I’d already distinguished myself in the newspaper war. Now I was attached to PEG. That’s how it is in small countries: the room to manoeuvre is abominably narrow.
Secretary held a note in his hand and looked around through his glasses.
‘Any volunteers?’ the Chief asked, a little surprised.
I saw Dario fidgeting on his chair – you could tell he was about to volunteer, but he didn’t know if the others had precedence. He knew it was a great honour to take on an anti-GEP topic. In the end he raised two fingers and was the lucky one.
I was probably like that once, too, before I cottoned on – basically until the current boss bought us. A fallen tennis star. During the war he played recreationally with the former president and let him win points, for which Mr President rewarded him with discount shares in several state firms.
At that time the president personally edited the daily current-affairs programme, The Evening News, forcing us to be fighters for the truth, and the circulation of the free media rose. But after we won democracy the truth became more accessible. The circulation fell and recently a preferential investor, the ex-tennis star, had moved in to become our chief shareholder. I was naively surprised; it wasn’t logical to me, probably because, according to emotive logic, I’d thought we were fighting against... against something. But in economic terms the situation was clear: we had no dough, but he did.
Now, finally, I was only working here because it was a job.
I took out the loan.
The democratic processes brought the interest rates down.
* * *
Three Iraqi Scuds were fired at the Anglo-American convoys heading for the border. They came down one after another this afternoon twenty minutes before I arrived on the scene of the miss. Please introduce me as ‘Boris Gale, directly from the scene of the miss’. Usually reports come from the scene of an event, but in war you can only report from the scene of the miss. I mean, if it’d been a hit I wouldn’t be able to report it. That needs explaining to the readers... So: ‘Here’s a report from the scene of the miss from our correspondent...’ But listen, write what you want, that’s your job.
There were two others with me at the scene of the miss, Italians - since I’m an impoverished reporter they let me hop in the back of their jeep.
Like I say, we just arrived there. But they sent us back straight away. They were all in complete NBC gear with masks, rubber gloves and rubber boots.
Rubber, rubber and more rubber. That’s my report.
A non-event, a miss.
Gumboots in the sand, a huge sky.
Nothing to say.
The soldiers in rubber made us skedaddle.
We zoomed off into the desert, ciao.
* * *
We discussed topics for the next issue. I announced an interview with the old economist Mr Olenić: ‘The guy has witnessed all the economic reforms of the last decades.’
Silence.
‘He has all sorts of anecdotes,’ I added.
Pero the Chief nodded at the bit about anecdotes.
The hardest part came at the end...
When the meeting had finished and the others were leaving, the Chief asked me: ‘And our man on the scene?’
‘Yes?’ I looked at him, waiting for the others to go out.
‘That boy in Iraq – is he still there?’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ I said.
I’d been suppressing it for too long. It was time for an admission.
I looked at the Chief and waited for his onslaught. What exactly should I tell him?
I didn’t know where to start. The fellow we sent to Iraq didn’t have any journalistic experience – but he’d studied Arabic and already been in a war. I’d praised him, first of all to Secretary. ‘Wow, what hat did you pull him out of?!’ he asked, fascinated that the guy knew Arabic. ‘Oh, you know me,’ I said – I was famous for my personnel conjuring acts.
Then Secretary took the matter before Pero. That was probably the first thing the Chief gave his rubber stamp to. He was itching to make decisions. And the recruitment of ambitious amateurs went together perfectly with the paper’s cost-cutting policy. We proudly emphasised that we were a corporation open to young people.
The guy we sent to Iraq was called Boris, and there was a catch. You see, Boris is a cousin of mine. I didn’t tell anyone about that. He’s human too, after all, and with Arabic Studies on his CV he was made for the job.
But now I began to feel the bond of kinship. Not only had I recommended a guy who played the fool instead of writing normal reports, but it turned out that I’d fraudulently employed one of my stupid relatives. I pretended to be a suave European intellectual but in secret I was clowning around for my clan.
I saw now that I was going to be caught red-handed.
My eyes fixed on the Chief.
I wanted to tell him that my mother was to blame for everything. She gave my phone number to everyone!
When you look at it, it really isn’t natural: people flock to the capital like blind mice, the city grows like a tumour, and half the bloody population have my number in their pocket.
So, of course, when Boris came to Zagreb he had my number in his pocket, or rather in his mobile.
He had it from her. As if sending me some forgotten debt, she’d mediated before the local community as a representative of my ‘success’ in the world; as soon as I’m out of earshot she boasts that I’m Mr Big in Zagreb. And there you go, people hold her to her word; she’s practically opened an office at home, receives petitioners and passes on my number. I then get called up by people who I’d forgotten even existed; they call me about the most unlikely things (someone’s pension or operation, the local water supply, the anniversary of their brigade from the war, a paedophile on the beach, etc.), and when I answer the phone they invariably ask: ‘Guess who this is?’
They’re curious if I recognise their voice. They ask that to see if I’m still the same as ever or if I’ve forgotten them.
When I hear that, I know it’s them because no one else plays that guessing game.
I become slightly disoriented when I hear that, like someone woken abruptly from sleep, because I’m suddenly confronted with all the forgotten sounds of my home dialect; that ‘guess who this is’ activates a whole backlog of memories and, I must say, I very often guess correctly who it is.
Each time I say I’ll see and dread when they’re going to call again. And they do call again, and again, until a feeling of guilt comes over me for having absconded and become such an individualist, and then I promise to do all I possibly can... Without this provincial pressure I’d obviously never have recommended cuz Boris for Iraq because I saw straight away that he was
