Nothing in the World
Read Nothing in the World Online
Authors: Roy Kesey
A Novella
by
Roy Kesey
For the four:
Svana, Bayo, Kijo, Moca
Puno hvala
The children were walled into the pier, for it could not be otherwise, but Rade, they say, had pity on them and left openings in the pier through which
the unhappy mother could feed her sacrificed children. Those are the finely carved windows, narrow as loopholes, in which the wild doves now nest.
- Ivo Andrić,
The Bridge on the Drina
Because it matters what kind of emptiness is left behind by things or beings.
- Milorad Pavić,
Landscape Painted With Tea
Part 1
T
he white stone walls of Joško’s house were tinged gold in the growing light, and the only sound was the sharp ring of his father’s
pick glancing off rocks in the vineyard. Joško ran to join him as the sun slipped into the sky, and they worked together without speaking, his
father freeing the rocks from the soil, Joško heaving them to his shoulder and staggering to the wall they were building to mark their property
line to the east.
The dust began to rise as the sun burned off the dew. By the time his mother called that breakfast was ready, the vineyard was flooded with light, and
sweat slicked Joško’s neck and back. He walked to the shaded patio, turned on the faucet and took a drink from the hose.
Water spilled from the sides of his mouth, and Joško went still as two small blue butterflies came over the wall and settled at the edge of the
puddle. He stared at them, thinking of nothing, then crouched down and clapped his hands around them, felt the faint beat of wings against his palms,
parted his thumbs and peered inside and saw that his hands were empty.
* * *
School went as usual: alone at lunch and during the breaks, invisible in the classroom. The teachers rarely called on Joško, and the few times he
volunteered an answer, they looked at him as though they remembered having seen him before, but weren’t quite sure where. His classmates
didn’t go out of their way to avoid him, but never sought him out or showed much interest in what he had to say. It was easier simply to be
alone.
The last bell rang and Joško hurried home, put on his swimming suit, took up his fishing spear and headed into the hot low hills west of Jezera.
The hillsides were patched with wild olive and fig trees, sage and thorn. At the top of a rise he caught another trail that led to a stone lookout.
From there he could see the whole island of Murter, a severed finger of earth and heat, the Croatian mainland to one side and to the other the quiet
sea.
Ten minutes later he arrived at the cliffs, and edged down through the striated rock. Boulders the size of tanks crowded the water that swirled over
the tide pools and shifted away, and again he felt invisible, but here it was a source of strength. He worked back and forth along the shoreline,
stopping short of every crevice, dropping down and crawling forward, careful to keep his shadow from falling across the water.
No one else in his family was any good at spearfishing, but it had never seemed difficult to Joško. It was simply a question of knowing where to
go and how to get there, and of not missing when the moment came. Though he would never have admitted it to anyone, at times he tossed dying fish back
into the water, throwing his spear again and again for the pleasure of hitting what he aimed at.
Three fat sea bass now hung from the stringer on his belt. He set his spear in a cleft in the rocks and hooked the stringer over its tip, drew a cloth
from his waistband and wound it around his right hand. The periška that lived in the sand of the sea floor were by far his favorite food, but the
edges of their long ochre shells left wounds that took weeks to heal.
He watched the sun settle into a thin bank of clouds on the horizon, then stepped out onto a ledge and dove into the water. The deeper currents
thrashed and curled. He kept at it, dive after dive, until his shell-bag was so heavy that he could barely make it back to the surface.
He checked the tide pools for abalone shells for his sister, and found only one. It was almost four inches across, too big for the earrings and
brooches that Klara made, and the inner surface was already weathered and dull. He tucked it into his bag all the same, climbed up the cliff, and now
the wind strengthened. The Adriatic whorled into the coastline, small waves spiking and guttering below. Shade by shade the sky turned his favorite
color, a ridged blue-gray as solid as stone.
He returned to his house, and its red slate roof glowed under the streetlights, and there were grapes and cantaloupes in a basket on the patio. As he
washed the salt from his body, his mother came up the sidewalk, back from the market where old women waited with their twined bunches of rosemary and
dill. She took the fish and the periška, and Joško went to Klara’s bedroom. The pile of abalone shells in the corner was almost a meter
high and smelled of rot. His parents complained from time to time, but he always insisted that sooner or later she would come back, would need the
shells, would use every single one.
He went to the kitchen, opened the periška and cut out the meat while his mother cleaned the fish. He watched as she fried everything in olive
oil. Then they all sat down at the table, and after his mother had prayed they began to eat, wiping up the grease with slices of bread, drinking wine
from rough wooden pots.
When the dishes were cleared, Joško’s father turned on the television. The news was the usual mix of referendums and local elections,
arguments about conditions in Kosovo and the Vojvodina now that they’d been swallowed again by Serbia, and discussions of Slovenia’s recent
freedom after three short days of fighting. His father said that he couldn’t understand what was happening, that all Yugoslavs were supposed to
be brothers. His mother said that that hadn’t been true since Tito died, and that the Serbs were not to be trusted under any circumstances.
They both looked at Joško, and he smiled and shrugged. These were the same arguments he heard most days in history class, and they meant nothing
more to him here than there. He suspected he’d have trouble trusting a Serb if he ever met one, but couldn’t say he spent much time
thinking about them. While his parents had been talking he’d been wondering what Klara was doing just now.
Two years ago she would have been in her bedroom, putting on her make-up and choosing her clothes, preparing to join her friends at one of the cafes or
bars in the center of town. Then she met a man from the south. A few weeks later she married him for reasons no one could understand, and went to live
with him in Dubrovnik. She hadn’t been back to Jezera in months.
Joško had done what he could to fill the small holes that Klara’s absence carved in his chest. He spent most of his free time working the
bit of vineyard that his father had given him the day he turned fifteen. Pruning, sulfur-dusting, harvest and rest, then pruning again: the future had
seeped into the past like water into dry soil.
As Joško leafed through a comic book, his father turned the television off, took an old mandolin from its case, and his mother sang the songs he
had been hearing since birth, of the sea and the sand and Bura, the wind from the north. If Klara had been there it would have been perfect.
At last his parents went to bed, and Joško took his father’s car into town. He sat down on the terrace of his favorite bar, sipped his beer
and watched the girls from nearby villages who’d come to show off their sundresses and their long dark legs. The girls ignored him as they always
had. Then he heard a radio broadcast turned up, and someone in the bar said, It’s finally begun.
F
or the first time in his life, Joško had someone to hate. Serb guerrillas had attacked in the Krajina, and the federal army had helped them crush
the towns of Tenja and Dalj. They’d started in Western Slavonia as well, only sixty kilometers from Zagreb. Now he stood outside the post office,
waiting in line with several dozen other young men. He knew some of them from school—one was in his geometry class—but could think of
nothing to add to their conversation. Their faces blurred in the heat, and there was a slight vibration in the air that he could not identify.
His decision to enlist had not really been a decision at all. He’d returned home from the bar, and his parents were awake, and the television was
on again. His parents had looked at him, and he had known: he would sign up and fight for the Motherland and probably die. His father had been silent
as his mother spoke on and on. Joško hadn’t heard any of the words, and didn’t need to.
A sergeant measured him, gave him a uniform, and waved him to a shed where he picked up a rucksack complete with the things that would apparently be
necessary—a canteen, a compass, a knife, a sewing kit and a tin of waterproof matches. He was sent to stand in another line, and the vibration in
the air grew stronger. Then he realized that it was the sound of his own fear, and he had no idea what to do about it, no idea how to make it stop.
He balled up his fists, spoke to no one, kept his eyes on the ground. His fear grew louder and louder in his head, and he stumbled as he stepped to the
head of the line. The soldier there said something he didn’t catch, and handed him an AK-47. It was old but well oiled and clean, felt perfectly
right in his hands, and suddenly Joško could hear again. He asked the soldier to show him how to load it. The man said he’d learn that soon
enough, and pointed him toward a jeep.
There were two other new soldiers already sitting in the back seat. Joško asked where the three of them were headed, and what would be expected of
them, and when they’d be allowed to visit home, but the other soldiers didn’t know anything either. They all sat there waiting. Then an
older soldier came over, climbed into the driver’s seat and told them to shut the hell up, though no one had been talking.
It was only a few minutes’ drive to Tijesno and the narrow bridge connecting Murter to the mainland. The jeep jolted across the concrete slabs
edged slightly out of square, sped up when they hit the roadway, and twenty minutes later they were at Tribunj. The driver told the other two soldiers
to get their gear, find the main square, and wait for the rest of their squad.
The road curled and cut southwest along the coast. The heat seeped into Joško’s lungs, made his chest heavy and slow. He slumped in his
seat. The noise of the engine was a low ache, a faraway gnashing of teeth.
Then the older soldier was pushing him out of the jeep, yelling for him to grab his rifle and rucksack and get moving. They were stopped under a torn
awning stretched out from a bus station. A hand-painted sign hanging over the door read “Šibenik” in black letters half a meter high.
Joško gathered his things and asked where he was supposed to go. The driver pointed toward the beach and drove off.
Joško stepped into the furrowed sunlight. Across the street was a vast mound of brick and charred beams. To his right was a plywood kiosk, its
counter lined with wristwatches and soap, and behind the kiosk was an empty bench.
All Joško really wanted was to sit down, but then an old man came walking up, rubbing his hands together. He stopped to look at Joško, at the
ground in front of him, at the air halfway between them. His hands were still working, still cleaning. He came closer, stroked the rucksack as if it
were a small deer, and asked a question that Joško couldn’t understand—the man’s words weren’t really words, just sounds.
Joško shook his head, and the man leaned forward, shouted the question as if the answer might save him from something.