Jadranka Jelić was not a woman who sought company, but company was fond of her. She sewed at home in Tuzla, on the ground floor with a yard and a walnut tree, and men were always finding reasons to stop by. Ilhan Ibišević, a young clerk at the municipality, brought trousers for hemming that he never wore. Ignjat Ivković, who owned the bakery down the street, brought kifle and words, the latter in greater quantity.
One Sunday, while her husband Janko was fishing at Modrac Lake, Ilhan sat at her table reading her his poem about autumn. It was a bad poem. Jadranka nodded and refilled his coffee, because he was kind and because she knew he would soon leave. There was a knock at the door. Through the curtain she saw Ignjat's coat and the box of kifle, and already he was smiling.
She had Ilhan in the pantry faster than he could close his notebook. "Quiet. Do not breathe," she whispered. Then she opened the door. Ignjat came in with the kifle, sat down on Ilhan's chair, still warm, and began telling her how remarkable her hands were. He looked at the two cups on the table and asked nothing, and she set a third in front of him. He was the kind of man who does not ask what might confuse him.
Then Janko's cap showed through the window at the gate. He had come back early because the fish would not bite. Jadranka stood with a kifla in her hand and had exactly as much time as it takes to cross from the table to the door. "Ignjat," she said, low and fast, "Janko is here. If he finds you with me, we are finished. Do not say anything, just leave with a loud shout: that you will find that scoundrel Ilhan, who spoke badly about your sister. Shout it and walk past him. Leave the rest to me."
Ignjat understood like a man who has waited his whole life for a part. He jumped up, buttoned his coat and burst into the hallway with a red face, just as Janko stepped into the house with a fishing rod in his hand. "Where is that scoundrel?" he thundered. "I will tell him what he thinks of my sister! Just let me find him!" He turned around, walked past Janko as if he did not see him, and went out through the yard, slamming the gate so hard the walnut tree shook.
Janko was left in the hallway with his rod and his cap and the look of a man who has come to the wrong film. "What is this?" "Ignjat," said Jadranka with a sigh. "He is chasing Ilhan. Apparently Ilhan said something ugly about his sister. Ilhan ran in here and hid in the pantry, poor thing. I did not know what to do." Janko lowered the rod. "Ilhan," he called, "come out, no one is chasing you anymore."
The pantry door opened with a creak. Ilhan came out pale, with a jar of peppers in one hand and his notebook in the other, looking like a man who would rather be anywhere else. "I did not," he said. "I never said anything about Ignjat's sister." "We will settle it," said Janko. "We are going to him, you and I. I have been making peace on this street for twenty years."
By evening Ilhan and Ignjat were shaking hands at Ignjat's table over coffee prepared by his sister, a woman who had never heard what was said about her. Janko sat there for an hour, proud of his work. Jadranka stayed home alone, long enough to gather three cups from the table and wash them one by one, then set them in a row on the shelf, side by side, as if they had always been there.