Read Nothing in the World Online
Authors: Roy Kesey
Nothing in the World (10 page)
He lunged away and the head stayed with him, the mouth laughing now, and one eye winked obscenely. Joško dove again, swam until his air was gone
and stones cut at his chest. He thrashed back to the surface, looked around for the head of Hadžihafizbegović, and did not see it anywhere.
He pulled himself onto the bank to rest. On the far side of the river there was a single willow, and as he watched, the tree became his sister. Klara
called to him, stripped off her long dress and walked into the water. He met her midstream, and as they swam they grew younger and younger until they
were children again, and their mother was waving to them from the near bank. She held flowers, perhaps for the graves of his friends now at peace, and
from somewhere he heard the music of his father’s mandolin spinning and rippling in the air. He and Klara swam faster and faster, and his mother
disappeared as they rounded a bend. His father’s music faded, and his sister came to him, kissed him and dove and was gone.
Joško got to his feet and began walking but stayed in the river—he knew that he could never again leave the water. Overhead the sun reached
in all directions, and the moon hung near the horizon, needle-thin and waiting.
He closed his good eye, and walking in that darkness was a comfort, a way to be safe. He walked and fell, got up and kept walking. The darkness went
darker, he opened his eye, and above him was a bridge hovering over the water like the wing of a giant bird. He came out from under it, and to his
right was a vineyard, the vines twisting in the faint wind. To his left was a man standing knee-deep in the river, holding a bottle in each hand. The
man smiled or frowned. Joško looked past him and saw other men, a massive oak, a terrace, a low white building. The men became ogres, hunched and
gnarled. Joško shivered and clutched and fell.
The water took him in, held him close, and bubbles left his mouth, pinpricks of light and crystal globes that vanished into the surface. There was no
pain, no trouble of any kind, just the rushing water full in his ears. He settled on the bottom, and the current drew his arms out and away from his
body, and the liquid mirror above reflected nothing.
There was a flurry of white, and he was wrenched up through the surface to the light that scalded and froze. Two men were at his sides, lifting him,
and Joško fought them off, but now they weren’t ogres, they were clowns, and it was all a tremendous game. He patted one of them on the head
and snatched the bulbous red nose of the other, laughed at how they shied and stumbled in the water. He splashed at them, but they did not splash back.
They came to him again, he fell and rose and the men were not clowns but mercenaries. He pulled away but now they were priests and they beckoned him
toward the bank.
The priests began to whisper, forgiving him for whatever he had done. He let himself be guided onto the sand, and now he could forgive as well: the
Serb jets and Magarac, the soldiers on the road to Dubrovnik, the men at the dam and the ax on the old man’s shoulder. The priests took him up
past the oak to the terrace of the white building, and Joško didn’t want to go, but surely the priests knew what was best. Then a river of
words flowed into his mind, one last special mission, and he sang to all who would listen.
For love: Ana Lucía Nieto de Kesey.
For, among other things, deft suggestions: Pat Rushin, Sue Henderson, John Leary, Seth Shafer, Kevin Dolgin, Xujun Eberlein, Eric Abrahamsen, Jacquie
Woodruff, Jonathan Posen.
Also for love: Tom and Jane Kesey, Kelly and Dave Clark.
For technical and various other forms of support: Maria Massie, Terry Bain, Igor Kajari, Nick Otto, Jim Morris, Francis Ford Coppola, Berthana Bonsang,
Sibyl MacKenzie, Rob Krott.
For bringing me things made of paper and sequins and glue: Chloë Kesey, Thomas Kesey.
For permission to reprint the parts of this book which first appeared in slightly different forms in their splendid magazines: the editors at Opium and
The Florida Review.
For many things: Jim Ruland.
For many, many others things: Ivana Širović and her family.
Roy Kesey is the author of the short story collection
All Over
. His work has appeared in
McSweeney’s, The Kenyon Review
and
American Short Fiction
, among other magazines, as well as in
Best American Short Stories 2007, New
Sudden Fiction 2006
and the
Robert Olen Butler Prize Anthology
. He currently lives in Beijing with his wife and children.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2011 by Peter Markus
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