DAY TRIP TO DURMITOR

The secretaries explained first that a dead person’s soul goes wherever she’d expected to go.

Everyone wants to go to heaven, I said. It must be too crowded there.

It’s not, said one of them. Most people are so unimaginative that they simply stay wedged in the ground, like a potato.

So I was lucky?

You weren’t made for the soil.

Wait a second, I interjected. I can’t tell the two of you apart.

I am Tristesa, said the one on the left.

I am Zubrowka, said the other.

Like the vodka?

Listen, kiddo, don’t complain, she said. You drink what you poured.

Death is typically a European film. The scenes are evocative, the atmosphere and characters charged. But in my case, death took on a different form. I suppose my final moments spent in front of the TV determined it. I was watching Rambo and unwittingly took his motto, Alone against everyone, to the world beyond. If it worked for him, it probably will for me too was my first thought once I realized what had happened. It wasn’t clear where death’s pervasive melancholy had gone: with the two secretaries who could only be distinguished by the color of their underwear (Tristesa’s were blue, to match her mood; Zubrowka’s, pink), it wasn’t realistic to expect the New Wave or anything like that.

Where’s God? I asked.

Zubrowka smiled and said that God didn’t exist.

He must be somewhere, I insisted.

You should’ve been more careful when you had the chance. You can’t champion atheism and then play cards with the Lord when you die.

When I was alive, I’d written a funny play about a sex-obsessed God and his gay disciples. If nothing else, I figured, this place would be like that. It wasn’t like I hadn’t considered Him.

God slipped in the tub, Zubrowka said after a moment.

I didn’t believe her. It was obvious from the way she kept looking at Tristesa that they were up to something.

You can’t keep things from me and use my heathenism as an excuse.

The secretaries shrugged and offered up more reasons. Seeing that I’d learn nothing from them, I gave up my line of questioning.

To be honest, I just didn’t think God was necessary; I was used to getting along without Him. And the secretaries weren’t any more necessary. I couldn’t figure out where they’d come from. At first I thought I’d lifted them from some comic strip I’d read long ago, but as time passed (I’m using the word time reflexively, because death doesn’t free the brain from such useless signposts), it became clear that they weren’t under my control. The secretaries came with death. This was, needless to say, frustrating.

I was trying desperately to understand. I couldn’t shake the feeling that my head was slowly expanding from all that strain. This whole time, I thought, it had been growing on all sides. It was right in front of my nose, but I hadn’t noticed it. Actually, it wasn’t right in front of my nose because it was my head, and, however big it was, I couldn’t see it without a mirror. Tristesa was rubbing her hands together in a satisfied manner. It was plain on her face that she was attentively following the growth of my head and was quite pleased. She called over Zubrowka.

She’s thinking? Zubrowka asked as if I weren’t in the room.

Then she looked at me and patted me on the shoulder. This is just the beginning. We have an idea for how to make it grow even faster.

But I don’t want an enormous head, I said nervously.

The head doesn’t ask, said Tristesa. It simply grows.

At that moment, I regretted choosing this instead of the potato option.

The secretaries had a clear plan. My head had become some sort of expensive egg. It resembled, in their words, one of those luxury Easter eggs from Czar Nicholas II. Since I didn’t have a mirror, I had no other choice but to believe them. The question was, What did they think they’d find inside?

Stories, loads of stories, said Zubrowka. That’s why you’re here. We want you to write a whole book of them. If we like it, we’ll let you proceed to the second phase.

Second phase? I asked.

I clutched my head. It didn’t seem to be growing, but still felt unpleasantly distended. I began to stroke my hair fretfully, panicked at the thought that in the second phase I’d discover only my skull had been growing, while my brain had stayed the same size.

I wasn’t sure if I had anything to do with it, but suddenly, not knowing how, I found myself in a hallway straight out of a fairy tale: There are many doors you can enter, except for the last one, blah blah blah. Of course, I wanted to see what was going on in that last room because, when I was alive, I’d watched a TV show about the difference between stupid and smart children. Scientists had conducted an experiment on a group of kids; they’d left them alone in a room with a two-way mirror they used to observe them. Before leaving a child, the scientists would warn them not to, under any circumstances, look at what was hidden under a white sheet on the table. The children who peeked were the smart ones. The others—not so much. Only one child turned out to be stupid, though. And not only was he stupid, he was also fat. I didn’t want to be him. If it weren’t for my desire to know, the size of my head would be a paradox. I bravely reached for the doorknob, but it was, of course, locked.

Where does a woman go, if she doesn’t know what’s in store for her? I was plagued by questions. I’d wondered a great deal in life too, but in death the questions that confronted me were harder, and the feeling of false finality was driving me crazy. The secretaries laughed loudly behind the locked door. They were obviously having fun, like they were reading something hilarious.

Why are you named Tristesa? I asked when they suddenly appeared behind me. I’ve never seen you sad. You’re always laughing and having a good time.

You should’ve learned by now that you can’t trust death, or people.

We should go, said Zubrowka, pulling Tristesa by the sleeve. She needs to continue.

Alone once again, I watched the door close. I wanted to run after them, to join in their merriment, but I couldn’t move. My head was throbbing, and I felt like at any second it might explode—the big bang. I walked once along the hallway, up and down, but quickly grew tired. I opened the door to the nearest room, took a seat at the table that happened to be there, and began to write. But as soon as I put my pen to paper, I knew I had to write about writing, and that was dangerous because it wasn’t what I’d been brought here to do. I needed action, events—that was clearly what the secretaries preferred. Death is like a dream where you’re running, headless: you don’t have time to stop and reflect because that would mean you’ve awoken, and in my case that just wasn’t possible. I’d never heard of anyone waking up from death.

What to write about then? Everyone tends to write autobiography, which I find repulsive. But while I was feeling judgmental, a memory surfaced of my grandmother, how she would raise her legs and massage them, one after the other, while my sister and I watched, in awe of her calloused heels. Everyone wants to read autobiography, so give them autobiography—it can even be fictionalized. Why should the secretaries be any different? Death loves other people. It’s not concerned solely with itself. It collects names, faces, human destinies, and gladly reads them. Fine, I thought, I will write about myself. And throw in a little about them; let everything be saccharine and romanticized, in the pastel shades of their underwear. But when I got down to writing, it became clear that I didn’t know how to write sappy stories. I wrote how I thought, and my thoughts were explosive.

When I was six years old, I fell off the kitchen counter and landed on my right hand, breaking it. At the emergency room, I sat next to a little girl with a bandaged leg. She said she’d been playing with an ax and the blade had fallen right on her foot. I never complained again about pain. Pain became superfluous to me; it was reserved for others.

I remember well enough the apartment I grew up in—it was a two-bedroom apartment on the thirteenth floor. The elevator never worked so we always had to use the stairs. I shared a room with my sister, who once stopped talking to me because she found my writing gross. I was hurt at the time, but she was right. My writing really was gross. I was a disobedient child and I stayed that way: mischievous through and through.

Every night when my family would fall asleep, I’d go out on the balcony and watch the parking lot, imagining morbid things, like a black van carrying off little children to some unknown place. I’d tell myself that soon it would be coming for me. Such vile things excited me, but I never ate my own boogers. To me, that was truly disgusting. Whenever I saw a child eating their own boogers, I’d smack them on the head.

I remember vividly my first grade school trip to Ozren, a mountain in northern Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the evening we’d lie in absolute darkness. I don’t remember how many of us were in the cabin, but all the girls would scream for the teacher when, just as everyone was on the edge of sleep, I’d tell scary stories about witches and monsters. Look at that woman lurking at the window, I’d say. I often forgot how timid other children could be. The only thing that had frightened me was the dentist, and I’d quickly gotten over it. I returned from Ozren another child, one who wouldn’t stop talking. My family dubbed me the Philosopher. I was always waving my hands, gesticulating wildly. I wrote poetry with a carpenter’s pencil. I was truly special. I was different.

You don’t seem that different to me, said Zubrowka.

She leaned over my story, tapping her finger on the word special.