* * *

Yara returns from her outing late in the afternoon; Mirna and I are both back from work. As soon as Yara comes through the door, she asks, “What happened? What did you do to Jasna?”

“How did you know about that?” I ask her. “How was your trip?”

“I stopped at Jasna’s on my way home. It was a wonderful trip. We were all glad we went without anyone older than us; we did everything we wanted to do. On the way home Julia and I tried to figure out some more things about Minister Vera and Commissioner Adrian, and I went to Jasna’s to see if we’d guessed right. She told me a whole bunch of other things Julia and I didn’t know. Then I asked Jasna to come home with me and she started crying. I asked her what was wrong but all she said was that she was too embarrassed ever to come to our house again. What happened?”

Mirna answers curtly, “I insulted her, that’s what happened.”

“How?” Yara asks.

“I called her a coward.”

“What did she do?”

“She praised the devil.”

“Good for her!” Yara shouts. “Then why did you call her a coward?”

“Because Jasna is the last person in the world —” Mirna begins, and stops. She sits down and pulls Yara to her lap. “Never mind that now. Were the mountains beautiful? What did you do?”

“Lots of things. We took hikes and we climbed to several mountain tops. The most fun was when we played love games on a mountain top, just Julia, Slobodan and I.”

“How do you play love games on a mountain top, Yara?” Mirna asks, with a fascination that’s mixed with apprehension.

“By pretending, mommy, the way you taught me.”

“Who did you pretend to be?”

“Once I was Vera Krena and another time I was you. And once Julia pretended to be the devil. It was beautiful, mommy; the three of us were alone in the whole wide world.”

The glassy, distant look comes into Mirna’s eyes. “Let me tell you a story, Yara.”

“If it’s about Vesna I’d rather not hear it.”

“It’s about a time when I played love games on a mountain top.”

“You never did that!”

“And it’s about you, Yara.”

“Then I want to hear it!”

“I climbed to a mountain top nine months before you were born, Yara. I took everyone I loved: my brother and my father, my husband and my friend as well as several of their comrades. There were twelve of them; counting me we were thirteen. When we reached the top it was beautiful because, like you and your friends, we were alone in the whole wide world. Up there we could do whatever we wanted. At the very top there was a large flat rock, just big enough to hold me. I lay down on it and let the sun beat down on me. I reached downward with my right hand and six hands fastened themselves to mine; I reached with my left and another six hands grabbed mine. With all the strength in my arms I pulled all twelve of my loved ones to the top of the mountain, and when all twelve were on the rock they became one, the one I loved most of all —”

“The devil!” Yara shouts.

“Yes, Yara. The devil fathered you on that mountain top twelve years ago.”

“That’s a beautiful story, mommy.”

“It isn’t over yet, Yara. I played love games with the devil all day long. But toward evening clouds hid the sun, a wind started blowing and the rock got cold. Everything was possible on the mountain top only so long as there was sun and no wind. I started shaking with cold and wanted to return back down where there was shelter and warmth. I pushed the devil away from me with both my arms, forced him down off the rock, and when I sat up and looked I saw that I was pushing all twelve of my loved ones down from the rock, six on each side. The wind blew fiercely, the clouds turned black and thundered, and it started to pour. The rock where everything had been possible was no longer beautiful; it was bare and cold; it gave no shelter. I jumped off the rock and pushed my twelve loved ones downward; as soon as I left the rock it was hit by lightning. I pushed as hard as I could, but the rain and the lightning blinded me. Suddenly I heard four shrieks in front of me. I had pushed four of my loved ones off a precipice. I backed away from that edge in terror and tried to shelter my remaining eight under a tree, but there was no shelter from that storm. Lightning hit the tree and killed four of them before my very eyes. Now there were only four left: my brother, my father, my husband and my friend. I pulled them away from the burned tree and started pulling them down the mountain side. The paths were all slippery and rushing rivers blocked our way wherever we went. I was frenzied and lost track of my friend. Suddenly lightning struck near us again. I lost my grip on my brother and my husband and both slid down into a river that quickly carried them away. I started to run after them but my father held me back; he told me they were both good swimmers and would find their way to land. I was all alone with my father in that terrible storm. The two of us descended, slowly and carefully; we stayed close to the banks of the river into which my brother and my husband had fallen. But lightning struck again, and yet again. We both fell to the ground, and a tree fell across my father’s legs, breaking both of them. I kneeled next to him and cried. My love games destroyed everyone I loved.”

Yara gets off Mirna’s lap and says, politely, “I don’t like your story.”

Mirna pulls Yara hack. “I’m not through yet, Yara. The story ends with your birth. I could see that my father was in pain, but there was nothing I could do for him. Finally the storm let up. The lightning stopped and the rushing rivers became small streams. In the black of night I ran down the mountainside alone, straight to my mother’s house. I told her where I’d left my father. She gathered several neighbors and they all went to help him. But I didn’t go with them. I ran to the stream we had been following, ran along it, and finally came across someone I knew. He told me he had seen my husband in the stream, with his head up, swimming vigorously. But he hadn’t seen my brother. I ran on down the stream, hesitated, and then turned and ran back to the spot where I’d left my injured father. The clouds were gone and the moon lighted my way. When I reached the spot I saw a circle of people standing around it. There was only one courageous person in the circle; I recognized him as my one-time neighbor and my father’s friend. He put his hand on my arm and led me through the circle; the others grumbled and moved away from me as if I were a leper or a witch. He told me they weren’t bad people but they were all afraid. And then he told me my father’s legs hadn’t been badly broken; they could have been cured; he might even have walked again. When the neighbor had reached my father, he had heard my father moaning about his drowned son, his daughter’s marriage to a drowned husband, and about his own inability to help his daughter find her brother or her husband. The neighbor said he died of a broken heart. When I reached the center of the circle I saw my father’s lifeless body where I had left him. My mother kneeled next to him across from me; her face looked blue in the moonlight. She pointed her finger at me, and at you as well, Yara; you were in my stomach then. ‘You and the devil killed him,’ she told me. I knew she was right. I crawled on all fours out of that circle, crawled all the way to my house, and at that moment I was able to let you come into the world, because I had paid what you cost, I had paid for my love game with the devil on the top of the mountain.”

“I don’t like you when you tell stories like that,” Yara says, trying to get away from Mirna. “You sound just like that crazy old woman.”

Unlike Yara, I’m deeply moved by Mirna’s story. I realize that I haven’t really been aware of the pain Mirna experienced during my second prison term. My eight years in prison weren’t pleasant, but I didn’t spend many hours, or even many minutes, trying to imagine what Mirna was undergoing during the days I spent in cells, exercise yards or prison workshops. I didn’t have any contact whatever with my family until several months after Jan and I were arrested at the steel plant on the day when the Magarna rising was suppressed. My first visitor was Titus. He told me he hadn’t found Jan “yet” but was still trying. He also told me Vesna was well and Mirna was pregnant. He didn’t tell me Mirna’s father had been fired from his bus-driving job; I suppose he didn’t want to be the earner of bad news to a prisoner. He did tell me Mirna had acquired a pass to visit me but was having “trouble” with her parents; she could barely find time for them, for Vesna and for her job. Titus also brought me two books. After Titus’ visit, my contact with the “outside” was completely broken for more than two years. I acquired my own constrained routine: prison acquaintances, interests and problems. Mirna and Vesna visited me three years after my arrest. Mirna spent a long time telling me she had gotten a pass with Titus’ help but terrible things had happened and by the time she got a day off work and came to the prison, she was told the forms had changed and she wasn’t allowed to visit me. Then Titus was arrested and Mirna wasn’t able to find out what she had to do to get the pass she needed. That’s why she visited me only after Titus was released. I asked her what terrible things had happened and she listed them mechanically, almost coldly, but something in her tone gave me the impression she considered herself responsible for everything she was telling me. She began with Jan’s and my disappearance “on the day after we dreamed”; then Jan could no longer be found, her father died, her mother got sick, Yara was born. When Mirna completed her list, Vesna uttered her only contribution during that first visit; it consisted of three words: “I hate you.” It became clear to me that if Mirna blamed herself, Vesna blamed me for everything that had happened. I felt like an extra burden on Mirna’s back, a burden she didn’t need to carry. I reminded her that during our first walks I had tried to warn her not to marry a “political criminal” because she might find herself bound to a non-person, a human being who would suddenly cease to exist. Mirna started crying but I continued in the same vein. I urged her to divorce me and told her I’d heard divorces were easily procured by wives of political criminals. Mirna’s eyes filled with anger, bitterness and resentment. “Is that all you have to say to me after three horrible years?” she asked me. “How dare you even think about divorce! Your return is all I live for, Yarostan; you’re all I have left now; you’re my brother, my father, my husband and my only friend; you’re everyone I love in the world; if you disappear, I’ll die of a broken heart, like my father. Don’t talk to me about divorce, Yarostan; tell me something else!” But I didn’t have anything else to say. I told her, “I love you, Mirna, more than I love myself; that’s why I don’t want you to sacrifice yourself to me.” Mirna left crying; Vesna walked away from me with hatred in her eyes.

Yara tries to get away from Mirna’s lap but Mirna holds on to her. “Neither you nor I have a right to say the old woman was crazy. You were born right after my father died. I got a short leave from work but I spent all my time with you. I didn’t once go visit my mother although I knew she needed me. I wanted her to let me know she needed me. You were my excuse for not going to her. The union had given my father a retirement pension after he was fired. Our neighbor, the same one who’d told me about my father’s death, found out she still had a right to that pension but she had to go to the union building for it. The first time he went with her. But the second time she went alone. She didn’t let the neighbor come tell me she wanted me to go with her: she was afraid I’d turn her down. The neighbor couldn’t get another day off his job. Titus told me what happened to her when he came to tell me, several days later, that she was in the hospital; he learned what had happened from the doorman at the union building. It was a cold, snowy day; the roads were slippery. The old woman confronted the door-man and demanded ‘her due.’ The doorman asked her whom she wanted and she ranted about devils and their agents. She pushed her way past the doorman but several guards pushed the ‘crazy woman’ out of the building. She tried to enter the building a second time but the guards pushed her so violently she fell — and remained where she had fallen. The police took her to the hospital and a few days later everyone in the union building knew she was ‘Sedlak’s wife’ and had a right to the pension she had come to collect. Titus came to tell me she was in the hospital, completely paralyzed; there was nothing they could do for her. That was when I let them bring the ‘crazy woman’ to the spare room in our house. She turned Vesna’s heart against me, against Yarostan, eventually against you, Yara. She knew her sickness wasn’t brought on by the guards or the snow, but by my love games —”

“She was crazy!” Yara screams. “I hated her!”

“You’re what made her the way she was!”

“You’re lying!” Yara shouts, trying to pull away from Mirna. “I hate you when you talk like her. You’re trying to do to me what she did to Vesna! But you can’t! I won’t let you!”

“Vesna would never have killed anyone she loved —”

“Neither did you and neither did I! That old woman lied through her teeth; it was all she was able to do; she was completely looney —”

“Say that once again, Yara, and I’ll —”

“Looney! Crazy! She taught Vesna we killed people by loving them and she killed Vesna by teaching her that! Everything she said was a lie and everything you’re telling me is a lie! I know it is. I played with Julia and Slobodan and nothing happened to any of us and nothing is going to happen, ever, and you know it! Why can’t you just be yourself instead of turning yourself into that crazy woman? You’re hateful when you’re like her, and don’t think you’ll ever stop me from playing love games whenever and wherever I please because you won’t! I’m not Vesna! I was glad when we took the old woman to the shed outside where we could neither see nor hear her and I was overjoyed when she finally croaked! I’m glad she’s dead and so are you!”

Mirna’s face is flushed with anger as she whacks Yara across the face. Yara starts bawling. Mirna rushes to the kitchen to put our dinner into the oven.

“She was so happy before I went on my outing,” Yara sobs. “What happened between her and Jasna? Why did she hit me? She never did that to me before!”

“I don’t understand, Yara,” I tell her. “She’s been upset ever since she heard that radio broadcast your friend turned on and she’s been angry ever since this letter came.” I point to the letter in which you describe your experiences in Sabina’s garage.

Yara starts reading your letter. She reads while I set the table and help Mirna bring the food in. She continues reading during the meal. Suddenly she asks me, “Is Sabina younger than Sophia?”

“Yes, three or four years younger,” I tell her.

Yara reads further and then says, “I wish Vesna were still alive, and I wish that old woman hadn’t ever come into our house.”

“Exactly what does that mean?” Mirna asks.

Yara looks defiantly at Mirna; there’s fire in her eyes. “It means I’d be Sabina and Vesna would be Sophia. It means Vesna would be different from me, she wouldn’t want what I wanted, but she’d still be my friend and she wouldn’t be dead, that’s what it means.”

Mirna drops her fork on her plate and runs to the bedroom. For a moment Yara pretends indifference and continues reading, but it’s obvious she can’t concentrate. She walks hesitantly to the bedroom and says from the doorway, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean how that sounded. I know you couldn’t help bringing your own mother into our house. If you ever become just like her I’d take you into my house too, but only because you’d once been good to me. I’d hate what you’d become as much as you always hated her. You called her a vampire!”

“I was wrong, Yara. You’re the vampire.”

“That’s a lie and you know it! You’re ten times worse than she was! She never hit me! She didn’t pretend to be my friend and then turn against me. You’re not just an enemy, you’re a traitor!” Yara starts to walk away from the bedroom.

Mirna shouts, “Yara! Tell me how you like me!”

Yara returns to the doorway. “When you’re yourself.”

“When am I myself?”

“When you’re not the old woman.”

“Show me, Yara. Come here next to me. Come on, Yara. That’s it. Now lie down. Pretend you’re on the mountain top. Lie still. Pretend we’re alone. Now who am I?” ’

“I don’t know yet but I like you now.”

There’s a long silence. Then Mirna asks, “Is this how you like me, Yara?”

“You know I do, mommy.”

“Who am I now?”

“You’re Slobodan and Sabina and Julia and father and I love all of you. I showed them —”

“What did you show them?”

“To pretend.” There’s another silence. Then Yara pleads, “You’re hurting me, mommy.”

“Can you pretend to forget what I showed you?”

“No, mommy, not if you hurt me a thousand times worse.”

“Do you ever pretend to be Vesna?”

“No, mommy, never, and I hate you when you pretend to be the old woman.”

“But I’m able to pretend that! And so are you!”

“I’ll never be Vesna!”

“Pretend hard! There, Vesna, lie still, I’m your father. How does that feel, Vesna? And that? Is this how you like me, Vesna?”

“No I don’t! I’m not Vesna! Why are you so afraid? What happened to you?”

“Do you like it better with Julia?”

“That’s right, mommy! And even better with Slobodan because then it’s more real!”

“Is it more real than Vesna?”

Yara shouts defiantly, “Yes, it’s more real than Vesna! Slobodan is alive! Julia is alive! Vesna is dead! Why can’t you understand that? Vesna isn’t real any more!”

I hear a loud whack. Yara shrieks with pain. “Let go of me!”

Mirna shrieks, “We killed her!” She whacks Yara again. “Pretend to understand that we killed her, Yara!” She whacks the girl yet again shrieking, “You’ll kill the rest of us!”

I run in frantically and hold Mirna’s arms back to keep her from hitting Yara yet again. The thought of Mirna’s father stopping her mother from swinging the broom flashes through my mind. I take Yara in my arms and rush out of the room with her; she goes on shrieking; her face is an expression of terror. My own face probably expresses a similar terror. I let myself down on the living room couch, pressing Yara to me. She starts trembling and places both hands on her burning cheeks. “I won’t pretend to be Vesna,” she sobs. “I’m not Vesna!”

Yara gradually stops trembling and sobbing. She falls asleep in my arms. The poor girl has had a full day since she returned from her outing. I carry her to her bed and return to the living room couch; I can’t make myself join Mirna in the bedroom. I try to sleep but the few memories I have of Vesna pass through my mind. Vesna was barely two when Jan and I were arrested at the steel plant. I didn’t see her again until she was five, when Mirna visited me in prison for the first time. Mirna didn’t come again for a long time after that visit when I urged her to divorce me; she sent Vesna to bring packages of food to me, packages which I was never allowed to keep. Every time Vesna came she made it perfectly clear to me that she hated me and blamed me for the miserable life they all led. From Vesna I learned that Mirna’s mother had somehow become incapacitated, that she had been moved into our house, and that she continually filled Vesna’s head with superstitions and fears. But it wasn’t only the old woman who shaped Vesna’s development; the whole environment in which she grew up terrorized her. When she was six, Vesna did all the shopping and housecleaning, took care of Yara and nursed the helpless old woman; Mirna cooked supper when she returned from work but was too tired to do anything else. On one of her earliest visits Vesna gave me a fairly clear idea of the quality of her experiences in the world “outside.” A few days before her visit, when she was on her way home with a bag of groceries, a group of school children walked by her. One of them shouted, “That’s Vochek’s daughter.” Others started chanting, “Traitor’s daughter! Capitalist! Foreign spy!” Vesna ran from them and was hit by several rocks. One of the “brave young revolutionaries” ran after her, pushed her into the snow, and spilled all the groceries. No one defended her; several adults walked by her indifferently. When she got home, the milk was half ice, there was snow in the bread and vegetables, and her hands were frozen. Yet she told me about the incident without indignation, as if it were perfectly natural that “Vochek’s daughter” didn’t really have the right to share the street with ”decent and normal” people. Mirna kept Vesna out of school until she was seven, partly to get help with all the work in the house, but mainly for fear of what the schoolchildren might do to her. When neighbors reported her, Vesna was enrolled in school. Her visits became rare and then stopped altogether. Contrary to Mirna’s fears, Vesna wasn’t physically assaulted in school. From Vesna’s sparse descriptions I gathered that she became a model “revolutionary” pupil. She absorbed everything she was told, like a sponge. Her schooling didn’t do away with the superstitions she’d learned from her sick grandmother but on the contrary reinforced them. She merely learned to call the devils that infested the universe by new names: now they were shirkers, counter-revolutionaries, hooligans and foreign agents; the rest of her outlook remained unchanged. About the middle of her first school year, Vesna’s visits came to an end; I never saw her again. I had no visitors for several months and I began to speculate that Mirna had finally decided to divorce me. But then Titus visited me for a second time. He told me that shortly after her last visit to me, Vesna had become ill; he had rushed her to the hospital. She remained in the hospital for several weeks; the doctors said she had a weak heart and advised that she be allowed to rest as much as possible; she recovered despite the fact that she couldn’t rest for a minute at our house. Titus brought me Mirna’s usual package; that was the only time I was allowed to keep it and share its contents with fellow prisoners. Ever since Vesna had started visiting me, I had gone to the visitors’ room with a certain apprehension; I was relieved when I saw Titus there instead of Vesna. I begged Titus to urge Mirna to divorce me. I told him there was no reason for them to go through a hell worse than prison because I had been convicted of political crimes. I had already been in prison for four years and I knew I’d be there for at least four more; I didn’t think I would ever see the outside world again. I reminded him that he had once asked me to join him in carrying a project; I had not done very well, but my efforts had caused me to lose my ability to survive, my ability to give another generation the possibility to carry a project. Titus smiled sadly at my request; he told me he would try. For several months I again had no visitors. I thought, without joy, that Titus had carried out my request. Then Mirna came; it was her second visit; I hadn’t seen her in years. She was skinny; her face had wrinkles; she looked twenty years older than I remembered her; in her simple dress and black kerchief, she looked very much like her mother. “Titus asked me to marry him,” she told me. “And you refused?” I asked. “No, Yarostan,” she said angrily; “I accepted. I knew it was you who’d asked him to propose to me. He did your bidding ever so meekly and unwillingly. But I threw myself at him. Take me, I told him; I’m yours. At that moment he backed away from me. He saw what I was! He saw the devil in me. He cast me away; he didn’t want the devil around his neck any more than you do. Suddenly I understood all your talk about divorce. Vesna thinks you’re responsible for everything that happened to us and she’s ended up by convincing you. But Vesna doesn’t know what I know. Vesna doesn’t know that whatever you were arrested for, I shared in greater measure. You told Titus you were a chain around my neck, but he saw that I was a chain around yours! Don’t lie to yourself any more; you know it too. You’re all I have left now; you’re my father, brother, husband and friend, and I’ll do everything in my power to hold on to you. I’ll be at the prison gate when they release you. And if they don’t release you I’ll find a way to crawl through the prison bars. If it’s the devil they want in jail, let them imprison me. It’s because of me that my brother disappeared and my father died. Please, Yarostan. share that burden with me!” As I listened to Mirna, I concluded she’d been affected by her mother’s insanity, but I couldn’t keep myself from crying. I realized that for Mirna my prison cell represented freedom from the life she had to live daily. From that day until a few months before my release, Mirna visited me frequently. Sometimes she brought Yara; she never again brought Vesna, I couldn’t hide the fact that I liked Yara much more than I liked Vesna, mainly, I suppose, because Yara seemed to like me. On one visit when Mirna came with Yara, I asked about Vesna’s health. Yara, who was six then and had just started school, answered, “Oh, she’s well enough, but her skin turns to goose pimples whenever anyone touches her. You’re not like that, are you father?” Mirna swept Yara off the ground and shouted, “Of course he’s not like that, Yara. The three of us have the devil in us. Vesna is a saint, like your grandmother.” After which Yara told me, “I wouldn’t like you if you were a saint!” Mirna and Yara visited me together for the last time about a year before my release. Mirna came in her best dress; she had fixed her hair; she seemed healthier than I’d seen her since my arrest and she looked her own age again. She was beautiful. Yara was as lively as an energetic seven-year old. Mirna blushed when I walked into the room. She told me she’d learned that prisoners were being released at the end of their scheduled terms, and therefore I would be released in 347 days. “Mommy says when you get home you’ll teach me all the things they don’t teach in school,” Yara said excitedly. Mirna blushed again. I was infected by their happiness. I, too, started to count the days to my release, although I knew that such activity could lead to frustrated hopes and a broken heart; if prisoners were being let out at the end of their terms, I was convinced it was out of pure caprice on the part of the repressive apparatus. I continued counting days; that’s why I know that for the next 204 days I received no visitors. I knew something had happened; I speculated that Mirna had found out the rumor did not refer to me and had spent her energy trying to move a cog in the bureaucracy. Yara finally put an end to my speculations, I was shocked by her appearance. She was dressed in a sack far too big for her, there were tears in her eyes, and her face had an expression I had seen before, on Vesna’s face, and once or twice on Mirna’s: it was hatred. “They killed Vesna!” she told me, concentrating all her hatred on the “they.” I asked her what had happened but could learn nothing from her account except that Vesna had died in a hospital and that I was indirectly responsible for her death. “Vesna was so afraid, father, so terribly afraid.” “Afraid of what?” I asked; “what happened to her?” “The day we got back from visiting you, mommy and I were so happy that you’d be with us in a year, but Vesna didn’t want you to come back, ever — and they took her away and killed her because of that!” “Who took her away and why?” I asked. “Mommy and I tried to stop them but we couldn’t; two of them held me and the others took Vesna away from us.” I asked impatiently, “You tried to stop whom, Yara? What happened to Vesna?” Her answer was, “They locked her up in that hospital and didn’t let her out again! They killed her! You would have stopped them if you’d been home! They paid no attention to mommy and me!” I grew suspicious. “Yara, how long was Vesna sick before Mirna called the doctor?” Yara suddenly backed away from me. The hatred that had earlier been concentrated on “them” was now aimed at me. With horror and indignation she told me, “Father, we didn’t call the doctor!” I became indignant too. “Why, Yara? Mirna should have called the doctor when Vesna’s illness began! Why didn’t she call the doctor?” Tears covered Yara’s face; she looked at me incredulously, as if I were a monster. “You don’t understand either!” she wailed as she ran from me. My last month and a half in prison was like an extra term. One phrase kept going through my mind: “Vesna didn’t want you to come back, father — she was so terribly afraid.” I remembered, analyzed and re-analyzed the few contacts I’d had with Vesna; none of them had been happy encounters; since she was extremely sensitive, she must have been aware of my dislike for her. of the resentment I felt at seeing her and not Mirna in the guest room. That dislike and resentment were somehow responsible for her death. But I didn’t understand how. Vesna’s heart was apparently too weak to withstand the numerous tasks that fell on her and I didn’t understand why Mirna hadn’t called the doctor when Vesna had gotten sick again; I remembered that it had been Titus, and not Mirna, who had taken Vesna to the hospital the first time she’d gotten sick. But I never asked for an explanation. When Mirna finally accompanied me home after eight years of confinement, I found myself in a worse prison than the one I had left. The joy Mirna and Yara had communicated to me during their visit a year earlier was gone; it had died with Vesna. Yara was no longer the friend and comrade she had been during her few visits with Mirna; she was cold and distant. Mirna was twenty years older again, tired and resigned; she dragged herself to work in the morning and dragged herself home in the evening, ate, cleaned and fed her mother, and fell into bed. Her mother was housed in a brick shed next to the house; she couldn’t move her arms or her legs; all she could do was talk. As soon as I returned I relieved Mirna of the task of removing the old woman’s excrement; I’d had similar tasks in prison. Mirna insisted on feeding and washing the old woman herself; her mother would probably have spat out food that I served her. Yara never entered the shed. I wasn’t able to find a job and wasn’t terribly eager to look for one; between my tasks and our meals, I took long, lonely walks. When we were together we didn’t ever talk about the old woman in the shed next to the house, and the subject of Vesna never came up.

Eventually I fall asleep on the living room couch. The following morning I wake up aching, at the hour when I usually wake to go to the plant, but it’s Saturday. I walk toward the bedroom and stop in the doorway, horrified. Mirna is still in the position where I left her when I pulled her arms away from Yara! Her eyes are wide open and concentrate on a spot on the ceiling; she looks like her mother did during the weeks after my release, before she died; she looks paralyzed. “Mirna!” I shout, and I start to tremble. She doesn’t stir. I run to Yarn’s room and shake her.

Yara rushes to our bedroom, shrieks the moment she enters, and jumps on top of the bed. “Mommy, don’t do that!” she shouts, shaking Mirna’s arms and shoulders. “Beat me all you want, but don’t look like that!” Then Yara starts to shriek hysterically: “Stop it, mommy! I’ll be Vesna! I’ll be anyone you want! But stop it! Please! I love you, mommy. You can be the old woman if you want. But don’t make them take you away. Please, please stop it!”

I become infected with Yara’s hysteria. I start pacing around the bed. “We have to do something, Yara. Mirna is sick. I’ll go out to look for a doctor.”

Yara’s face takes on the expression of hatred and horror I had seen when she last visited me in prison. She shrieks, “No!” Then she leaps away from the bed and starts pushing me out of the room. “Leave her alone! Go away from here!”

“Yara. what’s the matter with you?” I shout. “Your mother is sick!”

Yara shrieks. “She’s not sick! You don’t understand anything! You want them to kill her!”

“That’s terribly mean, Yara. I love Mirna very much. I want her to get well.”

“Then leave her alone!” she shouts. “The doctor is going to say she has to go to the hospital and they’ll kill her the way they killed Vesna!”

“Please, Yara! She has to see a doctor. We won’t let anyone take her to the hospital.”

“You’re lying,” she shouts, pushing me toward the outside door. “Go for a walk, visit someone, but leave her alone. Please! You won’t stop them from taking her! You wouldn’t have stopped them from taking Vesna!”

“Vesna was sick! The doctor should have been called —”

“Vesna wasn’t sick!” Yara shrieks. Then she calms herself and pleads with me. “I don’t hate you, father, but you don’t understand. You’re just like Mr. Zabran and those horrible doctors. Mommy isn’t sick. I know. I’ll get Jasna; she’ll understand. Maybe Zdenek will too. Please go away, won’t you? She’ll get well if you go away. And please don’t bring anyone; I’ll get everyone I know to stop them from touching her!”

“I’ve had enough of this silliness, Yara! I’m going to call —”

“Then go to hell!” she shrieks, pushing me and beating me with her fists. “Get out of here and stay out at least until tonight! Mommy isn’t sick!”

“Then what’s wrong with her?”

“Nothing!” she shouts. “Nothing’s wrong with her! She’s playing with you and me! But you don’t know how to play! You’re the one who’s sick, like all those others. Please, father, don’t have her killed for playing!”

I leave the house reluctantly. I go to a coffee house to try to think clearly but nothing becomes clear to me. Yara understands Mirna, especially her “games,” much better than I do. On the other hand, I suspect that Yara’s opinion of doctors and hospitals might be a bit of “wisdom” she picked up from Mirna and her mother. I convince myself that neither a “game” nor Yara’s opinion of doctors should endanger Mirna’s health. I take a bus to the city hospital. My first encounter with the hospital “reception” forces me to admit that whatever Mirna and Yara think of hospitals, it is based on something real. I’ve never been to a hospital before; I’ve also never visited a prison as an “outsider”; I imagine the “reception” offices of both must be very similar. “Can she walk? Is it critical? A hospital doctor cannot visit your house. Would you like us to send an ambulance with a stretcher? No? In that case you’ll have to bring her here by taxi.” I make up my mind to find someone to help me take Mirna to the hospital, someone Yara trusts. I walk to Zdenek’s house but he’s not home. I consider Titus but the thought of Yara’s hysteria dissuades me from looking him up. I take a bus to Jasna’s house but she’s not home either. I know I can carry Mirna to the taxi myself and I realize I’m looking for someone who will not only convince Yara of Mirna’s need for medical attention but also help me decide to oppose Yara’s will. I walk to Yara’s school and sit down on a bench in the playground. I try to take Yara seriously; I try to figure out the nature of the “game” Mirna is playing. But surely a person who is seriously injured or paralyzed in a game needs medical care! It’s already mid-afternoon. I leave the schoolyard and head home, determined to get Mirna to a doctor, with or without Yara’s approval.

The moment I enter the house, Yara plants herself in the bedroom doorway. Zdenek and Jasna are both in the living room. “Have you been here all day?” I ask. “I went to both your houses to look for you.”

“Yara came to get us as soon as you left this morning,” Jasna tells me. “Calm down, won’t you? Did you contact anyone else?”

“How is she?” I ask.

“Mirna is perfectly all right,” Jasna says with an insistence that makes me sense she’s lying; “it’s you who worries us, Yarostan.”

“Me!” I shout. “Are you in on that game too, Jasna? Are you playing with Mirna’s health, with her life?” I take two quick steps toward the bedroom doorway. “Yara, step out of my way!”

But it’s Zdenek who stops me; he pulls me towards the couch and forces me down on it, commanding, “Stay out of there! If you have any love for her, Yarostan, stay seated and listen to us!”

“She needs a doctor!” I shout. “Can’t you see she’s sick?”

Jasna says calmly, “I’m amazed at how cruelly you disregard Yara. She’s not an idiot, you know!”

“It’s not a question of insulting or not insulting Yara,” I shout impatiently as I writhe frustratedly in Zdenek’s grip; “it may be a question of Mirna’s life! Have you both gone crazy? Are you going to sit here and hold me while she dies like her mother?”

“If you’re just going to shout, Yarostan, it would be better if you took another walk,” Jasna says. “Come back when you’re in a mood to listen to us.”

“I should have had them send the ambulance!” I shout. “I’ll go, Jasna — I’ll go get the ambulance.”

Zdenek shouts, “You’ll stay right there and listen to us no matter what mood you’re in! It took Yara less than half an hour to explain the whole thing to me; why are you so mule-headed?”

“Because I love her,” I mutter weakly.

Zdenek shakes me. “Listen to me. Mirna is convinced she’s carrying a terrible burden. She thinks she’s responsible for all the deaths in her family, including her own daughter’s.” Yara starts to close the door of the bedroom but Zdenek shouts: “Leave it open, Yara! She has to listen too, and I don’t want to say it all twice! She’s convinced that death stalks every one of her happy moments. That stupid broadcast about the troop movements convinced her she was right, and that letter from your friend gave her some mysterious insights into the origins of her guilt. She seems to think she was driven to do everything she did, and last night she apparently convinced herself that Yara was an agent of whatever it was that drove her. Mirna’s sickness is nothing but an attempt to destroy Yara’s carefree love of life. She’s determined to drive guilt into the child, and she’s apparently willing to die trying because she’s as mule-headed as you are.”

I tell Zdenek, “I don’t understand a single word,” but that’s a lie. The shed in which Mirna and Yara had “isolated” the old woman flashes through my mind. Yarn’s visit after Vesna’s death and her admission, “Father, we didn’t call the doctor,” flash through my mind, as well as Mirna’s shriek when she hit Yara the night before: “We killed her — you’ll kill the rest of us.” What I don’t understand is why Mirna didn’t call the doctor when Vesna was sick, and why Zdenek and Jasna refuse to call the doctor now.

Yara starts to cry. “Why don’t you understand, father? Mommy made me think you were different, she made me think you’d be a friend, and I believed her, I wanted so much to believe her, but I couldn’t go on believing her after I visited you in prison for the last time, when you told me you wouldn’t have stopped them from taking Vesna away.”

I ask Zdenek indignantly, “Are you telling me Vesna wasn’t sick either?”

Zdenek answers, “The only thing wrong with Vesna was that she grew up in this house between her sister, her mother and her grandmother.”

“Vesna wasn’t sick,” Jasna adds. “She’d had rheumatic fever a few years earlier, but she’d recovered from that —”

“I’m not an idiot either!” I shout to Jasna. “You’re repeating Yara’s comment like a parrot. If Vesna wasn’t sick, why did she die?”

“You are an idiot, Yarostan!” Zdenek shouts. “Why can’t you believe Yara? In the hospital they didn’t know what to make of Vesna. They misdiagnosed her —”

“But that’s impossible!” I start to shake.

“Impossible!” Zdenek shouts. “But you’re as authoritarian as they come! Do you think doctors are gods? Hasn’t Yara told you what they did to her?”

“I couldn’t tell him because he was on their side,” Yara says.

“Tell him now, Yara; he has to be told sometime,” Jasna insists.

“They didn’t even let mommy and me go see her. They kept us in that front office where white-frocked people continually ran in and out. They told me Vesna was asleep and couldn’t be disturbed; we waited all day and half the night, but Vesna kept being asleep and then I knew they were lying; Vesna didn’t sleep all the time. When there wasn’t anyone in the office, I left mommy there and walked up and down the halls, which are the same as in school only longer; I looked into every room until I found her in a room full of sick people. The doctors had all lied to us. Vesna was wide awake, staring at the ceiling just like mommy is, but I knew they were killing her; they had all kinds of tubes connected to her: in her arm, through her nose and elsewhere. Poor Vesna couldn’t breathe. I went up to her and told her, ‘If you don’t stop, they won’t let you come out and see father when he returns.’ She said, ‘I’ve seen him and I hate him.’ I asked her, ‘Do you want to stay here?’ She said, ‘No, Yara, I hate it here, I hate all these people, I want to go back to grandmother’s room!’ I got mad at her and shouted, ‘Then stop pretending!’ Vesna said, ‘I can’t.’ I could have made her stop but they didn’t let me. Nurses and guards had heard me and came running for me; I screamed, ‘You’re killing her!’ while they carried me to the waiting room and then they told us both to leave; they knew what they were doing to Vesna,”

“How awful!” Jasna sobs. “I only learned about Yara’s visit to Vesna this morning. All I knew before was what Titus had told me right after Vesna died. He had called the hospital every half hour to find out how she was; poor soul, he had taken her there and he was so concerned. But he took the hospital authorities as seriously as you do. She was in a perpetual coma, he told me. They kept diagnosing and re-diagnosing her; every diagnosis had its tests and treatment; poor Vesna just wasn’t strong enough to withstand all those treatments. And all that time Vesna succeeded in fooling them!”

“How could she?” I ask, on the verge of tears.

“Please don’t be so stupid, Yarostan,” Jasna sobs. “How could Yara’s sister, Mirna’s daughter, herself an accomplished prankster, fool all those doctors and nurses? Children do that in school every day of the year — not just to me; that’s easy; some fool the entire teaching staff for months at a stretch! Those doctors authoritatively told Titus she was in critical condition, she had a clot on the brain, and even that her brain was damaged — and they treated her for all that!”

I can’t hold back my tears. I reach both my hands out to Yara and beg, “Please forgive me. I insulted you whenever you tried to tell me. You have good reason to hate me. I was terribly wrong.”

Yara runs to me crying. “Until today it didn’t matter how wrong you were,” she whispers. “You couldn’t have helped us; you were in prison when they took Vesna away.”

“I’m the one who could have helped but I stayed away and I continued staying away,” Jasna sobs. “Vesna had missed school for more than a week but I didn’t ask Yara what was wrong and I didn’t introduce myself to Mirna as her husband’s and her brother’s friend. Instead I told Titus that Vesna was probably ill and it was he who rushed to your house; I satisfied myself with visiting vicariously, through Titus. I knew that something was terribly wrong when he described Vesna’s illness and Mirna’s and Yara’s reactions to it, but I still didn’t come. Titus was convinced Vesna needed medical care; but he’d had no experience with imaginative children. He told me indignantly that Vesna never left the sick old woman’s bed and when he walked into the room the child repeated her grandmother’s hocus pocus about the devil and the charms with which to exorcize him. I should have known right then; I would have known if I’d seen her. Titus blamed Mirna for leaving the child in that bed instead of having her taken to the hospital. He told me that when he mentioned the hospital, Mirna acted as insane as her mother and Yara became hysterical. So he took it on himself to have Vesna taken to the hospital. When she was carried to the ambulance, two attendants had to hold Yara and keep her out of the way. Mirna has every reason in the world to consider me a coward and a hypocrite. Where was I when Vesna was carried away? Mirna and Yara needed me! Vesna might still be alive today. But I was home, reading. I couldn’t share the real horrors with Mirna, not even one of them.”

“She didn’t blame you, Jasna; she blamed herself, and that was my fault,” Yara tells her. “Mommy tried to stop them from taking Vesna as much as I did. She begged them on her knees not to take her away from us, and she cried all day long. We went to the hospital every day, even after they told us not to come any more. Whenever anyone came out we begged, ‘Please give our Vesna back to us.’ Twice we waited all day in the rain; a nurse kept running out and telling us to go home; she said we were crazy and called us stupid peasants. Finally a man in a white coat let us into the waiting room, but only to tell us Vesna wasn’t in the hospital any more. We screamed at him and he had another man in a white coat come in and tell us she had died that morning in an ambulance while being transferred to another hospital. That was when I shouted, ‘Mommy, you let them kill our Vesna!’ It wasn’t true. I knew it wasn’t true! But I wanted someone to blame because I loved Vesna. Mommy believed it; she blamed herself. For two weeks she went to work crying and she returned crying. I begged her to forgive me for saying that, but she never stopped blaming herself. One day, weeks after Vesna’s death, I told her Vesna would never have started hating you and mommy if that old woman hadn’t been living with us, and that made her stop crying. That night she went to grandmother’s room and screamed, ‘Vampire! You won! You’ve always wanted to take Vesna from me! You’ve done it! Your holy work is done. You can go now.’ Mommy had me stay home from school the next day. A heating stove arrived and abed, as well as a load of bricks. She came home from work with a wheelbarrow and mortar. That night we started building walls around the stove and bed. And every time she walked by grandmother’s door she mumbled things like, ‘You’ll soon have a house without devils in it,’ and ‘Vesna should have helped me do this five years ago; you might have spared her your salvation.’ When we finished, the two of us carried the old woman to her new house; she was mainly bones and lighter than I. I laughed when mommy sang, ‘Holy Mary Mother of God, we’re taking you to heaven; no demons will ever share your house again except to feed you and remove your excrement.’ But she didn’t stop blaming herself for Vesna’s death and when the old woman died after you came back she blamed herself for that too. I wish I’d never told her she’d let them kill Vesna! Vesna’s death was my fault more than anyone else’s!”

Hugging Yara, I beg, “Don’t say that, please. You loved Vesna; you and Mirna did all you could to save her. I didn’t love Vesna! I was afraid of her; I was sorry whenever she came instead of Mirna. I was even happy when Titus came instead of Vesna. I resented Vesna’s hating me for being in Jail. She sensed my feelings toward her; that must have had a terrible effect on her. Don’t ever blame yourself for that, Yara.”

“Your feelings had nothing to do with it,” Yara says insistently. “Vesna was playing a game with me and with no one else, and she won —”

“A game, Yara? And Vesna won?”

“A game, father! Why did those doctors have to come into it? Vesna hated the old woman as much as I did but she pretended to love her. She loved you as much as I did but she pretended to hate you. When we learned you’d return in a year, before mommy and I went to see you, I caught her kissing herself in the mirror. I knew she was kissing you and I forced her to admit it; she made me promise never to tell mommy and I never told. But I made fun of her until the day we went to visit you; I called her a liar for pretending to be like the crazy old woman; I told her I knew she wanted you to touch her and kiss her and sleep next to her.” Yara starts crying and continues through her sobs, “I didn’t tell her those things to be mean or to hurt her, but because I knew they were true. Vesna was my sister, not the old woman’s. And she wasn’t hurt when I told her those things. It was a game. She made her eyes real big and she ran to the old woman’s room shouting, ‘You’ll roast in hell, Yara.’ She didn’t hurt me any more than I hurt her. That was our game. And it was still just a game the day mommy and I went to tell you about your release. Mommy was so happy! She got all dressed up; she looked beautiful. Vesna wanted to come with us; I know she did. But when mommy asked her, she said, ‘You’re the devil, all of you.’ I told her, ‘So are you!’ Mommy and I were so happy when we got back; she showed me how you’d dance with me. We danced and played until Vesna came in and saw us. Mommy teased her the way I had, but Vesna just had to win, she had to prove I was wrong, that she wasn’t the devil. Vesna froze, and even mommy thought she was sick. Vesna made herself crazy just like the old woman and she wouldn’t come out of the old woman’s room. She sweated and then shivered, and mommy got scared until I showed her I could do that too; Vesna had showed me. But that’s when I should have stopped teasing Vesna, before all those outsiders came to our house. The more I teased her about being the devil, the more she became like the old woman, and in the end she won — everyone believed her, starting with Mr. Zabran and those ambulance people who came for her. It was all my fault — not yours or mommy’s or anyone else’s. I wish I hadn’t forced her to play the game so hard, so long!”

All of us turn our heads abruptly when we hear Mirna’s sob. She’s standing in the bedroom doorway looking at the three of us huddled around Yara; she’s crying. She walks toward us, kneels in front of Yara and throws her arms around her. “Did you really see Vesna kiss herself in the mirror?”

Yara throws her arms around Mirna’s neck and, kissing her on the lips, whispers, “Like this, mommy; it’s the only way you can kiss in a mirror. And I know she wanted a boy in school to kiss her —”

“You’re not making it up?”

“I swear, mommy.”

“Please don’t call me that any more.”

“Mommy? Why not?”

“Because you’re so much smarter than I am.”

Zdenek is the only one without tears on his face. He gets up and exclaims, “That was a nasty trick, Mirna! That whole elaborate performance just to get your daughter to admit her share of the guilt!”

“You’re smart too, father,” Mirna whimpers. “I’m the only idiot here.”

Zdenek turns to Yara. “Can I borrow that letter now? There are some things you didn’t make very clear.” Yara hands him your previous letter. He leaves the house shouting to Mirna, “I want to find out who taught you to play such devilish games.”

Mirna moves toward Jasna; her hand pushes the hair away from Jasna’s face. Kissing Jasna’s forehead, she asks, “Do you hate all the schoolchildren who fool you and play tricks on you?”

“No, Mirna, I don’t hate them,” Jasna sobs; “I love them more than any of the others, because they’re alive.”

“Will you forgive me?”

“There’s nothing to forgive, Mirna; everything you said about me is true; will you ever forgive me?”

Mirna wipes the tears from Jasna’s face. “Yarostan says you’re very pretty when you smile, Jasna. Show me, please.” Jasna smiles weakly. Mirna kisses her cheeks. Jasna hugs Yara and then me; she leaves the house crying — but smiling.

Mirna picks up Yara and carries her to the bedroom, asking in a whisper, “What else did Vesna want?”

“She wanted everything you and I wanted, mommy — I mean Mirna. If the old woman hadn’t been staying with us, Vesna would never have been afraid of being touched. That came from thinking herself the old woman with that cold, blueish wrinkled skin that was so disgusting to touch. If it hadn’t been for the old woman, Vesna would have loved you and father — can I call him Yarostan now? — maybe not the way Tissie loved Sophia; not that way at all; but at least the way Sophia loved Sabina. I know —”

A few days later, when I return from work, Mirna throws her arms around me and starts to dance around the living room with me. She waves your most recent letter in the air. Yara shouts, “She’s on strike!” I’m overwhelmed with joy. I spin Mirna around the room. Our crisis is over. Zdenek and Jasna join us to celebrate your commune and Mirna’s strike. “We’re finally together again!” Jasna exclaims while reading your letter.

We love you,
Yarostan.