The Small Boat of Great Sorrows

by Dan Fesperman

  It was only a few minutes before Vlado noticed the sports magazine on the table, the one in his native tongue with the names of football stars he had once cheered for. Not long after that he found two beers in the refrigerator. Jasmina hated the stuff. Once she recovered from her initial surprise, she dashed about tidying, almost imperceptibly snapping up the magazine as she collected assorted clutter, her cheeks rosy, and not just from the excitement, he supposed. She headed first to the bedroom, carrying Vlado’s suitcase to the closet and quickly stuffing some items into a plastic bag as he peered down the hall from the couch, where he sat exhausted, overwhelmed by the idea that the last two years had finally come to an end. His war really was over. The idea of another man having been here shouldn’t have surprised him, he supposed, and for the moment he was too dazed and weary to feel angry or even hurt. He had been sealed away for so long, with no prospect of escape, and suddenly here he was, watching his daughter eye him from the kitchen door. He knew from his own experience that lonely people in unfamiliar places either made friends or went crazy, and sometimes friends become something more. Beyond that, he was too drained by the interrogation, the long trip back to his family. And it was less than a week since he had left Sarajevo. The emotions of the years under fire still clung to him like wet clothing.

  Jasmina never once mentioned anyone, or offered another hint, although there were times when she seemed to hesitate, to hold back in conversation, whether in reluctance to hurt him or in sorrow for some loss, he couldn’t say, and wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

  Fortunately they had Sonja to distract them. She warmed to Vlado quickly, some old bond taking hold, as if she had encoded his smell, his voice, the way he felt when you snuggled up to him with a book, asking to be read to, and within a week she had latched on and wasn’t letting go. He developed an afternoon routine of reading her a storybook in German. It was good practice for both of them, although it was a toss-up as to who was doing the teaching. He proceeded down the pages like a man on stilts while she gently corrected his pronunciation, her little hand darting to the page while she deftly enunciated the throat-clearing sounds. Her Bosnian—if that’s what they called his language now, Serbo-Croatian having become a contradiction in terms—faded more by the day. He and Jasmina used it around the house, but breaking into their native tongue began to seem like shuttling to another era on a tram that had become creaky and outmoded.

  Their marriage felt that way for a while, too. They’d lost their feel for each other’s rhythms, their comfortable give-and-take with its catchphrases and gestures. It was like relearning a language, but with each day more words came back to them.

  Vlado never wanted to ask about any man, though he was tempted to broach the subject with Sonja. It would have been so easy to inquire about “Mommy’s friends.” But in trying to form the words, he’d feel the policeman in him coming out, interrogating his daughter, so he’d push the thought away. Besides, Jasmina showed no signs that anything had continued. No lengthy unexplained absences, no furtive moments on the phone—and yes, he listened for them, with an attentiveness that made him ashamed. The only clues she offered were those moments of emptiness, when she would gaze into corners where there was nothing to see. Whose face was still over there, he wondered?

  After a few months it had all surfaced anyway, while Jasmina was out shopping. Sonja was playing on the floor with a small plush giraffe, with orange yarn for its mane.

  “That’s a nice toy,” Vlado said from the couch, just making conversation.

  “Haris gave it to me,” she answered, and at first it didn’t register. He figured Haris for a playmate, some generous boy from the Spielplatz.

  “When he brought Mommy the smell-good.”

  Now she had his attention.

  “The smell-good?”

  “Yes.”

  “Show me,” he said, dropping slowly to the floor, sidling up to his daughter like a conspirator, but keeping his voice light. “Show me Mommy’s smell-good.”

  “You knowww.” She crinkled her nose with a smile, shaming his ignorance.

  “No. I don’t know.” He smiled back. “Bring it to me.”

  And like a good little informant she hustled off down the hallway with the wobbly walk of a four-year-old. He watched through the open door as she raised herself on tiptoes in their bedroom, rummaging in the top drawer of Jasmina’s dresser.

  “Here it is,” she said sweetly, approaching with the prize in her outstretched hand. “The smell-good. See?”

  It was a bottle of Chanel.

  Vlado unscrewed the cap, sniffing. Jasmina hadn’t worn this since he’d been home, but the bottle had been used. He held it to the light, feeling the coolness of the glass, admiring the amber color. Even the bootleg versions of such items fetched quite a price in the streets. On their income something like this would be a real sacrifice. He pulled Sonja to him in a tight hug, blinking back tears at the corners of his eyes.

  “Isn’t it nice?” she said, her voiced muffled against his shirt.

  He summoned another smile. “Yes, sweetie. It’s very nice.”

  So now he had a name. Haris. He mentally flipped through a catalog of faces from their building, from the bar, the wurst stand, the market, trying to remember a Haris. There was the Bosnian Cultural Center in Kreuzberg, a place where his countrymen sometimes met, celebrated holidays, held weddings. But the only Haris there was an old man, soup on his shirtfront, always muttering about his lost sons and the crimes of the Serbs.

  The front door opened with a jolt, and Jasmina, soaking wet, stood clutching two cloth bags overflowing with groceries. She stared at the bottle of perfume in his hand, then at Sonja, who was back on the floor with her giraffe, oblivious to the sudden charge in the air.

  The color rose in Vlado’s cheeks, and he gently set the bottle on a table by the couch. Jasmina walked to the kitchen without a word, not bothering to remove her shoes, trailing wet footprints across the carpet. He heard keys clattering on the counter, the opening click of the refrigerator, then a bustle of slamming cabinet doors, clanking bottles, rustling bags. He wanted to be angry but felt only coldness, a dull, deep pain.

  He looked again at the bottle. Now was his chance to return it to the drawer, any drawer. The move would save face for both of them, buying time, a gesture to build on. Then they could talk about it later. But instead he switched on the television and returned to the couch, leaving the bottle in full view, an open accusation. Exhibit A for the prosecution.

  They waited until after dinner, when Sonja was asleep. Then Jasmina made tea for herself and opened a beer for him, bringing it in a glass. That seemed a first step toward accommodation, and he seized the opening, speaking slowly.

  “Sonja told me about someone named Haris.”

  Jasmina folded her legs beneath her at the opposite end of the couch, the mug steaming in her hands.

  “Haris,” she said, pausing, “is a friend. Or was a friend. A friend and, sometimes . . .” She faltered, looking into Vlado’s eyes with an expression of care and concern. “Sometimes something more. A companion. More for warmth against the loneliness than anything. The days without you just went on and on. Between calls I would think you were dead. I’d be sure of it sometimes, knowing that no one would even find you in the apartment for days, and that even when they did, no one would know who to reach, or how. And it was on one of those days that I first met Haris.”

  He didn’t need to hear more. He only needed to hear the man was gone, finished in her life. Otherwise the conversation would veer toward the stalemate they’d often reached since his return. Both seemed intent on proving to the other that they’d suffered the most during their two years apart. And it was true that neither could fully appreciate what the other had endured. He’d never known the fierceness of life alone in an unwelcoming place with nothing but your child and your wits for company, swept along in a cold stream of indecipherable babble and officials who always wanted to see your documents, pape
rs and more papers. She, on the other hand, could never fathom the fear and exhaustion of two years inside a claustrophobic little war, where shells and bullets were part of the weather, in a stale atmosphere that stank of backed-up plumbing, burning garbage, and death.

  But the mention of the man’s name—hearing Haris pass from her lips—seemed to prod Vlado out of his accustomed trench, and she out of hers, and from that day on neither was quite as insistent about documenting their two years apart. Gradually, those discussions faded, and with them the name of Haris.

  It was not the last time Vlado would hear the name, however, and he regretted that all the more now that the American, Pine, had arrived on his doorstep.

  He had met Haris more than four years following his return—a mere month ago—in a place called Noski’s. It was a bar, one of the few where a Bosnian could hang out and not worry about being beaten within an inch of his life by the neighborhood pack of young toughs. Vlado went there sometimes to read outdated newspapers and magazines from Zagreb and even from Belgrade piled at the end of the bar. Sometimes there was a fairly recent copy of the Sarajevo daily, Oslobodjenje. The manager, an old barman from Prijedor, never seemed to mind that Vlado seldom bought a drink. He knew most of his customers couldn’t afford it, and the few who could more than made up for the others by drinking themselves to oblivion, day after day.

  Vlado was sitting at his customary roost when a voice hailed him from behind.

  “You’re Vlado.”

  He turned to see a thin, grizzled man in jeans and a scuffed black leather jacket, hair unkempt, eyes that would have been a nice calming blue if they hadn’t been bloodshot. But they were eyes that wouldn’t let you look away, and Vlado knew exactly who this must be.

  “And you’re Haris.”

  The man nodded. “I’ll buy you a drink. Then I’ll tell you a story.”

  He sat down at the next stool, smelling of whiskey. But he seemed sober enough, neither swaying nor slurring his words.

  “I don’t want a drink,” Vlado said. “And I definitely don’t want a story.”

  “It’s a story for a policeman, and you’re the only one I know. And, okay, it’s a story for a husband, too. A husband who only wants to read his newspaper and go home to his wife and daughter.” He turned to the bartender. “One beer, please. And a whiskey.” Then, turning back to Vlado, “Just hear me this once. That’s all I ask.”

  Those eyes again, pleading from some far and distant hill in the man’s past.

  “Okay. Just this once.”

  Haris waited for his whiskey, then began.

  “I came here with my sister in late ’92. My sister Saliha. From Bijeljina. We grew up there. Went to school there, got jobs, made friends. Most of our friends were Serbs. When the war started, I knew we would all be fine, because everyone knew us. No one would let anything happen.”

  He took a long swallow of the whiskey, wincing, then wiping his mouth with a sleeve before he continued.

  “Saliha was raped in the first month of the war. Five times by a group of men in a room where they kept her for two days. I was put in the concentration camp at Keraterm. They loaded fifty of us on a bus and put us behind a fence. Nothing to eat for four days while they took us out, two at a time, beat us around the head, chained us to trucks. A few of us they shot. Me they just beat. Legs and face. Left us behind the wire for five weeks until one day a commander drives up and sets us loose. All the ones who hadn’t died, anyway. But they took our papers, our money, then put us on trucks and drove us up to the front lines, where they dumped us out and told us never to come back.

  “Snipers shot two of us while we were walking to the other side, stumbling across the lines. Another one stepped on a mine. The UN was there and everything, but there was nothing they could do. I think someone filed a protest later.”

  He sipped the whiskey again, gestured toward the foaming mug of beer. “Please. You will need to drink if you’re going to hear all this.” He put a crumpled bill on the bar for the first round.

  “I found my sister three weeks later in a school gym where she was sleeping on the floor. The place was full of refugees. Hundreds. Whole families on towels and blankets, laundry hanging between the basketball hoops.

  “Lice, bad food, every smell you can imagine. That was life in the gym. My sister wouldn’t talk to anyone. Just lay there all day on a cot, eyes open. I slept on the floor next to her for a week. Then on the eighth day she finally stands up and decides to take a walk outside. It is snowing and she is barefoot, but she just keeps walking while I follow her, afraid to say a word. Two blocks and she stops and looks down at her feet and begins to cry. I carry her back, and on the way she tells me what had happened, whispers it into my ear like a child telling her father she’s done something bad. She knew the men, three of them anyway. Knew their faces and names. One taught our nephew in school. One grew up on the farm next to our uncle’s. I used to play football with him at school. The other guy was from the village, a baker.” He paused, shaking his head. “Five months later we came here. This was late ’92. And for a year she was pretty much the same, not going anywhere, just lying around the apartment, watching TV.

  “Then one day it was sunny and warm, a spring morning after some rain, so I took her for a walk, almost had to push her out the door and carry her down the steps. But she started looking around. We stopped to sit on a bench awhile, across from a bus stop. Then we decided to catch a bus, to go for a ride. We crossed the street and she looked at the crowd, seven or eight people waiting for the bus. And that’s when she saw him, one of the men, not one of the three she knew but their leader, the main one, the one who had the scar and wore a black beret, leaning into her face with brandy on his breath, sweating onto her for twenty minutes. She tried to scream, tried to tell me who it was, but nothing came out of her mouth until the bus had gone and the man was on it. She told me his name was Popovic, and I’d seen him, too.

  “So the next day I go to the bus stop again, waiting for him. Nine hours I’m there. Then the next day, and then the day after that. I decide I will go every day until he comes back, like it’s my job, because I didn’t have a real job anyway. Just construction work without papers, tearing out old walls and plaster, and half the time we didn’t get paid. So I kept going to the same corner. And that is how I met Jasmina.”

  Hearing him say her name was a jolt. But Vlado kept quiet, waiting for Haris to continue. He’d stopped for another swallow of whiskey.

  “She’d seen me, I guess, seen me on that corner day after day, like someone obsessed. And I was obsessed. Crazy and dirty. Same coat, rain or shine. Same little water bottle tucked under my arm with a newspaper.

  “She came up to me one day, curious more than anything, and asked who I was looking for. After days of being ignored by almost everyone in Berlin it seemed like some kind of revelation, like I’d been invisible to everyone but her. And when you’re feeling like I was, so focused on something that you can’t see anything else, when someone actually notices what you’re up to, it seems like magic. Like they have powers no one else has. So we talked. And I relaxed a little. I felt almost normal for those few minutes before her bus came. And the next day we talked again, and I still hadn’t told her why I was there, or who I was after. But she told me she was waiting on someone, too. I think that morning I might even have shaved. Changed my shirt. Wiped off my coat. I don’t really remember now. But on the fifth day she brought me an apple. I must have looked pretty pale. And in a few more days I stopped going there altogether. So we would meet instead in other places, more normal places, and we became friends.”

  That was all Vlado cared to hear on the subject. He started to speak, but Haris raised his hand.

  “Please. Another beer. I pay, you listen. I am through with the part about your wife, but I had to tell you that much, so you would know.”

  The bartender put down another round, Haris another crumpled bill.

  “Later I heard more about this man, P
opovic. It wasn’t the name he used here, and people who knew him said he had gone back, back to Bosnia and the fighting. He had his own unit, his own men with their own black uniforms and a nickname. Popi’s Lions. But by then I had a life again. I was working in old buildings. Painting, or stripping out insulation. Paid in cash at the end of every day, or sometimes not paid. My sister didn’t care. She stayed at home, quieter than ever, the TV on. After seeing Popovic that time she wouldn’t leave the house again. But I kept working. And, yes, sometimes I saw Jasmina.”

  It was the only time Haris came close to raising his voice, a brief note of defiance.

  “Then, in early ’94, the person she’d been waiting for came home. And for me, that was the end of Jasmina. She called me—only once— and said good-bye, said good luck. And for a while it seemed that was the end of life. So I kept trying to find jobs. Made a little more money. And forgot about women, and even forgot about this Popovic. Until three weeks ago, when I saw him again. I’d heard about him some, like lots of people. Someone had told me that in the last year of the war he’d been at Srebrenica when the city fell, leading his unit again, helping round up men and boys. Looting, killing, doing whatever it is he did. Other people said later he must have gone to Belgrade, or even to Kosovo.

  “But now it was peacetime and there he was near the same bus stop as before, this time walking across the street toward the U-Bahn. He was in a hurry. Before I’d always worried I might not recognize him if I saw him again, that his face might have gone out of my head for good, just to torment me, but even after more than four years I knew him right away, and knew that he hadn’t seen me watching him. So I followed him, got on the U-Bahn a car behind his. Watched him through the windows and got off at the same stop. A long ride, a couple of changes. Then half an hour of walking and he’s on the Ku’damm. And by now I’m looking out of place, I’m sure, a grimy Bosnian on this nice street of shops and theaters. The West Berliners with all their money and bored expressions, and I’m half a block behind him, trying not to lose him.