In Mostar everyone knows that jealousy is not reported to the police. Jealousy is taken to the hairdresser, to a godmother or a sister, but never to the police. Dubravka Bevanda knew this the way every woman her age knew it, and yet on Thursday, at eleven at night, she called Inspector Marinko, whom she had gone to high school with, and told him that someone was breaking into her husband's company office, because a light could be seen through the blinds.
The company was called Podrum Bevanda, and it sold Herzegovinian wine to restaurants from Neum to Sarajevo. Božo Bevanda was sixty, with gray hair he combed straight back and a smile that made waitresses forget to charge him for his coffee. For twenty-five years his books had been kept by Husnija Ćampara, a quiet man in a hat, who arrived every morning at twenty past seven and had never been off by a single mark. Five years ago Husnija had married Zarema, twenty years younger, and Božo, out of respect for Husnija, had given her a job at the cash desk. Since then Božo had been staying late at work. Inventory, he would say. End of quarter. The tax office.
Everything else was brought to Dubravka by Ružica, a hairdresser at a salon near Kujundžiluk, where Dubravka had her hair washed every Saturday, while the noise of the tourists on the Old Bridge came in through the open window. Ružica knew that Zarema was buying a new perfume, and which one. She knew that on Fridays Božo's car stood in the company parking lot until midnight. "I'm not telling you anything," Ružica would say as she dried her hair, "but if he were mine, I would catch him in the act. And let the whole of Mostar see." For months Dubravka said nothing. Then on Wednesday, as co-owner on paper, she used that paper for the first time: she called Husnija and asked him to drive twelve cases of wine on Thursday to a restaurant in Ilidža and to stay the night in Sarajevo, because the client was important and Božo was busy.
Husnija listened, his hat in his hand, and was silent for a long time. "I'll go, madam," he said at last. "I go where I am sent. But let me tell you something, as a man who has counted other people's money for twenty-five years. Every house has books that are not opened. Not because there is nothing in them, but because then something would have to be done." Dubravka told him she did not understand him. "You will," said Husnija, put on his hat and left.
The patrol arrived at ten past eleven. The office had not been broken into. Inside were Božo Bevanda without his jacket and Zarema Ćampara without her shoes, two glasses and an open bottle of žilavka on the folders of invoices. In the report Inspector Marinko, out of respect for their old school, wrote only that the owner and an employee had been found on the premises, who stated that they were doing inventory, and that no criminal offense had been established. But six police officers read the report, and in Mostar every police officer has someone he tells everything. On Friday at eight in the morning a news portal published the story under the headline "Night Inventory at a Well-Known Mostar Winery," and by ten the whole town knew the names as well. Dubravka had known everything since midnight, when Marinko called her and said wearily: "Dubravka, it wasn't a break-in." "I know," she said, and hung up.
Ružica called first. "Hats off, Dubravka," she said, and you could hear in her voice that she was already cutting someone's hair. "Everybody is talking about nothing else." Old Manda, who had cooked for the Bevandas for thirty years, said nothing until she had made the coffee. Then she set down the džezva. "You set the house on fire, child, to burn his fingers." Before noon Dubravka's brother Kruno arrived, a lawyer, red in the face, with a phone that would not stop ringing. The bank wanted a meeting. Two restaurants in Sarajevo had canceled their orders, because they did not want, they said, to be part of someone's soap opera. "Are you out of your mind?" Kruno asked. Božo sat in the armchair and stared at the floor.
Dubravka did not cry. She told her brother that she was saner than ever, and that for the first time in thirty years of marriage she had done something that was not for other people's eyes, but for her own. Only then did Božo raise his head. "We were working," he said, and it sounded so pitiful that even Kruno looked at him with disgust. "Working," said Dubravka. "With two glasses." From the kitchen came the sound of Manda washing the džezva, for a long time, as if she would never get it clean.
Husnija Ćampara arrived on the first bus from Sarajevo, at two in the afternoon, and came from the station straight to the Bevandas', with Zarema walking a step behind him, her eyes on the ground. He had read the news on the bus, near Jablanica. When he walked in, everyone stood up, as if a doctor had come in with bad test results. Manda withdrew to the kitchen door. Kruno stepped between him and Božo, because they expected Husnija to shout, or worse. Husnija did not shout. He sat down, rested his hat on his knee and asked Manda for a glass of water.
"Mrs. Dubravka," he said, "you know what a saz is. My father played one. A saz has strings, and a man, if you ask me, has three. The first is the polite one. On it you play good morning, how are you, thank you, goodbye, and because of it people like you. The second is the serious one. On it are work, loans, children, funerals, and because of it people respect you. And the third is the mad one. No one in his right mind touches it, because once it starts to play, nobody knows when the song will stop. For twenty-five years I played only on the first two. Last night, madam, with one phone call, you touched the third."
No one spoke. Husnija took a sip of water. "Now the whole of Mostar is waiting to see what Husnija Ćampara will do. If I do nothing, I am the fool who counts his boss's money while the boss does inventory with my wife. And if I do something, Mr. Bevanda, I keep your books. All the books. Including the ones the Tax Administration has never seen." Božo went pale. Kruno opened his mouth and closed it again.
"There is only one way to put everything back as it was," Husnija went on in the same calm voice. "That what was done last night was done not by an insulted woman, but by a sick one. If madam was suffering a nervous breakdown last night, then her call means nothing. Then there is no scandal, only misfortune. People will feel sorry for Mr. Bevanda, not for me. Zarema will come to the cash desk on Monday, I will come in at twenty past seven, and the books will stay closed." He looked at Dubravka almost tenderly. "It only has to be written down. On paper, with a stamp."
"I am not mad," said Dubravka. "I was right. Everybody knows I was right." "That is exactly why, madam," said Husnija. "A truth that everybody knows has to be mad. Otherwise someone would have to pay for it." Kruno was already on the phone. His best man, Dr. Šimunović, could write that it was a case of acute nervous exhaustion and recommend three months of rest at a clinic. "It is not madness, Dubravka," Kruno kept saying, covering the phone with his palm. "Half the managers in Mostar have it these days. The bank will calm down, the portal will publish a correction, the restaurants will come back."
Dubravka turned to her husband. "Božo. You too?" Božo Bevanda looked at the floor, then at Kruno, then at the floor again. "Only three months, Dubravka. You'll get some rest." She turned to Manda. The old woman wiped her hands on her apron for a long time. "Child," she said at last, "better three months of rest than thirty years in the courts." Only then did Dubravka understand that nobody in that room thought she was mad. They all simply thought it would be easier that way. Only Zarema, from the threshold, looked her straight in the eye, and in that look there was neither shame nor triumph, only tiredness.
Manda packed her suitcase, the same one Dubravka and Božo had taken to the seaside in Makarska thirty years ago. Kruno walked her out to the car. In the street the heat was melting the asphalt, and the neighbor women, who all knew by now, stood on their balconies. Ružica, who had come as soon as she heard a suitcase was being packed, stood on the corner with her phone in her hand. Halfway to the car Dubravka tore free of her brother's arm and shouted, toward the balconies, toward the whole street: "I am not mad! He is cheating on me with Husnija's wife, do you hear?" The neighbor women nodded, sadly and with understanding, and one said to another, loudly enough to be heard: "Poor Dubravka. And she used to be such a nice woman."
Husnija Ćampara stood in the doorway, his hat in his hand and Zarema behind him. "You see, Mr. Bevanda," he said quietly. "Now she can shout as much as she likes. Now it is easy." Then he put on his hat and laughed. He laughed long and loud, in the middle of the street, with a laugh nobody in Mostar laughs, and the neighbor women stopped nodding, and Kruno stopped with the car keys in his hand. None of them, not Božo, not Manda, not Zarema, knew which string was playing in that laugh.