The Cellist of Sarajevo (16 page)

Later, after his superintendent at the bakery discovered where he was and contacted the necessary parties to secure his release, Dragan stopped distinguishing the streets of the city from those trenches, didn’t care whether it was the men on the hills who were shooting or the defenders. It made no difference to him.

Now he wonders whether this was a mistake. He can see a very distinct difference between this street and the ditches he dug. A trench is used for war and only war. But on these streets, the streets of his city, he has walked with Raza’s hand in his, and he has laughed
with Davor. Today he shared a conversation with an old friend on one of his streets. There may be a war taking place on them as well, but they used to offer much more. This means something to him, although he can’t put a name to it.

He knows he should have tried to help Emina. He should have rushed into the street with the young man and helped him to carry her. Perhaps that would have allowed them to go faster. But it’s possible this would have made the sniper fire at them instead of at the man in the hat. There’s no arguing with the outcome. Still, he didn’t move when the shots were fired. Not because he thought anything through, but because he was afraid. If that makes him a coward, he’s comfortable calling himself a coward. He isn’t built for war. He doesn’t want to be built for war.

Dragan looks east, towards his sister’s apartment. He thinks of abandoning his trip to the bakery, of heading back. His brother-in-law isn’t so bad. Maybe they could find something to talk about that would help bridge the gap between them. Perhaps they can have a coffee, if there’s any left, if there’s any water to brew it with or wood to heat it. He can always try to make it to the bakery again tomorrow, when he has a shift to show up for.

He doesn’t want to go home, though. His head turns to the southwest, where, if he keeps on going past the
bakery and then down through Mojmilo to Dobrinja, the not-so-secret tunnel leads under the airport into unoccupied territory.

He imagines himself handing a pass to an armed guard at the tunnel entrance. Where he could have gotten it he doesn’t know, but no one gets by without a pass, and he imagines the guard inspecting his before allowing him through. He enters the tunnel, ducking low. The tunnel is poorly lit, and the air is stale. It takes him three-quarters of an hour to travel the 760 metres. The ground is covered in water in places, and he has to be careful not to trip over the rails that accommodate small carts. He’s heard that politicians and other important men sometimes ride in these carts, pushed by soldiers, but there’s no one to push him. He doesn’t mind, wouldn’t accept an offer anyway. The tunnel passes under the foreign-controlled airport, where numerous people have been shot while trying to run across the tarmac. None of these people were able to secure permission to use the tunnel. The men on the hills picked them off like ducks on a pond.

As he nears the end of the tunnel the walls get wider and higher. He’s able to stand up straight, and the air is a little fresher. When he emerges in the free territory of Butmir he’s only eight kilometres from his sister’s house. A fifteen-minute drive. But he’s free. Two hours on a bus and he’ll be on the coast. A ferry will deliver him to Italy.
The whole trip will take less than a day. It’s less than five hundred kilometres as the crow flies from Sarajevo to Rome. Not even an hour on an airplane. One and a half hours to Paris. Two hours to London. But he’ll go to Italy, because that’s where his wife and son are.

At first they won’t believe he’s there. Their mouths will hang open, and they will wonder if he’s a ghost. He’ll assure them he’s not, of course, and then they’ll be overcome with joy. Davor will hug him, his arms wrapped tight around his back, like he used to when he was a small boy. Raza will kiss him and run her hands through the hair on the back of his head. He’ll take a shower, the water steaming hot, and dry himself with a soft, clean towel. They’ll go out to a restaurant, and he’ll eat whatever he likes, and he’ll know that tomorrow he can do it all again. They’ll walk through the streets, looking through the windows of shops. There will be trees, their leaves green, and the buildings will be bright and without scars. No one will be on the hills with guns pointed at them, and after a while he won’t even think of this as a benefit, it will simply be an obvious thing, because that’s how life is supposed to be. They will be happy. They won’t hate anyone, and no one will hate them.

In the hills behind him a shell falls. He hears the rattle of automatic gunfire, and then another shell falls. It’s a language, a conversation of violence. He’s back in
Sarajevo. There’s no tunnel pass in his pocket, and there never will be. No one is getting out of town now. Certainly not him.

Dragan sits and listens to the men on the hills and the defenders in the city argue with projectiles. Nobody crosses the street. There are hardly any people even waiting, most having decided to take an alternative route, probably crossing the train tracks to the north and moving from east to west behind the protection of yet another barricade of railcars and concrete. Perhaps they’re safer there, perhaps not. There’s more than one sniper on the hills. They have enough men for every intersection if they choose.

He wonders what they think about, up there in the safety of their hills. Do they wish for this war to be over? Are they happy when they hit something, or is it enough to frighten people, to watch them run for their lives? Do they feel remorse when they go home and look at their children, or are they pleased, thinking they have done a great service for future generations? Dragan never understood, even before the war began, why they thought people like him were such a threat. He still doesn’t understand what killing him would accomplish, what effect it would have on anyone but him.

Dragan doesn’t want to go to Italy. He misses his wife and son, but he isn’t Italian, and he never will be. There’s no country he can go to where he won’t be
from Sarajevo. This is his home, and this is the city he wants to be in. He doesn’t want to live under siege for the rest of this life, but to abandon the city to the men on the hills would mean that he would be forever homeless. As long as he’s here, and as long as he can keep his fear of death from blinding him to what’s left of the world he once loved and could love again, then there’s still hope that one day he will be able to walk openly down the streets of this city with his wife and son, sit in a restaurant and eat a meal, browse the windows of shops, free from the men with guns.

Dragan knows he won’t ever be able to forget what has happened here. If the war ends, if life goes back to some semblance of how it once was, and he survives, he won’t be able to explain how any of it was possible. An explanation implies a logic, but there’s no logic to Sarajevo now. He still can’t believe it happened. He hopes he will never be able to.

Arrow

T
HE LIGHT BULB IN
N
ERMIN
F
ILIPOVIC’S OFFICE
seems more oppressive than ever. Arrow would like nothing more than to reach up and swat it, send it flying into the ceiling. She resists the temptation, knows that the sound of the bulb breaking would bring an aide scurrying into the room to investigate. He would replace the bulb. It would accomplish nothing. It probably wouldn’t even make her feel better.

She sits, alone, for nearly a half-hour before Nermin arrives. He looks like he hasn’t slept in days. He barely seems to notice her.

“It’s done,” she says as he falls into his chair.

“He’s dead?” Nermin asks, looking at her for the first time.

Arrow nods. She’s never seen him like this and doesn’t know how to gauge his reactions.

“Which one?”

Arrow’s face is blank. She doesn’t understand the question.

“The cellist or the sniper?” he asks, leaning forward.

“The sniper,” she says, her voice flat. She doesn’t move, refuses to allow her body to reveal how she feels.

“Good.” An assistant, a teenage boy who isn’t old enough to shave, arrives in the room with a tray of coffee. Nermin takes one, hands the other to Arrow. She hesitates before accepting it, which prompts a look of surprise from Nermin. The boy retrieves his tray and leaves, shutting the door behind him.

Nermin takes a sip. “You seem unhappy.”

Arrow says nothing. She drinks her coffee and keeps her eyes on the floor.

For a while neither of them speaks. Then, quietly, in a tone Arrow has never heard him use before, he says, “Maybe you have done this for long enough. Maybe you should stop now.”

Arrow keeps her eyes on the floor. “The sniper had the shot. He had it the whole time. But he didn’t shoot. He was listening to the cellist play.”

Nermin shakes his head. “You don’t understand me.”

She continues. “I killed him because he shot at me, and because I couldn’t trust him not to shoot later. I had no choice.”

“No, you didn’t. But this has nothing to do with the cellist. The time has come for you to disappear.”

Arrow looks up. His bloodshot eyes stare at her. “Disappear?”

He wets his lips and looks away. “I can’t protect you any more. The terms of our deal can no longer be honoured.”

“I don’t understand.” Where, she wonders, am I to disappear to? The city is surrounded. No one can disappear, even if they want to.

“The men on the hills have created many monsters,” he says, “and not all of them are on the hills. There are those here who believe they are in the right simply because they oppose something that is evil. They use this war and the city for their own ends, and I won’t be a part of it. If this is how the city will be once the war is over, then it’s not worth saving.”

“What are they doing?” she asks. There are so many rumours these days that she doesn’t know what to believe. Most of them are easily dismissed as propaganda, but some of them make her wonder.

Nermin takes a final sip of his coffee and sets the empty cup down on his desk. “You should disappear, now, so you don’t have to find out.” He stands, which in
the past has been her signal to leave, but she doesn’t move from her chair.

“What will happen to you?”

He steps out from behind the desk and stands beside her. “I expect to be relieved of my command at any moment.”

Arrow stands, and when he leans in to kiss her on each cheek she hugs him. Despite remaining always at a distance, he has become the closest thing to a friend she has. She turns to leave, and he grabs her shoulder, says, to her back, “Your father would never have forgiven me for turning you into a soldier.”

Arrow doesn’t turn around. She places her hand on his. “My father is dead,” she says, “and I forgive you.”

As she walks out of his office and into the bright light of the street, her rifle feels heavier on her shoulder than ever before. She remembers what he said about the opposition of evil, and wonders whether she might believe the same thing herself. Does she think she is good because she kills bad men? Is she? Does it matter why she kills them? She knows she no longer kills them because they are killing her fellow citizens. That’s just a part of it. She kills them because she hates them. Does the fact that she has good reason to hate them absolve her? A month ago she would have answered yes to this question. Now she wonders who decides what is a good reason and what isn’t.

She doesn’t know what will happen to Nermin. If he is right, if he is about to be relieved of his command, he will become a man without a place. The men on the hills will show him no mercy. Perhaps he has enough connections left to find a way to leave Sarajevo. It would be hard. Most countries won’t accept anyone who’s been a part of the fighting, and Nermin’s high profile means that he won’t be able to leave unnoticed. His best chance will be to stay out of sight until the war is over. If the men on the hills don’t win, then perhaps things will change and he can re-establish himself in a time of peace. She’s not sure exactly how a career soldier might do this, but lesser men have done greater things. She hopes that she is someday in a position to help him.

She has gone about three blocks when shelling starts. It’s been a quiet day for the most part, but the sky is beginning to darken, and the men on the hills seem to have a fondness for marking the coming of night with shells. She’s often wondered if the shells remind them of fireworks.

First they fall to the west, in Mojmilo and Dobrinja. Then a few land closer, across the river from Grbavica, and towards the riverbank around Baščaršija. Around her, people begin to move faster, heading home to the safety of cellars and basements, where they will likely spend the night. Arrow no longer goes into the basement of her building with the other residents when
there’s shelling. It doesn’t seem worth it. Given that she’s in more danger during her average day than she is during the worst night of shelling, she’d just as soon sleep in her own bed. If she’s going to die, that’s where she’d like it to happen. It’s a small measure of control over an uncontrollable situation.

She’s about to turn the corner and head north when a boy runs by her and clips her shoulder with his arm, almost knocking her over. He doesn’t stop, but he glances back at her, and she recognizes him from Nermin’s office, the one who brought coffee. He looks younger now. His face is frightened, almost white, and he’s moving much faster than anyone else on the street. Several shells land on the hills above her, distracting her, and the boy is gone. She shakes her head. Why would Nermin have a boy on his staff who is so easily terrified? Then she stops walking. He wouldn’t.

The boy isn’t afraid of the shelling. Something is wrong. She turns around and heads back towards Nermin. Her mind is all static, a poorly tuned radio, and she’s surprised to find herself running. The stock of her rifle bounces against her ribs, bruising them, and her boots feel as if they’re full of water, sloppy and awkward. Though it’s less than a minute, it seems to take days to travel a few blocks.

In a smooth and easy motion she slips her rifle off her shoulder and into her hands. Even as she’s doing
this she acknowledges that it is simply a reflex. It is unlikely her rifle can solve whatever is happening.