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Lavender
by Alison Leigh Brown

Emily was not seduced by the perfume encoded on brightly coloured ads; they felt like sandpaper on her wrists, didn’t smell real. Her high school friends swooned and dreamt of lead roles in those glossy romances. But Emily just liked lavender—the colour, the scent. She remained faithful to it. Her friends laughed—they called her quaint. They said, “Emily’s crazy for lavender.” It didn’t bother her. She liked what she liked.

A woman now, she’s planted a border of the bristly stalks around her front garden. Saying good-bye to dinner guests, she fondles the stalks, brushes her fingers over the tops as if tousling a toddler’s hair. She rubs the dry flowers over her arms, even in the creases of her elbows. She says lavender reminds her of Provence, of Nana. David had taken her to France for their first anniversary. Her grandmother sprinkled its chalky powder on her dresses, on her sweet, old arms. So, Emily fills sachets with dried buds, adds lavender’s essence to chocolate desserts. Friends have caught her crumbling freshly pulled petals over lamb ragout.

Yes, Emily is mad for lavender. She has invented a delicate, yet potent blueberry lavender martini. When held to light, three distinct colour layers are revealed, each shade shown to advantage by the blueberry mint garnish she crafts. Her husband, David, is sick to death of lavender. He mocks Emily’s preoccupation with it, says she’s afflicted by sophomoric affectation. She thinks he’s joking.

When Ben first saw Emily, lavender didn’t come to mind. He looked up from his work and there she stood: modern and spare. Small of bosom and hip, she presented all legs and eyes. Ben was researching the division of marital property in Oklahoma on the public library’s Internet, trying to stretch out the time left before putting in a little face time at his office. He doesn’t have any afternoon clients, but has to review the Johnson file before tomorrow morning. That file. What a sorry record: grief and pettiness cutting across three states, requiring custodial arrangements for two sullen teenagers. There’s more pain than money here. Seeing Emily gives him a mini-daydream; trying to refocus on work, he notices a bright flash of white hair tumbling over the woman’s huge laughing eyes. He sees her again. She hasn’t moved out of his sight. Emily is wearing a short brown skirt and tall tight boots from which her long, pale legs extend. Ben gives his attention to her, catches himself thinking, she knows me. He smiles at her, asks if she needs anything.

“I guess I do,” she says, leaning deep into his space. It’s only then he becomes aware of lavender. He was expecting J’adore, or, perhaps, Poison. Last spring, his last girlfriend moved out. He missed the hominess, at first. When a letter comes for her, he takes it over in person. They chat; she makes him a drink. He keeps her many magazines for himself: Glamour, Self, Elle. She’s never asked for them. He likes to take the quizzes, scan the ads. He really enjoys them—looks forward to the next issues. He’s learned as much about himself as the minds of women. For instance, Ben now knows that as a woman, he’d be moderately conventional. Adding up the points of his answers reveals that he would not be kittenish in bed. He’s more demure.

He’s surprised when Emily asks him to join her for tea. She’s pretty and young. She knows exactly where they’re going and soon they’re sitting on fussy, overstuffed chairs. Their tattooed server sets down pots of floral infusions, clattering, borderline messy. She has to return with sterling strainers. It’s a haphazard establishment with no discernible theme, no trays. The tea, however, is excellent. Ben adjusts to Emily’s height, allows himself to relax into adventure. He confirms that he’s not married or in a relationship, and that he’s straight. He finds her questions irritating. She tells him all about her Internet search for Katy’s Tea Room; her tone apologetic. She says she’s a little tired from the drive. She’s come all the way from Oxford, not that she doesn’t make “cooler runs” all the time. Ben knows about the sedans and SUVs whose trunks are kept ready for sun chokes and decent arctic char. He’s familiar with the Memphis-Oxford food run. He’s suddenly tired too, realizing he’s cycling the names of perfectly decent places to buy groceries in Oxford. Emily turns business-like.

“I have a request.” She’s urgent, insistent.

Her direct examination bothers Ben. This is not a quiz in Cosmo. He is not half-asleep wondering how pathetic it is to answer yes to questions, he suspects should be no. He’s bothered but also baffled. She can’t know what he’s capable of doing or offering. He switches on lawyer mode, wary and precise.

“A request?”

“I’ve been married for five years.” She’s shameless, stares him flush on. “I’ve never had relations with anyone but my husband. David.”

“And this concerns me, how?”

“I don’t want a boyfriend, to have an affair or anything. I just want to know what it’s like with someone else. You know, to see if it’s different. When I saw you, I could see you’re clean. You don’t look like a creep.” Her voice loses steam. She pours more tea.

“Yeah. That’s me, a regular boy scout.” Ben is trying to figure out why he is so insulted.

“Would you be willing to have sex with me?”

Ben brings his napkin to his face. He realizes that he is embarrassed, shocked, flattered. His face is red, his mouth dry. He drops the napkin, rubs his hands on it.

“Just once.” Her tone is almost condescending. It’s the voice Ben uses to calm an edgy client. “No strings attached. I promise. We’ll just do it, and then I’ll leave. I’ll never call you. I won’t stalk you.”

Emily is so sure he’ll say yes, Ben wants to reject her out of hand. He wants to show her that men aren’t what they seem, that they aren’t so easily won. Instead he says: “Sure. Why not?” He follows with his spectacular smile. His partners call it is his closer look.

Emily stands up even though they aren’t half way through their little sandwiches, the dainty scones. He hasn’t poured a second cup, had been planning to make a better job of it, without dribbles. She starts chattering.

“Let’s go, then. Before you change your mind. I really appreciate this, Ken.” She takes a bill from her back pocket, slaps it on the table. Ben can see it’s only a twenty. Pretty sure this isn’t enough, he stands there, uncertain. It’s her party, but it’s his town. He adds a ten. The whole thing feels farcical. He hopes she hasn’t seen him increase the payment.

“Ben,” he states. “My name is Ben.”

“Of course.” She produces a smile of her own.

Emily’s eager to go. They leave, not looking back, not taking one last sip. Emily laughs again, amused as they bump bodies, each having decided they know which way to go. Ben likes her laugh. Still, he’s not as happy as he feels he should be. Has he been chosen because he’s non-threatening? There are lots of men in Memphis. Trying to make an almost creepy situation appear friendly, he takes her hand. Emily pushes him away as if he’s insane.

“Someone might see us! God, Ben. I’m married.”

Ben acknowledges his mistake. “I read law at Ole Miss.”

This is enough to convey to Emily his awareness that women who live in Oxford shop in Memphis and that he knows they talk. She nods relieving him of social embarrassment. They walk along in silence the few blocks to his car. Once inside, she puts her hand on the back of his neck, making little circles in his short, wiry hair. Ben knows this is how she plays with her husband. He puts the thought out of his mind, tries to just enjoy this domesticity. So this is what it’s like to be married.

Once home he looks for any evidence she’ll back out. There is none. Emily’s undressed before he’s shown her the bedroom. Ben is unnerved by her lack of artifice. Her tall boots are quickly dispensed. Emily hasn’t needed to sit down, to pull or wiggle. Zip and they’re off. She gets out of her socks like a youngster, using the opposing toes of each foot to scrunch the fabric down and then flip them off. She bends to stuff each one inside its partner boot. She is not worried about the view of her backside. He’s never been with a woman so unconcerned about her body. It’s like she’s getting ready for gym class.

“I knew your house would be tidy.” The words she chooses to describe him leave Ben feeling unmanned. He can’t argue with her assessment. He is neat; he is a gentleman.

So there she is: waiting, completely at ease, naked. Still in his suit, Ben thinks: I’m dealing with a child. Emily appears to be waiting for him to cause something, not unlike the way his previous partners’ children, his nieces and nephews, stand by swings, silently demanding a push, a boost up, or the way they eye teensy spoons coated with peas or beets. They know the spoon will end up in their mouths if they just sit there looking at it. Emily reminds Ben of a cat nuzzling a door in that way that shows time is not a concept for it, that it can wait as long as necessary for the knob to turn, the door to open. Emily makes him think of a baby waiting to be diapered.

“Are you sure about this? There’s this sense I’m having that I’m maybe taking advantage.” Ben imagines what his mother would advise for this situation. What is the right thing to do? He tries to understand why, with so many candidates to choose from, Emily has picked him. Why me? “Do you still want to do this?”

Emily nods. “Yes. I committed to this before I left Oxford.” After a pause and with nothing happening, she asks, “Don’t you have to call your work or anything, Ben?” And then with equal weight, “Is there something you want me to put on?”

“Emily. I haven’t had sex for four months. I need a little time to get to know you. And no, I don’t have to call into my work ‘or anything.’ What a wifely thing to say.”

He’s only trying to make a joke, to loosen things up. Boundaries are shifting too quickly for him.

Emily takes his comment the wrong way. She swallows, holds her eyes tightly together, a movement he knows from his divorcing clients is meant to keep you from crying.

“I knew I wouldn’t be good at this.” She sits down on a dining room chair, her posture perfect. Back against the chair, her breasts stick straight out, too small to go anywhere else. Each nipple is tiny; they’re pale—the colour of a toy doll. The pink fleshiness accentuates how white the rest of her is. Ben can’t get over her poise; the innocence of her relationship to her body is new to him. He likes it. “You can change your mind if you want to, Ben.” She’s composed her face and has resumed the negotiation. “I know this is bizarre. You don’t have to go through with this.”

His body isn’t anticipatory, even though here she is. He can’t stop wondering what men had been considered and rejected before she focused on him. Had she come directly to the library or had she tried her luck at the courthouse, the supermarket? Had she been with someone else forty minutes ago and when he gave her an out, did she say those exact same words? He can’t let her be rejected twice.

“Of course I want to, Emily. The pacing’s off. That’s all. Let’s start over again. Let’s pretend we know each other. You stay here and I’ll come back when you’re not expecting me. It’ll be more fun. Sex is not just the doing of it, you know.” He sounds inane to himself. The rhythm of his words seem childish.

“I know that.” She doesn’t pout. “Ben. I’m not a virgin. I’m just inexperienced.”

“Emily, we didn’t think things through. For me, I need a context. Look. You get dressed, go in the kitchen and pretend to be making dinner.”

Emily indicates she’s game. She asks how long she has to get ready.

“I’ll be home by five.”

“Okay, sweetheart.”

Ben leaves his house with the stranger inside. He doesn’t usually drink in the afternoon but he stops at a bar by his office and orders a beer. There are quite a few men he recognizes, but doesn’t know, chatting over cokes and pretzels. Ben nods and smiles. He drinks straight from the bottle, wondering whether he should bring Emily a gift. Decides against it. He wonders if she’ll be there when he gets back. He doesn’t know if he’ll be relieved or sad if she’s gone.

Emily is excited now that she’s alone. Anticipating sex warms her skin even before she sees its glow in the mirror. She blows a kiss at her reflection with her hands on her hips. Emily winks at Emily. She turns to Ben’s closet but finds nothing of interest there. His shirts are on laundry hangers. This makes her feel sorry for him, that he has no one to force him to use good wooden ones. She searches for any little something left by another woman—a slip, a nightgown, but finds none. The suits soldier from charcoal wool to pale linen, just like David’s do. She has no choice but to put back on her same old clothes. Knowing that this won’t take long and that there is no way she will eat dinner with Ben, she calls the first take-out number she finds. It’s a sushi place and they say it will be there around five-thirty. She’s never cared for any kind of Asian food; she orders what David would if he were here. Nothing with eel or octopus—a California Roll in case the fish is off.

With fifty minutes to kill, Emily doesn’t know how to follow Ben’s instructions. She remembers her lavender martinis and how they always cheer a place up. She goes out back to cut some fresh lavender, but remembers where she is. There’s nothing in Ben’s garden except a few trees, some grass and the sorts of perennials bachelors have. A look through his cabinets shows he doesn’t keep liquor at home.

Emily almost had sex with the boyfriend before David. There have only been the two. Her reason for constant deferral had been the gravity he brought to each encounter. They were young, freshmen in college. Allen got all red-faced and fumbling from wanting her. Embarrassed for him, she couldn’t keep her focus. David was older than Allen, a senior, and more experienced. He came at the whole thing playfully, pretending to be a cat, biting her toes. It wasn’t until years later that she wondered if serious wasn’t more in keeping with the nature of the thing.

Yesterday afternoon, Sunday, she approached David with a sombre face. She wasn’t sure how to convey what she wanted. She almost asked him to stop joking around but couldn’t figure out how to say this, without it sounding like a criticism of their entire shared life. So she wore the sombre face and willed him to notice what she wanted. David somehow sidestepped the force of her willing; he just couldn’t keep his mirth down. After they’d finished, he went, as he always did, to fetch some water. She lay there, trying to find the reason to forgive him.

Emily balances their checkbook, was an A student in college and now is competent at her job. She’s in charge of all the windows at Oxford’s department store and she signs off on all marketing initiatives. She has a good eye for fashion, colour, the juxtaposition of shape and font. David’s daddy owns the store; the three of them do their business things together across the square in their corporate offices. Over morning coffee, she gave David several chances to apologize for missing her cues, but it was like he didn’t even know anything was wrong. Infuriated, even though she knew she really shouldn’t be, she decided to go over to Memphis and set things right.

“I’ve got to get to Memphis, David.”

“Well, that’s good, Emily. You have fun.” David didn’t even acknowledge her resentment. He just smiled. “Be careful.”

The world turned until it became five to five at Ben’s house. She decides to take her boots back off. Ben suspects Emily will return to Mississippi to spend the night with her husband, so he stops at his office to pick up the rest of the Johnson file and to check in. He’s stalling. He can’t be late so he gets his car and drives back to the house. He sits out front, waiting for inspiration. Nothing. Letting himself in a little noisier than if it were to the customary emptiness, he announces,

“Honey, I’m home.”

She welcomes him with a warm, open-mouthed kiss.

“What’s for dinner?” When did I become such a ham?

“Sushi. It’ll be here in fifteen minutes—we can put it in the fridge for later.”

Emily hasn’t lost her self-assurance. She leads him into the bedroom. She doesn’t ask Ben about his day. She refrains from using funny voices. Emily kisses him again, so soon they are prone and panting, as people do. Pieces fit where they should; the feeling of being marionette is unavoidable. In spite of her intentions toward gravity, then, Emily giggles. Ben is relieved and starts in with a few jokey remarks. It’s a good time—sex is what it is.

Emily tells Ben she better not stay for dinner. She’s ready to go home. As Ben drives her to her car, she’s proud she keeps the lesson to herself. It’s exactly the same.

Ben’s life was not much changed by his afternoon with Emily. He sometimes thinks about their late afternoon encounter. Sometimes he allows himself to dwell on it. He credits its novelty for a happy conclusion to the Johnson affair. His altruism stoked, he made an extra effort to keep his client from haggling over furniture, from bartering weekends with distressed offspring for any other thing.

Two years after his tea with Emily, he finds himself married, domesticated. It’s a puzzle though, that he smells the stink of lavender everywhere—on his fingers, at the bottom of his drawers.

Switching from coffee to tea has produced a Ben who is almost prissy. He loves its paraphernalia; he even plans vacations to places where tea rites are prized. When tall, pale women hold his eye, he wonders why they pass him by. Why not me?

Occasionally, he finds himself thinking about Emily, whether he has damaged her. He holds the memory close, just as he does his tins of teas. The Assams and Jasmines are delivered to his office; he never shares them. After a trying deposition or a rare failed settlement, he warms a clay pot on the hotplate he keeps hidden in a bottom file drawer. From that same drawer, he retrieves an antique silver strainer with its porcelain drip bowl. Ben is soothed by lovely cups of tea.

Kristine is perfect for him. She’s stately and funny, numbers three and seven on his list of ten preferred qualities in a wife. She’s surprised whenever he gives her gifts with a lavender theme: soaps, hair pomades, little baskets filled with dry buds. She doesn’t like lavender. Kristine’s considered telling Ben lavender is not quite her thing, but she doesn’t. Over the years, she finds a way to just be grateful. He loves me. He wants to grow old with me.

Emily and David continue living. David takes over the store when his father retires. Emily returns home to raise the two children. Sons. Slowly, she starts using the perfumes David gives her for appropriate occasions. The men who did the back fence did such beautiful work that she asked them to fill the front garden’s borders with matching stone. She doesn’t have time to stuff sachets.

One day the doorbell rings. She’d been rushing to find the boys’ soccer cleats. Annoyed, she opens the door to find a florist’s box on her porch. Thinking that David has sent roses again, she finishes packing for practice, then confirms private goalie practice for the next day. She thinks she’s earned a hot bath and is about to take it when she remembers the delivery. She’s grateful, of course, but wishes there could be a little variation in this world. Lifting the lid, having already set David’s mother’s best vase out to receive its bouquet, she doesn’t immediately make sense of the two long stalks of dried lavender tied with twine. “A little lavender for Emily,” is typed by one of those machines that ape human hand. Emily’s not usually overcome by emotion, but she is utterly delighted. She sits at her perfect kitchen table, shoulders straight back. She’s pleased.

Rocco Carbone’s Bodyguard
(from Bandiera Rossa in Coralville)
by Antonije Nino Zalica

Dato gave me a pair of sunglasses today. Chris told me I looked like a war criminal, but it seems to me I look just like an ordinary one. Earlier on we had a group photograph taken, we were all there except for the youngest one, who went off with a girl, I suppose he even fell in love. The photographs were taken on a lawn by a river called Iowa. Actually, we are in a state called Iowa, in a city called Iowa, in a memorial centre called Iowa, in a hotel called Iowa situated, as I have already mentioned, on the banks of a brownish river called Iowa. Most of the people around us were wearing T-shirts with “Iowa” printed across the chest. Dato has bought a pair of shorts to play football in, so he has “Iowa” written across his bum.

Rocco Carbone could have been a perfect gangster, his name is definitely right for it, and he sort of looks like one; black, combed- back hair, sparkling eyes, a restless spirit, a puzzling melancholy surrounding him like an aura, strange and volatile. Rocco is from Calabria, which fits perfectly as well, however, he does not live in Chicago, but in Rome; of course, he is not a gangster, or a consigliere, nor a burglar, gambler or pickpocket. Rocco is a forever futilely in love melancholic, partial to a drink; he is a writer too, of course, as are we all here, in Iowa City. I did not play football with him because, as I was told, he got so into it during the first game that he tripped over his own leg and spent the rest of the programme limping.

Although he is well into his adulthood, Rocco Carbone is still constantly in love and suffering for it. Sometimes it seemed to me that the “right to suffer” was more important to Rocco than love and being in love. He would try anything, he begged and knelt, in an old- fashioned way, before the objects of his adoration. He was ready to sacrifice everything for a bit of requited love or for, at least, some sign of it. Then he actually resembled romantic outlaws and ancient poets: Propertius, Tibullus or, at least, Petrarch—his consciousness muddled by the ecstasy of amorous longing. It need not be mentioned that this love was unrequited, and that the “Lauras” and the “Cynthias” changed in a strange and quickened rhythm. At the time I was hanging around with Rocco, the position was temporarily held by a beautiful and, they say, intelligent American poetess of Irish origin. She lived somewhere in Iowa, but had a boyfriend in Illinois whom she visit every Friday. That gave a perfect excuse to Rocco for even more passionate bouts of suffering and drinking. And so Rocco was consumed by amorous agony, and we, of course, drank with him, as if to help him.

Friday nights were the worst, every once in a while Rocco would desperately cry out: “Dato, do you know where she is now?” He always addressed Dato, as if he were a personification of us. Dato would reply with the wonderful understanding that only the people from Caucasus posses: “Yes, I know my friend, I know.” Rocco would then almost squeak: “And do you know what is she doing now?” And so it went on every Friday, to the point where we substituted the word “Friday” for the word “Illinois”—by which it was understood that the current “Beatrice” was getting off with some guy in Illinois. “Tomorrow’s “Illinois,” Rocco would sometimes say, the trace of appropriate sadness already in his voice. “Yes,” Dato would reply, “tomorrow’s Illinois.” “She’ll go to Illinois tomorrow, do you know why she goes to Illinois?” “I know, I know,” Dato would reply with empathy unique to him. And, after midnight, Rocco would cry out in his drawn-out Italian accent: “She is now in Illinois!” He would always draw out that word, he would sing it, Italian style, emphasize it with a strange self-agonizing pleasure. And so one night, we had already had a few, and Rocco wailed about Illi-no-i-s for the seventh time. I asked him, almost seriously: “Rocco, you must have some relatives here, in Chicago or Cleveland, some of your Calabrese. Maybe they could help you to solve that minor problem, with the girl?” Rocco stared at me with drunken, hurt eyes, then shrugged and nearly cried: “But Nino! I’m here in-cog-nito!” And then he started explaining how he would have no time for writing if his family knew he was there, he would have to call everyone, visit them, buy flowers for aunts, kiss the hands of grandfather’s relatives and bring chocolates for countless children.…He talked, and then paused, sighed with a long awaited relief, his face beamed with an ecstatic smile:

“Yes, I know! We’ll kill the guy!”

Yes, really, an idea struck Rocco, the problem could be solved in an instant, of course, the entire problem is in the boyfriend—if it were not for him, she would go to Rome with Rocco and would not live here in bloody Iowa, but in the centre of the world and in the city of all cities! And she would not be going to Illinois on Fridays to get her fat portion of passion!

“Dato, shall we kill the guy?”

“Of course Rocco, we will kill him for sure,” replied Dato practically in passing, while rummaging through his notes written in ornate and strange Georgian letters. Dato was the only programme participant who had not wanted a computer and only wrote in hand.

“It is so simple. We just need to kill the guy!” Rocco kept on repeating this sentence with a strange happiness, which even Robert de Niro would find difficult to act out so convincingly. Rocco was not acting it out. He was just in a position to imagine that remote possibility of realizing his dreams, or, maybe, he saw that his suffering could come to an end?

Although we spent almost three months in the USA, we did not kill anyone. Rocco soon became infatuated with someone else, so the fellow from Illinois was allowed to continue living happily, and we later heard that the Irish-American poetess had dumped him; nevertheless, she never did end up in eternal Rome. And I decided, once and for all, to become Rocco’s, my idol’s, personal bodyguard.

In Rome, Rocco had a weird job. Of course, he was a writer as the rest of us were, but unlike many of us, he was even acknowledged and read—however, he could not live from it. After he had become bored of teaching literature in a high school, Rocco found a job at a women’s prison. Every afternoon he would go behind bars and give literature classes to murderesses. Actually, those were not real classes. He would read selected texts to them and then they would discuss the contents. Once he told me how he had read an excerpt from a Tolstoy novel and one of the inmates said she could not listen to it any more and ran out. Later she admitted to Rocco that she had done away with her husband in exactly the same way, with an axe. “You know, that one was not evil at all, she freed herself from her tyrant, and that’s it. He had abused her terribly, you know.” I asked him whether he had fallen in love with any of the inmates. “Yes,” he said, “but nothing could be done about that.”

“And did any of them fall in love with you?”

“They were all, of course, in love with me!”

I truly believe that all of those women had really been in love with Rocco Carbone, but his destiny was such that some mysterious net had always found itself between him and requited love. In this case, it was the prison bars. God Eros was simply too mean to Rocco Carbone, and that is probably why he had described the god as a wicked and worn-out tramp in one of his novels. And gods are, as you know already, too egotistical and vain.

We were once, I remember, sitting in our common room on the third floor of the Iowa City University campus, a bit idle in our conversation, with a bottle of tequila, a little salt and lemon and, of course, a whole pile of ice. (Those ice machines on every corner certainly seemed to be the height of American civilization!) Quite a few of us were there. We talked about our childhoods and similarly silly topics. As a child I was, of course, a “pioneer.” I do not know how much people know about this, but in socialist countries everything had to be organized and collectivized in some way, so all the children above the age of six or seven belonged to the pioneer organization and they had to swear the “pioneer oath,” swear to listen to the elders, to be good and faithful to our leader and to the ideas of socialism and progress. And all the pioneers had similar “uniforms”—black trousers/skirts, white starched shirts, red scarves and hats with red five-pointed stars. At some point, I realized that most of the writers present in the room should have some experience of the pioneer past, and I asked each one if they had been pioneers as kids. Andrej Stanislavovič Bičkov from Moscow said: “Of course I was. Could it have been any other way?” and he laughed. Bičkov was a very entertaining and hilarious guy. We all had to give some kind of lecture to the students, and Bičkov started his in a very unusual way; as soon as he reached the lecture theatre pulpit, he admitted that he was not only a writer, but a murderer as well. Yes, yes, a real murderer who had killed two people! Everyone in the theatre stared at him confusedly, even with a feeling of unease (what if he really was, and you never know with the Russians, do you?)—and he did not let himself be disturbed, he calmly continued his confession and described both murders in detail—the first one he pushed under a tram without remorse, and watched him get crushed by the wheels, and the second one he stabbed several times with a kitchen knife and then decapitated him with one stroke! The American students stared at the strange little man who spoke English with an accent worthy of James Bond films’ worst villains. And he stood there at the pulpit of one of America’s universities with a smile on his face as if nothing had happened. And when everyone was really shocked, Bičkov added:“But I’ll have to emphasize that the two were writers as well! Postmodernist writers! And I hope that you can fully understand me now.”

But, let us continue with the topic of pioneers: Mileta Prodanović need not have answered. He said something like: “Give us a break,” with a grin. Ghassan Zaqtan from Ramallah looked at me over his cigarette he had just lit, showed with his ever-beautiful smile, which could have meant both confirmation and negation. So I was not able to find out whether Palestinians had a similar organization, but that they were a part of the “progressive humanity” was unquestionable. And Ghassan also had his “Moscow years,” and talked about them often. Aida, instead of an answer, started singing a well-known, Yugoslav partisan song, which, I later learned from a klezmer band in Poland, was actually a Ukrainian song. Aida was an Arab from Israel, and had problems introducing herself. I was plagued by similar difficulties. The most difficult thing was when they asked me where I was from, and they kept on asking that. People normally have a short and simple answer to that, two or three words and all is clear. But I have to take a deep breath first, take a short break—and then I start explaining slowly; I come from Holland, from Amsterdam, but actually I am from Sarajevo, from Bosnia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, which used to be a part of Yugoslavia, I mean, former Yugoslavia….I go on explaining, not because I have to, but because I feel a vague compulsion to. Aida is always edgy; a muted frustration is constantly eating at her. The way in which she is addicted to nicotine reminds me of Sarajevo and Bosnia. As if we had gone to high school together and had smoked in secret, hiding from teachers, I get carried away sometimes and want to address her in my language. I started talking to Dato in that language once without realizing, and I also got his name mixed up, as if we had served in the army together somewhere in Slovenia.

Antonia always gives out a strangely calm aura. Just for a moment, I notice that her voice faltered, that her jaw imperceptively quivered; in the blueness of her eyes I notice a slight wetness. She has a similar problem as Aida and I, she explains where she is from—she is an Irish citizen, but, actually, she is from the Northern part: “Derry, not Londonderry, we call it just Derry.” She grew up and lived for a long time in Belgium. Poor thing, she never even had a chance of becoming a pioneer.

Viet, from Vietnam, as his name implies, laughed his ever childish laugh—a definitive confirmation of his pioneer past and not only that—children there are probably still some kind of pioneers, and our Viet may never have ceased being a member. And our friend from Laos, Tongbay, smiled in a similar way and continued nodding with approval for a long time. Su Tong, probably the biggest literary star among us, the author of the novel on which the famous film “Raise the Red Lantern” was based, did not have to confirm anything. Clear as day—of course he was a pioneer! Even Marius from Lithuania, although the youngest among us, admitted to having been a pioneer for a few months. Young Polish poet Dariuš, said something similar.

Only Marek Zaleski, although quite a few years older than Dariuš, refused, with resignation, any possibility of ever having anything to do with pioneers. We tried to “explain” to him that we still thought it impossible, but he kept on denying it with a harsh, neurotic twitch in his face. He was not, period! There was something there that pained him too much, and we stopped insisting. Only Dato admitted to asking his mother to iron his hat the night following his admittance to the pioneers, and he showed us how he had slept with it under the pillow, gently folding his hands under his cheek.

Dato was some kind of a “mobile Georgia,” wherever he was a small Georgian colony would form around him. And so he found some Georgians in Iowa, who kept on coming round to see him and take him out; among them, a strange type of closeness and openness was present already at the first meeting. Georgians are great patriots; they adore their country and everything Georgian, and, of course, each other, or at least it seems that way when they are far from Tbilisi, the Black Sea or the Caucasus. Once we had a real spectacle on our campus: some important demonstrations were taking place in Georgia, they had liberated themselves from a lot of things, but the local dictator still remained, and he wanted to shut down the only remaining independent TV station, and the people revolted. Dato had been a leader of an important student revolt in the nineties; he received a call in Iowa during the demonstrations, the phone was connected directly to a loud speaker on the square and he addressed the masses in the streets from his hotel room. We awaited him eagerly in the common room, he came back quivering, flushed:

“I told them—don’t worry, Rocco Carbone’s with us!”

I do not know whether he did that, but I do know he was crazy enough to do it. Then, one night, Dato told us we had all been invited to a barbecue by a Georgian family in nearby Coraville. All of us, more or less, accepted the invitation, except Chris Keulemans, whose excuse was that he wanted to stay in and work on his novel, “The American I Never Was,” only to admit later that he got stuck again and spent the entire evening staring at the TV. The Georgians came to pick us up and we piled into cars the best we could, some of us even sat in the boot of a large Cherokee jeep. On our way Dato explained to us the rules of a Georgian party: the booze up is always headed by a person called the tamada, who is often the host or one of the elders. Our hosts had several of Dato’s books on their shelves. They loved him and respected him very much and insisted on him being the tamada that evening. Dato hesitated. He thought that the honour belonged to the host, but they were persistent. The tamada dictates the evening, from what should be drunk and eaten and when, to the order and content of toasts, which are an unavoidable and the most important part of the festivity. He explained that everyone had to, unconditionally, accept the authority of the tamada, do everything that was asked of them, almost blindly and unquestioningly. He told us how he had once drunk in a village somewhere high up in the Caucasus. The tamada had been an old man, the head of the village, and in a moment of excitement he had said: “And now we will drink the Georgian soil!” and had poured a handful of soil into his wine. Everyone had followed him immediately, without any dissension. They had drunk the strange mixture of thick red wine and reddish soil.

We arrived in Coraville, a pretty town with terraced houses. The hosts were excited and everything had been ready for a good while. Iced vodka from the freezer was being drunk from long “test tube” glasses. On a large, semi-spherical barbecue, above practically “volcanic” embers, something resembling our own meat on skewers, ražnjići, was roasting. However, the skewers were shaped like sabres and each peace of meat was the size of a hand. Later we drank wine, Georgian of course, which is probably the best in the world, alongside our “blatina.” Our tamada, Dato, skilfully maintained the level of celebration. We drank to everyone—our mothers, those we loved but who were no longer with us. We toasted and drank copiously. The last toast Dato dedicated to our home countries and I have to admit that he dedicated a part of the toast to me alone. He said: “We will all return to our homes soon. Only Nino won’t, he does have a home and a family, but no longer has his fatherland. This is why I dedicate this toast to him above all!” As a matter of fact, until then I had not realized how right he was; Holland is a fine country, a country that had, actually, adopted me happily. But, Dato was right—a mother is a mother, and a stepmother is, after all, a stepmother, no matter how good or kind. It is strange, but, in the tamada ritual, nothing feels fake, or pathetic or sentimental like in our quasi-folklore rhyming toasts, which were always a sort of recited paroles, closer to sleazy sycophancy than frank camaraderie. But, putting that aside, Dato in the end asked everyone to give everyone else something from their country. Rocco, even though he was drunk as a lord to begin with (what can you do, it was the first day of “Illinois”), recited some Tasso or Petrarch—clearly, without stopping for a breath. Sergio talked about the secrets of Argentinean tango; Antonia said something about Dublin and the painful beauty of her native North; Ben, if I can remember correctly, was very eloquent on the topic of his childhood—Oxford I think it was, something resembling the “Dead Poets’ Society.” Everyone gave something beautiful, honest and warm. Finally, it was my turn; I said that, well, despite everything, I still held my mother tongue dear, no matter what they called it, and that it was that language that was some sort of my only remaining fatherland, and that I would try and give them some of the melodiousness and beauty of that practically nameless language; and I delivered, in a long and slow rhythm, the only poem I could remember then, and probably the only poem I ever knew of by heart, but most probably the best fitting one for the occasion: Pučina plava spava / prohladni pada mrak / vrh hribi crne trne / zadnji rumeni zrak….

Later we went out to the terrace, we also took a guitar with us. I played La Bamba (the only one I can play even when completely drunk). Ben sang a few fantastic songs (Simply Red? Pink Floyd?), one of which he wrote himself, and in one of the verses he improvised something about a man speaking, as he called it, Serbo–Croatian. Sergio played some strangely tender Argentinean love songs, Tango again, with knives thrown in, just like in Borges. So, that was that one starry night in Coraville.

Rocco sat in a corner of the terrace, drunk enough to be close to crying. He would sing an Italian song, he was not much of a singer, but the song would reach us all with its beauty. I took hold of the guitar, already drunk enough to have difficulty finding the strings, and asked Rocco:

“Do you know which is my favourite Italian song?”

Although a definitely hopeless singer, I neighed without a trace of inhibition:

Avanti o popolo alla riscossa

Bandiera rossa, bandiera rossa

Avanti o popolo ala riscossa

Bandiera rossa trionferà

Everyone took up the spirited rhythm of the song. And once we reached the refrain, Rocco got up on his feet, which could hardly hold him, his eyes full of tears: “You’re trying to provoke me, Nino,” he said while a smile fought with a tearful ache on his face.

“You don’t know that I, truly, was a communist.”

With a bitter, hoarse voice he began singing “The Internationale,” in Italian, of course. It sounded truly touching. In my drunken brain, bits of old films started whirling; horsemen shooting peasants asking for land from double-barrelled shotguns in Bertolucci’s “Twentieth Century,” bandit Guliano, who, in “The Sicilian,” hews down red flags on rocky ground with a heavy machinegun.

We all started singing with Rocco, and to be honest, our hearts somehow grew bigger in the middle of the state of Iowa. Marek Zaleski stopped us, his hands shaking with rage and some innate fear. He said it was the same as singing a fascist song, the same as crying “zieg-heil.” It is not the same—we tried explaining. It is not the same when The Internationale is being sung by Rocco Carbone, drunk on a terrace in Coralville and when it is being sung by a choir on a Warsaw radio during the Soviet occupation. This was in vain. Marek was still shaking. Although he was in the wrong, we had enough respect for his frustration and we started singing Dylan and The Beatles again, and I definitely decided to be Rocco Carbone’s trusty bodyguard for the rest of my life (which is why Dato gave me a pair of sunglasses, which, he swore, he was given by the biggest Georgian rock star).

But I never kept another promise I made to Rocco while walking through Little Italy in Manhattan; I told him I would write a story entitled, “I was Rocco Carbone’s Bodyguard,” which will tell a story of a young Bosnian, a war veteran and a refugee in New York, who, when he realizes how much respect the man is given (and the event took place during a book signing in an Italian book shop), mistakes the writer Carbone for a big mafia man and offers to be his bodyguard, just for a seven-day trial. In the story, a drunken Rocco agrees to the crazy idea, of course, and they become friends over those seven days. The concept was not bad at all, but every writer has to have a story that remains unwritten.

And then, I imagine, like a scene from an unmade film: the orchestra is playing The Internationale, unassumingly—some violin, a tempered piano. We slowly peruse the audience and notice—a gangster is sitting in an ornamented theatre box. We get closer and realize it is Rocco Carbone himself, and I am with him—I stand behind him in a black pinstripe suit and dark glasses of a Georgian rock star and take notice of every wink.

The Internationale is playing, the gangster is breathing in the smell of a red carnation. And he is crying, quietly, as if it were Ridi Pagliaccio.