A Diary from Banja Vrućica

July 6. I arrived at Banja Vrućica at noon, with a referral from a cardiologist in Banja Luka who claims my heart skips beats. I think my heart works perfectly, it just has nothing to do. At the mineral water spring old men in tracksuits fill plastic cups and talk about blood pressure the way other people talk about politics. On a bench by the fountain sat Veljko, twenty-four years old, with a brace on his knee and a crutch he carries like a flag. He tore his ligaments in a motorcycle race, but he talks as if he had come back from the front.

He is in love, of course. He pointed out a girl who was drinking water at the spring with her mother: Anja Đukić, twenty-two, a pharmacy student from Doboj, the daughter of a woman who owns five bakeries and keeps a cardiologist on speed dial. Veljko dropped his cup and Anja picked it up for him with the kind of smile people give to patients. I was looking at her, and as she turned away she looked at me, briefly and with a certain anger, because I had not picked anything up for her. That evening I wrote down that this girl would love me. Not because I like her. Because Veljko will be watching, and there is nothing else to do here.

July 8. Doctor Pantelić is the only intelligent man at the spa, so we are friends. He takes my blood pressure and plays chess better than I do. Today he told me that the Đukić women had been asking about me, the mother about my firm and the daughter about my past. Then, as if in passing, he added that Obren Lalić, a builder from Derventa, had arrived after a bypass and taken the apartment above the Đukićs in the villa over the park, with his wife. The wife is young, blond, with a mole under her left eye. I put down my chess piece. I knew who she was before he said her name: Ivana.

We met at the spring early the next morning. Ten years had passed since she walked out of my apartment in Banja Luka and said she was waiting for someone who would promise her something at least once. She married a man of sixty-five who promised her everything. She said that Obren was good, that he fell asleep at nine after his pills, and that she wanted nothing from me except that we see each other now and then. "Get to know the Đukićs, Andrija," she said. "If you visit them, no one will ask what you are doing at the villa." Then she left before I could answer, just as she had ten years ago.

July 12. For a week I did not go near Anja. Instead, every evening on the hotel terrace I told stories, and the young men who had been standing around her drifted over to my table one by one. She watched it angrily, and I let her be angry. On Saturday there was a dance in the hotel hall. A drunk guest from Teslić grabbed her by the hand and would not let go. I walked over, took his arm like an old friend's, led him to the bar and ordered him a coffee. Then I asked Anja to dance. She said nothing, but she danced with me until the end.

After that it was easy, and easy is always boring. We walked the path through the woods above the spa, and I told her about myself, half truth and half what she wanted to hear. Veljko limped twenty steps behind us and pretended to be watching birds. On a small wooden footbridge over a stream she felt dizzy, or decided to, and leaned against me. I kissed her on the cheek. "Do you love me?" she asked. I did not answer. She walked ahead of me all the way to the villa, wiping her face with her sleeve, and I was thinking about Ivana's window.

I saw Ivana at night. Obren fell asleep at nine, the Đukićs turned off their light at ten, and the outside stairs of the villa led past Anja's window to Ivana's balcony on the second floor. We sat on the balcony, she in Obren's sweater, and talked until one, quietly, about how everything would have been if I had been someone else. On the fifteenth of July, as I was coming down, two shadows stood under the linden tree. One was leaning on a crutch. Someone shouted, asking who was there, and I jumped the fence and walked off through the park, unhurried.

July 16. In the morning I was sitting in the café next to the hotel when Veljko and his friend Momir from Prnjavor sat down at the table under the open window. The plan was simple: at noon, at the spring, in front of everyone, Veljko would say he had seen me leaving Anja Đukić's place at night. "He won't dare say where he really was," Momir said. "When he keeps quiet, everyone will believe you, and the girl will be ashamed of him for the rest of her life." Veljko asked whether that was fair to Anja. Momir said it was fair to Veljko, and that was enough.

At noon there were more people at the spring than usual, because Momir had made the rounds of half the spa that morning. Mrs. Đukić stood with Anja under a sunshade, Doctor Pantelić beside them, and a little further off, in a white hat, Obren Lalić. Veljko said his piece, loudly and badly, like a poem learned by heart. I asked him whether he had seen me come out of Anja's door. He said he had seen me on the stairs. I said that the stairs led to three apartments and into the park, and that I would leave the spa today if he now said, in front of her mother, that he had seen the door. Then I added that Momir was right: I would not say where I had been. But I would not let Veljko say what he had not seen either.

Veljko was silent for a long time. It was the only moment in which I respected him, and the only one in which I felt sorry for him. Then he said, looking into his cup, "I didn't see the door." Mrs. Đukić turned her back on him. The people with their cups moved away from him as if he were contagious. At five Veljko left on the bus for Banja Luka, with his crutch across his lap. Obren Lalić said nothing. He only looked for a long time at the outside stairs, then at his balcony, then at me.

In the evening an envelope was waiting for me at the reception desk. Ivana had written a few lines: Obren knew, they were leaving at six, I should not look for them. She also wrote that she had loved me even when I had not asked for it, and that this had been her mistake, not mine. It was ten past seven. I got in the car and drove toward Doboj, until on a climb the engine overheated and died. I sat down on the guardrail by the road and cried, for the first time I can remember. When I got back it was past midnight, and the whole thing already seemed ridiculous to me.

July 18. Mrs. Đukić invited me to the villa for coffee. She thanked me for defending her daughter's honor and said, in a roundabout way, that there was room in Doboj for one more firm. I asked her to leave me alone with Anja. Anja came in pale, her hands clasped in front of her, and sat down only when I stood up.

I told her the truth, because it was the shortest. That I had been laughing at her. That I had been playing all July, because of Veljko and out of boredom, and that I did not love her. That at the spring I had not defended her for her sake. She listened without taking her eyes off me, and only once did her chin tremble. She asked why I was telling her this. I said it would be worse if I did not. "I hate you," she said quietly. I said that was fair, bowed, and went out, and I met no one on the stairs.

July 19. I paid my bill at seven in the morning. Doctor Pantelić did not offer me his hand, he only said that my blood pressure was, unfortunately, excellent. The receptionist asked whether I would be coming back next year. I said maybe, and for some reason she wrote it down.