Our Man in Iraq. Robert Perisic

      ‘Oh, give me the phone then.’

      It was nicer to read those adverts in weightlessness than to descend into the lower levels of the atmosphere and talk with those people, hear their voices and feel how businesslike they were. There was something draining about those conversations.

      Still, we had to ring that number.

      The one with ‘urgent’ next to it.

      * * *

      We’d been in that flat for a bit too long, that was for sure, and were starting to get sick of the furniture which the landlords had dumped there in bygone ages. My friend Markatović and his wife Dijana had bought an apartment on credit and furnished it futuristically: it was spacious and spacey. We’d been there a few times: they’d cook slow food for us, we’d drink Pinot Grigio from Collio Goriziano and feel part of a new elite in that designer apartment, so light and spacious.

      Each time we returned from their place our rented flat looked... like a charity shop. They had boldly moved into a new world, while we dwelt among the dark wardrobes of aunts long dead.

      We didn’t talk about that openly, but I sensed the disappointment in the air and – oh my woes – I even found myself wondering if I was successful in life.

      I mean, what sort of question is that?!

      I’d only just begun to live after the war and all that shit; I’d only just caught my breath again.

      But there we were, one time when we’d returned from the Markatovićs’ and that fatal slow food. It was heavy in my stomach for some reason and I couldn’t sleep, so I got a beer out of the fridge and looked around at the cramped flat and its ugly furniture. Why don’t you take out a loan too, whispered a voice (probably my guardian angel). That bewildered me. I never would have thought of the idea because I always considered myself a rebel. Just look at Markatović, the voice said, he’s your generation, and he’s got such a fancy place and even twins. Why couldn’t you have that too?

      Hmm, me and a loan, a loan and me... I thought about it that night. I don’t recall the date, but I thought about it long and hard that night. It was a fact that we were still living in Sanja’s student flat although she’d finished uni. At my age, my old man tells me every time, he’d already... And at my age my ma had already... ohoho... What can I say when I think how they lived back then? Perhaps I’d better not tell you. They didn’t have enough money to buy shoes, but they still had children and even built a house. So, naturally, they wonder what Sanja and I are thinking. Do we think? When do we think? When do we think of thinking?

      I looked at our Bob Marley poster on the wall, a black and white portrait with him in a statesmanlike pose, and wondered: What does a Rasta think? But he just holds his joint enigmatically between his lips. We have Mapplethorpe’s black male torso on the other wall, which motivates me to do sit-ups regularly. That’s what we’ve invested in. And then you start thinking. A loan – hell, talk about feeling deepended! I wandered the flat that night looking around as if I was saying goodbye.

      * * *

      When I slept here the first time, Sanja’s rented flat seemed quite a des res: situated on the fifteenth storey of a tower block, above a tram loop. The view was so good that I was afraid to go up to the window:

      I was afraid of falling out.

      Of course, we came back drunk that first night. We were careful not to be loud because of her flatmate in the other room.

      I couldn’t come. She tried to give me a blow-job but turned out to be inexperienced at that. It was nice that she tried, although her teeth scratched. We kept on screwing, the condoms dried out quickly and kept bunching up around the head of my penis. I finally came in the third round. And now? Nothing had been further from my mind than pacing the flat at night and racking my brains over loans.

      Anyway, after my first visit I dropped by again the next day, too, but skipped it on the third day so it wouldn’t look like I’d moved in.

      I tried to stick to some kind of rhythm, so my moving in was never officially confirmed. I’d visit in the evenings, spontaneously, as if I’d heard there was a good film on TV.

      I haven’t organised anything and I don’t have any expectations, I wrote to her on a postcard which I sent from Zagreb to Zagreb just for fun.

      She liked that.

      She liked everything I said.

      At breakfast I made jokes, as fresh as morning rolls, and also entertained her flatmate Ela to try and keep her on side; it wasn’t hard to make her laugh, and it seemed she didn’t object to a guy hanging around the house in undies. So she slept in the bedroom, while Sanja and I curled up on the couch in the living room. When we made love we’d lock the door with a quick, quiet turn of the key. Later we’d quietly unlock it and run to the bathroom.

      For the first year I kept on paying rent in my basement bedsitter in another part of the city so as not to lose my independence. My things were there, I’d say.

      I made a point of going and sleeping there occasionally and tried to keep up a rhythm of sorts. I didn’t want to lose my independence entirely. When I went there I’d lie on my back, all independent, listen to my old radio and stare at the ceiling.

      * * *

      At one stage Ela became nervous during our breakfasts, despite the fact that I used to go down to the shop and buy everyone a pastry.

      Once she found a little pile of my laundry in the washing machine and said with a look of mild disgust: ‘Aha, so you two are in a serious relationship then!’

      ‘Where else am I to put his undies?’ Sanja defended herself nervously, and I felt guilty.

      I stared downcast at them both.

      I said to Ela by way of apology: ‘I haven’t got a machine, you know, and...’

      They both began to laugh.

      They laughed long and hard: ‘He hasn’t got a machine,’ they repeated, started giggling again, and were soon hooting with laughter.

      But Ela soon found herself a new flat.

      Our sex became louder. The ladies down in the shop started calling me ‘neighbour’: I bought bread, salami, milk, newspapers, cigarettes, two pastries and the non-existent yoghurt.

      * * *

      It all ran by itself, without any particular plan. We enjoyed that experiment. We went on our first summer holiday together, then there were autumn walks in Venice, the Biennale, Red Hot Chili Peppers in Vienna, Nick Cave in Ljubljana, a second summer holiday, a third, Egypt, Istria, and so on. Mutual friends, parties, organising things... Everything rolled along nicely as if nature were doing the thinking for us. And then we reached an invisible point.

      At a particular moment, I don’t know exactly when, we started to wait – waiting for things to keep happening all by themselves like before. Sometimes, on empty days, you could literally feel the standstill. We’d screw, lie sweaty on the bed and wait for things to go on. We caressed each other, gave each other sloppy kisses, kept each other warm, fell half-asleep, and then one of us would get the remote and zap through the channels.

      Now and then I asked myself: what now? It wasn’t that boredom crept in between us. It wasn’t that it might have been good to get up to go off and do something by myself. It wasn’t that; we didn’t speak about that. All in all, things were perfect. We ought to have been happy. That’s when we should have been happiest. That lolling around on the couch, our bodies’ mutual laziness – that’s the ideal of consummate love. We didn’t have a crackling fire in the fireplace, but central heating is all right. The blokes at the heating plant were shovelling like mad. The heating panels were really aglow.

      Now and again there’d be an unexpected bout of the blues. But it wasn’t that. Perhaps there was also some kind of anger, but we weren’t aware of it. It just coiled up in our bodies and sometimes