“Nobody likes your attitude.”
He licked the corner of his mouth with the tip of his tongue, the way he always did when he was focusing. Or nervous. Despite everything, the glisten of his tongue sent my belly into a shower of sparks, and for the first time, I felt faintly disgusted with myself. If I wouldn’t even let Luka close enough to me for a proper dance, I could imagine how he would feel knowing what I’d been doing the night before with someone I’d known for all of four days. Not even the sex so much as the talking. And the telling and the showing, all the things behind the curtain that I never drew back for him.
“It’s a hypothesis in human aesthetics,” he went on. “A Japanese robotics professor, Masahiro Mori, coined it in 1970. It applies to things like robots and computer animation, and it means that when something looks and moves almost, but not quite, like an actual human being, it can make people uncomfortable. Disgusted, even. The closer you get to human without the thing actually being human, the more people find it revolting.”
A prickling pressure built behind my eyes. “I think I know where you’re going with this, Luka. And I don’t think I’m going to like where you end up.”
“Just bear with me. If you want to, you can slap me when I’m done. Or kick me in the face with your baby foot, whatever you need. But I think you should hear this.”
“Fine,” I said through clenched teeth. “Go for it, then.”
“You and Malina, and your mother. None of you have ever had many friends, right? Just me and Niko, mostly, and Nev. Jasmina was close to Jovan, and spent a little time with my mother, but that’s it, as far as I know. And I think . . .”
“Go on.” My lips felt numb. “Tell me what you think. Too late to spare me now.”
He drew a deep breath. He didn’t want to tell me this, and that made it all the worse. “I think it’s because the three of you look the way you do. You’re so beautiful, Iris. All three of you so stunning that it’s stupid, it makes people uncomfortable because it doesn’t feel real, somehow. You give people chills.” He stole an earnest glance at me. “But it’s just an illusion. As soon as you talk—as soon as anyone gets to know you—the feeling shatters.”
“But it’s there. It’s there to begin with, you’re saying.”
“Yes.” His voice dipped much deeper than normal, like it always did when he was uncomfortable. “It is.”
I huddled against the door as if I could somehow teleport through it and out into the ravine below. Because I knew exactly what he was talking about. It reminded me uncomfortably of what ?i?a Jovan had said last night about our mother, the uncanny quality of her beauty and poise. Maybe she hadn’t merely been trained to be beautiful. Maybe she’d somehow been born to be trained.
And if Lina and I were of her blood, maybe we were somehow the same.
“So, what, it’s like Blade Runner? You think we’re androids. Something that just wears human skin.”
“Damn it, Iris, I think you’re gorgeous.” His voice was low and vehement. “I used to look at you every day, and even though I could practically graph a model of your face, I always want to look at it more because it’s never exactly like I remember. It’s always better. It’s—”
I looked into the rearview mirror, at the sliver of my features visible in the glass. Sunlight slanted over me through the window, playing on the creamy skin I shared with Lina and our mother, smooth as a nectarine, poreless like a baby’s. “I know you’re only trying to help. But I don’t really need to hear your compliments, or whatever you think they are, at this very moment.”
“I wouldn’t have told you if I didn’t think it mattered.” He reached over and slipped his hand behind the back of my neck. There was nowhere to go, so I tolerated it. “Please believe me, Iris. I think it has something to do with this Dunja, with Marzanna, with all this. And I’d rather tell you everything I know if it might help. Even if it hurts at first.”
I dropped my chin into my chest, and we were both quiet for a while. He kept his arm draped over my seat, his hand buried in my hair.
“I’m still going to wallow for at least thirty-seven minutes,” I finally said, tipping my head back so his palm cupped my nape. “Possibly thirty-eight.”
I could see him smile from the corner of my eye. “I can live with that.”
I TRIED TO nap after that, huddled uneasily against the door. I had no idea what might be waiting for us at Ostrog, but I had the queasy, churning sense that it was going to be worse than anything I could dream up. The feeling I’d had at Our Lady of the Rocks, the low-level revulsion, was beginning to seep into my skin again, as if I’d been coated with something itchy and loathsome, like mustard seed and lard. I hadn’t even noticed it when we set out, but by the time we’d descended into the Zeta River Valley, the plain that cupped Podgorica, Montenegro’s capital, and Nik?i?, the next biggest town, I was about ready to shred off my own skin.
The sky had darkened, clotting with gray clouds; I hoped it wouldn’t rain too hard for us to reach the mountain monastery. Luka drove us around Nik?i?’s rustic outskirts, through dirt roads that wound around brick houses with trellises, little orchards, and plots of cabbages, their heads round and ruffled like flower buds.
“How far are we?” I asked him, scratching at my tingling scalp.
“It’s right up there,” Luka said, pointing through the windshield. “See? We’ll have to pass underneath the pipeline that carries gravel from the mountaintops down to the plain. And then go even farther up.”
“Holy shit,” I whispered, following his gaze. “That is—that is very high up. How did people used to get up there? It’s practically vertical.”
“There you go again, underestimating our forebears. They got up there the old-school way, with horses and donkeys and on foot, on paths carved into the side. There’s still a series of steps cut into the cliff through the car road, for pilgrims who want to climb.”
My stomach bottomed out as soon as we began to ascend onto the road that led up to Ostro?ka Greda, the sheer slab of rock into which the monastery had been carved. As we rose higher, the road’s serpentine curves coiled back on each other ever tighter. Without speaking, Luka took my clammy hand and placed it over the gearshift. It shuddered beneath my palm, and he curled his hand around mine. We shifted from gear to gear, cutting the switchbacks together, and this small scrap of control calmed me until a measure of awe crept in. The lush valley seemed impossibly far below us, a deep, rich green like algae, scale models of forests bisected by farm fields, villages, and vineyards between them.
“We’re almost there,” he said. “This is the tightest portion of the road, but Saint Basil is the patron saint of travelers. They say no one’s ever had an accident on the way here.”