To Die in Chicago

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

PART TWO

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

About the author

Chapter One

The first thing you notice about East Chicago is the acrid smell of sulphur, like boiled eggs. Black dust covers everything; all the trees are gray. From the refineries nearby, red flames shoot up, an amazing sight at night. That’s what I saw later, each time I came, but not right away, not that time. Only the smell was there. That first day I am too stunned to pay attention, we’ve been on the ship for five days and nobody understands anything we say, a week on Ellis Island and all those X-rays, finally twenty-four hours on the train to get to this place, our final destination. In Hollywood films immigrants usually arrive in New York harbor wearing folk costumes, bundles in their hands, they cry from happiness and kiss the land. In real life, at least in our case, it didn’t happen like that, and there was no background music suggesting that the film will end soon and our wonderful new life will begin.

When the train stopped and we got out, Mother dragging one suitcase, me the other, this short frail man (shorter than my memory, my imagination of him) was waiting for us but he didn’t look like anyone I knew. He wore a beige raincoat which appeared too big for him, an old double-breasted suit of a grayish shade, his hair was brown, his eyes blue — this was my father I had not seen for years. Before I could go through the motions I had imagined many times at home, how it was all supposed to be and music stolen from movies would play as we wept, unable to stop, Mother pushed me toward him and I was in his arms and maybe he had tears in his eyes when he said, You are the only one who still looks the same. Nothing about your face has changed. I didn’t know if this was good or bad.

So, nothing lived up to our imagination from the beginning; the meeting was ordinary, nobody wept, he looked crumpled or maybe he was disappointed too. I didn’t think about all this right away, how could I, tired and stunned, know that his words to me were an insult to her, my Mother, how could I know those things at fifteen, I who had never kissed anyone yet, had never lived around men. Later, much later, when it was too late to know him, I would dream about that figure at the train station and he appeared over and over again to bother me in the dreams that wouldn’t stop. In them he was never dead but only pretending; he was hiding, running away from her. The dreams lasted an eternity, my entire youth, my thirties too, and I searched for him in real life but never found him in other men. In these dreams about him, he took me to the most exotic places, to Northern Africa or what looked like it, the sea in the background, and there he wore a white hat in a long shot far away; in Paris he disappeared around Saint Michel waving his hand, see you later. The last time he showed up, the only time he ever came near enough so I could see his face, we were in some ugly apartment with a formica table in the middle, and I ran up to him and said, Dad, guess what, I’ve become a writer—funny isn’t it? I expected him to react, something big to happen, but he only looked at me, smiled his same old smile, kind of sad, then shook my hand across the table. And that was that. He had never done anything similar in real life, so I decided in the dream he was pleased. He liked books too. He never showed up again, maybe I’ve stopped calling him, chasing him all over the globe.

The same year my dreams ended, the film modeled on our lives was shot in Chicago, and I saw his grave for the first time. We were in a cemetery full of dead Serbs and all of us had turned into Hollywood characters — he, fair and small-boned, was played by a swarthy guy with huge shoulders and a moustache; Mother, dark in real life, was now pale blonde; my brother, played by a young blond actor, had the main part, while portions of my life were given to an American girl who couldn’t dance and behaved on screen like a little slut. In a picture above his grave, Dad stared ahead, oblivious to all this, so sweet-looking in his cadet’s uniform, so very young. It was the time I didn’t know, before the war and marriage, before me. What did he think about that day as he posed for this picture? Not about his grave, that’s for sure.

There is no way to know what he thought that day at the train station either, and my own thoughts are gone. Most likely they were not there, the way it is with kids or primitive people. Sensations in the body instead, hot, hungry, tired, where am I? I am a girl in an indigo blue dress, a pretty wool dress of the right length for my age, knees visible, my hair is long, blond, and my eyes are blue as always. That’s what he saw that day, most likely, his daughter still the same. He must have been happy about that, and he probably recognized the indigo material of my dress because he had bought it, sent it for me after all.

The landscape from inside the car didn’t resemble any American film we had seen, neither a Western with red earth, horses, big skies, nor the other ones with flowers and swimming pools where Liz, Grace, and all those stars lived. All my girlfriends copied their haircuts, they even wrote letters to Hollywood begging for a photo of their favorites, then they spent hours foolishly comparing themselves, wondering if their legs, their waists were as long, as small, as perfect. Not me. Who can say why not, maybe because Hollywood didn’t seem real; like science fiction, it didn’t have the smell of earth in it, or because I liked my own country or because I preferred books, and they told of another America which was not just blue and white but shades of gray. Still, I was not prepared for what I saw that day. No writer had described it and even if they had, it wouldn’t be the same because a book is only a book, you can start another one, or you can go and see a friend and then you can go swimming after lunch. The books have clear beginnings and ends, it’s different. Outside, through the windows of that car, it was all gray, white gray like old people, then darker shades of coal toward the factories, and that smell of sulphur. It tickled your throat. It made your eyes itch.

We said nothing to each other but we must have seen the house in the same way — gray wood, paint peeling, tarpaper, the grayest place ever. At home the houses were made to last for a long time, either in brick or stone, except for the mountain huts or those ski chalets in bright colors, yellow, green, red. The man who drove the car mumbled something to my father, then left.

We followed him, through the front door, up the narrow staircase to the second floor apartment he had rented. A dog howled next door, then somebody shouted back. This was our new home.

It was May, hot already. My blue dress was perfect for spring days at home, with all those mountains and the river, even summer nights were fresh. We slept with blankets on, and you had to have a jacket after sunset. It was that kind of climate, neither too hot nor too cold, but what is this misery, and in May? Stojan wiped his forehead, poor thing, all decked out in his first suit, wool too, a jacket with short pants, wool knee socks; he even wore a real shirt and tie.

There were four rooms, one in the back had a large bed, a smaller one to the left with a funny green sofa you opened by pulling on this belt, you took out the pillow and the sheets, spread them, slept, then you took it all off, and stuffed it under. That’s how people sleep here, he said. I didn’t like it right away. All that pushing, pulling you had to do, every day. Our beds always stayed put, always in the same spot, in the cool room full of embroidered things. In our bedroom the view extended through the window, always open in the summer, across the trees, all the way to the creek, big foamy, whispering in the spring when the snow begins to melt. At home I heard the spring as I slept.

In the living room for which we didn’t have a word because we really lived in the kitchen, there was another olive green couch you had to open with a belt. Stojan looked disappointed—that’s where he would sleep. You could tell he didn’t like it either because he didn’t have a room of his own or that he would be separated from us. At home all three of us slept together in two large beds pushed together which were a part of Mother’s trousseau she rescued in pieces after the bombing, then a friendly carpenter glued everything all back, so well nobody could ever tell. I could see Stojan was unhappy and for a reason. It wasn’t fair that Mother and I had presents waiting for us — something called ‘a house coat’, slippers to match, while it hadn’t occurred to Father to buy similar things for him, or a toy a boy would like. He didn’t know much about boys and he himself didn’t have slippers or housecoats at twelve and most likely nobody ever gave him a toy. Even though they said I was very smart, I was not smart enough to consider all this at fifteen. Later yes. At that moment I only thought not fair, governed then and now by some system of just and unjust left over from my old school and my grandma who divided everything evenly, like a just God, or how I imagined perfect socialism would be. Everything I do has some of her in it, even this book is for her, it has to be. I thought about her that first day in that apartment, where would she sleep if she had come with us, if she were alive. I called her to help me the way she always did. She had rescued me from Germans, she knew exactly what to say to persuade the killers not to kill me. I never think dead when I think about her, the moment I say grandma she is in the room either in front of me or by my shoulder with that smell of woods about her.

In this new kitchen the air smells of dust, nothing you can attach yourself to. My eyes shut, I try to see her face. When I manage, I am still me. She’ll guide me. Help me, I say inside of myself. She would have slept in the kitchen but this one didn’t have a bed even though it was huge in comparison with the other, you could dance in this one. A table has a shiny white top and legs of a peculiar shape, fat ungraceful, shiny too. Aluminum he said, formica, easy to clean, just wipe it. True, nothing to it, so much easier than the wood, ugly though, so ugly. Chairs had the same funny legs with bright red seats, four of them. By the door the black object was the stove; it functioned with oil, he said. The oil is in the basement, you carry it up, you pour it inside, then you light a match. Not now, in the winter. The white kitchen sink with hot and cold water was certainly new for us although we had seen it before in the new apartments on the main street. We, like all the others in our neighborhood, only had a pump in the back yard, cold, clear mountain water, the longer you pump the colder it gets, pump it for a long time for your guest, serve it in a glass on a silver tray with coffee and cherry preserves. That’s the first thing you offer, when someone visits, then this or that, always with pauses in between.

You put the water in the fridge, in a milk bottle or any other, he said, introducing a white object next to the sink. It was fat and it hummed in a strange way. Nobody had a fridge at home, and even though it made everything easy for Mother, it was ugly, made too much noise. We didn’t need it before. She bought everything fresh at the market in the morning, and we had fresh eggs from our own chickens, which woke you up at dawn. Sometimes I snuck in before her and drank a new egg through a straw; sometimes we did it together, Stojan and I, but we didn’t take all of them—just one each. You can only do that with the freshest eggs, not those in the fridge, and Dad said in America the eggs are made with machines. We are not impressed with this fridge thing, even though you could store up meat, milk, cheese, shop only once a week, save time—but who wants to save time if it was more fun the other way, and you saw everyone at the market, your friends, peasants, horses with carts, gypsies arguing, and pigs that were alive. Sure the gas stove next to the fridge was much easier to use, no doubt about it, rather than chopping wood, starting the fire in the morning, my job, but here you had to worry about the gas, he said, make sure it’s properly lit. It could kill you, he said. Make sure, don’t forget. He showed us how to do it with matches, pouf it went in the oven. It could kill you, I kept thinking that first day. You could die in this kitchen.

Now, the bathtub should have made everyone happy, so big, so white, so nice. Nobody around us had one like this, although we had seen them in the new apartments on the main street. Still, we should be impressed, but we are thinking it’s summer, who needs a bath if you can swim in the river, what’s a bathtub if you can sit under the falls and, if you wish, drink the flowing water. At that moment we are not thinking about the winter when the river is frozen and Mother had to warm the water on the stove, pour it into the wooden tub where the laundry was done, too. Fortunately for her, we had a full bath only once a week. Then she used that water to wash her underwear and our socks, or to clean the floor. Here we could wash any time we wanted to, we could sit in the tub forever, or let the water run up to the brim. And the new toilet was so much easier than walking to our john, in the garden, in the snow at night. Somewhere there amongst the trees the ghosts were hidden, the souls of dead girls whispered through the planks, wind carried their voices urging you to jump. Jump jump, come with me, they said on the edge of the ravine, come closer, their voices said. There, in the sunlight, it was all different. Below, through the bushes by the creek, peasant women stopped to pee just lifting their skirts up, with no worries about toilets or staying clean.

Here in Chicago we could wash as much as we wanted, and Mother would have a machine, he said, and then the machine would do it all. Everything was easier, no doubt about it — water, tub, gas, fridge, sitting down on a white toilet seat, yet it didn’t make anyone happier or overjoyed for some reason, not even a bit. Somehow we were not astonished by these things the way we were expected to be, they failed to produce that funny ski- and-jump feeling in your chest when, running into the house Stojan said, Guess what’s at the movies tonight! or when we woke up and the sky was without a single cloud and that meant swimming the whole day at the river or swimming first, then movies later, why not. That feeling of joy, of being alive, of summer light, that something I don’t have the right word for. In this new place we are too tired, is that it? We don’t know what it is; we don’t dare think what now. Maybe it was the grayness of it, every house alike and that smell of rotten eggs and that sharp whistle of the factory twice a day. Maybe a pretty landscape of trees, ocean, and big blue sky would have startled us, seduced us, and then we would have liked the fridge and the stove too. No, not really. What good are all those things if you can’t yell through the window, come play with us, come have some warm bread. She didn’t bake just for us. The bread with the brown crust, hard on the outside, soft inside, was better than butter, steak, better than anything. It had the smell we knew.

We didn’t think happy or unhappy, that word was not used that much. It was an animal feeling in the stomach of something awful, bigger than the biggest disappointment. Did we leave everything for this? Is this it? Most likely that’s what we thought, if any thought occurred to us. Our faces must have looked the same, Mother’s had gloom written all over it, even Stojan so cheerful in general had a new expression that resembled grief. This new feeling around us was more dreadful than the memory of war, or the poverty after, worse than Grandma’s death, worse than anything because you didn’t know what to call it. Disappointment is too slender. Before, we were together with others; neighbors came to celebrate all of it, my good grades, death, weddings, and births. This, where we sat, was an unknown misery nobody could imagine or name, nothing had prepared us for it in that small town by the river. That’s why we didn’t know what to do, how to fight it, make it better. It wasn’t our fault really.

It was her decision. I had nothing to do with it, nobody had asked me. In fact I didn’t want to go, and why should I when everything was so perfect — the best student, the best pioneer too, just when I was falling in love with a boy who was dark, handsome, and looked like a gypsy. And the worst of it, he hadn’t even kissed me yet, not even once. If at least I had done that part. That failed kiss will haunt me for years, always, and no matter how much I kissed it would never be the kiss I wanted, the one that should have happened, didn’t, yet was more real than all the other ones.

She didn’t think about all this when she decided to have us together after so many years. What would my kiss mean when her worries were bigger, why would a head of state think about entertainment if he has to think about the price of wheat. Stojan needs a father, she kept saying, or he’ll go wild. How can I manage alone? She cried. If she had managed all alone before, why couldn’t she continue? I kept thinking, and we are all grown up. Who knows what her reasons were, maybe she didn’t know for sure. She gave all sorts of reasons later on, she often said she had wanted to come to America since she was a child; it was a happy land her father had loved, the country full of gold and no wars, but I couldn’t tell if this was the main reason or her fear that Stojan would turn into a bum.

Her father didn’t end well. He left healthy for California where he dug for gold, then became sick and came home to die.

Stojan, in whose name the departure was planned, was the only one not sad to leave; he was too young to have any regrets about a lost love, like me — already at fifteen that word ‘lost’ permanently in the back of my head — nor did he cry like Mama about her sister, her friends and