I drove for Berin Mušanović for eleven years, and in that time I learned two things: to keep quiet in the car and not to ask anything. That is why, on the evening in Vienna when it all began, I sat at the next table with a glass of mineral water and heard everything, and said nothing. Today I think that was my mistake, the first and the smallest.
We were at the Zlatni Klas restaurant in Favoriten, where our builders celebrate when they win a job and when they lose one. That summer everybody was hoping for the same contract: an extension to a hospital for the firm Leitner Bau. At Berin's table sat men from three firms, and next to him Velimir Kesić from Banja Luka, who had a company in Vienna, two cars and an opinion about everything. Around midnight the talk turned to wives who sit at home while their husbands work in Austria for six months at a stretch. Velimir said there was no woman who would wait that long. Everyone laughed except Berin. "Mine waits," he said.
"They all wait," said Velimir, "until somebody comes along who has the time." Berin put down his glass. Velimir proposed a bet: twenty thousand euros of his against five thousand of Berin's that within two months he would bring him proof that Zinka was not what Berin thought she was. Berin held out his hand across the table, and the men from the other two firms were witnesses. I looked into my mineral water. I knew Zinka. She was a licensed pharmacist at a pharmacy on Ferhadija, she spoke softly, and whenever Berin sent me to pick her up, she always brought me a coffee out to the car, because she knew I did not like going in.
Velimir went to Sarajevo the first week. Three times he walked into her pharmacy, bought vitamins and talked about Vienna. Zinka handed him his change and said "goodbye" before he could finish his sentence. When he understood he would get no further across the counter, he looked for another way. The apartment in Vratnik was cleaned on Thursdays by Fehima, a woman from an agency, while Zinka was at work. Velimir gave her five hundred marks and said he wanted to buy an apartment in the same building, so he would just like to see the layout of the rooms. Fehima decided to believe him. She let him in and went out onto the balcony.
In twenty minutes Velimir photographed the bedroom: the watercolor of the Štrbački buk waterfall above the bed, painted by Zinka's father, the pillow with embroidered initials, the note tucked into the frame of the mirror. To pass the time, Fehima told him how the lady slept with the radio on, always tuned to the same station, because silence weighed on her ever since her husband had gone to Austria. And from a box on the dresser Velimir took an old silver bracelet, which Zinka had inherited from her grandmother, with an inscription on the inside.
Five days before the deadline they sat down again at the Zlatni Klas. Velimir put his phone on the table and slowly swiped through the pictures, as if he were showing a house for sale. Berin recognized the watercolor and went pale. Velimir told him about the radio, about the station, about how she could not fall asleep in silence. Then he took the bracelet out of his pocket and laid it next to Berin's glass. Berin asked nothing. The next day he transferred five thousand euros, and he ordered me to go to Sarajevo, pack Zinka's things, drive her to her mother's in Bihać and call a locksmith. "I will not hear her voice," he said. "Not even on the phone."
Zinka opened the door to me with flour on her hands, because she was rolling out dough for a pita. I told her everything, just as I had heard it. She did not cry. She asked only what exactly Velimir had shown Berin. I listed it: the picture, the radio, the bracelet. She went to the dresser, opened the box and stared for a long time at the empty hollow in the velvet. Then she sat down on the bed and said one word: "Thursday." It took me half the drive to Bihać to understand what she meant.
Near Bosanska Krupa she asked me to stop. "Don't take me to my mother's," she said. "She will cry, and I have no time for crying." She asked whether I had anyone in Vienna. I gave her the address of my sister in Simmering, who at the time cleaned offices, Leitner Bau among them. I told Berin that Zinka was at her mother's and did not want to talk. It was the first time in eleven years that I had lied to him, and it did not sting.
What follows I know from my sister and from Zinka, later. Austria did not recognize her diploma overnight, so through my sister she got a job in the office of Leitner Bau, under her maiden name, which nobody at the firm connected with Berin. Mrs. Gertrud Leitner, a woman of sixty who had inherited the company from her father and trusted no one, gave her the key to the archive within two months. Zinka was precise, was never late and never asked anything she did not need to. Velimir's file was in the archive too.
In November she took the bus to Sarajevo for two days. She found Fehima in Hrasno, in an apartment on the eighth floor. Fehima cried, made coffee and cried again, and then on a sheet torn from a notebook she wrote down what had happened that Thursday and signed it with her full name. From a drawer she took an envelope with five hundred marks, untouched, and pushed it across the table. Zinka took it, even though she did not need the money. She said it was evidence, not money.
She saw the bracelet in December, at a reception Leitner Bau gave for its subcontractors. Velimir's girlfriend was wearing it, a young woman in a green dress, on her left wrist. Velimir did not recognize Zinka: he looked only at people he needed something from. Zinka went up to the girlfriend and told her she had a lovely bracelet. "Velimir brought it for me from Sarajevo," the young woman said, pleased. "He says he won it on a bet." Zinka smiled and went to Mrs. Leitner's office. She talked for half an hour. Mrs. Leitner listened to her without a word and then said, "We sign the hospital contracts in January. Invite them both to dinner."
I drove Berin to that dinner. He had lost weight, he wore the same suit as in June, and he did not say a word in the car. They sat in a restaurant in Vienna's first district, Mrs. Leitner at the head of the table, Velimir with his girlfriend and the bracelet, Berin across from them. Over dessert Mrs. Leitner said she had heard about a famous bet and asked Velimir to tell it. Velimir told it well, with jokes and without names, and looked at Berin. Berin looked at the tablecloth.
That was when Zinka came in from the next room, a folder under her arm. Berin stood up so suddenly that he knocked over his chair. Zinka did not look at him. She asked the young woman to read what was written on the inside of the bracelet. The young woman took it off, turned it toward the light and read aloud: "For Zinka, so she keeps it safe. Nana, 1999." Velimir laughed and said she had given it to him herself. Then Zinka laid Fehima's statement and the envelope in front of Mrs. Leitner. "This is the five hundred marks you gave the cleaning woman to let you into my apartment while I was at work," she said. "She gave it back. And she wrote down why."
Mrs. Leitner read the statement, closed the folder and told Velimir, in German, calmly, that his firm would not be working on the hospital, not now and not later. Velimir walked out without his coat. The young woman set the bracelet down next to Zinka's plate and went after him, though not very fast. Berin tried to say something. Zinka put the bracelet on her wrist and only then looked at him. "Velimir owes you twenty thousand," she said. "You will pay it to me. That is the price of five months in which you never asked me anything."
She did not go back to Vratnik that winter. With that money she paid to have her diploma recognized, and in March she started work at a pharmacy in Favoriten. Every Saturday Berin had me drive him to that pharmacy, and he bought things he did not need: hand cream, bandages, vitamins. In April she came out and sat down beside him on the bench in front of the pharmacy. In May she got into the car. I kept quiet, as I had learned to, and drove slowly.