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married friend, Neven Barac. Unlike the impassioned
Muzirović, Barac spent only his time and reproductive
organ on Zhana, and wasn’t in the least bothered with
whatever she might be doing, if it was not a Thursday. But
Thursdays were killing Muzirović.
He finally broke down while watching his friend prepare
for one such Thursday, whistling a popular song,
‘This is
Our Night.’
First he ritually downed a litre of Lieutenant
Borojević’s grape schnapps, in a further attempt to
repress his pain and then, at the climax of his delirium,
vacillated between a desire to apologize to Zhana on his
knees for his ugly words, then propose to her, right in
front of Barac, the restaurant staff, and any random cluster
of German tourists or, Option B, throwing Barac through
the window of the Fisherman’s Shed Restaurant, straight
into the sea. But rather than enact either of these options,
with a little help from the soldiers on duty, he merely fell
asleep in his office, putting off the difficult decision of
whether or not to snap into action until the following
Thursday.
Alas, it was the following Thursday that Dusha fled
Ljubljana, and the soldiers on duty were sparse since
Filipovski, the flag-bearer on call, had forgotten to tell
anyone what it
really
meant to be ‘on duty’ on Thursdays.
So Nedelko Borojević was on his way out of the barracks,
when he noticed the conspicuous absence of any snoring
coming from Captain Muzirović’s office. A minute later,