Читать книгу Belgrade Noir - Группа авторов - Страница 7

UNDERNEATH IT ALL RUNS THE RIVER OF SADNESS

by Oto Oltvanji

Block 45, New Belgrade

“If I win, you’ll help me spy on the neighbor on the fourth floor,” Kozma said. Not waiting for my answer, he moved his bishop.

Not the bishop, I thought.

We sat at a concrete table in the children’s park squeezed in among three four-story buildings. If nothing else, in the blocks you were protected from the wind. When you get old, the wind becomes your greatest enemy.

Kozma and I lived in Block 45, the last one in the row beside the riverbank. After us there was only the end of Belgrade, but it could easily have been the end of the world. At night, the darkness on the other side was that deep.

Before us stretched Block 44, which was kind of logical, but it was preceded by number 70, while on the other side of the wide avenue sprawled blocks 63, 62, and 61. Someone had had a lot of fun with numbering them.

All of it was part of New Belgrade, over 200,000 souls in the country’s largest dormitory. That’s what they used to call it anyway, but now big business had found its way here too. Car dealerships, shopping malls, private hospitals, a lot of eradicated green areas. Our little park was among the few resisting rampant urbanization.

Blocks and their history was my hobby, because retirees need to have one. Well, they don’t have to, but if they don’t, they quickly go mad. It started with me wanting to know who’d built the uneven ceiling in my apartment. Every morning, I would try to imagine heroes of the socialist labor of the sixties draining the surrounding swamps, as part of the Yugoslav postwar reconstruction. I had trouble imagining it.

Just as I had trouble coming up with a defense against Kozma’s bishop. Checkmate in two moves. When I looked up, Kozma was smiling at me.

I sighed and toppled my king. “I didn’t agree to anything.”

“But you will, won’t you?” He raised his eyebrows. “Now you have to.”

I didn’t have to do anything, and he knew it. At our age, everything happens voluntarily. That’s why I loved this oasis of ours, where we hid from the world, too-frequent elections, pension cuts, and uncollected garbage. That’s why I loved this block, this park, this table. Our table.

“Didn’t I tell you not to come here anymore?” shouted the girl with restless eyes as she hurried across the park.

Kozma and I rolled our eyes. Not everyone agreed it was our table.

They called her Gigi, nobody knew why. Nicknames don’t always have rational explanations. She was between fifteen and eighteen—it was hard to say. Somewhere along the way I’d lost my sense of youth. Didn’t matter, she was far too young to be shouting at the elderly.

All the girls she dragged along with her wore torn jeans and baseball hats. They all carried phones and beer cans in their hands even though it was only two p.m. (since they were probably underage, the time of day was, in fact, a moot point). One of them rolled a spray can between her fingers

Gigi stepped up onto our table, kicked over our chess pieces, and climbed down on the other side as if walking across a pedestrian bridge. “Mom and Dad think I’m in a gang, the school thinks I’m in a gang, the police think I’m in a gang.” She was virtually growling at Kozma. “All because of you.”

She swung her arm but only tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Kozma twitched and closed his eyes anyway.

I stood up. “Now that’s enough.”

“Shut up, Grandpa. You’ll get yours too. Being tall won’t save you.”

I remained standing and the moment passed. The aggression fizzled out of her. She seemed to realize it too.

“I’m watching you,” she said, backing away. “If I see you after dark, you’ll be sorry.”

We watched them go. The last one gave us the finger as they disappeared toward the river. I turned to Kozma, who squatted down to collect the pieces.

“Almost getting beat up by little girls doesn’t bother you?” I asked, while he stood up and started arranging the pieces. “Are you dragging me into one of your failed projects again?”

“So, you want to do it?” he asked quietly.

I sighed. “What have you come up with now?”

“It’s not like with the girls, Ranko, I swear. This one’s the real deal. I think he’s killing women. New ones come to him twice a week, but no one ever sees them leave. They come in, they don’t come out. I’m worried. Why are you looking at me like that? Here, you can be white this time.”

* * *

In his former life, Kozma was a policeman. During his career he sat in an office, a pencil pusher. Maybe that was the problem: too much paperwork, too few actual cases.

So his retirement hobby was quite different than mine. He wanted to solve a case for once in his life, to see how it felt. That desire was stronger than any realistic possibility of him actually succeeding, and it was certainly against the law. Officially he did not represent any authority in any capacity anymore.

And he had already made some blunders. Because he reported their daughter to the cops, Gigi’s parents were even more unpleasant to us than she was, if that’s possible. Kozma’s former colleagues had to warn him on several occasions, and they even threatened me. They asked what I was doing the whole day instead of keeping him on a short leash.

But Kozma was my best friend and my first neighbor. You don’t say no to either.

After our second chess game—Kozma won both—I reluctantly looked up when Kozma whispered, “Here he comes.”

He pointed to a balcony on the fourth floor where a pale young man wearing John Lennon glasses stood. He scowled at the yard below, his gaze not reaching our park, flicked a cigarette butt into the air, and went back inside.

“What do you say?” Kozma asked.

“He doesn’t look like trouble, if that’s what you mean. Or crazy. If you’re so sure, why don’t you report him?”

“He could be innocent.”

“Ah. You’re not so sure then.”

Kozma smiled. “But what if the police don’t find anything? He’ll become cautious, and then they’ll never catch him.”

“How do you even know women don’t leave his apartment? They might just sleep over and leave later.”

He made a circle around his eye with his thumb and index finger.

“You look through a spyhole? The whole night? You’re crazy, not him.” I shook my head. “What do you think he does with them if they don’t come out?”

He started sawing his forearm with the side of his palm.

“And stuffs their arms and legs into suitcases? C’mon! How come no one sees him removing the suitcases?”

“From now on we’ll be watching for that too. That’s why I need you.”

Glancing impatiently down at the board, I noticed Kozma’s rare oversight. I had an open passage to his queen, and after that his king was for the taking too.

“So, you have a plan?” I asked, mostly to divert his attention, and moved my knight. He seemed not to notice the threat since he responded with a pawn. His queen was mine.

“A new one is coming tonight, first time this week.” He looked at his wristwatch. “Speaking of which, we have to go. I’m taking the first shift.”

He stood up and started packing away the pieces, and with them the triumph within my reach. I sadly watched him close the wooden box and put it under his arm. He marched off not bothering to check if I followed.

I did follow. What else could I do?

We went around the building to the front entrance. We both lived on the ground floor, my apartment next to his.

In front of the neighboring entrance, virtually another building merging with ours through a double wall, there was a black limousine waiting, blocking us and cars from both directions. A robust, gray-haired man in a long coat exited the vehicle and hurriedly entered the next building. The limousine waited for one of the other cars to move and only then backed out of the street. Our neighbor Mira was sitting on a bench across the street smoking a cigarette. I asked her what was going on.

“Some big shot,” she whispered. “Goes to see the cardiologist on the fourth floor.”

“I know him,” Kozma said. “The loudmouth threatening everyone in Parliament.”

I didn’t really know what he was referring to because I didn’t read the newspaper, but it was enough information for me. A cardiologist on the fourth floor of a building without an elevator was quite the joke. A patient was prepped for the exam before even reaching the doctor.

If you wanted to truly disappear and never be found, the blocks were the perfect spot. Hiding in plain sight, inside the concrete beehive. Our labyrinth was a constant nightmare for the so-called real Belgradians from across the river, spoiled by conventional names and arrangements of streets, and for the couriers delivering stuff to people who behaved as if they did not wish to be found.

And you could make others disappear. Who knew if anyone would ever notice. What if Kozma was actually onto something? This predator could have been operating right under our noses for years.

“What did you mean about taking the first shift?” I asked.

“Just like in the army, two hours. The women usually arrive around eight, so we still have a little time left.”

Did I expect anyone to come tonight? Not really, but I was ready for Kozma’s game. We entered his apartment, the layout of which was the mirror image of mine, if we ignored the additional seventy-five square feet his had, another mystery that was probably the result of the builder’s negligence.

Kozma set up a folding chair in front of the door. I spotted numerous grease stains around the peephole, probably from his forehead. Next to the doorframe, a notebook was hanging on a string. I had one just like that, but in my kitchen. I used mine to write down every penny I spent, keeping track until my next pension payment arrived. I doubted Kozma had his for that purpose.

I asked him how long he’d been spying on the young man.

“Four girls,” he said. If they came twice a week, it meant Kozma had been active for at least a fortnight. All that time I’d failed to notice he had a new project. What kind of a friend and neighbor was I? I wondered.

We sat mostly in silence until we heard the heavy front door open or the buzzing sound of the intercom, and then he’d spring to his feet, peer through the peephole, declaring, “Baby,” or, “Dog.” He would write it down in his notebook. During Kozma’s shift, we welcomed two babies and three dogs back from their walks.

When the front door opened for the first time after eight, he got up again to take a look. I knew he saw something interesting because his back stiffened.

“It’s her,” he said.

“Let me see.”

I had enough time to catch a quick look before she disappeared to the left toward the staircase. Deep slit skirt, strong calves, assured walk. Black hair hiding her face. I listened until the clatter of her heels died down, then I unlocked the door and stepped out.

“What are you doing?” Kozma hissed.

While I was sneaking out into the corridor, I felt his disapproval behind my back, but despite this he followed me. We stood by the handrail listening to her footsteps, counting floors. She stopped on the top floor and knocked on a door. Someone opened it without any greeting. The door slammed shut behind her.

Kozma dragged me by my collar back into his apartment. He peered at me intensely in the darkness of his hallway, as if expecting me to admit defeat, but the fact that some woman had shown up on the fourth floor did not necessarily mean anything. I said nothing.

“Now you’re waiting for her to come out, or not come out,” he said. “Wake me up at half past ten.”

* * *

I fought the urge to go to the toilet frequently. Whenever I ran off to the bathroom, I left the door open so I could hear any sounds from the hallway and I hurried back as soon as I squeezed out those few precious drops.

During my shift, two students from the first floor arrived home from their night out. I watched a drunken neighbor from the second floor fail at unlocking the door and eventually took pity on him, buzzing him in. “Thank you!” he shouted into the air, to no one in particular, unaware as to who had let him in.

Then it got quiet in the building, with no one coming or going.

I listened to Kozma snore. I listened to planes flying over us, a noise I’d gotten used to. Part of the problem was that we got used to everything.

When no one went in or out for a long time, I started nosing around the apartment. On the kitchen wall I studied framed photographs of Kozma’s family. He lived alone, just like me. It’s probably why we got close so fast. But it was not by choice that he lived alone, as it was in my case. His wife and daughter were no longer with us, and his son acted as if he weren’t—living in Canada and refusing to speak to his father. All the pictures looked yellowed as if from another, more ancient time. They probably were, especially for Kozma.

The black-haired woman did not come back down. At least not by eleven, when I woke Kozma, having let him sleep an extra half hour.

He looked at me quizzically and I shook my head. Getting up without a word, he moved over to the chair, while I lay down on the couch, covering myself with his blanket.

* * *

I was woken by daylight. I didn’t immediately realize something was wrong, but I slowly became aware that I should have taken over well before sunrise.

Kozma shrugged. “I didn’t have the heart to wake you. You were sleeping so soundly.”

He was right. I hadn’t slept that well in a long time.

“Nothing much happened anyway,” he added. His eyes were so red I did not doubt he’d stayed awake the whole time.

We heard steps outside. “People going to the market,” he explained, yawning, and struggled to stand up in time to see who it was. “It’s him!” he whispered loudly, although no one could hear us.

“Is he carrying a suitcase?” I asked.

He shook his head, frowning. “If he’s headed to the market, this may be the perfect time to get into his apartment. To see for ourselves what’s going on up there.”

“What do you mean, get into his apartment?”

“Well, I have the keys.”

“What? Where did you get them?”

Kozma could not hide his conspiratorial smile. “It’s a long story.” He opened a locker in the hallway and took a bunch of keys off a hook. “Mira found his keys left in the lock of his mailbox one morning. She took them for safekeeping and tried to return them, but he was gone for the whole day. She told me all about it over coffee. I offered to return them for her because she had to go to her mother’s. Eventually I did, but not before I made copies.”

“I can’t believe it. How long have you had them? Why didn’t you go into his apartment sooner?”

“I needed a lookout.” He dangled the keys under my nose. “Coming?”

I came because I had no other choice. Over seventy years old and this was the first time I was about to break into someone’s home. But I didn’t feel guilty, maybe just a bit excited.

I prayed that we wouldn’t run into anyone, because we would have had a hard time explaining what two retirees from the ground floor were doing upstairs. Not even the roof would serve as an excuse since it was sealed off.

It was smooth sailing till the third floor when we heard a door open one level below. We flattened ourselves against the wall and waited for that someone to leave. When we arrived at the apartment door, instead of immediately putting the key in, Kozma knocked. He wanted to be sure no one was home. But if he was right, there would be no one alive in there anyway.

We both took deep breaths and entered. Inside, there was a long, naked corridor. The apartment did not look so much abandoned as not lived in. That’s why the voices we heard from the next room caught us off guard.

Behind closed doors, two men were talking. I could pick out a few words, “turnout,” “electoral roll,” and “polling board.” My knees buckled as I completely panicked. I ran straight for the door, colliding with Kozma who reached it first. He darted into the hallway as if launched from a circus cannon and tumbled down the stairs. I followed close behind him, as always.

On the stairwell between the fourth and third floors, he whooshed past a man who was climbing up, while I ran straight into the guy. I felt as if I’d hit a lamppost and fell at his feet. He grasped me by the shoulders roughly as he helped me up, and only when I lifted my head did I realize it was the neighbor whose apartment we’d just broken into. I couldn’t see his eyes behind his glasses, only my own reflection. An empty garbage can was dangling from his left hand.

Kozma was long gone. I wrestled out of the neighbor’s grip and hurried down the stairs. He shouted after me, but I paid no attention. I didn’t stop till I got into my own apartment, where I slammed the door and leaned against it. I was sure my pulse would never slow down. I was so out of breath I almost didn’t hear the knocking.

Through the peephole I saw Kozma nervously glancing around the hallway. I quickly let him in.

“Are you insane?” I shouted. “He didn’t go to the market! He went to throw out his trash!”

“We have a bigger problem now,” Kozma replied. “Do you know what we forgot? To lock the door!”

* * *

I slept until late afternoon, tossing and turning, waking up even more tired. I was studying the ceiling, wondering how it could even be possible to be that uneven. Which construction company did it? Who approved it?

I dragged myself to the kitchen, stepping around a bunch of chess books which were not helping me much. I swallowed a handful of pills. Routine was routine, it didn’t matter if I’d gotten up six hours later than usual.

Like Kozma, I too had a framed photo from another time, only I kept it in an old suitcase under my bed. I would take it out every morning, wipe off any dust, and wonder how she’d look today, if she were alive, before carefully putting the picture back in the suitcase.

I opened a chess book to delay going outside. I read a section about the Slav defense, when the opponent declines to respond to the sacrificing of a pawn in a Queen’s Gambit. The purpose was to narrow down the opponent’s maneuvering space in the middle of the board. Too bad I probably wouldn’t have a chance to use it.

Eventually, I came out with unbridled trepidation. The thing I was afraid of most was that Kozma was right about our neighbor, that he would jump me in the hallway, push me back into my apartment, and torture me for hours.

Outside, the sky was grayish, but it was still too light for me. Smog, humidity, and concrete often raised the temperature by several degrees. Kozma was sitting at our table in the park when I arrived, staring into his lap, failing to notice me. Soon I realized why.

UNDER 70 ONLY was spray-painted in black across the table. Dog owners and young parents were frowning at us as if we were the ones who wrote it.

I don’t know what made me look around, but it seemed logical that they’d stick around to see our reaction. I spotted the girls sitting on a bench just outside the park fence, in two rows, on the seat and backrest, just like soccer players posing for a picture.

Gigi grabbed her chest as if in pain from an imaginary heart attack and keeled over the back. When she got up, she and her friends laughed at us. They had every right to. They’d scored a strong point on their home turf.

I wanted to go, but I couldn’t leave Kozma behind, so I sat down.

“What are we going to do now?” Kozma said.

“You’re asking me? It’s easy for you, he probably didn’t even see you. It’s always me who ends up bearing the brunt of your nonsense.”

Gigi and the girls lit cigarettes as one, losing interest in us. Triumph sometimes has that effect on people. Without a real challenge, it becomes boring. Our challenge was on the fourth floor, but his balcony was empty.

“Nothing’s going on,” Kozma said. “I’ve been watching the whole time.”

“You’re not giving up, are you?”

“The conversation we heard in the apartment? Why would anyone talk like that? When I think about it, he may have left the radio on in order to warn off accidental snoops or burglars, because when you hear the radio through the door, you assume someone’s home.”

“Where did you get that idea?”

“Well, sometimes I do it myself.”

“And does it work?”

“I don’t know, but no one has ever broken in.”

We watched the balcony until it got dark. After that we squinted at it.

I don’t know what made me drop my gaze four stories to my ground-floor terrace, but when I did, I spied a movement through the windows. At first I thought I’d imagined it. Then it happened again. A shadow moved over from the kitchen to the living room. From my kitchen to my living room.

I turned to Kozma. “Did you see that?”

He gave a wide-eyed nod.

“You know I just shit my pants,” I said.

“Me too.”

I got up, but Kozma grabbed me by the wrist. “If you go through the yard, he will see you. Let’s go in through the front.”

My head was humming, the vein in my neck throbbing. When she saw us leaving, Gigi started rolling her clenched fists under her eyes as if crying. I let Kozma take my hand and lead me around the building. Smoking on the bench across the road, Mira looked at us as if we were old loonies. She was probably right.

The door to my apartment was slightly ajar, but there was no one inside. I found my garbage can emptied out in the middle of the living room. Everything else seemed intact.

“He’s screwing with us,” I said. “Now he’s broken into my apartment. But where did he get the keys? The lock doesn’t seem broken.” I shook my head, overwhelmed by a feeling of anger that replaced fear. “You know what this means, don’t you?”

“War,” Kozma said.

* * *

Kozma turned me into a kibitzer, voyeur, spy. I waited in my hallway until after seven, when he knocked on my door three times. It was a signal that he saw the neighbor leave, this time hopefully farther than our dumpsters.

While we climbed to his floor, I didn’t care about running into anyone. When Kozma unlocked the door, I heard the voices again, one male and one female, and recognized the words “sonata” and “philharmonic.” I instinctively wanted to turn away, but Kozma smiled and walked into the room, calling me over. He pointed to a radio sitting on the windowsill.

We had no trouble searching the apartment because not only did it not contain any women—or suitcases or saws—but it was nearly empty. In the middle of the living room there was a double bed with clean sheets; a large mirror hung on the wall across from it.

The view from the window so high above my own was totally different. In the park, I made out a shadow of someone who looked like one of Gigi’s girls looking up, as if watching this particular apartment. Over the roofs you could see the river, black and swollen.

“Something here isn’t right,” Kozma said absently.

The room next to the living room was locked. None of the keys matched, but this didn’t stop my friend. He went on searching until he found a door in the kitchen. We looked at each other. It should not have been there on the apartment’s outer wall.

This door was unlocked. We carefully peeked inside, mustered up the courage to enter, and stepped into a completely different apartment. It was covered in bathroom tiles, like a hospital. We passed a reception desk and in one small room found a bed and ultrasound and EKG equipment.

“The cardiologist from the next building over,” I said.

“They drilled a hole through the double wall and made a passage. I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve fallen into Wonderland.”

“I think we did fall into Wonderland.”

When we returned to the neighbor’s apartment, Kozma went on knocking on walls and wooden screens. Knock knock knock. Thump. In the living room he found a hidden closet. Two panels, floor to ceiling, hard oak boards, painted white just like the walls. It was not simple but we eventually found an indentation where we could fit our fingers in and slide the panel open. In one compartment there were stacks of cardboard boxes. It looked like the boxes had once contained an assortment of A/V equipment, but now appeared mostly empty. In the other, we found a wardrobe full of women’s clothing, from doctors’ coats and leather corsets to wigs of all colors. On the closet floor there was a similarly wide selection of footwear, from high heels to flats.

“What’s going on here?” Kozma asked.

Instead of a reply, someone opened the front door on the other side of the apartment. In the empty space it sounded like a gunshot.

“Hello?” a woman’s voice said.

Kozma started flapping his hands as if trying to fly. “This hasn’t happened before!” he croaked. “They never come two days in a row!”

I interrupted him by pushing him inside the closet with the boxes, barely squeezing myself in. Pulling the panel after me, I left a narrow crack to watch through. Kozma leaned over me hoping to see something too. We probably looked like a twisted totem pole, two sorry old men peering from their hidey-hole. I wasn’t sure we were completely hidden from the outside.

A tall blonde in a business suit entered the room. I’d say I had never seen her before but for two minor details: her skirt slit and those strong calves. She peeked into the kitchen, snapped her bubble gum, and took off her hair in a single practiced motion. Underneath, she had short black hair. Now I was certain she was the woman from the night before.

She opened the other wing of the closet and threw her wig inside, then pulled out a leather corset. She took everything off, white jacket and skirt, black bra and panties. I managed to count three tattoos: a scorpion on her shoulder, a crescent moon on her stomach, and a whip on her thigh. She squeezed herself into the corset, her waist becoming so small I wondered how she could breathe. The two of us did not breathe, did not swallow, did not dare look away.

When she went to the bathroom and we heard her turn on the tap, I whispered to Kozma, “This is where all your women disappeared. Into this closet.”

“I can’t believe it,” he whispered back. “She’s the same one. But that doesn’t explain­—”

I shushed him. The front door opened again.

“I’m in here. Will be out in a sec,” the woman called from the bathroom.

We heard someone turn off the radio and then our neighbor entered with a paper bag in his hand. He took out a hamburger and bit into it. He had his mouth full when the woman entered the living room.

“Sorry,” he said between bites. “I’m sick of just snacks.” He wiped himself off and they kissed on the mouth.

“How come we’re working tonight?” he asked.

“He begged me for an extra day.”

The neighbor nodded. “I’m going to get ready.” He unlocked the next room with a little key from his pocket and closed the door behind him before we could see anything more.

The woman started rummaging through the closet, taking out more clothes. She draped herself with something and put some kind of cap on her head.

A sound system crackled. Over invisible loudspeakers we heard the neighbor’s voice: “You look stunning, as always.”

She leaned forward and pointed her bottom toward the mirror.

We heard him chuckle. “He rang the bell in the other apartment. Go get him. You know he doesn’t like to wait.”

When she went to the kitchen, the apartment remained oddly silent. Kozma started digging through the boxes behind us and pulled one out. The label on the box showed that it had once contained a video camera. I sat down on the closet floor and Kozma slid down next to me.

“We’ll never get out of this one,” I whispered.

“Let’s wait a bit, then go for the door,” he replied.

“You’re not scared?”

“No.”

“How come?”

“Everything I dreaded in life has already happened to me.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know how you survived.”

“Life goes on,” he said. “It’s just that afterward . . . Well, there’s always sadness underneath everything. Like a river.” He smiled.

His answer didn’t surprise me. He probably didn’t know I would take his river of sadness over mine anytime, though he might’ve suspected it. Maybe that’s why he put up with me in the first place.

Peering through the crack, I watched the woman enter the room. This time I clearly saw that she was wearing a green army jacket, while on her head there was an army cap with a red five-pointed star. She was followed by a gray-haired man in a long coat.

“The loudmouth,” whispered Kozma.

It was the politician we’d seen the day before, a patient in the clinic connected to this apartment. He managed to drop his pants down to his ankles before she pushed him onto the bed. He tried to get up, but she wouldn’t let him. She pulled out three different-sized lashes from under the bed and tried them all out in the air. He screamed after each swing although she did not touch him.

“More,” he said, panting. “I need more. You’re crossing all my boundaries.”

The woman swung once again, this time hitting him. He moaned.

Kozma and I looked at each other in the dark. We sat back down and listened to the lashings and shouts for some time. Despite worrying about my bladder, I eventually dozed off.

* * *

I came to sensing a light on my face, and when I opened my eyes, I saw Kozma’s eyes were shut too. The politician stood in the open door of the closet, his face purple and his body red all over. He only had on leather underpants with spikes.

“Didn’t I tell you I heard snoring?” he said to the woman.

When Kozma and I fell out of the closet, the woman was standing in the middle of the room slapping the lash against her palm.

“Who are these people?” the politician shouted.

“Nobody,” the neighbor said from behind him. “Annoying old nobodies.”

The neighbor had come out of the next room with a small black gun in his hand. It seemed to me it was pointed more at me than Kozma.

“And who the hell are you?” the politician said.

I gestured toward the mirror hanging on the wall opposite the bed. “You think you’re just having some perverted fun, but they have you on tape. They’ll squeeze you dry before the elections, for money or something else.”

“Don’t listen to them,” the neighbor said.

“Stop waving that under my nose or I’ll shove it up your ass,” the politician said, but then he frowned at the mirror.

“All right,” the neighbor said. “Listen to them, then. You don’t want us talking to your electorate. We recorded everything you two did. Just remember.”

The politician turned to the woman. “Pandora!”

“Do what you’re told,” she said, holding his gaze.

“I’ll tell the authorities!”

Pandora snapped her gum. “Give me the gun,” she said to the neighbor.

The naked apartment suddenly became too crowded. The dominatrix playing a kinky partisan, the politician caught with his pants down, the psycho whose eyes I still couldn’t see.

And us, two jinxes. I thought they’d kill each other off, and that Kozma and I would just have to sit back and wait it all out.

No such luck.

The politician burst into tears. He cried his heart out while collecting his clothes from the bed. Wiping his face, he asked, “What do I have to do?”

“First, get rid of these two,” the neighbor said. “Then we’ll talk.”

“I have my man downstairs,” the politician mumbled. “All my men are former police or military.”

“Good for you,” the neighbor said, then turned to Kozma and me. “Why are you two spying on us?”

While I was wondering if we should tell him anything, Kozma’s eyes moved to the woman.

The neighbor caught it. “Ah, I see. She thought if she disguised herself she’d be inconspicuous. I begged to differ. But she also likes it.”

Pandora blew him a kiss.

“You would have gotten away with it, if it weren’t for him,” I said, pointing at Kozma, who seemed at once ashamed and proud. “By the way, how did you get into my apartment?”

“I have your keys. Not only yours, the whole building’s. I have cameras in each apartment.” The neighbor laughed when he saw the expression on my face. “C’mon now, everybody out. I’m tired of you.” He turned to the politician. “You too.”

While we all obediently marched to the door, Pandora entered the room with a camera and started packing what looked like a bunch of video cassettes. I assumed they weren’t, because technology did not wait for old farts like me. It was probably something you could store a lot of video recordings on, though.

At the door, the politician started to say something, but the neighbor cut him off. “We will get back to you. We have to tidy up here first.” He wiped the handle of the gun with his handkerchief, dropped the weapon into the politician’s hands, and slammed the door in our faces.

The three of us were left standing in the hall. The politician glanced at the gun in his hand, put his coat on, and waved for us to go.

“They’ll probably go out through the clinic,” Kozma said. “You could still wait them out in the next building.”

“Shut up,” the politician said. “The things we did to avoid my wife and the press, all for nothing. There will always be spies.”

“You’re just the one who got fooled,” I said over my shoulder.

He whacked my ear with the butt of the gun. I moved forward, massaging the sore spot.

The dark limousine was waiting for us in front of the building. The politician motioned for us to get into the back, while he took the passenger seat. The driver looked at once confused and like someone who regularly witnesses these kinds of events. “To the summerhouse, chief?” he asked.

The politician nodded. “Up the riverbank.”

We glided by the buildings on one side and the walkway on the other. I saw a girl stand up from a bench and start walking toward us. My ear was still ringing.

Kozma sighed. “Now we’re done for. And I will never find out why you didn’t marry her.”

“What?” I said. Another girl was running toward us from the direction of the dumpsters on the right.

“I always wondered.”

“You did?” I thought I saw someone standing in the middle of the road in the distance. “What can I tell you? I was afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Arguments. Children. Family life. Everything.”

“And you’re not sorry?”

“Shut up!” the politician snapped, but he didn’t sound very convincing. He suddenly noticed the figure standing in front of the car. As we approached, I recognized Gigi. Girls on our left and right started sprinting toward us.

“What are these crazy bitches doing?” the politician shouted. “Step on it!”

The driver floored it, but a girl on the left managed to get close enough to throw something at the car. A balloon filled with black liquid splashed across the windshield, blocking us from seeing where we were going. The driver panicked and swerved. We crashed into something solid, and the driver and politician were immediately engulfed in airbags. While they were trying to disentangle themselves, the door on Kozma’s side opened. Gigi peered inside.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

Kozma had a cut above his eye. My shins throbbed from hitting the front seat. We both nodded as she helped us out.

Once outside, we watched the politician and his gun fall out of the car, which was bent around a pole. Gigi’s girls played soccer with his weapon while he tried to stand up, his coat failing to conceal his spiked leather underpants. The girls had more balloons with thick black liquid inside them, but they chose to shower the man with flashes from their camera phones instead.

Gigi smiled at the sight, then turned to us. “They’re not allowed to bother you,” she said. “Only we are.”

* * *

Two days later, I woke up in the afternoon. I didn’t think sleeping so late would become a habit, but it felt good. My ear and my shins were still pulsing. I’d gotten off easy, I knew.

I continued some of my old habits. I swallowed a handful of pills and read chess books.

I gave up my hobby, though, of trying to figure out the meaning of my asymmetrical ceiling. I stopped studying the history of the place I lived in, and just lived.

I started by going out to buy a newspaper. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done so, but they’d printed some interesting photographs of our friend the politician. Maybe it was like that for him too, the river of sadness running underneath it all, but at least now he had something to be genuinely sad about.

On my way back, I found Kozma in front of the building talking to his former colleagues. They had come to unofficially interrogate him, but this time they did not shout or threaten. The criminal ring that acted as a BDSM cell was broken. Celebrities and people who had something to lose had been coming to the cardiologist and entering the next apartment, thinking they were free to do what they pleased. When the blackmailing started, they’d had no one to turn to for help. The only thing missing from the whole story was the ringleaders. When Kozma’s former colleagues said goodbye, he and I set off to the park.

“Nothing?” I asked.

He shook his head.

They hadn’t found the neighbor or Pandora. With so many people in New Belgrade, they could easily move to another building and no one would know. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d done just that. I knew they’d been hurt by the publishing of the politician’s pictures. I only hoped they hurt like hell.

I didn’t believe the neighbor about duplicate keys, but then again, how had he unlocked my apartment without breaking in? Instead of ceilings, I was now occasionally studying corners in search of hidden cameras. They tell me today’s technology in that field is cheap, available, and efficient. I found nothing.

“Here they come,” Gigi said, smiling, when we got to the park.

She sat down with me, put a tablet in front of us, and pulled up a virtual chess game. Choosing the white pieces, she played her first move.

Beside us Kozma set up the folding chair he’d started carrying to the park, and lay down in the sun. He said he would take a break from the game for a while.

“That thing with me being in a gang, that was funny,” Gigi said.

“Hilarious,” I said.

We agreed that the winner had to win two games. I was telling her about the Slav defense, but I somehow got the feeling she already knew all about it.