As soon as Izet came clean and admitted that he wasn’t the Condor of Mount Treskavica, he was given a violent beating by his own people. The soldiers kept him locked up for days and threatened to shoot him or to give him back to the Chetniks. With each blow of the rifle-butt they shouted out the names of all the prisoners whose freedom would have been negotiable in exchange for the ten Serbs. They could have liberated war heroes instead of ending up with a sad case like Izet, who was only good at talking nonsense. In the end they let him go – fuck it! – it was their own fault for watching too many films and believing in stories about condors.
Sooner or later Izet recovered from the shock. He forgot about his episode in prison and went back to telling safer and more intelligent stories.
Having recovered from his wounds and his nightmares, the only painful memory that stayed with Izet concerned Mijo, the butcher, whose throat was slit by the Chetniks in Vraca. He couldn’t help wondering if Mijo had been killed for spouting the lie that Izet invented for him, or if the poor man had simply lacked the ability to use the right words at the right time. Perhaps there really are occasions in life when it’s best not to say anything.
The Gardener
People can be pathetic when they’re dying. Sometimes they try to make you feel guilty. Jan Palach doused himself in gasoline and then lit the touchpaper. Take the eighty-year-old guy who can’t bear to stop breathing. He’s having a tube inserted in his throat while his relatives sit in the waiting-room whining. Hospitals are full of people who grab hold of their souls. They fight over them like women fighting over bread in a bakery line while the mortars fall outside. In the end, of course, some playboy living a dolce vita announces that suicide is the only real philosophical question.
We were coming home with our water when the shells began to fall, so we ran into the nearest building. The hall was already full of people. Ivanka leaned against the wall and put her canisters down, but I didn’t let go of mine. She lit a cigarette, and then the place just exploded. People fell to the ground, and then one by one they stood up again. All except Ivanka, that is – she didn’t get up. At first, because there was no trace of blood, I thought she’d simply fainted out of fear. I lifted her head but it didn’t feel right; it was as though her neck was made of rubber. Her hair was covered in dust from the ceiling. I cleaned it off with my fingers. The emergency doctors rushed up in white coats and a boy with a face like Kafka’s tried to find the pulse on her neck. He was slow and methodical, as if he was playing the piano. I saw his fingers dance on Ivanka’s neck – it made me angry. I just wanted him to stop, but there were lots of people around, so I didn’t say anything. I think I was jealous. They put her on a stretcher and carried her away. Nobody spoke to me all the time I was there.
The crowd began to disperse. I was left on my own between the four canisters. I picked up the two I had been carrying. Water was pouring out of them, like the stream of water from those statues of little boys in Dubrovnik. Her canisters were still intact, so I picked them up and went outside. It was a beautiful spring day and by now the sound of gunfire had vanished. I covered the thirty yards or so to our building, and then decided to go for a walk, so I turned back and went in the opposite direction. Two soldiers were running along the bank. Some boys were playing kickball on the grass by the art school. One of them kicked the ball awkwardly – and I caught it on the volley. To be honest, if I hadn’t, I think it would have ended up in the Miljacka river. I met Tadija by the Two Fishermen Café. He asked me where I’d been exactly when the shelling began. I was afraid that he’d ask me about Ivanka. We sat down on the wall in front of the restaurant and he cut a cigarette in two with his penknife. (He took the half with no filter.) Wittgenstein was afraid of going mad, I told him, and that’s why he became a philosopher. I don’t remember what he’d wanted to be in the first place – a gardener or something. Tadija shrugged his shoulders and exhaled the smoke. A cold sore was visible on his mouth, next to the cigarette.
Ivanka’s funeral was brief and rather superficial. When it was over I went to the market and found seeds for carrots, parsnips and lettuce among the old shoes and the ludicrously expensive tins of beef. I bought a few packets and went home along the back streets in order to avoid meeting people I knew. The washing Ivanka had done a couple of days earlier still wasn’t dry. I buried my head in a damp, white shirt. It’s odd – even when the sun shines nothing dries. I cooled my face and pondered: Heraclitus only cracked jokes at his own expense, but Zeno made jokes against the world. Plato was a transvestite who dressed up humanity. Somebody should have bumped off Socrates to stop him making such a performance of his death. If you want my opinion, philosophy is just a video game. I put the shirt back on the line. My face hadn’t left any marks on the fabric.
I haven’t spoken to the girls for months and I don’t know how to break the news that their mother’s dead. But it’s wrong to let them go on thinking she’s still alive, a beloved parent to whom they need to send food parcels and remember in prayers at bedtime. They have a right to know so that they can mourn – and then forget. One life and one worry less.
The water lasted for days so I didn’t go out. I sat on the table by the window and stared at the concrete slabs below. If you looked closely, you could already see blades of grass growing in the cracks. I leaned out of the window as far as I liked, without my heart beating faster. I was free and happy: I didn’t have to write messages, I didn’t have to suffer or to explain myself to anybody. The world vanishes if you don’t talk.
In the pantry I found a little bag of compost and some light styrofoam boxes, just big enough to bury a rat in. I mixed the compost with the infertile soil from the children’s playground. There was something hypnotic about touching the damp black-brown dust with my fingers. I could have kneaded and stroked the soil for hours. I scattered the seeds and marked the boxes. I placed them under the window and watered them. I think I read in a book somewhere that Wittgenstein didn’t in fact want to be a gardener but an aeronautical engineer. Does that mean a pilot or something else? I returned to the window and looked down again with a kind of resignation. All I’d have to do is persuade myself I’m a canary. Nobody would believe that I’d jumped out of the window immediately after sowing the seeds. I can already see people whispering that somebody had pushed me. Otherwise the carrots, parsnips and lettuce would never have been planted.
I don’t go to the cemetery, as I explained to Tadija, because there are too many fresh graves there. It is vulgar to visit them all one by one. He pulled out a cigarette, which he snapped in two, giving me the half without the filter. His cold sore has been there for weeks and so he can’t really manage the tiny cigarette ends any more. I put my half away in my pocket, for later. He looked at me and shrugged.
Friar Andro sent word to the girls that Ivanka had died. They asked about me. I don’t know what he told them. Whatever happens they should know that I’m ok. I flick through books, read and wait for the carrots, parsnips and the lettuce to grow. Humans live out of curiosity. That’s the best and most honest way. Anything else is just a false way of courting other people’s tears. Camus demanded and gave melodramatic explanations. For those whose death isn’t accidental, the situation is as follows: women and homosexuals slit their wrists, soldiers and boors shoot themselves in the head, actors and romantics swallow pills, the clumsy and the neurotic shoot themselves in the heart, the ignorant and the perverse hang themselves, the ambitious and the weak jump off bridges, sad cases and intellectuals jump from roofs or top floors.
The parsnip was the first to sprout, followed by the lettuce and finally the carrots. The tiny leaves are as soft as a newborn baby’s hair. I watered them before I went to visit Tadija in the hospital. The doctors don’t know what is wrong with him. He has shrunk to half his size and the cold sore still hasn’t disappeared. I offered him a cigarette as we sat on the bench in front of the hospital. He took a penknife out of his pocket, divided the cigarette in two and gave me the end
with the filter. He’s got used to having the other end, he says, it doesn’t bother him any more. We sat and smoked. I told him about the parsnips, lettuce and carrots. He replied that he was now quite sure that Wittgenstein had wanted to be an aeronautical engineer.
The lettuce was the first to be ready for picking. I pulled off two heads, washed and cleaned them, wrapped them in newspaper and took them to the market. I gave them to the first woman who came along for two cigarettes. Everyone looked at me strangely. A Gypsy said that he would have given me two boxes of cigarettes for the lettuce. That’s fine, I replied, but the woman didn’t have two boxes of cigarettes. The Gypsy swore and went off.
I pulled out three small, as yet unripe carrots and washed them. I put two cigarettes in my other pocket and went to the hospital. Almost timidly, the doctor asked me if Tadija had been a relation. I said no – he was my friend.
“Yes, of course – is,” replied the doctor, extending his hand, “but I have to inform you that you will no longer be able to talk to him.”
“No problem,” I said, pulling out the cigarettes and carrots. “This is for you because you looked after Tadija.” He shivered and withdrew his hand. “Don’t be silly,” I smiled. “Take it!”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m just tired,” and he took the three carrots and the two cigarettes.
“It’ll be ok,” I said, turning away and going down the stairs.
At the bottom of the stairs I felt the doctor’s hand on my shoulder. We went outside and sat on the bench. He offered me a cigarette and put the other in his mouth. As we sat there, people were running about in blood-stained white coats.
“You know, it was cancer,” the doctor said finally.
“No problem.” I replied again, and then I told him the whole story from the beginning about the seeds, the compost, the white styrofoam boxes and the sprouting plants. He looked at me with tears in his eyes, just nodding his head. I think he really was a tired man.
The lettuce, parsnips and carrots continued to grow. I often relaxed as I leaned out of the window. The grass between the concrete slabs was already getting dry. Autumn was on its way. The white boxes will remain empty. It’s not easy to get rid of unwanted things.
Awakening
By six o’clock the last trace of daylight had vanished from the room. Every fifteen seconds the glow of three cigarettes described the short, nervous trajectory through the darkness from their lips to the ashtray on the table. In the distance you could hear the muffled sound of nonstop warfare and the occasional burst of a machine gun or the revving of a car. The infrequent gusts of wind distorted the sounds like a mixing desk in a recording studio. It gave the impression of a virtual reality or multimedia event – listening to the digital transmission of a pop concert, say, or the spinning turntable of a cyber-DJ.
In the morning Davor left to fetch the water. Perhaps he dropped in on a friend in Bistrik, or took cover from the shelling in a café, or stayed to lunch at Aunt Rozalija’s. Or did he meet somebody else perhaps? Every hour brought fresh comfort and a new explanation. Yet in order to retain its happy ending the story’s plot had to become more and more complicated. As time went by, the mood of depression was punctuated by spells of euphoria unprovoked by anything except the need to perform the daily tasks, such as chopping wood or fixing the radio. But later a wave of indifference began to roll in, a private acceptance of everything, including the worst news. How would they react to the stranger who knocks on the door and, scratching himself or averting his gaze, reports that a shell had landed close to the water, just where Davor was standing, and a tiny, one could almost say unimportant, piece of shrapnel had hit him, against all the odds, where it shouldn’t have. Each puff of a cigarette was accompanied by this unspoken story which always ended in a sigh of resignation.
But nobody knocked on the door, and so apart from the rumbling background noise of the war – and that never went away – there was nothing to confirm or to deny the family’s hopes, or to underline the need finally to acknowledge the horror, with a deep breath, as a prelude to beginning again. At last a hand crushed its cigarette in the crystal ashtray and the ember dwindled into microscopic flames. The same hand reached for a match whose tiny flame briefly illuminated the faces of a man and two women as it proceeded to light the wick in a glass filled with oil and water.
The man got up with a sigh and limped off to fetch the car battery. He skillfully wired up a boom-box. Suddenly the end of a pop song was blaring out of the machine. They heard the tail-end of a melody and then the piercing beeps of the time signal marking the top of the hour. “It’s nine o’clock precisely,” said a voice. “Here is the news: leaving today on a state visit . . . seventeen dead and eighty-five wounded . . . under enemy fire . . . in panic-stricken retreat . . . the French Minister for Humanitarian Aid paid his respects to the victims . . . our correspondent in the free territories reported new atrocities committed by the . . . world sailing championships . . . white-water canoeing . . . our team received the warmest applause . . . people were crying . . . now the weather: the outlook for tonight is wind and rain.” The pop music started up again, a drum beating, a voice singing, “I know I’ll die of love and only love.” When the man disconnected the battery, the music continued for a second and then stopped abruptly.
Eight years ago Davor went camping with the scouts near Lake Boračko. It was part of an exam to become a Scout-Partisan. He and six other boys were not supposed to talk all day. They had to spend the night in the woods and cross the hanging bridge over the Neretva. The following day the other six returned but Davor was nowhere to be found. The whole camp began to search for him. They alerted the police in Konjic. The phone rang in the flat, and a man’s voice asked various questions about Davor. Did he show any signs of pathological fear? Was he afraid of the dark when he was little? How did he cope with loneliness? The father gave hysterical answers. The mother and sisters grew pale; it was chaos. That night Davor was found in the wood near Glavatičevo. He was laughing and pointing at something. When the scout leader gave him permission to speak, he calmly said that he had got lost because, unlike those six cheats, he had decided to become a real Scout-Partisan and cross the bridge. The next day the camp was over. The tents were folded, and only the regular geometrical patterns of dry grass and the scorched traces of the camp fires remained.
At midnight the older woman poured more oil into the glass and the flame crackled briefly. Once again the man fixed the wires to the battery. This time a woman’s voice reiterated the same news. The pounding became more syncopated. Regular waves of explosions covered the city from one end to the other. There was a sound like a cat scraping its claws on glass, very quiet at first but getting louder – it had started to rain.
The younger woman went over to the window and pressed her hand against the pane. “It looks like a real spring shower,” she said, “and yet by morning it will have turned to snow. It didn’t rain when it should have, so it has to now. There’s no winter without snow; you keep on hoping it won’t come this year, but it arrives with the first cherry blossom.”
She walked into the bathroom and picked up two aluminum bowls, then she went out into the rain. When she came back her hair was covered in droplets of water that shimmered like quicksilver in the candlelight. The water had a rather solid appearance, as though a gentle hand could have gathered up all the drops. Soon a different noise came from outside; it was the metallic sound of water pouring out of the drainpipes into the bowls.
The older woman held the now-forgotten bottle of oil between her knees. She looked down and saw that her dress was covered in grease marks.
She said, “You boarded up all the windows, there isn’t a glimmer of light in the room. Others light their candles at nine; we have to light ours at six. You’ll rot in this darkness.”
The man looked at her, clenching his right hand into a fist and raising it in front of his face as if he were about to scream. He jerked his hand open, drummed on the tab
le with his fingers, then stood up and left the room. At first they just heard the sound of branches breaking and wet leaves fluttering, but soon it was possible to hear the man taking the boards off the windows and pulling down the sandbags, which landed with a dull thud on the ground. The sand went everywhere.
“Happy now?” cried the man.
The older woman sighed. The younger one nervously slapped her knees. The man came back into the room without a word, sat down on the bed and lit another cigarette. The two women also lit up at that moment. According to the house rule, they were only allowed two cigarettes each per day. They were already over the limit.
In the early days of the war Davor told his parents that he wanted to join the Territorial Army. His mother could never sleep while he was absent on duty. Her husband used to scold her, and so she always had a terrible migraine the following day. Usually Davor came back from military duty with a smile on his face, only to spend hours regaling the younger woman with stories of his exploits in the war zone. Of course he used to exaggerate slightly, making up jokes about himself as well as the Chetniks. Yet it seemed that in his bizarre, war-engendered happiness, he was unlikely to come to any harm. The man always hugged his “brave son” and interrupted with a story of his own – how in 1953, somewhere near Pirot, or somewhere even more remote perhaps, he was among half a dozen recruits who were ambushed by Bulgarian border guards.
The young woman was the first to fall asleep. She curled up in the armchair like a fetus. The man covered her with a large Russian scarf and stroked her hair. The older woman took a bottle of transparent liquid from the cupboard and poured the contents into two coffee jugs, but very quietly, to avoid knocking the neck of the bottle against the rim, because the sound was likely to wake the sleeping woman. Afterwards she sat in the middle of the room scraping bits of wax off the bottle with her fingernail. The man stared absent-mindedly into the black mirror of the windowpane.
Sarajevo Marlboro Page 9
