5 May 1992, Tuesday - Erased

Zala arrived at the town hall half an hour too early. She kneaded her handbag handle with the palm of her hand as if trying to wring it out. A pensioner arrived soon after her. His baseball cap advertised some kind of stocks and shares company, and his khaki vest with countless pockets did the same for a local fishing club. The man attempted to start a conversation with her a couple of times, but Zala answered with only “Yes” and “No,” so he mumbled to himself until another man of approximately his age arrived, and they both began complaining about the inefficiency of the State, thieves and crooks who oppressed the little man, meaning themselves of course, though both were as tall and thin as beanstalks.

Precisely on the hour, a female security guard unlocked the door and Zala was about to enter when the uniformed woman blocked her way.

“Another minute!”

She watched the clock on the wall, and then said, “Now you can come in!”

‘What a cow!’ Zala thought to herself and looked around to find the right window. She decided on one that said Citizenship Queries, as it seemed the closest to what she was after.

“Good morning,” she greeted the woman in a grey suit, with over-bleached hair. “I was told at the health centre that there is something wrong with my details. Can you check please?”

She placed her identity card and passport under the glass screen. The official picked them up, began typing away on her computer, leaned slightly forward, looked at the name on the identity card, checked the screen again, took a pair of scissors, and cut the document in half. She pushed the passport into the hole-punch and firmly pressed the lever.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Zala was left speechless, managing barely more than a whisper.

The official glanced at her briefly and then cut the two halves of the identity card again.

“These are the instructions we have been given!”

She threw the pieces in the bin.

“What instructions?”

“Our boss gave us clear instructions.”

“May I talk to your boss? Where can I go?”

“She is on study leave.”

Zala pointed toward the bin.

“What did you do with my identity card? What am I supposed to do now?”

“Madam, the law is clear. You are a foreigner. Go to Kragujevac to sort out your citizenship there, then come and put in a request for a residence permit in Slovenia.”

“But... there I don’t have...”

The shareholder-fisherman pensioner had had enough.

“Well, come on! Unlike today’s youth, some of us don’t have all day to loaf about at the town hall.”

He looked at the man, who was nodding eagerly.

Zala grabbed the edge of the counter.

“Madam... please... I don’t know anybody in Kragujevac.”

The official began shifting from one buttock to the other, making the springs in her chair creak.

“Listen, do not take this personally. This is the law, our boss is very strict about implementing it because she wants to enter politics. She might yet become the Minister of Public Administration, and I’m stuck here at the counter so that all of you can shout at me. Where were you when you should have filled in the application for citizenship?”

“When was that? I knew nothing of it!”

“Well, don’t you watch the news?”

“No.”

“Then it’s your own fault! Don’t take it out on me.”

Zala struck her hand against the counter.

“I am not taking it out on anyone! I want my documents, because I am Slovene!”

“You’d better leave.” The official straightened up and pressed her fists against the desk, as her eyes turned toward the main door. Zala quickly turned her head. The security guard was nowhere to be seen.

“I am not going anywhere! I want to know what is going on!”

“I told you what is going on! I’ve had enough of the lot of you! You are all the same! Everyone shouting at me as if it was me who passed the law. Should I have filled the forms in instead of you?”

She grabbed the phone and lifted the receiver well above her ear, as if she was about to start a keep-fit routine with it.

“I’ll call the police!”

By the time the official had pressed two digits, Zala had turned to run. She rushed past the pensioner, standing there with a satisfied smile.

“That is how they should be treated,” he said loudly. “Is this what we fought for?”

* * *

“Did they cut up your identity card too?” a male voice asked. Zala jumped as she turned around, expecting to see a guy in uniform. Instead, a neat, snazzy young man of about twenty-five stood before her, wearing a beige shoulder-padded raincoat, a tone darker trousers ironed with a crease, and aviator sunglasses, despite the fact that the sun had yet to pay any attention to him.

“How do you know?” she asked. He reminded her of one of those models in soppy films, the way he’d stuck his thumbs in his pockets. She could swear he was winking behind his shades. But his face didn’t look like that of a model at all. It was one of those faces she had long believed practical jokers created for themselves over the years, a sort of mix between a fox and Pinocchio, until through her work with children she began to think that perhaps the exact opposite was true – some people were born like that and their character developed according to their face. He straightened his sunglasses, which had slid from the prominent ridge on his nose and asked, “Cigarette?”

“No, answer me. How do you know?”

“Let’s go for a drink and I can tell you all about it.”

The pensioner with the fishing jacket came out of the town hall, observing them with curiosity.

“My name is Nikola,” the young man said. “I’m only telling you in case you don’t go for drinks with foreigners.”

“I don’t have time,” Zala said. “Tell me about the identity cards.”

“Pssssss.” Nikola shook his head and suddenly Zala had had enough – in her state, the flirting game seemed repulsive and a waste of time; the world was a different place than it had been just a week ago. She snarled and hissed, “Fuck off!”

“Well, that’s what I’ll have to do if you don’t want to fuck with me!” He grinned, as the essence of his comedy character surfaced. His lower teeth looked as if they were trying to overtake each other in a messy row.

He leaned on the metal railing and made something of a performance out of lighting his cigarette.

Zala turned around and left.

Once round the corner, an attack of doubt slowed her down. It dawned on her that she had nowhere to go. The way the woman at the town hall had dealt with her so routinely, in such an irritated manner. She had kept on stressing how “you are all the same” – ‘Who are we? Who is this all?’ Zala wondered and realised that, were she to walk away, she would lose the only person who might know the answer. She turned around.

Stopping before turning the corner, she took a deep breath and peeped round. As he smoked, the young man ceremoniously raised his face to the sun, as if offering sacrificial incense.

A few more people came out of the building, including an older woman tapping her walking stick on the pavement. She stopped for a while right in front of Nikola, wiped her brow with the back of her hand and sobbed, but the young man didn’t even glance at her. He flicked the stub of his cigarette and continued to expose his neck to the rays of the sun that reflected in the gold frames of his glasses. Zala had to control herself not to go out and give the poor woman a hug. Perhaps they had cut up her documents too? But even if this was the case, she appeared as shocked as Zala and was unlikely to know anything.

The woman left and Nikola slowly lit another cigarette.

A young blonde girl in a mini and a perm that, according to the latest fashion, turned her hair into the wings of an angel, exited the town hall.

“Did they cut up your identity card too?” Nikola asked her.

“What?”

“Your ID, did they cut yours up?”

“This is the town hall, they issue identity cards here, not cut them up. Idiot!” the girl scowled and left, accelerating with such haste around the corner that Zala had to take a step back and didn’t dare peek again for a long time.

When she did, the young man was no longer there.

She thought she saw the tail of his coat disappear behind the building at the far end of the street.

She began running but was stopped by the pain. Clenching her teeth, she proceeded as fast as she could.

Round the corner she almost bumped into him and he grabbed hold of her wrists. She shifted her weight; he spotted her right foot getting ready to kick and let go.

“OK, OK! Calm down. You thought I didn’t see you? Huh! I knew you’d get all fired up and come running after me.”

“How do you know about them cutting up the IDs?”

“How old-fashioned you are! What, now we’re supposed to chat before we get on with it?”

“Hey, kiddo, do you need a kick in the balls to grow up?”

“Oooh, calm down. I am a responsible and mature person.”

“Then behave like one. Why are they cutting up people’s ID cards?”

Nikola removed his sunglasses and put them in his pocket. Without them, his macho pose disappeared. Suddenly, he appeared confused and his eyes emitted a weakness of sorts. Zala kept her guard up.

“All right then, let’s chat,” he said. “If a girl is good-looking, guys don’t have a problem when she wants to talk.”

* * *

“...so, last month I was driving a little too fast, as usual, what can I do, I was born with a heavy foot. What was I going to say? Well, I turn... into that street... I can’t remember what it’s called... it’s not important anyway. It’s nighttime, even the run-over cats on the road have closed their eyes, do you get it, I thought of that myself right now, to illustrate the scene... Well, I’m driving along. Here, shit, suddenly the police appear in front of me. One in the car, the other flagging me down, I’m taken by surprise. In my own car, all my papers in order. I don’t know what came over me, it felt as if I had set off for the market stark naked. I stop, what can I do? The policeman starts walking toward me, and I do a quick tidying up, you know, like at home when you are expecting guests, you need to straighten a few things out. I chuck the small amount of grass under that plastic mat, what is it you call them, and step on it, everything will be fine, they didn’t have sniffer dogs with them. Along comes the policeman, shining his torch. At the number plates, the car, straight at my eyes. This all takes a long time, get it. I thought it was a bit strange. I felt a sort of... how can I put it, not fear, after all I am a man, but an unpleasant feeling... he continued to shine his torch... it brought tears to my eyes, the whole thing shocked me, the light in the dark. Shining at the car, at me, the fucking cop. I want to make conversation, so I say, ‘I was a bit fast, wasn’t I? I won’t go that fast in the future, I promise...’ but he says nothing.

Silence. Anyway, I’m no longer one of those kids they would stuff in the back of the police van and take for a ride to teach a lesson. But there were a couple of cops who still begrudged me, my brain ticked away like a pneumatic hammer, going over all my sins to guess who it could be. Lots of sins, countless possibilities. Now this was really getting to me, the palms of my hands were all sweaty, slippery on the steering wheel. Then the guy turns the torch upwards, just briefly, toward his face, and I see that it’s Tine!

‘Tine, mate, what’s up?’ I say. He turns the torch downwards and doesn’t say anything.

‘Tine, what’s wrong with you? Stop scaring me! For fuck’s sake!’

I laugh, expecting to hear him laughing too, you know how they say that laughter is contagious. Fuck it, Tine is immune, nothing is contagious with him. He just stands there, silent, as if carved out of wood.

‘Tine, what is it? What is wrong? Come on, mate, don’t do this to me!’

He finally speaks. ‘You were driving too fast,’ he says.

I thought it was all strange, you know, him being all official as if he didn’t know me from the neighbourhood, we grew up together.

‘You know me...’ I say.

‘I do,’ he says quickly, as if air were on credit. I’d thought my heart was squeezed as far as it could be, but those two words tightened it even further, like a screw, you know, when you think you have tightened it and then you try again and it turns just that little bit more.

I was lost.

‘What’s wrong?’ I ask him again. And now he, get it, there in the night, his torch shining down at the ground, I can see him in the darkness, suddenly loses his stony face and becomes the old Tine I’m used to. It’s not nice to deride people you grew up with, but we always knew he’d become a soldier or a policeman. Well, that’s Tine.

He looks at me with his typical Tine face and says, ‘We both know what I owe you. You pulled me out of the river and saved my life. Now I can return you the favour.’

I still don’t get what this is all about, but it is clear that we are negotiating here, bargaining over something. Big time apparently, he’s mentioning his life. You know, I really did save him.

So I say, ‘What are you talking about? Not issuing me a fine? You value your life at a few banknotes of what?’

Tine sighs, like it’s me who’s short in this equation.

‘If I issue you with a fine I need to confirm your details with headquarters. But you do not exist.’

‘Ah?’ I gaped.

‘You don’t exist,’ says Tine. ‘I’ve checked all my friends. Some of you no longer exist, you amongst them. Since the twenty-sixth of February. We received a brief about how to deal with you.’

He spoke as if he was standing at my graveside sending me off into the great beyond. I needed to get him to think straight again, so I thought of the most logical explanation.

‘Do you have a fever? Perhaps you need some sick leave?’

He shook his head.

‘Go to the town hall tomorrow and show them your identity card if you don’t believe me.’

‘Tine, you are kidding me, aren’t you? Getting me back for all those pranks I played on you and you fell for, fell for many times and often. A joke, eh?’

He still shook his head.

‘You were erased from the Registry. You no longer exist. They say you didn’t want citizenship, that you are against us.’

‘Against you, you being who?’ I got agitated. ‘Us who grew up on the first staircase against you who grew up on the next one along, or what? What are you on about?’

I could sense that he was annoyed by all this. That he just wanted to get it over with, leave and forget me.

‘Because you are erased, I cannot issue you with a speeding ticket. I’m supposed to take you to the shelter for asylum seekers. From there, they’ll take you to the border and hand you over to the Croats. The Croats will say, oh, look, a Montenegrin, we are at war with them, and they will do stuff to you that I would not wish on my worst enemy. So I won’t even take the tickets out of my pocket, you are erased and I can’t see you. Now we are even, but I must not see you ever again.’

He switched off his torch and I really have never seen him since.”

* * *

“Hang on,” Zala said, her hand creeping forward of its own accord. She observed it as if it were someone else’s limb, sliding across the table, fingers turning slightly to the left, toward the packet of cigarettes, “they just deleted us from their computers?”

She focused on her bony joints and stopped her hand. She needed a little extra effort to actually pull it away. In secondary school, all her schoolmates had smoked, only she had stuck to her guns. But during her bad relationship, she had caved in, in the second or third year. One of those evenings when they sat on the sofa, he should have been writing, he said, but he had a creative block, so he drank a beer that was supposed to help his imagination, as he called the thing that never appeared then or later. After taking a sip, he lit a cigarette and Zala had joined him. After the first draw, she went to vomit, but then stubbornly finished off the stub that awaited her, stuck in the ashtray. When she did a recap of the relationship and remembered the smoking, she realised that all she and her ex had ever shared was the packet of cigarettes on the table in front of them. It was not words that came from their mouths to intermingle, but puffs of smoke. She first stopped smoking, then she put on some weight, of course, and then began going to gym classes, at which point any slightly more attentive man would have noticed and realised he was in for a rough time. But had he really been attentive, he would have noticed earlier and not let things get so far.

She stopped drinking coffee when the double line on the pregnancy test appeared.

Nikola shrugged his shoulders. “So, that’s it. We are no longer.”

“And how many such cases are there?”

“I haven’t a clue. Many, I’d guess.”

“But what have we done?”

“You know, at first I thought it was a police trick. You drive too fast, get into a fight or two, sell a joint or two and they get fed up with you. But then I heard about the same happening to old grannies, pensioners, get it? I asked myself and I think I figured out the rule: my surname ends in –i ć and I was born in Montenegro.”

“And I in Serbia, but I was only born there, Father soon got his transfer...”

“Well, it doesn’t make a difference. Kragujevac in your case, Titograd in mine, that’s the problem. I have a mate who can’t even speak the language properly, but he was born in Vienna. His identity card was not cut in half. Fuck him.”

“They erase you if your surname ends in -i ć and you were born in Yugoslavia? But there must be thousands of people like that? Tens of thousands?”

Nikola finished his coffee and lit another cigarette. Zala felt the herbal tea in her hand cooling. She looked around at the bar, the polished brass and varnished veneer, fancy a decade ago. Since then it had lost its shine in places and begun to look like a patient with a skin disease. A few guests still sat at the bar and the waitress kept looking at the clock as if she were waiting for her life to tick away. A neon sign on the wall announced this was the DAY BAR and under it a notice read, “Deliberate breakage will be charged at a triple rate.”

“Eh, possibly,” Nikola said. He puffed on his cigarette and tried to form a smoke ring; when it failed he quickly continued talking. “But they all hide, shelter in a mouse hole, become invisible. Simply disappear.”

Zala looked through the window. She tried to capture and retain in her memory the faces of passersby, imagine that they too were erased but didn’t even know it, because they had yet to be stopped by the police for speeding, or gone to the town hall to change their documents, or delivered their baby at a hospital. She tried to imagine other reasons, but her brain was not cooperating. A kind of bitter astonishment seemed to have penetrated it and caused it to stop functioning.

“This could take years,” she said, “before everyone finds out what’s happened to them. And even then they’ll think for a long time that it’s their own fault. But it was the State that did this to us!”

“Aha.” Nikola nodded wisely, and from the way he said it, Zala was not convinced he would not continue with a joke.

“We need to protest! Get organised! Do something! How long have you known?” she asked, blushing with revolutionary eagerness.

“Almost two months.”

“And what have you done about it?”

“Everything, get it? Everything possible. I have adapted. I don’t go out at night when you can be asked for your ID. I drive by the rules, never an old car, they are more likely to stop you in an old car. I do not draw attention to myself. I am invisible. There.”

“And? What else?”

“What do you mean? One needs to find something good in everything. Women whose identity cards have just been cut up need a shoulder to cry on.”

Zala shook her head sadly.

“This is all you managed to do in two months? Sex?”

Nikola was surprised by Zala’s desperate expression.

“Hang on a little. What are we talking about? I took care of the basics, what’s wrong with that?”

Zala felt a dull ache at the back of her eyes and she turned her gaze out the window until it passed. ‘This is like explaining something to a child. Why are men so shallow?’

She began to talk slowly and clearly, realising that she was using the voice she used at the nursery school. “We must get organised. We are a group. An injustice has been perpetrated against us. We need to protest.”

He nodded enthusiastically.

She waited.

He then occupied himself with lighting another cigarette and, as he took his first draw, looked at her expectantly as if waiting for her to say more. Zala felt like standing up and leaving. She couldn’t – finally she had found another castaway in the middle of the open sea and bad company was better than no company at all.

“Where are your parents?” she asked.

“Both worked for the Army. With Independence they packed up my two younger brothers and took off to Montenegro. We argued, but I stayed on. What could I possibly do in Montenegro, get it? We used to go there on holiday once a year, I really don’t know anyone there at all, and...”

He began waving his right hand about as if directing traffic.

“...anyway, they kept taking the piss out of you because you were Slovene.” Zala finished the sentence for him.

“Yes. Fuck it!”

“Do you have anywhere to live?”

“No, but no sweat. I get by,” he said, gazing at her movingly, another childish trick.

She reached into her handbag, tore a page out of a notebook and jotted down her address and phone number.

“If you need to, you can come sleep on my sofa in the evening. But call first, OK?”

* * *

Tania opened the door, but blocked the entrance with her body.

“Is anything wrong with my baby?” Zala leaped at her.

“Don’t worry,” Tania said, “Everything is fine. We won’t manage it today. There are some people next to him. And the Director and the Consultant...”

“I’ll wait.”

“I need to leave. My parents have their wedding anniversary. I’m sorry, but I really need to go.”

‘Is she lying to me?’ Zala thought. ‘She won’t even dare let me in the broom cupboard now because I almost ran away with him last time.’

She had called Tania from the phone booth and used a fistful of coins before she was connected to the right department. When they met, she did not go into details but explained that there had been a mix-up at the town hall and that they were sorting out the problem. She asked whether she could come to breastfeed the baby in the evening.

Tania was shuffling her feet, opening and closing her mouth.

“What is it?” Zala said.

“I think it’s right that you should know. No, no, no, everything is fine with the baby! But when I went to get him, I overheard them talking. The Director has a distinctive voice, as you know. In her presence, the Consultant stays silent and only nods anyway. The door was left ajar, so...”

She looked at Zala apologetically, but Zala waved impatiently for her to continue.

“Around the bed with your baby I saw the Director, the Consultant, and next to them a younger couple that I had never seen before.

‘He is alone, abandoned,’ the Director said. ‘Father unknown, mother ran away and left him here. This happens sometimes. In some women, the mothering instinct simply does not awaken, never believe stereotypes.’

‘All tests without any problems,’ the Consultant added. I couldn’t take my eyes off him – what a wimp! When he is just with us, he behaves quite differently.

‘You can ask for temporary custody and then begin the adoption process. Go and see Tina about it,’ the Director said, and that was when the younger woman first spoke.”

Tania fell silent and grabbed a lock of her hair with the tips of her fingers.

“What did she say?” Zala asked.

“She said, ‘Oh Mummy, thank you!’”

Tania moved a step back, as if expecting Zala to explode. Zala felt an icy and dangerous calm. The pieces of the puzzle, rippling on a crumbly surface, now began to settle and one of the key pieces had fallen into place. Like an illness that instantly becomes less terrifying when it acquires a name. Or hatred that finds a face and changes into the enemy.

* * *

The Director dryly thanked the security guard who had escorted Zala into her office and leaned back into her chair. She waited for him to close the door and then gestured to her visitor to sit down.

Zala obeyed, but only half sat on the chair, ready to make a run at any moment. She allowed herself a nervous biting of the lips, feigned a confused expression, and fidgeted with the material around her pockets. ‘What if I’m being too obvious?’ she thought and lessened the pretence, afraid the Director would see through her and sense her determination, that feeling that in place of her spinal cord was a waiting blade, hidden until the right moment. All the urge, drive, and instinct that had previously drawn her to her child, remained inside her, cocooned and waiting. The true reason behind the Director’s behaviour transformed the woman in front of her from a cog in the machinery of the state, into an individual, a person playing her own game. In her favour were the circumstances and the State, and an unjust law that had awoken such vampires. Zala did not know where to find the hawthorn stake that she would drive through the woman’s heart, but at last she was fighting a person and not a state. And for good measure, this time Zala knew more than the woman in front of her thought she knew, something that gave her a feeling of power.

Her first thought when the door had closed behind Tania had been to go to the police. She had immediately realised how stupid that would be, since she would undoubtedly be asked for identification at the gate of the police station and once more find herself on the path of persecution. Her second thought had been that she would have to find him, vows or no vows. But she needed more information, so she had approached the security guard at the hospital.

The Director waited calmly, her fingers intertwined; she turned them slightly, perhaps just to make her wedding ring sparkle.

“I was thinking,” Zala began.

The Director’s face remained expressionless. The scent of her heavy perfume wafted toward Zala.

“The thing you mentioned... that...”

The Director nodded, as if to say, there is no need to actually utter the word ‘adoption.’

“What is the procedure?”

“You sign this...” she tapped a pile of papers with her right hand, “but before that, you tell me your conditions.”

“What conditions?”

“Financial ones.”

“I don’t want money.”

“Rich people have one single thing in common: they never refuse money, otherwise they would not have grown rich.” The Director disengaged her fingers and put one hand on top of the other, her fingernails shining, painted in a varnish the same red tone as her lipstick.

“I am not interested in money. I am interested in the procedure. What is it and how long does it take?”

“If you sign this, that’s it. If not, then temporary custody, it can take a whole year. Basically until they find you. But if they find you, you will be deported, you do know that, don’t you? The police here are much more efficient than social services. Will you sign?”

“No.”

“What did you come here for, then?”

Zala stared straight at her and swore she would not be the first to look away. She hoped that she could also compete in calm indifference.

She won.

The Director picked up the form and pretended to read it for almost a whole minute.

“You’re making a mistake,” she asserted and looked at Zala. “You know, years ago I was at a seminar in Spain and I talked to some doctors. This is quite normal there. In many hospitals, they simply swap healthy babies; they take them from bad families and give them a better chance in life. Without asking anyone.

This is how you build a healthy nation, there is no other way.

You say you don’t want money? What did you come for, then? I don’t have time to chat, I’m a busy woman. The entire hospital rests on my shoulders. Let us sort this out in a civil manner. Give me your price, be reasonable, and we will come to an agreement. Sign. We might even be able to do something about this erasure of yours; we are an influential family.”

She pursed her lips and continued. “You certainly won’t be able to do anything yourself. At your age, it should be clear to you that if you haven’t achieved anything in life by now, you’re unlikely to do so from here on. You know, you’re not part of the system. I’m not talking about the law, institutions, and so on, all that is just a screen for ancient families who all know each other. Sometimes we argue, fight, even slaughter each other, but we’re united in one thing: foreigners are not allowed access. The Communists tried by force, through terror, but soon showed their true colours. They didn’t wish to destroy the old family system, they wanted to start one of their own. Unfortunately, they were successful, to a degree. But you don’t belong to either the old or the new families, so, if you come again, come to sort things out to the satisfaction of both sides. Come to sign. Thank you and good-bye.”

She turned the chair with her backside and busied herself with entering some numbers into a chart that spread over numerous pages.

Zala stood up slowly, straightened her blouse, and stared for a while at the scalp bending over the forms, before saying calmly, “I will now go to see a lawyer. This cannot be so. And it will not be so!”

The Director looked up swiftly, her throat giving her voice a tone of hatred.

“Huh! Were you not listening? This is a country of relations, not law! And who do you have? No one! And because of your stubbornness, your son will also be like that! No connections or acquaintances, a nothing! Good-bye.”

Zala wanted to scream and claw away at her face. Instead, she said coldly, as if biting the words from ice.

“Good-bye. I’ll see you soon.”

* * *

The Head of the Social Services Department leaned forward and folded her arms above the elbows. Her nails, her wedding ring, and her blouse had a silvery sparkle to them. Her brown suit with padded shoulders gave her an air of respectable serenity. She had dyed her hair a copper tone of red that seemed to absorb the light.

“The case is so sensitive that I will look into it personally,” she said and smiled. Her face rearranged itself in folds around her lipstick-covered pout, first the wrinkles on her cheeks, then her eyes and brow.

“You should know,” she said, “in certain circumstances, adoption is also possible before the period determined by law is over, if Social Services establish that this would be in the interest of the child. But do not worry about this, whatever they are planning at the hospital, we follow procedures strictly. Ascertainment procedure, interview, oriented discussions, oriented interview. All within procedures. There’s no chance that anything would happen that is against your will.”

“When can I get the child?” Zala asked.

“Nobody has contacted us yet, you know. I will personally check what’s going on. They cannot simply take your child. But it’s probably true...” she fell silent and gave her a sympathetic look, “that you have no residency status and that you would both be deported to Kragujevac. So it’s probably better that you leave him at the hospital and come and see me again in a few days’ time.”

It sounded definitive and logical, but Zala was unable to leave. She stared at the diplomas and acknowledgements on the wall, a calendar from a charity for the blind, the stem of a dragon tree plant in the corner that almost reached the ceiling with a crown of fallen leaves in the pot below, next to it a cupboard full of books with framed photos leaning against their spines. Each one showed the Head, with her family, with a group of children, then a frame that had fallen down and she had not put back up, then a photo with people from the office...

“Don’t worry,” the woman repeated, as she sat back at her desk and unfolded her arms. It sounded like a farewell.

“In a few days’ time?” Zala said.

“I have your number, I’ll call you if I find out anything earlier. Otherwise you call us. Or come and see us, you’re always welcome.”

Zala thanked her absently and said good-bye. She could not rid herself of the feeling that something was off. As fear turned into suspicion, her instinct began to scour around like the tentacles of a trapped octopus.

She closed the door behind her but could not let go of the handle. The conversation had lasted for a long time, but all she could remember was the conclusion: nothing.

VALENTINA said the first engraved word on the sign on the door.

What was it that the Director had said to her daughter at the hospital?

‘Go and see Tina about it!’

Had she thought about it, she would have restrained herself. She opened the door and the woman jumped, picking up the fallen photograph. She pushed it back, then changed her mind and pressed it to her bosom. Zala grabbed the frame and saw the Head of the Social Services Department and the Director of the Maternity Clinic standing next to each other, holding glasses of champagne.

“I should have put it away in the drawer,” the Head said.

The pout at the centre of her face turned contemptuous.

“I advise you to leave peacefully,” she said. “Neither of us wants the police involved, you even less than me.”

* * *

She could not recall how she left the office or where she walked before ending up in the middle of Tivoli Park. It was only the creaking of baby carriages and strollers being pushed along the gravelled paths that roused her. ‘I should not have come here!’ she shuddered and tried to look away. No use, the young mothers strolled along and chatted, children shouted as they ran along in the grass, someone was collecting dog shit and expertly inspecting it.

* * *

She stepped out of the lift and saw the three shadowy figures standing by the window at the end of the corridor. Instinctively, she wanted to turn round, get back inside and close the door without pressing any button.

But she knew that, sooner or later, she would have to face them, and whenever she anticipated something unpleasant or painful she always wanted to get it over with as soon as possible. When her maternal grandfather had died, a man who spent his last years living in an unplastered house in the hills, she’d thought about death for a long time after. She had often wished that life would fast-forward itself, so she could know what hers would be like. Surely not bare exposed brick walls, a bucket for carrying water, rubber boots next to a woodworm-infested, creaky bed and a bony body with a handkerchief over the mouth.

“Well, where is he?” Meta asked, as Zala walked past them, staring at the floor. She could sense the flowers and presents in their hands and felt she could not stand the sight of them: there was something obscene in presents for a child she had not brought home.

She found her key in her handbag and unlocked the door. She entered her apartment, leaving the door wide open.

Nana was the first to shyly follow her. “Is there something wrong with him?”

“Come on, don’t torment us, tell us!” Vlasta raised her voice but fell silent as Zala approached the empty cot. She slid her hands down and stroked the edge of the cot, as if preparing for a piano recital.

When she turned around, they seemed surprised at the tears on her face.

“I feel so ashamed! Oh, I feel so ashamed!” Zala cried and covered her face with her hands. They stood around her, looking at each other to see who would be the first to put their hand on her shoulder, touch her, hug her. Smothered with hands, she began to cry out loud.

“I had imagined that you would come back from your holidays, stand here and watch him sleep in his cot, and I would... Shame, I feel so ashamed!”

“Tell us what happened,” Vlasta said as they all hugged her.

Slowly, she began to tell them, first about the mistake in the computer, then about the town hall and how this was all about a new law, how there were many others in a similar situation. Even at this point, they stared at her and frowned in disbelief, so Zala deliberately didn’t mention the Director and her plan.

“We will get the money!” Vlasta took the initiative.

“I have my savings, I could pay it. But I must first sort out my residence status. How can I possibly go to Kragujevac with the baby at a time like this?”

They looked at each other and Vlasta tried again with a suggestion.

“Do any of us have any connections? Do we know any politicians?”

“I met the mayor at an event once,” Nana said, but they all shook their heads.

“Zala, we’ll ask around, we must find some connections!” Meta said, “You have nothing to be ashamed about! It’s those who deleted you from the registry that should be ashamed!”

“I don’t think they even know what shame is, the bandits!” Vlasta, who was ten years older than the rest and worked with Zala, had always looked after Zala and stood up for her when parents came to take out their complaints on the teachers, when it was always parenting problems that they themselves had caused at home.

Nana removed a linen cloth from the basket she had brought with her, to reveal a big red pot.

“Chicken soup. My grandmother says it is the best remedy.”

They began cooking, whilst Zala sat at the table, giving in to her dizziness. Sensing an opportunity in the safety of the group of friends, exhaustion claimed her. It spread to her hands and feet, clouded her eyes, and made her so sleepy she kept dozing off.

They placed a plate in front of her on the table and tried to make her take a spoonful. She took the first sip and initially sensed only the warmth of the liquid. Then her taste buds stirred and her stomach joined in. She was surprised at herself, at how she could enjoy chewing the over-boiled pieces of vegetables and tiny slices of stringy meat, feel it travel down her throat and warm her from inside.

“There, see!” Nana nodded with satisfaction. She was usually an excellent cook, but clearly thought that giving birth was similar to a dental procedure and so had overcooked everything. She worked as an accountant, because she didn’t dare work in catering. Her parents had never openly expressed their objection to it, but she had sensed their disapproval of food service when she was choosing a career, and their approval when she had finally made their decision.

“Go and lie down!” Meta said. She was the realistic and taciturn axis of the group, to whom they always turned when something needed to be organised.

“At six o’clock, I have to...” Zala began saying and heard her own voice as if it were coming from the room next door.

“That’s in two hours’ time; we’ll wait and wake you up.”

* * *

She bought a fistful of phone tokens at the newsagent’s and walked toward the centre of town. Pollen covered the pavements, leaving yellow traces of footsteps. As she walked, she kept going over events in her mind – what was real and what had she dreamt? Being erased, the Director and the Head of Social Services, families with connections, all of these could be the product of a nightmare, but the milk extraction pump that replaced the baby’s mouth homed in on reality. ‘It will all be fine, as long as the milk still flows,’ she told herself.

She stood outside a glistening office building, plucking up the courage for her next move. Then she went to the nearest phone booth and dialled the number. Her fingers rushed across the dial.

He picked up after the second ring.

“It’s me,” she said in English, and he hung up instantly.

* * *

The lift descended in stages. It stopped at almost every floor to pick up more businessmen in dark suits. They squeezed Zala into the corner and blocked her with their bodies and smells of fading deodorant and aftershave. One of them had forgotten to shake the dandruff off his jacket and this miniature Milky Way was the only disruption in the darkness that enclosed her. A number of foreign firms rented office space in the building and many of their employees worked during the office hours of their home country. Those with children found the local socialist working rhythms rigid and unhelpful – nursery schools emptied after three o’clock in the afternoon and anyone who came to collect their children after four was almost certain to receive nasty looks from the teachers, steep late fees, and threatening reminders from the management of the school. Occasionally, it happened that only a single charge was left with a teacher, the one whose turn it was to stay late. Zala tried to handle these occasions stoically and, despite being annoyed, kept telling herself it was not the child’s fault. Some of the other teachers would tell the children that next time they would be left sitting alone on the outside steps with a piece of dried bread to nibble on, like orphans from stories.

She had met the American businessman when a friend of his had asked him to collect his child from the nursery school. The girl and Zala were looking for a four-leaf clover in the grass. Zala’s back had begun to hurt from bending over. She had looked toward the parking area and noticed an expensive car drawing up. (Her knowledge of cars extended to only three types: expensive, cheap, and hers.) A man had climbed out of the car, opened the metal gate, and strolled toward them.

Later, she would often remember this moment.

He was walking too slowly, looking left and right, taking in the surroundings that were strange to him, probably comparing nursery schools in Slovenia with those in the United States.

“Where is everybody?” he had asked after greeting them in his American accent that was far easier to understand than most British ones, because Zala was more used to it from films and television.

She had had to explain local working hours to him, how all the parents picked their children up by three o’clock.

“Oh!” he said, “that must be why we only have internal corporate meetings in the afternoons and all our local partners are unavailable.”

She had thought he was making fun of her, but his enthusiastic astonishment convinced her. She had liked the fact that she was practicing her English, but was embarrassed that she wasn’t fluent and kept having to think ‘third person singular, an s at the end of the vowel’ and things like that.

The girl she was looking after almost jumped at him and cried out, “Uncle Mark!” He lifted her up in the air and Zala noticed how big his hands were. He really was large, in an American sort of way. Not fat, just big and wide, as if he had just come from an American football match and not yet taken his kit off.

“You haven’t been in Slovenia long, have you?” she asked him and when she thought about it later, she realised it was this extra question that took her beyond just being a nursery school teacher handing a child over.

“Only a month.”

She wanted to ask him how he liked it, but didn’t want him to think she was shallow, this was the exact word that came to her mind, so she asked, “And what do you do?”

He smiled and was about to start explaining. Instead, he frowned and something devilish twinkled in his eye. He stuck his tongue under his lip, as if cleaning an upper tooth, so that it swelled on one side, a gesture she would later see him do often and would always associate with him, and said, “I solve problems.”

“Welcome,” she said, and he laughed.

The first time they had dinner, he had explained that the corporation had sent him to this country because their Slovenian branch hadn’t done well from the start, they couldn’t find a way to ‘pick themselves up off the ground,’ as he said, and it was his job to go round the world solving business problems. He had begun to explain about crisis management, was surprised when he lost her attention, and had swiftly changed the subject.

The lift stopped at the ground floor and the dark suits carried away their briefcases into the lobby. The doorman greeted each one separately.

Besides Zala, three men remained in the lift, the tallest of them pressed the basement button and the doors shut immediately – American businessmen were always in a hurry.

When the door opened, the man next to the controls stayed put, while the other two left.

Zala stood behind him and waited.

The door closed automatically and the man flipped the STOP switch.

Zala moved away from the metal panelling, without taking her eyes off the white shirt collar that hemmed in the neck with its shortly trimmed hair and the odd white streak, lost amidst the prevailing blonde at the back, only coming into force around the ears.

“You said you never wanted to see me again,” the man said, without turning around.

He pressed the button to open the door and left.

Zala followed him into the multistorey car park. A car drove by and on their right one of the businessmen was leaning over the boot of his car. Dusty fluorescent lamps lit the parking level and made the letters painted on the columns shine. Despite the metal vents buzzing away, the place stank of petrol and exhaust fumes.

Zala caught up with the man and walked alongside him. She didn’t want to look at him; they both stared ahead.

“You told me to fuck off. That you’d found a younger man.”

She had forgotten! Their last telephone conversation resurfaced in her memory and shamed her. There was no younger man and she could have simply told him that it was over, the end, as the Americans write at the end of every movie, but something inside her persisted and did not let go until she had ended up shouting a whole load of stuff at him that she didn’t really believe. About how he was old, how she had found a younger man, how he bored her, how she was fed up... A circus number: she had tied him to a spinning wheel thrown kinves at his heart, blood squirting everywhere.

“I lied.”

“What do you need?”

“Do you not care why I lied?”

“No, because I know why you came. You need something from me. Something big. What is it?”

“Your connections.”

He stopped so suddenly that she had to make half a step backward. He looked at her with contempt and she allowed the pain to burn away at her.

“Hah! And you dare, after everything you said to me?”

He began walking again and Zala followed him.

“I wanted you out of my life.”

He reached the car and the parking lights greeted him as the doors unlocked.

“Because you had told me what you were most afraid of...” Zala stood by his side and talked faster and faster. He opened the back door and threw his briefcase on the back seat. “... and I didn’t want you there when that began to come true.”

He slammed the back and opened the driver’s door.

“First, my period was late.”

He had already put his right foot in the car.

“Then the pregnancy test showed two lines.”

He stopped, pulled out his leg, turned around and stared at Zala.

“I didn’t want you with me when I told my friends about the pregnancy and I never mentioned you to anyone, keeping you a secret all this time.

I didn’t want you with me when I was fat as a hippo.

I didn’t want you with me when I gave birth.

But now I need you, because they are going to take my baby away.”

They stared at each other. An undefined sound came from his throat, something between a groan and a dying growl. He had difficulties swallowing and she observed the efforts of his Adam’s apple.

He covered his face with his hands.

“Fuck!” he said.

Zala looked toward the exit.

“Should we go out, into the park?”

She led him along the narrow pavement next to the concrete wall, past the barrier and across the road. She could sense him following her and his confusion made him weak, but she knew she would have to answer all the inevitable questions that would soon begin.

“Is he even mine?”

“The due date was the ninth of May, so calculate it.”

The plan had been that they would lie on the blanket and watch the shooting stars. They had gone to the top of the hill on the island and found a secluded clearing. Zala was afraid of snakes and scorpions, so he had walked across the entire patch stomping with his feet against the ground and shining the torch into the night. They had lain next to each other and waited for their eyes to adjust to the darkness. The Milky Way spread across the firmament above them and, in the distance, fused with the lights of the town. She could feel his warmth next to her, he had put his right hand around her and she wished she could crawl into him.

“You told me you were on the pill.”

“The leaflet says: 98% reliability.”

“What...”

She interrupted him.

“I know you have to ask all this. Go ahead. But I came to ask you a favour.”

“After all you...”

The pain in her quiet voice stopped him. She spoke as if her skin was being grated from her body.

“You were like a tooth that caused pain. I kept poking at it. I had to extract you. I had to. I chose the wrong method. Because... because it hurt so much. Mark, I am sorry.”

He nodded and they continued to walk. The gravel under their feet crunched and yellow pollen cascaded from the trees. It made the far end of the tree-lined alley look as if it were immersed in a yellow fog.

‘I should not have come here! Why am I torturing myself?’ occurred to Zala when she saw the parade of mothers with strollers and children running alongside them playing with their dogs that, after a whole day inside, were jumping about with enthusiasm and excitement. Pregnant women strolled along with their partners and Zala sneaked a glance at the man on her right and wanted to cry. Worst of all was seeing mothers who carried their babies on their hips, making them sway in a particular way.

“Your wife will never find out,” she said.

She heard him sigh.

“Or your children. Nobody will ever find out. Help me, please.”

Another sigh.

“What do you need?”

“The media. This is not just about me, people need to find out about us.”

“Hang on, what is this about? If I understand you correctly, you’re asking for access to the media and promising that nobody will ever find out?”

“Not about you. Let me explain...”

She began to tell him all that had happened and this time she left nothing out.

Halfway through the story, he sat on a bench and supported his chin with his hands.

When she was through, he sat silently for a long time, then passed judgment. “Fuck!”

“It sounds impossible; you could not make up a story like this if you wanted to. Let me summarise. The hospital director is taking advantage of the circumstances created by the state. To do so, she is using her connections at the social services office. If you sort out your status, then it will be OK, and they can’t do anything to you.”

“That’s right.”

“Hmm.” He began drilling at his upper lip with his tongue. “I’ll talk with some lawyers and ask my political contacts where things stand.”

“What about the media? You have access...”

“Yes,” he smiled, “we Americans always go to the media. I know a much-respected editor.” He looked at his watch. “He’ll still be at work because they finalise their redaction in the evening. I’ll call you at home if I can arrange a meeting with him today.”

His voice became slightly metallic, almost mechanical. His left eyelid ticked to the rhythm of his thoughts.

Zala smiled.“What is it?”

“I can see you have a project.”

“Hey, I am a crisis manager and I enjoy my work.”

“I know.”

“Ever more often, I get the feeling that I’ve a purpose here. Do you need any money?”

“No, I haven’t even touched my maternity leave pay.”

* * *

The Headmistress of the nursery school asked Zala to sit down and sat at her end of the desk. She took off her glasses, breathed on the lenses so they steamed up and began wiping them with a cloth she produced from the drawer.

“Zala, tell me, what’s wrong?”

“I’m sorry I called you at this time...”

“Oh, come on. You know I live right next door. What is it? Why didn’t you want to come to my home?”

“Because this concerns work...”

The real reason was that the Headmistress’s husband and grown-up son were home most of the time, Zala didn’t have a clue why.

“Tell me!” the Headmistress urged her and Zala realised that she had spent all the vigour of telling her story on Mark. Now she was left with a sense of desperation that, despite all the talking, nothing was moving ahead.

Again, she explained about the Erased. That in itself stunned the Headmistress into just staring at her.

“I can’t believe it! Never! Slovenes would never do something like that! You say you have no maternity pay? It was not paid at all? You have no health insurance?”

“Yes. I just wanted to ask you, you know yourself how long I’ve worked here...”

“Zala, stop it. I will do everything in my power.”

“If you could ask around... Confirm to them how long I have been working here, tell them that I’m not a foreigner.”

“Certainly. Give me a few days... This cannot be true!”

* * *

She stood by the cot, stroking the edge with her hand, her eyes closed. This trip to the bedroom had become a ritual that she carried out every time she came back home. When she first moved in, the apartment had seemed too big; when she bought it she had felt it was just the right size; and as her belly began to grow, she had wondered whether it might not become too small soon after birth and what she would do in a few years’ time, when the child would need a room of its own. Now it gaped at her with a terrifying emptiness, the space biting at her, hollowing her as soon as she entered. All that she had imagined, her failed hopes and dreams, roamed around the space, haunting her like personal ghosts.

She opened her eyes and stared at the sheet. Yet another emptiness. Not even the tiniest patch of skin had ever touched the material, not once had the blanket warmed the tiny body it was intended for.

The pressure crept through her chest and tightened around her neck. What if she died before she was able to save her child, before bringing him here? Betrayed by her heart, beating rather improvidently, unable to find a balance, sometimes thumping away like boots on parade and at others, merely shimmering like spilt oil on the surface of the sea. She reached for the mobile above the cot, the threads becoming entangled in her fingers and the paper birds taking off. She walked around the room placing her hands on objects – the desk, the chair, the sofa, not one of them holding a memory of the baby, they all greeted her coldly. A folder rested on the far right corner of the desk and when she opened it, all her pregnancy documents fell to the floor through her trembling fingers. Doctors’ notes, test results, and amongst them newspaper and magazine clippings about pregnancy and childbirth. She began searching through them with great haste, without knowing what she was looking for.

She stopped when she found a black–and-white image that looked like an old etching covered in computer print and clusters of numbers. As if something had rushed past the unsuspecting camera at great speed, something between two great waves, a kind of bundle with protruding wings. She had stared at the picture when her gynaecologist first gave it to her, wanting to take in every detail. Bent legs and a head with a slight bump where the nose was growing, the unrecognisable face of the person yet to be born, one still waiting.

“Enough,” she said out loud to her tears, without success.

She fetched the scissors and carefully cut out the ultrasound image, opened her wallet, measured it and then folded the picture so she could see it through the transparent plastic pocket.

The phone rang.

* * *

“I apologise for coming at this late hour, but...” she began to explain, but the editor interrupted her. “No, no, no, it’s fine! They told me that you wanted to talk about the problem of the Erased. Let’s talk, though I must finish the redaction. We did write about the draft legislation and the voting. Please, take a seat!”

The editor smacked his lips and Zala first thought it was some kind of tic. Then she noticed a ball of greaseproof paper in the bin and realised that he had just finished eating. The noise that his tongue made as it cleaned his teeth drew her attention to his tiny mouth, lodged softly in its surroundings. The face could well have belonged to someone fat, though the body did not align with it, other than his stomach bulging against his jacket. He continued, “You know, these problems of yours are more of a social issue now. We are a political daily paper.”

“An injustice has been done! There must be many others like me. What kind of an issue is that?!”

He grimaced, as if something had stuck in his throat but he was trying to be discrete and not burden his guest with his own problems. “Yes, I heard, but this is still only a marginal issue.”

“Not for me. Not for us.”

“I understand you, madam. But look...”

He began scratching his cheek with the fingers of his left hand, working his way to his lips and nose and then returning to the starting point.

“...I have no problems with social upheaval and protests, after all I participated myself in one or two protests...”

He had his eyes closed as he talked, leaning back so that his brown suede shoe poked out from beneath his desk, its tip shaking to a rhythm entirely its own.

“We stood outside the Yugoslav Army barracks and protested at a time when that was a brave act, twice even, so I do have a certain amount of experience...”

Clasped together, the tips of his fingers found their way toward the mouth again. He was reminiscing about the demonstrations and the fall of the Communist regime. Without opening his eyes, he spoke into his hand.

Perhaps he sensed Zala’s impatience, for he suddenly raised his head, looked at her, extended his index finger and changed the subject. “But! This press is engaged on other levels.”

“Excuse me,” Zala said, “what are you talking about?”

“I am trying to explain the situation to you.”

“What do demonstrations that you attended ages ago have to do with what I’ve come to see you about?”

He leaned his chin against his palm. She could no longer take her eyes off his hand and the impossible positions it was getting itself into. The suede shoe stopped, while the left hand indulged in moves that reminded her of someone applying shaving cream. Meanwhile, the right hand leaned limply over the edge of the chair, its extended fingers pressing against his trouser leg.

“No, this is not how things are done,” he said, and she wasn’t sure what the negative was referring to.

“At the time, demonstrations were the paradigm of a new discourse that...” He had his eyes closed again, his face expressionless but for the motion of the tireless hand.

She glanced at the wall, plastered with framed cover pages of newspapers. She recognised the one with a well-known face and large bold letters: OUR TITO IS DEAD. Among them hung various diplomas and awards the editor had received and photographs of him shaking hands with politicians. Their faces were familiar to Zala but she could not remember all their names.

There was much repetition of the words ‘discourse’ and ‘paradigm’ as the man recalled his memories of the firm stance of civil society, of journalists and the Writers’ Association, and mentioned referential legal systems. Zala did not understand such talk and it exposed a weak point in her education.

Mark had once started on the subject. “You are clever and young,” he told her. “Will you always be a nursery school teacher?” He left out the word “only”, but she reacted as if he hadn’t. That evening they had parted with anger on her side and astonishment on his. He hadn’t dare broach the subject again, but Zala had often thought about it later – and admitted that the conversation had begun when she told him that she had been doing the same job for thirteen years, something that he found unimaginable. When she reminded him that he had been a crisis manager for a long time, he replied that the crises he worked on were always different. Kids are also always different, she had snapped back at him, without being herself convinced of the comparability of the arguments. He could not understand that people in her country were proud of how they defined their lives by choosing what school or college to attend. Once they finished their education, hardly anyone dared to change their mind about their career: jobs were provided by the state, retirement rewards by the company.

The man from her bad relationship had been a believer in an unvarying present and a rich and varied future that would arrive of its own accord. He talked of himself in the future tense: “I will write a novel!”, “I will be famous!”, I will this and will that, merely as an excuse for putting off doing things. Mark was, perhaps due to his Americanness, quite different – his “I will” was followed by an assessment of the situation and working out all the possibilities. He was a man of lists, ticking off those lists in logical combinations. In this respect, he reminded Zala of a boy in her class at elementary school, one of those born mathematicians whose abilities brand them useless for everyday life. With Mark, this translated into practicality and even the most fleeting “would” or “will” instantly called for analysis. The first sign was always the tongue that made a bump in the upper lip. Zala couldn’t decide if this got on her nerves or not, but she often wondered what it would be like to live with such a pragmatic person, who would not daydream all day long while she brought him beer from the shop. Everything inside her kept saying “YES!” and that was when she had first begun to worry.

The editor began to stutter slightly. “Ev-v-vents in the courts and inside the courtroom…”

“Excuse me,” she said, “we have been erased. Why don’t you write about that?”

He halted. He looked like an unhappy child and when, to his great amazement, he discovered the watch on his left wrist, he could no longer take his eyes off it.

“Why not?” Zala insisted.

“Madam...” he began, his voice acquiring a desperate tone of its own, “the government is still constituting, do you understand? There will be elections in the autumn!”

“So what?”

“Look...”

He picked up one of the numerous bits of paper scattered across his desk, checked what was on its written side, turned it to the blank side, and began drawing with a pencil.

“Well... like this...”

He drew one square after another, arranged in a semi-circle.

“Well, you will see...”

He began on a second row of squares slightly further in and finished sooner.

“Now it will all be clear, won’t it?”

A third row, a fourth... Zala realised that she was staring at him with her mouth wide open, so she carefully closed it. He didn’t notice. He became absorbed in the squares, overcome by a kind of autistic concentration.

In the end, the sketch looked like a seating plan for a cinema auditorium.

“Look,” he said, “the Liberal Democracy Party is probably going to be strongest, twenty seats.”

With great speed, he ticked twenty squares.

“The Christian Democrats... I give them ten, no more.”

Fresh twitching of the pencil. He listed the names of parties and ticked all the seats in parliament.

“You see? You understand?”

Zala stared at him for a long time. In his enthusiasm, his face had acquired an air of idiotic kindness.

“No,” she said. “Excuse me, how is this at all connected to me and my child? To those being thrown out of the country?”

He leaned backward, his enthusiasm evaporated. His left hand turned and he closed his eyes.

“Look, if your issue becomes political, then these ratios can be upset and the state will feel threatened. When we protested outside the army barracks...”

“What do you mean? Who is threatened by the Erased?”

“Well, don’t you understand?” he looked at her. “We still only have a fledgling government. Something like this could lead to early elections!”

“So what?”

“Excuse me, madam, but you are politically totally uneducated.”

A sense of fruitlessness overcame her.

“Yes, indeed, I don’t watch the news at all,” she said, sarcastically. The editor thought that, for the first time, they were in agreement and smiled gratefully.

* * *

In her mind, she looked down at the sleeping baby, so powerless to defend himself. She wished she could just take him back into her womb and run, run.