The Hired Man

6

A yellow light. A surge of energy and the taste of electricity. The wind that day came from the south and arrived in the afternoon. A sudden rattling of the shutters and then the rain. I’d been watching the sky all morning as I prepared the outside walls for whitewashing. Grace was working on the fountain, Laura had gone to the supermarket and Matthew was sitting at the kitchen table eating a late breakfast, where Grace and I joined him.

Minutes passed, Grace said, ‘Well this isn’t much fun.’

‘Tell me about it,’ muttered Matthew.

‘It will be over in fifteen minutes,’ I said. ‘Maybe if you go and look out of the window you’ll see something.’

Grace stood up and crossed the room. For a few seconds she stood looking out of the window and then, ‘How did you know that would happen?’

I only knew what everybody else around here knows, like when the rain is coming and when the wind will change, when to expect snow and which winter months are best for picking rujnika mushrooms in the pine forest. The western wind is carefree and light. The northern and southern winds are troublesome. The bura is the fastest wind in the world, so cold that at Karlobag the sea freezes: white horses are turned to ice, frozen in motion like characters in a fairy story; in the streets signposts snap like straws. This southerly summer wind arrives, as always, with all the fanfare of a Gypsy caravan driving into town with a new spectacle for the townsfolk. First an empty stage. The wind dies, the sky is clear. Across the stage thunder gives chase to lightning. Up come the lights and the special effects: sunshine and transparent ribbons of rain. The Gypsy magician swirls his cloak.

‘What is it?’ asked Matthew.

‘A double rainbow,’ said Grace. ‘Come and see.’

Matthew only grunted. At that moment Laura came back from the supermarket; her clothes and hair were wet, she’d run from the car. Grace pointed to the rainbows. Laura pushed her wet hair from her face and craned her neck. ‘Mattie, have you seen this?’

‘I’m good, thanks.’

Laura insisted. ‘Come and look, before they disappear.’

‘I said I was cool.’

Laura moved to behind Matthew’s seat, she put her hand on his shoulder, bent and kissed the top of his head. Matthew pushed her hand away. ‘What’s the matter, darling?’ she asked.

‘Nothing, I’m fine.’

‘Why don’t you want to see the rainbows?’

‘Because I don’t, that’s why. Just drop it, will you, I said I’m fine.’

‘Come on, Mattie. ’

‘Oh for fuck’s sake, I said drop it.’

Laura flinched, but persisted. ‘Not until you tell me what the matter is.’

‘Oh OK. Well where shall I begin? Um, no TV, the phones don’t work, no Internet. Nothing to do all day, every day. It’s fucking boring here, that’s what.’

‘You’ve scarcely given it a chance.’

‘This was your idea, not ours, and just because it’s your fucking fantasy to live in the middle of nowhere doesn’t mean it’s everyone else’s.’

The mood changes. The sky darkens, the rainbows are snatched away. The clouds close in, the temperature drops and down comes more rain, heavy and sullen this time. The caravan closes up, the locals drift away.

After Matthew had left the room Laura raised her head and gave a little sniff, which meant she was being brave. Grace, standing by the window, said, ‘Wow, that was a mood killer.’

‘I’m sure he didn’t mean it.’

‘I’ll go and get him,’ I said. ‘Matthew shouldn’t speak to you that way.’

‘Leave him, Duro. It’s just his age, he’ll grow out of it.’

I was silent.

‘You don’t have children, Duro, otherwise you’d understand. I’ll talk to him later.’

I breathed in, I said, ‘There is no English television channel here, but you can get Internet at the library and there is a café in town called the Zodijak where you can get it too.’ And because I needed to leave the room I went outside to bring the bags in from the car. Laura urged me to wait for the rain to finish, I pretended not to hear.

Soon afterwards I went to the outbuilding where the Fićo was parked. I pulled away the cover and began an inspection of the vehicle, something I’d been meaning to find time to do. The body was in reasonable condition, a few spots of rust here and there, along the edge of one window. Despite the day’s rain this is a dry climate, as you know. The car was unlocked, I opened the driver’s door. One of the seats was split and the foam bulged, but here again the car had survived the years and the rats well. I fetched a torch and crawled under the car to inspect the chassis; I assumed it would be sound and it was.

The rain had eased off. Back inside there was only Grace, eating biscuits from the packet along with a glass of milk; she looked up at me and smiled. I fetched the car battery and the engine oil I’d brought in a day before and returned to the outbuilding where I stowed them next to the car. I shook out and replaced the cover. Along the wall of the outbuilding was a shelf where the rakija had been stored. I ran my hand along the underside, snagging my finger on the splintered wood. I searched until I felt what I was looking for: a row of hooks and keys. I shone the torch on them, inspected each one until I found the key for the Fićo.

Laura complimented my hands. She sat opposite me while I worked the splinter out of my thumb with the pin she had given me; when she offered to help I held my hand out for her. After the splinter was gone she held onto my fingers, lifting my hand to the light the better to examine it. Piano player’s hands, she said.

Piano player’s hands. I liked the things Laura had said. True, I take care of my hands. I take care of them not despite my work but because of it. My nails are trimmed to a length of one millimetre, and by the side of my tub I keep a Lipari pumice stone. My sister Daniela gave me my first manicure; she was training as a beautician and had done my mother’s hands and those of my sister Danica. I begged her to do mine next and sat with my fingertips in a bowl of soapy water. Daniela massaged my hands and rubbed in my mother’s rose hand cream, she painted my nails with a clear varnish and when it wore away I begged her to do it again, because I liked the way they looked so much. Daniela gave me a small piece of shammy leather wrapped around a matchbox and taught me how to buff my nails.

Laura’s hands were slim and tapered, with polished, almond-shaped nails. On her left hand next to her wedding band she wore a gold ring, set round with diamonds, on the other hand a small silver ring in the shape of a heart.

Laura said, ‘You don’t talk much, do you?’

I said, ‘What do you want me to say?’

She’d bought Pag cheese because she read about it in a book and wanted to try it. I told her where to go, because even though the cheese comes from the island, in fact you can buy it just about anywhere. Laura had been to the market in Gost and was disappointed. I know what she wanted: cheese and cured meats, olives soaked in oil and vine tomatoes, like in Italy. Instead she found imitation-leather jackets, mobile-phone covers and pickled vegetables. I explained that Gost market has always been like that. In years gone by the farmers sent their produce away to a central distribution point to be sold. What they didn’t send they kept for themselves. Laura invited me to try the cheese and wanted to know what I thought about it and I said it was good, though the truth is, it was only OK. While Laura enthused about the cheese Matthew rolled his eyes. Laura wanted everything to be special: the cheese the best cheese, the house she had found the best house in the best town. She was pleased there were no English people here.

We were alone in the house, the cheese between us on the table. She said, ‘Tell me about your family.’

‘I was raised here in Gost.’

Laura waited. ‘And?’

‘And what?’

‘Well tell me more.’

‘We were very happy.’

Laura laughed a great deal at that.

‘What’s funny?’ I said.

‘Sorry, Duro, but, well you’re the only person I’ve ever met who said they came from a happy family.’

‘Yes,’ I repeated. ‘We were happy.’

‘What did your father do?’

‘He worked in the post office.’

‘A postman?’

‘Not postman. In charge of the sorting office. My mother had different jobs. She helped in the school kitchens. I used to see her every day at lunchtime. When I was little I liked it a lot but when I was older I was embarrassed about it, I don’t know why. Because my other friends saw her there too maybe, and I worried she would become the butt of their jokes like some of the other staff members. She found another job, went to work in the fertiliser factory. We were five: my father, mother, two sisters and me.’

‘Do they all still live in Gost?’

‘One of my sisters and my mother moved away. My father and my other sister died.’

Laura’s smile disappeared, she said, ‘Oh.’ Her eyes slid away from me. ‘I’m sorry.’

I saw that it was up to me to put the conversation right again, to steer it back to where Laura would feel comfortable, something bereaved people learn to do. I said, ‘It was an accident. In any case they’re gone. My other sister lives in the capital with her husband, work is easier to find there, not too much of it here. My mother wanted to be around for her grandchildren when they came. There it is.’

‘Yes,’ said Laura. ‘There it is.’ She still had the olive stone in her mouth, which she sucked and turned around with her tongue while she looked at me. This and the fact I had been made to talk about myself made me uncomfortable. I was about to make an excuse and go back to work when a car drove by. Laura’s eyes followed it through the window as it passed. ‘There must be a party.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Hardly anyone comes down this road usually.’

Word was getting around: someone in the blue house. I said, ‘One of the roads is closed. Work on the water mains.’

‘I hope that doesn’t mean the water gets cut off.’

I reminded Laura she had a well.

I like to leave a job in a certain place, where I can pick it up easily. At the beginning of the day I set myself a goal and don’t stop until I’ve reached it. It’s just the way I am. I like to work hard and go to bed tired and begin again the next day, allocating tasks for myself in the right order and completing each one within the schedule I’ve set myself. I didn’t like my work to be disrupted or disturbed, even the school projects I laid out on the kitchen table when I was a child. I grew mad if anyone touched them. My mother complained to my father that I was stubborn. Not stubborn but single-minded, my father insisted, like him. Two men marooned in a household of women: my father always talked as though we were outnumbered, two to twenty instead of two to three. Perhaps it was because I was the youngest, petted by my sisters and my father, so easy-going; somehow we’d failed to stamp our masculinity upon the household.

Shooting was one thing we alone shared. My first shooting lessons were given to me by my father, I was barely taller than the gun, still watching Professor Balthazar on television after school. My father came into the house holding a rifle, he said, ‘Come on, chief.’ The Professor was on holiday in Switzerland, skiing and riding in trains. I turned the set off, jumped down and followed my father.

Learning to shoot is a lot like learning to play an instrument. In time I got to know my rifle the way a violinist knows his violin, every curve and line of the stock and barrel, the slide of the bolt, the pull of the trigger. From all those hours with my father I brought a single lesson. Patience, focus, control: in all things and especially in shooting. Aged ten I lost a shooting contest. It was at the local fair; I was nervous. My father put his hand on my ribcage, he told me I needed to learn how to still my heart. By the time I was in my teens I was winning every competition and I understood what he had meant: to go to a place within, to feel my heart shudder, slow and pause, hovering in advance of the next beat. To begin to beat again only after the shot had been taken.

When I was satisfied with the outside walls, I went to the courtyard and washed my brushes one by one under the tap, laid them out on a sheet of newspaper and made sure the lid of the paint tin was firmly in place. I washed my hands and splashed water over my face. I opened my eyes to find Laura standing in front of me.

‘Duro, Grace and I were wondering if you would like to stay and have supper with us.’

‘Thank you, yes.’ I dried my face on the sleeve of my T-shirt.

‘Good, we hoped you’d say that.’

‘First I need to wash and change my clothes.’

‘It’s just family.’

‘I must also feed Kos and Zeka.’

‘Bring them back with you, why don’t you?’

‘Thank you.’

It had been a while since I left the dogs alone for so many hours in the day; they were feeling sorry for themselves and let me know. I spent a few minutes raking their fur with my fingertips, searching for ticks, something they loved. On Zeka’s haunch I found one, already gorged with blood. He held still while I burned it off, but the damned thing burst and left a mess. I’d have to take a pin to remove the head later, now time was short. I fed them and let them follow me into the house. After I had showered I wiped the mirror and decided to shave. While I lathered my face I inspected myself as I hadn’t done in a long while. When you live on your own you forget how others see you. Overall I was not unhappy with what I saw. I had aged well, certainly compared to Fabjan and even Krešimir. I still weighed what I had at twenty and still had my hair and teeth. Every morning I performed the same exercise routine. Squats, pull-ups, crunches, push-ups: twenty-five of each. I went to the door and hoisted myself up, raised and lowered myself five or six times, counted to one hundred and let go. I shaved, found a pair of kitchen scissors and snipped at some coiled hairs growing in my eyebrows.

In the bedroom I chose a clean shirt. I dressed quickly and left the house with Kos and Zeka at my heels. It was still warm, a crane flew overhead and we followed in its path towards the blue house. I tried to think of the last time I’d shared a meal with anyone. The last family dinner I remembered was when Danica left Gost. Danica’s husband Luka worked for the railways and said the line through Gost was not so important any more, because the trains only came from one direction now. Osijek to Zagreb, Zagreb to Rijeka: that was going to become the most important. Wait and see. There were flats, he said, in Zagreb, vacated and going for cheap rents. Danica and Luka had their name down on a government list. Any tenant in social housing who left and didn’t pay the rent for six months would lose the flat and the flat would go to someone on the list, end of story. There were hundreds going spare. You had to act fast for the good ones. Some people just moved in and claimed they’d been living there for years. Sometimes it worked.

‘What if the tenants come back?’

‘Too bad,’ he shrugged.

Luka was confident. He roasted a lamb; there was walnut cake. Beer. My mother drank cola and red wine, her beloved bambus. A goodbye dinner, though no one said so. Luka went first, Danica followed, my mother the last. There must have been suppers in-between, but I have forgotten them. I felt no particular sadness when they left: at that time I felt very little at all. Later I felt it. Later still, I got used to being alone.

Every year Danica calls to wish me Happy Christmas and New Year and passes the phone to my mother. Soon enough she tells me there are still flats vacant in the building. Theirs has a view of the Sava. They sent me a photograph taken from the opposite shore of the river: a row of six or seven high-rise blocks: their image reflected in the steel water. The riverbank is straight, of soft, black earth. On either side there is what looks like a strip of no man’s land, though my mother insists it’s a park. There was a running track, she told me, as though she was thinking of taking up the sport. The first years were difficult. Danica had trouble finding work. My mother disliked leaving the apartment. Once she witnessed the trees being felled in Tomislav Square, some were one hundred years old. People gathered in front of the railway station to watch, cheering as each one toppled, though they were perfectly healthy trees. Sapling planes were planted in their place. These days Danica works as a tour guide and has introduced my mother to the city the way she does her tourists. For Mother’s birthday they visited the zoo, where my mother took a liking to the miniature hippopotamus. Then for a drink in Republica Square, I mean Jalačić Square, and then for supper on the terrace of the Hotel Dubrovnik. My mother liked the row of gift shops in the lobby, the restaurant with its red chairs and black-and-white-tiled floor, the buffet table covered in white cloths: my mother’s idea of glamour. Now she is in awe of the city and in love with the city at the same time. She rides the trams. Everything in Gost is small and far away and there are no trams. She never asks about the people she once knew.

At the blue house Grace was setting the table, folding napkins. Laura came in with a bunch of sunflowers, their heads already lolling on the end of their narrow stalks. She set about searching for a vase, rejecting those too small for the giant flowers. In the end she took a pot from the windowsill and filled it with water. She picked up the flowers, exclaimed and dropped them. I picked them up. Hoards of glistening black beetles crawled through the stamens of the discs.

‘Gross!’ said Grace.

‘Weevils,’ I said. At the front door I shook the flowers and plunged the heads into a bucket of water that stood there until the remaining insects floated to the surface. I handed the flowers to Laura, who thanked me and told me (again) that she didn’t know what she’d do without me. Of Matthew there was no sign.

‘He’s upstairs,’ said Laura. ‘He’ll be down.’

‘He’s in his room. He’s been there all day,’ said Grace. ‘He’s sulking.’

‘Grace!’

‘I’m just saying.’ Grace widened her eyes at her mother and turned to me. ‘He’s been in a bad mood ever since we got here. Just because it’s not cool enough for him. And there’s no Internet, of course.’

‘Don’t be silly. Matt’s enjoying the holiday just fine.’

‘Matt’s too cool to enjoy anything,’ said Grace. ‘He thinks enjoying things is for idiots. We’re all idiots apparently.’

‘That’s enough, Grace!’

Grace flinched but said nothing, she twisted the dishcloth to wipe the inside of a glass, set it on the table and hummed a single note.

We ate: pasta, tomatoes, local cured ham, good red wine in fine glasses. Grace was sent up to call Matthew, but she came down and said he wasn’t hungry. While her daughter was out of the room Laura had rearranged the settings, switching the position of the spoons. She undid and refolded two of the napkins. There was a carafe of water, not well water but fizzy, bottled water. New table mats and a tablecloth. Banished now to the windowsill: the sunflowers; candles in the middle of the table instead. The house had curtains, fastened with bows, even though I had yet to fix the patch of plaster on the wall. The order of things was wrong. Then Laura told me her husband was coming.

‘I hope he’ll be pleased.’

‘I’m sure he will be. To tell you the truth when I first saw the house I was a bit worried it wasn’t going to work out. Conor bought it without me, you see.’ What Laura told me next surprised me a great deal. She said she’d found the house on the Internet and her husband had flown over from Italy where he was on business to look at it. Imagine Krešimir having the wit to use the Internet. He must have found somebody to do it for him. That young wife of his, maybe? No, Krešimir would never let anyone be privy to his finances, let alone something like this.

To Laura I said, ‘What made you want to buy this house?’ For surely it could not have been Gost. I wondered how Laura saw the town, the churches and the school, the hills and the swimming hole, the people who lived here. I tried to imagine seeing it all for the first time, not knowing anything.

‘Property here is cheap relative to the rest of Europe. Conor reckoned the coast had peaked or would soon and we should look inland, a little off the tourist track. It’s got to be a good thing. People investing in the country again, getting the economy moving? I’ve been looking for something to do now the kids are more or less off my hands. If this works out, we’ll keep going.’

‘What do you mean keep going?’

‘Buy another one and do it up.’

‘You mean you plan to sell this house?’

‘That’s the idea. I’ve been scouting around. There’s no shortage of empty houses, though some of them are in appalling condition and nobody seems very interested in repairing them.’

‘The people around here are peasants,’ I said. ‘They don’t see property the same way you do, they don’t see the value and so take no care.’

‘The odd thing is there don’t seem to be any estate agents.’

‘Most houses here belong to families. They stay in the family even after somebody dies.’

Laura thought about that. ‘So how do you go about buying one?’

‘By private sale. The way you bought this one.’

‘They’re almost grown-up.’ Laura looked over at Grace petting Zeka, who stood with his head in her lap. Laura fell silent for a short time, drank more wine. She said, ‘We bought the house five years ago, but it’s only now I’ve really worked up the courage to come out and make it good. Mattie’s off to university next year. Grace takes care of herself, she doesn’t really need me.’ Laura spoke as if Grace couldn’t hear.

Five years? I stared at the table, I only came back to myself when Grace said, ‘I think Zeka’s hurt?’

I looked. The blood left by the exploding tick had matted in Zeka’s fur. ‘It’s nothing,’ I said. ‘Just a tick.’

‘Oh, OK. Can I take them out?’

‘Yes.’

‘Will they come with me?’ She stood up and went to the door.

‘Kos! Zeka!’ I waved my hand and the dogs rose as one and went to Grace.

‘They won’t get lost, will they?’

‘They’re hunting dogs. They know the area and they’ll do as you tell them.’ I thanked Laura for the dinner, suddenly I wanted to go home, to be alone. To think. My head was bursting with this new knowledge. But Laura brought a salad bowl and plates to the table, heaped the remaining pasta on a clean plate and placed it on a tray along with cutlery and a glass of water.

‘I’ll just take this up to poor Matt,’ she said. ‘He’s probably starving.’

The sight of Laura carrying supper upstairs to her son, taking the steps carefully. I climbed those stairs holding a tray once. It was the year before the family moved to the house in town after Krešimir’s father was promoted to his new job in the administrative offices of the Town Hall. An important job, more so than my father’s. It widened the space between me and Krešimir even more. But all that was to come. Back then the Pavićs still lived in the blue house. I had run up and down those stairs a thousand times. In Krešimir’s room we hung out of the window shooting wood pigeons with our first air rifles. One year Mr Pavić bought Krešimir a junior pool table and we played against each other for months. I owe it to Krešimir that I’ve never had to buy myself a drink in a bar where there’s a pool table.

I’ve gone to the Pavić house, as I so often do. The door’s open, though the parlour and kitchen are empty. It’s after school so I expect to see Krešimir at least, and usually at this time of day Mrs Pavić is home. It is a clear autumn day; the house is without heating and cold inside. The kitchen bears all the appearance of a careful departure: sink wiped dry, dishcloths on their pegs, a pot at the back of the stove. The room smells of onions.

A sound from upstairs: a cough, the flush of the toilet, a faint shuffle and creak. There is Anka, standing at the top of the stairs, wearing a nylon nightdress. Her hair is damp and stuck to her forehead in sharp points; at the back it forms a tangled halo. The lower part of her face is massively swollen and she sways so alarmingly I hold out my arms because I’m afraid she might fall down the stairs. She turns and stumbles away. By the time I reach the door to her room she has crawled back into bed.

The air in the room is sweet and stale. I open the window. When I am ill my mother makes me rosehip tea, beef soup; but I’ve no idea where to begin, so I boil milk and pour into it some of the coffee from the pan on the stove, I fry an egg and carry it all upstairs on a tray. I straighten the bedclothes around Anka, making noises like my mother does. Anka sips the milky coffee, the skin sticks to her lower lip. She says swallowing the egg hurts.

She has mumps. Where is everyone? I lie and say they have asked me to sit with her. I stay the whole afternoon and watch her sleep. I am too young to put my finger on the awfulness of it, but I feel it in my chest. Gone to town to buy new laces for Krešimir’s football boots, such a small thing. To leave your sick daughter for such a small thing.

Sleepless in the dark later the same night I had dinner with Laura. The new knowledge that Krešimir had sold the house five years ago was like a rat gnawing at my gut. I clenched my fists beneath the sheets. All this time he’d been sitting smugly on his secret, making fools of us. The number of times I’d passed him on the street, he knew he had one over all of us. Fuck you, Krešimir, you cunt! The blue house was never yours to sell.

There are some things in life you don’t set out to do. The arrival of Laura, Grace and Matthew was nothing to do with me. Krešimir sold the blue house to Laura’s husband. Five years ago, I now knew. I went there because I needed work. I’d no choice but to do the things I did. I knew the house better than anyone and it made sense that if somebody was going to work on restoring it then that person should be me. I led Laura to the mosaic in order to divert her from doing the jobs she could be paying me to do.

So it irritated Krešimir to see the house looking as it once had? Fine. What did he expect? I enjoyed rattling the bars of the cage that was Krešimir’s heart. The truth is, I hated Krešimir, I loathed him, and the years of loathing far outnumbered those we’d ever been friends.