Nothing in the World (6 page)

- Now you’re going to tell me your name, your rank, and what you were doing by that stream instead of fighting the Serbs with the rest of your
squad.

- My name is Joško.

- Joško what?

- Joško Banović.

Magarac smiled, then laughed, a tremendous braying that echoed down the cellblock.

- Ah. So you’re the famous Joško Banović, the man who shot down two jets over Šibenik, who left the head of that Muslim sniper on
a cafe table in Split.

Joško thought about bringing out the earring as proof, but of course if he did the guards would take it.

- I’m not sure it was Hadžihafizbegović, but—

- Brother, I’m going to give you one more chance. Who are you?

- Joško Banović.

- Of course you are. And I’m Marshall Tito.

Magarac smiled again, and drove his cast into Joško’s groin.

- Let’s try something else. Why don’t you tell me why you deserted your squad.

Joško tried to answer, but no words came out.

- There’s no hurry. Consider your answer carefully.

- It was a special mission. The planes came and killed them all, and now my sister—

Magarac hurled him into the wall.

- Are you making fun of me?

- No, I know, but she—

The man smacked him into the wall again.

- You’re aware, right, that the war isn’t going very well? That whole towns are being slaughtered? And do you know why? Because cowards
like you are abandoning their posts. Now tell me the truth, or so help me—

- I did. The—

Magarac threw him to the floor.

- Fuck you and your God both.

Joško rose to his knees and looked up.

- And may my God fuck you back.

Magarac began kicking him, his boots thudding into Joško’s stomach and chest. Joško clawed his way under the bed, and the two guards
stepped in and pulled Magarac back to the door.

- I’ll see you in Room 105, he said.

He wiped the sweat from his chin, and looked over at Kunić still huddled in the corner.

- And you’ll be seeing me early tomorrow morning.

When the men were gone, Kunić came to Joško, helped him up and onto his bed.

- Your head’s a mess.

- Yes.

- Seriously. You need to get it looked at.

- I know. Thanks.

Kunić hesitated.

- Are you really Joško Banović?

- Yes.

- Wow. I heard the guards talking about you yesterday—you were in the newspapers and everything.

Joško didn’t reply. For a time Kunić stared at his bandaged hand. Then he walked to the corner of the cell, knelt on the floor, and
rocked gently back and forth.

Joško didn’t sleep much that night. Kunić stayed in the corner working through the rosary prayers, and Gusterica came over twice to
fiddle with Joško’s belt clasp. At last a thin light slipped in through the window. The guards came walking down the hall. One of them
opened the door to the cell and drew his pistol. The other lifted Kunić to his feet.

* * *

Magarac stopped by that evening to tell Joško that he had until the end of the week to think about what it meant to desert his squad, to betray
the Motherland, to be a coward. Kunić did not come back, and no new prisoners were brought in. Gusterica still would not eat, so Joško ate
for him, and the food seemed to be repairing what Magarac had broken.

For three days he saved his waste in the pail beneath his bed. After breakfast on the fourth day he went over to check on his cellmate. Gusterica was
asleep, his eyelids scaly with dried pus and tears. Joško stepped to the door of the cell and called for the guards.

Again the other prisoners joined in the shouting, and again one of the guards came running down the hall, swinging his baton like a sword. Joško
waved him to a stop.

- Gusterica hasn’t been eating his food, and now I can’t wake him up. I think he’s dead.

The guard looked at Joško, then over at Gusterica.

- Shit. Okay. Go sit on your bunk, facing the wall. If you move at all, I swear to God I’ll put a bullet in your brain.

The guard unlocked the door, stepped into the cell and closed the door behind him. He walked over to Gusterica and put his hand to the man’s
wrist.

- You asshole, he said, turning back around. He’s—

Joško slung the contents of the pail into the guard’s face and clutched at the man’s throat. The two of them fell to the floor,
rolling in the stew of feces and urine, and the guard lost consciousness before he could get his pistol out of its holster. Joško kept his grip on
the man’s throat a moment longer.

Now Gusterica’s eyes were open wide. He stared at Joško, and his mouth moved but no sound came out. Joško nodded, took the key ring
from the guard’s belt and opened the cell door.

- Goodbye, Gusterica, he said. Best of luck.

His cellmate shook his head and started clawing at his mattress. Joško walked up the hallway, and all around him the prayers and ranting went
quiet. One fat hand reached out to grab at his shirt. Joško stopped, looked at the prisoner, and the man drew his hand back in.

He found the storeroom, got the door open, took up his rifle and rucksack, turned around and met the second guard coming in. He drove the barrel of his
rifle into the man’s stomach. As the guard fell, Joško flipped the rifle around and swung it down again and again until the man’s
skull broke open.

Up the next hallway, into the lobby, and the clerk was standing in the far doorway, staring out at the morning. Joško brought his rifle back over
his shoulder, drove the butt against the back of the man’s neck and watched him fall.

Across the compound a group of guards stood talking and smoking, and to his right Joško heard the rumble of an engine. He walked around the
corner, saw a jeep with its hood gaping open, and a soldier leaning in so far that one of his feet was raised off the ground. Joško stepped
forward. It was Magarac. Joško watched the man work, then reached up for the hood and slammed it down.

The engine coughed thickly and Magarac’s legs lifted, collapsing against the fender as the engine died. Joško opened the hood and pulled the
body out. The fan had caught Magarac on the temple and peeled his face away.

- I’m sorry, Joško said.

The corpse did not answer. Joško dragged it over to the side of the building and stretched it out flat, taking care to fold one of Magarac’s
arms gently under his head. He put his rifle and rucksack in the back of the jeep and climbed into the driver’s seat, turned the ignition key,
and the engine spat and went silent. He turned the key again, and this time the engine hacked and sputtered, then roared.

Through the middle of the compound, past the circle of guards. The sentry shaded his eyes to get a better look. Joško took up his rifle, shot him
in the chest, burst through the gate and out onto the road.

* * *

The wind sang around him, and Joško smiled as he thought of how soon he would be at his sister’s house. He reached back and pawed through
his rucksack until he found what was left of the rolls he’d bought in Split. Ants had been at work on most of them, but at the bottom of the
third bag he found several rolls that were still in fair shape. He pulled two of them out, and imagined his arrival in Dubrovnik: the gunboats were
silent, and Klara was on her balcony, saw him walking toward her, came running down the stairs to embrace him.

The landscape went pale and dry as he flew along the ragged coast, slipping onto side roads when he could, shunting back down to the highway when there
was no other choice. Hard bright cliffs grew from nothing to his left, and the sea mumbled and tossed to his right. He wondered if the spearfishing was
any good here. Then the cliffs fell away, and a small village stretched along both sides of the road. He slowed when he saw children playing in a patch
of sand nearby.

He counted the rolls he had left, checked his canteen and found it empty. He searched the sides of the road, and when he saw a stand with a sign
advertising ripe tangerines, he pulled onto the shoulder and smiled at the pudgy woman who sat inside.

- Hello, he called. Is there somewhere around here where I could fill my canteen?

- Nothing is free, the woman said.

- And if I bought something first?

The woman shrugged, and scratched at the bristly black hairs that grew from the mole on her chin. Joško opened his rucksack, then saw a
five-thousand-dinar note stuffed into a plastic box between the seats. He took the bill and held it out.

- What will this buy?

- Twenty figs, ten tangerines, or two melons.

Joško walked to the stand. The tangerines and figs looked good, but the melons were overripe, and some of them had started to rot. One was exactly
the size of Hadžihafizbegović’s head, and near the base there was a crack that curled up to either side like a grin, as if the melon,
at least, had gotten the joke.

- Ten figs and five tangerines, please.

The woman reached under the counter and came up with a plastic bag. She blew it open, counted the figs into it, took up four tangerines and dropped
them in as well.

- You—

- Minus one for the water, the woman said. You want free water, go to the sea.

- Where’s the faucet?

The woman jerked her thumb around the corner of the stand, then covered her mouth and nose with her hand.

- You really stink, she said.

She took a closer look at his clothes, reached up and drew a heavy metal grate down between them. Joško found the spigot and filled his canteen.
He washed his hands and face, his neck, his arms, and sprayed off his uniform as well as he could. As he walked back to the jeep he called his thanks
to the grate. There was no reply.

A few kilometers farther on he came to a checkpoint, and it seemed that the soldiers were waiting for him. One stood in the middle of the road and
signaled for him to stop. Another took out a clipboard, walked around behind the jeep, and shouted to the one in front.

Joško hunched as low as he could, slipped the gearshift into reverse and jammed the gas pedal to the floorboard. He felt the jolt of the
soldier’s body, put the jeep in first and hit the gas again. A bullet shattered the windshield, and there was another jolt, a soldier flying up
over the hood, catching on the top of the windshield and again on the tailgate, tumbling away. Other soldiers along the road began firing, and then
Joško was past them, past a row of tents that hunched like khaki vultures, and now he was alone with the sea and its pinpointed light.

There would be other checkpoints soon, he knew. He tried the first side road he came to, but it dead-ended only a few hundred meters inland. He tried
the next one as well, and it curled southwest and burrowed into the hills.

What happened was this: There was once an old man, a vintner, who lived outside the village of Kopačevo, midway between Osijek and the Serbian
border. He had worked as hard as he could his entire life producing the finest wines in the region, and as a result he had always lived
comfortably. His cupboards were well-stocked with fresh vegetables, his bins with flour and sugar and salt, and his coop with a flurry of fat hens.
He had a brilliantly colored rooster the size of a goose, two sheep, and a cow who provided him with three liters of the richest milk every
morning.

However, as the war passed through the region, fewer and fewer people were able to afford the old man’s wines. This did not worry him
greatly, for he knew that sooner or later the war would end. He began to live frugally, eating at first two meals per day, and then only one.

When his money was gone, he began slaughtering his chickens, and they lasted him nearly a month. He killed the rooster as well, but the meat was so
tough that he had to stew it for days on end. Now it was time to butcher his sheep, and he was not looking forward to the musky taste of their
meat, but it turned out he needn’t have worried. On the morning he went to herd them in, one of them stepped on a landmine, and the following
evening the carcass of the other was stolen from where it hung in his barn.

Thus, with winter coming on, the vintner was forced to slaughter his cow. He begged her forgiveness as he sank the blade of his ax into her skull.
In recent months he’d had little with which to feed her, and as he butchered her he saw that now she had equally little with which to feed
him: her haunches were veined and spare.

As if such troubles were not enough, a few weeks later the old man’s well, which for six generations had provided his family with clear cold
water, suddenly went dry. Again and again he sent down the wooden bucket, and again and again it came up empty. For the first time in his life he
became afraid.

The next day, he searched through his kitchen for something, anything, the smallest scrap to eat. He checked his pantry, his bins and cupboards.
Finally he realized that he had nothing left.

Nothing, that is, but a cellar full of wine, a bottle from each of his many good vintages. He walked down the wooden staircase into the cool dry
darkness, turned on the light, took the bottles in hand one after another, and tears slipped silently from his eyes.

As his Croatian neighbors had long since refused to pay what his wines were worth, he had no choice but to cross the border into Serbia. He chose
eight of his very best bottles, placed them in his leather knapsack, took up his walking stick and set off.

It was a four-hour walk to the border, and another three hours
to the village of Sonta. By the time he arrived the sun had set. His burden
was not light, and he was very tired, but he knew that he could not rest. He made his way to the threshold of the most brightly lit house in town.
There he knocked, and awaited his fate.

The man who opened the door was none other than the mayor himself. Gathered in his living room were the village’s wealthiest inhabitants,
merchants who came each night to drink the mayor’s brandy and talk of better times.