In a choir the alto is the voice nobody hears until it is gone. Desanka liked that. For eleven years she had stood in the second row of altos in the amateur choir Javor, on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the community center hall in Lauš, between a former bookkeeper and a hairdresser, and nobody had ever looked at her longer than necessary. For thirty-five years she had taught math at an elementary school, and she had seen enough faces waiting for her to say something. In the choir she was one of twelve. That suited her.
In September the conductor Milica, a young woman of twenty-nine with a pencil always tucked behind her ear, announced the program for the choir's fiftieth birthday, in December, at Banski Dvor. At the end of the program was the duet Two Shores, which the choir's founder Mitar had written for himself and his wife and which nobody had sung since 1990. For the alto Milica chose Desanka. Desanka said she did not sing solo, had never sung alone and was too old to start. Milica said she had the only alto in the choir that did not wobble, and there was no escaping that. For the baritone she chose Radovan.
Radovan Šipka had joined the choir that same September, and within three weeks everybody knew him. He was a retired train driver, big and gray, in sweaters that, as he said himself, had been knitted by someone who did not love him, and he had a voice that came out of him like a train out of a tunnel. He laughed loudly, came to rehearsals ten minutes late and apologized to everyone each time, one by one. Until then Desanka had not even said hello to him. Now they stood side by side in front of the piano, holding the same sheet music.
The first rehearsal was hard. He sang too loudly, she too quietly, and Milica lowered her hands and said: "You are two shores, not a shore and a flood." Radovan laughed about it until the end of the rehearsal. It also turned out that he could not read music. He had learned his part by heart from an old recording Milica had put on the internet, listening to it in the car on the way to Gradiška and back. Desanka read music the way she had once read problems off the blackboard, and she counted the beat with her lips, silently, as if she were back in class.
The hardest part was the last bar. At the end of the song the two voices meet on the same note and hold it together, for a long time, until the conductor lowers her hands. Every time, Desanka stopped first. Not by much, by half a beat, but enough for the hall to hear the baritone left on his own. "Desanka, wait for him," Milica would say. Desanka would nod and the next time stop early again. For thirty-five years the school bell had told her when it was over, and she had always known before the bell. "You would jump off a train before the station," said Radovan, and it did not sound like a reproach.
After rehearsals they began walking down toward the Vrbas together, because he parked by the bridge and from there she caught the bus to Borik. Chestnuts were falling on the sidewalk, and he gathered them into his pocket as he went, for a granddaughter who lived in Canada and whom he had seen twice. He talked about railway lines, about nights on the Doboj run and about a wife who had left long ago and had not come back. She talked about Slavko. Slavko had been a good man and always got to the station forty minutes early, so every trip they took began with waiting. He had died six years ago, peacefully, one Sunday after lunch, as if he had finished that on time too.
In November the heating broke down in the hall in Lauš, and there were five weeks left until the concert. Milica said the duet had to rehearse wherever it could. Desanka, to her own surprise, said she had an upright piano. It had stood in her living room in Borik since her daughter's childhood, half a tone out of tune, covered with crocheted doilies and photographs. Radovan came for the first time on a Tuesday at six, at exactly six, with a bag of Banja Luka ćevapi from Gospodska Street, and said it was the first time in his life he had not been late. Desanka made coffee and moved the photographs off the piano.
The rehearsals in the apartment were different. The neighbor downstairs banged on her ceiling with a broom every time Radovan went for a high note, so he learned to sing more softly. To hear him over the piano, Desanka learned to sing louder. Somewhere around the second week they met in the middle. One evening her daughter Sonja called from Vienna on video and saw behind her mother's shoulder a man in a green sweater eating a ćevap. "Mom, who is that?" "The baritone," said Desanka. Sonja laughed so hard she had to put the phone down. "Mom has a baritone," they could hear her telling someone in Vienna.
The last bar still would not come right. Desanka knew where the mistake was and could do nothing about it. When she reached the end, something in her would say enough, and the breath would leave on its own. Radovan stayed on the note alone and then laughed, more and more quietly as the weeks went by. At the end of November, at the door, while he was putting on his jacket, he told her that on Sunday he was driving to Krupa na Vrbasu to see the watermills before the snow came, and that he would be glad if she would. "No," said Desanka, before he had finished the sentence.
Radovan nodded, wished her good night and went down the stairs without turning on the light. Desanka stayed behind the door with her hand on the handle and listened to his footsteps fading somewhere around the second floor. Only then did she realize what she had done. Once again she had finished first. She had not even heard everything he meant to say, whether there had been something more after if she would. That night she lay awake for a long time. She listened to the old recording of Two Shores on her phone, Mitar and his wife in seventy-eight, and at the end, in the last bar, she heard the wife hold the note even after her husband had run out of breath, just a little, so that he would not be alone.
For the next two weeks Radovan arrived on time, sang correctly and left right away. He no longer gathered chestnuts, because there were none left. At the dress rehearsal Milica said everything was in place and yet something did not sit right with her, and she did not know what. Desanka knew. She kept quiet and counted the beat with her lips.
The concert was on the seventeenth of December. Wet snow was falling in front of Banski Dvor, and the hall was full: grandchildren, sons-in-law, former colleagues, retirees from all over the Krajina region in coats they did not take off. Sonja watched the livestream from Vienna. The choir sang everything in order, and the duet was left for the end. When Desanka and Radovan stepped forward, alone, in front of eleven altos and thirty other voices, she felt her hands go cold. Then Milica raised her hands, the pianist played the introduction, and Radovan began to sing softly, the way he had learned because of the neighbor downstairs.
They sang well. Not perfectly, but well, the way people sing who have listened to each other for five weeks over an out-of-tune piano. Then came the last bar. Desanka landed on the note together with him and felt the moment when she had always let go, the moment when something in her said enough. This time she did not let go. She held the note while he held his, and then a little longer, when he had already run out of breath. The hall was completely silent. Milica lowered her hands only when Desanka stopped, and only then did someone in the front row begin to clap.
At the coat check he held her coat for her. "Desanka," he said, not looking at her, "I will ask you once more, and if you say no again, I won't ask anymore. On Sunday I'm going to Krupa. There's snow, but they say the watermills run in winter too. I have chains for the tires, a thermos and a blanket for the back seat, and we could, if you like, sing on the way, just the two of us, without Milica and without the neighbor downstairs, as loudly as we feel like singing." He paused, used to her cutting him off right there. Desanka was slowly buttoning her coat, button by button, and let him say everything to the end. Only then did she say yes.