The Wind and the Rain

by Martin O'Brien

  “Love makes you fearful. I learned that at an early age. Fearful of what you could lose in one single moment. The glory of love can be offset by a life mundanely taken away in a second. It can be hard to bear,”

  “Is that what has made you so religious?” I notice Gunari is fingering his rosary with his non-driving hand.

  “My family were always extremely observant of our Lord, but I can’t deny my faith has been strengthened by the tests He has sent to me. It is written that the Lord is close to the brokenhearted and He saves those who are crushed in spirit. If that is true Ana, then I know that when I pass from this earth I will be comforted in eternity by God,”

  I don’t reply to this but Gunari speaks in response as though I have spoken.

  “It brings me tremendous solace. I have seen things and done things in this life that I wouldn’t wish on any God-fearing person. I’ve endured unimaginable loss but I will fight the good fight until my dying breath,”

  “I feel bad that I don’t believe in God,” I say and Gunari smiles again, which lightens my mood.

  “You’re a good girl Ana and it doesn’t matter. He believes in you.”

  I’m not sure I agree but I refrain from commenting. Gunari is right in that this isn’t a normal life for anyone. Especially a teenage girl who had never left Yugoslavia and is now chasing old Nazis around Europe while in desperate need of a haircut.

  I have never been one for those kind of urges. I buried myself in my books and avoided most situations where talking to boys was involved. And the boys never bothered with me anyway. Whether that’s due to my background or haircut I suppose I will never know.

  Now I’m living at a remote cottage in the middle of nowhere with two men old enough to be my grandfathers. I seriously doubt I’ll be meeting Tom Cruise or Harrison Ford while I’m splashing about nude in the lake.

  “We don’t take pride in what we do. Pride is a sin, vengeance is a sin. That is why we take the necessary steps so the rest of our people can live without sin.”

  “So what we do contravenes the bible?” I say, puzzled at Gunari’s statement. It sounds to my ears like a massive contradiction.

  “It says in the bible: ‘Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’”

  “That still sounds like a contradiction.” I say.

  “I prefer to think that we are working on behalf of the Lord. It’s the only thing I can do Ana,”

  “What if God isn’t too impressed with your behaviour?” I say, half-jokingly. Gunari sighs deeply.

  “Ultimately we have to protect our people and do the Lord’s work on earth. As long as our people know who took certain actions and why they did it, then that is all that matters. If I can meet my maker knowing I did what I thought was the right thing, it’s all I can offer. I hope God will forgive me but I am ready for the consequences if not.”

  It explains why Gunari seems to bear the weight of the world on his shoulders. He genuinely believes he is doing God’s work on earth. That’s quite a responsibility. Especially, if God takes a dim view of Gunari’s action then he won’t be spending his eternity in the place he wants.

  “Did Nuri believe in God?” I say.

  “I don’t know. Maybe at the end she saw things a little bit clearer,” Gunari says.

  Monsters

  Friday, 2 May 1986

  I wake up with a start. Gunari has been poking my ribs, either to wake me up or simply for his general amusement.

  “We are only about six kilometres from the border Ana. Remember you are my daughter and we are off to visit our grandfather in West Berlin. I don’t think they’ll talk to you though.”

  “OK Dad,” I reply and we both laugh, I crane my head to see across the lanes of traffic and speeding up behind us are two bright yellow Deutsche Post vans, I point them out to Gunari.

  “Ha, look Ana, the post office have sent two vans to chase us down before we escape!” This cracks us up even more as we laugh hysterically.

  “Maybe he didn’t have any insurance,” I say.

  “Or Bavarian Boris has another package for us!”

  Our laughter continues until we reach the border where we are waved through the West German border after only a cursory glance at our passports. My passport is in the name of Anna Orchon, born in Clichy-sous-Bois. The date of birth matches mine so it is easily memorable.

  Our car rolls slowly up to the East German border guards. For once I don’t have any nerves. I hope this complacency isn’t a prelude to six years in jail for illegally entering the country.

  A young border guard, handsome but gaunt, approaches. Gunari winds down the window and hands over our passports.

  “Where are you heading to?” the guards says and leans his head in to take a closer look at us.

  “To West Berlin,” Gunari replies, “My father lives there. I am taking my daughter to see him for the first time,”

  I grin inanely at the guard. Or is an inane grin my normal smile? The guard has had enough chat and stamps our passports, hands us our visas and tells us we must arrive at West Berlin by the end of the day. Gunari nods and we set off again

  I examine the DDR stamp which has a cute little car in one corner. It’s funny having your first passport and that passport also being a fake one. It is like I am leading someone else’s life. Is there an Ana who remains in Ljubljana completing her studies and hoping to work at the United Nations in New York as a translator? I hope so.

  I’m sure it has been Janko’s influence but I have started looking at the cars in the places we go. From the scooters and Fiats of Italy to the Audis and Volkswagens in Bavaria. As we travel through East Germany, the heavily forested road edges are the same but the vehicles look completely different.

  Faded paint jobs seem to be the fashion here and it seems every second car is a boxy Trabant. They make the Yugo shine as an emblem of modern engineering. Our sparkling Audi 80 is speeding past most of the traffic and is attracting a lot of stares.

  We are making good time so we stop at a service station outside Leipzig for some lunch. The sun is shining so we sit outside and it feels very warm. I am enjoying having a nice bask. Gunari brings over a couple of plates of pork schnitzel and some coffees.

  “Janko’s plane arrives at eight this evening, we will pick him up, it’s a long drive from here and we have another checkpoint to cross later. Try and sleep for a bit Ana on this leg of the journey,”

  “I’m not tired, I want to find that man in Berlin,”

  “All in good time,”

  This service station is busy with truck drivers and young families. A few policemen stand around their cars looking very bored and clearly unaware that I am wanted by the authorities in two countries.

  “How did you find Nuri? Did you kidnap her like me?” Gunari fires me an icy glare until he realises I am joking.

  “She was from Yugoslavia too, maybe there’s something in the Balkans water that turns out girls like you both,”

  “Was she my age?”

  “No, but I wish we had found her earlier. We might have saved her and her mother from a lot of pain. She had the hardest of starts in life. Her mother gave birth to her in the Jasenovac concentration camp in what was then the Croatian puppet state during World War Two,”

  “Oh my, that is a tough break,” the word ‘Jasenovac’ in Yugoslavia is synonymous with utter dread. Even though I don’t know the details of what went on there every schoolchild in the country knows that it is a stain on our country.

  “The Ustaše regime stood out like a terrible beacon in the Second World War for their crimes against humanity. Which tells you a lot about them considering the abuses perpetrated in that conflict. Her father was shot in the head when her parents first arrived at the camp. One bullet in the temple in front of her mother.

  “Every male that day that arrived at the camp suffered the same fate. Over thirty men exterminated like flies because
they were Roma, or if they were Serbs or Jews. And they called us subhuman. The only positive was that within a few weeks of giving birth her mother managed to escape with her after a big revolt in the camp.

  “Her mother, Denisa, made it to Belgrade, which had been liberated a year earlier by Tito’s partisans. Denisa brought her up in an apartment block near the train station but unfortunately that wasn’t the end of the turmoil for their family.”

  “Why, what happened?”

  “She met a man when her little girl was about five years old. Another Roma who had escaped from a camp in Hungary. He turned out to be a very aggressive, angry man with violent tendencies.

  “For the next eighteen years he would beat both Denisa and occasionally little Nuri. Finally, Denisa asked a friend for help who put her in touch with us. Janko, Věštec and I travelled to Belgrade in the summer of sixty-eight. They lived in one of those huge tower blocks in the suburbs.

  “Denisa’s face was purple from bruising. Nuri too, had bruises on her arms. Anger was rising up in me and I think Janko could sense it too. He has always been able to keep his emotions under check compared to me. However I knew he would be burning up inside.

  “The wife-beater refused to allow us to take Nuri away. He was under the mistaken impression that we were some kind of country fools who would walk out and leave the women there. It’s not often that other Roma underestimate us but this guy was something else. He was only a small man but his ego was enormous. He squared up to Věštec, who was taller than me and looked like Rasputin. Věštec simply floored him with one punch. He collapsed unconscious and we carried his body down to our van. Janko brought along Nuri too.

  “We drove to a lake about twenty kilometres from the city. By this time the piece of dirt had woken up, luckily I had tied his arms up with rope. He began to mouth off so I punched him square in the mouth and teeth and blood began to dribble from his gaping mouth. He was shocked at the treatment he was receiving. It took all of my energy not to kill him in the back of the van.

  “Janko told me to ease off and wait. We reached the lake and hauled his body out of the car and threw him on the ground. He could barely make any sense when he spoke but we could tell he was begging to be let go. Unfortunately for him, this was one situation he couldn’t escape from. Janko pulled out his Glock and prepared to shoot him when he stopped and asked Nuri if she wanted to do it.

  “Without saying a word she took the gun off Janko, her stepfather tried scrambling away until Věštec kicked him in the ribs with immense force. He kneeled and pleaded with Nuri to allow him to live.

  “Again, with no words spoken, she aimed the gun in between his eyes and pulled the trigger. His head exploded but she continued to hold the gun in the same spot. Janko put his arms around her and took the gun away whilst Věštec and I tied up the body and tossed it in the lake.

  “Wow, she didn’t hold back,” I can’t even begin to imagine what went through her head as she pulled that trigger.

  “On the journey back to her apartment Janko explained who we are and asked her to join us. Nuri accepted immediately and when she arrived back home she spoke with her mother, gathered her belongings and came back with us,”

  Jesus, what a life Nuri had experienced. What I have experienced is nothing in comparison. An imposter in a world I can never understand. Nuri shot her abusive stepfather in the head to earn her position, all I did was a silly, impulsive act of revenge.

  “It is a reminder Ana, that we have monsters in our own community,” Gunari maintains his eye on the road as we travel north towards Berlin. I am beginning to feel uneasy about our trip to the divided city.

  “When was Nuri’s first mission?” the airport coffee tastes barely of coffee. It’s pretty much dirty, hot water. Janko’s flight is due to land any minute now from Geneva.

  “A few months after we took her back to Savoy. We knew that a lot of former fascists were living in Spain. The Franco regime was providing asylum to prominent members of the Ustaše command,”

  “Didn’t they have the Nuremberg trials after the war?” I can’t believe they would allow such people to carry on with their lives after what they had done.

  “Not for the Croatians,” Gunari replies and takes a sip of coffee, grimaces and continues:

  “After the war, many of the former Croatian leaders were killed by Serbs, Montenegrins, Yugoslav Communists, disaffected Croatians. I’m sure you know what it’s like being from where you’re from. The leader of the Ustaše, Ante Pavelić fell out with his own head of the concentration camps, a man called Vjekoslav Luburić. Luburić formed a rival Croatian nationalist organisation after the war. Pavelić was assassinated by a Montenegrin in Madrid, possibly aided by Luburić.

  “By the late sixties, most of our targets had been terminated by various groups. However, word reached us that Luburić was living in Spain, with wife and children, playing happy families.

  “This was a man who had raped and sexually mutilated women, sanctioned multiple massacres and held overall responsibility for the Croatian death camps. I say these words to you Ana and it doesn’t seem real. What people can be capable of is truly astonishing. This man, without doubt is one of the worst I have dealt with in my time on this earth.

  “He would turn up at concentration camps and personally execute one prisoner. At another camp he introduced prisoners infected with typhus in to the rest of the camp to hasten the others’ demise. He ended up living in a little village in Spain not too far from Valencia and spent his time writing romanticised, Nationalist shit about his homeland. A man without remorse, we naturally thought it would be good for Nuri to come face to face with a man who potentially killed her father.

  “Nuri and I travelled over on the ferry from Genoa to Valencia in April sixty-nine. A two man job, Luburić wasn’t in hiding and we found his address with ease. From our research he didn’t have any bodyguards but he was close to the local police.

  “We arrived in Carcaixent, rather a dull place and not very pretty. Nothing stood out about it, mostly rows of plain white houses with very little greenery. It didn’t take long to find out where he was living. It transpired that a lot of the locals were latent left-wingers who didn’t publicise their leanings following the civil war. They were pretty eager to give us the information about Luburić’s house. One couple also said if needs be we could stay at their house if anything goes wrong.

  “I found his house which was a large red-brick building and the name he was using: Vicente Pérez García. It was five in the morning and the streets were deserted. We broke into his house and hoped he wasn’t awake yet. It turned out he was awake but he was sat outside on his patio eating his breakfast.

  “We sat at the kitchen table waiting for him to finish his breakfast and come back into the house. Nuri was frozen still like an ice sculpture. She was holding a Spanish police baton she had stolen the previous day. Frozen, not in fear, but in concentration. It concerned me how much of a natural she was. The demons that she carried with her could probably have never been exorcised.

  “Eventually we heard footsteps walking through the house. Nuri lifted the baton and as Luburić entered the kitchen she swung double-handed and hit him square in the nose. He collapsed to the floor. I thought he might die from the force of the blow, it was the sweetest strike I have ever witnessed. Even now, when I think about it, it makes me flinch.

  “He spoke in their language. I’m not entirely sure what was said but Nuri told me later he said that he was prepared for this moment but didn’t expect it from a woman. Nuri smashed the baton over the top of his skill and he lay prone on the floor. She hit him one more time and Luburić could now barely speak.

  “Nuri then pulled out the weapon that she had been carrying in her bag. She told me later that it was called a srbosjek and was used by the Ustaše in the camps, the word meant ‘Serb-cutter’. She placed the leather strap over her hand and the long knife protruding from the bottom of her hand.

  “She sat him up
and went behind his back. She pulled the srbosjek in to his full view and whispered something to him then violently tore it across his neck. His throat was ripped apart and blood poured everywhere. Nuri stood looking over his dead body while I washed the baton and threw it in to a nearby garden.

  “She didn’t hesitate, did she?”

  “No, she was remorseless. Like I said, her lack of compunction scared me. Taking a life is incredibly difficult, no matter how bad the person is, but she never hesitated.”

  What an astonishing story. I’ve been utterly engrossed by it. I realise that this is the first airport I have ever been to so I decide to take a walk around the arrivals hall here at Berlin Tegel.

  The airport is busy with people, taxi drivers are milling about. Loved ones are meeting up with their friends and family. I walk to a large window at the end of the long Arrivals hall. I decide to check out the planes to take my mind off Nuri.

  The sun has nearly set and I can only just make out some of the logos on the planes out of the window: Pan-Am, Air France, British Airways, TWA. Maybe one day I will fly on a plane. Fly off to somewhere exciting. I could visit the great cities of America or the Great Wall of China, places where the scars of my past aren’t so prevalent.

  I walk back to meet Gunari and take a seat again at the cafe. Almost immediately I see Janko is heading toward us. I wave at him and Janko smiles.

  “Good evening Ana,” Janko says, “I hope you’ve managed to get through today without mindlessly crashing into any vans?”

  Knowledge is Power

  Saturday, 3 May 1986

  It takes me a few moments to realise where I am. I stumble out of bed and notice I’m still wearing my jeans and t-shirt from yesterday. I open the curtains and catch my first real glimpse of West Berlin. Following our late arrival at the hotel in West Berlin, sleep arrived quickly for me and I’m now ready for what today will bring. I sniff my armpits which is a decision I soon regret. I could do with a wash.