The Woman Who Lost Her Soul Hardcover (26 page)

Unnoticed coming toward them was the boy with the shotgun who stopped and stood transfixed
by the sight of his mother seated at the piano, radiant in her nakedness. His memory
would hold her in this pose, a vision that over the years his imagination would enshrine
and render beatific, this image of his mother and her persecution and its torturous
gift, a permanent and consuming secret excitement, hidden in the darkness of his soul.

She watched teardrops of blood weep from her breast onto the ivory keys, mesmerized,
listening to a girlish voice in her head fretting about her performance, her inadequate
interpretation of Pamina’s acquisition of strength, wanting to shame her for clumsy
sequencing and phrasings not to mention forgetting the notes, her fingers convulsing
with inchoate Mozart, three chords of one thing and three chords of another and somehow
a trickle from Strauss’s
Salome,
growing perplexed by her inability to fit them together, unable to find the place
in her mind where she kept the music that was the repertoire, precocious and virginal,
of her adolescence, there
at the headwaters of her self, now a turbulent cascade flowing nowhere.
What’s happened?
she asked herself, her fingers printing a gibberish of blood across the keys.

Marija, stop, Bogadnov said, breathing hard from his strenuous work. Get up, cover
yourself. He supported the half-conscious captain with his forearm still clamped under
his chin, the gun in Bogdanov’s right hand flat against his jaw. This man is my hostage,
he yelled out.

Old man, we don’t give a shit, said a soldier. You’re both crazy bastards.

We’re Serbs and Croats, said another soldier. We’re sick of this Turk.

Go ahead, take the Sultan with you, said the first soldier. Give us the rest of the
money and get out of here. The corporal picked up a rifle and raised it tentatively
at the pair but took the advice of the soldier who had ridden the motorcycle now warning
him that the colonel was coming, don’t get involved. The soldiers argued shares and
Bogdanov helpfully reminded them of the packets he had dropped near the piano, extending
the advantage he knew not to trust more than another few minutes.

Marija, please, hurry, said Bogdanov, his strength drained and the captain senseless
in his arms. Pull up your dress and come. Boy, he ordered, get back to the car.

Horrified, she returned to life, looking around to find her son staring at her. Stjepan
there with the soldiers, armed with a gun he could barely hold steady, watching her
with a similar intensity as if he too found her to be an object of his nascent desire.
She rehooked her bra and held the flap of her torn dress against her chest and rose
from the bench shaking, furious at the child for being there, watching, fixated, absorbing
her abasement, a little mascot to the men’s depravity. Go to the car! She made a beeline
for him, screeching, as if the child were to blame for this nightmare. Goddamn you,
I told you to stay in the car! and then she had him by the back of the neck, pushing
him roughly back down the road, and he did not understand his mother’s anger and was
terrified by its tornadic shift to hysteria.

At the car, she made him put down the shotgun and get the blood-stained washcloth
she had held to his head. A filthy crow did his mess on me, she told the boy, scurrying
to appease the shrillness in his mother’s voice. Take the rag and clean it off. And
now, scrubbing his mother’s skin to a fiery pink, he understood the problem—somehow
his mother had torn her dress and a bird had crapped on her back. Is it off? she said,
her body beginning to heave with sobs. Is it off? she demanded, and he scrubbed harder
and the two sedans came down the road from the city. Then he heard his godfather talking
with the archbishop’s driver and shouting orders at the soldiers and walking back
toward the two of them and Stjepan picked up the shotgun.

Boy, do you know how to use that? said the colonel, challenging Stjepan with a look
of amused skepticism and then ignoring him to remove his linen jacket, Stjepan staring
at the shoulder holster at the top of his withered left arm. He held the coat out
to his mother, who seemed to slip into a trance and let her dress fall open and pulled
down the blood-patched cup of her bra to make him see her breast’s crescent of throbbing
welts. The colonel pinched his eyes closed, stroking the furrows of his forehead,
and then opened them again. With his good arm and the stick of the other, he tried
to help her, creating a strange, dipping minuet between the two of them, and like
a child she let him guide her palsied arms into the sleeves and, fumbling one-handed,
button up its front.

Marija, he said, I will give you back your dignity.

My dignity? she said, wagging her head ruefully. Your honor! Give that back to yourself.

He told the boy to come with him and her mind blinked off and she let them get halfway
down the road toward the soldiers before she grasped his intention and ran to catch
up and stop this madness, arguing frantically, Davor, he’s eight years old, he’s a
child, dear God look at him he’s a baby, you cannot do this, I won’t allow it, Stjepan
go back to the car, but the boy gave her a look that he wasn’t going to listen and
with spite in his voice Davor replied that an hour ago she herself had sworn her son
to vengeance against his own godfather. He stopped and shook his finger in her face
and the boy continued walking. You want to raise the child as an assassin? he asked.
Good. Let’s begin.

Davor, let him be, she implored. I forgive you.

With weary fatalism, Bogdanov hugged the captain from behind, uncertain of the changing
circumstances. The stern-faced agents who had executed the priest in Karlovac had
drawn their pistols but kept them lowered, waiting, and the soldiers stood penitent
off in loose formation, also waiting, all eyes on the boy’s advance, wondering what
this was about. Then the boy’s mother rushed forward to take the shotgun from him
but he would not readily give it up and the colonel took it out of their hands and
turned his scalding attention to the archbishop’s driver.

Bagman, you are standing on your grave. I suggest you move.

Bogdanov released the captain and stepped away and offered to surrender his pistol
to one of the agents but the agent did not want it. The bloodied captain swayed on
his feet, his head lolling but his eyes upraised with a slippery focus on the colonel,
a lithe but plain-faced man who, before the war had bitten into him, would not have
attracted much attention on metropolitan streets thronged with office workers and
bureaucrats. Who is second-in-command? Starcevica asked. The question seemed innocuous
enough. Here, said the churlish corporal, stepping out of the ranks, and the colonel
ordered him arrested. The rest of you, he said, let me remind you that you are Tito’s
men, and let me advise you of my disappointment in that fact.

Comrade Colonel, interrupted the captain.

This man is guilty of criminal dereliction, said Colonel Starcevica. Which of you
will speak in his defense?

Comrade Colonel, said the captain, it’s like this. Allah and his prophet will not
be joining us in the new Yugoslavia.

Comrade Captain, the colonel said thoughtfully, as though he found the pertinence
of the captain’s observation worth considering. What business would Allah and his
prophet have with the likes of you?

This is a mistake, said the captain sadly. Unacceptable.

Anyone? asked the colonel, addressing the platoon.

She is a Ustashe whore, said the captain with a disgusted laugh, pointing at Marija
as she came up the road to stand behind Stjepan. Why all this trouble about a Ustashe
whore?

The colonel told the boy that the Bosnian had dishonored his mother and must be punished
and when he offered the child the gun Marija snatched it away, the driver obeying
her shrill command to take her son back to the car. She took one step toward the captain,
raising the shotgun to her shoulder, afraid to breathe.

One moment, please, said the captain, his arms bent at his side, palms up, to request
the satisfaction of a final intimacy. He wanted to know the name of the wife of Kovacevic,
her Christian name, but she could not answer and he asked the colonel—Comrade, may
I know her name?—and finally he shrugged and resigned himself to the impenetrable
silence of their judgment upon him.

Madame Kovacevic, thank you, he said, how beautiful the music, and she fired into
his chest, the kickback from the double blast cracking her collarbone and throwing
her to the ground.

Did I hit him? she asked, and Davor, looming over her, nodded with a worried look,
helping her to her feet. When he began to lead her away she said Let me go, and went
to examine her work and felt her hate transcendent, looking into the captain’s dying
eyes, and she thanked God for granting a woman, a Croatian widow, this rare and exhilarating
satisfaction of justice.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The grassy smells of midsummer, ashy shadows of carnage, pale sun. Hayricks, linden
trees, a revival of orchards beyond the bone-jarring road. Bands of drunken but garrulous
soldiers, drifting from one reprisal killing to another like holiday revelers. The
solemn trudge of refugees into purgatory.

Fifty kilometers south of Karlovac, below the hilltop village of Slunj, the motorcycle
stopped at an abandoned settlement of water millers. The self-important young partisan
riding in its sidecar hopped out to tell Bogdanov he and his comrade were hungry and
were going into town to find something to eat. Rest here by the river, he said with
callow officiousness, until we return. Bogdanov parked in the overgrown yard of an
old stone-walled mill and the boy got out to explore. Because the afternoon was warm
and because he had spent his childhood jumping off the quays of Dubrovnik into the
emerald Adriatic with all the other boys too young for war, Stjepan soon had his clothes
off and was swimming in a pool between a foaming set of rapids, calling for the grown-ups
to join him.

Bogdanov removed his suit coat and sat on the riverbank, watching the boy swim and
listening to the sound of his carefree splash and laughter. How life skipped so quickly
past death to seize small pleasures, and it seemed only yesterday, no matter the season
or weather, he had watched his sons frolic in the Sava River, practicing their father’s
daily custom to exercise in water, the Sava or, when he made his rounds for the archbishop
throughout the country, whatever nearby lake or river he could find. He had trained
for the Olympics before the army put him in the trenches in 1914. He had taught his
sons the sport of boxing, had taken them climbing in the Italian Alps. Even during
the war he had hunted wild boar in the mountains, bringing the dressed carcasses out
of the forest on his back. Never assume failure, Bogdanov had schooled his own boys,
never accept the incompetence that festers from a weak, complacent will. Now his eldest
son lay in a mass grave at Novi Sad, the second son assassinated by the mafia, and
the youngest missing in action in the Ukraine, his daughter emigrated to Argentina
and his grandchildren dead or among the rebels and his remaining loyalty parceled
out to the ones left to save, the viscera of the Croatian phoenix, he had no doubt,
to be reassembled by the future.

Marija remained in the car as she was, disheveled, remorseless, her body aching, spread
out on the backseat with a fresh towel folded over her eyes and another under her
head. When Davor Starcevica had walked her back to the car she recoiled from the excitement
and awe in the boy’s eyes, the thrill of approval—
Momma, did you kill the bastard!
—and for the only time in her life she slapped him, hard and unrepentant. The colonel
took care of him and that’s all there is to know, she told the boy. I never want to
hear another word about it, and with nothing more to say to anyone she changed into
the last dress she owned and lay down on the seat and covered her eyes and heard Bogdanov
and Starcevica behind the car—You, old man, are going to give me something right now—and
eventually Bogdanov got back in, striking a match to light a cigarette, and they left.

She inhaled the willow and stone scents of the river wafting through the open windows
and said to the water,
Carry us far away,
and in the long but always broken conversation she kept with her dead husband she
experienced a surge of insolence and told him they were leaving now, she was taking
their son to the place of his birth, and get used to it, if he comes back he comes
back, and she would not guarantee her own return, nor venture any promise to the dead
except memory.

The teenage boy-soldiers returned from their forage, the moon-faced driver with a
carrot stuck cigarlike between his grinning lips and the one in the sidecar with a
goat kid squirming in his arms. Stjepan came shivering out of the water to admire
their riches and the partisans shared their lunch with Bogdanov and the child, cheese
and bread with slices of salty
prsut
and a paper cone of greasy
burek,
his mother unresponsive to their offers and everyone seemed to know to leave her
be. Clouds gathered and the light collected into burnished lumps and the afternoon
became more humid and when Stjepan jumped into the river again the young soldiers
followed along, their undressed bodies like the boy’s, colorless and bony and malnourished,
and all three played a game of tag, which became a game of tossing the boy into the
air between them, and his mother listened to the yips of their exuberance and could
not stand it. For the first time since leaving the outskirts of Karlovac she sat up,
wincing in pain, and leaned over the seat to tap the horn.

They drove on to the wilderness of Plitvice, the rugged high country before the land
descended to the coast. Bogdanov seemed to have a particular destination in mind,
rejecting the escorts’ desire to stop at an abandoned cottage and, farther on, a bivouac
of local partisans. At the driver’s insistence, they spent the night in the open,
camped a short distance off the road in the hilly forests near a waterfall rumbling
over the brim of a turquoise lake, arriving an hour before sundown, the sky overcast
and threatening. While her son and the young soldiers collected firewood and Bogdanov
wandered away into the forest with a tin pail to gather mushrooms, Marija walked along
the lake until she was out of sight and removed her dress and waded into the frigid
water to wash herself with a brown bar of soap, her teeth chattering and the sting
in her breast and shoulder easing with the cold. When she looked back at the darkening
shoreline she noticed smoke curling out of the trees not only from the direction of
their own camp but throughout the wooded headlands and thought, of course, the forest
is filled with runaways like us.

Back in the clearing, the soldiers had slit the throat of the little goat and were
yanking back its hide and Stjepan heaped branches on the fire as if it were All Hallow’s
Eve. She sat on the running board of the car and called him over to dry her hair,
telling him, Careful, not so hard, pain streaking through her right shoulder, and
then Bogdanov emerged from the shadows between the trees with a companion. I found
this Jew hiding in the forest, Bogdanov announced. He says he’s trying to get to the
boat to go to Palestine and he says he’s hungry. Is it a problem? he asked the two
soldiers, intent on butchering the goat, who looked up at the haggard man with more
indifference than suspicion and said they didn’t mind. The man nodded his appreciation
and dropped his duffel bag at the rear of the car and sat down on a log, head bent,
staring at his cracked shoes. Where’s Palestine? Stjepan asked his mother. Is that
where we’re going too? Look, said Bogdanov proudly, dumping chanterelles and wild
onions on the hood of the car. That’s the stuff, eh? and he sent the boy down to the
lake with the emptied pail. Marija, he said, stepping over to her, are you feeling
better? With paternal tenderness, his large hand alighted on her right cheek, below
the swelling where the captain had struck her.

What happened? The bastard hit you.

Yes, she said, pressing into the warmth of his palm, this small reprieve from the
poverty of touch.

What can I do for you? Perhaps brandy?

Yes, she said. Thank you, Bogdanov. Brandy.

Grandpa, don’t forget us, said the soldiers.

He went around to the trunk and came back with two bottles and a metal cup, which
he filled and gave to her and gave the partisans the unopened bottle for themselves
and a pack of cigarettes and took the first bottle to the man on the log. Rabbi, a
taste? he said with strange joviality, and the fellow took a long swallow and then
Bogdanov took a long swallow and the bottle was soon finished. Stjepan returned with
the pail of water and Bogdanov helped the soldiers wash the carcass of the goat and
took a jackknife from his pocket and trimmed what little fat he could find and put
it in the cook pot the soldiers carried in their kit, along with the mushrooms and
onions. Son, he said to Stjepan, stop putting wood on the fire, let it burn down,
and the partisans cut forked branches for the frame of a spit and Bogdanov skewered
the goat through the gullet and anus and Marija drank the cup dry and asked if there
was more and out came another bottle. The last of it, said the driver. The last of
everything, she whispered bleakly.

Nightfall was upon them and blackness hugged the campfire where the men prepared their
rustic dinner. From her perch on the running board she watched her son enjoying this
adventure, poking at the coals with a stick, seemingly oblivious. She sipped her brandy,
welcoming its burn, the relaxation of the hard knots that held her perseverance together,
which could be loosened but never untied, and thought about her husband Andre and
about Davor and Andre, what firebrands they had been, what spirited boys, ardent and
enlivening, unlikely but devoted brothers, living poems of courage and passion.

She and Andre were university students and Davor a street-corner recruiter for the
Organization, the cafés of Zagreb the mixing bowl between the intellectual activists
and the uneducated paramilitaries. They were young together in a world they agreed
was no good and could not be allowed to persist. Was that it? she wondered, to which
all the energy and glorious intensity of their youth had been dedicated, was their
common cause that banal?—and not their idolization of the hard-line nationalists who,
within a few short years, would become the government of Croatia. Why had they become
such good friends when so little in their backgrounds recommended it?

So Davor, she concluded, I see. Your joke was not a joke, when you hectored us for
being bourgeoisie. How do you spell that word? she had once teased back, everyone
laughing at the hick’s expense, but she had wounded him and never teased again.

Davor, she said into her cup of brandy, saving my life won’t prevent me from hating
you. I don’t have the luxury of choosing my protectors.

It was Davor who inspired Andre to cross the ideological threshold from talk to action,
to put aside his books and join the uprising, and then they were running from the
police and when Mussolini allowed the Ustashe to set up training camps they fled to
Italy, an effortless transition for the two of them, newly married, both Dalmatian-born
and schooled in Italian, foreigners yet not absolute outsiders. Davor, however, felt
shunned as a philistine and mistrusted the Italians, a mistrust that would spare the
three of them twenty months of internment on the island of Lipari with the hundreds
of Ustashe exiles imprisoned by Mussolini after the assassination of Aleksandar, the
king of Yugoslavia, during a state visit to France. As the training camps closed and
the roundups began, the three of them had already embarked on a ship bound for Buenos
Aires, Davor having persuaded Andre to answer the Organization’s call for volunteers
to establish Ustashe cells abroad. Embraced by the Peronistas, Andre lectured and
administrated while Davor drilled recruits; the children of German businessmen and
the Argentinian military became her students at the piano. Before the year was out
the leadership issued a decision that Andre’s talents could be applied to greater
benefit in the United States, and so she began English lessons and two months later
there they sat, the three of them, for the last time together, in a steak house behind
the wharves in Buenos Aires, their farewell dinner, making plans to reunite in Zagreb
but they never did, never the three of them together again, although the two men saw
each other frequently that year, back home before the war. She never understood Davor’s
aloofness, never fathomed why he would not make an effort to see her and the baby,
his godson, or participate in a second christening in the national cathedral, but
now, sickened by her first smell of roasting meat since that day her husband’s head
was booted into the fire, she understood.

Twice the traitor, she told the brandy before taking a gulp. Even in friendship and
love, a turncoat and double agent. She should have known then, in Buenos Aires, when
he kissed her good-bye—the way he kissed her good-bye—and she let him, turning, gasping
and confused, from the flare of the embrace toward her smirking husband, the only
man who had ever measured her passion.

She shifted her gaze toward Stjepan and the boyish partisans, the three of them squatting
like Indians around the red coals, the glint of a knife passing from hand to hand,
taking turns carving fistfuls of meat from the goat and stuffing their mouths. The
Jew sat hunched on the log, slowly chewing, the fire’s glow sliding along the muscles
of his jaw, and she watched him for a moment and then looked away, not wanting to
think about Jews or imagine their troubles or anticipate tomorrow, when her fate would
pass into their hands. Then the archbishop’s driver came toward her with a full plate
of meat and steaming mushrooms but she shook her head no, groaning from the noxious
fumes, and he opened the driver’s door and sat sideways, his feet on the running board
next to her, and began eating the meal himself.

Bogdanov, she said after a while, did you know Davor Starcevica? The colonel. I mean,
before today.

Not well. I saw him around with the others. The Home Guard. The police.

He called you bagman, she said. I don’t know this word. This is a gangster word. What
does it mean? She waited for him to reply but he didn’t and she continued. What did
he want from you? Money? Information? What did you give him?

Marija, said Bogdanov, life is complicated now. What he gave us is what’s important.

She felt the urge to reprimand him but could not make sense of her feelings—he had
risked his life to undo his mistake, taking her to the captain—and she had no desire
to examine her continued value in the bartering that took place among enemies, which,
she was learning, was how the temperature of war cooled down to a state of tepidness.