A Spare Life by Lidija Dimkovska

Greece.” Srebra and I were, I think, jealous of Roza, because, at least for one day, she would go abroad, to another country, unknown to us, even though it was so close, a country with which we shared a border. We arrived home. Mom was lying in the big room, half asleep. Our uncle said, “It’s a good thing you’re here. I have three hundred things to do, and I can’t sit here all day.” When it came time for lunch, Mom got up, fried some chitlins with eggs—my favorite—and chopped up a bit of garlic for the dipping sauce. She was feeling better. That afternoon, our father said, “Come on. Let’s go to the Hippodrome. Let’s get some fresh air.” It was the only time we ever went to the Hippodrome, our only familyouting in the fresh air, unless you count the one trip we took to the city park in Skopje when our cousin Miki was at our house, and, to show that his aunt and uncle were good people, we all went to the park, where our parents bought him a candy apple on a stick, but nothing for us. While we walked around, I remember the feeling that washed over me: pride that we were walking in the park, even though everyone gave us a wide berth and talked about us, horror-stricken. But at the same time, it was unpleasant for me, the way it is when strangers pay too much attention, or when you think that someone does something because they have to, not because they want to. Still, in some way, that walk in the park, our one and only, was lovely. Before going to the Hippodrome, our mother put on a dress and nice shoes. She put on her gold necklace, too. We put on our espadrilles and, after a ten-minute drive, arrived at the Hippodrome. We got out of the car. It was a beautiful April afternoon, and it was no longer cold on our legs. We stood for twenty minutes beside the car, not knowing what to say to one another. We were embarrassed that we were there, and sad, and soon wanted to end the outing, get back into the Škoda, and go back to the safety of our home where Dad would sit in front of the television set, Mom would sit on the couch in the kitchen with her embroidery, and Srebra and I would sit at our table by the window with the book about Heidi. The light there had a forty-watt bulb. On the table, some crumbs from our lunch scratched our elbows. The wall clock counted the time covertly, with regular silent beats. It was a white wall clock with the inscription “YU Auto Repairs” that had been presented to our mother at work on March 8, International Women’s Day, after which the noisy old wooden clock disappeared under one of the beds in the “big” room, becoming a clock in suspended animation, entombed in an archive. On those April afternoons, we played with Roza every day somewhere inside the building, or we played pachisi on the steps (but then we’d also call Bogdan so the four of us could play), or dodgeball in the street out front, which Srebra and I would always lose, because we couldn’t coordinate our running. Or we simply walked through the neighborhood, and the early spring breeze caressed our bones. It carried to us the scent of love, but we knew nothing of that. We thought, however,that Roza might know, because she was in love with Panait, and he with her. No one was in love with me or Srebra, and we were not courageous enough to fall in love. Srebra really liked Enis, a young Turk in our class, while I preferred his brother, Orhan, who was in Roza’s class and occasionally came to our class during recess to sing the Croatian hit song “Oh, Marijana,” accompanying himself on the guitar. Neither Enis nor Orhan paid any attention to us. We sat at our desk with the chairs pushed together, and then Bogdan would come sheepishly over to us, stopping in front of the desk to ask us the name of the composer of the ninth symphony, or something similar, but neither of us had any idea how to solve crosswords, and we’d just shrug