Nothing happens in Maglaj without my hearing of it first, because every illness, every love and every debt finds its way into the pharmacy sooner or later. Mine is across from Dr. Nazif's clinic, on the main street, and for thirty years I have watched through its window who comes to see the doctor and who comes to see the doctor's wife. Dr. Nazif is a good man. I say that without malice. He drives out to the villages along the Bosna even in the snow, knows the blood pressure of every grandmother from Maglaj to Žepče, and has never in his life read anything but medical journals and soccer scores.
He brought Irma from Doboj seven years ago. She was twenty-six, with a literature degree and three suitcases, two of them full of books and home decorating magazines. The apartment above the clinic looked out on the Kuršumlija mosque and the river, and from the first day it was too small for Irma. She read about Tuscany, watched videos of apartments in Milan, rearranged the flowers in the vase three times over and waited for something to happen. Little Zejneba was born. Nothing else happened. The doctor praised the soup, talked about his patients and fell asleep as soon as he sat down in front of the television.
What happened was called Zahid. He had a furniture and home goods showroom in Doboj, and on Thursdays he made the rounds of the markets with his catalogs. He was always clean-shaven, always smiling, and never asked about money. He told Irma what men like him tell women like her: you can pay when you are able. First came the velvet curtains, then a lamp from Milan, then a walnut table, then a red coat that turned every head in the old bazaar. I wrote down every van from Doboj in my prescription notebook. Not out of curiosity. Out of habit.
Ferhat had raspberry fields above the town and a sawmill by the Bosna, forty-five years of age, a divorce behind him and a black SUV in front of the café. He brought a worker who had cut his hand on a saw to the doctor, and there, on the stairs, he saw Irma for the first time. At the agricultural fair in September, while the mayor spoke from the stage about raspberry exports to Germany, Ferhat sat beside her in the back row and talked to her about the sea, about freedom, and about how a life must not be wasted on waiting. That day I was on the stage handing out the prize for the best plum jam, and I saw everything. The prize was my idea.
After that came the drives in the SUV to his cabin on Mount Ozren. The doctor thought Irma was going to yoga in Doboj. Irma thought she would go to Italy with Ferhat, and she bought two suitcases on Zahid's installment plan. The day before they were to leave, Ferhat sent her a message saying they should be reasonable, because he had a sawmill and she had a child. He left alone, for the season in Austria. Irma lay in bed with a fever for six weeks, and every day the doctor bought vitamins from me and asked whether I, as a man of science, knew what was wrong with her. I told him it was the climate.
In the spring he took her to the theater in Doboj, to cheer her up. There she met Sanjin, who had once been an intern at our municipal office and who, while he was an intern, had liked her enough to carry her books from the library. Now he worked at a bank in Doboj and wore expensive glasses. On the way out of the theater he told her she had not changed at all, and that was the one lie Irma recognized at once and forgave at once. The next day Irma told the doctor she would like to study English with a teacher in Doboj, on Thursdays. The doctor said it was an excellent idea. He paid for the course and the bus as well.
The English was studied in an apartment above a bakery near the bus station, and Irma paid for it. She also paid for the lunches, and the gifts, and the watch Sanjin had wanted, all of it on installments, with Zahid and with a quick loan agency whose poster hung at the station. When the payments started falling behind, she brought the doctor some papers to sign, for the bank, she said, about the apartment. The doctor never read what Irma gave him. He signed at the table, with a spoon in his other hand.
In November the bailiff pasted a court order on the clinic door. The list was long and precise: velvet curtains, lamp from Milan, walnut table, two suitcases, man's watch. By noon all of Maglaj had walked past that door, some of them twice, and the women stopped at the word velvet. I read the list aloud to customers who had not brought their glasses. People need the truth, not gossip. That is exactly what I told them.
That day Irma went to Doboj, to Sanjin. She told me about it later, herself, because she no longer had anyone else to tell. Sanjin had gotten engaged to the bank director's daughter, and he asked her not to come to his counter. Ferhat, who was back from Austria, offered her coffee on the terrace of his house, beside a new SUV, and said that he had no cash at the moment. She walked home along the Bosna in the dark. Just before closing time she came into the pharmacy and asked me to lend her money, any amount. I have a family and a reputation. I turned her down politely, the way one does.
The doctor learned the truth from the bailiff, and the rest from Irma's drawer, where he found Ferhat's messages, printed out, and Sanjin's letters, because Sanjin liked to write by hand. He read them in the kitchen all night. He did not shout. In the morning he took Zejneba to his mother in Doboj, sold the clinic to a doctor from Tuzla and with that money paid off the debts, down to the last mark. He filed for divorce in December. He never said an unkind word to Irma. I think that was the hardest part for her.
Irma lost the apartment, the clinic she had never loved, the child she now sees on Sundays, and the town that had always been too small for her anyway. She rented a room from a widow near the station. In the end it was Zahid who gave her a job. She works at his showroom in Doboj, selling curtains, lamps and tables to women from the towns around and telling them they can pay when they are able. When she meets me at the station, she greets me first. They say she sells well. She knows what those women want to buy.
That winter I received a municipal plaque for my contribution to public health. It hangs in the pharmacy, above the register, and customers notice it before they notice me. Every morning at six forty I see Irma through the window, getting on the bus to Doboj. She wears the red coat. It is the only thing the bailiff did not list, because that morning she had it on.