Two Men, One Name

Jakov Kardum had two lives and one brother who did not exist. Old Kardum, who had raised him, had left him in trust a house in Fojnica and his granddaughter Lucija, and there Jakov was a serious man of thirty-four who paid his bills on time. Whenever Fojnica bored him, he would say he had to go to Sarajevo, because his younger brother Iskren had once again run up a debt, scratched someone's car, or gotten engaged to the wrong woman. In Sarajevo he then introduced himself as Iskren. There he had an apartment, friends, and, as of recently, a woman he wanted to marry.

Only one man knew about Iskren, and by accident. Alen Mandić, a friend from university, picked up Jakov's phone one evening to check the time and read the message on the screen: "Uncle Jakov, when are you coming? Mrs. Pajić is making me do German again. Lucija." "Who is Jakov?" asked Alen. "And who is Lucija?" Jakov had to confess everything, and Alen was delighted, because he had the very same system himself. His was called Cousin Bekir from Tešanj, eternally ill, and Bekir took a turn for the worse every time Aunt Ljubica Bracanović invited Alen to Sunday lunch. Alen called it going to see Bekir.

That Saturday Aunt Ljubica came to Alen's for coffee with her daughter Melisa, and Alen, as agreed, led his aunt into the kitchen to show her his new coffee machine. Jakov stayed in the living room with Melisa and proposed before the machine had started to hum. Melisa said yes at once. "Do you know why?" she said. "Ever since I was a little girl I have known I would marry a man called Iskren. That name cannot lie." Jakov cleared his throat. "And if my name were, say, Jakov?" Melisa frowned. "Jakov is a name for a man who returns borrowed books on time. No. I would not marry a Jakov."

Aunt Ljubica came back from the kitchen and sat down to examine her future son-in-law. She asked about his job, his salary, his apartment, and she was satisfied right up until she came to his parents. Jakov decided that here, at least, he would be honest. He had never known his parents, he said. In September 1990 he had been found as a baby in a travel bag from the cloakroom of the Sarajevo railway station. Old Kardum had checked his suitcase that day, and at the counter they had given him back someone else's bag by mistake, with a child in it. Aunt Ljubica stood up and put on her coat. "My daughter is not marrying into a cloakroom," she said. "Find your parents, sir. Or at least one of them, by the end of the year." In the hallway Melisa managed to memorize the address in Fojnica. Alen, who had been listening behind the door, memorized it as well.

In Fojnica, Lucija sat in the garden with a German grammar and did not study. Mrs. Zora Pajić, a retired teacher who was preparing her for an exam, read her the rules on grammatical cases and glanced toward the gate every five minutes, because at that hour every day Mr. Čubelić, head of the registry office at the municipality, walked past. Lucija was twenty and had a secret: in a notebook with pink covers she had been engaged for three months to her uncle's brother Iskren, whom she had never seen. In the notebook they had even broken it off once, out of jealousy, and then made up. A man who goes wrong so beautifully, she would say, must be more interesting than a man who pays the electric bill.

That afternoon a young man with a backpack rang at the gate and introduced himself as Iskren Kardum, Jakov's brother. Lucija dropped her grammar book. Within ten minutes Alen learned that he was engaged, that he had been forgiven, and that he had promised to mend his ways. He did not protest. For the first time in his life he wanted something to be true. And as they walked down to the river, Lucija told him the same thing he had already heard once in Sarajevo: that she could never love a man who was not called Iskren. "Not even an Alen?" he asked carefully. "Alen?" she laughed. "Alen is a name for a hairdresser."

Toward evening Jakov arrived, in a black suit and with a mournful face, determined to finish with Iskren once and for all. He gathered the household in the living room and announced that his brother had passed away in Vienna, suddenly, of pneumonia. Mrs. Pajić crossed herself, and Lucija began to shout for joy, because Iskren, she said, was alive and well and at that very moment eating fritters in the kitchen. Alen appeared in the doorway with a plate in his hand. "Brother," he said, and spread his arms. Jakov embraced him the way you embrace a man you would much rather send to Vienna.

Later they quarreled in the kitchen in whispers. Jakov demanded that Alen leave immediately. Alen said he could not, because he was engaged, and besides, he had not finished the fritters. Then, without saying so to each other, both of them went to the municipality. Mr. Čubelić received them half an hour apart, each with the same form for a change of personal name, and told each of them it was a rare and beautiful decision. Fojnica had not had a single Iskren for as long as he had worked there.

The next day Melisa arrived in Fojnica too, by bus, unannounced. Mrs. Pajić seated her in the garden with Lucija, and for the first ten minutes the two young women liked each other very much. Then Melisa mentioned that she was engaged to Iskren Kardum. Lucija put down her cup and said that was impossible, because she was the one engaged to Iskren Kardum, and since July, as it said in the notebook. Melisa said she had it on her phone, with a date. When the men came out into the garden, Lucija pointed at Jakov: "That is my Uncle Jakov." Melisa pointed at Alen: "That is my cousin Alen." They looked at each other, linked arms, and went into the house. The door closed quietly, and that was worse than slamming.

The men confessed through the door. Jakov said he had already filed a request to change his name. Alen said he had too. The door opened a hand's width. "Both of you?" asked Melisa. "At the municipality?" asked Lucija. That, they admitted, was brave, but it still left the question of parents, and the question of parents arrived at five in the afternoon, in a white taxi from Sarajevo, in the person of Aunt Ljubica.

Aunt Ljubica had come for her daughter and refused to sit down. She gave her consent for Alen and Lucija as soon as she heard that Lucija's grandfather had left her a house in Fojnica and an apartment in Split. Jakov, as guardian, refused to give his until the aunt agreed to him and Melisa. They were all standing in the living room like pieces on a chessboard when Aunt Ljubica caught sight of Mrs. Pajić, who was carrying in the coffee. The tray rattled. "Zora," said Aunt Ljubica, in a voice that made even those who were already standing straighten up. "Where is the child?"

Mrs. Pajić sat down for the first time that day. In September 1990 she had worked as a nanny for Ljubica's sister Nevenka and her husband, Dr. Mandić. One morning she went out with the baby in the stroller and with a bag in which she carried the manuscript of her romance novel, in three notebooks. She was absent-minded, as women who write tend to be. She put the manuscript in the stroller and the baby in the bag, and checked the bag at the station cloakroom. The stroller was later found near the National Museum, with the novel in it, and out of shame she moved to Fojnica and never wrote again.

Without a word Jakov ran upstairs. They could hear him moving wardrobes and turning over boxes. He came back with an old brown bag with a broken zipper, the initials Z. P., and a faded sticker of Vučko from the Olympics. Mrs. Pajić recognized it before he had set it down. "My bag," she said. "I have been looking for it for more than thirty years." Jakov embraced her and said, "Mother." "Mr. Kardum," she said, "I am not married." Aunt Ljubica parted them with her umbrella. "You are my sister's son," she told Jakov. "Alen's older brother."

Alen sat down on the floor. Melisa asked only one thing: what they had called him. Aunt Ljubica could not remember. They had given him his father's name, she said, but she had been in Vienna that year, and she remembered everything by the weather, not by the people. Jakov opened the glass cabinet of old Kardum, who had collected directories, and took out the Directory of Sarajevo Physicians for 1989. He leafed through to the letter M and read aloud, then once more, more quietly: "Mandić, Dr. Iskren, internist." Melisa kissed him in front of everyone. "I knew it," she said.

Mr. Čubelić, who had just then come to bring Mrs. Pajić flowers, stopped in the doorway with two forms in his hand. "I must reject one request," he said. "The gentleman is already Iskren." Alen reached for the other one. "Mine stands." Lucija lowered his hand. "Leave it," she said. "Alen is a lovely enough name for me. Just don't go to see Bekir anymore." "Bekir got better this morning," said Alen. "Completely."