TE20 Migrant Mosaics

Goran Vojnović

entire person in two. Forcibly cut off from a part of their lives, Vesna and Aleksandar now sat together beneath the fig tree, and both thought about Safet, erased from their picture.

When everything down there has settled, and Safet comes back… Aleksandar began, but Vesna interrupted him.

For better and for worse, we vowed to one another. For better and for worse. Only he decided to head into the worse without me. And he knows full well that I won’t forgive him for that. He knows me just as well as you do. Aleksandar went back into the house. Through the cracks in the shutters he heard the ignition of Vesna’s car engine, and the sound of spinning wheels crunching the gravel beneath them. The next evening he returned to the fig tree. He sat beneath it and waited for Vesna to call and tell him about Safet’s disappearance, to ask him if she could speak to her mum. He held the receiver in his hand and explained to her that her mumwasn’t well, and that he knew this news would crush her. He was looking at Jana and was looking at Vesna, too; he could see both of them now, and he saw Safet, too, eavesdropping on this conversation from some muddy bunker. He was the only one that lived with her, he told them. He was the only one who had witnessed her departure; the only one who had been by her sideas herwords ceased tocome togetheras thoughts, when words lost their meaning; the only one who flushed the toilet after her three times a day; the only one who chased after her into the garden to put a coat on her, when she left the house 64