Aleksandar Hemon - The Making of Zombie Wars

“What am I eating?” he asked her. She pointed at things and named them in Bosnian and he kept trying to repeat the words. There was no hope — Bosnian sounded like Hebrew spoken by someone with a debilitating speech impediment — but he enjoyed watching her mouth. The lips that could make those sounds must be very soft. Those lips were certainly not forty, but younger, much younger.

Their naming game kept them apart from the rest of the table. Joshua could see Bega glancing over, even in the middle of his performance, and he made sure his body was at an angle in relation to hers that prevented their circle from completely closing. He considered calling Kimmy and reporting as if from a far-off land about all this: the strange language, the strange food, the strange people — all this, that is, except Ana’s body. In any case, as far as Kimmy was concerned, he was at the movies, watching Touch of Evil yet again. His throat narrowed around the returning lump; he took in her jasmine smell and her overmanicured nails (Kimmy gnawed on hers) and watched the veins on her hand and her long fingers and imagined kissing it all. No one can desire to be blessed, to act well and to live well, unless at the same time he desires to be, to act, and to live, that is, to actually exist. Whenever Ana’s husband reappeared, Joshua tried for eye contact with him, so as to exhibit his honesty and innocence, thereby covering up his humming desire. I can kiss you for that , she’d said.

* * *

Right after Ana blew out the candle — her lips immaculately pouted — on the chocolate happy-birthday cake, the Ponomarenkos left, then some other consonant clusters departed, and then Joshua had to stand up to let Ana’s boss out. Her name was Zosya, he found as she thrust her limp, cold hand into his. She owned a chocolate shop and was Jewish, Ana told him, as if those two things were connected. Joshua showed interest, but couldn’t go as far as to own up to his Jewishness — somehow it demanded complicated, fine-tuned qualifications — though he did own up to liking chocolate. Ana walked her out and Joshua could see Zosya stroking her cheek before kissing it goodbye. Now there was more space at the table, and when Ana came back she sat a little farther from Joshua.

Bega seemed to have started a new story. He spoke slowly at first, taking sips from another Corona, but then he sped up and raised his voice until he was shouting, banging the table with his hand. The more commandingly he talked, the more his audience laughed. The skinny, gray-haired man at the far end fell off his chair laughing, and was now on his knees, holding his stomach. Ana was clapping her hands as she laughed, throwing her head back, thrusting her bosom out.

“What is he talking about?” Joshua asked her. He deployed a nonspecific grin so as to participate in the general merriment, waiting for her to regain composure, but Ana could not stop laughing. Finally, she said, still chuckling:

“Very hard to translate.”

“Come on,” Joshua pleaded.

She looked at him as if trying to decide whether he was worth the effort. I can kiss you for that . Joshua held his breath. All the dubious flirting, all the body positioning, all the surreptitious touches — the reality and the value of it seemed to depend presently on whether she would try to translate the joke.

“Come on,” he said.

“Maybe,” she said, “maybe it will not be funny.”

“Let’s just give it a shot,” he said.

“Okay,” she said. Bega stopped talking. The skinny man got off the floor and reclined in his chair. They all wanted to see how Ana would do, how Joshua would react to her translation.

“One old man in Bosnia,” Ana said. “He liked his mobitel—”

“Cell phone,” Bega said.

“—cell phone so much,” Ana continued, “that he asked his son to go to grave with it when he dies. So old man dies and his son respect his wish. But his grandson steals SIM card—”

“Cell phone chip,” Bega said.

Shut up! Joshua thought.

“—before funeral and puts it in his phone. So they put him in the ground, they cover him with earth.”

Bega and the others seemed rapt — they kept nodding in approval, encouraging her. Joshua was all ready to laugh, so eager for the rendition to work out. Ana giggled and took a nervous sip of Johnnie Walker.

“But grandson sends text to his father. Text comes, it looks like it comes from old man and it says: I arrived to other world. His son goes crazy! Text from other world!”

Joshua chortled, hoping this was not it. Ana seemed out of breath, as if she had been running. This was not unlike an exam for her; she had stage fright. He had seen it before: her stuttering, the rise at the end of a difficult word, as if she was reaching for it, the thought in her eyes as she parsed the possibilities, her dramatic breath intake. He realized he was attracted to her striving, to her struggle to survive. I can kiss you for that .

“But then”—Ana inhaled and exhaled—“best friend of old man dies. His name is Fikret and he has funeral. Before the funeral, grandson sends text message to his father: Please send phone charger with Fikret.”

Everyone laughed, but nowhere near as much as when they heard it in Bosnian. The skinny man certainly didn’t fall off the chair. Joshua laughed too, but his laughter was devoid of the abandon he’d witnessed in the Bosnians. Ana didn’t laugh at all; she just shrugged, as if to say that she’d done her best and it wasn’t her fault. She finished her glass of whiskey.

“Hard to translate,” the skinny man said.

They sat in silence for a while. When Bega restarted the conversation in Bosnian, it was serene, as if the mistranslated joke had reminded them how sad and displaced they really were. History: the first time a joke, the second time a badly translated joke. Joshua was now the only one in the room not speaking the language, but he could not leave, as if that would violate the sacred impenetrability of Bega’s words. A woman with dyed-blond hair and a chest armor of necklaces listened for a while and then started crying, pressing her face against the skinny man’s shoulder to sob mutely. Ana saw it, but said nothing, nor did she offer to translate for Joshua. It was not unlike watching a movie: he was simultaneously there and absent; present, but not responsible for any of it. Ana was sitting close to him again and he could feel the warmth of the thigh, the deep vibrations of her flesh, the hum of her blood on its way to her heart.

“So what you are speaking is the Bosnian language, then,” Joshua said, just to keep her engaged, away from Bega’s lamentations.

“It has many names. I call it Bosnian, sometimes I don’t like to argue so I say ‘our language.’ I much more like to speak English, not complicated.”

“You speak English well,” Joshua said.

“I need to speak better to find better job,” she said. “I don’t want to work in chocolate shop whole life.”

Their faces were turned to each other conspiratorially. He smelled her alcoholic breath and he could see himself moving deeper into her space to plant his lips on hers. Kimmy’s mouth was sweet, but almost never alcoholic. Alcoholic breath turned him on: I must kiss you for that . As if reading his mind, she leaned back, just in time for her husband to walk in and sit across from Bega. They knocked their beer bottles together and drank.

“Your boss seems nice,” Joshua said.

“Very nice,” Ana said. “But she likes to touch me. She stands by me, touches me and says: ‘Oopsie daisy.’”

“Why does she touch you?”

Ana straightened her back, pushing out her chest, and circled her hand around her breasts, anabashedly .