Fikret Bećirović had been making barrels for thirty years in a workshop below Konjic, not far from the Neretva, and he knew exactly what each one was worth. Only about one of them would he not hear a word. The old two hundred liter oak barrel had stood by the stove since winter, crooked at the waist, with a salt stain on the bottom. He called it the tomb. Sixty marks, he said, and that would be a gift, and what a man had made badly himself was not sold, because that was a shame on the whole house.
Fadila thought otherwise. The barrel took up half the workshop, and Galib Hubijar, a baker from Jablanica, wanted just such a one for pickled cabbage and was offering a hundred and fifty marks. On Tuesday Fikret said he was going to Mostar for planks and would not be back until evening. As soon as his bus had disappeared behind the bridge, Fadila called Galib.
He came with a tape measure in his hand and a battery lamp, looked the barrel over from every side, and said he would like to look inside too. He had barely slid in headfirst through the opening when a key turned in the door. Fikret stood on the threshold, pale and wet from the rain. The bus had broken down near Ostrožac, so he had come back by train.
"Why is a lamp lit inside the barrel?" he asked.
Fadila did not blink. "It's good you came," she said. "I have sold the tomb."
"To whom?"
"To the man who is inside it right now, checking that it's sound. A hundred and fifty marks, Fikret. A hundred and fifty, for a barrel you would not give away for sixty."
Fikret was speechless at first, and then he went red, because he did not know what to think: either he had been wrong for a whole year, or someone was making a fool of him. A muffled voice came out of the barrel. "Master, it is a sound barrel. Only that salt stain on the bottom, I would like to see it cleaned before I pay. I don't carry home one like that."
"A stain," Fikret repeated, offended. "My barrel has a stain."
"It has, but if the master doesn't scrape it off, I'm going to someone else."
Fadila folded her hands to hide a smile. Fikret was a man who could let a customer go at a loss, but who would never let anyone say his work was dirty. He took the scraper from the shelf, grumbling that he had never heard of such an insult, and told Galib to come out, because he would do it himself. Galib came out carefully, like a man who had never bent himself into a barrel before, shook the flour off his sleeves, and greeted Fikret as though they were meeting for the first time.
Fikret crawled in up to his waist. Galib held the lamp and Fadila held the barrel so it would not rock. The scraper squealed, salt gathered in his palm, and from inside Fikret explained that he had found oak like that only once in his life and it was a pity it had lost its shine.
"A hundred and fifty?" he asked from the bottom.
"A hundred and fifty," said Galib, and counted the notes into Fadila's hand, because that was the easiest way. Together they lifted the barrel onto a handcart, and Galib wheeled it down the street toward Jablanica.
Fikret stood in the doorway and watched him go. For the first time in a whole year it seemed to him that there was room in the workshop. Fadila put the money in her apron pocket.
"Fadila," he said quietly, "and that barrel by the window, the one I blamed on the joint, how much would you ask for it?"
"Two hundred," she said, and Fikret nodded.