by Nicol Ljubic
“Drive. Drive off, they’ll jump away fast enough,” Ana whispered. He felt alarmed – naturally, who wouldn’t be in a situation like this? There were four of them and each one was physically stronger than he was. He wound the window down. As he did, he saw Ana close her eyes and clutch at the edge of her seat with her free hand.
The skinhead stared quizzically at him. Then he said, “Look, man, you screwed up. You admit that?” He reached into the car, opened the door and said: “Get out.”
Ana’s eyes were still closed.
What would happen if he didn’t get out, if he simply sat there?
“Come on, out.” The man’s voice sounded more aggressive now.
He got out.
“Good. Now, you apologise for what you did.”
He glanced into the car and realised that Ana was watching him from the passenger seat. He held onto the open door. “I’m really so…” His voice cracked and he had to clear his throat. “I am really sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” the skinhead asked, glancing at his mates.
He felt himself blush and glanced quickly up the road in the hope of seeing another car. “I’m really sorry,” he then said, “that I braked the car right in front of you.”
The big man in bomber jacket and boots scrutinised him. He can still remember that man’s gaze, his dark eyes. And he still remembers what he thought at the time: these eyes, with their hint of melancholy, don’t fit the scenario. The perception would stay with him, even though, a moment later, he saw only the cold stare of superiority.
“Where are you from?”
“Berlin.”
“What I mean is, are you German?”
“Why do you ask?”
“You look a bit like an Eyetie or a Yugo.”
He glanced at Ana. And said, “Yes, I am German.”
The man seemed to think this over. Then he looked at his mates and nodded in their direction. They all climbed into the Golf and drove off.
After a while, when the Golf was well out of sight, he got back inside. “I’m so sorry,” he said, without meeting Ana’s eyes.
And she said, “You shouldn’t have opened the window.”
The next witness, called once Ana’s mother left the courtroom, turns out to be male. Ana hasn’t come through that door. That’s enough for him. He has no idea who this man is, and isn’t interested. He takes off his headphones and leaves.
He walks to the beach and finds a place to sit in one of the many cafés, picking a seat from where he can look out over the sea. He orders a pot of tea and stays until darkness falls. Before he goes, he asks the waitress the way to the prison. She shrugs. But surely everyone in the world has heard of the Scheveningen prison for war criminals? “It must be somewhere nearby,” he says. “I guess so,” she replies, “but I’ve no idea.” She looks to be in her early twenties. “Have you never heard of the war crimes tribunal?” She picks up his cup and puts it on her tray. “Yes, I’ve heard of it.” She looks at him briefly. “Was there anything else?” He shakes his head.
It’s colder now, even though the wind has died down. He finds a hotel reception and asks for directions. The man behind the counter quickly checks him over. “You want the United Nations Detention Unit, right?” He nods. The man mentions a couple of street names, and then repeats them in the same order: Gevers Deynootweg, Zwolsestraat. There’s a bus, he adds, but it’s walking distance. Take the first on the left and go on until you come to the park, then walk through the park. Perhaps, he thinks, it would be better to wait until daylight, but he sets out anyway, in what he hopes is the right direction.
He has to ask twice on the way, but reaches the prison. Tall brick walls. It looks like a fortress. Walls protecting the inmates from the outside world.
He read in a book about the court that the prisoners, who are all charged with war crimes, have created their own private reality behind the walls. It is a world free from ethnic conflicts, where Serbs, Croats and Muslims cook and play games together, and sign birthday cards to each other’s relations. The members of this community have fought wars against each other, massacred people of one ethnicity or other, causing distrust among the survivors. Now they get on perfectly well together, as if they want to mock their victims’ suffering.
Šimić’s cell is somewhere inside this building. Fifteen square metres equipped with shower, WC, washbasin and table. He is allowed to use a computer, but not to connect it to the Internet. He can watch television in his native language, has access to a lending library and also courses in arts, languages or sciences. Perhaps Šimić sits there now with the others, having an evening meal in the kitchen. Or he might be reading quietly.
It occurs to him for the first time that Ana probably visited her father during the week she was away. That was the week just before they went to the seaside together. She never told him that she planned to travel anywhere. It was only when he asked her if she’d like to come along and see a friend on his birthday that she said she wouldn’t be around. He asked where she was going. Belgrade, she said, just for a few days. It disappointed him that she hadn’t let him know that she was going away, and so soon too. He pointed out that he could have come with her, if only she had told him earlier.
He imagines himself walking up to the prison gate to say that he would like to meet one of the inmates, because he has fallen in love with the man’s daughter. Perhaps he could write Šimić a letter and hand it in at the gate. But what would he write?
Herr Šimić, you don’t know me. I’m not even sure that you’re aware of my existence. Ana may have told you about me, as I got to know her in Berlin. Last February, I fell in love with her. I didn’t know then whose daughter she was.
She has told me a great deal about you. You read Shakespeare aloud to her and, in the summer, you used to take her for walks along the banks of the Drina. You taught her angling and how to kill a fish. You played Coltrane and Armstrong records for her, which inspired her to learn the trumpet. And you bought her one, which she played at home in the cellar.
You’re always a good man in the stories Ana tells about you. I admit there were times I wished you were my father. I fantasised about the day I would meet you for the first time. Do you know that Ana keeps a photograph of you on the wall next to her desk? It’s easy to see that Ana is your daughter. You have the same eyes.
I don’t know if you caught sight of me in the courtroom, but then, even if you had, how could you have known who I was? I doubt that Ana has shown you my photo. But I have been watching you during your trial.
When I listened to what you were charged with, I wished you weren’t who you are – I wished that the man in the dark suit, who toyed with his tie while a woman spoke of her family burning, was not Ana’s father. But I did observe your eyes.
Frankly, I don’t know why I’m writing to you. Is it because I hope that the whole thing is a misunderstanding and that you were not on the bridge at that particular time? Do I really want to know you? The prospect of meeting you frightens me.
I haven’t seen Ana for weeks now and it’s all because of you. You have come between us. But I still think of Ana all the time. Why do I write to you? Perhaps because I would like to know if Ana was mistaken about you.
He is cold and decides to take the bus back. What did he hope to gain by seeing the prison? He has no idea. But then the gate opens and a solitary figure, a woman, steps outside. In the poor light, he sees that she’s wearing a coat. A short woman, walking with her eyes fixed on the ground. She is coming towards him. As she crosses the street only a few metres away, he recognises her. Actually, he recognised her at once.
They are the only ones at the bus stop and their eyes meet briefly. She sits down, folding her hands in her lap. He can hardly take his eyes off her. The street light makes her look pale. Close-up, she looks younger than she seemed in the courtroom. He sees her hands, Ana’s hands, with their soft fingers, pale and fragile. The rest of her body is different from Ana’s. She is shorter, h
eavier, much plumper. Her stillness is different; there’s more tenseness in it.
Then there’s the sound of the bus and its headlights sweep across the stop. She goes to sit on an aisle seat near the back. He walks past her, but she takes no notice. He finds a seat two rows behind her.
She must hate it, he thinks, this city and all it stands for. Hate this bus, the houses we’re passing, the people who live here in a city that has taken away her husband and perhaps will never let him go. He doesn’t know what kind of sentences are meted out to men like Šimić, maybe he’ll get ten years or fifteen, or maybe he’ll spend the rest of his life locked up. He watches her. When the bus goes rounds a corner, she holds onto the edge of her seat and he sees her hand. There is a wedding ring on it.
“Mrs Šimić, would you please tell us when you married?”
“I’ve been married for thirty-five years. Thirty-five this year. The wedding was on the 12th of February 1970.”
“Tell us when your children were born.”
“Our son Milan was born on the 23rd of November 1972 and our daughter Ana on the 15th of June 1980.”
“Would you describe your marriage as happy?”
“Yes.”
“To this day?”
“Yes.”
The bus route crosses half the city. He isn’t sure what this journey is all about.
“My mother? Mum took care of the house. Cooked, did the laundry, cleaned. She ran a small shop once, but she gave it up after a while. Do I take after my mother in any way? Everyone has something of their mother in them. But what exactly do you want me to say? Why do you want to know? Why are you so interested?”
“You haven’t put her photo on the wall.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It just occurred to me.”
He recalls that Ana told him she and her mother didn’t speak much on that bus journey. Everyone on that bus was very quiet. The passengers were all women and children. Ana’s mother kept a plain white plastic bag on her lap, a bag from the baker’s shop. Once, she must have brought the bread home in it. Ana only learned later that there was soil in the bag, earth dug up in her mother’s garden.
There are so many questions to ask this woman. What is Ana doing? How is she? Where is she? Perhaps they could sit down and talk together in a café. Meanwhile, he stares out through the window at houses and parked cars.
She is almost outside when he leaps up, hurries to the door and manages to jump out just before it closes. What next?
Apart from the two of them, there is no one around. “Mrs Šimić.” He needs two attempts before his voice carries. She stops and turns round. Looks at him. He comes closer until he is one or two paces away from her.
“Mrs Šimić,” he says.
She only stares at him questioningly. He says, “I’m a friend of Ana’s.”
She still only looks at him, but nods when he says “Ana”.
“I got to know her in Berlin.”
She shrugs and now he realises that she doesn’t understand English. “Ana,” he says.
She nods again.
“Ana, fine?” he asks. “Dobro?”
She nods. Then she looks over her shoulder. She says something he doesn’t understand. Signs that she must get on. She turns, walks away, hesitatingly at first, then with a more determined step. He stands there for a while, looking after her.
“It wasn’t my mother’s fault that I was taken away. She didn’t want to be on that bus either.”
For her birthday, he baked honey cake. It was a Serb recipe he’d found in a cookbook. The cake, decorated with flowers of white icing, was beautifully presented in the photograph. Because it was his first ever cake, he underestimated the cost.
The first instruction was to stir the egg mixture in a bain-marie. He didn’t know what that meant. Once he had found out, he had to learn that the mixture sets when the water gets too hot. He rolled out the dough, trying to make six equally sized layers of the same thickness. Then, he had to distribute creamy filling over five of the layers and place the sixth on top. At the same time, he was meant to whip the egg whites to stiff peaks and add the syrup. “The whipped egg whites will puff up when they come into contact with the hot syrup,” the recipe said, but when he tried it, nothing of the kind occurred. The whites didn’t stiffen either. Desperate to make the icing set, he stuck the cake in the freezer compartment. He called his father and asked him to phone his sister in Karlovac for advice. It annoyed him that he couldn’t speak her language.
Hours later, the cake was ready, though it looked nothing like the picture. He hoped that Ana would recognise it as Honey Cake anyway, or at least understand how much hard work had gone into its creation.
They went dancing that evening. Or rather, she danced. Most of the time, he leant against the bar next to the dance floor and watched her merging into the dancing crowd, high on alcohol and music. He wished he could switch off that easily. At midnight, they met at the bar to drink her birthday toast. It was the night between the 14th of June. Only much later would he come to realise what a fateful date that was. On that night, sixteen years earlier, the Hasanović family had burnt to death. He wondered about this. Could it be anything more than an unfortunate coincidence? What connection could there possibly be between Ana’s birthday and that odious crime? None. But then, later on, he would feel that their champagne celebration was in some way improper.
She was still asleep when he quietly slipped out of bed to go into the kitchen and take the Honey Cake out of the fridge. It was decorated with his version of twenty-eight flowers made of icing. He spread out a white sheet close to the bed and placed the cake on it, together with a knife to cut it with and his gift, a box which looked the right size for a piece of jewellery.
She slept with her face resting on her hand. Even now, asleep, she seemed to hide her toes, one set squeezed in behind the other. He began to count the freckles on her face, trying to find the little one on her lower lip.
The first time he had woken up beside her, he wanted one of her freckles to be his and chose one on her lip. He asked her the word for “freckle”. It was something to do with summer and he still remembers the word – leto – but what was the other part? “Pega,” she said, “pega.” He stored the word away, as he did all the words she taught him. The word for “love” he learned later on – ljubav. He asked her and she said: “Is that right? You don’t know how to say ‘love’?” She shook her head in disbelief.
She blinked. Then she turned to lie on her back, opened her eyes and, once she had slowly become fully conscious, he said in English, “Happy Birthday.”
She sat up. “Look, a cake.”
“Can you see what it is?”
She examined the cake.
“A real Serb Honey Cake,” he told her.
“Somehow, I remembered it differently,” she said and blew him a kiss.
“Would you like some?”
She nodded and he cut her a slice.
“And what’s that?” she asked, pointing to the gift.
“That? It looks like a gift to me.”
He picked up the small box, handed it to her and sat down next to her on the bed.
She straightened up, looked at the package from all sides, shook it and said: “I can’t work out what it is.”
“You’ve got to work harder then,” he said.
She unwrapped it, put the tiny box on the palm of her hand and opened the lid. “What’s this?” she asked, holding a round pebble between her fingers.
“Smell it,” he told her. “The smell might remind you of somewhere.”
She lifted the small stone to her nose, sniffed it and shook her head.
“This isn’t any old pebble,” he said. “Getting it cost me a lot of effort and lots of phone calls. I had to persuade them to find me this stone – and most of the time we didn’t understand each other. This is a pebble…” he paused and looked into her eyes. “This is a pebble from Lumbarda Bay.”
“Ana,” he said. “I’d like to come with you to Lumbarda and the journey would be my gift to you.”
She stared at the pebble, then closed her hand around it.
He watched her face in profile. The ridge of her nose, so very straight, the high cheekbones, her lips pressed together.
She breathed in three times before she turned to him and asked, “When?”
He watches as, behind the glass, the court rises and the judges leave the room in an orderly file. By now, almost everyone else has left the public gallery and the guard glances at him reproachfully. He apologises and hands in his headphones.
He’s not sure what to do next and ponders whether to leave for the day or come back and follow the trial after the lunch break. Standing in the foyer, still deep in thought, he suddenly realises that someone is talking to him. It’s a young woman with short, dark hair, probably about his own age.
She tells him in English that she’s sure she saw him here yesterday, and asks if he’s following the entire Šimić trial. He nods, asking himself if he has noticed her before. But he can’t remember, so she probably sat in one of the rows behind him.
“I’m Aisha,” she says and they shake hands. She offers him a cigarette, but he declines. She asks where he’s from. Berlin, he says.
“Oh, good. Let’s speak German instead. Shall we go outside? I could do with some fresh air.”
He holds the door open. She walks down the few steps and then stops. Some of the other visitors leave, presumably off to lunch in the city.
“Why are you here?” she asks.
“I wanted to know what this sort of trial is like.”
“Are you a law student?”
“No, I’m not.”
“I’m pretty sure most of the people in there study law.”
“Have you been here from the start?”
“Yes.” She looks at him. “And you?”
“I was here during the first week. I came back the day before yesterday.”
