by Nicol Ljubic
He sought out a hotel on the shore. He wanted a room with a view of the sea. The receptionist asked him how long he would be staying, but he had no idea what to tell her. “I don’t know,” he said, “four nights, perhaps five. Perhaps more.”
The train stopped once, owing to “an accident involving a man on the line”, as the announcement put it. A man behind him had been outraged. People should top themselves at home, if that’s what they want, he said. There are plenty of ways to go about it. No one contradicted him.
They were kept waiting for an hour, stuck in the empty landscape. By the time the train finally started moving, the person who had killed himself had vanished from his thoughts. Everyone left thoughts of the dead man behind. Ana couldn’t do that, he suddenly realised. Forty-two dead bodies, forty-two anguished deaths. And now here is the accused, who keeps smoothing his tie. He was expecting another kind of man – someone broken, with grief-stricken eyes, pale skin and hollow cheeks.
He would like to know whether Ana would consider this an appropriate image. But they didn’t talk, and haven’t seen each other since. He doesn’t know if that was the end or not. He doesn’t know what had held her back, why she hadn’t told him earlier. Why couldn’t she confide in him? He often fails to understand why she decided to tell him anything at all.
Afterwards, during all of the last three weeks, he has tried to distance himself from her. And he tried to distance himself from her life story too, but soon found this impossible.
She didn’t know of his journey to The Hague. For a long time, he thought a great deal about whether or not he should go, but was persuaded in the end that it might be of use to him, to them both perhaps. It might at least help him to understand a little better. Now, after the first hour in court, he is doubtful. Instead, he is anguished by the thought that Ana might come to seem alien to him, and so too his love for her. For the first time, he is also fearful that he might find something appealing about that man, so obviously unmoved by his surroundings. Even if it were only some small thing, like an old man’s freckle on his forehead, a timid gesture, a brief attack of weakness, or perhaps simply something like the way he folded his handkerchief after blowing his nose.
The young witness has taken her seat in the courtroom, and her back in a mint-green cardigan is turned to the public gallery. Her black hair touches her shoulders. On the screen mounted above the protective glass, he can see her face with its scarred right side. She sits there, calm and collected, at least that is how she seems to the onlooker and he asks himself how this can be possible – how does she manage? She has kept her eyes averted from Šimić, and even when she entered the room, her gaze shifted immediately to find the chair where she was to sit.
The presiding judge asks her to stand to take the oath. She swears in the name of God to speak the truth and nothing but the truth. The judge tells her to sit down and hands the proceedings over to Mr Bloom, who rises and turns to his witness.
“I would like you to begin by stating the name of the community where you once lived.”
“I lived in Koritnik, six kilometres outside Višegrad.”
Her steady voice and brisk, firm delivery surprise him.
“How do you earn your livelihood?”
“I’m a nurse.”
“To what ethnic group do you belong?”
“I am a Muslim.”
“Please tell the court what happened on the morning of the 14th of June 1992.”
“One of our Serb neighbours had threatened us. We were all to be killed. That was why my parents decided to leave Koritnik”
“How many people were involved?”
“Altogether, almost fifty. I don’t know the exact number.”
“Was everyone in the group civilian?”
“Yes, everyone.”
The defence lawyers are back to shuffling notes, the judges slump in their seats. Šimić stares at the table in front of him. Mr Bloom glances at his documents.
“Did the group include a newborn infant?”
“Yes, it did. He had been born forty-eight hours earlier. My little brother.”
“Once you had arrived in Višegrad, where did you go?”
“We went to the police station. One of my uncles spoke to a policeman and told him that we wanted to find the Red Cross. The policeman informed him that the Red Cross was based in the hotel on the Drina, that we were to avoid the main street and stay together, all of us, but in twos.”
“What happened next?”
“When we reached the bridge, we met a man who told us that the buses had already left. He worked for the Red Cross, he said, and was dealing with the refugees. He added that he could take us to a place where we could stay the night. The buses would be back the following day.”
Mr Bloom pauses and looks at her fixedly.
“Do you think you would recognise the man if you were to see him again?”
“Yes, I’d recognise him. Only death could prevent me from doing that. The man is over there, that’s him.”
She gestures towards Šimić.
“Can you describe where in this room you see him?”
“Yes, I can. He is sitting on my left. I have not looked at him properly, so I cannot tell you what he is wearing. I would rather not see him at all.”
“I would like you to look at him now, please, and assure the court that this man you are referring to is indeed the same man whom you met on the 14th of June 1992.”
“He is seated behind that man there.”
“Can you describe his clothes?”
“Something brown, I think. It’s hard to be precise at this distance. Yes, it’s brown. By now, he is sixteen years older than he was. He was better-looking, then.”
She only casts a quick look at Šimić, hardly moves her head and avoids meeting his eyes.
What might have gone through her mind just then? He would have liked to know and so much wanted to ask her: what do you feel in the presence of this man?
Do you hate him?
But it’s not that simple, hate is a word, a powerless word if used by people who have not yet experienced what it’s like to hate. Hatred is different from love. One way or another, everyone has loved, but who would demand the right to judge the intensity of another love? I hate him because he has run off with my wife – yes, perhaps that’s a kind of hatred, but what word am I to use? I watched as my entire family was burnt to death. I heard their screams. To this day, I still hear them.
Tell me, what do you feel?
Everyone who asks about this wants to know what I feel. Do I feel anything but hatred?
And?
Listen, he didn’t keep his word. Maybe this is hard to understand, but that’s what I can’t help thinking about, all the time. Whenever I think of him at all.
Mr Bloom: “Your Honours, please note the witness’s identification of the defendant.”
Throughout, he has been listening to the voice of the English interpreter, a woman of indeterminate age, or so it seems to him. He imagines the interpreter following the trial in her sound-insulated booth. He tries to discern emotion in her voice – rage or grief – asking himself how she manages to translate all this without taking sides. He changes channel and listens to the witness. He can’t understand what she is saying, and yet it seems so familiar he believes he can recognise certain words. But she is speaking too quickly for him to make sense of what she says, and he changes back to the earlier channel. He needs the translation in order to understand her.
“Can you recall what the defendant told you all next?”
“Yes. He said that he was a Red Cross official and responsible for explaining to refugees that they were safe and should feel at ease. No one would be allowed to harm us and no one would try either. But he advised us to stay together as a group.”
“Did you observe him writing anything down?”
“He tore a sheet off a writing pad and wrote something down. I don’t know what it was. He handed the note to my uncle, who sh
owed it around. It apparently said that we were to be left alone and that no one should attack us. If anyone turned up, we were supposed to hand over the note.”
“After your arrival at the House by the Stream, did some men turn up?”
“Yes, about an hour later. We had prayed to God and cooked a meal, so it must have been an hour or so afterwards, but I couldn’t say exactly.”
“Did you recognise these men?”
“I didn’t dare to look at them. I heard their voices in front of the house, but only three of them came inside.
“I need to step away for a moment. Please excuse me.”
Mr Bloom turns to the judges, exchanges a few words and then the older, white-haired judge nods.
The witness straightens up, as if she has only just realised how much her body has sunk into itself while she was being questioned. Her shoulders were sagging and bending her forward; her head was sinking slightly. Absorbed by her voice and the determined look on her face, he failed to notice when her body began to contradict her expression. Now, she seems desperate for a short break to recover.
She takes the headphones off, closes her eyes for a moment and presses her fingertips against her temples. Twice, her shoulders heave visibly as she takes deep breaths. Then she puts the headphones back on and speaks again.
“When they came inside the house, one of them ordered us to go into the next room. He wanted cash. Money and gold. He pulled a knife from his boot and said: ‘I’ll use it if I find someone has kept back a single dinar. Get on with it.’”
“What happened next?”
“We went into another room and the adults put all their money and jewellery on a table. One of the men was sitting on an armchair with a shotgun in his lap. He called to three of us and said: ‘Get undressed.’”
“Were you one of the three?”
“Yes, I was.”
“Then, what?”
“He said: ‘Take your clothes off.’ I began to unbutton my blouse. Then I said: ‘I can’t carry on.’ He repeated: ‘Undress. Like that.’”
“You held up your index finger just now. Was that how the man gestured to you?”
She breathes in. He knows this from the way her shoulders move.
“Yes. He showed me his index finger and said: ‘You should be as naked as this finger.’”
Mr Bloom: “Please, continue.”
“I began to take off my underwear. I had to come over to stand in front of him, then turn around. He looked at me. After a while, he said: ‘Get dressed again!’”
“Where was the defendant at this time?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he was waiting outside.”
“Did one of the women refuse to take her clothes off?”
“Yes.”
“Who was that?”
“My mother.”
“What was done to her?”
“She had told the man that she didn’t intend to undress. But my aunt caught hold of her and I started unbuttoning her blouse. Together, we undressed her.”
The elderly lady who had been tearful earlier crosses herself.
“Were you all searched?”
“Yes. They searched everyone, even felt the children’s pockets. One mother had put some things made of gold in her little son’s pockets, I don’t know exactly, but anyway they found out and beat him.”
She makes as if hitting out with her fist.
Mr Bloom: “You show us a blow with your fist. Is that what the man did to the child?”
The witness: “Yes, it is. He hit the child in the face.”
Some of the public shake their heads. The woman next to him has stopped taking notes, her fingers rest on the pad, closed round the pen. For a moment, everyone seems still, quiet. Even the interpreter.
Šimić fiddles with his suit buttons, twisting them.
The prosecutor looks down, puts one sheet of paper on top of another, then turns back to his witness.
“Did the men return later?”
“Yes. Yes, of course they did. Had they not, I wouldn’t be here, talking about it all. I would be at home with my family instead.”
She looks at the prosecutor for the first time. Pulls her chair a little closer to the table.
“When the men returned – I mean, when the men came into the house for the second time, was it already dark outside? Was it night?”
“Yes, it was dark. Night-time. The children had already fallen asleep.”
“How were you alerted to the men’s return?”
“We heard a car pull up. As it swung round, the headlamps lit up the house. One of my aunts said: ‘They’ll do us all in. Hang us or set us on fire.’”
“Did you hear anyone pray?”
“Yes. My father was a religious man. He always told us to pray to God and ask for his salvation.”
“Did you pray, too?”
“Of course I did. But I had been looking around to work out how to save myself. I didn’t want to leave everything in God’s hands.”
“Would you please tell us what happened in the house?”
“That’s why I’m here. To tell the truth about my family.”
One of the defence lawyers stands up, shakes his head theatrically, and says, “Your Honours …”
But the presiding judge waves him away and turns to the witness.
“I have to ask you to keep your account limited to what happened inside the house. Anything else will, as you can see, be regarded as provocative.”
She nods.
“The door opened and instantly, the flames shot upwards, all different colours, red flames, blue and yellow ones, as if someone had been fanning the fire. I heard screams. The smoke was rising, so I turned my face away and ran to the window. I covered my mouth with one hand and used the other to hit the pane. I don’t remember how many times, at some point it broke but only in the same way as windscreens do. It didn’t come to bits. Then someone shoved me from behind and I was pushed straight through the pane. My mother shouted, ‘Run! Run!’ When I turned around, I saw my cousins trying to protect their small children, three children each and they were crying. And I saw my own baby brother and little Emilija, who was only nine. She sat holding her weeping brother on her lap. My mother shouted, ‘Run!’ But I couldn’t. Someone had thrown a hand grenade into the back of the house and shrapnel had struck my neck and head, and one hand – I couldn’t feel my body any longer. Then I heard my mother shout once more that I must run. I had fallen but somehow I got up and ran to the stream, where I crouched down to hide. I could see other people jumping out of windows, but the men noticed and shot them.”
For the first time, she reaches for the glass of water on her table. She sips, presses the glass against her lips for longer than necessary.
“How many times did you have to hit the windowpane before it broke?”
She puts the glass down.
“A few times, the glass was thick, though I thought it would be thin. Like ordinary glass, I mean. So I hit it quite a few times but I can’t tell you how many. I was so terrified.”
“How far was it to the stream?”
“Fifty metres. Maybe a hundred. If you’d like to know more precisely … I don’t know. I would really like to go back there just once, to see that house, even more than I’d want to see my parents’ house, where I lived for fourteen years.”
“Where did you hide after your flight from the house?”
“Under a small bridge. I spent the night there, in the water. While I was under the bridge I couldn’t see the house. I could hear the screaming, it went on for an hour or maybe two. The last scream was a woman’s.”
“You have injuries from that night. Can you describe to us what they are?”
“You only need to look at my hand and my face. What can I say? There was an explosion … my neck was hit, I was injured all over by the fragments, I had cuts everywhere.”
The prosecutor puts his papers in an orderly pile and nods to the judge.
While she was ben
ding over him, he started to tug at the zip of her anorak. Seen from above, it might have looked as if she were kissing him. But like her closed eyes, her lips were pressed together. She held his face between her cold hands. When he tried to kiss her, he could sense how she pulled gently away from him, how the pressure from her hands increased to prevent him from coming closer to her lips. He pulled the zip down instead, saw her pale throat with its soft curve and a wide section of her dark T-shirt, far too thin for the time of year. It looks like a river mouth, he thought. Pale skin, flowing down from the neck, spreading under the dark fabric. He loved this delta, would have loved to sink into it. He knew what would be revealed as he pulled the zip down a little more. He knew her body, every part of it, her shoulders where the bones were so easily felt, her wrists which he could circle with his thumb and finger, her small breasts that made him light-headed as he held them, pressed them, kneaded them, clung to them, losing all control, then her belly stretched flat between her hips and with a small navel, little more than a slit, in the middle. So warm was her belly, as though it held a power station within her; its heat surprised him every time. But her toes, her small, slightly crushed-looking toes, were very cold, as if all warmth vanished on the way down her legs; these legs of hers, so thin-looking when she stood naked in front of him, and yet men turned their heads in the street when she walked by in a short skirt. Her shins were blotchy, blue or brown in places, and didn’t match the rest of her body. He often wondered about the bruised areas, since he never saw her banging into the edge of the bed or the table legs.
Her eyes were still closed as he examined her pale skin and sensed the soft wind sweeping over her and making her shudder a little. He told her that he had never loved another woman as he loved her. He insisted that he loved every single thing about her and began to list what he meant. Then, on their day by the Baltic Sea, he did not tell her that she seemed utterly untouchable and that, for a moment, he had wondered if ever a man had made love to her, pushed into her body and held her down by her slender wrists. Then, he could not believe that he had done just this. Nor could he understand his desire for her body, a desire that was new to him. Afterwards, seeing how he had left marks on her skin, he would ask himself if he could possibly have caused her pain. This idea came back to alarm him, as he saw her bending over him with her anorak half-opened.
