With the slender fingers of his right hand Apis wiped away the sweat on his forehead and shook it off on the floor.
“The second whore is Queen Draga.”
He spat after saying her name, and everyone else in the café followed suit. In a matter of seconds the floor was covered in a layer of spit hacked up from lungs filled with tobacco-brown phlegm. Not wanting to attract attention, Dragan was going to spit as well; but afraid that the spittle would stick to his moustache, which he had so meticulously groomed that morning, he made do with pretending. Celal noticed Dragan’s ruse and smiled.
“The vile progeny of a drunkard mother and lunatic father… Her Czech husband’s sloppy seconds. She’s handled cocks you wouldn’t even touch with a blind beggar’s walking stick. That whore has slept with more men than the sluttiest of whores you’ve ever screwed. And Alexander, who took over as head of the Serbs as king, is a pup led around on the leash of that alleyway tramp, rolling around on the ground hoping for a belly rub.”
Some of the men swore and banged their pewter beer mugs on the wooden tables.
“I say ‘pup’ because we’ve seen what his father was like. Didn’t King Milan offer up Belgrade on a golden platter to those monkey-bearded Habsburg bastards? And why didn’t Vienna swoop down on us when he bowed and scraped before them? Fear. Because they were afraid that we’d rise up. They were afraid that our comrades taken captive by the Habsburgs would revolt. But you see, Milan would have been happy to sell us out if he could have. And while Alexander is just a pup compared to Milan when it comes to being a spineless coward, even Milan didn’t go so far as to insult the Serbs by marrying a slut.”
Standing near the bar, a barrel-chested man with a thick grey moustache drunkenly shouted, “And a barren slut at that!”
Apis was taken aback by the interruption, especially since he had just reached his speech’s most titillating point, but since the man had raised a subject that he was going to discuss anyway he went on: “She’s barren and she’s a liar. Didn’t they announce that she was pregnant last year? And then what happened? Did she have a miscarriage? No! She was never pregnant. It was a lie! All the European newspapers mock this lying whore of a Serbian queen. Schoolchildren run around chanting, ‘They have a queen who is a whore, and Serbia is the whore of the Habsburgs!’ Since he can’t have his own children, Alexander named that slut queen’s brother his heir. When Alexander dies, is Nikola, the drunkard brother of a whore, going to be king? Is Nikola, who once killed a poor police officer just for fun while out on a drinking spree, going to be the saviour of the Serbs?”
Apis had reached the end of his speech, but the crowd didn’t respond with applause or enthusiasm. Instead, silent anger filled the café, thicker than the smoke hanging in the air.
After finishing his drink, the orator got up and walked towards a door behind the bar that Dragan hadn’t noticed before, followed by three other men. Apis shot Celal a stern look and hissed, “Jovanovic,” motioning for Celal and Dragan to join him.
Unable to bear the pressure in his bladder and intestines, however, Dragan, whose face was beetroot-red by this point, quickly shuffled off in the direction of the lavatory.
8
A Fool’s Aid
DRAGAN PETROVIC was lying on the ground in an emerald-green meadow, the branch of a lilac tree blooming with purple flowers brushing against his forehead. Translucent smoke from a giant censer slowly snaked into his nostrils, but he didn’t sneeze. Quite on the contrary, he felt more and more at ease. He could feel his muscles relaxing, and he closed his eyes.
As he stretched out his arms and legs, he realized that he was actually floating on water. The earth and scented flowers had given way to ripples that smelt of iodine. There was a finely woven sheet covering the lieutenant, and lilac petals gently rained down on its surface.
When he slowly opened his long-lashed eyes, he saw beams of light among the petals drifting down over him. To his right and left, little swirls and eddies pulled the petals on the water’s dappled surface down into the depths.
He was surprised to see that the sheet wasn’t getting wet. It had merely become transparent and was still covering him, leaving only the tip of his nose and his eyes exposed. The petals carried by the little eddies slowly flowed down the stream and filled the lake. Everything was covered in lilac petals.
Dragan then found himself immersed in a stream of lilac petals. The smoke pouring from the censer was getting thicker, filling the air, blanketing everything.
His muscles, already relaxed, went completely limp. The young lieutenant, Serbia’s great hope, was lying beneath a sheet made of lilac petals. He could hear a song being sung, ever so faintly. He wondered if it could be Dejana from Deligrad, Dejana whose hair hung to her waist.
As he tried to picture her lips, he felt a sudden jab in his head and metal grating against his skull. The sound echoed in his head, turning into that song, filling all the empty spaces of his mind.
The pain that started at the top of his head spread over his body like a net, each and every filament cutting into his skin. He felt like he was being cut to pieces and that he would bleed out under the lilac petals, never to be seen again.
First he forgot the song, note by note, and then his name, letter by letter. Then he forgot that he’d forgotten his name. All the same, he knew that something was wrong. The smoke was getting thicker and the pain was so intense that it paralysed his mind, but eventually he forgot everything, even that he existed. He became nothingness, non-existence.
Nothingness Dragan.
Lost Dragan.
Non-existent Dragan.
Let go, Dragan. Give in.
“Dragan! Dragan! Dragan Petrovic, wake up! That’s an order!”
Celal’s booming voice drove everything from his thoughts except the lilac petals, and the dream faded out.
Dragan was in such pain that he couldn’t open his eyes, but when Celal saw him shift ever so slightly under the sheet and utter a weak moan he knew that the lieutenant was awake.
The attic flat on Skadar Street may have been fairly new, but it had already witnessed its own fair share of strange scenes.
There had been the medical student, who had sliced open his wrists with surgical precision from a sense of melancholy that even he himself didn’t understand.
There had been the two young civil servants who stabbed each other to death, out of fear of what would happen to them if it was discovered that they made love.
There had been the ageing bachelor, who died after accidentally inhaling poisonous fumes while burning love letters from his fiancée of many years.
There had been that bizarre husband and wife, who had moved in with a goat that they milked in the living room. The man was so fond of milking the goat that when it died he cut off its teats and had them stuffed. The couple moved out, unable to bear the loss of the goat, the man carrying the stuffed teats under one arm and his wife holding on to the other.
Dragan was the latest link in that long chain of tenants, but he wasn’t the strangest person the attic flat had welcomed through its door.
If it had been just a commonplace apartment, not such a worldly-wise one, and witnessed the scene of Celal in all the glory of his military uniform standing over that frail, long-faced man covered in bandages as he lay on the thin mattress of that wooden bed, then surely it would have shuddered at the sight, down to its very beams and posts.
Dragan’s bed was in the living room along with the rest of his meagre furniture: a low wooden table, two chairs and a small wardrobe.
Celal leant down and blew hard on the lieutenant’s face. When Dragan opened his eyes, Celal stepped back.
“It all happened in six minutes, Petrovic. I know, because I checked my watch when Apis and I went in, and I kept my eye on it all the while. No one pays enough attention to things like that, but if you’re going to have discipline you have to always keep track of time. I even sent the military academy a few petitions, asking them to
add a class about horology. That way, restless officer candidates would learn the meaning of patience, and when they get kicked out of the academy they’ll have a vocation.”
Dragan tried to sit up. The pain in his chest, which was wrapped tightly in bandages, brought tears to his eyes but he managed to prop himself up so that he could turn towards Celal.
“Let me give you an example, Petrovic. If you had taken a course in horology at the academy, primo, you wouldn’t have gone off and so openly asked where Apis was holding the meeting about the coup, thereby bringing upon yourself the most well-deserved beating of your life. Secundo, when you get kicked out of the military for your idiocy, you’d have a job. I know what they say: ‘Jovanovic is always sending rather eccentric petitions to his superiors, which is why he’s still a captain while his former classmates are all colonels.’ But the thing is, I’ve thought it all through and my requests are always based on experience. Tertio, I’m always right, in a way that even you can understand. You’ve got long, delicate fingers. If the commander at the military academy had actually logged my petitions, by next week you’d be set up as an horologist in a small town somewhere.”
It took a while for Dragan to make any sense of what he was hearing. Celal was standing over him menacingly, uttering each word with such firm conviction that his sword swung from his hip like the pendulum of a cuckoo clock.
Dragan chewed his lower lip, trying to remember what had happened. Based on the bandages and pain he was in, he knew that something was amiss.
The last thing the young lieutenant remembered was going to the lavatory at The Acorn. He surmised that he must have done something foolish and then got a thrashing at the hands of Apis’s men, the shame of which he could readily accept. Being kicked out of the army and subjected to the stinging words of this commander, however, was too much for him to bear.
Dragan wanted to run away and hide but he knew that it was pointless, so he closed his eyes and tried to whisk himself back to the emerald-green meadow of his dream, whereupon he received a resounding slap to the face. Two large hands grabbed him by the shoulders and propped him against the wall by the bed. His broken ribs dug into his flesh but the sudden movement seemed to knock his lungs and brain back into place. Celal’s surly strength was not the kind to trifle with.
“Exactly six minutes, Petrovic. Six minutes. That’s how long you were in the lavatory. Who knows what the hell you were thinking, but in the end they beat you unconscious. Why? For saying that a secret society was going to restore the glory of the country by overthrowing the King and Queen and saving our comrades from captivity. For mentioning the members of the society by name. And you managed to do all that in six minutes. Bravo. That’s quite a feat.”
Dragan opened his mouth to reply but Celal was like a charging locomotive gathering speed, determined to thunder on even if it meant flying off the tracks. Angrily he pulled his sword halfway out of its scabbard and slammed it back in with a clatter, which was enough to make the pale-faced lieutenant close his mouth. As Celal stood there, anchored in place by rage, the sword went on swinging at his side.
But then something happened which caught Dragan off guard. The captain started laughing. At first it was a titter like the cooing of a dove, the sound spreading out like ripples on a pond. But as Celal opened his mouth wider and his body started to tremble, the cooing changed. The walls of the small apartment echoed with the sound of his laughter, which by now was like the squawking of seagulls, and Dragan’s eyes widened as the echo roared in his ears.
The young lieutenant, having awoken from a dream only to find himself in a nightmare, realized as he watched Celal that if he didn’t speak then, he would never speak again. “Captain,” he managed to mutter, “I beg of you…”
Those words managed to stem the crescendo of Celal’s laughter, which was still resonating through the flat. Celal looked at him, a demented smile twisting his lips.
His head already throbbing, Dragan could bear it no longer. “Captain,” he said, “I don’t remember what happened yesterday but it must have been an unpardonable mistake. Please let me resign and, if possible, restore my honour. I always wanted to die on the battlefield, taken down by a bullet. So give the order. I will resign and save myself from this shame with a single shot from my gun.” Celal fell silent. After a moment he walked over to one of the chairs and, grabbing it with one hand, dragged it over to the bed and slowly sat down.
“It wasn’t yesterday,” Celal said. “You’ve been unconscious for two days. The doctor has been here three times already. I spent all last night sitting here on this chair. You’re not going to resign from the army. I am. Actually, that’s not quite true. I’m going to get dismissed.”
Dragan started to object but Celal silenced him with a stern look and leant back in his chair, making it creak. “We didn’t bring you into the group just because you’re a patriot. This country of ours may have plenty of traitors, but it has even more patriots. We need you, lieutenant. You. For Vesna Jevric.”
Celal pulled his watch from his pocket. Opening the thick silver lid, he checked the time.
“Did you know that I’m from Prizren? Just like Lazar the monk. Do know who he was? No? He was an horologist. He made the clock for the first clock tower in Moscow. Spring-driven, all mechanical. A true work of genius. For two centuries it kept the time perfectly. Think about it, two whole centuries! Then they put in a new clock. And do you know what happened then? No? Of course you don’t. Well, the clock tower burned down the very same day they changed the clock.”
He closed the lid of his watch with a resounding “clack”. Slipping the watch into his pocket, he crossed his legs. The small chair groaned under his weight.
“Vesna Jevric. She’s one of Queen Draga’s servants. A pretty girl. If you ask me, I think her lips are too thin, but still, she’s pretty. If I remember rightly, she can speak three languages. When Queen Draga lied about being pregnant, Vesna was in on it. The barren Queen was going to try to fool us by passing off her sister’s child as her own. It’s a good thing that not all Russians are as idiotic as those people who replaced Lazar’s clock. Again and again I sent petitions to the Tsar explaining the situation, all in the most eloquent Russian, and in the end he sent his own physician down to investigate. The Queen can be as devilish as she wants, but she couldn’t fool the physician. It was obvious that she wasn’t pregnant. Because they didn’t take my petitions seriously, the others were all caught off guard, including Apis. The King paid five doctors to sign a report saying that it was a phantom pregnancy. The Queen walked away with her name intact and we pretended to go along with it.”
With those words he leapt to his feet and walked over to the wardrobe. He rummaged among the shelves and then tossed some clothes onto the bed. “Get dressed,” he said. “An officer of your rank shouldn’t be meeting a woman for the first time half-naked, especially a woman who is a servant at the palace. They’ll be here soon.”
Dragan reached out for his trousers and shirt.
“Captain,” he said, “if this is about my committing suicide, I could dedicate the rest of my life to horology instead. I wouldn’t mind.”
“Dragan Petrovic, you truly are one of a kind. This country of ours has such a big heart that she doesn’t even turn down the help of the biggest of fools.”
9
The Doomed Palace
“ONCE UPON A TIME a king was travelling through his lands, and as he gazed upon the Bojana River from the top of a hill, he caught sight of a rocky outcrop on the riverbank. ‘There,’ he said, ‘is where I will build my palace.’
“So he summoned his two brothers to help him. One of them was a voivode who ruled over towns and vast fields, and his domain even included a mountain. The other brother was a cheerful, carefree man who brought joy to the hearts of others, but he spent much of his time alone writing under mulberry trees, the juice dripping from the berries staining the pages of poems that he never shared with anyone.
“W
hen they received the summons, they set out to see their brother, one riding a bay horse and the other a sorrel horse.
“The king showed them the outcrop on the banks of the river where he planned to build his palace. The voivode and the poet were pleased with the king’s decision and they promised to help him, for in those times even kings helped in the building of palaces. And so every day they toiled all day long, but in the morning they would see that their work lay in ruins.”
Vesna paused for a moment and looked down at her nephew, who was lying on the divan with his head in her lap. Taking the book in her other hand, she went on reading:
“Years passed and every day it was the same. Everything they had built the day before would be lying in ruins. They posted sentries to watch over their work and they used only the finest stone, but all was in vain. One day before the break of dawn the king mounted his white horse and went down to keep watch over the foundation they had laid the day before. As the sun rose, the earth started rumbling and within seconds the foundation was reduced to rubble.”
Vesna wrinkled her face and said, “Shall I read a different story? I’m getting a bit bored of this one.” But the boy protested so vehemently that she turned back to the book.
“When the earth shook and rumbled, the king’s horse reared up in fear, throwing the king to the ground. He rolled down the slope all the way to the water and his fine golden robe lined with badger fur was ripped and torn. Badly wounded, the king barely managed to pull himself out of the water. Just then a witch with hair down to her ankles emerged from the river. ‘Vukavic, you are toiling in vain,’ she said. Walking across the water towards the king, she added, ‘The foundation is flawed. Even if you toil for a thousand days, you will find it in ruins every morning.’”
The Peace Machine Page 8
