The Dealer and the Dead

by Gerald Seymour

  That morning, he had asked Mladen to gather together the principals of the village, then had told them what had been fed back to him. They had heard him out in silence. Then, there had been a frantic round of applause. They had pumped his hand and slapped his shoulders, and the women had kissed his cheek. And none would have believed that Josip had no loyalties and owed no allegiance.

  After his release from gaol – after hardened criminals had hugged him, thanked him, wished him well and alliances had been confirmed – Josip had walked to the bus station and taken a slow stopping ride to Vinkovci. Then he had trekked for three hours until he had reached the village. His home was among the better preserved. It had a roof, it had some of the furniture that he and his wife had abandoned, and the dog was there, old and arthritic but well fed – cared for first by Serbs, then by Croat neighbours. He had slept there that night on the bare mattress. The dog had warmed to him, seeming to forget or forgive its abandonment of seven years, and had slept beside him.

  In the morning Josip had walked the length of the village, seen the wreckage of the battle, and had found Mladen. He had recognised a new authority, and had pledged that whatever skills he had were now at the village’s service. He wrote scores, literally, of letters to the telephone, electricity and water companies, requiring immediate reconnections. He bombarded the Zagreb and Osijek authorities with ferocious demands for every kuna of resettlement funding available. He became expert in extracting the most generous pension terms for those men who could justify entitlement as veterans, and understood the small print on the disability claim forms.

  Many in the village had despised him initially but had reluctantly changed their minds. Man for man, woman for woman, child for child, the village did better than its neighbours in Bogdanovci and Marinci, better even than the martyr city of Vukovar. Josip was a man of importance in the village, but he had learned in his cell block that he should not push himself forward. He had become an almost indispensable part of the village. He lived alone now, had not replaced the dog after its death, and he had never brought the mistress he kept in Vinkovci to the village. He lived off a percentage of the pensions and grants he had negotiated.

  If he had described himself, and not sold himself short, Josip would have said he was good-looking. He had a mane of thick grey hair that he wore long, a nose that seemed hawkish and good skin. He did not have the paunch of many in the village. He was not, as many were, a manic depressive, addicted to temperament-calming drugs or an alcoholic. He lived in the village because he could think of no better place where he – and his past – would be accepted.

  And he nurtured secrets. His grandfather had been a policeman in Split in the Ustaše days of the Second World War and had died hanging upside-down from a lamppost, his throat slit by partisans. His great-uncle had been a guard at the Jasenovac concentration and extermination camp and had fled via Trieste. He was thought to have gone to Paraguay but had never been heard of since.

  The angler came.

  His car had Osijek plates, but he would change them once a month, and his old Opel saloon every third month. The angler was an officer in the Service for the Protection of the Constitutional Order. With its recent past, and the ever-present threat of communal violence in Vukovar – Serb on Croat, Croat on Serb – the Služba Za Zaštitu Ustavnog Poretka retained an officer dedicated to clandestine surveillance of the community on the bend of the Danube. Josip had been recruited while he was still in gaol.

  There had been an Englishman in the gaol, sentenced for trafficking class-A drugs. He had shown Josip how to play two sides – had spoken of ‘hunting with the hare and the hounds’. In the name of Christ, the government had betrayed the town and the villages. He did not feel he did wrong and it was important, always, to have a protecting friend.

  Josip said softly to the officer of the SZUP – and did not see himself as Judas: ‘His name was Harvey Gillot. I do not have detailed knowledge. In payment of the debt, a contract has been taken and …’

  5

  Petar drove his Massey Ferguson. The tractor was pulling a trailer that might have been loaded with manure, corn or logs. The evening before, he had been out in his yard, using a power hose on the wheels, chassis and cab of the tractor, then the trailer. Both shone in the morning light. The trailer bore four coffins, each with the country’s flag spread over it.

  The four hearses had come from the hospital in Vukovar and had stopped at the village’s outskirts where, nineteen years before, there had been an anti-tank ditch, a roadblock, a felled oak and trenches for machine-guns. Tomislav would have been there with the Malyutka missiles, and would have had a good field of fire. From the hearses, the coffins had been lifted on to the trailer and Petar had pulled them to the part-rebuilt church that was on the village’s crossroads. A service had been held there, taken by a bishop who had travelled from Osijek and assured the congregation that these men were never to be forgotten as guardians of freedom. Hymns had been sung and prayers said; politicians from the region and from Vukovar had attended.

  Tomislav thought the singing had been subdued, that there had been little celebration of the lives lost. The local priest, who came every third week and whom they shared with other villages, walked briskly in front of the tractor. Tomislav was behind the trailer, in the front rank, a small terrier skipping beside him, held close on a length of baling twine. Alongside him were Petar’s wife, Andrija and the Widow. It was unusual for women to walk immediately behind the coffin of a loved one, but she had demanded it. There were no flowers on the trailer, not even a simple posy.

  He had wondered if his wife would come, if any of the other three children – now adults – that she had taken with her would want to be there. He had had no contact with any of them since they had left. His eldest boy had stood beside him as they walked away, a broad arm around his shoulders. Tomislav walked with a firm stride behind the coffin that carried the fleshless bones of his son. He was pleased his wife had not come.

  During the siege, he would have been regarded as the weapons expert. He was given control of the RPG-7 grenades – only eleven of them – that could be used at close range against armour. He would have had charge of the Malyutka missiles if they had been brought to the village. He had been a career soldier in the Yugoslav National Army, expert in warfare against tank and personnel-carrier attack, with the rank of senior sergeant, stariji vodnik. He had married a Serb girl, and when the war had started the years of marriage had meant nothing. He would have been able to use the Malyutka, the armour would have been kept back, the Cornfield Road would have stayed open and …

  The wheels of Petar’s trailer were clean but not oiled and they screeched. It was Tomislav who had persuaded the schoolteacher that the Malyutka would give the village and its untrained volunteers an edge in combat. Often, after the dog had arrived at his home, a tiny puppy licking his hand, he had told it why he had wanted the Malyutka and what he could have achieved with it. The dog had been told of the weight of the warhead, the range it could fly, how the line-of-sight command cable unravelled from the spool as it carried the handler’s signals, how far from the handler the ‘dead zone’ stretched, and the killing accuracy of manual command to line-of-sight control.

  At the pace the tractor went it would take them twenty minutes to get from the church to the new cemetery that was just short of where farmland fell to the river; the edge of the water-meadow was marked with signs, the red triangle and skull-and-crossbones symbol. He knew what had been done to his boy and Petar’s, to Andrija’s cousin and the teacher. All of those who mourned had been told. It was right that his wife and younger children had not come. The Serbs around the village in those ten weeks – the irregulars of Arkan’s scum – had known that the defence had been organised by a former senior sergeant in the regular army: Tomislav. Maybe his wife had told them – told her own – when she had reached their lines. And he was taunted at night with megaphones. Shouts boomed over the village that Tomislav’s wife opened her
legs to a warrant officer, a zastavnik, each night and a queue was waiting to service her. When the warrant officers had tired of her, the sergeants would take their place, then the corporals. They named one, a desetar, and yelled into the night that she would enjoy it when his turn came. Tomislav heard it, as did his eldest son. He could remember the night his son had smeared his face with mud for camouflage, had hugged him and disappeared into the night, dragging the handcart. He remembered the long wait and the reverberations of the explosions along the track through the corn as dawn was coming. He and others had been to the place the next evening, had found the crushed stems where many men had been, the cartridge cases and cigarette ends, the blood that the rain had not obliterated, but not the bodies.

  They came towards the cemetery.

  The whole village, every man, woman and child, walked with him – except Petar, who drove the tractor. Petar’s wife had come to Tomislav’s home last night, rooted in a drawer and found a shirt. She had brought it back an hour later, ironed and smart. He had been, as a senior sergeant, the best turned out in the regiment, and after he had left the military, to work as a car mechanic, he had always worn clean overalls. He had no best trousers now, no best jacket, no shoes that were not scuffed, and he had not shaved for three days. Little had remained for him to aim towards and hope for – but now he had a target for his hatred.

  Tomislav thought the killing of Harvey Gillot could go a small way towards lessening the pain that racked his mind. He had told his dog so. He yearned for news of a death.

  The tractor stopped beyond the gate, and men came forward to lift down the coffins. At the far end of the cemetery there were four heaps of fresh-turned earth. Tears ran down Tomislav’s face.

  Steyn said, ‘The one at the front is interesting.’

  ‘Which?’ Anders queried.

  ‘The man with the dog.’

  They stood inside the cemetery wall, backs against the brickwork, in clean shirts with ties, but no jackets. The sun seared them.

  ‘He’s the most interesting, and his son was cadaver number three – a tall boy.’

  The four coffins, now, were carried on shoulders. They looked, to Daniel Steyn, to be light loads. Some of the pallbearers used hospital walking-sticks. He knew of these men, survivors of the siege, mostly from word of mouth. The one he pointed out, Tomislav, carried the third coffin in the line on his left shoulder and steadied it with his right hand; in his left he held the dog’s string leash.

  ‘What’s interesting?’

  ‘He’s one of those patients that eminent men would fight over. They’d all want him in a consulting room on a couch … It’s about what war does. It was eighty days of his life and now he’s in his sixties, and everything about him today is shaped by those eleven weeks. He lost his wife and young children. He lost his eldest child too. Now he has nothing. First the cameras leave, and the arc-lights, then the politicians with the silver bands, then the money for restitution. This one, Tomislav, should have been better equipped than most to handle it. Not so.’

  ‘Men of great heroism – and women – held the lines here, in the other villages and the town. Ordinary people, blessed with courage, determination.’

  Steyn thought it appropriate that the Church, political and civic leaders had left, with a senior policeman from Vukovar and an army officer. They would not have been wanted in the cemetery. The local priest was a good source of information – anecdote or intelligence – over a small glass of Eagle Rare from the Buffalo Trace distillery in Kentucky, a hell of a drink and about the only luxury in Daniel Steyn’s life, shipped in by mail order. His friend, Anders, still had his cigar lit but cupped in his hand. The first of the coffins went down and dirt was thrown.

  ‘But the reward for the heroism and courage is the most acute form of clinical depression. Tomislav lives like a hermit – there’s no aftercare here. No acknowledgement of the symptoms. Suicide is not uncommon. They’re addicted to prescription benzodiazepines and alcohol abuse is so widespread as to be commonplace. Rakija is the home-brewed hooch. Putting it crudely, they need real help but it’s not available because no one gives a flying fuck about them.’

  ‘You’re not, Daniel, a sack of laughs.’

  The second coffin was lowered on ropes into its pit. Sweat ran in rivulets down Steyn’s back. All his clothes hung loose because he was losing weight and hadn’t the money to buy smaller sizes that would fit him better. He didn’t have new clothes because the European charity that supported his work had cut back on its commitment to the town and villages. He had managed to rent a room in his semi-detached house to a confectionary salesman, and scraped by. He ate little and the Eagle Rare was meanly poured for himself and special guests, although dog meal was plentiful for the undisciplined Irish setter he kept and loved. He shrugged. ‘It’s a backwater of Europe. It had a little moment in the spotlamp that didn’t last.’

  ‘What can a guy in his position – hit that hard – hope for? Heh, has to be some degree of hope. You think you can make a difference. Me, I’m arrogant enough to know I deliver something of value. When I’m working in mud, with the stench of decomposition and barbarity around me, I can take comfort from the importance of what I do. What does he have?’

  ‘Worse now.’ Steyn saw the third coffin go down and the ropes come back up, flapping. The priest’s voice carried softly. Tomislav, big, strong and quivering with weakness, had crouched beside the pit, then stood up, clutching a handful of soil. He rocked, opened his hand and allowed it to cascade down.

  ‘How come?’

  ‘His purpose in life was to see the minefield cleared and have the body recovered.’

  ‘Some don’t want that. Some want to continue in a sort of vague hope. They don’t want the digging done.’ Anders grimaced.

  ‘Not here.’ Steyn shook his head hard. ‘They knew the area where the bodies were. Now they have them. The bodies go into the ground, a stone is put up and the grave becomes a challenge: what can they focus on now? I’ll tell you. Who is responsible? Who is to blame? Who can be punished? Christ, you know your husband or your cousin or your son – your son – was alive when he was castrated and was still alive when his mouth was prised open and his organs were shoved in.’

  It was the Widow’s moment. Her lips moved but Steyn couldn’t hear what she said. Did she make a promise? He watched Tomislav, half a pace behind her. If he had had that man on the couch for a half-dozen sessions, opening his heart and baring his soul, he believed he would have been able to write a definitive paper on the long-term casualties of combat.

  ‘I repeat, Daniel, how is it worse?’

  ‘There cannot be peace until there is punishment of the individual responsible.’

  ‘Now I hear you.’

  ‘You played your part, Bill.’

  ‘I did.’ Anders was reflective.

  ‘You gave a name.’

  ‘Seemed the right thing to do.’

  ‘Maybe and maybe not.’ Steyn chuckled. They turned away – they wanted to be out of the cemetery before the villagers came through the gates. He said, flat, ‘But I doubt you’ll get the chance to ask him if it was right or wrong. Ask Harvey Gillot.’

  He said the name often. He said it aloud, Harvey Gillot, whispered it or mouthed it silently. Once he shouted it, and the name reverberated around his home, part of which Tomislav had turned into a shrine in memory of his boy, the others who had died in the siege and the men who had not survived the camps after capture. He kept the second bedroom, the hallway and the living room pristine and a candle always burned in the hallway. Pride of place went to his son, who had been allocated half of the living room. Photographs of him were there, portrait and childhood snaps, his sports teams; one showed him in khaki camouflage fatigues, with a cigarette lolling from his lower lip, an AK in one hand and his other arm draped around Petar’s son, his friend. When Tomislav had come back after the years in the refugee camp he had retrieved them from the biscuit tin he had buried in the garden during th
e last hours before the escape into the corn. There were many more photographs in the bedroom and the hall, with the remnants of the flag that had flown over the command bunker. It was ripped and scorched but Mladen had carried it in the final breakout. The sniper rifle that Andrija had used, the Dragunov, until a newer version had been recovered from a Cetnik’s corpse, was suspended from nails on a wall. Many weapons had been buried in the last hours and they had been retrieved now – rifles, a heavy machine-gun, pistols, deactivated hand grenades. All had been polished and the rust scoured off them. On the wall in the hallway he had the maps on which first Zoran and then Mladen had planned the village’s defence; there were charts of the Cornfield Road where it crossed the defence lines, and went south-west to Vinkovci and northeast to Vukovar. Tomislav’s map, with his proposals for where the Malyutka missiles could be fired from, was in the living room, beside the window, where he could see it from his chair. When he had shouted that name his eyes had been fixed on that chart.

  A call was made by an SZUP official from a government building near to the centre of Zagreb. It was received by the station head in a back room at the British embassy in the new city to the south of the railway station. A meeting was arranged.

  The official walked briskly from the building and went on past empty cafés and deserted boutiques. They were challenging times for his country, independent for less than two decades, in hock, with unemployment rising and organised crime the only flourishing industry. Friends were needed. Knowledge – intelligence – was the oil for friendships in his trade. The days when Croatian officials and British officers sparred for territory – protecting suspected war criminals and hunting alleged barbarians – were over. Clandestine co-operation was the new order of the day.