Treasure Chest

by Adam Bennett

  “If he fought in the war, shouldn’t Vlado hate Muslims?”

  “He does, but he took her in for a few years, got her a job with friends. She’d be dead without him. He’s like that. I should stop by to see her, we always got along.”

  The ćevapi arrives. It is the only thing about Serbia that I approve of wholeheartedly. The meat is like sausage without the skin, and Amina serves it to us stuffed into a flatbread whose name I can’t pronounce. The simple white plates are probably the same ones her family eats on at night. The sandwich is stuffed to bursting with onions, sour cream, feta cheese and some kind of spicy paste made of red peppers. The effect of eating it is to feel cured of everything wrong with you, and a few things that aren’t.

  As we eat I ask Uncle Vlado a few simple questions about the farm, Neda’s horse, and other meaningless things. It gets tired.

  “Vlado, this thing about getting drunk and fucking with me when I’m blacked out. I think I understand what you were trying to tell me: if I’m with Neda you’d like to see me take charge of my life and learn to deal with shit. I get it, but I don’t see why learning that had to be so fucked up.”

  “No?” He says, like cutting into the bodies of prospective family members as a joke is a normal topic of conversation.

  “No,” I tell him, “but this time when you explain it to me, maybe less scalpels, okay?”

  Vlado gives me a wry smile.

  “Fine, I will try,” he says. “You and Neda stay at the Vilina Vlas, no? What does she think? Is the spa nice?”

  “Not really. The baths aren’t bad, but the rail on our balcony isn’t levelled right. Somebody might fall off. You’d never get away with that in Canada.”

  “No,” Vlado says, “and not just that. Did you know the White Eagles used that hotel during the war? This fucking guy Lukić and his men kept their girls there. Serbian room service. A lot of them jumped over those railings to die. That was the only checkout.”

  I feel my face rearranging itself. Vlado keeps going.

  “Your room—it has single beds and iron bed stands, curved like this?” He makes a round gesture with his hands.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “Original, still,” Vlado says. I try to work my mind around this. It feels like the first time you hear about Apartheid or a tsunami or that your favourite band broke up. Not real.

  “How is it still in business?” I tried to kiss Neda in there. What the fuck is wrong with this country?

  “Everyone tries to forget the war,” Vlado says, “or they want to make it disappear. Those blowing bubbles at the bottom of the Drina are the only ones without this problem. Do you understand now?”

  I stare at the ćevapi. I’m not hungry anymore. I take sip of beer. It’s as cold and sharp as a knife left on a window sill. I think about what Vlado said.

  “The war was so cruel, so awful, that you can’t just let it go.”

  Vlado is still muscular, even with his gut. There are white hairs and little scars on his forearms. He leans forward and shakes his bull head.

  “A thing I saw in Srebrenica,” he says, “a patrol is out picking up prisoners. Muslim Bosniaks. In the back they are crying. That is war, if you want to know about it; your life changes in twenty seconds. So you are picked up and put in the truck. The guy who drives tells you to shut the fuck up. Most people don’t. They cry and shake. So the loudest is a woman, very young, and he says to her, ‘come out, it’s fine, everything will be ok,’ and takes her off the truck.”

  Vlado takes a swig of his beer.

  “Then he takes his bayonet and stabs her in the head.” Vlado snaps his fingers. “Like that.”

  “Jesus.”

  “He has nothing to do with it. That is not the point. The point is the guy can’t get the fucking knife out of her face. He has to wrestle around like he’s dancing. Finally he gets it loose and gets back in the truck. Now, everyone is shut the fuck up. He starts to drive, okay, but he backs up. Bump!”

  Vlado claps his hands.

  “Then forward. Bump! He’s so mad about the knife he’s running her over a few times.”

  “What? What the actual fuck?” I feel like my face is doing those weird back flips between laughing and blinking away tears.

  “Yes, exactly. It was that kind of war. One guy I knew, his wife left him. So okay, he decided to kill himself. That is normal. He found an anti-tank mine on the road. He stepped on it, but that didn’t work, so he ran like his ass was on fire and threw himself down. Pow! Like a cartoon.”

  We sit there and drink. Vlado lost in his memories and me lost all the way around. I’m starting to see how this place works, though.

  “So the point is you can forget it, but you really have to try,” I say after a while. “You can’t just plug your ears, you have to yell, too.”

  “Yes,” Vlado says, “you said that well. Fuck the war, you know? Serbs, Muslims, Croats. Fuck their mothers and those who fucked them. Fuck everyone. Do you see, now?”

  “Yeah,” I say, then, after another pause, “Maybe we should get going to the farm. Start the weekend. Neda wants me to meet her horse and bond with you. We might as well get to it.”

  Vlado shakes his head one more time, coming out of the reverie, then nods. I rub my stomach absently and get up.

  “That scratch is bothering you?” he asks.

  “Sure,” I say, “but who cares, right?”

  He pats me on the shoulder and we walk out into the sunshine.

  Mehurići the Horse

  “The horse’s name is Bubbles?”

  “Mehurići, that is what Neda named it,” Vlado says, shrugging. We’re chilling on his patio looking out at a badly fenced paddock. There’s forest in the distance and cigarette smoke hanging in the air like spider webs. The cottage is a lot bigger than I expected. The tack room and stables are what I thought the whole thing would be; old and run down, full of rust. The house itself is rustic but well maintained, and we have a big charcoal grill going. Some of Vlado’s buddies are cooking. I don’t say anything about the ice bath and they seem to have forgotten about it. I sense a pattern: this is just the kind of shit that happens here. Anyway, the beer is cold and the sausages smell like life itself.

  Bubbles the stallion is grazing in the far grass. He’s a great looking horse. Big and powerful with a flowing white mane. Like he could be a mount for King Arthur or Don Quixote.

  Vlado and his friends, who I’m finally realising may all be old war buddies, treat me kindly. We eat and drink. The fact I don’t speak Serbian isn’t a problem. Most of them speak a little English, and the kind of night we’re having doesn’t need a lot of talk. By midnight the sausages are gone and we’re all roaring drunk. There’s freedom in the air here. These men have all been through things I can’t even imagine, and they can still laugh. I think about my internship and my boss and my problems, and all I can do is laugh. It’s all that makes sense, apart from jumping in the Drina, and fuck that.

  The drinking, bright lights, and raucous noise prevent Bubbles from sleeping. The horse leaves the stable and runs around like an asshole, its giant dick flopping in the breeze. I realise that I hate this fucking horse and its giant balls. How can Neda love him and not me? Vlado slumps into a chair next to me with a cigar chomped between his teeth.

  “Fucking thing never won a race,” he says, “it’s the only horse we have left here. I keep it around for Neda.”

  “Man,” I say, “fuck that horse.”

  Vlado turns his drunken eyes to me. The rest of the guys do too. Like they heard something familiar in my voice.

  “What is the matter, Paul? This is just a fucking horse.”

  “No, Uncle Vlado, I think that horse is fucking with you. It costs you money, Neda isn’t here to feed it, and it never wins a race? Bubbles is fucking crossing you.”

  “Is that right?” Vlado says. He gives me a look that’s part drunk, part mocking and part bitter. “And what do you do when someone betrays you? Like your pindo boss or
this horse?”

  “No mercy,” I say, “not anymore. When it’s you and the enemy, no mercy.”

  “That is very hard talk for you, Paul,” Vlado says, and the moment has gained weight whether we meant it to or not.

  “It’s basic business. You saw what a piece of shit my boss was in a second. You had to strip me naked and cut me up to teach me that. So, why are you letting this horse eat here for fucking free when all it does is lose and run around with its dick hanging out?”

  The rest of the guys make a little noise and Vlado translates for them. I expect them to laugh. Instead, they start nodding seriously. Like switching from party time to Serbian death squad is a thing they’re used to. Vlado asks a few questions in Serbian while gesturing to the horse. Toma says a few words back and the guys all look away.

  “Paul,” Vlado says, “Toma agrees with you, but it is a serious thing you are suggesting. Are you sure this is what you want to do?”

  “I thought we were here to forget the past. I thought we were supposed to let the shit that holds us back drop away, and if it won’t shut the fuck up, we scream louder than it does.”

  Vlado locks eyes with me.

  “I have to know, with this horse, is it business like you say, or personal as well?”

  We are both very drunk.

  “Sometimes I feel like Neda loves that horse more than she loves me,” I whisper, “so both. It’s both.”

  “You think you can you do this with your own hands? There is no going back.”

  “Yeah,” I say, “no going back.”

  Vlado’s eyes are dark and old. Eyes that see the truth.

  “Okay,” Vlado says. “Fuck this horse.”

  Fuck This Horse

  I’m not really surprised when Vlado clears off the patio table and starts laying out guns. I point at one.

  “That seems too big to be an AK-47,” I say. Vlado nods in approval and burps.

  “Very good. RPK light machine gun. That will do fine.”

  “I don’t know, man.”

  “Getting cold feet?” Vlado frowns.

  “No,” I say, and find it’s true. “But I’ve never shot a gun before. I’ll probably fuck up. And if I fuck up, the horse will run around and bleed and shit.”

  “You want to fuck this horse so hard between his eyes that his grandchildren will be born blind, so that is okay with you, no?”

  “No, it’s not okay,” I say, “if I’m going to kill it, I just want to kill it. No fucking around.”

  Vlado translates. The Serbians all look at me, then at each other, and back at me. They nod.

  “Good,” Vlado says, “we are all learning how to be modern Serbians. We will not fuck around with torture and suffering. There is one weapon for that.”

  Vlado says something in Serbian and Toma disappears into the tack room and comes back out with an RPG, a Soviet anti-tank grenade launcher just like the ones I see the Taliban using on CNN. The tube clanks on the table and makes all the bullets and land mines jump.

  “I don’t know how to work it,” I say.

  “Don’t worry, we will write you the instructions and then teach this horse to smile like a Muslim. Toma, get your needles.”

  Everyone cheers.

  Later, on the plane home, I will wonder if any of this actually happened. I will roll up my sleeve to check, and see that the tattoo is real. The lines are fresh and black and surprisingly well drawn on the inside of my left forearm.

  “You got a tattoo?” Neda will say.

  “More of a life lesson, I think.”

  “That happens around Uncle Vlado,” Neda laughs.

  “What does this say?” I’ll ask her.

  “Depress thumb safety,” she translates, “centre target in reticule, pull trigger.”

  Vlado slides a bulbous rocket into the tube, then unscrews a little blue plastic cap from the tip.

  “Normally,” he says, “Russians are fucking useless. They can’t find Mars even if I hide it in their sister’s panties. This they built well, however.”

  I stand at the edge of the patio with the missile launcher balanced on my shoulder. I wobble drunkenly and try to steady the sight. I am about to shoot an anti-tank rocket at Neda’s horse. I run through the check list of how to do this in my head and forget half the steps. I check the new tattoo, but the instructions are in Serbian.

  “Okay,” Vlado says, “safety off, aim. Toma, stop standing behind him, idiot. Now we are ready.”

  I put the reticule on Bubbles the Serbian horse. How can Neda love this animal and not me? The horse just stares at me. It does not know what’s coming. How can such a mute thing fill my heart with so much noise? The horse doesn’t understand what it’s done to deserve any of this. It doesn’t understand what happened here, or what will happen. Well, I do. The day of reckoning has come. If Bubbles had any fucking brains, he’d know that. He’d run and leave the past behind in a cloud of dust.

  “Fuck this country,” I say, and pull the trigger. There’s an ear popping bang and the rocket grenade streaks forward like summer lightning. Way faster than in the movies. The horse doesn’t have time to watch the foreshortened projectile streak toward it and wave its hooves and scream, Noooooo! This is Serbia, not an LA movie set, so the horse just fucking explodes with a giant muddy boom. The middle part turns into a red mist and the back legs go cartwheeling off like two giant chicken wings dropped off a plate. Bubbles’ head spins away into the sky, a Catherine wheel made of blood and gracefully flowing mane.

  “Your horse goes pretty fast now, eh, Uncle Vlado?” I say, and put down the smoking rocket launcher. Vlado is bent double, grasping his sides and coughing out a wheezing hysterical laugh.

  Bubbles in the Drina was first published in PHUKET TATTOO: Crazy Tales of Far Away Places along with 15 other fantastic stories. You can find it on Amazon in ebook or paperback.

  Cœur du Dieu Mécanique

  Lannah Marshall

  Tick tock.

  Kello tapped a single copper finger against the smoky glass, but the plant inside the bell jar stayed perfectly still. So, she listened.

  Tick tock.

  Tick tock.

  Tick Tock chimed her little mechanical heart, but no sound issued from the plant within the bell jar.

  “Do not play with it,” said Master Pennifold from his desk. His hands were pressed against his balding head, fingers playing with his web-white hair, as he scanned the pages of his book. “It is the last of its kind.”

  Kello sat back, clockwork joints clicking as she rested her weight on her bronze heels. The plant still did not move, but it had grown since last night. It had a new shoot from its thick green stem, and its leaves had turned ever so slightly to face the single ray of sunlight in Master Pennifold’s study.

  It twisted upwards, tapering off into three thick leaves and a pinkish bulb. It looked like many of the plants in Master Pennifold’s books, all illustrated delicately to best portray their patterns and veins.

  Tick tock.

  Kello had no veins.

  Underneath her copper arm plates and beneath her porcelain mask, she was an ordered chaos of cords and bolts and joints. There were brackets here and there, and a spirit level somewhere to help her balance—but she had no veins.

  Master Pennifold grunted in his chair and flicked a page. His mood had been steadily declining throughout the day, with one or two bursts of energy during the course of his read. Something would catch his fancy, but result in nothing but mutterings.

  Kello pressed her finger against the glass. It made a sweet dink sound, and she knew that if she could smile, she would. The plant remained still, undisturbed by her presence. It did not have a face, not like she had a face; a labour of perfectionism inked onto porcelain. Permanent red lips and tiny silver lines from where the white paint had dried made her mask, but she had many other faces to choose from, should Master Pennifold tire of this one.

  Master Pennifold ripped a page from the book and worked his jaw, chew
ing on a thought as he stared at it. He grunted and crushed the page into a tight ball. Kello watched, placing her whole metal hand against the glass. It did not crease, but he’d promised her it would break if she pushed too hard.

  He threw the ball into the fireplace where it sizzled and hissed; smoking thick black clouds before bursting into a plume of blue-green fire.

  The glass was not warm, not how she knew flames to be. She had seen heavy black cauldrons smelt solid gold coins into puddles. Kello did not want to be a puddle.

  “You’ll never win,” he muttered from his desk. He flicked his hand out and reached for the long raven-black quill but knocked the inkwell onto the stone floor. He shot up, screaming into his clenched fists.

  Kello took the bell jar and backed into the shadows, watching him as he spat curses at the stain on the floor. His face had turned a new colour, a fantastical pink that spread to his ears—of all his shades, Kello liked this one the most.

  “Wretched crone!” he cried as he kicked out at his desk.

  Tick tock.

  “You stole everything from me!” His lips wet and frothy with spit.

  Kello trembled, rattling the glass in her hands, looking for the reason for his outrage. Yet, they were alone in his study. There was no one there but Master Pennifold, herself, and the plant in her arms.

  She had not stolen anything. Master Pennifold told her it was wrong to take what did not belong to her. He told her she could not own anything, as she was only a thing herself.

  Master Pennifold gave a guttural cry and slumped back into his chair. He pressed the bridge of his nose with his weathered fingers and sighed. “Why are you doing this to me?”

  Kello tilted her head. She had not moved.

  Master Pennifold turned and stared at her, his eyes narrowing, burrowing into the dark. He groaned and leant forward in his chair, fingers twirling as though conjuring up the words he was struggling to find.

  “What did I say about that plant, Kello?” he asked.

  Kello straightened. The glass clinked in her rattling hands.