Our Man in Iraq (17 page)

“What is this?” the Chief asked without raising his head.

“His report.”

“But what is this?” He raised his head.

“I don’t know?”

“Do you deny that you’ve recommended us a madman?”

“He wasn’t mad.”

“Was he in the war here?”

“Yes.”

The Chief leaned forward over the table, holding his temples in his hands. “It’s some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder.”

I felt a lump in my throat. The Chief was looking at me. He seemed so far away, as if we were separated by more than just space.

“Maybe it’s a put-on,” I said. “If he were totally bonkers he wouldn’t have lasted so long—he wouldn’t have made it to Baghdad.”

“Did he send crap like this from the beginning?”

“He did,” I admitted.

“Really?”

“I covered for him because I’d recommended him. I rewrote his pieces.”

“You’ve really fucked up.”

“He’s playing some kind of game. I’ve studied these pieces of his for days. He wants to seem madder than he is. When he came to Zagreb the first time he showed me some of his writing. It was the same.”

“PTSD prose,” sighed Pero. “Now PTSD prose will become the issue of the day. Brilliant. We have to publish proof that he got back to us. But not this. Have you got anything that came for this issue?’

   From: Boris <
[email protected]
>
To: Toni <
[email protected]
>

   Allegedly the Yanks have Saddam’s DNA, we know how that works from detective soaps, the forensic experts work like maniacs, and this is better than Dynasty, there’s oil. From a plane you can see the family’s palace, and we can identify them by means of the Y
chromosome and the mitochondrial DNA, since a son’s chromosome is 99.9 per cent the same as his father’s, and if they find remains of the three corpses with the same Y chromosome beneath the ruins of the palace there’s a high probability they’ll be remains of Saddam and his sons, and in order to be able to say which are the remains of the sons and which are Saddam’s the experts will have to use a different method of analysis, the one based on mitochondrial DNA, popularly called the Gospel of Eve, because every person carries his maternal mitochondrial DNA, so Saddam’s sons have to have the same mitochondrial DNA as their mother Sajida, whom her son Uday ordered to be killed in year 2000 of the Common Era. Then, historically speaking a little later, we set off toward the president’s quarters, where the asphalt is scorched at the intersections, the lampposts have snapped like matchsticks and the occasional corpse lies by the roadside, and you can see a humongous building the color of sand. Two soldiers from the 2nd Infantry Division lead us in, there’s no electricity in the big halls, massive pearl chandeliers lie among the stuff on the floor, waiting for the tradesmen to come and repair them, the soldiers warn us not to go up to the first floor, which hasn’t been cleared of booby traps. Next to the palace is the so-called Baghdad Miami, a building with several domes, a garden, swimming pools with built-in bars, now an American detachment is there, dusty soldiers sitting around the swimming pools with their stale water, among them a marine originally from Lika in Croatia, who left ten years ago because he’s from a “mixed marriage,” there was nowhere for him to go other than America, and now he’s an American. They call him Pete, he said, he’s as well as well can be, gets Western wages, and he asked me how things were back at home, and what sort of car I drive, for example, and whether I knew an old school friend of his called Karakaš who went on to become a journalist.

   
So we’ll take Saddam’s DNA and hunt around a bit and see if he’s alive or dead. That’s the main question, as usual. If you have dealings with someone, first check if they’re alive or dead, and only then get in touch so you don’t go getting worked up for no reason, like when I was standing by the swimming pool where my old man died, where he was taken away by a heart attack under the sun. I’ve chatted with him in my mind, I’ve raved with him, all the Arabic has been ringing in my head for years, so I returned to the place by the swimming pools where they were searching for the dictator’s DNA, the DNA of his son Uday and the mitochondrial DNA of his mother Sajida, but like hell they’re ever going to find anything, that’s like searching in the sludge, and I’m sinking in this rot, in this Arabic, all these days, I’m going down here amidst the war, in this universal mess, in this soul of mine, in nothingness.

“We can’t publish this,” the Chief said.

I know that, I thought. I wouldn’t have falsified these pieces if they’d been publishable. Now you can see how I felt.

“What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?” he said.

I looked at him with sympathy as if to say: this time it’s not for me to decide.

Having seen the full depth of the problem, Pero fell silent. He leafed through our back issues with my texts and Boris’s photos. “You know, I hate to admit it, but you really do a good job.”

He glanced at me with what amounted to respect, like you regard a thief who can open any lock.

“It’s nothing,” I mumbled.

“When he comes back he’ll be a star reporter after all this media hype,” Pero said.

“Anything’s possible.”

“I’ve got an idea. It won’t be in his interest to tell people that we didn’t publish him, right? That would make him look like an ordinary loser, not a reporter the whole country was looking for. And if he doesn’t come back, he won’t be telling people either.”

I must have been wearing a gloomy expression.

“Hey, I’m just thinking aloud. We have to keep all our options open,” he admitted. “When you add it all up, nothing’s stopping us from continuing. I mean, he does send the odd snippet of information. And you can beef it up, give it some normal conclusions and a normal tone.”

“Hang on, you want me to keep pretending to be him?”

Pero nodded.

“For how long?”

“This really is the best option,” Pero said. “Or have you got a better idea?”

If the charade continues, the others play along and I keep pretending I’m him, are they going to treat me
as
him in the end? Will everyone ultimately agree that’s the best? Would I have to knock on Milka’s door one day and say: “Mom, I’m back!”?

I needed to clear my head. I went down in the elevator and left the building. I thought of going for a walk—a long walk. I was on the sunny side of the street. Nothing special, just everything you’d expect: buildings, ads, cars, people, and offensive graffiti scribbled by Nazi-minded kids.

Walking along the four-lane avenue there, I thought of me and Sanja. It was a strange flash like remembering someone I knew long ago. For a second I saw us in a photo from one of her birthday parties.

I was pierced by a sudden and inexplicable sadness.

I ought to have done something with my life, I thought—I ought to have done something instead of messing around and botching things up. I was always just patching up my reality. I didn’t want to go back to the office and I was afraid to go home. I imagined all the neighbors would stare at me. So I thought now was the time to go and see the flat—the one from the classifieds. It was high time. I had the number in my mobile. I wanted to see the flat so badly, as if I was driven by a superstitious urge and would be able to comprehend my fate there.

I called the people. They were doing the place up or something. Then I called Sanja and said, “We really ought to go and look at that flat. We have to finally do it, you know.” I whispered it as if we were inmates and I was suggesting a breakout. She was still sleeping. She asked if there was anything in the papers about the play.

“No, I didn’t see anything.”

“I really can’t now, I’m still sleeping,” she said.

I don’t know why, but I’d always thought there had to be a modicum of telepathy in a relationship that would spring into action when needed.

My whole life I’d secretly been waiting for a miracle. And now it was high time for it to happen.

It was an attic flat, reasonably large, with quite a few angled walls. I liked that: we could do all sorts of wild things with it to make it look rebellious. Now everything was white, but we’d add our own color scheme: yellow, red, orange, plus some crazy pictures, and perhaps some stupid graffiti. That way we’d be young and crazy again, rant and rave—that was the only thing that could save us.

I paced from the living room into the kitchen, peered
through the window, went back to the living room, into the kitchen, and had a look in the bathroom. I stood in the hallway for a moment, then went into the bedroom and eyed it up and down as if I was noting the dimensions. Then back to the living room.

The owner and his son kept walking behind me, watching me like the peasants in Van Gogh’s
The Potato Eaters
. Big eyes. I couldn’t take in the flat properly with them behind me: I was only pretending to be viewing it, and I didn’t know what I was seeing.

“Goood!” I said with a superior tone of voice, as if I was some important inspector.

The owner and his son trundled around after me like cars behind a little steam engine.

They wouldn’t leave me alone.

“May I use the bathroom?” I asked schoolboyishly.

I stood in the bathroom and exhaled as if I was catching my breath after a steep climb. I reflected for a minute but could sense the two men on the other side of the door.

I flushed the toilet and came out.

And they watched me.

I looked at them.

The son glanced at his father to see what he thought because he was even older and heavier.

I began to walk around again, admiring the views.

“Well?” said the father.

What now? I liked the flat. But had they just painted to cover up a leak? Why the recent renovation? Should I pay the deposit and get it over with?

A weakness comes over men at the very thought of having to make a decision about buying something. That’s the reason they bring women with them when they go to buy clothing: women will turn a shop upside down until they find what they
want. A man doesn’t have the strength for that. He buys quickly, impulsively, wanting to hurry up and finish what he’s started, just like sex. A woman is taught to turn things down, she’s constantly saying no, even a promiscuous woman is constantly saying no, because if it wasn’t like that everything would be different and no one would ever go to Thailand for sex. Men go all the way to Thailand, but for every woman Thailand is just around the corner, in every bar, every business and even every religious group, because there’s nowhere she won’t find a man to offer her sex. The world is one enormous brothel for women, but they pick and choose, they’re after that extra quality and say “no” until they get it. That’s why it pays to take them with you whenever you’re buying something, especially a flat.

But Sanja wasn’t here. I felt that if I hesitated too much I’d never buy the flat. She’d leave me, the flat would be gone, and everything would drift away. I wanted to do it before it was too late. The best thing would be for me to get out the damn deposit. I rummaged in my pocket, but I didn’t have it with me.

As I meditated on my empty pocket the son turned on the TV. The song “We Are the Champions” came on.

The stage was full of stars, and Mandela was with them. Probably some kind of repeat.

We are the champions, we are the champions
, the audience sang.

I looked around the flat again. I peered into all the corners, felt the walls, stared at the parquet, and turned the taps on and off. Father and son walked behind me. The silence stank of freshly whitewashed walls.

I asked why they were selling the place. They said they’d inherited it from an aunt who died.

“Did she die here? In the flat?” I asked.

The son stared at the floor, but the father said, “No, in a hospital.”

“I have to consult with my girlfriend. We’re getting married soon and we’ll be buying together. I’d be happy to get out the money right now and pay the deposit, but I need her to come with me so she can have a look.”

“Well, you’ve seen the apartment now, so feel free.”

I went down the stairs, four stories without an elevator.

Out on the street I turned and looked once more: a fine old Austro-Hungarian building. The façade slightly dilapidated. Less than ten minutes’ walk from the main square.

Perfect.

A Croatian reporter is missing in Iraq
, the radio reported as I was driving back.

Later in the office, I found myself sitting at the computer in the role of the missing reporter. I had to write one of his pieces. It was almost as if he’d officially taken me over. I’d been working at being him for two hours already and I was still stuck on the first sentence. Back when I was falsifying things in my name—back when no one knew—it had worked. Like when you’re masturbating somewhere: you can fantasize about all sorts of things as long as no one is watching you, and then you return from that fiction and the world is still the same. But this was different, it was a lie we’d agreed to. It was irrevocably becoming my world.

I made myself write, but my language started to flake and fall apart.