THE HEART OF DANGER (25 page)

history to be rewritten in new nationhood, said it and grinned

sardonically. Jovic took him to the Tourist Bureau and there were

no

new guidebooks of the city; the old ones were all recalled for

pulping,

and the new ones would carry no reference to the Ustase fascists ..

.

A new bar, more money for the telephone, Penn waited outside.

The rain had started again.

The artist said, "There is no record of her coming out. There is

a

database for refugees who have left the occupied territory, and she

is

not listed. She is classified a missing person. The detail is

small.

She is Katica Dubelj, she is eighty-four years old. She was in her

eighty-third year when Rosenovici fell. If she had died between then

and now, it is the sort of matter that is discussed at the liaison

meetings, if her body were returned for burial here then it would

have

come through the Turanj crossing point, escorted by UNHCR. I cannot

help it, but she does not appear on the database .. . There are a

few

old people who still live across there, perhaps in the woods, perhaps

they are tolerated. She is beyond your reach, alive or dead. It

is

the end of the road, Mr. Penn. I think you should be satisfied.

You

know the last weeks and the last days and the last hours of the life

of

Miss Mowat. Only a few minutes have escaped you .. . Satisfactory,

yes? Do you want me to book the flight for you?"

Penn said he wanted to be alone.

"Shall I come tonight for my money, or in the morning before you

fly?"

Penn took out his wallet. He counted out the notes, American

dollars.

He took the scribbled receipt written on the ripped paper from Jovic's

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notebook. "I think we did well, I think you will write a good

report."

Penn shook his hand. "I think that by next week you will have

forgotten us, Mr. Penn. We are easy, with our problems, to forget

..

." Penn had no pleasantries for Jovic, and he saw the surprise of

the

man. For the moment he believed he had, at last, unsettled the

artist.

No banter, no chat, no laughing, and no thanks, as if he had no time

for them. There was a confusion on Jovic's face, but he was proud.

Jovic, Penn thought, would not have known how to grovel, and was gone,

skipping away across the road through the cars, lost in the

pedestrians

on the far side, never looking back. He had finished, or he had not

begun. Finished, not begun, it was Penn's decision ... A light rain

fell and it brought a dust with it that lay on the cars, and it settled

on the shoulders of his blazer. He made room on the pavement for

two

young men who swung theirjweight on crutches, war amputees. He was

the

intruder. He prised himself into their lives, into the life of the

city, into the lives of the camps. It was Penn's decision on whether

he had finished, or whether he had not begun. She had had everything

and he had had nothing. She had had privilege and advantage and

abused

them. She could have walked into college but she declined to. He

would have called her, to her face, if he had met her, 'selfish little

bitch'. Had had everything while he had had nothing, had been free,

and he had never been. It was as if he should have been warned away,

kept safe distance. And he had prised, beaten, kicked his way into

the

life of Dorrie Mowat. "I told you, and you cared not to hear me ..

."

Charles barking and the gin spilling from the glass rim. '.. . I

told

you that you were wasting money, but you cared not to listen." "I just

wanted to bloody know .. ." Mary walking the lounge, spinning, like a

caged creature, and smoking which was new for her. '.. . Don't I

have

the right to know?"

"It's obsession, and obsession will break you."

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"I tell you, he wasn't flash. He was well-mannered and he was

considerate .. ."

"Mr. bloody Penn, he's taken my money and he's taken you for a damn great ride. When he's ready he'll be back. When he's back there

will

be his bill, and there will be a report that is bullshit. They're

grubby people and you chose to involve them."

"Sorry what sort of day was it?"

"A bloody awful day."

"He could have rung me back, could have talked to me. Sorry

She went to her kitchen, started the supper. What hurt was that she

had thought Mr. Penn cared.

The media had hit the hotel.

Penn, rueful, sat in the bar and nursed the fourth beer, might have

been the fifth.

The circus had hit the hotel.

Penn listened, and he watched.

It was reunion time for those from Sarajevo and those from Vitez and

those from Mostar. There was embracing and kissing and bellboys bent

under the weight of equipment boxes. He sat apart from them,

listened,

and his hand twitched to his tie; no ties on show in the circus, no

blazers, no pressed slacks, no shined shoes. Penn listened because

the

talk was of staying alive.

Staying alive was paying the welding company in Sarajevo to fit the

shrapnel-proof sides onto the reinforced Land-Rover chassis: "I'd

have

bought it, too bloody right, 81-mm chunks coming in." Staying alive was not going to Srebrenica across country on foot: "Crazy place,

place

to get killed, not worth the hassle." Staying alive was laughing

for

the wild man in Sarajevo who had brought a cow across the airport

runway, under the snipers' guns: "Best bloody milk in the city."

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Staying alive was getting down to the mortuary in Mostar after the

shelling: "He was about twelve, he'd got new trainers on, sticking

out

under the blanket, the trainers made it front page, and it

syndicated."

To Penn, listening, they made staying alive just about possible.

They

were in town for a wedding. They were going back to Sarajevo and

Vitez

and Mostar in thirty-six hours. It was his decision, whether he had

finished, or not begun. It was as if her freedom laughed at him,

as if

the laugh was recklessly loud in a cavern of silence. As if she

danced

in front of him, feral, a creature of his childhood woodland,

challenging him to follow where she led. He had never been free,

had

he? Bloody structured, bloody trapped. Duty, stability,

discipline,

commitment, Penn's gods. It was as if she had never been defeated,

not

even in death ... as if he had never succeeded, not even in life.

He

had not known freedom, would never know it unless he followed ...

It

was like a pain in him. He finished his beer. Penn went out of the hotel, to walk, think. He sat in his kitchen and he fastened the

belt

that held the holster at his waist. The carpenter, Milo, bent beside

the table and eased off his shoes, then dragged on his old boots,

and

he heard the intake of breath from his wife because the boots shed

dried mud onto the floor that she had washed. He went to the

refrigerator and took an apple and put it into the pocket of his heavy

coat. It was a good refrigerator, the best that could have been

bought

in Zagreb, but the door was always open because he had learned that

to

close the door meant the gathering of mildew on the inner walls.

There

was no power in Salika. It was near to a year and a half since the

carpenter had made the two journeys, with the wheelbarrow, across

the

river and come back with the refrigerator from Franjo and Ivana's

kitchen and the television from the house behind Rosenovici's store.

144

They both looked well in the carpenter's home and he spat back at

his

wife each time that she declared them useless because there was no

power. With the holster at his belt, with the apple in his pocket,

he

took the hurricane lamp down from the shelf above the sink. He could

no longer use the big flashlight because the batteries were

exhausted.

He lit the lamp and clumped in his old boots across the kitchen floor,

and left more mud. He went out into the night. He went to his store shed and he took from the nail the sharp bow saw and his big jemmy

and

the lump hammer. He went past the house of the Headmaster, where

a

small light burned, and he groped down and found a stone in the road

and threw it hard so that it rattled the upper planking of his house.

He went past the house of the Priest, the old fool, and past the house

of the gravedigger, Stevo, and called out to him, and past the house

of

the postman, Branko. Short of the bridge, he shouted forward.

There

would be young men on the bridge, guarding, and it was best to call

forward. He yelled his name into the night. The light swirled

around

him and beyond the light was blackness. No moon that night and he

could not see the ruin of the village nor the trees beyond it, nor

the

outline against the skies of the higher ground. It was to please

Milan

Stankovic that he went with his pistol and his apple and his bow saw

and tools out into the night. They were good boys on the bridge,

good

laughter when he came to them, and they pulled aside the frame that

was

laced with barbed wire so that he could go onto the bridge .. . He

considered Milan Stankovic the finest man in the village of Salika.

He

hated to see it, what he saw every day now, the sullen and hostile

and

bleak face of the best man he knew. Milan had said, that morning,

that

Evica had complained of the table in the kitchen. It was too old,

and

the glue was dried out, and the surface was too scratched to scrub

clean. There were fine timbers to be had in the ruins .. . The wind

was around him as he walked up the lane towards the village of

145

Rosenovici, and there was light rain, and once he stumbled and nearly

fell because he had been looking ahead to the edge of light thrown

by

the hurricane lamp and he had not seen the deeper hole left by the

jeeps that had come for the digging ... He did not understand the

recent mood of Milan Stankovic. The carpenter thought that he could

bring the life smile back to the face of Milan when he presented him

with a new kitchen table. At the edge of his light, he saw a cat

sprinting away, stomach down, and he kicked a stone fiercely towards

its starved ribcage .. . There were none in the village who would

come

with the carpenter to Rosenovici at night, the scared farts, but he

would gather up sufficient seasoned wood from the timbers and haul

it

back that evening and work through the small hours, catch some sleep,

then work again through the day, and have the table ready for the

next

evening.

The carpenter would have said that he was afraid of nothing.

He reached the village.

There was an owl in a tree up the hill.

He had been back to the village many times, never with Milan. The

timbers would not be at the square, not at the store nor the cafe,

because the headquarters of the Ustase had been there, and the

greatest

concentration of tank fire had been there. He had been back for the

refrigerator and for the television, and to help others round up the

cattle left there, and back for the shooting of the dogs that had

been

abandoned there, and back to look and to search among the homes for

hidden jewellery, and he had been back to stand in the group that

had

watched the digging. Milan had never been back. There was fine wood

in the roof of the church but what had been burned had fallen, and

the

rest of the roof spars were too high for him to retrieve. The

farmhouse with the cellar had not been burned, but it had been

dynamited, destroyed, the timbers would lie under plaster and stone

rubble. Milan always found an excuse for not returning to

Rosenovici.

He stood in the square. The wind played at his face, coming from

146

the

east and cold. The light caught at the houses that had been

destroyed.

The carpenter could see up the road along which they had marched as

escort to the wounded. He was not frightened of darkness. He

thought

he knew in which house he would find seasoned timber. Out of the

square and along the lane. He had brought up the rear, pushed them,

driven them. It was the lane up which the bulldozer had been

directed,

following them. He was not frightened of darkness but the silence

around him was broken by the wheeze of his breathing and the stamp

of

his boots, and the carpenter shivered, felt the cold of the wind.

Ahead

of him, at the edge of the light, was the collapsed gate, then the