Last Stories and Other Stories (9780698135482) (9 page)

What do you think about him?

I have nothing to think about him. He was a criminal.

Next morning the journalist and his wife took a stroll down to the Vrbanja Most. They passed the Holiday Inn, which surprised him; he said nothing, for fear of boring his wife. It was hot, and the air was grimy.— I hate this street, said the journalist's wife. Her back was also aching.

The journalist took another of his wife's pain pills. Presently his life
began to be as pretty as a lemon-haired Serbian girl's face in sunlight when she leans back and drags on her cigarette.

So she was twenty-five and he was twenty-four, he said, reading the inscription. They'd be forty-three and forty-two now.

But that happened after you were here.

You're right, darling. How are you managing?

Oh, you know, she said.

So they hailed a taxi. Rolling easily through the Big Park, they passed the monument to the dead children of the war. Then they were on the double highway (directions: Tuzla, Zenica, Mostar, Mount Igman). The journalist knew that somewhere ahead lay the source-spring of the river Bosna where Tito's bunkers used to be; many Partisans had died there when the temperature was thirty-seven below zero. He remembered that from something he had read years ago, but decided to keep it from his wife in case he had mixed up his facts again. His wife was biting her lip; probably her back hurt.

He remembered the tram tracks between the two lanes of the highway, but nothing else appeared correct. Now they had arrived at the former frontline. He told the driver to stop and wait. He stepped out. His wife took his hand. For the first time ever he was able to survey the enemy positions. Here was the old age home, called “Disneyland” for its multicolored façade, whose construction had been nearly completed when the Serbs occupied it. Considerable sniper fire had originated here. Now the drug addicts used it.

We'd better not go in, he told his wife. I don't know if it's still mined.

He photographed an arched window with a black tree growing through it, the wall-tiles pitted and pocked. (He still used a film camera, of course; why should he put away what had always worked for him?) Seeing the hateful place ruined and abandoned gave him pleasure. He said nothing about that to his wife. Weeds, rose hips, young walnut trees and blackberries strained up toward the blackened concrete cells, some of whose highest honeycombs were floored with grass. There was a tunnel like a grave-shaft which passed right through the gutted edifice and into the summer greenness by the highway.

I'm getting worried about how much the taxi will cost, he admitted. So they got back in and rolled toward Centar, passing a smashed apartment
building, with Mojmilo on the right. Now they drew near the tall white skyscrapers of Centar, wondering whether it would rain, for clouds already pressed over them like crumpled bedsheets.

Up there, he said, that meadow there with the new houses, I think that's where we had to run. I had my bulletproof vest on, and it was so heavy I fell down . . .

His wife took his hand.

Actually, he said, that might not have been the place.

Next morning they took a brisk walk from their hotel up into the hills. Once their backs began to ache as usual, they sat down against the ancient rock wall in the shade of the four walnut trees by the Yellow Bastion, with heavy, fragrant clusters of white elderflowers bowing the branches down below them, and then, far down through the greenness, a hoard of those other white flowers called tombstones, rising delicately and distinctly from the grass.

There is no life on
the earth without the dead in the earth.

Veljko Petrovic, 20th cent.

They had been friends of a sort, perhaps more so in his parents' mind than in either of theirs. Had they never seen each other again, the insignificance of their accidental association would have been plainer, although as it turned out he rarely thought about his childhood; and when his acquaintances mentioned school reunions he produced his supposition of a smile, enduring the subject warily because his boredom resembled withered branches over a hole. He knew that others were different; sometimes he wondered whether they had made real friends when they were young, or even been happy; or whether (which would have rendered his own situation relatively enviable) they were simply in the market for false memories of joy. From what little he recalled, his high school classmates, even Ivan, had longed to get away and enter the shining world where they could dwell apart from the elders whom they were already becoming. He could barely recollect the place he had fled, so deeply had he despised it; therefore he felt unable to deduce how far, if at all, he had gone, which gratified him since it ought to be best to forget what one runs from: Amir watching silently while he interviewed fighters beneath the thudding and booming of shells along the frontline, and the morning when there were six new bullet-holes in Enko's mother's kitchen, and Enko's contempt for him (the natural feeling of the crucified for the free man who climbs on and off the cross), those he remembered better than his two or three dull school years with Ivan, who had likewise, so he'd supposed at the time, looked down on him, or at best askance; Ivan's mother's opinion of him he never learned, although the last time he met her she must have been far from pleased; as for Ivan's father, he had died long ago. The journalist (if we allow him to call himself such) could not recall the house where Ivan had lived with his mother, brother and sister,
so perhaps Ivan had never invited him over; but, after all, we live so hemmed in by our memories that we scarcely realize how few they are. For instance, he could hardly bring to mind the beardless version of Ivan's face. He had invited Ivan to his home once or twice. Ivan, two years older, possessed older friends; besides, Ivan had been born in that town, while his own family had moved so many times that he could not say where he was from, which might have been the real reason he felt lonely in those days, although he naturally never considered that, and therefore believed his presence to be distasteful to others, which rendered it so. His nature was impressionable—a fine quality in youth, when one stands a chance of adapting to one's dreams; an excellent characteristic in a journalist; but a liability in those later years whose captive will manage best through stolid stupidity. Anyhow, he passed much of his childhood either by reading and dreaming alone or by watching others, wishing that they liked him. To him Ivan appeared to be laughing unfailingly, charming his true friends.— Ivan's such a nice boy, said his mother. Not knowing how to make the world admire him the way it did Ivan, he withdrew into his room.

Sometimes an accident returned them into propinquity, especially when Ivan was visiting someone else. The younger one might have been flattered when Ivan sat beside him—flattered, yes, but coolhearted; he needed no favors from Ivan. Each time, they liked each other more, but by then it was the shallower liking of grown men, for whom conviviality suffices. Men know what they think, at least; and anyone who pretends to think the same will do; some people can afford to be different, and tolerate what they fail to understand, but were that the rule, there might still be a Yugoslavia. As it happened, Ivan passed a year in Zagreb and even learned the language, which in those days was still called Serbo-Croatian. Why was he interested? Well, it turned out that he was Croatian, or Croatian-American as anxiously inclusive Americans would say; when they were boys together, Ivan's shy half-friend had never heard of Croats; Ivan was simply the older one whom he should perhaps look up to. The idea that he could ever get away from the narrow darkness which so faithfully contained him hovered beyond him; therefore he could not even envy Ivan, who lived in sunlight.

Later they were journalists together—mere freelancers, of course,
being dreamers who lacked the ability to do as they were told. Despite his superiority, Ivan was a less methodical dreamer than his friend. He had grown almost fat by then, while the journalist was only plump. Kinder, not so disciplined, loving to sit up all night talking history and smoking cigarettes with any Balkan type, more fluent than ever in Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, Slovenian, and all the other languages which used to be one, Ivan gloried rather than labored on these journeys. He had a paying job; Yugoslavia was his leave of absence. With shining eyes he spoke of Knin and Tuzla, Sanjak and Banja Luka, Vukovar, defiant Sarajevo. Very occasionally the other man still wished to be like Ivan, and sometimes he pitied him a little. When he could, he took Ivan as his interpreter.

Once between assignments when they met for dinner in their home city, the journalist happened to be lost and drunk. Ivan watched him make a rendezvous with a transient hotel's hardest passion girl, then distracted and delayed him in a bar, until he missed his hour. Ivan was protecting him! The journalist insisted on searching for the girl, who was long gone. In the hallway, two men were fighting. The journalist wanted to look for his girl all the same. With that gentle, almost feminine laugh that he had, Ivan tried to jolly him. They went around the corner for another drink. Was Ivan sorry for him? He agreed to sleep on the sofa in Ivan's messy apartment. He felt disappointed, irritated, amused and touched.

Years later, Ivan's guest seemed to have discovered peace; perhaps it was fair to state the case more definitely; since no one gets full measure of anything but death, why expect more tranquillity than this? He kept his habits, not to mention his memories, which made him prouder as he corrected them; his health wasn't bad; his wife loved him.

At the border there were many tour buses and a Tiško-Benz truck blowing diesel. Two policemen boarded and began to check documents, their manner less intimidating than merely formal; he worried because his wife on principle refused to pull out her passport before the last minute.
DOBRO DOŠLI—WELCOME
, he read within a grey rectangle. Past the lowered red signal bar at the stop signal lay a hill of bushes and trees, for all he knew still mined, although that would have been discouraging, and then those red-roofed two-storey houses with the windows
shuttered—just like before, those silent houses. The beautiful blue and yellow flag with its white stars barely quivered.

The signal bar ascended; the bus entered the new country. At this moment Ivan used to get as excited as a child. On the righthand side of the road, a man stood behind his car, holding out his passport while two white-clad officials peered beneath his car, presumably for contraband or bombs.

His wife was tired. He stared at ivy on a ruined wall.

On the Rijecka Krupa road the Cyrillic had been blacked out by hand on the bilingual sign for Sarajevo-Mostar. He had seen that years ago, in Kosovo, where an old Serb had told him: We must live here. We have no choice!—and a pretty young Serbkina whose family had lived and died in that place for three centuries had said, smiling bitterly: I can't walk across that bridge anymore.— Had they blacked her out yet?— Evidently some good Bosnian wished to assert that Rijecka Krupa likewise was not and had never been Serbian.

There were grapes fat on their arbors, figs and pomegranates. He wife took pleasure in the apricot and peach trees. Here came the tower of a mosque.

At the next road sign the hand on the spray can of paint must have trembled, for black mist wavered over Cyrillic and Roman alike. Here came the yellow sign for Karatok; the Cyrillic had been sprayed out again. For some reason he could not pay close attention to anything but the signs. Now swelled the sign for Medjugorje; he remembered that place all too well; his wife pointed out an onion field. The sign for Kelpci remained stencilled in both languages, but at the sign for Čapljina the Cyrillic was blacked out as before. Knowing what that might again portend, he endured the clenching within his chest. On the trees by the bus station the peaches were already pinkening. They passed a troop of young soldiers brown-green in camouflage, who marched happily swinging their arms; he felt sick.

A soldier approached, with his duffel bag pressing him from shoulder to hip; he walked in small weary steps. Then the bus pulled away, past grubby white and tan apartments which had not been scorched full of
holes; laundry hung over the balconies; but a moment later they passed a brick building with darkness punched through it. (This was his wife's excursion; he had not expected to feel anything.) At least in this zone the local talent left the Cyrillic on the road signs undefaced. On the high point by the river rose an old wall and a stone tower. A pair of tour buses were parked below, on the edge of a poppy meadow. His nauseating dread increased. His wife saw white potato blossoms.

The semiarid hills ahead had an evil appearance to him, simply because he remembered expecting to be shot.

At Buna they drew up to a long narrow concrete bridge or dam, which resembled the place, but was not, he realized. He had thought to recognize it right away, but of course landscapes do alter in eighteen years, particularly in war zones.

He could not recall whether they had come into the city before it happened. It seemed so, because he remembered photographing Croatian soldiers on the west side. In a steel cabinet in his office he still kept the negative strips; on his return he might take them out and place them under the loupe, although it would be preferable never to see those images again. His wife closed her eyes; she hated the heat, and the seat hurt her back.

Three women stood at the side of the road, selling cherries, and he remembered the two pretty rose vendors with whom he, Ivan and Ted had flirted in the last minutes; the girls had given them each a flower, and he could not remember what he had done with his; probably he had affixed it to his bulletproof vest. The other two roses must certainly have remained in the car. There had been a Croatian checkpoint before they met the rose vendors. Then they had entered No Man's Land.

Now they had arrived. His wife felt very tired. He changed money at the bus station, and then a taxi rolled them past a scorched building improved by time into a mellow ruin.

It was very humid, the roses practically wilting in their little planters. At the hotel, the waiter asked if it was their first time in this place. They ordered lunch. At the next table a young couple were holding hands. He
had already quarreled with his wife, and felt bitter and furious that she could not understand him.

The muezzin's call to prayer wavered beautifully over the river. He saw two birds in the sky. The green river descended the steps of its straight stonewalled channel.

The young couple gazed stupidly into each other's eyes; they held hands; he could hardly endure it.

His wife stared down at her wineglass, while he remembered how after days of submissive waiting for Ivan's family to claim the body and ask of him whatever questions they cared to—hence the inquisition from Ivan's brother, who naturally sought to establish through circumstantial proofs the guilt of the hated survivor, followed by dinner with the well-mannered, exhausted old mother, in company, of course, with the brother, who, it was made clear, held him accountable not only for Ivan's death, but also for declining to take the blame for it—he found himself home again, some weeks after which he came to be drinking with his friend Sam, whom he admired for being a more mature person, in possession of many adventures and sufferings; and Sam, whom he had first introduced to Ivan and who had not paid for any of the drinks, now rounded on him, shook his fist, and said: Don't think I'm forgetting about Ivan; someday I'm going to
revenge
myself on you!— Since Sam was drunk, he contained himself. A month later—the next time they had met—he said: Sam, I'm going to ask you to apologize to me, which Sam readily did, at which point he forgave him. Now he unforgave him. He wished to punch Sam in the teeth. Then that too passed, and he waited for his wife to finish her wine. How he hated sitting here! But lying down in the room would be worse. Actually it was interesting here; he was glad for these people that tourists had begun to come.

High up on the far side of the river wall, the old foreigner in a silly hat was showing his old wife something. The foreigner stretched out his hand and pointed, as if he had been to the place he indicated, or somehow had something to do with it.

His wife ordered another glass of wine, probably out of loneliness, while he remembered how en route to the place where he would await Ivan's mother and brother, he had returned to Zagreb, because he and
Ivan had left their extra suitcases in Zrinko's apartment, and Zrinko said: Tell me one thing. The radio said that you were in another car, and Ivan was following you. Is that true?

No. We were in the same car. Ivan was in the front seat, and Ted was driving—

He had never been able to fight for himself. His childhood had taught him to bear with the threats and aggressions of others, and this fatalistic patience, which many mistook for compliance, had served him equally well in his profession. He raised his hands to be searched by secret police of any stripe; the insults of uniformed killers he answered with mildness; even when someone touched a bayonet to his throat he held no grudge, because what good would that have done? The killers were what they were precisely because they overreacted. Whatever he did feel announced itself within him afterward, if at all. So Zrinko's questions did not anger him then. For one thing, Zrinko was his friend; they had met through Ivan; Zrinko evidently needed to be told the sequence of events, in order, as Americans would say, to “bring closure” to his grief; hence it was the survivor's duty to comply and explain, all the more so since he was fond of Zrinko.