“Hard winter coming,” Frankie said. “Like these poor shits don’t have it tough enough already. So, hey, tell you what. You’re not going back today, right? I mean, you don’t want to drive that road in the dark. There’s still mines in the ditches. You got to stay at my place. ‘Yankee Frankie’s.’ I even got American music. Liz Phair, man. Hot little bitch like that. And Mariah Carey. All that shit.”
Sergeant Crawley, who wore a plaid wool shirt for this peculiar duty, spoke again. With the endless NCO suspicion in his voice: “How much you charge for rooms, Frankie-boy?”
Frankie smiled. “No charge for the room. If it wasn’t for America, I never would’ve been able to buy the place. You’re Frankie’s personal guests. You just pay for dinner, cause I got to pay the yokels for the produce and shit, keep the local economy going. But the room’s free. I even got running water. But no MasterCard or crap like that. This is hillbilly country, man. Cash only.”
Green wanted to be a good officer. He wanted to appear strong, impervious to physical discomforts. But the thought of a warm bed had more appeal than a fall night in the mountains crunched up in the Cherokee, engulfed by the decline of Sergeant Crawley’s digestive system. And it was standard practice to stay on the economy when there was no fighting in the area. The small talk with the locals sometimes paid off. Random facts led to revelation.
Green was imagining a warm room and dinner when a worker approached him with a bundle. The man laid the corpse of an infant, reduced to leather, at the American’s feet.
“I’ve been from Bolivia to Bumfuck, Egypt,” Sergeant Crawley said, “and nothing’s ever simple.” He sipped from his can of Coke. Hergestellt in Deutschland. The rule was no alcohol during a mission, and Green and Crawley both honored it, though grudgingly. The sign advertising Austrian beer was a wicked tease.
The room held half a dozen tables, a corner bench, and the bar. It was a poor man’s copy of a German Gasthaus, down to the Balkan kitsch that substituted for Bavarian kitsch on the walls. Business was slow, but the place was warm and surprisingly clean. An old R.E.M. disk whined in the background. America had had its effect on Frankie Sostik, who stood behind the bar, drying glasses and talking to a man with a scar that ran from his ear down across his cheek then back into the collar of his jacket. It was the kind of ragged slash inflicted during a hand-to-hand struggle.
Frankie and his customer were drinking shots. Leaning against the bar, Scarface looked like a made-for-television movie’s version of a thug. He showed no interest in the Americans. The only words Green overheard were “girls” and “cigarettes.”
“I know it isn’t simple,” Green said. Crawley was a helpful, closed man, hard to get to know. Shaped by the special ops world, he was a masterful soldier. He made Green, most of whose soldiering had been on training ranges and in schools, feel amateurish. Yet the NCO was never condescending, and he let Green take the lead without resentment. Crawley was a team-player in a world of yes-men who thought they were team players, and Green learned from watching him. In the two months they had been working together, they had spent enough time on the road and in the office late at night to know each other’s habits, health, and appetites. They disagreed, almost angrily, on politics and music. But the two men were becoming friends—even though Crawley, with an NCO’s reverse snobbery, still refused to call Green by his first name.
“Nothing’s simple until the shooting starts,” the sergeant said. “Then things have a way of coming clear. Shit, I wish I had a beer.” He settled his can on the cardboard coaster.
“Buy you one when we get back. Listen, I know it isn’t simple. But you saw the grave. And it’s not just one. And there don’t seem to be very many of them on the other side of the border.”
Crawley made a so-what face. “Most of the fighting was on this side of the border.”
“Most of the victims were ethnic—”
“Come on, sir. That’s only because these guys didn’t have the firepower. If these jokers had had the big muscle on their side, the atrocity ratio would have been reversed. I say to hell with all of them. We don’t have a dog in this fight.”
Green didn’t buy that. “When women and children are butchered, somebody has to be punished. We can’t just talk forever. For God’s sake, Bob. It has to be clear … that atrocities are unacceptable.”
The song “It’s the End of the World as We Know It,” came on the stereo.
“You really want our troops plopped down in the middle of this sewer,” Crawley asked, “trying to figure out who’s zooming who? These people have to settle their own business. What do you want, major?”
Helpless, Green looked down at the table and pruned his face. “Justice. For a start.”
The NCO began to laugh, then stopped himself. “Look, sir. It’s ugly. I’m not blind. And I’m not heartless. But I’m not stupid, either,” Crawley said. “We can’t fix this one, boss. Hell, we can’t even tell the players apart.”
Scarface dropped a pack of cigarettes on the bar and he and the proprietor lit up. Green sipped his Coke. The German stuff was sweeter than the Coke he was used to. He didn’t like it.
“We can’t just ignore genocide,” Green said. “I can’t.”
But the sergeant was in his stubborn mode. He was a good man, and honest to the nickel, Green knew, but his service and a string of failed marriages had hardened the NCO.
“Why not, major? We always ignored it before and did just fine.” His mouth hooked up on one side. “You see genocide, I see the local version of bingo night. Some of these jokers like things this way. I mean, those drive-by diplomats don’t understand that there really are evil fuckers in this world. Not everybody wants peace, boss. And people don’t execute women and children because they hate the work. Some guys like it.” Crawley had three years on Green, but he looked a decade older in the lamplight. “Or just look at it this way: we’ve got our means of conflict resolution, they’ve got theirs. We sue, they shoot. Every place I’ve been, people have their own way of settling scores. And, near as I can tell, this crap’s been going on forever in Mr. Frankie’s neighborhood. We just know about it now. Thank you, Mr. Turner.” The sergeant shook his head in naked sorrow. “I’ve been in seventeen years. And I’ve seen more damage done by ignorant men with good intentions … Christ, I ought to write a book.”
Back when the Soviet empire was coming apart, Green had been trained for special duties in the East. One of the bennies had been travel, and one of the trips had taken him to Eastern Europe, just as the locals were slipping their leash. In Poland, he had visited Auschwitz.
There were haunted places on the earth, and the gas chambers of Auschwitz were among them. The ghosts crowded you, and you felt a kind of cold that had nothing to do with thermometers. You felt the weight of death.
Auschwitz had been a benchmark for Green. He was not a particularly sentimental man, and his church attendance was erratic. But he wanted to believe in the goodness of mankind. And he believed that good men had to face down evil.
He believed that someone had to be at fault in the Balkans. Crawley was wrong about that. Genocide was not some kind of local folk tradition that had to be respected by outsiders. When the crime was a massacre of unarmed human beings, someone had to be punished.
Green longed to know who to punish. He knew that Crawley was right about some things, too. It was not simple. So Green went carefully. Waiting for clear evidence, for the muddle to sort itself out, and for more powerful men to decide what must be done.
The sergeant played with his empty soda can. They had eaten spiced sausages, green beans, and peppered rice, with crusty bread and goat cheese on the side. There had even been pudding for dessert. Frankie had pulled out all the stops, to the extent that the war had left him stops to pull. And, to Green’s relief, their host had let them enjoy the meal in peace, with no more tales of sexual conquests and the splendors of Milwaukee.
“What the hell,” Crawley said abruptly. “Maybe you’re right.
I hope you’re right. Because I see us getting into this, God help us, no matter what Sergeant First Class Robert G. Crawley thinks about it. I mean, the president hasn’t consulted me personally on this one. And that guy Vollstrom, Mr. Negotiator, he’s just set on making his mark on history. We’ll be in it, alright. And then I’m going to retire on the spot and set up a concession business selling little touches of home to the GIs. You know, Hustler, Tattoo World, action videos.” He grimaced. “Maybe get this Frankie-boy to go in with me, take care of the local connections and pay-offs and shit. Start us a real nice whorehouse with the local talent. Because once we’re in, we ain’t getting out in no hurry. We’ll be here till the cows come home. And I figure I might as well make a profit on stupidity of such magnitude.”
“You’ll never retire.”
“Just watch me, major.”
“I wish I knew what was right.”
Crawley looked at him. “Sometimes, sir, right is just staying alive and keeping your nose clean.” He snorted. “Other times, the judge tells you to pay alimony. But it’s never like in those books you read.”
Green smiled. “And how do you know? If you haven’t read the books?”
“Oh, I read them alright. It just wasn’t a lasting relationship. Guard the fort, I got to take another piss. Army life’s been hell on my kidneys.”
When Crawley went past the bar, Scarface held out a glass and gave him a broken-toothed smile.
“Good,” Scarface said. “Slivovitz. Very good.”
The NCO waved him off. “I gave at the office.”
Scarface grumped his mouth for a moment, then knocked back the shot himself. He said something to Frankie in a low voice. Frankie laughed. Then they both stared across the room at Green.
“Hey, major,” their host called. “He wants to know what kind of man turns down a free drink.”
Green returned the stares.
“There are no free drinks,” he said.
Frankie laughed again. Frankie liked to laugh. “I told him Americans get this religious bug up their asses. It makes them crazy.”
Yes, Green thought. Except we don’t butcher each other over it.
Scarface caught the word “crazy.” He tapped a finger against his temple, grinning. His teeth looked like he had been in a thousand fistfights and lost every one.
“Yeah,” Green agreed. “We’re crazy, alright.”
Scarface muttered again, but he did not lose his smile.
“He says you’re crazy for not bombing those people over there. With your Star Wars airplanes.”
“Tell him we don’t want to spoil his fun. He looks like he could handle them all himself.”
Scarface liked that. But he was disappointed that Green would not accept a shot of plum brandy in the interests of eternal friendship with America.
“He says, how you going to fight if you don’t drink?” Frankie translated.
Green was tired of the game. But he had no excuse for turning his back until Crawley returned. So he said, “Tell him I’m like you. Tell him I’m a lover, not a fighter.”
Frankie hooted, then translated. Scarface chuckled. It was the sound of a forty-year-old Ford starting up.
“He says that’s worse. Lovers need to drink even more than fighters. Women need to be afraid of you.”
A woman appeared in the doorway. Early to mid-twenties, she wore jeans and a purple roll-collar sweater. Dark blond hair fell over her shoulders, and her hair and the sweater glistened from the light rain that had drifted over the village. Even at a distance, Green could see that she wore too much makeup, but so did every woman in the Balkans who didn’t walk with a cane. By any standard, the woman was attractive. She did not look like village goods.
She considered Green, then walked hastily to the bar. Scarface grunted at her, but she ignored him and spoke to Frankie. He shrugged his shoulders, his favorite gesture, and the woman nodded and smiled uncertainly.
She turned toward Green. But her steps faltered. It seemed as if she were giving herself orders to keep going. As though she were afraid. A few feet away, she stopped, briefly met his eyes, then looked down.
Up close, she was genuinely lovely. Green hoped she was not a hooker. He did not want any part of that, and he did not want her to be that sort. There was something about her that made you want better things for her. She did not look strong. And war sent people down ugly paths.
“May I … speak with you?” she asked. Her voice was low, almost masculine in pitch, but it quaked. “I heard that you have come, and wish to practice my English, please.”
Good opening for a hooker, Green thought sadly. But the night wasn’t going anywhere. If she wanted to sit, he didn’t mind the company.
“Please,” he said, rising slightly. “Have a seat.”
She brushed by him and he smelled the musk of her, and the wet wool of the sweater. After she sat down, Scarface and Frankie lost interest.
“I am Daniela,” she said.
“I’m Jeff.”
“Cheff?”
“Right. ‘Daniela’ sounds Italian.”
She smiled. Her teeth were straight and fairly white, a blessing by local standards. Odd, how you noticed different things in different situations, Green thought. In the Balkans, you checked out their teeth.
“I think my parents have taken it from a film. Is it a pretty name, do you think?”
“Yes. Very much so.”
Sergeant Crawley came back in, wet. Green realized the NCO had been checking the lock-up on the Cherokee and getting the last of the gear into their room, which was in a double cabin out back. With a good lock on the door. Crawley had little ways of shaming him by taking care of duties they should have shared.
The NCO did a fast intel estimate and headed for the bar instead of the table. Green heard him ask for another Coke.
“I do not ask about my name’s attractiveness because I seek flattery,” Daniela said. “But for practice.”
“Practice is very important.”
A thick strand of hair fell forward and she flipped it back over her shoulder. The corner of her mouth began to twitch and she quickly set her fingertips over it. Her fingers were rough and scarred, and cuts striped the back of her hand. The sight startled Green. The hand did not match the rest of her.
When she removed her fingers from her lips, the twitch had stopped.
“So … are you a teacher?” Green asked. Trying to figure her out.
She shook her head. “There is no school now. Maybe next year. Do you have a cigarette, please?”
From Belfast to Belgrade, the women of Europe still had not gotten the word. They all smoked.
“I’m sorry. I don’t smoke.”
She looked down, embarrassed at having asked for something, sensing a greater error she did not understand. “I’m sorry. There is no need.”
But Green called to his host, “Frankie? Got a pack of cigarettes?”
“German okay?”
Green looked at the woman. She kept looking down.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said.
“Whatever,” Green said to Frankie. Then he asked the woman, “Would you like something to drink?”
She raised her face. There was a little struggle in her eyes, manners at war with appetite. “I think so,” she said. “Perhaps there is coffee?”
Frankie dropped off a rose-colored pack of cigarettes and a box of matches with Cyrillic lettering. Leftovers. And yes, there was coffee.
Green opened the pack and held it out for the woman to help herself to a cigarette. Then he laid the pack down on her side of the table and lit a match for her.
Those scarred hands.
She closed her eyes and sucked the smoke deep. As if it fortified her.
“You wish to know what I do?” she asked.
“If you want to tell me.”
“But I cannot. You see, there is nothing to do now. I live with my mother. My father is gone. In the war. We do not know any facts about him. But w
e have hope.” She stilled the twitch at the corner of her mouth again. “I have studied at the university until the war’s beginning. I studied English literature. But I do not speak so well now. There is no opportunity here.”
“You speak English very well.”
“Perhaps you know the books of Mr. George Orwell?”
Green remembered reading 1984 and Animal Farm in high school. But he was not certain he was prepared for a literary discussion.
“I think they are very true, the books of Mr. Orwell,” she went on. “I cannot agree with the people who say 1984 is wrong because the year has come and is gone. The year is not important. I think it is like walking toward the horizon, you see. This 1984 is always ahead of us, no matter how far we go. I think there are always too many people who would like us to behave in such a way.”
Green could only remember Big Brother. And the mask with the rats.
“And I think that Animal Farm is very important. There are many such pigs.”
Green read regularly, but most of the books he chose were histories or biographies. The last novel he could remember reading was a thriller he had picked up in an airport, a story about Washington intrigue and POW/MIAs seized by the Russians during the Korean War. It had not impressed him.
“But I like Mr. Thomas Hardy as my favorite,” the woman said, smoke frosting her thick, damp hair. “He is so romantic and sad. But there is an unfortunate lack of books now.”
“Maybe you can go back to the university?”
She looked into the smoke. “I would like that very much. But it is difficult. I think the war will come back. And only the people who make black-market business have money.” She lifted her head and managed to meet his gaze for several seconds. Her eyes were green, almost gray in their lightness of color. She touched her fingertips to the side of her mouth and looked down again.
“But I think it is not polite to talk so much about my person. We will talk about you now, Mr. Jeff. Where are you from?” She smiled.
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