“I’m still not sure I could use it,” Pearse had said as he’d shifted the rifle onto his shoulder, the strap pulled tightly across his chest.
“Use it?” Josip answered. “You’ll be lucky if the damn thing doesn’t blow up in your face. Still, it’s good to have it. What do they say? ‘A man who can’t use a gun—’”
“‘Is no man at all.’” Petra appeared at the doorway of a nearby house—little more than two rooms, an old radio somehow connecting them with the other Croatian towns in the region—the communications center for Slitna’s endless flow of refugees. She kept her hair pulled back, the ponytail struggling to keep the thick black mane out of her face. As ever, it was losing the battle. Two or three wisps across her cheeks, olive skin, the gaze of charcoal eyes.
He would find himself staring at her strange beauty amid all this, lithe body in pants, shirt, the gun at her hip dissolving easily into the long line of her legs. But always the eyes. And perhaps a smile.
He wasn’t a priest yet.
“Then I guess I’m not much of one, given the way I fire this thing,” he said.
A hint of a smile. “You’ll get better,” she said. “With practice.” She stared at the rifle, at him, then walked over. She reached up and began to tug at the matted cord across his chest, slender fingers adjusting it so the rifle would hang more easily. “Are all priests this hard to fit?” She was having fun, yanking down hard on the strap, then loosening it, shifting it across his chest.
“When I become one, I’ll let you know.”
“Oh, that’s right. I forgot.” She stepped back. “You never looked like much of one anyway.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
For several seconds, he stood there, his own smile becoming a laugh. He reached up, pulled the strap over his head, and tossed the rifle to Josip. “Better?”
She continued to size him up. “So you think you could survive without one?”
“Maybe.”
A look of mock surprise spread across her face. “You’d pray people into submission?”
“Something like that.”
“Uh-huh.” She unclipped her holster and let the gun drop to the ground. “So how would you make me submit?”
Pearse shot a glance over at Josip; the Croat smiled and shook his head. It was clear he was enjoying himself immensely.
“Well”—Pearse began to move toward her, picking up speed as he spoke—“there’s the direct approach.”
He was about to hoist her up onto his shoulder, when she suddenly reached out under his arm and twisted. Before he could react, she kicked his legs out from under him, her boot on one of his arms, her knee on his chest, fingers gripping his neck, her thumb held precariously over his Adam’s apple.
“Didn’t you tell me you once knocked a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound catcher unconscious?” Pearse was about to answer, but she pressed her thumb even closer. “No, no. Save your strength.” The smile reappeared. “Then again, I’m not protecting someone’s little ball, am I?” She pulled her thumb away and straddled his chest. “I’d learn to use the rifle if I were you. Much less dangerous than all of this.”
She was on her feet, making her way back to the house, before he had a chance to recover.
“Difficult to gauge this one,” said Josip as he helped Pearse up and handed him the rifle.
Pearse pulled the strap over his shoulder, all the while his eyes on Petra. “That feels about right.”
“I’m not talking about the rifle.” He winked and headed for the house.
“She doesn’t understand why I’ve stayed, does she?”
Josip stopped, turned. “I don’t know. It’s a good question, though.”
“I haven’t heard any complaints.”
“You haven’t gotten any of us killed yet.”
“Is that what worries her?”
“No.” Josip looked at the gun, shook his head; he stepped over and began to fiddle with the cord. “American boy comes to deliver food, blankets, maybe a little faith to a people he’s never heard of before.” He pulled down on Pearse’s shoulder. “Bosnians in need of help, spiritual guidance, whichever God they pray to. Simple enough for him to ease his conscience, serve his own God, and move on with the others. But he doesn’t.”
“That would have been too easy.”
“There’s nothing easy in it, at all. Difference is, you can leave whenever you want.”
“But I don’t.”
“No, you don’t.” He let go of the cord. “And for that reason, you’re as puzzling to us as we are to you. I’m a good Catholic, Ian, but if they weren’t doing this to my home, I wouldn’t be here.”
“Even if you’d seen the pictures of Omarska?”
“Thousands have seen the camps. And thousands have shrugged and said how terrible that such a thing can happen in a civilized world. They’re not people without conscience. But it’s not their home. It’s not yours. And yet you stay.”
“Is that what she thinks?”
Josip laughed and shook his head. “I have no idea what she thinks. You’ve learned to shoot a rifle. That’s good enough.”
Pearse returned the smile. “I hope I never have to use it.”
Josip’s smile disappeared. “Then what would have been the point in learning how?”
His mangled body had already done much to feed the local wildlife. Little skin remained on the torso and legs, eyes and ears gone. The incongruity of the college bandanna, slightly bloodied, its large ND lashed across his wrists, sickened Pearse as much as the butchered flesh. For the first time, he could connect a voice, a smile, an arrogant charm to the obscenity in front of him. For the first time, he wondered how far his faith could be stretched.
“He said you were crazy for staying.” Petra drew up to his side, her ponytail managing a bit better today. “But I think he admired it.” The two had grown close in the last month, or at least as close as they dared. He had learned how to induce the smile, revel in the fleeting moments when she’d brush the strands from her face, talk of a past she no longer cared to recall with any accuracy.
They stood there, silently staring.
“He was so grateful when I gave it to him,” Pearse finally said, his eyes on the cloth, “as if I’d handed him something irreplaceable.” He shook his head.
“Maybe it was.” After a moment: “We need to get going.” As she moved toward Mendravic and the others, Pearse nodded, knelt down, and crossed himself.
And prayed for Josip’s absolution.
That night, they sat in one of the remaining houses in Slitna—few chairs, one square wooden table, beds of straw in every corner—watching as a handful of children gulped down great mounds of eggs. The mothers, in long printed skirts, solid-colored scarves around their heads, stood off to the side, beaming with each child’s eager mouthful. Mendravic watched as well, smiling with the children, his empty cheeks chewing along with them in mock ecstasy, eliciting bursts of laughter from the tiny faces.
Pushing the memories of Josip aside, Pearse managed to get caught up in their delight, its novelty infectious. Petra, too. She took hold of one of the boys—only as high as her waist—and began to dance around the room with him, spinning them both, lifting his feet from the ground, wide eyes from the children as they clapped between each ravenous forkful. For a few minutes, the world beyond seemed to vanish. That fewer than half of them would make it as far as the border, and fewer still survive once there, played no part in their momentary grasp at normalcy. Enough to take what they could when they could.
Perhaps it was the sound of their own laughter, or the high-pitched screams of the exhilarated children, that muffled the telltale whistle of incoming rockets. Whatever the reason, the terrifying screech tore through the small room only seconds before the bomb struck. No time to race to the cellar, to cradle children in protective arms. The far wall was the first to go, splitting down its center as if made of paper, dust and smoke rising in great swirls. Pearse was th
rown to the ground, his left shoulder landing with particular force, a jabbing pain as he tried to recover. He reached for his neck—nothing broken—the pain no less intense. Without thinking, he got to his feet and began to grab as many small bodies as he could. The children were screaming, some bloodied, some shaking frantically as he pulled four or five of them close into him. Again the whistle of artillery flooded the air, this time accompanied by a violent groan from the roof. He knew he had only seconds. Clutching the little bodies to his chest, he careened across the room, half-blinded by the dust, and leapt toward what he hoped was the door.
The appearance of stars above and a rush of fresh air told him he had found it. Only then did he feel the weight in his arms; he glanced down at the four tiny bodies still holding tightly to his waist. They were screaming, but they were alive. One of the boys tried to break away, rush back to his mother inside the now-burning building, but Pearse’s grip was too strong. The boy screamed louder, began to claw at his arm—“Molim, molim!”—but there was nothing he could do. A second bomb exploded off to the right, the reverberation enough to dislodge the roof, a wave of wood and stone cascading into the night. Pearse dropped to his knees, trying to cover the children, the little boy still flailing away, the others trembling in abject terror. Dirt showered his head and back, a battering of pebblelike projectiles, four quivering bodies tucked under his torso as the onslaught subsided. One final explosion beyond the town’s fringe, and then nothing.
The attack had been like any other—from somewhere in the hills, arbitrary, and with no real military significance. The tactic to terrorize. A drinking game for late-twentieth-century Bosnia. As quickly as it had come, it was over.
People began to appear, shouts everywhere, panic as they poured from the surrounding buildings, lucky enough to have escaped the night’s target practice. Pearse tried to stand, a shooting pain in his shoulder as two of the children broke free, running haphazardly toward the house. A figure stepped out from the haze, two great arms swallowing them up. Pearse was now on his feet, his hand raised as he tried to shield his eyes from the flames and heat. It was Mendravic, thick hands pulling the two small boys from the ground, cradling them into his huge chest. He was limping, his right thigh soaked in blood, whispering to each child, soothing the small heads buried in his neck. Two women approached and took the boys; another emerged to take care of the children at Pearse’s side.
“You need to stop that bleeding,” Pearse said, nodding as Mendravic neared.
“You, too.” The larger man pointed at Pearse, who was only now aware of the red patch growing on his shoulder. He moved the arm. Superficial. He started toward the burning house. As with the children, Mendravic pulled him back.
“There’s nothing you can do in there now.” His hand was like a vise. “Nothing.”
A second wall collapsed, its bulk smothering a large patch of fire. Muted cries rose from within. Then silence. Instinctively, Pearse tried to break free, but Mendravic was too strong. “Petra managed to get the boy out; I took another three. I doubt more than one or two of the women made it.” Simple facts not open to debate. “A crippled orphan can’t survive,” he said, as much to convince himself as Pearse. “Better for them to die now than alone and starving in a month, a week.” Pearse had heard the rationalizations before, had almost learned to accept them. Not tonight.
“You really believe that?”
The older man said nothing, his gaze on the flames. Slowly, he let go of Pearse’s arm and started to walk off. “It’ll burn itself out. No need to waste the water.”
Pearse stood, weightless, limbs frozen to the ground, his body suddenly trapped by the enormity of the last three months.
Better for them to die.
Each depraved moment—every detail, every image—rushed back to him in perfect clarity. And with each burst of memory, a voice cried out inside of him: What price faith? He stood apart, stunned that the question had even come to the surface. The one constant. The one certainty. Now dancing in flames in front of him.
“Walk with me.” He turned, Petra by his side, only now aware of her. He had no idea how long she had been there, how long he had stood motionless. She waited, perfectly still. A black residue streaked her cheeks, tiny rivulets of blood on her neck, but Pearse saw only the eyes. Clear, alive, and, for an instant, unable to mask the despair behind them. He nodded slowly. They began to walk.
With each step, a sense of hopelessness began to seep into the vacant space, as foreign to him as it was unnerving. Disgust, anger, even hatred had forced their way into his conscious mind in the past, but he had always found a way to diffuse them. Now he could actually feel that mechanism slipping away, in its place something far more destructive.
They moved past a second burning house, out beyond the buildings to an open field, the sound of boots on grass, two sets in perfect synchrony, the pace even, deliberate. The glow of flame receded behind them, moonlit darkness swallowing them as they continued on. Neither said a word, each finding what they needed in the plodding motion of the other. Several times, they came across large roads, sometimes taking them, sometimes not. It was always her choice, her decision. He would simply follow, happiest when back into the mindless rhythm.
When she finally spoke some two hours later—her voice barely a whisper—it seemed to echo throughout his entire body.
“It’s not far from here.” The sound caught him off guard, the rote motion of his legs jarred by the intrusion. He nodded and regained his pace.
Ten minutes later, she stopped. They stood at the lip of a wide patch of open land, perhaps two hundred yards in each direction, untouched as far as the eye could see. A line of shadow defined the far edge—trees, he guessed, thick wood beyond. She started out into the field, he at her side, the center of the far shadow growing taller with each step. It took him a minute to realize that there was something in the middle of the field, its outline ever clearer as they drew closer. Twenty yards from it, they stopped.
Gazing down at them was the perfect facade of a church. No dangling roof, no blown-out walls. Perfect. It was no more than three stories high, a vaulted roof with bell tower rising into the sky, its stone glistening in the moon glow. Exactly when it had been built was impossible to say. Fifty, a hundred years ago. Perhaps more. Too little had changed in the way the men of Bosnia built their churches to make an accurate guess. Weathered was the best one might do. Tucked in at the center stood two large rectangular doors, rusted iron rings on each. Petra made for the one on the right, Pearse a few steps behind her.
The inside had not fared as well. Shafts of moonlight poured in from several rows of glassless windows, enough to see that the pews had long ago been ravaged for firewood, the stone floor strewn with bits and pieces unworthy of plunder. As with anything roofed in the region, piles of straw lined the walls, vestiges of onetime tenants, though the most popular routes of escape had drifted farther and farther from the church, thus releasing it from any obligation of sanctuary. A large iron chandelier hung at center, empty sockets, glints of glass below the only remnants of long-ago-shattered bulbs. A second, smaller lamp swung above the altar at the far end, its long link chain twisting in the air from some unseen draft. Above it, segments of the phrase “Benedictus qui venit” were chiseled in thick block letters.
The overall structure of the church, however, remained unscathed, a few chipped pieces of brick and stone here and there, but little else in the way of damage.
“No one comes here anymore,” she said, “not even the refugees.” She had found something on the ground and was trying to make it out in the ivoried light.
“Incredible that it’s survived.” He’d begun to slide his fingers along the wall, cold, smooth stone with a hint of moisture.
“Not so incredible. Destroying it would be sacrilege.”
“‘Sacrilege’?” The word seemed strangely out of place. “That didn’t stop them in Prjac.”
She tossed the piece back to the floor. “That
was a Catholic church. Those, they take pleasure in destroying.”
“And this is an Orthodox one?” he asked, pointing to the inscription above the altar. “With the Benedictus etched in stone? I don’t think so.”
“No, this part is Catholic.” She saw the confusion on his face. “It’s the foundations that are a little unusual. Underneath us is an old Orthodox church, most of it destroyed in the time of the last Turks. Enough of it survives, though, to keep it holy ground. Under that, the remains of a mosque from the time of the Bogomils, also holy. All in layers, one on top of the other. The perfect model for how we used to live. Now, destroy one, destroy them all. Sacrilege for whoever fires the rocket.”
Before he could reply, she was making her way toward a small archway at the far left of the altar. He fell in behind her as she disappeared down a narrow set of stairs, the white stone spiraling into darkness.
The light quickly vanished. Hands against the wall, he moved cautiously down the steps, the sound of her in front of him just enough to give his groping some direction. Once or twice, the steps narrowed, breaking his rhythm. He would stop, toe his way forward for a few steps, then continue on.
“Watch your head.” She was farther along than he expected, her voice a good fifteen feet beyond but only slightly below him. He guessed there were only a few steps left, and placed his hand directly in front of him. It was then that he remembered his shoulder, a momentary twinge from the tightened muscle. He had no time for it as his fingers met stone and began to trace the curve of an archway, his feet finding ground at the same instant. He ducked under his hand and continued to move slowly, his eyes growing more and more accustomed to the darkness, bits of wall and floor taking shape.
His victory was short-lived, as a bright light suddenly flooded the area in front of him, its source a flashlight in her hand.
Shielding his eyes from the glare, he noticed the walls were of a different color here, whiter, with more texture. And whereas the cut of each stone had been precise and rectangular in the church above, here they were large irregular slabs that undulated from side to side and top to bottom. The ceiling was no more than seven feet high, its smooth surface and neat brickwork a clear indication of its Catholic lineage above, an intrusion over the small Orthodox chapel in which they now stood. Nothing in the space, however, hinted at its onetime religious calling, save for a few fragments of inscription along the top of each wall, the letters Cyrillic, the words too far gone to make out. More straw, a torn blanket.
The Book of Q Page 2
