An hour later, Zdravko and Rusim re-emerged on ul. Shesti Septemvri. People were walking by in the sunshine. It was the kind of day you waited a whole year for. Where the light smelled of hunger, and the hunger smelt of newly printed notes.
“You want something to eat?” Zdravko asked. But Rusim was already walking across the street.
They sat down at a table at Paulo’s halfway along the wall. The wall was white gypsum plaster and the table marble and round with ornate iron legs. A waiter brought water and a menu and a wine list.
“Bring us two sangrias. Sorry. Change that. Just one,” said Rusim. “And what else?” He turned to Zdravko.
“Decaf.”
“Decaf?”
“Decaf.”
Rusim looked at the waiter. The waiter was looking at the water. “Decaf,” Rusim repeated. The waiter walked away. Rusim turned back to Zdravko and began pouring two glasses of water.
“How are your kids?” Zdravko asked.
“Running round. Running round.”
“Shit. Hungarians have the weirdest fucking names,” said Zdravko. “I mean how do they make up their names? It’s like: my name’s John but I’m gonna spell it backwards. Then I’m gonna stick in an extra G which is pronounced like a D.”
Rusim shrugged. “Gomenko hasn’t changed.”
“You’ve been away too long. He’s now got a picture of himself on his screen saver. Flathead’s the asshole he always was,” Zdravko said.
Rusim sipped on his water. “We’ve both been away. And so, mister non drinker. How long’s that been going on?”
“Two years about.”
“And how is it?”
“I feel pretty good. A lot better than what I did two years ago,” said Zdravko.
“What happened then?”
“I was depressed. I was a fictional character in someone else’s cesspit novel. Plus I was lying to my wife about my drinking, you know? And I couldn’t sleep. I needed help so I went and got some. One day my counsellor said to me ‘you know you’re gonna have to stop drinking?’ I thought: fuck, you know, why didn’t I think of that? Anyway, so I stopped drinking. I took three months off and went on sleeping pills and whatever else they gave me. After a while, I went back to work.”
Rusim was silent.
“They’ve roped you back in? I thought you were done for good,” said Zdravko.
“Lower Malina. Lower Malina,” Rusim looked up. “It’s like a song.”
“Yeah. I’ve got a splitting headache.”
For some reason, Rusim laughed, and for some reason that made Zdravko think of whales.
“I once met a guy who’d made a proper scientific study of assholes,” Rusim said in relation to nothing. “Lucky for this guy, his whole town was full of them. He had them all categorised, folderised, like a university thesis. Every asshole got to get his photograph taken. Some small town by the sea, whatever it was. He showed it to me. Very impressive. This guy Dimcho’s theory was that the isolation of the place, the abundance of stones, the clean rivers, the favourable climate, and an insufficient gene pool had combined to produce an entire town of fuckwits. It was either that, he said, or some asshole from outer space had come down and mated with the locals.”
Zdravko smiled. “Ten years is a long fucking time, Rusim. It’s good to see you.”
The decaf and sangria arrived. They waited for the waiter to leave.
“It’s good to see you too,” said Rusim. “Nazdrave,” he said, clinking the foot of his glass against the decaf sitting on the table. “So where are we?”
“We were talking about jail breaks. And a rich guy who steals horses,” said Zdravko raising his cup midair.
Rusim took a too big mouthful of sangria.
“And an alkie drinking decaf,” added Zdravko admiring his decaf. Rusim too looked at the cup. It was a normal looking white coffee cup if you happened to be a decaf guy.
“What we’ve got is not a lot,” said Rusim.
“What we’ve got is a yellow wind,” said Zdravko.
