The Cellist of Sarajevo (20 page)

“I hope you realize what you’re doing,” he says.

Arrow continues crawling. “I know exactly what I’m doing,” she says as she reaches the inner hallway and gets to her feet. She walks to the stairway quickly, but doesn’t run. She doesn’t put her rifle over her shoulder, isn’t sure she won’t need it. The stairway is dark, and she’s forced to make her way to the ground blind. Every sound she hears brings the expectation that Hasan will follow her, but he doesn’t. She emerges from the stairway and walks across the lobby towards the rear entrance to the building. The two guards are still there, but again they pay her no notice. Just before she steps through the double doors and into the street, she checks her watch and sees it is almost four o’clock. Her feet hit the pavement, and she begins to run.

Dragan

A
MAN IS GOING TO TRY TO CROSS.
H
E’S BEEN
warned, can surely see the body of the hatless man as well as anyone, but he doesn’t seem to care. He’s young, perhaps a bit foolish. Dragan wonders if he gets some sort of thrill out of challenging an intersection that’s known to have a sniper. It’s a new sport, perhaps. The hundred-metre dash, with bullets.

Dragan sees a camera is being set up across the street. A man in a bulletproof vest stands behind the barricade and surveys the scene, calculating distances and angles, judging the visual quality of the destruction. He’s clean-shaven and his clothes are immaculate. Dragan can see the neatly ironed creases in his pants
from across the street. Or he thinks he can. Still, he’s surprised, not at the cameraman’s presence but at his location. The camera should, he thinks, be on his side of the road, the side closest to the hotel the foreign journalists stay at. The one that still has food and hot water and, often, electricity. This man has gone the long way around. It’s an odd choice, and Dragan doesn’t know what to make of it.

The man about to cross has seen the camera too and pauses, as though weighing whether he should wait so that his sprint can be captured on camera. He even looks down, checking his clothes. He seems to decide that his outfit isn’t something he wants to wear on television, however, because he jerks forward and enters the intersection.

Everyone, including the cameraman, stops what they’re doing and watches. It’s not much of an audience, no more than a half-dozen people, and they’ve all seen this show before, with both endings. The man runs in a straight line. He’s fast. A new world record? Maybe. Perhaps they will have to notify the people at Guinness.

The sniper doesn’t fire, for reasons all his own, and, when the man reaches the other side, Dragan thinks the cameraman looks disappointed, because the sprinter lived and because he didn’t get a shot of his run. The disappointment irritates Dragan, makes him feel like a zoo animal.

A dog comes up behind the cameraman, startling him, and Dragan smiles. The dog is uninterested, though, and continues into the street. As it nears, Dragan wonders if it’s the same dog he saw earlier, with Emina. This dog has the same sense of purpose, and also appears as though it has somewhere to go. But he can’t remember exactly what the first dog looked like. It could be the same. They all look the same to him now.

The dog trots across the lanes of pavement towards Dragan. As he gets close to the body of the hatless man, Dragan wonders if the dog will try to eat the corpse. It must be hungry, he thinks. Everything that is neither politician nor gangster in this city is hungry. But the dog walks past the body without even stopping to sniff at it. It’s as though it wasn’t even there.

Dragan hears the clink of tags as the dog passes him, sees it’s wearing a collar, but it’s obvious from the condition of its fur that the dog lives on the streets. It doesn’t look up at Dragan or anyone else it passes, and he wonders if the dog has written mankind off altogether. Dragan wants to call out to the dog, give it something to eat, pet its fur, do something that will restore its faith in him. But he doesn’t have any food, and he knows the dog won’t come even if he calls it. As it turns the corner and disappears he feels a little like the way he felt when he stood watching his wife and son’s bus pull into the street and fade out of sight.

He knows that he has been that dog. Ever since the war started he has walked through the streets and tried to pay as little attention as possible to his surroundings. He saw nothing he didn’t have to see and did nothing he didn’t have to do.

The cameraman is having a problem with his equipment. He’s set his camera down on the ground and is rummaging through a large backpack. Dragan is relieved, but then the cameraman appears to find what he was looking for and moves back to the camera. Dragan knows that the camera will be filming soon, and he knows that he doesn’t want the body of the hatless man to be captured on film.

It’s not that he doesn’t want the world to know what’s happening here. He does, or at least he agrees with the argument that the world is more likely to intervene if it is forced to see the suffering of innocents. It’s just that the scene the cameraman will capture is in no way representative of what’s happened here today. It’s the aftermath.

A dead body won’t bother anyone. It will be a curiosity, but unless some viewer knew the hatless man it will mean nothing. There’s nothing in a dead body that suggests what it was like to be alive. No one will know if the man had unusually large feet, which his friends used to tease him about when he was a child. No one will know about the scar on his back he got from falling out
of a tree, or that his favourite food was chocolate cake. They will not know that when he was eighteen he went on a trip with his friends from school, hitchhiked all the way to Spain, where he slept with a blonde girl whose last name he never even knew, and that he would think about this often over the next thirty years, always at the strangest times, while peeling an orange or sharpening the blade of a knife or walking up a hill in the rain.

Then there are the things one doesn’t mention about the dead. It will not be said that he had a quick temper, or that he sometimes cheated at his monthly card game. He was cheap. When drunk, he was cruel.

None of this will ever be said again, has simply vanished from existence. But these are the things that make a death something to be mourned. It’s not just a disappearance of flesh. This, in and of itself, is easily shrugged off. When the body of the hatless man is shown on the evening news to people all over the world, they will do exactly that. They may remark on the horror, but they will, most likely, think nothing of it at all, like a dog with somewhere else to be.

Dragan looks at the body of the hatless man. He doesn’t know his name, can’t picture his face. He doesn’t know anything about him at all. It’s all conjecture. But it doesn’t matter. This man is him. Or he could be. He lived in this city under siege, and he was shot crossing the street. They both did nothing when Emina needed help.

He won’t allow this man’s body to be filmed. He remembers what he told Emina about the cellist, why he thinks he plays. To stop something from happening. To prevent a worsening. To do what he can.

As he looks at the cameraman, however, Dragan realizes that he’s missed the point. It doesn’t matter what the world thinks of his city. All that matters is what he thinks. In the Sarajevo of his memory, it was completely unacceptable to have a dead man lying in the street. In the Sarajevo of today it’s normal. He has been living in neither, has tried to live in a city that no longer exists, refusing to participate in the one that does.

The sniper is still there. He can’t say how he knows this, but he does. Somewhere on the hills or the buildings of Grbavica he’s waiting, biding his time. A man just crossed without him shooting. It means nothing. It’s all a calculation. The longer he waits before shooting, the more people will venture back into the intersection. Dragan thinks it might be possible to draw a chart to express the best correlation between the number of potential targets and the time between shots. He wonders if the sniper has such a chart, perhaps on a small laminated card, tucked into the breast pocket of his jacket, or if it’s just something he knows by heart.

The hatless man is close, maybe fifteen metres from him. It should be a simple thing to run to him, grab his
hands and drag him off the street. Twenty steps each way. Half a minute is all it should take. Possibly less.

He takes a deep breath and exhales. Then his feet are moving, and he’s back in the street. Once again time slows down, and each time his foot surges forward it seems like an eternity passes. He can hear his feet hitting the ground. The sound slaps and echoes loud in his ears. His mouth feels dry. When he’s three-quarters of the way to the body he remembers to keep his head low, and his shoulders ache as he ducks down, still running.

Dragan reaches the body of the hatless man. The soles of his shoes stick and slip in his blood. He reaches down and grabs one of his hands, lifeless and still warm. The other one is difficult to get a grip on. He loses his balance and falls. Dragan’s nose is a centimetre from what remains of the head of the hatless man. A flap of skin hangs over the maw of his emptied skull like a bad toupée. For some reason, it doesn’t bother Dragan. He thinks it should, knows that normally such gore would horrify him. But it isn’t important. All that matters is getting the body off the street.

Something slams into the body in front of him with a flat thump. A rifle cracks. The sniper has fired, missed him by less than half a metre. Dragan grabs the hatless man’s other hand and tries to get to his feet. He can’t. The body is too heavy. He’s able to crouch and, in an
awkward sort of crab-walk, pull the body backward towards the boxcar.

He knows the sniper will fire again, but he isn’t afraid. At this moment fear doesn’t exist. There’s no such thing as bravery. There are no heroes, no villains, no cowards. There’s what he can do, and what he can’t. There’s right and wrong and nothing else. The world is binary. Shading will come later.

He doesn’t hear the bullet hit, but he does hear the gunshot. He doesn’t think he’s hurt but he isn’t certain. As he pulls the body of the hatless man the final few steps to safety he waits to feel some sort of pain, waits to feel the wetness of bleeding. It doesn’t come. He sits down on the ground, breathing hard, sweating. He looks across the street and sees the cameraman staring at him, his mouth open. His camera is in his hands, but not on his shoulder. It hasn’t captured him, or the body of the hatless man.

Good, he thinks. I will not live in a city where dead bodies lie abandoned in the streets, and you will not tell the world I do.

One of the two people on his side of the street moves towards him. The whistle of descending shells makes the person change his mind. The shells fall on the other side of the boxcar, in what’s left of the abandoned army barracks. Dragan lies on his stomach, his hands over his head and his face pressed to the ground.
He tries not to think about what will happen if a shell falls on his side of the barricade. The men on the hills are angry. Be angry with yourselves, Dragan thinks. You had your chance to kill me, and you’ll have another chance soon.

The defenders answer back with automatic gunfire, followed by several single shots, the calling cards of counter-snipers. These shots elicit more mortar fire from the men on the hills, and for a few minutes each side trades volleys until finally it’s quiet, or at least relatively quiet.

Dragan sits up, brushes the dirt from his face. He wonders if this war will ever end. He wonders what it will be like if it does. Will people forget? Should they? He doesn’t have any answers to these questions. But he’s happy to be thinking about them. When he gets to the bakery he will ask his co-workers what they think. They may be surprised. He hasn’t spoken to any of them in a long time.

He stands up, his knees and back stiff. He walks away from the body of the hatless man and picks up Emina’s coat. Beside it lies the man’s hat, which he picks up as well. He looks at each of them for a while. If he were to guess from the condition of the clothing, he’d think that it was Emina who was killed and the hatless man who lived. But things aren’t always the way they look. Especially here. If this city is to die, it won’t be because
of the men on the hills, it will be because of the people in the valley. When they’re content to live with death, to become what the men on the hills want them to be, then Sarajevo will die. Dragan takes Emina’s coat, covers the man at his feet, and gives him back his hat.

FOUR

Kenan

A
NOTHER DAY HAS JUST BEGUN.
L
IGHT STRAINS ITS
way into the apartment, where it finds Kenan in his kitchen, his hand reaching for the plastic jug containing his family’s final quarter-litre of water. It’s been four days since he last went to the brewery for water. It’s almost always four days between trips, five if it rains. Today’s trip will be different, he knows. Today is the day the cellist will play for the twenty-second and final time.

The air is cold this morning. Kenan wonders if the weather is changing. He hopes they’ll have enough warm clothes to last the coming winter. Firewood will be a problem as well. He doesn’t know where it will come from or how he’ll get any. He’ll find a way, somehow.

Kenan pushes his chair back from the kitchen table and picks up an empty water bottle. He goes over every part of it, checking for cracks or holes. He repeats the process with each of his six bottles. On the fourth he finds a small crack, which worries him. It hasn’t gone all the way through, but it will, and there’s no way to tell when. He decides to switch it with one of his spares. Better not to risk it.

He hears a stirring in the sitting room, where Amila and their children sleep. He hopes he hasn’t woken them. It’s still early. There’s no reason for them to get up yet. Better they remain asleep. Who knows whether they might have to spend tonight in the shelter, where it’s almost impossible to get any rest.

As quietly as he can, he picks up the last of their water and makes his way to the bathroom. He turns on the switch for the light out of habit, but nothing happens. He lights a stub of candle beside the mirror and begins to shave. Someday, he thinks, he will shave again with hot water and a sharp razor. Every day will be full of small luxuries like this, and he will enjoy every single one of them. Until then, though, he’s used to shaving in the dark with cold water. It hardly bothers him anymore.