Last Stories and Other Stories (9780698135482) (4 page)

In front of the apartment the asphalt had been eaten away in blotches by shells, and beyond that was a littered sort of green over which wandered two dogs whose owners, Enko's mother had said, couldn't feed them anymore, and then a row of cars, some perfect, some rusted and windowless, some bullet-holed. The American listened. The smashing roar of a howitzer was startling, to be sure, but what did it accomplish? Did the besiegers possess only one shell? At nine it was quiet again aside from certain boomings in the background, and people passed leisurely, most of them walking, a few driving or bicycling, all of them crossing the two-lane highway at the intersection where the streetcar had been abandoned, then vanishing behind a tall construction crane. Shots sounded, but a man walked reading the newspaper. No one was running. Pigeons picked at the litter.

At nine-thirty came bursts of echoing poppers that blurred the hills behind dust or smoke, and an elderly man carrying a shopping bag grimaced, ducked and began to run. The pigeons flew in a frightened rabble. Then it fell quiet again; everyone walked slowly or stood chatting unconcerned. A one-legged man swung himself steadily along on his crutches. He kept turning his eyes in the direction of the booming sounds. Then he was gone. The journalist wrote it all down.

The door opened. Enko's mother came in sighing. The American offered her a pull from his hip flask, at which she finally liked him. She took a gulp, licked her lips, and slapped him hard on the shoulder. Then she made them both some weak tea.

Where's Enko?

Asleep, he said.

Ah. With her.

They sat there, listening for the shells, and after awhile the old woman lit a cigarette and remarked: They say it is better not to go out now. Very dangerous. Sometimes it is true, and sometimes the other way. Anyhow, one cannot stay inside forever.

Just before ten the door of Enko's bedroom opened. Enko, shirtless but already wearing his gun, strode into the bathroom and shut the door. Then he returned to the bedroom, rubbing his forehead and yawning. After another quarter-hour the girl came out, fully dressed, and darted shyly into the bathroom.

Listen, said Enko. I need another advance.

Why not?

Give me a hundred.

How about fifty?

I said give me a hundred.

If I give you a hundred, then after that fifty I gave you last night, we're square for today, which is fine by me. The only thing is, I don't have much cash on me in case we need to eat.

Don't worry about that, said Enko.

All right, said the American. He took up his bulletproof vest. Jasmina had just left the bathroom, so he locked himself in there, dropped his pants and removed another hundred Deutschemarks from the money belt. Of course he had lied to Enko, who probably knew it; there was no safe place to leave cash, so he carried it all. Like the others, this was a good new banknote, the kind that the people here preferred. He folded it three times and dropped it into his pocket. Then he lifted the heavy vest over his head, lowered it into place and snugged the two tabs across the torso panels. Over this he zipped up the light windbreaker, to make him less conspicuous to snipers. It had always seemed to him elementary logic that the wearer of a bulletproof vest would be in and of himself a target.

Jasmina stood at the dining room table, with her purse in her hand. Enko's mother ignored her.

Enko was staring at him. No doubt he wanted his advance. The American said: Do you have a second?— Enko rose and followed him down the hall. The American gave him the money.

What's all this secret bullshit? said Enko.

I keep my finances private, said the American. That's how I like to do things.

Fine, said Enko. Amir's downstairs.

Where are we going?

The frontline, if you promise not to shit your pants.

I'll do my best.

We need petrol. That's what the money's for. On the way we'll drop Jasmina at her cousin's. Let's go.

The American shook Enko's mother's hand.— Come back, she said. I'll pray for you.

Enko was whispering something in Jasmina's ear. She giggled.

Here everyone runs, said Amir. This corner is very dangerous. Serbian snipers shoot from the hills. We must speed up here.

Okay, said the American. Enko was in the back seat with his pistol on his lap.

The car turned onto the sidewalk, then rushed across a pedestrian bridge.— This place is very dangerous, said Amir.

I think I can see that.

Amir's ancient M48 rifle jiggled between the seats, the barrel pointing ahead.

Now they were on a straightaway, and a single bullet struck the car somewhere low on the left side of the chassis, harming nothing so far as they could tell. Nobody said anything. Amir slammed the gas pedal to the floor. No more bullets came. The American felt that slight sickness which always visited him on such occasions: in part mere adrenaline, which was intrinsically nauseating, that higher form of fear in which his mind floated ice cold, and a measure of disgust at himself for having voluntarily increased his danger of death. Over the years, the incomprehensible estrangement between his destiny as a risk-taking free agent and the destinies of the people whose stories he sometimes lived on, which is simply to say the people who were unfree, and accordingly had terrible things done to them, would damage him. Being free, however, he would never become as damaged as many of them. And, like Enko, he did get paid for his trouble. Mostly he broke even or better. On this day, of course, he was simply considering how to live out the day while writing the best notes he could. His mind subdivided checklists into sub-lists, in hopes of
preparing him for anything: If Amir gets shot, I'll take the wheel, but he'll be in the way, so I'll hold the wheel steady with my left hand and crook my right arm around his neck, and then if Enko helps me . . .

Hey, Enko, said the American.

Shut up, said Enko.

Enko, I hope your finger's on the trigger guard.

Fuck you.

Just don't shoot me in the back when we drive over a bump. Unless you do it on purpose.

Enko laughed.

Amir rounded a corner on three wheels, and they sped into a tunnel lined with sandbags, already braking now, and parked in the garage of some partially ruined building.

Listen, said Enko. We're going through that hole in the wall. The Chetniks can see us there, so we're going to run up the hill about two hundred meters.

Okay.

So that was what they did, the American journalist stumbling once, topheavy under the weight of his vest, and nobody shot at them. After that it was still only mid-morning there behind the wall of sandbags where half a dozen men, some in the uniform of the old National Army, stood smoking cigarettes while another half dozen loaded munitions into the military police truck not far from last night's shards of broken glass which were something like new-fallen snow. Enko clashed his fist against several of theirs in turn, while Amir stood expressionless, perhaps smiling behind his sunglasses. A grey and ghastly look was in their faces as they listened for the shells.

They were friendly to the American, because in those days his government considered Bosnian Muslims immaculate victims, hence allies to rescue; in later years it would consider all Muslims to be potential terrorists. So they gave him colorful interviews while he wrote diligently in his notebook.

A militiaman showed him a paddle studded with nails and said: You know what we call this? We call this
Chetnik teacher.

The American knew enough to laugh heartily, and after that they liked him even better.

You know, you missed a big story, said an eyes-alight French reporter to the very young British journalist whose handler was Enko's enemy. Four French was wounded last night, and one Egyptian!

Buy you two a drink? the American offered.

Very funny. Find your own story.

I will, said the American, excited because he and Amir were about to go to Vesna's. Enko would come later; he was with Jasmina.

Amir accepted one whiskey and no more. He liked to drive carefully. He said: I think you like Vesna.

Sure. Do you?

A real Bosnian woman.

Bosnian women are very pretty.

Good.

Last night Marko was telling me his theories about Slavic beauty. He's fond of an actress named Olga Ilic—

Who?

Olga Ilic. He said she died in 1945.

Forget what Marko told you. That's just some dead Serbian bitch. Are you ready?

Sure. By the way, do you think Vesna minds when I stay over there?

She understands. You are a guest, and a friend.

Thank you. You're all my friends—

He paid the waiter, and they went to the car. It was another point of difference between him and them that so many of them lacked bulletproof vests, and his was more invulnerable than most of theirs, although that made it proportionately heavier. The best model he had ever seen was manufactured for members of the Warsaw Pact. It had a collar to protect the carotid and subclavian arteries. His own went only as far as it went. Amir sat in the driver's seat, very slowly smoking a cigarette, staring straight ahead. An automatic rifle chortled far away. The American understood that Amir was listening to the night and forming the best plan that he could. He waited quietly. Presently Amir started the car.

They rounded the corner rapidly and then Amir stamped on the gas as they traversed the sniper's field of fire, and the American looked up into
the four window-rows of the building across the street but they were black and grey without any revelations, and the car whipped safely round the next corner, and Amir, slowing, said: Someday we'll get that sonofabitch.— They came into the Stari Grad more sedately than when Enko had driven the other night, but Amir kept gripping the steering wheel hard, with the fat barrel of the M48 pointing greyly forward between them. The American liked him better than Enko. He never asked for advances.

They climbed the stairs. Vesna's apartment was very crowded that night. A tall man was shouting: How can we stop them with fifty rounds? Fifty rounds, just fifty rounds!

Vesna rushed up to him and touched his hand very gently.— Don't worry about it now, brother, she said.

The man stared at her. Vesna led him to a chair.

Something almost gentle came into Amir's face as he gazed at Vesna. He leaned his rifle inside the closet.

As soon as Vesna moved to another guest, the drunk stood up, muttering: Fifty fucking rounds—

Shut up and give me a cigarette.

Where's Enko?

With Bald Man, and you should be, too. Hey, you, Mr. Fifty Rounds! What's your name?

Kambor. Who are you?

Don't you know who Bald Man is?

Of course.

Then you'd better learn who I am. I'm Muhamed. I'm in Bald Man's squad. If you need ammunition, go to Bald Man. He's got so many more rifle grenades—

Not for me, for everyone! The men on the frontline with fifty rounds—

Why aren't you on the frontline, asshole? Amir, brother, what do you have for me?

Amir gave the man a hundred Deutschemarks. The American went to greet Vesna, who smiled at him with a brilliance in whose meaning he could almost believe. Awkwardly he asked how she was, and she replied that a neighbor had been killed, not a close friend, but as it turned out someone whom she missed more than she would have guessed.

How did it happen?

She was queuing for water at the brewery, when a shell . . .

I'm sorry.

And the funny thing is that she was Serbian! Well, at least we're all equals here.

Vesna, have you met Bald Man?

Oh, yes! He's always smiling. He's good for his neighbors and friends. He's good with the people that he's good with.

Such as Amir and Enko?

Yes, reliable men like them.

The American sat drinking and listening, sometimes recognizing that someone had said something very important which out of respect for them all he would not write down in their presence but do his best to remember exactly (the night silently torn open by a faraway shell-flash which could not keep the night's flesh from cohering again); he assumed that none of them knew why what they said could matter to other people and times; after all, how could it be of more than temporary value to them themselves who already understood the shells? Perhaps after ten or twenty years, should they survive so long, they might grow sufficiently fortunate as to forget the significance of what people said in such a situation, and then, if he had written it down and they discovered and read it, it might mean something new to them, and even lend them something like fulfillment.

Presently the poet found him, and with relief those two shy men sat down together to enumerate the beauties of the Slavic woman. The American thought that his friend seemed sad, perhaps even by nature. They drank together.

And how was the frontline? asked the poet.

Not bad. And how was it at home?

How can I complain? When the Nazis were here, my grandparents used to eat beech bark.

Now, Olga Ilic, the poet began to explain, when they accused her of collaboration with Bulgaria, she was imprisoned and then she experienced a nervous crisis, because she was a very sensitive woman. So
sensitive and so beautiful! Vesna resembles her in both these qualities, I believe.

Would you say that Olga Ilic was kind?

You know, I feel as if she could have been my wife, or maybe my sister. During the Hitler war she lived in a suburb of Belgrade, bombed out of her house and terrified that an American or British shell would get her. Don't you think she was one of us?

When the next shell exploded, not so far away, a young woman went rigid as if she were playing the violin, because this type of life was still new; and the poet gazed on her with pity in his beautiful eyes.

That afternoon Amir had chauffeured the American to the morgue, where he had set about first seeing and then knowing that those children were dead—thank God he'd never known them, so he wasn't compelled to feel much, at least not immediately; he could write about their openmouthed yellow-green faces without being hindered in his work by personal considerations. The details, being precious in and of themselves, since they were the manifestation of the real, would array themselves, and express the sad horror they represented, without his needing to be tortured by it. A photojournalist may look at his negatives ten years later and only then be infected with the anguish they record; for word-workers it is the same only different. He knew enough not to expound on this subject at Vesna's, even to the poet, who continued praising Vesna in the guise of describing Olga Ilic, while the lost American sat listening to other conversations around him, trying to remember them forever, so that something, anything, could be made of this: