The sun was dipping in the west when she stood. “Good-bye, Nadia. I will visit next week.”
She walked for her brother’s old black Peugeot. The town lay in a dusky silence found only in the country. A dog was barking incessantly across the village. At a squawking chicken by the sound of it. “Ah, my Bosnia, it is good to be home.”
Ivena climbed into the car, shut the door and reached for the key. The faint odor of petrol filled the cab. Half the cars in Bosnia were either parked on their axles or patched with twine and wire. Blasco’s was no exception. At least it ran. Though with gas or whatever caused this terrible smell leaking it was a wonder it didn’t blow sky—
A hand suddenly clamped over her mouth and yanked her head back into the seat. Her fingernail caught on the key ring and tore. She cried out but the sound was muffled by the rag the perpetrator was trying to jam past her teeth. She instinctively bit down hard and heard a grunt of pain.
The strong hand shoved the rag into her mouth and she felt she might gag. Another hand gripped her hair and pulled her head backward. She stared at the bare metal ceiling and screamed from her throat. Blackness covered her eyes—a blindfold, strapped tightly to her skull.
Hands shoved her onto her belly and then bound her wrists behind her back. It was only then, blinded and tied facedown, that Ivena stopped reacting and scrambled for some reason.
Her kidnapper had climbed over the seat and now he fired the car. The Peugeot lurched forward.
Suddenly the sentiments that had preoccupied her mind over the past hour were gone. Another took their place. The desire to live. The desperate hope that nothing would harm her. She cried out to God again, but this time the words were different.
Save me, my Father
, she prayed.
Don’t let me die, I beg you!
HELEN WALKED over the concrete slab in bare feet, holding a cup of tea close to her chest. She approached the square window in the tenth-story flat and peered out to the sprawling city of Sarajevo, dimmed by the late-day overcast. Behind her, the living room clacked with Jan’s incessant typing.
Clack, clack, clack . . .
Square houses bordered thin streets in the Novi Grad district in which she and Jan now lived. The frequent rains made the trees green enough, but the cold that accompanied them could hardly be in greater contrast to Atlanta’s smothering heat. And it was not the only contrast. Her whole existence here was one giant contrast.
For starters, the flat. Janjic’s uncle Ermin had offered the place to them for a pittance, a thousand dollars for the year, paid up-front of course. Jan had brought the ten thousand dollars in cash with them and given three thousand to Ivena. The remaining seven thousand was enough to live comfortably in Sarajevo for a year, he’d said. They had spent three thousand already, most of it on the rent and outfitting the top-floor apartment with amenities that helped Helen feel more at home. A toaster oven, stuffed furniture, a real refrigerator, rugs to warm the floors. A typewriter, of course. Jan was a writer once again; they had to have the typewriter. By Sarajevo standards they had done well with the place.
But it wasn’t America. Not at all. What was first-class in these hills would do well to pass for middle-class back home.
This is home, Helen. This is your new home.
She sipped at her hot tea. Behind her Jan sat at the kitchen table, a pair of old glasses hanging off his nose. He’d started working on his new book the very day they’d taken the apartment.
Clack, clack, clack . . .
They saw Ivena once, maybe twice a week now, but she had already fit back into her beloved homeland, with greater ease than Jan—no surprise considering what each had given up to come here. The days Ivena came were Helen’s favorite. She was family now. Besides Jan, her only family.
Helen looked to the street below; the market across the way bustled with a late-day rush. Which reminded her, she needed some potatoes for dinner. Helen turned around and leaned on the window sill. “Jan?”
He smiled and pried his eyes over those silly black-rimmed glasses. “Yes, dear?”
“I think I’ll go down and buy some potatoes for supper. I was going to try that potato soup again. Maybe this time I can get it right.”
He chuckled. “It was fine last time. A bit crisp, perhaps, but in my mouth it was deliciously crisp.”
“Stop it. Not only am I learning to cook, I’m learning to cook strange foods. Maybe you’d like to cook tonight.”
“You’re doing wonderfully, dear.”
Helen drank the rest of her tea in one gulp and set the cup on the tile counter with a clink. Every surface seemed harsh to her. If it wasn’t cement, it was tile. If it wasn’t tile it was brick or hard wood. Carpet was hardly known on this side of the world. She didn’t care how upscale this flat was in Sarajevo, it still reminded her of the projects back home.
Clack, clack, clack . . .
Jan was intent over the machine again.
“I’ll be going then. Do you need anything?”
Listen to me, “I’ll be going then
.
” That’s how a European would say, “I’m outta here.”
This land was changing her already.
“Not that I can think of,” Jan said.
She walked over to him and kissed his forehead. “I’ll be back.”
“Make some friends,” he said with a grin.
“Yes, of course. The whole world is my friend.”
“I’m mad about you, you know?”
“And I love you too, Jan,” she said smiling, and she slipped out the door.
The steep stairs were enough to discourage more than one or two ascents each day, and the thought that she would be coming back up with a bag full of potatoes brought a frown to her face. They hadn’t heard of elevators in this corner of Europe yet.
Helen walked briskly for the market, keeping her head down. A bicycle careened by, splashing water from the morning’s shower onto the sidewalk just ahead of her. Horns beeped on the street. They didn’t
honk
here; they beeped, a high tone expected of tiny cars.
Beep, Beep.
Clack, clack, clack . . .
Jan could work for twelve hours straight without a break on that book. Well, he did take breaks, every hour in fact. To smother her with kisses and words of love. She smiled. But otherwise it was only the book. Her and the book.
It was really
The Dance of the Dead
, but written from a whole new point of view. Ivena was right; the story wasn’t finished, he said. It wasn’t even that well told. And so he was up there clacking away, engrossed in a world even more foreign than this wacky world below.
Helen entered the open marketplace and nodded at a woman she’d seen shopping here before. One of the neighbors, evidently. Some of them spoke English, but she was growing tired of discovering which ones did not. A nod would have to do. The tin roof over her head began to tick softly. It was sprinkling again.
The market was crowded for late in the day. Helen passed a shop brimming with bolts of colored cloth. The owner was checking some plastic he’d strung across the back where the tin gaped above. A small kiosk selling snacks made on the spot filled her nostrils with the smell of frying pastries.
Helen made her way to the fresh vegetable stand and bought four large potatoes from a big man named Darko. He smiled wide and winked and Helen thought she’d made herself a friend as Janjic suggested. Perhaps not what he’d imagined.
She left the market and crossed the street. It was then that the deep male voice spoke behind her, like a distant rumble of thunder that pricked her heart. “Excuse me, miss.” Helen glanced back, saw the tall man keeping stride with her ten feet behind, but she immediately dismissed his comment as misdirected. She certainly did not know him.
“You are an American?”
Helen stopped. He was speaking to her. And then he was beside her, a very large man, square and wearing black cotton pants. His shirt was white with silver-and-pearl buttons, like those cowboy shirts she’d seen in the shops back home. She looked into his eyes. They were black, like his pants. Like Glenn’s eyes.
“Yes?” she asked.
A crooked smile split the man’s boxy jaw. “You are American, yes?”
He spoke with a heavy accent, but his English was good. “Yes. Can I help you?”
“Well, miss, actually I was going to ask you the same thing. I saw you in the market and I thought, now there is a pretty woman who looks like she could use some help.”
“Thank you, but I think I can handle four potatoes. Really.”
He tilted his head up and laughed. “An American with humor. So then humor me. What is your name?”
A bell of caution rang through Helen’s bones. “My name? And who are you?” she asked.
“My name is Anton. You see, Anton? Is that such a bad name? And yours?”
“I’m not in the habit of giving my name to strangers, actually. I really should be going.” She turned to go. But did she really want to go? She stunned herself by answering the question quickly. No.
“You don’t want to do that,” the man said. She looked at his face. White teeth flashed through his grin. “Really, you want to know me. I have what you’re looking for.”
Helen stared at him. “You do, do you? And what is it that I’m looking for?”
“For a destination. For a place to go. A place that feels like home; that swims in your mind the way you like.”
She blinked. “I’m sorry, I need to leave.”
“No. No you shouldn’t do that. You’re American. I know a part of Sarajevo that’s very . . . what should I say? Friendly to Americans. Do you like to fly, American?”
What was he talking about?
You know what he’s talking about, Helen. You know, you know.
“What’s your name?” the man asked again. The sky was still spitting the odd raindrops. Pedestrians had cleared the streets for the most part. To Helen’s left, an alley ran between two gray buildings, dark and dingy.
“Why are you talking so strangely to me? Do I look like I have ‘fool’ stamped on my forehead?”
He found the remark funny. “No. And that’s precisely why I’m speaking strangely to you. Because you’re not a fool. You know precisely what I’m talking about. You really should join us.”
Helen’s blood was pumping steadily now. A thousand days from her past screamed through her spine. She should leave this man now. He was the devil himself— she should know, she’d shared the devil’s bed many a night.
But her feet were not moving. Instead they were tingling, and it had been a while since her feet had tingled like this. She wet her lips, and then immediately hoped he did not read her too clearly.
“There are other Americans here?”
“Did I say that? No. There are others like you.”
She hesitated. Her breathing was coming harder now.
Run, Helen, Run!
“How do I know who you are?” Her ears were hot.
“I am Anton, and you must ask yourself another question; how do I know what I know? Unless I am who I say I am?”
“And who are you, Anton?”
“Tell me your name and I will tell you who I am.”
She cleared her throat. “Helen.”
He grinned wide and nodded his head once. “And I’m the one who will help you fly.”
She swallowed, looking up into his eyes.
“May I see your hand?” Anton asked
She opened her hand and glanced down at it. His large hand suddenly held hers gently. She tried to pull it free, but the man held her firmly and she saw that his eyes were not threatening. They were deep and dark and smiling. She let him take her hand. But he was not interested in her hand; his eyes followed her arm to the tiny pockmark from her old days on the needle.
Then the man who called himself Anton did a very strange thing. He leaned over and he kissed that tiny scar very gently. And Helen let him do it. His lips sent a shiver right up her arm and through her skull.
There was suddenly a small black card in his hand and Helen had no clue where it had come from. She took it. He held her eyes in his own for what seemed an eternity. Then he turned and left without another word.
It occurred to Helen that she had stopped breathing. Her heart was slamming in her chest. She looked at the card. It had an address on it—this man’s address— and a simple map. The den of iniquity. She should throw it to the ground and stamp her feet on it, she thought.
Instead she shoved it into her pocket and walked numbly for the flat.
HELEN HAD calmed herself before entering the apartment, but a tingle rode her spine and she was powerless to dismiss it.
“Did you find the potatoes?” Jan asked without looking up. He continued his typing, reached the end of a section and slapped the carriage back.
Ding!
He lowered his hands and looked at her. She held up the four large spuds.
“They’ll make a fine soup,” he said and clapped his hands together once. “I’ll give you a tip, my dear. Use a low flame. It may take a few minutes longer, but we’ll be using ladles instead of forks if you do.”
She
humphed,
feigning disgust at him. “Come over here and I’ll use a ladle on you, Jan Jovic.”
He threw his head back, delighted. Then he clambered out of his chair and padded over to her. “Have I told you recently that you’re the light of my world?” he said, taking her head in his hands. He kissed her cheek. When he withdrew his eyes were on fire. No, his passion for her hadn’t dimmed, not even a little, she thought.
“I love you, Jan,” she said.
Do you? I mean really, like he loves you?
He winked and returned to the table.
Helen slid into the kitchen and dumped the potatoes into the sink for cleaning.
Clack, clack, clack . . .
The day fell to darkness as Helen prepared their supper. Outside, the cars beeped on through the evening. Inside, the room kept time to Jan’s clacking. But Helen was not hearing the sounds. She was still hearing the stranger’s voice, soft and soothing.
And I am the one who will help you fly.
The card lay in her pocket. God forbid if Jan should find it! She eased into the bedroom and placed it under the mattress. He stopped his clacking and she rushed out, but he was only reading a page he’d written.