The Pale House (27 page)

nodded. “That is important. That is one of the reasons Safet wrote the play. Safet
. People kept asking him, ‘Why, Safet? Why bother? Why risk it?' Because it
was
risky. You simply never know, anymore, what people will think and say and do about anything.”

“And so why did he?”

“A reminder, he would say. He told me, he wrote it to maintain his sanity. And to remind Sarajevans who they were, who they are, and who they could be again.”

“And what is that?”

“A community,” she said, simply.

There was silence between them. It was nothing heavy, or oppressive, nor one of those silences that demands to be broken. It simply was, and he remembered something Padelin had once said, the day he had gone to meet the detective at police HQ, the day after the police had lost their prime suspect in the murder of Marija
.
There is the world, and there is Sarajevo
, Padelin had said.
A world of itself. Rules you never understand. A community you will never be part of.

“I'm sorry?” said
.

Reinhardt had not realized he had spoken aloud. “Nothing. Just something I remembered.”

“About?”

“This city. Its community. Those who are outside it.”

“It's a choice, sometimes, isn't it?”
said. “Being outside something.”

“Or a decision that is made for you.”

Reinhardt needed suddenly to be away from here.

“I would like to thank you for this. For taking the time to show it to me.” He winced inside, hearing himself so formal. So Prussian. “If you will excuse me, I wish you a pleasant evening.”

She tilted her head, knowing something was wrong. “I am glad you enjoyed it.” She paused. “If you are going through the new town, perhaps you will escort me home, Captain?” He hesitated a moment, then nodded. “Then let me get my coat.”

Reinhardt kept coming back to
.
—Valter, as he was better known—was elusive in the extreme. The Partisans' best-kept secret. For
to have revealed himself like that, exposed himself to such risk, meant the Partisans were concerned, profoundly so. They would use all the tools in their possession, including Reinhardt. And after all, he thought to himself, was that so different from the way he had spent so much of his life? Being a tool in someone else's possession? Soldier, policeman, soldier again. A life in service, so why the fixation on independence, now? Was he still so enamored of a need to make his own mark, in his own service?

He needed air, and there was still a crowd at the entrance. It shuffled out, slowly, and he could feel something was wrong. The crowd pulled him out into the cold air and he drank it deep, wanting to wake himself back up. He paused on the steps. Someone had hung a lantern from a makeshift hook over the door, and his breath puffed up and away into its light.

Bunda stood at the bottom of the steps, lantern-light glittering in his eyes, looking up at him.

“G
etting cozy with the natives, is you?”

Reinhardt said nothing. He walked down the steps slowly, Bunda's eyes following all the way.

“I 'eard you was 'ere. I been looking for you.” The huge UstaÅ¡a leaned back against a car with two other UstaÅ¡e standing on either side of him. Reinhardt's back prickled suddenly with his fear, and he pushed his tongue hard into the gap in his teeth.

“Captain?” The light from inside the theater and from the lantern cast
into sharp lines of light and dark so he could not see her eyes. The Ustaše straightened, even Bunda. He seemed to coil up and in at the sight of her, and something in the set of his gaze sent a flood of cold through Reinhardt.
seemed to hesitate, looking back inside, then came down the stairs, the light changing, flowing and fading and pooling differently over her as she stepped out of the lantern's glow. “Is there a problem?”

“No problem, madam,” said Bunda, slowly. “Only, we was asked to fetch 'im.”

“Who?”

“
'
im, right there.”

“He has a rank. Do him the honor of using it.”

Bunda's lips furled in around his teeth. He paused. Breathed. “That would be 'im. Captain Reinhardt.”

“Better, Captain. Thank you. Why?”

“Something to show 'im. And someone wants to see 'im. Someone you don't want to keep waitin', if you know what's good for you.”

“An UstaÅ¡a?” Reinhardt asked. Bunda nodded.
flashed through Reinhardt's mind. Here was a golden opportunity, but it was so soon. Too soon. “Then as I am not at your beck and call, I think I must respectfully decline,” he said, stalling.

“No, Reinhardt. You don't decline. You just come.” The two UstaÅ¡e to either side of him straightened, and their hands tightened on their weapons. “No fuss, now. Not 'ere. Not with all these nice people around. Just come with me.”

“Where?”

“Not far.”

“The Pale House?”

Bunda smiled. “After I show you something.”

“Who wants to see me?”

“It's a surprise,” Bunda said. His face shifted, hardened. “Enough.” He hauled himself upright and opened the car door. “We ain't about to 'urt you, Reinhardt. Don't be such an old woman. It's just talk. Your driver can follow. So just get in. 'fore I lose my temper.”

“Very well,” Reinhardt said, remembering Bunda as he stood at that checkpoint at the entrance to the city. He wanted to walk away but dared not. He felt the pressure of eyes all around him, the people gathered and bunched up around him on the stairs, in the theater, and the eyes he could only feel staring down at him from the windows along the street. “I will come with you.”

“I sincerely hope nothing amiss will come to Captain Reinhardt,” said
, suddenly. “Or I will have words with General
.”

As Bunda inclined his head, a glitter in his eyes as he looked at
, something feral lurking far under the cavernous hang of his brow, Reinhardt realized she had spoken in Serbo-Croat. “Wouldn't dream of 'arm coming to the captain, ma'am. Not seeing as 'e's your particular friend.” He said it loud, and he said it for the crowd around them. If it was meant to wound, or embarrass,
seemed not to notice. Reinhardt looked at her as if for the first time. She had drawn herself up, standing straight. She was half Bunda's size, yet she still filled the space around her with a confidence rooted in some calm authority. But the risk she was taking, standing up to an Ustaša. For a German.

put her arm on Reinhardt's sleeve as he made to move. “I will see you later,” she said, looking at Bunda as she said it. Again, there came that feral look in the giant's eyes as she turned and walked away, straight-backed elegance, her long black coat flaring out over her hips.

“Now that,” said Bunda, “is one regal-looking backside.” Bunda smiled, locking eyes with Reinhardt. “Nothing to say, Reinhardt? In the car, then.”

Reinhardt took a moment to tell his driver to follow. The Feldjaeger was standing behind his
kubelwagen
, an StG 44 in his hands. He nodded, safed his weapon, and started his engine.

Thus comforted by knowing he had at least some support, Reinhardt climbed into the back of Bunda's car as one of the Ustaše pushed in after him. The car lurched to one side as Bunda dumped his huge weight into the front and the driver fired up the engine with a ratcheting cough, followed by the stench of homemade fuel. The car rattled down the road, turned left onto Kvaternik, then right, across the Princip Bridge. People moved around them in the gathering gloom, hurrying home. Fog was settling in, drowning the tops of the buildings, and the street was studded with points and pockets of light from candles, flashlights, even a couple of brands that left halos of light as they bobbed away into the deepening evening.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Not far, don't worry. But there's something you'd like to see, I reckon. It's up here.”

The car's engine whined as the driver put it at a steep hill, and Reinhardt realized they were in, or not far from, Bistrik, the neighborhood to the south of the Miljacka where he had previously been barracked. The car lurched into a right-hand turn, a white sign on a wall proclaiming Balibegovica Street, and stopped outside a house. Like a staged reproduction of the killings that morning in Logavina, cars were drawn up outside it, but they were all local, one or two police cars, and a truck with Ustaše plates. The car door was opened, and Reinhardt, followed by Bunda, went up to the front door, past a soldier on guard, and into the house, flicking on a flashlight as he went. The place was dark, the heavy wooden walls and floors drinking what little daylight was left. There was a stench, latrine thick, as he was pulled to the side, into one of the rooms that led off the entrance, and handed the flashlight. It might once have been a dining room but was now a place where men had been murdered. Butchered, in fact.