The Wolf of Sarajevo (23 page)

TRNOVA, BOSNIA

NOVEMBER 12

F
ather Stefan had been in the business of saving souls long enough to recognize a troubled one when he saw it. The man who had come to his small mountain chapel seeking solace and forgiveness had the haunted look of someone who had seen too many terrible things, who had done too many terrible things. It was a look that Stefan remembered from the war, a war that this man—who had introduced himself only as Darko from Vukovar—had never, the priest suspected, left behind. Men like Darko carried the war with them everywhere they went, as though it were a religious talisman or family heirloom, something too precious or familiar to surrender. And like a talisman, it was worn close to the heart.

Stefan knew why Darko had chosen him. It was the magnetic pull of reputation. That Stefan was no longer the man he had been was irrelevant. Darko had come seeking only a shadow of the past.
That was alright. Stefan could offer him comfort, even absolution, without having to refight his own war.

He did not get many visitors out here. The monastery was not on any of the major pilgrimage routes, nor did his little chapel have the kind of high-quality artistic flourishes that might have drawn the more adventurous sort of tourist. It was simple and quiet up here in the mountains. That was how Stefan liked it.

People who came to the chapel did so purposefully. Darko was one such visitor.

He was short and dark with black hair cut close to the scalp. He was dressed in black, a color that enhanced his pallid complexion. The priest was reminded of one of those pale, blind cave fish. A creature of the night and the dark who looked out of place under a clear sky. His boots were black leather and laced up to the calf. They were polished to a mirror shine, just one more marker of his military history.

Even in repose, there was a tension that seemed to emanate from the visitor, a sense of energy bound tightly in his belly and just barely contained. It was less a coiled spring and more like a steam pipe, smooth and seamless on the surface but with pressure building up on the inside, probing for weak points or design flaws. There would be no outward sign of failure, but the pipe would eventually burst in an explosion of heat and steam. And heaven help anyone who was standing nearby. At least that was how it seemed to Stefan.

“Come,” he said to Darko. “Eat and drink with me, and we can talk.”

It was a cool day, but the sun was out and that made it just warm enough to sit outside in relative comfort. Stefan set out fresh bread and soft white cheese, a small plate of smoked meat, a bowl
of honey, and a dish of walnuts. There was also a bottle of
rakija
on the tray with a beeswax stopper and a large wooden cross that one of the novices had patiently assembled inside the bottle.

“It's not often I have a guest for lunch,” Stefan explained, as he set the food and drink on the table. “Company is always pleasant.”

Darko said nothing, but he helped himself to the food and grunted in appreciation as he ate. He did not, somewhat to Stefan's surprise, crack the seal on the bottle of brandy.

“You've come quite a distance to this church,” Stefan observed. “Is there perhaps some way I can be of service to you?”

Darko seemed to consider this as he chewed a handful of the walnuts that Stefan had picked and shelled himself.

“There are some things that I would like to discuss,” Darko said carefully.

“What sort of things?”

“Terrible things. Dark things. Things that grab you by the throat and never let go.”

“You speak of the war?” Stefan asked sympathetically.

“Yesterday and today it is all the same. The past is the future. It is a snake that circles the world thrice and swallows its own tail.” As he said this, Darko's eyes darted back and forth as if he expected an enemy to emerge from the tree line at any moment.

“Our memories can seem real and immediate,” Stefan said. “Especially when we dream.”

“Then I dream all day, Father, of things I have done and things I have yet to do. I see the spirits of the dead mingled with the spirits of the not yet dead, for that is what we are. All of us. I want to deliver them to this higher state of being, for that is what I am. An emissary. An angel.”

Stefan suspected that Darko might be more than spiritually troubled. There was something about the way he spoke and the intensity of his gaze that led the priest to suspect that the man sitting across from him was delusional, perhaps even dangerously so.

Stefan dipped a walnut in the honey and chewed it slowly, biding his time as he formulated a response.

“My son, your soul seems restless. The past is a heavy burden for us all, but I would help you bear the weight if you would let me. Confess your sins and I will offer absolution.”

Darko's features seemed to soften at the idea, and his eyes ceased their rapid and unpredictable movements and seemed to focus on something comforting in the middle distance.

“I would like that,” he said. “The dead won't stay dead, you see. Father, I see them. They follow me. They cloud my vision and muddle my thinking. I have hopes that absolution will banish the dead back to their graves.”

Stefan led Darko into the church and up to the altar. The sacrament of confession in the Orthodox Church was different than in its Catholic cousin. There was no booth, no pretense of anonymity. The Orthodox Church had adopted a system of lay confessors to serve as spiritual guides to the village folk in times of crisis, although only an ordained priest could formally absolve a person of his or her sins.

On Stefan's instruction, Darko laid his left hand on the holy book and two fingers of his right hand on the foot of an image of Christ engraved on a wooden cross.

Stefan stood across from him.

“Tell me your sins, my son.”

“They are many, Father.”

“We are all but men.”

“Some of us are more than that. I am an angel. An avenging angel. A fallen angel.”

Darko's eyes were bright and unblinking with a hint of madness. Stefan was moved to pity tempered by fear. The violence had wormed its way into Darko's heart and folded in on itself until it had become a part of the fabric of his being. Stefan feared that this visitor was deranged beyond redemption. But he was a priest and he would try.

“Why have you come to me?”

“I have killed. I have killed many men.”

Stefan nodded.

“I have killed women and children.”

“The war brought out the worst in all of us,” the priest said reassuringly.

“No, Father. It brought out my best. I was good at war. I have never been . . . will never be . . . as good at anything ever again.”

“You are in conflict with yourself,” Stefan said. “It eats at your soul. I understand this. But there is a part of you that rejects that identity. Rejects violence. Turns from death. Desires another way of living. That is why you have come here.”

“Yes. There is a conflict. My nature is dual. Both angel and man. And the part of me that is still a man has a soul that is in mortal danger.”

“Then repent and save your soul,” Stefan said urgently.

Darko's list of sins was long even by the standards of a region that had seen too much of war.

Stefan listened with patience and sympathy, and offered his blessing.

“Go forth and sin no more,” the priest commanded.

“I cannot promise that, Father.”

“You must try.”

“I am not done with killing. There is one more I must do.”

“It is one thing to kill during war. It is another thing altogether to murder.”

“Is it, Father? Is it really?”

“Why do you say you must do this thing?”

“Because he wants her dead and I have given my word.”

“Who?”

“She is gold. A woman of gold.” Darko seemed to be babbling nonsense.

“My son, I fear you are in the grip of a delusion. I can tend to your soul, but I cannot treat your mind. You have need of a priest, yes. But you also need a physician. Let me help you.”

Darko only shook his head, and without another word, he turned and walked out of the church.

Stefan was left alone with his thoughts. He had been in the presence of something powerful, but whether it was evil or simple madness was impossible for him to tell. Was there even a difference? Was insanity simply a form of spiritual turmoil?

Was Darko merely delusional or would he act out the commands of the demons in his head? There was something about the woman of gold that almost seemed to make sense to Stefan. But he could not quite put the pieces together. It was almost there. Scattered fragments of understanding that he tried unsuccessfully to shape into a complete picture. He pushed it aside. Darko from Vukovar was insane. The war had broken him, and peace—such as it was—had failed to remake him. He was caught in a world of fantasy and
make-believe. In this, he was hardly alone. There were too many of the walking dead from all sides in that terrible conflict.

Darko needed a psychiatrist, hospitalization, drugs, and therapy. That was a problem for the secular authorities. There was little Stefan could do from his isolated mountain chapel. He had already done everything in his power to help the former soldier save his soul. That was the job of a priest.

Stefan returned the cross and the holy book to their resting place, and closed the door of the church behind him.

The bees needed tending.

AGINO SELO

NEAR BANJA LUKA

1570

I
want you to cut the boy,” his mother said. “Disfigure him. Nothing too extreme. Maybe one of his ears. A finger. He won't miss one.”

His wife, Brana, was mad with worry, Radoslav knew. The fear that the scout would choose their son Uros had grown in her mind until it had become a certainty. This was the dangerous period for Uros. The scout came only once every four or five years. If they could make it through this “collecting,” it was likely that Uros would be too old the next time. Radoslav understood his wife's fear, he even shared it, but it was his job to be strong.

“What's wrong with you, woman? Disfigure my son? Never. He will not be chosen. There are many boys in the village who are the right age. Many are bigger and stronger than Uros.”

“And if he is chosen? What then?”

Radoslav drained his cup of
rakija
and poured himself another from the wooden cask on the table.

“We have more than one son.”

“You are not his mother.”

Radoslav smiled at his wife and reached for her hand. Life in the village could make a man grow hard, but he was not unkind. It hurt him to see his wife suffer, and if the scout chose his boy, he would no doubt weep himself. In private. Radoslav loved the boy too. But he was a man.

He twisted the end of his mustache, a habit he had when he was thinking about something especially serious.

“If he is chosen,” he said carefully, “it might not be all bad. He would be educated in the sultan's court. He would learn to read and fight. He might come back to us one day as a bey, even as a pasha. Sokollu Mehmed Pasha was born a Serb in Sokolovići and now he is master of us all. Is that so bad?”

“He would be a slave and a Turk,” his wife said. “They would circumcise him and make him Muslim. He would have no reason to love us, you and me, or even remember us. It is most likely that he will die in some foreign battle fighting the sultan's wars. That is not what I want for my son.”

Uros was only eight. This was the age the scouts' preferred for their Janissaries, the privileged class of slaves who guarded the sultan's person and administered his sprawling empire. Most Janissaries came from the Balkans: Albanians and Serbs, Croats and Bulgarians. Muslims were exempt from the collecting, the
devşirme
system by which towns and villages were expected to tithe their children to the sultan's imperial ambitions. Whole towns had been known to convert from Christianity to Islam to avoid the
devşirme
.

Radoslav looked around him at what he had built. They had done well for themselves, he and Brana. They had seven healthy children and two more in the church graveyard. Their house was strong, made of wattle and thatch over stone and timber. Their farm was five acres of wheat and a small orchard that produced plums and cherries and succulent apricots in season. He had iron farm tools in the shed, a draft horse, and a cow that gave enough milk to meet their needs.

The last thing he wanted was trouble. Not with the village headman, not with the bey and, God alone knew, not with the pasha. Some families tried to hide their sons or pretend they had died. But the scouts knew. The Ottomans were nothing if not very careful keepers of records. Land records. Court records. Marriages, births, and deaths. Those who tried to cheat the scouts lost their homes and farms. It was better to take your chances with the numbers. There were many Christian sons, and few were chosen as Janissaries. But you could not expect a woman to understand numbers.

A bell rang, the church bell. It was time.

Brana gathered the children. The girls did not need to come, but if little Uros was chosen, it would be their last chance to see him.

Radoslav pulled his
kožuh
, a warm sheepskin vest, over his best shirt of embroidered linen. He wrapped a red wool belt around his waist. Red was for Christians. The Muslims wore green. His hat was also made of wool dyed dark red and embroidered in black thread. Finally, he stuck a long knife into his belt. A man never left the house without a weapon.

It was already November and the cold rain had turned the roads to mud. The sky was an iron gray. His
opanci,
shoes made from
woven leather, kept his feet dry and his wool socks kept them warm. The scout always came in November. Radoslav did not know why. The walk to town took longer than it usually did, as they were weighed down by their heavy hearts. Within the hour, however, all of the families in the village assembled by the church for inspection. The priest was there with his own family, but his two sons were grown, almost old enough to marry and certainly too old to be of interest to the scout.

The agent of the sultan's army was the same man who had come for the last two cycles of
devşirme
. He had seen enough winters now that his mustache was beginning to gray. The scout's riding clothes were made of lamb's wool dyed a deep blue, and his boots were polished leather. It was his horse, however, that made the most powerful impression on the villagers. If Radoslav had sold his home and all his land, and indentured his sons and daughters as servants, he could not have afforded to buy such a magnificent animal. The horse was black and at least sixteen hands high with a broad chest and thick black mane. This was the scout's personal mount. But it was the other horses that his wife feared, the dull-brown drays yoked to the wagon that would take their son away to far-off Constantinople at the whim of the man before them. The Muslims, Radoslav knew, had another name for the city, but he could not recall it.

The sons lined up for inspection, all of the village boys between the ages of seven and eleven. Uros was one of the smallest of even the youngest boys, and Radoslav hoped that he would be overlooked because of it. He did not look like a soldier or even, Radoslav had to admit to himself, a farmer. But Uros was clever, and he had not yet learned to hide that, to dull his eyes and make his face
a stone. The sultan was after more than big and strong, Radoslav knew. Uros was a curious boy and also a handsome boy. He took after his mother. The scouts were partial to good-looking sons.

The scout walked up and down the line of young boys, inspecting a few of the bigger ones the way he might look over a horse, checking their muscle tone and even looking at their teeth. One boy was nearly a head taller than the others. He was eleven and strong for his age. The agent took him. Radoslav heard his mother cry out in anguish and her husband hush her.

The scout stopped again in front of Uros, and Radoslav felt his wife's grip tighten on his arm.

“What is your name, boy,” the scout asked.

“Uros.”

“How old are you?”

“Nine,” the boy lied. He was barely eight.

The scout seemed to recognize the lie. He smiled.

“Uros, you will come with me.”

The boy did not cry. He did not run to his mother. He made his father proud.

The family was allowed to say good-bye. Brana shrieked and wailed and needed to be pulled apart from her son by two of the village women. Radoslav kept this face impassive. He would show nothing to the Turk. No pain. But he held his son tightly one last time and whispered fiercely in his ear.

“Remember us. I will remember you.”

Remember.