I-hardly-know-you to I-feel-like-I’ve-always-known-you. Katia had let go of her skepticism for long enough to believe that what they had was an open-ended parenthesis with no sign of closing.
Two weeks later they arrived in Zagreb late at night and checked into their hotel room, exhausted after the flights. Drifting into sleep, they rolled into each other in the middle of the sagging bed. It was late in the morning when she woke him up by running her hand along his arm. Her lips lightly touched his shoulder.
As they slowly emerged from their sleep, the only light was a thin white line coming through underneath the door. With her nose resting at the back of his neck, Goran’s smell was familiar. Freshly cut wood mixed with a slight scent of sweat. This grounded her. She was glad the room had no distinct smell that distracted her from his.
They were mostly silent over what remained of the breakfast buffet in the ground-floor hotel dining area. All of it was pleasantly far from Chicago and from classes and term papers. Both could tell the other was enjoying being away from their daily routine.
They continued their silence as they walked the cobblestone streets through the upper, old city of Zagreb to the museum. Freed from their heavy winter coats, they held hands and let their arms sway as if they were only loosely connected to their bodies. The mid-morning air was comfortably cool, the sun shining with the promise of heat.
Goran looked at home here with his fair skin and straight, dark hair and a seriousness that in an instant could give way to his Balkan joviality. Katia, with skin the color of caffe latte and a long afro, stood out. They leaned into each other as they found the street where the hotel concierge had said the museum was, bracketed by a baroque church and a Greek orthodox seminary. Goran held the door open for her while still holding her hand. Normally Katia didn’t like these overt displays of affection, but here she followed his lead.
He spoke in Croatian as he bought tickets from the young woman at the entrance. Then they stepped into a world of passion and love and sex gone wrong.
This was the place where the curators exhibited love’s detritus. There were wedding dresses and keys and dolls and stuffed animals and dildos; objects of affections lost and ended through deception and confusion and death and migration and dozens of other reasons known, unknown, or unclear.
After reading several of the letters together, they went in different directions. Goran was drawn to a trunk and a smashed statue in a glass case:
He was never the same after the earthquake. It was as if all he thought he could build for me and build to keep us safe could be broken. He pulled away from me and could not talk. He could not get beyond speaking only the basic things he needed to communicate just to live. It was the gardener who saw him leave. He told me he saw my husband lean down to pick up the pieces of this statue. The gardener said my husband began to cry and then walked away. He did not come back. He wrote months later with an address of where to send some of his things. As if I had been nothing but a landlady, or the manager of a warehouse for his belongings, for our twelve years together. He didn’t ask how I was. I didn’t tell him that I was pregnant when he left. I didn’t tell him about his daughter. He still does not know.
Kushiro, Japan, 2003
Katia was drawn to the corner with the sex toys, curious about the letters and stories that came with them. She read the letter next to a rabbit-shaped dildo:
We had seen each other at the pub on the corner near my flat and stopped to talk a couple of times. Then, that one Friday, we finally found ourselves sitting down for that drink we promised we would share one of these nights. It all happened without our having to say much. After drinks we went to my flat. She said the sex was amazing, that I was the first woman she had ever felt so free with. For that whole weekend we hardly got out of bed. I wondered if you could go crazy from amazing sex. I showed her my toys. She had this one in her purse. Then Monday came and we both had to go to work. I was sure when she called me at lunchtime that she would ask when we could get together again. That she missed me already. That she felt it too. She said I should know that she had a husband and that he couldn’t know about any of this and that it couldn’t happen again. She didn’t ask for her dildo back.
London, England, 2007
Each story compelled Katia to read the next one, to understand and feel the love and the hurt that went into each letter and accompanying object. Some had videos and pictures, and at times Katia felt she was invading the privacy of all these lives—that the writers of these letters would somehow feel her peering into their secrets.
Katia was so engrossed in the stories that she was slow to notice that Goran had been staring at the same exhibit for a long time. She became curious. Although she could only see Goran’s backside, she thought she could tell by his posture that he was somber as he read.
Katia walked toward Goran, and said nothing as she came up beside him, casually placing her hand on his shoulder. She moved her hand up past his shirt collar to his neck. Under the glass and next to the letter there was a CD case and next to that a drawing of a house and garden that looked as if it had been done by a child.
Katia carefully read the letter.
We were together for just two days. Two days all those years ago. And I have never gotten him out of my head. It sounds trite even as I write it. He is my first love and he probably doesn’t even know it. Our families were trying to get out at the same time. We were stuck in a transit camp, trying to leave at the beginning of the war.
It was very difficult to get out. You had to have papers in order, connections. Proof that no man in your family was running away from being drafted. Proof that you had somewhere to go. That some country, one not falling to pieces, would accept you.
We stayed up late into the night, all night, telling stories about our friends, our families, and our schools. He was fourteen. Nearly fifteen, he insisted. I was sixteen. He was so sweet, and so nervous. I could tell he had probably never talked like this with a girl before. He said he was sad that he had to leave his guitar behind.
He had a portable CD player with earphones and when we ran out of things to talk about, he put one earphone in my ear and the other in his and we listened to his CDs together. With his fingers he tapped the rhythm on my leg, pausing the CD and going back to lyrics that he wanted me to understand. His English was much better than mine and I could tell that he enjoyed being able to translate for me.
I took out the notebook I had in my backpack and showed him a drawing that I had made when I was younger of the cottage my grandparents had outside of Mostar. The notebook was one of the few things I was able to bring, apart from my clothes.
He saw me getting sad when I talked about the cottage, and about my grandparents, who were not going with us. He looked at me for a long time. Then he brushed the hair out of my eyes and ran his hand along my cheek. He moved his arm so our forearms were entwined. Then he brought his mouth to mine.
I wonder if he remembers that kiss. It was a kiss that carried my whole body with it. And I wonder if he remembers how safe he made me feel when he held my arm like that.
I wonder where he is now. His family was going to the US.
I wonder if he ever stays awake at night thinking about that kiss the way I do. I wonder if he knows that was the last time I felt safe.
Almost every day I wonder what has become of him. Whether he has children. Whether he is married. What he looks like as an adult. What kind of man he turned into. What his life is like.
This is all I have of that time: the drawing I did of my grandparents’ cottage and
