Aleksandar Hemon - The Making of Zombie Wars

INSERT

Major K’s handwriting.

MAJOR K

(v.o.)

Muscular tension. Irregular breathing. Despair. Suicidal thoughts.

Joshua stepped into Kimmy’s living room as into a furnished nightmare. Everything was overwhelmingly familiar yet disturbingly misarranged — the flowers in the vase appeared positively aggressive, the books on the coffee table growled at him — not least because Ana and her daughter were seated on Kimmy’s sofa. Her face ashen and devoid of dimples, Ana kneaded her hands, wearing the white shirt with leg-of-mutton sleeves, minus the chocolate smudges. Her daughter (what was her name?) stood up to offer her hand to Joshua, as if welcoming him to a scheduled appointment.

“We have met once before, but you might not remember me,” she said. “My name is Alma.”

Joshua shook her hand — firm and confident — but he couldn’t muster any words. You kids have fun , she’d said to him at Ana’s place before prancing off. Stagger extended his encased hand and they exchanged warm, nearly conspiratorial smiles. Perhaps they knew each other. Nothing was beyond Stagger, or this day, or this nightmare. The Lord is a great plotter, the clever tormentor of the innocent. Ana didn’t look up or say anything to Joshua, who was grateful for her restraint.

“Perhaps you’d care to tell Teacher Josh what brings you here,” Kimmy said. Ana rose and took a deep breath, Alma looking up at her, eager to hear her next line. Joshua set the New Balance bag on the table with a flower vase, as if preparing to be slapped around. Ana’s eyes were a different, darker shade of green in the diffuse light of Kimmy’s living room. Perhaps if they all remained silent for as long as possible, they’d slip out of this moment into the next one, and then the next one, until all the preceding moments were erased from memory and everything could start all over again. The ultimate American dream: the eternal present, where nothing has ever happened before what is happening now.

“This is what I’ve learned, Teacher Josh, while we were waiting for you to enrich us with your presence,” Kimmy said. “Her husband threw them out of their house. He said he no longer cared. He’s done with being a stepfather and a spouse.”

Alma nodded, confirming the general outline of the unfolding catastrophe.

“A most complicated family situation, this. A plot worthy of a fat Russian novel,” Kimmy went on. “The trouble is I can’t stand Russian novels.”

“They’re not Russian,” Joshua offered. “They’re Bosnian.”

“Whatever. They’re strangers,” Kimmy said. “In my living room. In my home.”

A centrifuge of terror spun in his stomach. He couldn’t have imagined that the fear booth could offer services like this. Neither the vase nor the flowers moved, nor were the coffee-table books in any way affected by what was transpiring. Joshua’s mind was burning to reach a perfect state of blankness — he could be approaching satori, if it weren’t for the mean little man in the crawl space, making notes, gloating: one day, when we’re all dead and gone, this will be a page in a script.

He didn’t like it that Kimmy’s arms were crossed at her chest. It rendered her determined to inflict the most brutal punishment in abeyance of any forgiveness. Meanwhile, Stagger drifted toward the bookshelf and bent his neck to browse through the book spines. Joshua could learn a lot about the art of psychotic detachment from Stagger, who was rubbing his forehead presently, as if to stimulate a dormant thought. Kimmy was too self-possessed to be forgiving; ever confident she could tell right from wrong, she hated the wrong. Joshua really needed to sit down. Perhaps he could escape and join the marines, go to Iraq, lose his mind honorably. Become like Stagger, a man inoculated against suffering and sanity. Where was the samurai sword? In the laundry room, yes, he left it there. It might come in handy for a future hara-kiri.

“What do you think you should do here, Jo?” Kimmy asked. “’Coz I’m plain flummoxed.”

Everyone waited for him to say something. Everyone could see he was clean out of explanations or ideas. Whereas Kimmy was flummoxed. He did think that flummoxed was an odd word to use in this particular context.

“Why don’t we all just sit down and talk it over,” Joshua said. “I’ll try to explain.”

“Esko also said that we were now free to go and live with Teacher Josh,” Alma said. Somehow, she seemed blithely untroubled by all this. How early can you learn to stay out of your own life? To watch it as if it were taking place on the screen? Ana barked something in Bosnian at Alma but she ignored her with ease. Stagger grinned at some sinister book on the psychology-of-sex shelf. Flummoxed . What the fuck? Joshua clawed at his head, aware that his paralysis combined with his anxious gestures indicted him. When I find myself bound by death’s ties, I call upon the Lord to make me completely catatonic. Coppola had once faked an epileptic seizure in a meeting with rapacious film executives. Joshua’s mouth, however, was much too dry for foaming. Ana leapt up from the sofa toward Alma, as if to slap her, but the girl stepped back, disobediently and dexterously, to continue her testimony.

“He said that Teacher Josh can now feed and fuck us,” Alma said. “I beg your pardon: feed us and fuck her .”

“Please, stop!” Ana said.

“I’m just saying what your husband said.”

There was still a way to explain this into some acceptable shape: pathologically jealous husband plus excessively devout teacher equals terrible, terrible misunderstanding. Kimmy panned from Ana to him and back — like guilty children, the two of them conspicuously avoided eye contact. Why was it so difficult to dissemble? The one thing that parents need to give their children to increase their survival chances in this punishing world is the skill to lie blatantly and unflinchingly. Bernie was good at lying, like many a man of his age and generation; yet he failed to teach Joshua how to look a woman in the eye and deceive.

“I see,” Kimmy said. “Teacher Josh. Yes.”

“All I’m saying is I’m just saying,” Alma said. She sat down, evidently relieved to have contributed to the comprehensive unmasking. Teenagers should be rounded up and forcibly trained in lying; it should be part of the high school curriculum. We must learn to be concerned with the meaning of utterances, not with their truth. Script Idea #151: Subterfuge Summer Camp, where everyone’s a liar, except for one boy, who keeps getting punished for his suicidal honesty, providing a lesson for the rest. Title: The Lies of Others.

Ana sat down on the sofa to fully dedicate herself to weeping. Joshua had never heard her crying; he’d never even imagined her crying — she was suddenly someone else, someone whose throat was convulsing as she emitted high-pitched yelps that couldn’t be construed as anything other than hurt. Even Stagger looked up from the book he was flipping through— Female Perversions it was, too fittingly.

“Is there something you would like to say to me, Jo?” Kimmy asked. There was a time when Joshua’s mother had often delivered the very same line, expecting little Josh to grovel apologetically. One day he’d had nothing to say, and he’d said it and it was poetry.

“That was not me,” Joshua said.

“What’s that?”

“That wasn’t me.”

“Try again.”

“Her husband was in the war in Bosnia,” Joshua tried again.

“Let’s first agree on some facts: you had sex with his wife, who is also your student. Yes?”

“He was in Special Police.”

“Did you or did you not?”

The ice in her voice started cracking. Joshua wanted to grab her hands and bathe them in kisses, but he knew it wouldn’t have been a prudent move. He said: