“So how is it,” she said. “In America? The family?”
In truth, things were strained between us. I’d only spoken to Laura once more after I’d snapped at her. She’d called a few times, but I hadn’t answered. She’d sent my passport. Finally I’d forced myself to call her back the day before I left. I’d given her my flight details and she’d told me resignedly to be careful. But I did not want to tell this to Luka’s mother. “They took good care of me,” I said.
“Are they happy for you? That you’re coming back home?”
“They worry a little. But they understand,” I said, and hoped it was true.
“They sound like good parents.” She pulled me into an awkward embrace. She smelled of rosemary and bleach and something else I remembered but could not name.
“Ana!” Luka was yelling from what sounded like the opposite end of the house. “Come on! I’m going to be late.”
But I couldn’t put it off anymore. Halfway down the stairs I reversed and stuck my head back through his mother’s doorway. “Do you know if Petar and Marina are—” I paused. “Okay?”
Ajla’s smile waned; she looked ashamed. “I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t tried to contact them in a long time.”
—
“You’re sure you’re okay?” Luka looked wary as we walked to the Trg, like the sight of the city might set me off crying. We spoke Cringlish, a system we’d devised without discussion—Croatian sentence structure injected with English standins for the vocabulary I was lacking, then conjugated with Croatian verb endings.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I’m just having culture shock.”
“You can’t get culture shock from your own culture.”
“You can.”
In the Trg the morning sun bounced from tram to tram in spectral refractions. I felt myself beginning to move with the rhythm of the city again. The buildings were still tinted yellow, a remnant of the Hapsburgs; billboards hawking Coca-Cola and O?ujsko beer were propped up on rooftops with the familiar red and white lettering. Teenagers in cutoffs and Converse high-tops formed sweaty clusters beneath the wrought-iron lampposts. And Jela?i? was at the center of the square, sword drawn, right where I’d left him.
“Wait. Where is it?”
“Where’s what?”
“Zid Boli.” The Wall of Pain had been constructed over the course of the war, each brick representing a person killed, until the memorial of brick and flowers and candles spanned the whole square. I’d made my parents bricks there, when I’d gotten back to Zagreb, and it was the closest thing they had to a gravesite.
“They moved it.”
“Moved it? Where?”
“Up to the cemetery. A few years ago. The mayor decided it was too depressing to have it in the Trg. Bad for tourism.”
“It’s supposed to be depressing. Genocide is depressing!”
“There was a big fight about it,” Luka said. “Shit, that was our train.” We arrived at the tram stop just as a full car pulled away and were alone on the platform.
“I’ve got to drop off some forms at my college,” Luka said, fanning the papers in my face. “We can go up to the cemetery tomorrow if you want.”
But I could not visit my parents there, not really, and I felt a creeping sadness at the thought. I pushed it from my mind.
“It’s funny, you at college,” I said instead.
“I’ve got good marks.”
“I just mean you’re all grown up.”
“Same as you,” he said. “What are you studying?”
“English.”
“English? You still haven’t gotten the hang of it?”
“Not the language. Literature and stuff. What about you?”
“Finance.” I was underwhelmed by his choice. I’d imagined him as a philosopher or a scientist, holed up in some library or laboratory in a profession that would allow him to scrutinize the minutest of details like he’d always done. “In third year at high school, all the adults were asking me what I wanted to study at university. I hated talking about it so I just made up the most practical answer I could to shut them up. Then, when it came time to apply, it actually sounded like a good idea.”
“Sounds stable.”
“It’s not as boring as you think.”
A man with a shaved head and unshaven face was staggering down the platform in our direction. His cheeks were sunken, his eyes shifting rapidly inside deep-set sockets. He clawed at his face as he walked, bumping shoulders with Luka as he passed. An odor of sweat and urine followed him.
I tried to refocus on our conversation, but the man spun around and now came toward us with a purposeful look. He clamped his hand down on Luka’s shoulder.
“Did you touch me?” the man asked.
Luka said he hadn’t. The man pushed Luka, asked again.
“No,” Luka said, more forcefully. “Keep walking.”