundred metres down. At lunchtime they sold soda bread and devrek through the window. They had a retarded daughter, a Mongol, whom the boys, Andro, Goran and Miro, used to tease, imitating her tottering walk, her slow, deep voice and stupid smile. The other daughter owned a white angora sweater and served in the shop. She’d something of a reputation, as though she was compensating for the shame of her sister by being an easy lay. I used to visit their house from time to time, usually on an errand for my father, and wait in the sitting room mortified by the presence of the Mongol. But their burek had been the very best, no doubt. Sometimes, on those days I was working in town, I would buy one of their potato or spinach pies for lunch. Ever since the bakery closed there had only ever been one bakery in Gost. Someone could have made money opening a new one, Laura was right. In all the years that passed since the family went away, nobody ever did. Not Fabjan: too much even for him.

The town was silent, save for the boys in the car park of the supermarket, playing with their motorbikes; moustaches of soft sparse hair, bitten fingernails and acne scars: boys in love with their cocks, who think themselves men. Boys who have been around for ever and exist in every town, in every place in the world. I was once like them, we all were: Andro, Goran, Miro, Krešimir and me. In the end you grow out of it, or you hope you do. We grew older and the lads who replaced us hung around the Zodijak where Fabjan had had the good business sense to install a pinball machine and make money out of them.

On the bridge I stopped and looked out over the river, upon which the last of the light played itself out. I followed the trail of the water back along itself where it wound through a route five times longer than the actual distance it covered, up towards Gudura Uspomena.

Some days Anka and I go up to the pine forest to shoot birds without Krešimir. How did we begin to hunt together? I have forgotten. Probably I arrived at the house one day to find Krešimir out and Anka there instead and so it seemed natural to invite her along after the way she shot the rabbit, plus hadn’t her father bought her a shotgun with a design of a clover leaf on the stock? Soon enough I found I preferred hunting with Anka.

With Anka I shoot my first deer. I’ve taken my father’s gun without his permission. To show off, no doubt. It is an old bolt-action rifle with iron sights and we practise with it on a home-made target at fifty metres. As the gun belongs to me, or at least my father, I get most of the shots. On the way home we see a small bachelor herd feeding on the edge of the wood, drifting across the hillside towards us, and the wind coming straight up the hillside carries our scent away and into the pines. Anka and I begin to stalk them, not seriously, we’re still playing at being hunters. Sure enough the herd soon becomes aware of us and begins to move away and we, because it is the end of the day and we have time on our hands, we lie back on the grass and watch a lone crow cross the sky.

A buck, separated from the herd, appears on the brow of the hill about forty metres downhill of us. He is young, concerned principally with reaching his companions and hasn’t seen us lying in a shallow dip in the hillside between the two positions. He comes and keeps coming. Anka and I watch. Any minute I expect him to make a break for the safety of the herd, but he does no such thing. We are motionless, sharing a single thought. Slowly I train the sight on him. The breeze blows straight into my face. I aim fractionally ahead of him so that he walks straight into the bullet. The herd flees. We watch the buck: the moment of hesitation, the buckling of his back legs, the final lurch forward. Together we drag the carcass back to my house, where for the next week my father hugs me and brags to anyone who’ll listen. He couldn’t care that I took his gun, because that sin has been redeemed. And that I shot the buck out of season bothers nobody.