TE20 Migrant Mosaics

Goran Vojnović

He pretended not to hear her call of Hey, you! He was sitting beside her, and waited for her to use his name. But he was ‘Hey You’. He got up, picked up the tray with their coffee cups and carried it into the kitchen. He tilted it over the sink and let the cups and plates slide into it. Hey You didn’t care if anything got broken. He turned on the tap, letting the water cascade over it all, causing the coffee dregs to splatter all over the walls. He watched as they dried, and saw how the tiny dirty flecks would stay there, forever. Hey You let the dirt build up everywhere; he let oil splatter out of frying pans that were still wet. He carelessly shovelled vegetables into a pan, not peeled nor scrubbed; he left the simmering liquid to spill over the sides and flow into the crevices, spoiling thewood and steel. She was frightened by the cockroaches that crept around her, but they no longer signalled to her that her house needed cleaning. Those disgusting little things never seemed to repulse Hey You, much like the moths, maggots and spiders and their other cohabitants that quietly crawled around the house. There’s room for everyone, Hey You would say. The back garden was so overgrown that it was no longer possible to fight your way through. Tending to all those stalks and stems that no longer served any purpose became senseless–HeyYouwas ambivalent about how they looked; it all came out of the ground and it was all living, and who was he to restrict and interfere with nature. Hey You didn’t care if others would pick his raspberries over the garden fence.

66