My sister Kamila
If I get lost I'll send you a location pin, so you can come and rescue me, he explains as he packs for Velebit. Or send help, whatever's easier. Don't worry, mountains are not so cruel in spring. It is his first hike since we've been together, and my guts are slowly crumbling in preparation for mourning at his funeral or, worse, standing in some back row because his family doesn't consider me relevant. They haven't met me yet, and we've only been together three weeks. Love is crazy, too crazy. But also short. And short loves are uncountable. Even in contemporary times, this is love's greatest drawback. Although our love has other drawbacks, more serious ones. It won't be me coming, but someone from the rescue services, You'll just have to stand quietly and wait, I think, perhaps I say it too, I definitively believe it would be just like that.
I also believe that with him I would, with time, become a rock climbing, hiking and even mountaineering enthusiast. I prepare, on the outside, carried away by his desire and yearning, note down everything I find in the pamphlets, the newsletter. My glutes will evolve from girly shapes into sporty muscles, thanks to gym machines, running schools, nordic walking, and climbing halls practice. We would always be one step behind the other, walking alongside each other, avoiding crevasses. We would stand proudly above them, literally and figuratively. Our fucking in the outdoors would not melt a glacier nor would it set off an avalanche, but it would mark a comma, and possibly a colon in climate change. And from the world's peaks, drunk on passion and tired from the walking, we would sift through the clouds for lightning bolts and throw them upon the earth. I believe all kinds of things. Including the fact that our love counts, and worse - that it is love.
He cannot focus on work. He can't stop thinking about me. Today was the first time, in the seven years he's been working there, that he wanked off in the toilet. And not just in any toilet. In the boss' toilet. The boss is away on a work trip. He didn't want to take any risks. He took pictures of me at the lakes on the Savica (my trial trip to the countryside outside Zagreb) and put one of them as a screen saver on his work desktop computer. He is showing off. Domesticating me. On his breaks, and he works in the city centre as a project manager, he invites me for coffees, brunches, lunches, is late for meetings, runs across the square and shouts, under the clock where he leaves me, MARIZA, SAY YOU WILL NEVER FORGET ME. How will I forget you, you idiot, I'll see you tonight, as you ordered, at your place, in your bed.
He has even written a short story about me. The title is 'My sister Kamila' after my real sister Kamila. Well, it is more of a sketch. All because he is amazed by our names: Mariza and Kamila, and the little bits of information I have occasionally shared about myself. The story is in his head, he just has to write it. He'll do it for my birthday. He's a writer, and his job is just to . get away from his parents, their ideas about him, it's different from where you come from, what did you call it Prikom - or whatever.
The writer is young, good-looking, fit, with thick lips and healthy teeth, and lives in the attic of an Art Nouveau building, several streets away from his work. High ceilings. New windows. New paint on the walls. New wardrobes. New bed. New furniture. New floorboards. New beams. New roof. New bath. Everything feels new. New him. New me. A terrace with views of Ibler Square and the Mosque, and fountains with waves like the sea waves in Prikomurje, they awaken a melancholy in me, a feeling of familiarity. His unshaved face is lit up with the flashing lights of passing trams and seems like the most real thing I've ever seen. Mariza, what have you ever done to deserve such a bloke? You've sailed into the most beautiful bay. Careful that it doesn't turn into a tourist attraction, you've seen how all of the most attractive bays ended up on the island. Our kind wants them, but we never drop anchor in them. Quiet, Kamila, shut your gob!
I am in love, I am, I tell everyone, or rather my sister and a work colleague while we shelve books and collect magazines and I move chairs and tables with my knees in our small reading room. It's the guy that borrows four books every Monday and reads two poetry collections while browsing the shelves. You know him, I'll point him out. Ah, I sigh from the sofa, enchanted, reminiscing about his blue eyes, long fingers, big smile, he hasn't yet introduced me to his friends, but he will, just wait until we are really solid, I assure my colleague and myself. We've been together for two months now. It'll happen any time now. And the parents.
The books are always on his bedside table, neatly placed, whenever I go around, they're always in the same spot. Do you actually read them, I open one, the pages are stuck together, I rub the edges of the cover on my naked breasts. I do, of course, what do you know what I do when I'm alone. But when is he alone? Ever since he met me he keeps ringing me, wants me all the time, we have been, without a fault, glued together from the start. I'm comfortable. I have got away from the island for the first time since finishing university and spending some years back home. I have no friends or responsibilities here. But he . He cancels birthdays, concerts, barbecues, parties. I am convinced that if I don't act in the same way eventually, he will get mortally offended. One night he cannot get an erection. He stuffs me like a turkey. It's sickening.
It's also sickening two days later, when he doesn't get in touch and it's the first time this has happened since we met. I'm worried. Maybe he's writing. Maybe he lives like a writer. I can understand that, I console myself. He might be working on Kamila. I'm suspicious of the fact that he doesn't ask for more details, that even if he is writing, I've never seen him write, he only talks about writing, and those books . Mere objects with smooth covers. Static with dust. I think about that story, as if it were mine, and it will be mine, a gift for me, but what do I do with a bad gift? I'm ashamed to be thinking of him as a bad writer. During a lonely lunch, glancing over at his office window, and thinking about the story, I sense that something is off between us. I confide in the work colleague in a roundabout way, I don't mention being stuffed like a turkey. She tells me to google 'silent treatment', that her daughter was put in her place like that by a young man she'd fallen in love with when he didn't like her openness and assertiveness, when he'd, so to speak, started feeling like he was losing his power next to her. The school counsellor said that he had learned this at home from narcissistic parents, and that this was how they regulated one another, by hurting each other. Regulating one another? We are not thermostats! But those are . problems of immaturity. Or worse, serious pathologies. And I kept quiet! A narcissist!
It hurts. My chest hurts the most. I cannot suck air in all the way. I fall over from the pressure at the gym, send him a message from the changing room. If I had googled what my colleague had suggested, I told myself later, who knows, perhaps I'd have sensed it in time, perhaps I'd have known not to send the message, not to apologise that evening in a bar, in public, for a simple comment about reading books, not to keep quiet when threatened with breaking up because I doubted him, that I was being too demanding and that why, oh why, can't he find a person who for once wouldn't question his words. I am not questioning your words, I sit silently, I am questioning what you do not do. And perhaps I'm wrong, he's my first city boyfriend, maybe he's right, we find it easier in Prikomurje to . handle everything that happens to us, we are toughened from a young age, by a mother who always keeps silent and a father who instead of wrinkles has scars from fishing nets and dynamite. I keep quiet, I don't mention being stuffed like a turkey, he gives me another chance, and finally my lungs can draw in air again. I am loved!
It's a month to my birthday. The story is still a sketch. I don't ask about it, and he withdraws from me. Something is growing between us, and it isn't love. My glutes are rock hard. I'm embarrassed to have such tight buttocks because they draw looks away from newspapers, trams, posters, the road. In Prikomurje old women would cross themselves, and young men would stick their tongues under their teeth for a wolf whistle until their trousers were bulging with desire that had nowhere to go. My work colleague notices it too, teaches me how to wear my shorts twisted at the hips. Ooh-la-la. Enjoy the looks, you're young. I think of the boys on the island, I have made all of their wishes come true. I'm no longer embarrassed. The writer takes me to our first and last climb together and introduces me to his closest friends: two work colleagues and a childhood friend. I walk past the friend in the mountaineering shelter toilets and recognise the look...
