Belgrade Noir

He took a small sip of his cognac, and looked at her, tilting his head as if to better focus on her reply. “I’ve heard he has a somewhat specific taste, but you are an experienced woman, aren’t you?”

At first, Neda was not sure if she had heard him properly. Then she realized she wasn’t that surprised. No matter how much she wanted to believe she was special to him, not just one of many, she was actually prepared for something like this.

He came closer, slid to the edge of the bed, firmly took her ankle in his hand, and looked her in the eyes. Behind the darkness of his gaze, there was no room for discussion.

“Life is an expensive adventure, Neda. We all pay a price. What we get depends on what we pay. Simple economics. Do we understand each other?”

Neda swallowed hard and averted her gaze from his wrongly assembled face.

October 30, 1999

What did I expect? To be honest — I have no idea. I jumped into the water and waited to see if I was going to float.

The first time I said I simply couldn’t do something like that, a nightmare descended on me, something horrendous and yet unreal, like a monster in a child’s dreams. Loose teeth, cuts inside my mouth, and a wide range of bruises unequivocally confirmed the reality of it.

Thinking of all this now, I realize it wasn’t the physical abuse that frightened me the most. It was the silence in which it happened. Can such a methodic manifestation of rage be categorized as rage at all? I don’t think so. I believe the wrath of Viktor Marković is a much more complicated animal, something that draws its black energy from a deep source older than time. Sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if I hadn’t escaped, if I hadn’t, without a coat or any of my belongings, hawked a cab and given the driver Goran’s address.

Goran was fired the very next day. He wasn’t upset — he was already sick of driving around drunken idiots and taking care of the vomit and other nasty stains from the company’s Mercedes.

So, calling it all an unenviable situation is a euphemism for the deep shit I’m in. But I didn’t have a choice, right? I tried my best, but when it comes to sex, we all have our boundaries. And once the precedent was set, who can say what the other creatures from Marković’s powerful circle would ask me to do?

But at this moment, I am only concerned with whether or not I want to keep the child growing in my womb. One part of me still obstinately desires the life I promised myself, a life with much more freedom and space for seeking than single motherhood can offer. Yet I feel instinct overcoming me. It is a frightening but powerful force, more powerful than any obstacle, be it of philosophical or practical nature.

Yes, I know that my freedom has just been incarcerated by the solid walls of impending day-to-day duty. But I am an almost-middle-aged woman living in Serbia, not a Greek philosopher strolling through the groves of Aristotle’s Lyceum.