would seem a rude and transparent lie. I smiled and nodded.
“Good,” Josip said. “Tomorrow. But we shall speak no more of this today. Tomorrow is for business, and today is for living!”
We clinked our beers together again. I looked over at Talena; she and Saskia stood next to one another, ignoring the rest of the world, talking fast and laughing, making up for so much lost time. Josip introduced me to the rest of the fifteen Mostar Tigers, whose names never made it past my short-term memory. They were as scary as Dragan. Three of them were missing limbs, and two others walked with pronounced limps. Even the ones who didn’t have visible scars, even the several who were of the lean fine-chiseled-features almost-effeminate type that seemed to be grown en masse in a pretty-boy factory somewhere in the Balkans, all of them had the flat, arrogant demeanor of men who are casually comfortable inflicting and receiving violence.
Woody Allen once said that every time he met a woman on some level he was thinking about having sex with her. Whenever two men meet, on some level they are both thinking:
could I take him? If it comes down to him or me, in a fight, who wins?
Usually there is some element of doubt in the answer. Here there was none. Against any one of them I would lose. The Mostar Tigers were friendly, and at that point they were still mostly quiet and reserved, but like Sinisa’s lieutenants last night, the woman and the uber-thug, they had the feral aura of wild animals. Carnivores.
I noticed that several of them looked towards Talena more often than necessary, and let their gazes linger. I was used to Talena attracting attention; she was tall and slender and startlingly pretty, even in khaki cargo pants and black T-shirt. But for the first time I felt irrationally threatened by it, as if she might decide on the spur of the moment to replace me with one of the pretty-boy Tigers, or one of them might challenge me to a duel for her.
The group dynamics of the Tigers made it clear that Dragan was their leader. The others came to talk to him. They asked questions and he answered. On the rare occasions when he initiated conversation, those around him immediately fell silent and listened intently.
Well
, I thought,
at least Saskia got the alpha thug
.
The party went on all day and into the night. I didn’t enjoy it. I was tired, and hot, and I wasn’t accustomed to drinking as early or as much as the Bosnians, and by midafternoon I was wobbly and exhausted. I’m not a people person to begin with, I’m uncomfortable in big groups, quickly bored by small talk, uncertain of the appropriate conversational protocols, although in Mostar that wasn’t a big deal as the only people I could communicate with were Josip and Talena. I was actually glad that the language barrier walled me off from everyone else. I wasn’t used to being at parties without Talena by my side. Here, she and Saskia were inseparable and didn’t want company, and I couldn’t blame them, but it made me feel like I was an awkward teenager again, lounging around a party looking for someone to talk to, pretending I wasn’t bored and embarrassed by my solitude. I passed my time by drinking more beer, which didn’t help. And in addition to my usual party insecurity I had to swallow the angry contempt with which I responded to the all-too-common manifestations of the endlessly deep vein of bloodcurdling hatred and bigotry that lay beneath Bosnia’s unconvincing veneer of civilization.
And, I didn’t want to think about this and walled it off, but the more I drank the more my awful understanding began to seep in through the cracks and around the edges, I had to start dealing with the conscious knowledge that Talena and I were through. She was the only good thing in my life, and I was about to lose her forever. I tried to tell myself that maybe this would be the best thing for me. Maybe, like the US economy, like Bosnia
“Good,” Josip said. “Tomorrow. But we shall speak no more of this today. Tomorrow is for business, and today is for living!”
We clinked our beers together again. I looked over at Talena; she and Saskia stood next to one another, ignoring the rest of the world, talking fast and laughing, making up for so much lost time. Josip introduced me to the rest of the fifteen Mostar Tigers, whose names never made it past my short-term memory. They were as scary as Dragan. Three of them were missing limbs, and two others walked with pronounced limps. Even the ones who didn’t have visible scars, even the several who were of the lean fine-chiseled-features almost-effeminate type that seemed to be grown en masse in a pretty-boy factory somewhere in the Balkans, all of them had the flat, arrogant demeanor of men who are casually comfortable inflicting and receiving violence.
Woody Allen once said that every time he met a woman on some level he was thinking about having sex with her. Whenever two men meet, on some level they are both thinking:
could I take him? If it comes down to him or me, in a fight, who wins?
Usually there is some element of doubt in the answer. Here there was none. Against any one of them I would lose. The Mostar Tigers were friendly, and at that point they were still mostly quiet and reserved, but like Sinisa’s lieutenants last night, the woman and the uber-thug, they had the feral aura of wild animals. Carnivores.
I noticed that several of them looked towards Talena more often than necessary, and let their gazes linger. I was used to Talena attracting attention; she was tall and slender and startlingly pretty, even in khaki cargo pants and black T-shirt. But for the first time I felt irrationally threatened by it, as if she might decide on the spur of the moment to replace me with one of the pretty-boy Tigers, or one of them might challenge me to a duel for her.
The group dynamics of the Tigers made it clear that Dragan was their leader. The others came to talk to him. They asked questions and he answered. On the rare occasions when he initiated conversation, those around him immediately fell silent and listened intently.
Well
, I thought,
at least Saskia got the alpha thug
.
The party went on all day and into the night. I didn’t enjoy it. I was tired, and hot, and I wasn’t accustomed to drinking as early or as much as the Bosnians, and by midafternoon I was wobbly and exhausted. I’m not a people person to begin with, I’m uncomfortable in big groups, quickly bored by small talk, uncertain of the appropriate conversational protocols, although in Mostar that wasn’t a big deal as the only people I could communicate with were Josip and Talena. I was actually glad that the language barrier walled me off from everyone else. I wasn’t used to being at parties without Talena by my side. Here, she and Saskia were inseparable and didn’t want company, and I couldn’t blame them, but it made me feel like I was an awkward teenager again, lounging around a party looking for someone to talk to, pretending I wasn’t bored and embarrassed by my solitude. I passed my time by drinking more beer, which didn’t help. And in addition to my usual party insecurity I had to swallow the angry contempt with which I responded to the all-too-common manifestations of the endlessly deep vein of bloodcurdling hatred and bigotry that lay beneath Bosnia’s unconvincing veneer of civilization.
And, I didn’t want to think about this and walled it off, but the more I drank the more my awful understanding began to seep in through the cracks and around the edges, I had to start dealing with the conscious knowledge that Talena and I were through. She was the only good thing in my life, and I was about to lose her forever. I tried to tell myself that maybe this would be the best thing for me. Maybe, like the US economy, like Bosnia
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