THE HEART OF DANGER (24 page)

gloom of a corridor. A line of men waited to use the basins of the

wash

house, a queue of women waited to use the lavatories. Jovic had given

a name, waited, and they had been led by a sullen guide to a bleak

and

small room. "I had taken food to the cellar in Franjo and Ivana's

farmhouse, in the early morning. There had been a halt in the

shelling

and I was able to go with food. We had only bread to give to the

wounded, and the bread was old. It was when I was there, in the

cellar, that the firing started again, and I could not leave. I was

in

the cellar when the village fell, when the Partizans came .. ." Her name was Sylvia. She shared her wood-walled room with her husband,

and

he lay on the bed with dead eyes, and Sylvia said he was now diabetic.

There were two boys, who she said were aged ten years and seven years,

and the older boy twitched all the time and the younger sat across

his

mother's lap and would not be separated from her. Penn judged her

close to nervous collapse, and he wondered whether it was worse now,

or

had been worse when the village was fought for. She chain-smoked

cigarettes. "She had come with the boy from Australia, and she would not leave him. Everyone told her that it was not safe to stay in

Rosenovici, and she ignored everyone. Perhaps I understood her,

because my eldest son was with the fighters, and I would not leave

the

village. I cannot say whether she realized properly the extent of

the

danger but she refused to go. It was early on the Thursday morning

that I reached the cellar with the bread. My son was in the cellar

..

." Quietly, Jovic told him what she said. Penn wrote the words fast in his notebook. He was humbled. She had lost her home, and she

had

lost her future, and her mind was turned, and she dragged hard on

the

filters of the cigarettes and threw half-smoked ends into an old tin.

She said that she had been the secretary to the director of the railway

station at Karlovac. "She had come, herself, the previous evening, 135

when there was still shooting, to the church where we were hiding

and

she had taken clothes that had been torn up for bandages and for

dressings, and we had told her then that it was dangerous for her

to be

with the wounded. She never listened, in the month that I knew her,

that she was in the village, it was never her way to listen. When

I

came into the cellar she was bandaging the wound of my son. I can

see

it. It is never away from me. I see it each night, and it is near

to

a year and a half ago. I will never forget it. My son had hold of

her

wrist. She was trying to bandage the wound at his stomach, but he

could not be still because of his pain and it was difficult for her

to

make the bandage stay. I can see it because there was a pi all candle lighting the cellar. My son held her wrist as she tried to make the

bandage and I saw his love for her. They all watched her, where they

lay, they all watched her and they all loved her .. ." He thought

of

what Mary had told him, stories and pain. "I knew the village could not fight on for much longer, and there was too much firing for me

to

go back again to the church. I thought that I would be useful if

I

stayed in the cellar, and I thought I could help the Partizan soldiers

to move the wounded after the village fell. I thought they would

want

help to move the wounded boys to the ambulances to take them to the

hospital in Glina. It was in the afternoon on the Thursday that they

came into the cellar, but it was not soldiers. The men who came were

from Salika, that is the Serb village across the stream from

Rosenovici. I knew all of them. The first who came in was the

postman

from Salika, and quickly after him was the gravedigger, and there

was a

carpenter who had made the chairs for our kitchen. They were fierce

with us. Most of the wounded were kicked. They were shouting at

them

to stand up, and none of them could stand and they were kicked because

they could not stand. She shouted back at them, I do not think they

understood her language, but I saw her punch the postman when he

kicked

one of the fighters. I thought they had a fear of her, I thought

136

they

did not know what to do with her. We were taken up the steps from

the

cellar and she made the postman, Branko, and the carpenter, Milo,

and

the gravedigger, Stevo, help to lift the fighters up the steps. He

was

in the garden of Franjo and Ivana's farmhouse .. ." Tasting the

coffee, feeling the warmth of Mary's kitchen, hearing the pain

stories.

He shut them out .. . "I have shame because I did not have the

strength that she. had. They threatened me with a gun, they told

me I

could not help. I was the last out of the cellar. He was in the

garden. They did not know what to do, it was for him to decide what

to

do. Some of our fighters were kneeling and some were on the grass

in

the garden, and she held two of them upright, and all the time she

shouted at him, and he went to her and he hit her with the end of

the

barrel of his rifle and she was still shouting at him. I would not

say

he was a friend, but I knew him well enough, and there were days when

I

used to accept a ride from him as far as Turanj where he worked and

then I would take a bus into Karlovac. She was not shouting at him,

pleading, she was shouting at him in anger. I should have called

to

her, told her not to shout at him, but she would not have listened

.. .

They made a line of them. There were some who could walk, just, and

there were some who were carried, and she helped two of them. They

took them along the little road in the village to the square where

there was the cafe and the store and the school. They took them past

the school and away along the lane that goes to the fields. He gave

the instructions, they took them away down the lane because that is

what was ordered by Milan Stankovic .. ."

"What happened to Dorrie Mowat?"

He watched her. The tears streamed on her face. Her fists were

clenched and he thought she might hit him. He knew he reopened the

wound. He understood why the shame held her. She had been allowed

to

stay in the garden of the farmhouse. She would have seen the back

137

of

her son, walking or carried or supported, and she would have seen

the

bobbing head of Dorrie between the two young men that she held

upright,

and she would have seen the guns and the knives, and she would have

known. Her words were a torrent breaking on Penn.

"I saw them until they were at Katica's house. The lane bends after Katica's house. I could not see them after they went past Katica's

house."

He said, flat, "Who killed them, your son and her boy and Dorrie

Mowat?"

Jovic said, "She told you, she saw them taken as far as the old lady's house. She does not know what happened after they had passed the

house. She told you that Milan Stankovic gave the order for them

to be

taken along the lane, past the old lady's house, towards the fields.

She told you what she knew ..."

"But it is correct that she did not see them killed?"

A bitter flare in Jovic's face. "She buried her son four days ago.

Can

you not comprehend what these people have suffered, what you make

them

endure again for your report? She did not see them killed, correct."

A quiet in the room. The husband had not spoken, lay on his back,

defeated. The children held their mother. The woman, Sylvia,

looked

with bruised eyes, into Penn's face.

Jovic said, "She does not understand why it is important, who shot

them, who beat them, who knifed them. She says that Katica was in

her

house when the village fell. She knows that on the previous day

Katica's husband went out to the yard to get wood and was shot by

a

sniper. She knows that Katica was in her house, with the body of

her

husband. She knows that Katica was not brought out of the village

with

the others who survived. She has not seen Katica since .. . Does

138

anybody care what happened to them or who did it, she says, does

anybody?"

He said, grimly, "Would you thank her for her time .. ."

"She says that she has only time left to her. She says, and she says it is what they all said, she says that the young woman was an angel

..

."

He blundered out of the room and away down the corridor. He shoved

his

way through the queue of men and women lined up for the wash house.

There was a cockroach crawling amongst the feet, going slow because

it

was already damaged by kicks, and then it was stamped upon by a bare

foot. He saw the slime of the destroyed creature. The cockroach

was

forgotten, the feet tripped past it. He saw himself as the creature,

insignificant, gone from memory .. . but Dorrie was remembered ...

He

could write his report, embellish it for effect, take the money, be

a

creature squashed and slimed. Perhaps, in life, there was just one

chance .. . Penn felt humbled ... He walked fast out of the camp,

and

Jovic had to scurry to keep at his shoulder, towards the waiting tram

at the end of the track.

She came in from her shopping.

She played back the answer phone and there was a message advising

the

date of the next meeting of the south-eastern branch of the Save the

Children Fund, and a query on the availability of the marquees for

the

garden party at Whitsun in support of leukaemia research, and the

secretary who did two days a week would not be coming in the morning

because of influenza. She let the tape run. She did not hear the

voice. The voice, crisp, competent, was absent from the tape. The

dogs were scratching at the kitchen door. She let them out and they

jumped at her, happy. Maybe it was just a folly. Maybe she had no

right to know. Maybe the dead should sleep. Four times now she had telephoned the number of the hotel in Zagreb, four times in growing

annoyance she had left her message and four times in increasing

loneliness the message had not been answered. She left her shopping

139

on

the kitchen table. She took the leashes from behind the door. Mary walked her dogs through the village. She walked on the drying grass.

Next week they would take the flowers away from the grave. She laid

her coat on the grass and sat on it. Next week she would bring more

flowers. The dogs hunted out fallen wood and lay beside her and

chewed

and spat the morsels clear. She heard herself, her own words,

saying,

calmly, that she enjoyed winning, and she wondered what he thought

of

such stupidity. She heard herself, her own voice, saying that her

daughter was a horrid young woman, and she wondered how he had taken

such betrayal. Shared her secrets with him, given her secrets to

Penn,

wretched little private detective, opened herself to him, stupidity

and

betrayal. For nothing, Dorrie, should have allowed your rest .. ."

He

walked with Jovic. Jovic showed him the big German cars speeding

on

the cobbles and said they belonged to the new elite of racketeers.

Jovic said that the country was rotten and that the profiteers fed

from

the carcass .. . And every few minutes Jovic would stop, hold out

his

hand for telephone money and be gone into a bar, and then be back,

and

not offer any explanation .. . Each time he was left on the pavement

he

gazed around him. The city was at ease. The war was forgotten,

tucked

and hidden behind the cease-fire line that was thirty minutes' drive

away. He had never seen a tram before Zagreb, clanking and swaying

monsters with raucous hooters to announce their coming, with the

passengers clinging inside to the straps, and the lines running

polished amongst the worn and smoothed cobbles.

He watched a flower seller. . Jovic showed him the great circular

plaza. It had been the Square of the Victims of Fascism, now it was

the Square of Croatian Celebrities .. . Jovic showed him the

Historical

Museum, closed for reconstruction, indefinitely .. . Jovic took him

into a yard behind a building and in the yard weeds grew amongst the

mighty toppled statues of the former regime in Stalinist bronze, and

Jovic said the statues would be cut up and melted down, destroyed

140

as

historically incorrect .. . Jovic said that it was necessary for