Read Online The Small Boat of Great Sorrows by Dan Fesperman - Free Book Online
Authors: Dan Fesperman
Tags: Fiction
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toward the foaming mug of beer. âPlease. You will need to drink if youâre going to hear all this.â He put a crumpled bill on the bar for the first round.
âI found my sister three weeks later in a school gym where she was sleeping on the floor. The place was full of refugees. Hundreds. Whole families on towels and blankets, laundry hanging between the basketball hoops.
âLice, bad food, every smell you can imagine. That was life in the gym. My sister wouldnât talk to anyone. Just lay there all day on a cot, eyes open. I slept on the floor next to her for a week. Then on the eighth day she finally stands up and decides to take a walk outside. It is snowing and she is barefoot, but she just keeps walking while I follow her, afraid to say a word. Two blocks and she stops and looks down at her feet and begins to cry. I carry her back, and on the way she tells me what had happened, whispers it into my ear like a child telling her father sheâs done something bad. She knew the men, three of them anyway. Knew their faces and names. One taught our nephew in school. One grew up on the farm next to our uncleâs. I used to play football with him at school. The other guy was from the village, a baker.â He paused, shaking his head. âFive months later we came here. This was late â92. And for a year she was pretty much the same, not going anywhere, just lying around the apartment, watching TV.
âThen one day it was sunny and warm, a spring morning after some rain, so I took her for a walk, almost had to push her out the door and carry her down the steps. But she started looking around. We stopped to sit on a bench awhile, across from a bus stop. Then we decided to catch a bus, to go for a ride. We crossed the street and she looked at the crowd, seven or eight people waiting for the bus. And thatâs when she saw him, one of the men, not one of the three she knew but their leader, the main one, the one who had the scar and wore a black beret, leaning into her face with brandy on his breath, sweating onto her for twenty minutes. She tried to scream, tried to tell me who it was, but nothing came out of her mouth until the bus had gone and the man was on it. She told me his name was Popovic, and Iâd seen him, too.
âSo the next day I go to the bus stop again, waiting for him. Nine hours Iâm there. Then the next day, and then the day after that. I decide I will go every day until he comes back, like itâs my job, because I didnât have a real job anyway. Just construction work without papers, tearing out old walls and plaster, and half the time we didnât get paid. So I kept going to the same corner. And that is how I met Jasmina.â
Hearing him say her name was a jolt. But Vlado kept quiet, waiting for Haris to continue. Heâd stopped for another swallow of whiskey.
âSheâd seen me, I guess, seen me on that corner day after day, like someone obsessed. And I
was
obsessed. Crazy and dirty. Same coat, rain or shine. Same little water bottle tucked under my arm with a newspaper.
âShe came up to me one day, curious more than anything, and asked who I was looking for. After days of being ignored by almost everyone in Berlin it seemed like some kind of revelation, like Iâd been invisible to everyone but her. And when youâre feeling like I was, so focused on something that you canât see anything else, when someone actually notices what youâre up to, it seems like magic. Like they have powers no one else has. So we talked. And I relaxed a little. I felt almost normal for those few minutes before her bus came. And the next day we talked again, and I still hadnât told her why I was there, or who I was after. But she told me she was waiting on someone, too. I think that morning I might even have shaved. Changed my shirt. Wiped off my coat. I donât really remember now. But on the fifth day she brought me an apple. I
âI found my sister three weeks later in a school gym where she was sleeping on the floor. The place was full of refugees. Hundreds. Whole families on towels and blankets, laundry hanging between the basketball hoops.
âLice, bad food, every smell you can imagine. That was life in the gym. My sister wouldnât talk to anyone. Just lay there all day on a cot, eyes open. I slept on the floor next to her for a week. Then on the eighth day she finally stands up and decides to take a walk outside. It is snowing and she is barefoot, but she just keeps walking while I follow her, afraid to say a word. Two blocks and she stops and looks down at her feet and begins to cry. I carry her back, and on the way she tells me what had happened, whispers it into my ear like a child telling her father sheâs done something bad. She knew the men, three of them anyway. Knew their faces and names. One taught our nephew in school. One grew up on the farm next to our uncleâs. I used to play football with him at school. The other guy was from the village, a baker.â He paused, shaking his head. âFive months later we came here. This was late â92. And for a year she was pretty much the same, not going anywhere, just lying around the apartment, watching TV.
âThen one day it was sunny and warm, a spring morning after some rain, so I took her for a walk, almost had to push her out the door and carry her down the steps. But she started looking around. We stopped to sit on a bench awhile, across from a bus stop. Then we decided to catch a bus, to go for a ride. We crossed the street and she looked at the crowd, seven or eight people waiting for the bus. And thatâs when she saw him, one of the men, not one of the three she knew but their leader, the main one, the one who had the scar and wore a black beret, leaning into her face with brandy on his breath, sweating onto her for twenty minutes. She tried to scream, tried to tell me who it was, but nothing came out of her mouth until the bus had gone and the man was on it. She told me his name was Popovic, and Iâd seen him, too.
âSo the next day I go to the bus stop again, waiting for him. Nine hours Iâm there. Then the next day, and then the day after that. I decide I will go every day until he comes back, like itâs my job, because I didnât have a real job anyway. Just construction work without papers, tearing out old walls and plaster, and half the time we didnât get paid. So I kept going to the same corner. And that is how I met Jasmina.â
Hearing him say her name was a jolt. But Vlado kept quiet, waiting for Haris to continue. Heâd stopped for another swallow of whiskey.
âSheâd seen me, I guess, seen me on that corner day after day, like someone obsessed. And I
was
obsessed. Crazy and dirty. Same coat, rain or shine. Same little water bottle tucked under my arm with a newspaper.
âShe came up to me one day, curious more than anything, and asked who I was looking for. After days of being ignored by almost everyone in Berlin it seemed like some kind of revelation, like Iâd been invisible to everyone but her. And when youâre feeling like I was, so focused on something that you canât see anything else, when someone actually notices what youâre up to, it seems like magic. Like they have powers no one else has. So we talked. And I relaxed a little. I felt almost normal for those few minutes before her bus came. And the next day we talked again, and I still hadnât told her why I was there, or who I was after. But she told me she was waiting on someone, too. I think that morning I might even have shaved. Changed my shirt. Wiped off my coat. I donât really remember now. But on the fifth day she brought me an apple. I
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