Pretty Birds (36 page)

“He said, ‘If Muslim bands come here, we will let you into our place. We will protect you as we would our family. If Serb bands come here, you let us hide in your closets or bathroom. No food, no water—we will be fine. Just let us hide until the madness passes. What do you say? Whatever happens, we both live.' ”

Pretty Bird had lost interest in his cigarette and had wobbled onto Irena's right foot.

“What did your father say?” she asked.

“That his scheme wasn't real. It sounded nice. It would make a fine fairy tale for the BBC. But it wasn't real. My father told him that Serbs were going to take over our building—rough boys from the country. They would hurt any Serbs who harbored Muslims. So what Mr. Zajko proposed wasn't a fair offer. It couldn't save them, and it could get us killed. My father said that in these times he could only worry about us.”

“Do you know what happened to the Zajkos?”

Amela shrugged. She put her Marlboro to her lips, flipped her fingers over her eyes like a bird's claw, and shrugged again. “They got out. Of the building, at least. We're keeping their television and microwave oven for them until the madness passes.”

Irena rolled forward slightly and stretched her arms out to her toes. When she felt a muscle snag in her ribs, she began to laugh. “I guess if you can't save their lives,” she said, “save their microwave.”

Amela, who was uncertain whether Irena was being kind or snide, smiled faintly.

“It's something,” she said.

Irena herself wasn't certain if she was being considerate or scornful. “I'm sure if they survive,” she told Amela, “those are the first things they'll look for.”

         

GIRLISH GIGGLING IN
the hallway had seeped into Mr. Zaric's mind. When he opened his eyes, he heard it distinctly outside the door. He looked over at Dalila. She was still sleeping; sleep and grime had mussed her hair into playful platinum thorns. He didn't see Irena, and her blankets hadn't been unrolled. He didn't see Pretty Bird snoozing in his cage, or shuffling across the sheets. Fighting down alarm, Mr. Zaric reached for his mother's old pale jade robe and had opened the apartment door before he could quite close the flaps over his grimy gray boxer shorts.

“Omigod,” said Mr. Zaric when he saw Amela, and he fell almost to his knees, as if he'd seen an apparition in a cave. Amela crawled forward to reach for his hand.

“What the hell . . . what the devil . . .” he stammered.

“Just a visit. A quick visit. I'm going back now.”

“Are you . . . on this side now?”

“Just visiting.”

“Of course,” said Mr. Zaric. His voice seemed to roll through the hallway as he knotted his robe. “
Of course.
Has Irena offered you coffee? Tea? I think we have a little orange marmalade. This is amazing. The marmalade is good in tea when you don't have bread.
Anything
is yours.”

“I'm fine, Mr. Zaric.”

“I didn't know visits were possible.”

“I snuck over.”

It was gracious and good—Irena was glad—that Amela had been oblique in describing that course of action.

“Snuck over.
Snuck
over.” Mr. Zaric kept pacing and shaking his head, as if it might put something new into place. Amela had gotten up off the floor and was shaking her feet, as if she were about to begin stretching for a game.

“I'm fine. I've got to go. Irena and I . . . I think we both have work today. I have to slip back before it gets too light. We've had a fine time. I've gotten to see Pretty Bird. I've gotten to see my friend. And now I've gotten to see you.”

Irena could tell that her father wondered if he were still asleep. He held up one of his hands and brushed it through the spears of light that had begun to seep in from the window at the end of the hallway. He looked down at Pretty Bird, who was now doing a stutter-step back into the apartment. He looked over at his daughter, who had risen to stand beside Amela as they looked down at their strutting bird.

“The little emperor,” said Irena.

Mr. Zaric took hold of Amela's arms gently. “I'm sorry. No man looks good in his mother's robe.”

“You look fine,” she assured him.

“It's been—maybe Irena has told you—hard to keep up appearances.”

“You are all still handsome and lovely,” said Amela. “I don't know how . . . you're all amazing.”

“You are welcome anytime,” said Mr. Zaric. “I would say, ‘No call is necessary,' except no call is possible. What you have done . . . Pretty Bird,” he said. His voice seemed to be smothered someplace in the bottom of his throat. “The seed. Not just that. I just want you to know. So much can't be known these days. Always—you are family.”

Amela's eyes shone, and Irena thought she could see her wrists quavering slightly after the long night of little food and strong cigarettes. She could see her own fingers trembling faintly, like branches in a breeze. “Pretty Bird's family,” she added.

32.

IRENA WASN'T DRUNK.
But she was sleepy, fuzzy, and had a queasystomach from socializing with good wine, weak beer, Amela Divacs, Sir Sasha Marx, and Olga Finci cheese. She told her parents that she needed to sleep because she had to work that night. Mr. Zaric would tell her mother about Amela. Irena would go to bed. For the first time in months, she took her sheets into her grandmother's old bedroom and spread them on the floor. She did not bring Pretty Bird with her, because there were gashes and breaks in the windows. She worried that a wind might take him away, back into the street.

It was nearly three in the afternoon when Irena awoke. The sun had gotten bright, and the bedroom was almost stuffy. She twitched in the sheets for a few minutes, then got up to see if there was any water. Pretty Bird had been sleeping, too, and flapped his head, as if he were shucking water. But when he shook his head he made a sound like the opening of the Zarics' old refrigerator door.

“Phhhffft!”
Pretty Bird said, and wagged his wings.
“Phhhffft!”

Mrs. Zaric was reading a book about Panama. Mr. Zaric was dozing. Irena saw the edge of a small blue envelope under the door and went over to pick it up.

“What is that?” called her mother.

“It says
Irena
on the front,” she told Mrs. Zaric. “Looks like Aleksandra's handwriting.”

The letter was written in a crabbed hand, on old blue-ruled school paper:

My dear young friend:

When the sun broke through today, I decided—damn it all—to venture out of this block that has become my small shrunken universe. I walked down Saloma Albaharija Street. People would tell me to get down, to crawl, to turn back. But I needed to see.

I walked by my old tea shop, my old
cevapcici
shop, the old magazine shop on Marshal Tito. All gone, as your father told me, just rats and rubble. I looked for my old friend Azra in the green-and-yellow building—an old art teacher, too. She is dead, many months. Muris, too, an old admirer, a civil engineer, lived on the floor below. He was in line on Vase Miskina Street. Rats and rubble happen to us, too.

The library, the theater, this whole side of the city now—it's like being on the moon. I have lived too long. I was never meant to see this.

Irena could feel a stinging on the very top of her head. As she flipped the sheet of paper over, the words seemed to slide away. She had to reach out with her hands to keep them close. Aleksandra's lettering seemed to grow lighter with each line. The last few letters fairly floated out of their lines and off the page:

We call this
madness,
to make it seem like a mirage. Just hold on, our heads will clear, everything will be back. The world I saw today—it's not worth waking up for.

Please do not be hurt by this! It is just not right that you—your mother, your father—should put yourselves in peril to bring a little food, water, or cigarettes to a feeble old bird like me.

It was not for me to know what you do—
really
—at the brewery. The long hours—so few particulars. I assume it has been secret, scary. We were lazy, sweet-natured children here who lived by our wits. We had to drive steel into our veins. But Sarajevo has a chance to live.

I am not religious (even now, when I should try). But if devout people are right, know that I will reach down whenever I can to try to make life kind for you. My impression of heaven is a place where I can see you. I am not sad. I am going on a voyage. The thought of you is my companion. Like Pretty Bird, I soar.

Aleksandra

Irena said nothing. She leaped from the room—she thought she had been sitting; she couldn't remember getting up—and raced through the Zarics' door, leaving it to whack against the wall like a clap of thunder. She took the interior staircase three steps at a time, and when she reached Aleksandra's door it wrenched open without resistance.

Aleksandra lay across a mossy green sofa trimmed with shriveling brown fringe. Her eyes were closed. Her hands were folded over her waist, as she might hold them in a reception line. She was wearing one of Irena's grandmother's old flowered blouses, her own long black skirt, and, Irena noticed, black nylon stockings and white men's socks for her voyage. Irena drew in her breath. She walked to the sofa to put her hand softly against Aleksandra's forehead. She smelled the drugstore vetiver splash-on that Aleksandra had found last year in Mr. Kovac's bathroom cabinet.

“Oh shit, dear, I'm fine.”

Irena leaped back. She dug her thumb into her thigh and quite literally pinched herself.

“I left the door open, so I didn't hear you come in,” said Aleksandra. “I was just stretched out here, dreaming of Eduard Shevardnadze.”

Irena heard her parents stamp anxiously into the apartment, but she laughed so hard that her head lit up with tears, like a blaze at the end of a match. Mr. Zaric waved Aleksandra's letter as if it were a visa that could get his family into Switzerland.

“That,”
said Aleksandra with a frown. “I was going to come up and get it from under the door, but I was embarrassed. I got up to the roof and decided it was a long way down. The soaring part would be nice. The crashing part—ugh! It would only make more work for you. Pick up the pieces, dig a hole. Besides, you wouldn't like any of my clothes.”

The Zarics surrounded Aleksandra on the sofa. Mr. Zaric kissed the top of her head. Mrs. Zaric put her head across her bosom. Irena took hold of her left foot and began to pull on it.

“I worked so hard on that note,” Aleksandra protested. “I can see you didn't find it convincing.”

         

IRENA REPORTED FOR
work at the brewery and Tedic had her driven to sit behind a trash bin on Ilija Engel Street to look for flares of muzzle fire should they sprout from any of the small hills overlooking Otoka. She saw none. She was deeply tired and dulled. “Life and death,” she mumbled. “And I can't keep my eyes open.” She was exhausted, emotional, and sure that Tedic had deliberately stored her away for a night—out of sight, and in no position to harm herself, if also no Serb.

She heard the brewery truck pull up a block away shortly after five in the morning. She heard some unzipping and zipping at the back by the rear flap, and stifled the urge to shout out, “If you think you're hiding, you're not!” She waited until the preassigned hour of six before getting up from her post behind the trash bin and scratching on the back flap of the beer truck. There was a small delay. She imagined Tedic inside, pulling threads from around tacks he had stuck on his maps to plot the line of shots.

Irena was booting a rear tire with the toe of her shoe when she finally heard a rustling in the back. Jackie, Venus de Jackie, unexpectedly lifted the flap. Jacobo, the Mexican, reached down with two long cream sleeves to help lift Irena into the back of the truck.

“Ingrid, hi,” Jackie said, smiling. “I'm making the run this morning.”

She had on another winning black dress, clinging around her waist, a short sleeve pinned over her stump.

“Jacks, great, good to see you,” said Irena. “Slow night. No flashes, nothing shot, no report. To what do I owe the honor of not finding Tedic behind this flap?”

“We'll explain.” She looked over at Jacobo. “In fact, we need your help.”

By now Irena was standing securely in the truck, but it hadn't moved. The motor wasn't running on idle. Jackie didn't rap her fist against the ceiling or call to the driver to pull away. When Irena took down the zipper on her gray smock, she heard it grate with unaccustomed volume.

“There's been a shooting into the Central Bank,” Jackie explained. “That's where they put on the play. People were just filing in.”

“There's a barrier there,” said Irena.

“Yes. Well, they shot through the blue curtain.”

Workers had stretched a large blue curtain between two buildings along Branilaca Sarajeva Street. The cloth had once hung in the sports plaza during the Olympic Games and it now flapped over the street like a mainsail in spring winds. The curtain couldn't stop bullets, of course, but it prevented Serb snipers from taking aim.

“Three people are dead,” said Jackie. “Two wounded.”

Irena sat down heavily on a bag of Swedish-aid wheat.

“One of the Brit actors, Rob. You may have met him.”

Irena shook her head. “The Viper?” she asked. “What does Tedic say?”

“To hear them tell it, yes.” Jackie replied. She inclined a shoulder toward some imagined speaker. “More important, the Viper must have had a partner. Someone who told him where the play was and when people would be there.”

“I didn't know that,” said Irena.

“I know. Few people did.”

“Tedic saw to that,” Irena added. “He knows how people talk. Tedic lives on loose talk.”

Jackie fought down a smile. The Mexican may have held Tedic in some deference and dread, which it might be valuable to maintain.

“I know.”

“Who knew?” asked Irena.

“We're trying to figure,” Jackie explained. “Two wounded, three dead. We have to ask about your friend.”

“Fucking Miro Tedic,” said Irena. She began to squirm around to slip her arms out of her smock. “Horny Tedic. Ogles a girl and then suspects her. The only person I saw talk to her who knew any particulars about the play was Tedic himself. What does he say to that?”

Jackie tugged on Irena's left sleeve to help her slide it off. Jacobo apparently didn't smoke; he unwrapped a half-inch ash of tinfoil from a roll of mints. Jackie caught Irena's arm gently as she slipped it from her smock.

“Miro,” she said, “was one of the three.”