"In Mostar there is no guesthouse without mosquitoes and no landlady without an angle," Silvio Rondić wrote last summer in his column No Stars, and half of Kujundžiluk remembered it. Fahira printed out that sentence and stuck it on the fridge in the kitchen of the Tri smokve guesthouse, between the electricity bill and the shift schedule. The guesthouse was a stone house with six rooms above Kujundžiluk, with a terrace under three old fig trees from which you could see the Old Bridge. She had inherited it from her father two years earlier, and along with the guesthouse she had inherited Redžep, the receptionist, who had worked there since he was nineteen and knew what coffee every regular guest drank and which pipe leaked when the south wind blew. In his last week in the hospital her father had told her: "Redžep is an honest man. When you get married, don't look any further." Fahira had laughed back then and straightened his IV line.
That summer two regular guests were courting her. Nurko Hasanbegović from Stuttgart owned three car washes, a black Audi with German plates, and an opinion about everything. He came every July for a month and each time brought something: perfume, a gold bracelet, a coffee machine for the terrace, "so I don't have to watch you struggle with a džezva." Behaudin Kreho held a doctorate from a private university that operated in a former furniture showroom. His business card listed three titles, and his wallet usually held nothing. He paid for his room late, but he offered protection. "I know people in the canton. One phone call from me and they will never send you an inspector again." Fahira accepted the gifts graciously, the protection even more graciously, and charged both of them the full rate.
Then a name appeared in the bookings: Silvio Rondić, room four, three nights. Redžep read the name twice and went to fetch Fahira. The critic arrived at noon, in a heat that softened the asphalt on the Bulevar. He was thin and neat, with a laptop in a canvas bag, and at the front desk he told Redžep that he wanted his breakfast brought by him, not by the lady. "Women in the hospitality business fake friendliness," he explained, "and I don't pay for acting. Generally I don't trust women even when they tell me the time." Redžep passed this on word for word. Fahira listened leaning on the bar, a dish towel over her shoulder. "In three nights," she said, "he will write me a poem." "Don't play games, Fahira," said Redžep. "It isn't a game. It's marketing."
The first evening on the terrace there was a quarrel, but not Fahira's. Nurko and Doctor Kreho were arguing over who had more right to the landlady: the one who gives or the one who protects. Nurko waved the key to his Audi, the doctor his business card. Silvio listened from a corner, drank mineral water, and finally said: "Gentlemen, you are fighting over a woman as if over a parking space. And you will both end up with neither the space nor the woman." Both of them turned toward him and, for the first time that summer, agreed on something: the critic was unbearable. Fahira heard it all through the kitchen window and was pleased. A common enemy for her suitors was a good start.
The next morning, as the guest had requested, Redžep took breakfast up to room four. On the tray, next to the eggs and coffee, stood a small bowl of japrak, which was not on the menu. "The lady says you told us you don't like acting," said Redžep, "and this cannot be faked. She rolled them last night, from her father's recipe." Silvio ate one stuffed vine leaf, then another, then the whole bowl, and by noon he had not written a single sentence. In the evening he came down to the terrace. Fahira did not go over to him. She sat over her accounts and let him speak first.
When he did, she agreed with him. She said that she would never marry either, that men were like guests: they arrive, complain about the air conditioning, and leave, and afterward you wash the towels. Silvio had never heard a woman speak in his own sentences. They talked until midnight, while below them the Neretva rushed over the stones and from the bridge you could still hear tourists waiting for someone to jump. On the third day he extended his stay to seven nights. On the fourth day he asked Redžep what flowers Fahira liked. Redžep was folding towels and said he did not know, although he did: white roses, but never from a florist, only from other people's gardens.
Nurko and the doctor noticed. The next morning Nurko left a small box with a ring on the table, and the doctor offered to enroll Fahira as an honorary member of his academy. Silvio began coming down to breakfast in an ironed shirt and looking at both of them the way he used to look at dirty sheets. Redžep watched all of it from the front desk. One evening, while they were closing out the register, he told Fahira he no longer knew where her marketing ended. "I know exactly," she said. "You don't," he said. "You never know when you have hammered a nail into someone too deep."
On the sixth day Silvio realized what was happening to him and got scared, like a man who had spent his whole life writing about other people's mistakes. He packed his suitcase at eight in the morning and came down to hand in his key. Fahira was on the steps with a watering can. When she saw him with the suitcase, she sat down on a stone step, put her hand to her forehead, and said quietly: "The heat." Redžep brought water. Silvio dropped his suitcase, knelt beside her, and held her hand as if she might run away from him. "I am not going anywhere," he said. "Fahira, never in my life have I," he began, and did not finish. She drank some water and said she felt better. Redžep picked up the watering can and went to water the fig trees, and he kept watering them until the water ran down the steps.
That afternoon Silvio's review came out on the portal. Five stars, the first time since the No Stars column began. About the rooms he wrote two sentences, about the japrak a whole paragraph, and about the landlady three, one of which said that she was the reason he had stopped believing his own writing. By evening half of Mostar had read it. Nurko asked for his coffee machine back. The doctor said he would sue the portal. That evening on the terrace, in front of all the guests, Silvio told Fahira that she had to choose, here and now. Then he looked toward the front desk and added: "And tell that one to stop bringing water."
Fahira stood up. The terrace fell silent, and from the bridge came only the voice of a single diver counting to three. "You are right, Mr. Rondić," she said. "I have to choose. I am getting married." She walked over to the front desk and took Redžep by the hand, the one holding the tray, so that two glasses clinked. "To Redžep. My father wanted it, and only this week did I understand why. He is the only one in this house who has never given me anything or promised me anything, and he has fixed everything for me." Redžep set the tray down on the counter. He was silent for a long time, then said: "On one condition. No more marketing." "None," said Fahira.
Nurko was the first to recover, and he asked whether he could at least come to the wedding and whether they would need a coffee machine. Doctor Kreho offered to be a witness, since his signature with three titles on the marriage certificate meant something. Fahira thanked them both and told them both that their bills were waiting at the front desk. Silvio said nothing. He went up to room four, carried his suitcase down the stone steps himself, without anyone's help, and walked to the bus station in the heat, with his laptop in its canvas bag.
The next morning the review on the portal had been changed. Of the five stars, four were left. Beneath them stood a new sentence, shorter than any Silvio Rondić had ever written: "One was taken away by the receptionist." Fahira printed it out and stuck it on the fridge, over the one about the mosquitoes. Redžep said it was not nice to gloat. Then he went to get some tape, because one corner kept falling down.