TE17 Mysterious Montenegro

Alta Ifland

It was she who asked where Serioja was. As he tried to reproduce the conversation he’d had with Serioja, he became aware of her focused gaze, and suddenly realized that she didn’t understand a word of English. He paused and stared at her, helpless, then made a gesture with his right hand in the direction of Bill’s home, which he accompanied by the words: “Serioja…Bill.”

“Oh,” she said.

He liked the way silence settled around her, as if it were an emanation of her long, dark hair—no, not an emanation, he corrected himself; rather, an exaltation. He took another sip of the red wine he’d been drinking and offered her a glass, which she accepted quietly, and he himself began to feel exalted, as if a door that had been closed for too long had finally opened. He started to talk, reticently at first, about Tania and Irina, and about “what happened,” but the more he talked, the more encouraged he felt. The fact that she, apparently, understood no English had no bearing upon her ability to understand —he was talking to her silence and to her eyes and felt perfectly understood. You see, he was saying, it was Tania’s incapacity to understand that drove him crazy, for a year and a half he lived with a wall, when he talked to her his own words ricocheted back to him, hitting him in the head, he was beginning to wonder if he was the crazy one. And now, talking to her (that is, to Maria) was like recovering his sanity, do you understand what I’m saying, and Maria nodded her head, smiling, and he went on, clinging to the light in her eyes. It was way past midnight when Maria excused herself and went to bed, but the same scene took place again the following night (sameactors, different bottle). He talkedandasked herquestions, 178