Belgrade Noir

They spoke on the phone for half an hour. I couldn’t properly hear what Mom was saying but I realized something was going on. After the call, she was full of energy. She rushed into the bedroom, switched on the light, and told me with a shaky voice that it was my wife who called and that she’d be here tomorrow. She wasn’t even angry that she’d missed some of the crime show. She started cleaning the house in the middle of the night, like a crazy woman. She rummaged around so that it was impossible for me to sleep. After she calmed down and laid down next to me, she proudly declared that it was now time for me to have my own room. For me and my wife, that is. You’ll move into the sewing room, we’ll make a nice nest for you, she said. I started worrying and wanted to cry. I didn’t want my own room anymore, and I definitely didn’t want to sleep with a stranger in a stupid nest, and besides, where would we put Mom’s sewing? She told me to be quiet. She told me we’d just rearrange things, a bed by each wall and the sewing machine between them, where the window is. That’s not my own room then, is it?

I was about to say, but I didn’t have the nerve. You can always sleep in my bed if you feel like it, she said before she finally fell asleep. I didn’t sleep at all that night.

Una arrived the following morning. Mom opened the door as we’d planned and I peered through the curtains in the kitchen. I tried to be careful not to brush the curtains. Mom had told me to wait in the kitchen and only come into the living room when she called for me. Sweet suffering Jesus, Una was pretty. She and Mom talked for a long while on the steps and at times she’d glance at the kitchen window as if she knew I was there. She swayed around very slowly, and her long dark hair swayed too. I’d never seen anything like her. Her clothes were special, not at all what other people wore. Her shiny dress was skintight, like someone had doused her in oil. Her eyes and lips were painted black. No one in the village looked like that, not even in the magazines I sometimes secretly skimmed in the shop. As I saw her swaying on our doorstep, I started to think it wouldn’t be too bad to have a wife of my own. My little mickeybob, which is what Mom called it when she was washing me, started to swell inside my pants and I became short of breath. I had to rub myself through my pants when they went into the living room and continued talking. I did feel a bit ashamed and dirty. Mom would’ve thrown a fit if she’d seen me like that, but I couldn’t show up in front of my fashionable wife with bulging pants. She would’ve thought I was a fool and Mom had warned me time and time again that I shouldn’t look like a clown. Hair combed, no staring with an open mouth, no picking your nose, and whatever you do, don’t fart, is that clear? she’d shouted at me repeatedly that morning. Best to keep my mouth shut and let Mom do the talking. I said I’d try my best.

After Mom and Una had chatted for a while, Mom came into the kitchen and put the džezva

on. She told me in a low voice that after the coffee was ready I could join them and that it seemed promising, she was really interested in me. Mom was not pleased that Una was forty. She wanted me to marry somebody much younger. But then again, she said, best not to quibble when you’ve got a good one

. An older woman could be better than a young thing, might have seen the world and wouldn’t be after something impossible, would understand how the world works. Well then, she said as she was putting down the sugars next to the cups and biscuits, now it’s time to meet our Una.