The Note Under the Wiper

The note was written in large block capitals, as if a child had written it, or someone afraid their handwriting would be recognized. Ramo found it on Saturday morning under the wiper of his old Golf, in front of the weekend house above Šabići, along with pine needles and dew. "I have loved you for a long time," it said. "You do not know it, and it is better that way. I watch you every Saturday while you chop wood. Tonight at ten, come to the old gazebo by the fountain. If you do not come, I will know I was foolish, and I will never trouble you again."

Ramo was fifty-four, with a bald head he smeared with sunscreen in summer and a belly his wife Bisera called government-issue. He worked at the tax administration in Sarajevo, and no one had ever written him anything but a reminder notice. He read the note three times, folded it in four and put it in his wallet, behind his ID card. That morning he chopped wood without a shirt, even though at seven o'clock on Bjelašnica it was as cold as October.

All day he guessed who it might be. Jasminka, the neighbor from the next weekend house, a widow who washed her car every morning and waved to him when he passed? The waitress at the restaurant in Babin Do, who last Saturday had brought him two sugar cubes with his coffee instead of one? Or the young woman who sold cheese at the turnoff for Lukomir and always called him "sir" in a tone she did not use with others? In each of them he found something that, if you thought about it properly, could mean love.

By noon he had shaved. He took out of the wardrobe the sweater Bisera had bought him for their thirtieth anniversary, which he had never worn because it was for special occasions. He asked her whether it suited him. Since morning Bisera had been carrying buckets, rags and a bottle of linseed oil around the house, and she told him it suited him and to get out of the doorway. For the third Saturday in a row she was trying to oil the old oak floor Ramo's father had laid. Every time, someone walked across it in shoes, Ramo or his brother, and she had to start all over again.

The brother's name was Reuf. In winter he worked as a ski instructor in Babin Do, in summer he did nothing at all and behaved as if the house were his. He was forty-one, with one divorce and a head of hair he was prouder of than anything. That afternoon Reuf was acting strange too. He brushed his teeth twice, asked Bisera for the hair dryer, and asked Ramo, quite casually, whether he still had that cologne the kids had brought him from Vienna. Ramo said it had been used up long ago, and went to shave once more.

At dinner both of them kept quiet and watched the clock above the stove. Bisera brought out a potato pie and said that after dinner she did not want to see anyone in the house for at least two hours, because she was oiling the floor. Ramo said he was going out for a little walk anyway, for his digestion. Reuf said he would go out too, to look at the stars, because up here you could see them best. "You have never looked at a star in your life," said Ramo. "And you have never taken a walk for your digestion," said Reuf. Bisera said it was all the same to her, as long as they went.

The gazebo by the fountain was old and wooden, with a bench into which the children from the surrounding weekend houses had carved their initials for years. Ramo arrived ten minutes before ten, out of breath from the climb, in his special-occasion sweater and a cloud of that same cologne. Someone was already sitting on the bench in the dark. Ramo stopped, straightened his sweater and cleared his throat the way a man does when he does not want to frighten anyone. The person on the bench switched on a phone flashlight, and Ramo saw his brother's hair.

"What are you doing here?" Ramo asked. "Looking at the stars." "Through the roof?" Reuf said he had been here first and it would only be fair for Ramo to leave. Ramo said he was older and married, and that as such the gazebo belonged to him by the nature of things. "Exactly because you are married," said Reuf, "you should be at home." "At home the floor is being oiled." They sat down at opposite ends of the bench and waited for the other to leave. Nobody left.

Half an hour went by. The cold came down from the mountain, and the mosquitoes, which should not have existed at that altitude, did not know it. Reuf said Ramo was sitting there purely out of spite. Ramo said he was waiting for someone important. "So am I," said Reuf. "Someone who has loved me for a long time." Ramo froze. Slowly he took out his wallet, pulled the folded paper from behind his ID card and handed it to his brother. Reuf took his own out of his jacket pocket.

By the light of the phone they compared them. The same letters, the same words, the same gazebo, the same hour. Only one line was different: Ramo's said she watched him chop wood, and Reuf's that she watched him drink coffee on the terrace and comb his hair. For a long time they said nothing. Then Reuf said it had to be Jasminka, because she was a widow and had time. Ramo said Jasminka only ever wrote Viber messages, and those without a single comma. They argued a little longer about which of the two of them she had noticed first, and then a fine mountain rain began, and each of them set off home along his own side of the road.

The house was warm and smelled of oil. The floor shone as it had not since their father laid it. Bisera was sitting on the stairs to the attic, in her socks, with a cup of tea, and she did not let them past the doormat. "Don't step on it," she said. "It is drying until midnight." Ramo stood in the doorway in his wet sweater. Reuf stood behind him. Bisera looked at the two of them, then at the sweater, then at Reuf's hair, and started laughing so hard she had to set her cup down on the step.

"I wrote them," she said when she caught her breath. "Three Saturdays in a row I have told you to get out of the house, and ten minutes later you are back, walking across the floor like it is a market square. I needed something that would keep you outside for two hours. Now I know what it is." Ramo said it had been ugly of her. Bisera said what was ugly was watching him shave for the second time. Reuf asked why she had written to him that he combed his hair. "Because you comb your hair," she said.

That night the brothers slept on the terrace, in sleeping bags, because nobody was allowed to step on the floor until morning. Ramo could not fall asleep for a long time. At around one in the morning he took out his wallet, pulled the note from behind his ID card, and read it once more by the light of his phone. Then he put it back in the same place. In the morning a new piece of paper was waiting for him under the wiper of the Golf, in the same large letters: NEXT SATURDAY, WINDOWS. COME AT TEN.