Aminatta Forna - The Hired Man

The image I best remember from that morning is only this, a single snapshot: Anka, bent forward, her neck exposed to the light, the filaments of fine hair standing upright on their tiny goose-pimple hillocks.

A day later I go to town, to the Zodijak, sent by Javor. When I arrive, there is Krešimir, standing in the office talking to Fabjan. The door has been left slightly ajar. I wonder if I should come back, but at that moment Krešimir leaves. He passes me at the bar. Usually Krešimir ignores me but this time he smiles, nods and asks after my mother and sister. I tell him they are fine. He leaves. That’s it. All of this is unusual, but not enormously so. Krešimir doesn’t like people to know of his dislike for me so he greets me when he sees he has no choice, this time because Fabjan has come out of the office and is standing right behind him. Krešimir likes to impress Fabjan, I’ve told you this. Maybe he wants Fabjan to back some business venture of his. Krešimir was meant to make money but never really has, well not a great deal, not as much as was always supposed, despite his job at the fertiliser factory and all the opportunities that must offer. I think it is because Krešimir is afraid of risks, would rather hang on to what he has, like all good misers. Fabjan, on the other hand, could never be accused of being afraid to take risks. Fabjan is all about business. All the same there is something about Krešimir’s smile that makes me wary, as his smiles always do.

Fabjan nods at me and goes behind the bar. I take a coffee, there are other customers in the bar. I wait for the place to empty and then I give Fabjan Javor’s message about the money. Fabjan doesn’t look up from what he’s doing, which is jabbing the buttons of an outsize calculator with his finger, but he nods as if he is listening and jabs some more. He stares at the numbers on the screen. ‘Tell Javor I’ll have something for him tomorrow. How much does he want?’

I say enough to last until this is over. I name a sum.

‘Tell him I can do better than that. The way inflation is going, he’ll need more than that. But he’ll need to hold on a few days: cash flow, you know. It’ll be sorted. How’s he doing?’

I say he’s fine. His mother left for her operation, which she’d had to put off but couldn’t any longer. She’d gone to the district hospital.

‘Tell her to take her time coming back. You know what I mean?’

I tell all of this to Javor later. He presses his lips together and nods, frowning. He’s worried about his father and wants to try to see him. I say I think that’s a bad idea, but I’ll go. Anka and I walk back down the road, she to the blue house and me to my place; Anka is quiet and restless at the same time. She tells me she and Vinka had argued on her last visit.

‘Over what?’

‘She’s drinking more. She gets into rages. I’d asked for a little money, just until Javor gets some in. She started on Javor. We argued. No, she argued. I tried to explain the situation. I didn’t want to argue.’

‘I can give you money.’

‘It’s fine. Krešimir gave me some. It’ll be sorted soon. Fabjan knows.’

‘Krešimir was there?’

‘Yes. Krešimir was there.’

The rain comes down suddenly, though the sky stays bright. It feels like a summer storm but it’s a bit late in the year for that. I am on the mountain above the tree line. The rain is so heavy that, despite the light, I can hardly see where I’m going. It’s like looking through a waterfall. With the lightning I change my mind about going back through the plantation and head in the direction of Gudura Uspomena.

Earlier the same day, as well as visiting Fabjan at the Zodijak to ask for Javor’s money, I had also been to ask after Javor’s father. The school looked just the same as before, the grey van parked outside. I approached one of the lads outside, I recognised him and he knew me by sight. He told me visitors weren’t allowed but said he’d take a message. I thanked him. I told him I’d wait in case Mr Barac had a message for me. The lad shrugged, please yourself he said and disappeared inside. About fifteen minutes passed and just when I was about to go in search of him he came back and said, ‘Barac has been released.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Isn’t that what I just said?’ he replied cockily.

‘Yes, and I asked if you were sure.’ I stared him down.

‘That’s what they told me.’ Surly now.

So then I went by the Barac house and found it closed up, as it had been ever since Javor’s mother travelled to have her operation and her husband was taken away. I’ve checked on it at intervals, to make sure it doesn’t get looted. So far nobody has dared. I banged on the door for the sake of it. A woman passing by watched me out of the corner of her eye. At the end of the street she stopped and turned to look. At first I ignored her but then I stared back at her and after a while she shuffled off, though not immediately. At first she met my gaze for a full four or five seconds before she gave a little smirk, dropped her chin and turned her back to me. Nobody had dared to steal from the house just yet, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t. What was it they were waiting for? I wondered. Was it merely a matter of time, or was there some other signal? I went back to the school, to the same guy I spoke to half an hour before, and waved at him from a short distance. He looked up but didn’t wave back. He ground out the cigarette he’d been smoking and was about to duck back inside when I caught hold of his arm. I told him the house was empty.

‘So what? What’s that got to do with me? They said he’d been released.’

‘Who?’

He jerked his thumb in the direction of the school building.

‘Well someone’s made a mistake.’ I let him go.

Something like twenty minutes passed before he came back out. He mumbled and I couldn’t hear.

‘What?’

‘Deported.’

Javor’s father had been deported, but how do you deport someone from this country? ‘To where?’ I asked.

Javor’s father had wanted to join his wife and gone to the north.

‘You just said he’d been deported.’

A minute ago he wouldn’t look at me, now he looked up, lip raised above yellowish teeth, like a cornered rat. ‘That’s all I fucking know,’ he hissed.

‘Did they say when he was let go or taken there or whatever?’ asked Javor when I told him.

‘No,’ I answered. ‘Your mother hasn’t called?’

Javor shook his head but determined to remain hopeful. ‘She’s been in the hospital. It hasn’t been long, a few days since he was taken into custody. Maybe there’s some kind of transit centre. paperwork.’

I had forgotten. It felt like we had been in this new world far longer.

Here up in the hills the rain washing down my face feels good. I lift up my head and open my mouth and let the water in, it is sweet, pure and sweet. I shield my eyes and look in the direction of the town, invisible behind the torrent of water. Let it run, I think, through the streets, down the gutters, into drains until it is carried away by the river. Let it wash away the shit and the pus and the blood, the things that can be washed away. But let it also wash away the fear and the malice and the spite, the things that are harder to erase. I wish these things that are happening right now weren’t happening to us, I wish they were happening to someone else, somewhere else. I didn’t care who. I clenched my fist. Leave us alone.

The rain makes Kos mad: she runs in a loop with her head down, and races through puddles with her head held high, letting her tail and backside drag through the water.

As swiftly as it came, the rain clears: the drumming slows and the threads of rain thin and lift. The air is scentless, pure. When it is clear again the sun shines strongly. The roofs and roads of Gost glitter and wink, the heat draws out thin drifts of steam from the tiles and stone. Between where I am standing and the houses of Gost the ravine yawns and stretches out, like a sleeping dragon whose tail begins at Gost and whose body lies to the north. The trees that fill the upper banks are just beginning to change their colour. Opposite me the clouds have moved behind the hills, dark-centred clouds with gleaming edges, and through the gaps between them slanting columns of light fall, radiating out from a hidden sun, lighting parts of the hills and the fields, a roof here and there.