It was on the tip of my tongue to add that he shouldn’t treat Ela like that because she’d been having treatment for depression, but I changed my mind. If Ela thought she might have any chance with this lout she’d kill me if I said anything like that.
‘Hey, have you seen this?!’ Charly exclaimed, trying to change the topic. ‘In Solin near Split there are eight betting shops in a thirtymetre radius.’
‘Uh?’ Silva nodded.
‘Look!’ he opened the newspaper. ‘A guy says: “You oughta come Sundays after Mass, that’s when it’s busiest.” Y’know, they all go to Mass, and then it’s off ta the betting shop.’
‘Who were you talking about just now?’ Silva asked.
I just blew out a plume of smoke.
‘Oh, a girl from the accounting section,’ Charly lied. ‘She messed up a payment to me. I claimed she’s a birdbrain, but Toni defends her.’
Not only did he behave as if they were a real couple but he had that conditioned reflex: he was able to think up a lie on the spur of the moment. I looked at him almost in admiration. If we ignore the fact that it was all pretty inane, he’d come through it remarkably unscathed. ‘Uh?’ Silva went, long and drawn out. Then she looked at me: ‘Why are you standing up for her?’
I paused for a second, and Charly scowled at me as if to say: we’re boys, you’re not going to give me away, are you?
‘It’s just that... the girl’s OK,’ I said to Silva, taking a deep breath.
‘From Accounts? Seriously? Is this something new?’
I had no idea now what she was thinking. Should I conceal what we were talking about, or tell her I was fucking my way through Accounts?
Oh hell, I don’t know!
‘What’s wrong with the girls on the editorial staff?’ she asked with a wiggle.
Oh God, I thought, don’t lean so close to me with that décolletage...
‘I mean: en masse from Mass to the betting shop?!’ Charly fought for attention. ‘That beats them all. Where else do you have anything like that?!’ He wanted to underline the grotesqueness of our religious, post-communist reality.
Silva butted in laconically: ‘Most people go to church to improve their chances.’
Charly rolled with laughter. You could see he considered her the wittiest person in Europe.
When someone has a faithful audience they always turn out witty.
I felt it’d be best to get out of there. Charly had a jealous eye and, as if the Iraq crisis wasn’t enough, Silva’s décolletage was now causing me additional stress...
‘May I sit here?’ our youngest colleague Dario asked.
He kept popping up at our table ever more frequently. He probably saw mixing with us as a way of moving up in the world.
‘Yes, yes,’ I said, looking up gratefully – he’d come at just the right time to kill that conversation.
Dario sat down and whispered worriedly: ‘Whaddaya think? Didya hear the Chief?’
He was pretty scared, but he enjoyed that.
Silva watched him with an ironical smile, while Charly waited for a witticism from her to laugh at. Dario detected that and turned towards me, seeking an ally: ‘By the way, I think those reports from Iraq are fantastic!’
I twitched. Talking about that was the last thing I wanted. And, in particular, I didn’t want him praising it. As soon as someone praises an article there’ll always be someone to sling mud at it.
‘It’s a standard piece,’ I said. ‘But there’s a lot of work in it.’
‘Sure, but I think it’s fantastic,’ Dario went on.
Stop bloody well going on about it, I thought.
‘I don’t know, I’ve had enough of wars,’ Silva joined in.
Me too, I said to myself, me too.
‘I think it’s brilliant because –,’ Dario continued.
‘Don’t be such a slimebag!’ I snapped.
I was losing my nerves. That was an overreaction, I knew straight away. He looked at me in embarrassment and blushed.
I tried to turn it into a joke: ‘Sorry, just kidding. Hey, it was a joke, OK?’
His gaze wandered.
‘Hey, it’s not because of you,’ I said. ‘It’s just that the guy drives me nuts.’
‘Uh-huh,’ Dario muttered.
‘Who drives you nuts?’ asked Charly.
This is going fundamentally wrong, I thought. I stood up.
‘I’m off!’ I said.
They looked at me like a runaway train.
There’s fire
I parked near our tower block in front of the shop window of the ‘last minute’ agency where big letters advertised THAILAND, NEW YORK, CUBA, TIBET, MALAGA, KENYA. Every day you could decide at the last minute.
That wouldn’t be bad, I thought.
I looked in the shop window as I was locking the car. Should I go to Cuba? Or to New York – the centre of the universe? Or to Tibet, to have a revelation and come back a new person?
But I went up to the flat, checked my mails and saw that Boris hadn’t sent anything, let alone mentioned when he was coming back. I read his old mails again, trying to fathom his psyche.
* * *
Saddam is a young villager from the outskirts of Basra, he was named after the President, what can he do, he spreads his hands, spreads his hands wide like a scarecrow, and I spread mine too, spread mine wide, and we chat like two scarecrows in the field, except there are no crops, no plants, no grass and no birds for us to scare away, only sand and scrap iron, and his village, said Saddam, is in a bad place, he spreads his hands, a very bad place, there’s fire there, he says, a lot of fire, so he stuck all his goats in a crazy film pick-up truck and took to the road like Kerouac, except there’s no literature, no Neal Cassady, no poetry, no shade under the vine, as they say here, and his tyre burst, and Saddam the goatherd was out on the Basra-Baghdad highway, his tyre burst and there was no spare, gaaawd, so Saddam is patching his tyre, the goats are bleating in the pick-up, an idyllic scene, Abrams tanks pass by, all looking ahead, amassed forces around Saddam’s goats, I crouch beside him, looking at the tyre, you know, as if I’m going to help, but I don’t.
* * *
I read this as if I was monitoring him like they monitor malingerers in the army;
