Aleksandar Hemon: Nowhere Man

“I loved that song.”

“Thank you.”

“I never knew you could sing like that.”

“Thank you.”

“My mom liked you.”

“I liked her.”

“You know, Maxwell and Aaron are moving in together. They found a place in Evanston.”

“Good.”

“I’ll have to find a roommate.”

“I see.”

“My dad moved in with my mom the day they met.”

“The same day?”

“Yeah. She met him in a bus station. He had no place to stay so she took him home.”

“How long he stayed?”

“Twelve years.”

They heard Maxwell and Aaron playing their trumpets, the plaintive wails coming from the kitchen. Pronek was a little drunk and when he closed his eyes he could see flashing spirals, and he could smell Rachel’s hair, her elbow touching his ribs.

“I’m happy we are together,” she said.

Some of his cracked chairs and the shabby table he left by the Dumpster, along with cracked dishes, permanently smudged glasses, and a rotten mattress, which Pronek suspected was home to a fresh brood of cockroaches. The rest fit into five boxes, which he carried upstairs one at a time. He put the towels in the dresser, next to his underwear. He hung up his clothes in his half of the closet. He put the box of Mirza’s letters under the bed. He positioned a couple of picture frames on the TV: Pronek on stage with Dead Souls; his drunk parents holding hands awkwardly. He deployed the toy chopper on the bookshelf and the marble bowl on the coffee table. He hung up the map of the world in the kitchen and scattered other things that belonged to him around the apartment, marking his territory, like a dog pissing on trees — wherever he looked there was a trace of him. And when he was brushing his teeth while Rachel waited in bed, it exhilarated him that he was in the bathroom while she was in the bedroom.

Rachel said: “I’ll wait here.” Pronek went through a maze of walls, then through low, arched gates, and he realized he was inside a castle. He found his way to a locker room and was waiting in front of a locker for it to open, but then decided to tinker with the lock. He was sticking a graphite pen into it, when someone walked in. He quickly collected himself and with a perfect American accent, so perfect it seemed someone else was speaking, as if he were a soul-infested ventriloquist’s dummy, he said: “Do not trespass on my domain!” The trespasser was Sila the Drummer, wearing a green beret, a snare drum hanging from his neck. “This place stinks with foreigners,” Pronek said. “Damn right!” Sila said. Then Pronek was rummaging through the locker, which had a bedroom and a bathroom and a garden with an ear-shaped bird bath. He took a silver cell phone from the garden and a roll of film from the bedroom, and a condom from the bathroom and put them in his pocket. Then he was crawling along the inside walls of the castle and was out in no time. He saw people going down the craggy hill backward, everybody holding on to their own rope. It was some kind of pilgrimage in reverse — somehow he knew that at the bottom of the hill there was a bleeding saint who had tumbled down. Everybody was carrying their possessions in their hands, still managing to hold on to the rope — he saw Maxwell carrying a kite; he saw Dallas carrying a shoe box with a nuclear reactor and a banjo. He saw his father dragging a dead, rotten Rottweiler on a leash. There was a herd of three-year-old boys with hairy chests, each of them holding a swarm of flies forming different shapes in their hands: a banana, a revolver, the shape of Yugoslavia. He saw strangers carrying downhill things he recognized as his own: the guitar he had sold before coming to America; the blue UNHCR letters he had received from Mirza; a jar full of marbles in different colors. He saw a couple of Siamese twins, joined at the hip, a box in their four hands containing a soulless football; a broken-boned umbrella; some sacred scrolls; a bundle of shoes with crescent soles. One of the twins shot a vicious glance at Pronek and Pronek understood that he had broken into their locker. He got terribly afraid, he sped up running backward down the hill, faster and faster, the rope burning his palms, and he couldn’t see where he was going — all he could see was the huge rock on the top of the hill the saint had pushed up and left there.

Pronek listened to Rachel’s even breathing, trying to calm down, but his heart was pounding, the balls of his feet sore, the arches tense, as if he had just stopped running.

“Rachel, what is that sound?”

He leaned over her. Her face was calm, her eyelids relaxed, she murmured something he could not understand and for a moment he hated her because she could sleep so peacefully, so far away from him, dreaming different dreams.

“Rachel, what is it?”

He touched her shoulder and she shuddered, yelped, and snapped her eyes open. She looked at Pronek with frightened surprise as if she couldn’t recognize him.

“Rachel, it’s me.”

She pushed him away and sat up in bed, suddenly snorting and breathing heavily.

“Rachel, what is that sound?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Listen!”

There was nothing to hear. They were motionless, silent, in the darkness.

“Go to sleep, Jozef.”

“No. Listen.”

There was scraping and scuffling, barely audible, somewhere in the hall. Pronek leapt out of bed and tiptoed out of the bedroom, then turned the hall light on abruptly.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

Rachel put on her robe and followed him out. Pronek was advancing toward the kitchen, his body taut and ready in his flannel pajamas.

“It’s three in the morning, for God’s sake.”

Pronek turned on the light in the kitchen, then determinedly got on all fours and crept along the floor. Rachel stood at the door, barefoot and cold.

“Listen.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

Pronek went under the table in the corner, she could see only the soles of his feet. “Mouse!” he shouted, and banged his head against the table. Something darted past Rachel’s cold feet and she trotted for an instant as if dancing. It ran along the walls of the living room and went behind the sofa. Pronek got out from under the table holding his pate and got up.

“It’s the mouse,” he said.

“It’s behind the sofa.”

Pronek strode toward the sofa, then pushed it away from the wall. The mouse was in the corner shivering, huddled, a light-tentacle reaching its tail.

“Give me something,” Pronek said. The mouse was fat, a short evolutional step from a rat, its cheeks bulging as if it had been caught eating and still was chewing the food.

“What do you want?”

“Something.”

Rachel grabbed a book off the shelf: “Here.”

Pronek took the book, looked at the title page, and flipped through it — it was The Idiot.

“Not this one.”

“You gotta be kidding me! What difference does it make?”

“Not this.”

She put the book back on the shelf and stood, with her hands pressing against her back, choosing another one:

“Do you want fiction or biography?” she asked, irked.

The mouse dared to move, its back against the wall, but Pronek stomped his foot.

“Here is Death in Venice” she said.

Pronek grasped the book — it was a small paperback, thick and reeking of library must. He slammed the mouse — once, twice. The mouse squealed and squeaked and writhed as Pronek kept hitting it until it stopped moving and producing sounds.

“God!” Rachel said.

“I think it’s dead.”

“What are we going to do now?”

“I don’t know.”

He was still holding Death in Venice , his eyes fiery — he had just killed a living creature and felt nauseated, as if he had swallowed blood. Rachel came back with a broom and a dustpan and offered them to Pronek.