Aleksandar Hemon - The Making of Zombie Wars

“By the time I divorce him,” Ana said, “I will not have loved him for long time.”

She kissed his forehead lightly and slipped out of the classroom, back into the world overrun with Ponomarenkos and their ilk. Next year in goddamn Jerusalem! The map of Israel, vaguely vaginal as it was, made little sense: the sharp angles, the curlicues and straight lines that were supposed to be the borders. None of it made any sense. How many worlds could there be in the world? How many worlds would the cosmic asshole have gratuitously created? Joshua’s hard-on was painful; he considered manually relieving himself right then and there.

But he didn’t — the temporary victory of reason was a defeat of the body. The pent-up desire hence turned into groin tension and pain in the ass, not in the least figurative, auguring many prostate problems. The regrets and shame arrived promptly, as soon as the adrenaline levels dropped, as soon as he remembered that Bernie had never sailed in the waters of Israel, as soon as the dead-endness of it all became self-evident, as soon as he saw that door close behind Ana.

* * *

On a tightrope stretched between arousal and despair, Joshua crossed his inner abyss to reach the Westmoreland, which he recognized only as he was locking his bike in front of it. Bega was there, still in his Fuck T-shirt, perched on a stool, fitting so naturally into the dump landscape he might as well have been a piece of furniture. This time around, he had beer bottles on the bar organized in groups of three, perhaps in order to count them better — there were twelve of them. He was not surprised to see Joshua, nor was he particularly happy. There was, far too appropriate for the perpetual Westmoreland circumstances, a large, stopped clock over the mirror behind the bar. Paco was watching baseball again, somehow acknowledging Joshua without actually looking at him. His goiter seemed to be a little bigger and redder than a couple of days ago. It could’ve been the light, or it could’ve been that the tumor was growing rapidly.

“Why doesn’t he take that thing out?” Joshua whispered to Bega as Paco attended to two thick-armed Northwestern frat boys, who must’ve adventurously descended into the city in pursuit of mindless fun. Both of them had their baseball hats backward, the better to announce their partying ambition, wearing shorts and flip-flops in early April, the month not quite cruel enough to them.

“What thing?” Bega asked.

“That thing on his neck. The goiter.”

As Paco poured two double Jell-O shots for the frat boys, Bega looked at his goiter as if he’d never seen it before.

“ Goiter . That’s good word,” Bega said. “Is it Jewish word?”

“Jewish word? You mean Yiddish? No, it’s not a Yiddish word.”

In truth, Joshua had no idea. Joshua inherited little Yiddish from his venerable ancestors, mainly what was already part of the English language, mensch, schmuck , and such. Paco’s bulge could well be a goyter . What would goyter mean in Yiddish? Someone pretending to be goy ? Nana Elsa used to curse her goyrl —her fate. Maybe goyter is goyrl ’s sinister fiancé. Or was it the word for tumors, for what Bernie’s prostate was turning into?

“Goiter,” Bega said, with relish.

The frat boys emptied the shots into their gullets then slammed the glasses down on the bar dramatically, as if they’d just accomplished a brave and rare feat. Paco poured them another round. One day these wide-shouldered boys will be running mutual funds into the ground, loyally voting Republican, and supporting foreign wars while watching the Wildcats football games, their hands stuck into their sweatshorts.

“Goiter.” Bega rolled it on his tongue like a sommelier.

“I just made out with Ana,” Joshua said out of the blue, surprising himself. It could’ve been that he was hoping Bega, an elected representative of all the Bosnians residing in this particular universe, would understand and forgive him in one fell swoop, thereby quickly alleviating Joshua’s nascent guilt; or it was that he wanted Bega to stop saying “goiter.”

“I’m sure she’s dying to fuck you,” Bega submitted with what equally consisted of disgust and admiration. “Sincere congratulations!”

“I’m not interested,” Josh said. “She’s my student. And I have a girlfriend.”

“Sure you do, Josh. But that is no problem if you play it right,” Bega went on. “He is her second husband, but you must be careful. Esko went little crazy in war, now he’s little bit fucked up.”

“I don’t want to think about Esko.”

“Sure you don’t,” Bega said. “He drinks a lot. He does not get along with his stepdaughter.”

“His stepdaughter? The girl is not his?”

“No. Her father was killed in the war.”

“How do you know them?” Joshua asked. Them , he said.

“Oh, Bosnia is small world. I know lot of Bosnians,” Bega said and winked. “Some better than others.”

What was that wink supposed to mean? Know in what way?

“She has my wallet,” Joshua said. “I lost it at the party.”

Bega finished off his beer. “Goiter,” he said.

“What?”

Bega raised his hand to call Paco over for another round. What they did at the Westmoreland was more than just drinking; they also longed for Paco and his attention. It was what other people went to holy temples for. Paco, for his part, was impervious to their prayers, ever looking up at the TV as at a celestial body. There must be a place in the world where there would be monks serving as bartenders, communing with spirits, mixing martinis to help you transcend your consciousness and fall facedown into enlightenment.

“Listen to me, I give you free advice: never, not even if they torture you, you must say anything to your girlfriend,” Bega said. “If she has video of you having sex with Ana, you look her in eyes and say: ‘That is not me!’ Never guilty, always innocent.”

“I just got carried away. It was a mistake. I have no intention of having sex with Ana,” Joshua said. “Whatsoever.”

“Whatsoever?”

“Whatsoever. She has a teenage daughter.”

“She does.”

The frat boys were high-fiving each other. They looked exactly as the ones Joshua remembered from his college days: the same arrogance acquired by way of torturous football drills; the same unblemished skin and well-organized bodies; the same victoriously sparkling eyes; the same unquestionable confidence in the arrival of the cozy future. There ought to be a scene in Zombie Wars where chesty fratboys are quartered by the undead. Paco finally came around to take an order.

“Red wine,” Joshua said.

“No way,” Bega said, ogling the goiter. “Give him Jack on the rocks. He’s real man now.”

Joshua was too busy examining the goyter to object. It looked just as it sounded: goyter . Bernie used to speak Yiddish growing up. Joshua must learn Yiddish. By the time I’m sixty-five, I’ll have written unproducable scripts in unspeakable Yiddish. Bega was staring at the goyter too.

“What’re you looking at?” Paco asked them testily.

“Goiter,” Bega said. “We’re looking at your goiter. Why you don’t take it out.”

“Take it out?” Paco the goytermonk said. “That’s where I keep my spare head.”

* * *

The Westmoreland Jacks should have rendered the Ana experience as distant as a medieval battle, yet Joshua spent much of his walk home (home?) searching for the exact way to convey the taste and texture of her lips: red licorice? tuna sashimi? a warm, split red-bean mochi ball? It was all wrong (why did only food come to mind?). He could not perfectly recollect the sensation, because his hands had been too busy exploring her skin and groin. He should’ve paid more attention to the lips — the stupid adolescent habit of always going for the deeper bases. He opened the front door like a burglar, hoping that, if Kimiko was sufficiently tranquilized by late-night television, he could slip into bed so that Ana and her lips would by the morning dissolve into the untroubling past.