“Let me tell you then,” she said. “The message is that God loves man passionately. That one moment with God is worth death. He gave his own life for nothing less. I'm not sure any of you has learned the nature of God's love yet.”
Except for the sound of Bob Story's spoon clinking through his coffee the room fell to silence. They had come from all over the country for a conference in Atlanta and carved out a few hours in Janjic's honor; surely they had not expected this. Jan looked at Roald and offered that set grin of his, as if to say,
“She's rightâ you know she is
.” Roald held Jan's eyes for a full second and then looked at Ivena.
“I think that Ivena's right,” he said. “We're all learning about God's love. Ivena has simply expressed this truth in a way that's as unique as Jan's story. And please do not misunderstand us; we are thrilled at the work God has done with
The Dance of the Dead.
I think my own effort speaks for itself. We just ask you to be cautious, Jan. You've risen among the ranks, so to speak. A lot of people look to your example. Just watch your step, that's all. What do they say? âDon't bite the hand that feeds you'?”
Several of them chuckled. Ivena thought about telling them that Janjic did not need their hands, but she thought better of it.
Jan nodded. “Good enough. Point taken.” That seemed to satisfy them.
“I propose a toast,” Roald said. He pushed his spectacles up on his nose. “To
The Dance of the Dead
. May she live forever.”
They drank to a chorus of “Amens.” Surely they must know that in reality, the life of Janjic's bestseller was nearing an end. It had soared high and far, but the story had run its course over the last five years, a fact that brought Ivena pause in light of their conversation. Why were Roald and this conservative bunch so concerned about Jan's image now?
The meeting disbursed ten minutes later with firm handshakes and one last round of affirmations. The leaders were off, leaving Jan alone with Ivena in the empty room. The sounds of laughter swept in through the open door; the party was winding down.
“I should be leaving now, Janjic.”
“So soon? And you haven't even congratulated me yet.”
Ivena reached a hand to his cheek. “Congratulations, my dear Serb.” She smiled. “I'm sure she will make you very happy.”
“Thank you. Would you like Steve to take you home?”
“I'll take a cab.”
“Then I'll walk you.”
JAN SKIRTED the party and walked Ivena to the street. Not until they were outside did Janjic confront her about the exchange in the room. “You really think that was the best time to question their spiritual sensibilities, Ivena?”
“It was perhaps the
only
time. I don't run with them every day.”
“Of course, but you were pretty direct. Actually I shouldn't complainâI think it played in my favor.”
“And how is that, Janjic?”
“Compared to you they see that I'm a gentle breeze. I may have brief periods of disorientation and grab the nearest telephone pole at the sound of a car's backfire, but at least I don't line the country's top religious leaders up and school them in the love of Christ.” He chuckled and then cleared his throat.
“When we return to Bosnia they will be a distant memory,” she said.
“I'm happy in America. You're happy in America. Why do you cling to this silly notion of returning to the land that nearly killed us both?”
“It's a notion that won't fade. We will see, Janjic.”
She wasn't sure if the hunch they would one day return to see her daughter's grave one last time came from her own latent desires or if there was more at work there, and she'd given up trying to discern three years ago.
“I'm not sure Karadzic would take my return too kindly. I've turned him into an infamous monster.”
“A reputation well deserved,” she said.
They walked for the curb.
“I had the dream again last night,” he said. “It was so vivid.”
She glanced up at him. He'd had the same dream every few nights for twenty years nowâthe nightmare the psychiatrists liked to blame on the war. But she had her own ideas. She stopped and turned to him.
“Tell it to me.”
“You know it. There's nothing new.”
“Tell it to me again. It will help you.”
He swallowed. “Okay. I'm in a pitch-black room, strapped to a wooden beam behind me. It's the same: I can't see anything, but I can feel everythingâthe ropes digging in, the sweat leaking down my naked body. I think I am being crucified.”
He stopped and breathed deep. Then he continued. “I can hear my own breathing, in long ragged pulls, echoing as if I'm in a chamber. That's all I can hear, and it terrifies me. It stays like that for a long time, as if I'm suspended between life and death.” He blinked. “And then the lights are thrown on. And I'm not in a dungeon; I'm staring at a white field.” He stopped and looked down at her.
“And that's where it always ends.” She stated it rather than asked it.
“Yes. And it means nothing to me.”
She reached up and rubbed his arm. He nervously ran his fingers through his hair. “The doctors may be right; maybe it's only my mind playing tricks, pretending to be Father Micheal on the cross.”
“Those doctors are full of nonsense. Take it from me; the dream has meaning beyond this world. I'm sorry I can't tell you what that is, but one day we will know. I'm certain of it.”
“Maybe you're right.”
“Perhaps the dream speaks more to what you have
not
experienced than to what you have, hmmm?”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning that there's still more to learn about love, Janjic. Meaning that
The Dance of the Dead
only tells part of the story. God knows you have more to learn of love.”
He looked at her with mild surprise. “As do we all. But now you're suggesting that I haven't learned the lesson of the priest, right alongside of Roald?”
“Not necessarily. But I do worry for you at times, Janjic. Sometimes I wonder if you've become more like those around you than they've become like you. You defend the truth with vigorous words, but your life is changing.”
Now his mild surprise was accompanied by a blink. “You really think so?”
“Come on, Janjic. Is it really such a secret?”
“I don't know. But changing a few things on the surface doesn't remake the man.”
“No. I wasn't referring to your skin. I mean your heart. Where do your affections lie, Janjic?”
“My affections are with God. And my affections are with Karen. You may not approve, but it's me, not you, who'll marry her.”
“What I'm saying has nothing to do with Karen! I'm speaking of Christ.”
“You're too strong, Ivena. I've written a book on the affections of Christ, for heaven's sake! Give me some credit.”
“You witnessed a dramatic expression of affection between God and man, and you've committed your observations to a book. Just because you saw the love of the priest does not mean that you've learned how to love in the same way.” She paused. “Perhaps the fact that you have been unable to write since the book tells us something.”
She'd never spoken quite so plainly about the matter, and he looked at her with shock. “You say that with such conviction! I also spent five years in prison for opposing Karadzic. Still you question my love for God? That it has given me writer's block?”
“You understand the love in ways most do not. But still, have you loved him that way? Loved Christ? Or have I, for that matter? And I'll tell you something else: Until we do, we'll never find peace. You've seen too much, my dear Serb.”
Traffic hummed by on the street. Janjic waved at a yellow cab that veered toward them. “Yes, maybe I have seen too much. And you as well.” He faced her. “You're right, one day we'll find our way through this. In the meantime, please don't rob me of the love I have for Karen.” He smiled and opened her door. “Give me at least that much.”
“Don't be so sure that I don't approve. You mustn't confuse caution with disapproval, my dear Serb.” She climbed into the cab. “Call me soon, Janjic. Come for supper when you can.”
“I will. Thank you for coming.”
“It was my pleasure.” She shut the door.
She left him standing there alone, watching her go. All dressed up in the wrong clothes, but so handsome nonetheless. Famous and now engaged to be married. So very wise and so very tender, yet in his own way lost without knowing it.
Her Janjic.
IVENA'S WORDS burned a hole in Janjic's soul that night. He was newly engaged, for goodness' sakeâsinging the song of true loveâand Ivena had the audacity to suggest that his words were louder than his life. The ringing truth of her suggestion tempered him.
The next day started no better, and he decided to take an hour to sort out his mind at the park before Karen returned to the office after her morning meeting. She was evidently neck-deep in discussions with their publisher over the next edition, and as always she preferred to handle the details on her own. This time the publisher had come to Atlanta and Jan didn't even bother to suggest he attend the meeting. He was a writer, not a businessman.
It was then, sitting on a bench in Piedmont Park, that he first saw her. She was still a shimmering figure at the park's perimeter, a faceless ghost in the midday heat. She looked small and frail under the massive weeping willows that swayed with the wind. He didn't know why his eyes were drawn to herâhis mind certainly wasn't. It was busy grappling with the growing dilemmas that seemed to have infected his soul since Ivena had graced him with her words. Maybe it was the woman's direct approach that drew him; or perhaps it was the intensity with which she walked, swinging her arms barely, but hustling along at a good clip nonetheless.
Jan shifted his mind back to Ivena's words.
The people had bought
The Dance of the Dead
in a feeding frenzy, desperate for meaning in a changing world. It was as if a generation had decided en masse to reflect on its past sins and had chosen this one book in which to look for absolution. The story of the young Serbian soldier who had found meaning through the brutality of war and his imprisonment following that war. There was a soul to his story that drew them. Like curious onlookers at a Big Foot exhibit.
He'd told them in bold terms at every university campus and every book signing and every radio show that
The Dance of the Dead
was a story first and foremost about the martyr's desperate love for Christ, not Jan Jovic's redemption. They would mostly nod their heads with glazed looks and ask about the girl or his ordeal in war crimes prison after that fateful day. He would tell them and tears would come to their eyes. But they were not falling to their knees and begging forgiveness as he had. They weren't throwing away their lives for Christ as Nadia had done. They weren't climbing on their crosses and laughing in delight as the priest had.
Therein lay part of the problem, he thought. His life had become a spectacle. An exhibit. But in the end they all walked away from the exhibit, shaking their heads in wonder, unwilling to climb in to join Big Foot in his lonely search for identity.
And now Ivena's little tidbit of truth: Perhaps he himself had peered at the exhibit without climbing in. Maybe he himself hadn't learned as well as he expected his audience to learn.
The woman still approached steadily. An American woman hustling her way through a park, dressed in black pants and a white shirt, going nowhere fast, as the cliché had it. He leaned back and watched her absently.
The Dance of the Dead.
In the priest's village it had been a dance of rapture, begging to be joined by those who watched. A great awakening to the other side. But here in America it was inevitably different. They were more interested in having their ears tickled than their hearts changed. Perhaps he could write another book after all, one that characterized these new steps taught in the churches here. He could call it
The Death of the Dance.
That would have the publishers scrambling.
Jan leaned over and rested his elbows on his knees. His mind fell back to that day. It had been the love of Christ that had pierced his soul in the village. The sentiment swelled in his chest and rose to his throat. Dear, precious Nadia. And
Ivena!
He still couldn't imagine the grief of her loss. It was a part of his insistence that she come to America with him and he supposed it was a good thing. She alone really understood.
“Hi, there.”
He jerked upright, startled by the voice. It was the woman! In his quandary she had walked right up to him and now stood not five feet away, trying to smile.
“Yes?”
She glanced behind her shoulder and he followed her look. Nothing but empty park and an old couple walking a dog. She sniffed and turned back to him. A small shiver seemed to work its way over her body and she tried to smile again. A flat grin pulled at her pale lips. Her eyes twinkled bright blue, but otherwise her face appeared void of life. Dark circles hung under each eye and her cheeks looked powdered white though he could see that she wore no makeup. Her blond hair lay in short, stringy tangles.
Jan couldn't help his slow gaze over the woman. The plain white T-shirt rode up her arms, too small even for her delicate frame. Her blue jeans hung past flip-flops to the ground where they were frayed.
She lifted a hand to her lips and bit at a worn nail. Now, half hidden by her hand, her smile took up life. “I'm sorry. I hope I'm not too much of a shock for you,” she said. “If I am, I could go. Do you want me to go?”
She said it with a tease in her voice. If he wasn't thoroughly confused, she was a junkie, strung out or coming down or doing whatever drug addicts did. He almost told her to leave then. To get lost. To find her pimp or her pusher or whomever she was looking for someplace else. He was a writer, not a pusher. He almost told her that.