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People see me and smile the wrong way.
They see the twenty-year-old car that still starts if you ask it nicely. They see the unshaved face, the messy hair, the jacket missing a button.
They think: Here goes another Balkan cliché. Soft. Managed. Harmless.
They don’t see the strategy.
At home, I learned early that peace sometimes costs pride.
“Why are the dishes still in the sink?” she asks.
“I was going to do them,” I say.
“When?”
“After the kids fall asleep.”
“They’re already asleep.”
I nod. I always nod.
“I’ll do them now.”
She sighs, already thinking about tomorrow. About work. About time she doesn’t have.
Later, it’s the laundry.
“You mixed the colors again.”
“I thought it would be fine.”
“You always think.”
I smile. “That’s my talent.”
She doesn’t laugh. But the argument ends. The house stays quiet. The kids sleep.
Being the fool works.
At work, it works differently.
The director leans back in his chair, fingers crossed.
“You know how things are,” he says.
I do.
Hours not paid. Classes added quietly. Paperwork that fixes itself if no one asks questions.
“I just wanted to mention—” I begin, then stop.
He looks at me. Waiting.
I swallow. “Nothing. Everything’s fine.”
I leave the office employed, carrying silence like a second bag.
People call that weakness.
I call it rent.
In Novi Sad, at the flea market, I become a different kind of fool.
“Original,” the seller says, holding up the tracksuit.
“It looks… very original,” I answer.
“Imported.”
“From where?”
“Brother, from abroad.”
I touch the fabric. Smile.
“If it’s original, why is the price shy?”
He laughs. I laugh. We both know.
We argue like actors who forgot the script but kept the rhythm.
I pay less. He saves face.
Two fools satisfied.
At a celebration with my best friend, the night stretches too far.
“Just one more,” he says.
“Tomorrow we work,” I say.
“Take a day off.”
“I can’t.”
“You can.”
We drink anyway.
Morning comes fast. Responsibility comes faster.
Some choices don’t need defending. They just need surviving.
I didn’t tell my father everything at once. Not about her child from her first marriage. Not at the beginning. I told him later. When love already had weight. When leaving would hurt more than truth.
Sometimes silence is not a lie.
It’s timing.
There were days when she came home glowing in a way that wasn’t meant for me.
“Busy day?” I’d ask.
“Very,” she’d say.
I’d nod. Again.
I washed dishes. Helped with homework. Fixed nothing.
Until one day, I stood behind the classroom door.
Unplanned. Uninvited.
I listened. The laughter. The tone. The kind of flirting that pretends to be harmless.
I didn’t explode.
I didn’t confront.
Love, like the song says, is just a word. Letters on paper. Secrets and lies are something else entirely.
I nodded many times so our children could grow up with both parents.I nodded so days would connect into years.I nodded so things could mean more than my ego.
People think fools don’t notice.
That we don’t understand.
But when they think you’re harmless, they speak freely.
They tell the truth.
And that’s when you hear everything.
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