Zagreb Noir Page 3

  Emil lit up another cigarette and waited for the veteran to wake up. He got bored with it after a minute so he pressed the cigarette against Domagoj’s earlobe. Domagoj came to with a start and the duct tape killed his scream in a satisfying way. Emil watched him unsuccessfully try to wiggle himself free and was pleased. Good thing the fucker had puked already, Emil thought, lest he choked on his own vomit. After all, Emil did not want him dead, just scared.

  And Domagoj was scared. Bound and burned, his alcohol courage gone, he was trembling and his cloudy eyes were begging for mercy. A tear escaped from his right eye and perished on his unshaven cheeks.

  Emil was enjoying himself. Not a bad Christmas Eve, after all. First the girl and now this unexpected victory over another man. He could imagine no better day.

  Emil reached behind him and picked up the red and green plastic bag he’d gotten at the supermarket. He flapped it in front of Domagoj’s eyes. “See this?” he said. “You pissed off one Serb too many, you fucking moron. Now you’re gonna pay.”

  Domagoj’s eyes widened in terror. He started to shake violently, straining his limbs against the duct tape, but the tape held. So did the armchair. They used to make furniture strong in his mother’s day, Emil thought, ugly but strong.

  Emil spread the bag open and pulled it over Domagoj’s head. The plastic started to move in and out in the rhythm of the veteran’s panicky breathing. “Are you sorry now?” Emil asked, making a show of reaching for the duct tape, measuring a length that he would wrap around Domagoj’s neck, and tearing the piece off with his teeth. “I bet you’re sorry now. I bet it’d never cross your mind to bother honest folk again as long as you live, if only I’d—”

  Domagoj spasmed forcefully. And again. His head hit the armchair’s headrest. The plastic bag stopped moving.

  “The fuck?” Emil said.

  Domagoj was sitting perfectly still, his back somewhat arched. For a moment Emil suspected a trick, but the moment did not last long. He reached out to pinch the vet’s arm but could not bring himself to do it. He felt a sudden need for air, for lots and lots of fresh winter air. The air in the garage was dead.

  He went out, sat on one of the chess table benches, and stared at the little church, recently built and quite unimpressive compared to the She-Mammoth. A few people went in, a few came out. There would be more of them for the midnight Mass, he thought. He was thinking of the church so he would not think of the garage. He smoked one cigarette after another.

  Perhaps he should have given the old guy CPR? That might have saved him. There were no guarantees in such matters, and anyway, Emil felt slightly repulsed by the thought of touching mouths with another guy, especially an old drunk who had recently vomited. And he would have to get him out of the armchair first and what if the CPR was successful—what would the old guy do next? Not fight, probably . . . but tell? And what would Emil do then? It was probably better this way. And even if this were not true, it was too late now. How long could a brain survive without oxygen: half an hour, ten minutes? Emil wished he knew. He wished he did not feel as if his own brain was critically starved for oxygen.

  Emil sat on the bench until he had finished his pack, then crumpled it up and threw it to the ground. He knew he had to go back. He did not want to, but he could hardly leave the old guy in there. Perhaps it was cold enough now and he would not decompose right away, but sooner or later . . .

  In a way, it was funny to see the dead guy in a camouflage jacket and pants with a plastic bag over his head sitting in his mother’s off-white armchair, among all the other furniture. He looked like just another thing, a pile of dirty clothes. His hands had turned the gray color of clay to fit in better.

  Emil sighed and fished through the dead guy’s pockets until he produced a wallet and found where he lived. He also learned his name. “I’ll be right back,” Emil said, and went up to buzz the dead guy’s apartment on the intercom. He buzzed it three times at five-minute intervals, the last time holding the buzzer until he counted to a hundred. No one answered. Either the old guy had lived alone or everyone else had taken off somewhere for Christmas, which was equally fine.

  Emil went to the supermarket, now reasonably empty, and bought two more packs of cigarettes, then returned to the garage.

  He used his house key to cut the duct tape and hoped that nobody would notice the glue residue on Domagoj’s cuffs, nor the missing hair on his wrists and chin. He unrolled his mother’s old carpet and laid Domagoj on it. The dead guy smelled faintly of shit. Luckily, his pants were tucked, military style, into his boots so not much seeped out. Emil rolled up Domagoj in the carpet and then rolled the whole thing out of the garage. He switched off the light and closed the door.

  Emil hoisted the bundle over his shoulder, grateful for the workout the warehouse job gave him. Slowly, he headed toward the exit. On the way he passed a husband taking an armload of carefully wrapped presents out of the garage. Emil nodded at him, but the guy did not seem to notice.

  Hefting the corpse up a flight of stairs, across the terrace, unlocking the foyer door, getting into the elevator, and stepping out onto the dead guy’s floor—Emil did all these things as if in a dream. Nobody paid any attention to another guy carrying another load.

  Emil lowered the carpet in front of Domagoj’s door and looked around. There were two other apartments on the floor, one silent, one with dining sounds coming out of it. Emil stretched his back then fished for the keys, unlocked Domagoj’s door, and dragged the corpse in.

  No wife, no family—that much was clear from the first glance at the clutter. Emil told himself not to get distracted and pulled Domagoj into what seemed to be the living room. He thought he would switch carpets and make it easy on himself but the dead guy did not have a carpet at all. “You can have my mother’s,” whispered Emil as he unrolled the carpet, trying to judge whether Domagoj was prostrate naturally enough. He could not tell.

  Emil forced himself to take the bag from Domagoj’s head and stuffed it in his pocket. He left the keys in the ashtray on a small table by the door. It occured to him to wipe the doorknob although he figured he was fucked if anyone cared to investigate. He went home.

  * * *

  By Christmas morning Emil had smoked both the packs he’d bought. He tried to eat but couldn’t. Couldn’t sleep either. He went out and watched the people go in and out of the church. He bummed a couple of cigarettes from passersby but did not really feel like smoking. He stared at what he thought was Domagoj’s window. In the evening he went home, found some hard liquor in the cupboard, and drank himself to sleep.

  On Boxing Day he went to work, came home, managed to eat something, shat, drank a little, went to sleep.

  Domagoj’s body was not found until Thursday and nobody, it seemed, suspected foul play. Emil was there, just back from work, when the metal coffin was being carried to the black hearse. “What happened?” he asked.

  “A veteran died,” somebody replied. “A suicide, probably, you know how that goes.”

  Emil nodded. He spotted Leda in the crowd and waved at her. She did not wave back, the corpse interested her more.

  A short, pale youth with a shaved head and wearing an olive-and-orange flight jacket was waiting for Emil at the terrace. “You Emil?” he asked.

  “Who’re you?” Emil frowned. He felt good about the corpse being found, bad about Leda.

  “I’m Neno,” the kid said. “We heard you keep a girl in your garage.”

  “We? Who the fuck is we?”

  “I’m asking the fucking questions here, okay? You answer, okay?” Neno was spitting a little. “Do you have a girl in the garage?”

  “No, I do not.” Emil lit a cigarette.

  “We hear you do. And I’m here to tell you that you better not, because that’s our business. The girls are.”

  “The girls in garages?”

  “You fucking with me? You better not be fucking with me!”

  “I’d rather be fucking a girl but I don’t have
one,” Emil said. “In the garage or anywhere else.”

  “Mind showing me?”

  Emil thought of doing just that, but then he remembered the duct tape and the shit stain on the armchair. God, why had he not cleaned that already? “Yes, I mind,” he said.

  “Why?” Neno was staring at him slit-eyed, trying to look tough but appearing myopic.

  Emil sucked on his cigarette and thought hard about what to say. The inspiration struck. “Cause I have a guy in there,” he said.

  “A guy?” Neno frowned. “Why?”

  “Why do you think?”

  “You fucking him?”

  “Not personally, no. But there are lots of faggots who pay for a nice piece of ass. Hell, the ass doesn’t even have to be that nice, if you know what I mean.”

  “Jesus, that’s disgusting!”

  “Wanna try him?” Emil was starting to have fun.

  “Me? Christ, no! Who do you think I am?”

  “I dunno. You tell me.”

  “A guy . . . Jesus!” Neno was feeling increasingly uncomfortable.

  “So I guess guys aren’t your business? Just girls?”

  “Just girls,” Neno quickly replied.

  “I guess your business and my business don’t overlap, do they?”

  “I guess,” Neno said, then spat on the terrace. “You’re in some disgusting business, man.”

  “Just trying to make a buck,” smiled Emil. “Lemme know if you wanna get in on it.”

  Neno left, trying to shake the images nesting under his shaved scalp.

  Emil smiled and went home. I really should clean up the garage, he thought, but then shrugged. Nobody would investigate another dead vet. The autopsy would show a coronary, some distant cousin would be happy to inherit a flat in Zagreb, and nobody would spare the vet even as much thought as Emil already had.

  He decided not to bother. He opened the window to air out his apartment and stood there enjoying the winter chill, the cigarette warmth, and the hot memories of the evening when he had a girl in the garage.

  Crossbar

  by JOSIP NOVAKOVICH

  Maksimir

  This event happened a few years back, in 2017, the year when Serbia and Turkey became members of the European Union, shortly before the EU dissolved. Dinamo Zagreb was trailing 1:2 against Crvena Zvezda Belgrade in a semifinal UEFA cup match in Maksimir. Maksimir is a strange name—meaning “greatest peace”—but it isn’t famous for peace. The Yugoslav war of 1991 started at the stadium as a soccer war, when these two clubs played and the Yugoslav police attacked the Croatian fans, injuring about a hundred.

  In Maksimir, as a ten-year-old, I had seen my first first division match three decades before, also between Dinamo and Zvezda. My brother Zdravko brought me to the game. Being a Hajduk fan, I didn’t care who won; for some reason, Zdravko was a rabid Zvezda fan, and I rooted with him, and rejoiced when Džajić scored the winning goal, with a fantastically curved lob that licked the crossbar and fell just below the line into the goal. We walked out of the stadium in a procession of Zvezda fans. Somebody handed us Zvezda flags (they were red and white, strangely enough, Croatian colors)—for all I know it could have been Arkan, who was an active hooligan at that time before becoming a war lord—and we marched down Maksimirska toward Republike Square, at the head of the procession. The flag was heavy, my brother was screaming, “Zvezda! Zvezda!” and I mouthed the words after him, the way I did when we sang national hymns and other things I had no reason to believe in.

  On the sidewalks, Dinamo fans had whistled and sworn in such a colorful vocabulary that I was startled, but not nearly as much as when a rock hit me in my rib cage, on the left side. It was big, probably a cobblestone picked up between the tram tracks. It took my breath away, so much that I failed to utter a sound. I would have screamed out in pain if I’d had the breath to do it with. The flag fell out of my hands. Although I never swore, after gulping some air, I said to my brother, “Fuck this!” and ran to the sidewalk, where a fat man slapped me, knocking me down on the pavement. Since then, I’d detested both clubs, Dinamo and Zvezda, but a lot of years had passed, and my addiction to soccer had not subsided, and so here I was, right behind the goal, shrieking for Dinamo for no reason other than it was a Croatian club. I must say that I am not particularly nationalistic, except when it comes to soccer, and then I tremble for the national team.

  Rooting for Croatia was hardly a rewarding experience. The national team would usually play well and sometimes be ranked as high as third in the world by FIFA and go far just enough to crush you with some unfortunate miss or defeat—such as against Turkey in the European elimination stage, when during celebration for having won 1–0, and imagining that the game was over as it was in its third minute of overtime, they failed to defend and Turkey scored; and then the Croatian guys missed a couple of shots in the shootout, losing the game. The coach, Bilic, may have been to blame, because instead of a psychologist to prepare the players for the shootout, he had invited a priest to pray with the team.

  Anyhow, back to 2017. The match in Belgrade had ended 3–3, so 2–2 would advance Dinamo into the finals as goals scored away were still valued more than those at home. There were only ten minutes left and Dinamo was still trailing. Davidović, Zvezda’s halfback, deflected a ball with his hand. The Dutch referee should have blown a whistle for a penalty shot in Dinamo’s favor, but he didn’t. Is it possible that he didn’t see the handball, and that the assistant referees hadn’t either, while the whole stadium had? The fans were shrieking and throwing crackers and for a few minutes the match was suspended, and after a deliberation, the referees decided to let the game resume, which was a big mistake.

  Big guys around me kept jumping up and down so that the cement stands shook. I knew it was safe as it was not the first time they had been jumping up and down en masse, and it would not collapse the way the stadium in Milan had years ago, killing dozens. I have no idea how these guys grew up to be like human bears—most of them in the range of six-two to six-six and weighing between 250 and 350 pounds. And it looked unseemly that such huge guys would be so passionate about what short and stringy players did in the grass with a ball. But passion is inscrutable, and to tell you the truth, I was one of those guys, jumping up and down and shrieking. It’s hard for me to explain how I got into this. Ordinarily I was a civilized denizen of Zagreb, an architect with a taste for macchiato and single malts, and at the beginning of the match I was still a civilized human, but now, by the end, I had taken off my shirt and was hollering for blood and retribution with my tribesmen.

  The game became frenetic. See, I am cultured enough to use words like that (and I am even writing this whole thing in the damned English language, not all that patriotic of me) when I am away from the stadium, but in it I am a Roman barbarian wanting to see gladiators kick balls around like they are chopped-off heads. Dinamo exerted fantastic pressure, shooting at the goal almost twice a minute, and then there was a great chance as Marić advanced rapidly to the goal. Then he was felled by Branislav Ivanović, who slid into his shins from behind. Ivanović is a fine player—Chelsea captain until recently—and I am sure he intended to get the ball rather than the player, but rules are rules. As long as you touch the ball first, anything goes, but if you get the foot or the shin of the player before the ball, it’s a grave foul. At that speed it’s impossible to always be accurate.

  Anyhow, it was a clear penalty, and strangely enough, the stingy Dutch referee did whistle and point to the penalty spot. Marić—the new star player for Dinamo, best scorer in the UEFA championship in 2015–16, who had sunk Bayern—got the honor to shoot. The rules had been changed since 2015, so that instead of eleven meters now it was twelve meters to the goal. Eleven meters had given too much advantage to the kicker. That one meter didn’t equalize the playing field between the two but it made it less predictable, giving the goalie somewhat more time to react. But still, a good shot like Marić should make it more than 90 percent of the time. Howe
ver, in a crucial situation like this one, the anxiety of the penalty kicker has to be great, and certainly it must have been for Marić.

  I knew that Marić probably hated the Serbian players. Marić was born in 1992 in a Croatian village near Bugojno in Bosnia, and both of his parents disappeared at the beginning of the war, never to be heard from again. He was raised by his grandmother as a refugee in Austria, and for him eliminating Zvezda must have been a dream . . . a form of revenge. I am not sure he thought in such nationalistic and simplistic terms, but in the stadium, he probably did. He certainly wanted to score more than anyone else. He was a bony guy with sharp cheekbones and a long hooked nose, kind of hawklike.

  At the whistle, Marić ran, took a full swing at the ball, and the ball flew straight and hit the inside of the crossbar in the right corner; the metal resounded and the ball bounced onto the line and back up to the crossbar. The Zvezda goalie, instead of catching the ball at this point, kicked it out and it hit Marić’s chest. Marić had another chance: he shot and yet again hit the crossbar and the ball flew far out, where Ivanović cleared it, sending it far away into the Dinamo stands. Now, you had to admire Marić’s shots, even though they didn’t go in. I think there should be a different scoring system, whereby each hit on the crossbar counts as half a point. Not that it would have helped the outcome of this game; it was lost. The crowd was in a wounded state, bloodthirsty, screaming, throwing crackers. The place was a stinging smoke screen, anything could happen at this point . . . and it did. Many of us jumped over the fence, and right in front of me, I saw a man with a machete. Another one grabbed the referee, a Dutchman by the august name of Rembrandt, and pushed him on the ground onto his knees, and the man with the machete brought it down, beheading the referee. Somehow it looked normal, at first . . . easy. The head fell and rolled and ended up sideways in the grass, stopped by the nose.