Girl at War(61)

“All right, all right,” said Petar. “Make her one of ours then. Don’t you need to take her picture or something?”

“Indeed.” Srdjan adjusted a pair of photographer’s lights that looked like umbrellas, and I stood stoic against a white sheet while he snapped a picture.

“I’ll be back to pick it up Wednesday?” Petar handed him an envelope, and Srdjan fingered the flap and peeked inside. “I’ll bring the rest then.”

“Very well,” Srdjan said, and took a dramatic bow before walking us to the door and releasing us out into the daylight. “Ana.”

I turned back.

“Your parents. They were good.”

“Thanks.” I tried to think of something better to say, but Srdjan had already shut the door, the dead bolts clicking behind us.

—

Voices of my neighbors echoed in the stairwell as we climbed the stairs to my flat; the walls there had always been thin. Just as I’d been unsettled at the idea that my friends had been going to school without me, I was shocked to find people were still living out normal existences here in my building, that their lives had not stalled as mine had. Petar turned the extra key in the lock, but instead of smashing against the wall, the door stuck to the frame, and he forced it open with his good shoulder.

“Can you stay out here?” I said. He looked hurt but hung back anyway.

Inside, the room was dim and the air was stale. Cuts of sunlight slid between the blinds, revealing swirling columns of dust. The door to my parents’ bedroom was closed, and I left it that way and moved through the kitchen. A sour smell emanated from the refrigerator, and something small and shadowy ran alongside the baseboard and disappeared under the door of the pantry.

In the living room I ran my hand over the armrest of the couch where my father used to sit. Then I pulled my clothes from the bookshelf and shoved them into my pillowcase. From the bottom shelf I gathered a sampling of the pirated radio tapes my father and I had made. Over the piano there was a photo of the four of us, and another of me as a baby in Tiska. I took them from their adjacent places on the wall. My parents’ wedding picture was hung higher up, but I couldn’t reach it.

Petar called out and asked how I was doing and I jumped. Plunking my hand down on the bottom octave of the piano, I ran from the room, dragging the bulging pillowcase behind me. I thought about asking Petar to go back for the wedding picture, but as he turned in the doorway, the light revealed his reddened eyes, so I said nothing.

—

The night before I left, Luka appeared under my window on his bike. Petar had instructed me not to tell anyone when I was leaving or where I was going, but I had told Luka anyway, swearing him to secrecy.

“How did you—”

“I snuck out. Come down.”

“Come up.” I met him at the door, and we trod warily through the kitchen and out to the fire escape. Marina and the family in the next building had strung a clothesline across the alley, and someone’s bed linens crackled in the wind.

“Will you be safe there?”

“I think so. Rahela is safe.”

“But you know in the movies. All those cowboys and gangsters.”

“I guess all places are sort of dangerous.”

“I guess.” He put his hand on mine, then pulled it away.

“Will you write me?” I said. He said he would, and we sat for a while contemplating the Wild West and New York City and Philadelphia, where I might be able to see Rocky. When Luka’s eyelids began to flutter, I punched him in the arm and told him he could stay the night, but he had to get home before he was discovered missing. The ladder on the fire escape was broken, so he climbed back into the flat and let himself out.

“I don’t know what to say,” I whispered as he swung a leg over his bicycle.

“So don’t say anything. When you come back, it will be like you never left.” He stood up on his bike pedals and bounced down the gravel drive, then turned the corner out of sight.

—

I woke in the dark with Petar standing over me.

“Sorry,” he said. “It’s time.”

“I’m awake.” I dressed in the only clothes I hadn’t packed. I went to the bedroom to say goodbye to Marina, kissing her on the cheek.

“Be safe,” she murmured. “And take care of Rahela.”

“Come. Be my co-pilot,” Petar said, motioning to the passenger seat. He was wearing his army uniform with the left sleeve cut off to accommodate the brace. He put a yellow envelope in my lap and backed out of the driveway. “Now this is very important. These are all your documents—ticket, passport, contact information for the family, letter of invitation, and”—he reached in his pocket and stuffed some dinar into the envelope—“something extra in case anyone gets hungry.”

“Hungry?”

“Not for food,” he said, tapping the envelope. “You’ll find powerful men can often be persuaded. At least they can here. I don’t know about America. Don’t worry. You’ll know if you need it. Subtlety is not the military way. Now. When you get to Germany—”

“Don’t leave the international terminal,” I said, remembering Srdjan’s instructions.

“Good. And when you get to New York?”

I gave him a blank look. I couldn’t remember any advice about America.