Blagoje Lazić from Dvorovi had never in his life thrown away anything that might come in handy. In his shed he kept jars full of screws, little coils of wire, the rubber rings from ajvar jars, and twine, twine above all, because in Semberija twine ties up everything: tomatoes, sacks, the gate when a hinge breaks. His wife Zorka said that one day they would bury him with his pockets full. He answered that at least he would have something to tie the coffin with.
That Saturday in October he set off for the market in Bijeljina before dawn, in his old Golf with a trailer full of potatoes and cabbage. The market was already full. Women from Janja were stacking kajmak in plastic tubs, men from Popovi were unloading sacks of peppers, because it was the last week of ajvar season, and an accordion was playing from one of the kiosks, too loud for that hour of the day. In the parking lot behind the stalls, while he was unloading, Blagoje saw on the asphalt a piece of red twine, the kind used for baling hay, maybe a yard long. He bent down, with difficulty, because his knees had long stopped obeying him, picked it up, wound it around his fingers, and put it in his jacket pocket. When he straightened up, he saw that Novak Petković was watching him from his honey stall.
Fifteen years earlier Novak had borrowed his trailer and returned it with a cracked axle, and then sworn it had been cracked before. Since then they had greeted each other only at funerals. Blagoje was ashamed that Novak of all people had seen him stoop for a piece of twine like a beggar, so he kept looking at the asphalt a little longer, as if searching for something he had dropped, and only then went to his stall.
Around ten o'clock the phones began to buzz. In the Facebook group Bijeljina Live someone had posted: lost, a brown leather wallet near the market, with one thousand eight hundred marks inside, an ID card and a driver's license in the name of Slobodan Simeunović from Patkovača, reward for the finder. Gojko, the market manager, read it over the loudspeaker too, between two songs. The sellers looked under their crates, the shoppers at the ground, and for an hour the whole market walked bent over.
At noon Blagoje was eating bean stew at the Tezga snack bar when a young policeman came in. "Lazić, Blagoje? Come with me to the management office." In the office were Gojko, a big man in a fleece vest, red in the face, who turned out to be Slobodan, and Novak, leaning against the window with his hands in his pockets. "Mr. Petković says he saw you this morning picking up a wallet in the parking lot," said the policeman.
"Me? A wallet?" Blagoje laughed, and then saw that no one else was laughing. Gojko turned the monitor toward him. The camera above the parking lot filmed in a blur, and a truck blocked half the picture. In the other half a small gray figure bent down, picked something up, and put it in his pocket. "Is that you?" "It is. But this is what I picked up." He took out the red twine. Slobodan snorted. Gojko looked at the ceiling. "Twine," said the policeman. "Twine," said Blagoje. "Who bends down for twine?" asked Slobodan. "I do," said Blagoje, and it was the worst answer he could have given, though it was the truest. "If I had taken a wallet, would I have stood in the parking lot staring at the ground while he watched me?" "That's exactly why you were staring," said Novak.
He swore on his grandchildren, on his late mother, and on the icon of Saint Nicholas that hung in his room. He turned out his pockets: twine, a handkerchief, twenty-three marks, a screw, and a receipt for seed potatoes. The policeman wrote up a report and said he could go, but that he should get in touch if he remembered anything. At the door Novak said, to no one in particular, "What do I know. I only said what I saw."
By the time Blagoje got back to his stall, the clip was already on Facebook. Gojko's nephew had filmed the monitor with his phone, and under the clip someone had written, "Here's who found the wallet. Reward for the finder, ha ha." By evening there were four hundred comments. His grandson Stefan read them aloud in the kitchen until Zorka took the phone away from him. Some wrote shame on him, at his age. Others wrote that they knew him and he was not like that. One wrote only, "Twine. Well done." That night Blagoje did not sleep. He kept getting up, turning on the kitchen light, and looking at the twine on the table, as if it might say something.
On Sunday afternoon the wallet turned up. Bosiljka from Ostojićevo, who sold eggs at the market, found it at home, under the egg cartons, when she was stacking them in the cellar. Someone had dropped it onto her stall. She was deaf in one ear and had never been on Facebook, so she knew nothing about the whole affair until her son showed her. She took it to the police with her son, and every mark was in it. Slobodan posted his thanks in the group. On Monday Blagoje put on a clean shirt and went to the market, so people could see him.
People patted him on the shoulder. "There, you see, it all worked out." He told everyone the story of the twine, and everyone nodded. "Oh, sure, sure, Blagoje." At his stall Novak said loudly to a customer, "A clever man. He takes it, and when he sees he was filmed, he returns it through the old woman from Ostojićevo. And he still comes out looking honest." On Facebook they wrote the same thing, only shorter. Someone wrote that Bosiljka was his kuma. She was not. Blagoje went over to Novak's stall. "Tell them you were mistaken." Novak was stacking jars of honey into a pyramid and did not raise his head. "I wasn't mistaken. I saw you bend down and put something in your pocket. That's the truth, and I'll tell it to anyone who asks." Blagoje had no answer, because that was the truth too.
Blagoje began explaining. He explained to the man at the gas station, to the women in line at the health center, to people at the bus stop, to a cousin at a slava. He asked Stefan to write a post and photographed the twine next to a tape measure, so people could see how long it was. The post got a thousand likes and became a joke. For weeks, under every notice about something lost in Bijeljina, a dog, keys, or a ring, someone would put up a photo of a piece of twine. Children at the market asked him, "Grandpa, did you find the twine?" The more he explained, the longer his story grew, and the longer it grew, the more it sounded like a lie. He added the truck, the camera angle, his knees, and the weight of a wallet he had never touched.
In November he stopped going to the market. The potatoes in the cellar sprouted. He slept little. At night Zorka would find him in the kitchen, the twine on the table, whispering the sentences he would say to someone the next day. "Let it go, Blagoje, it will pass." "It won't pass until they understand." He lost so much weight that his jacket hung on him as if on a hanger.
In December he went to see a doctor in Bijeljina and waited at the bus station for the bus to Dvorovi. Beside him sat a young woman with a suitcase, waiting for the bus to Tuzla. On the suitcase she had a sticker from some university in Graz. It was cold, so he offered her a piece of candy, and then, without asking, he began. He told her everything from the beginning: the twine, Novak, the trailer back in 2009, the camera, Bosiljka and the eggs. He took out the twine and laid it on her palm. She listened and warmed her hands on a paper cup of tea. When he had finished, she said, "I believe you."
Blagoje stared at her. No one had said that to him since October. "Why?" he asked. She shrugged. "Well, I don't know you. Why would I think you're lying?" For a while he was silent. Then he leaned toward her. "Wait. You didn't hear the part about the camera properly." And he began again, from the beginning. The bus to Tuzla came, stood for a while, and left. Blagoje did not see it. She did, and she did not get up.