Killing Pilgrim

by Alen Mattich

  They dropped della Torre off at the police station on the edge of the old town. He showed his ID to the sergeant at the front desk, who immediately sat up. An UDBA document commanded fear and revulsion, like a tattooed face.

  The sergeant hadn’t been expecting him but sent della Torre up to the station captain’s office anyway. The captain hadn’t arrived yet, so della Torre made himself comfortable on the sofa after getting a uniformed secretary to make him a cup of coffee. It wasn’t a particularly nice coffee — too much sugar and too gritty — but at least the office’s upright fan worked. Della Torre had dozed off by the time the captain arrived.

  “Ah, Comrade della Torre,” he said twice before della Torre responded.

  Caught by surprise, della Torre couldn’t remember the captain’s name, so he just stood up and shook the man’s hand.

  “Captain, how good to see you. Hope you don’t mind that I made myself at home. One of your typists very kindly brewed up a cup of coffee. I’d been told to get here sharp or somebody’d be wearing my ears on a necklace,” della Torre said.

  “Very sorry. I’d have been in earlier, but I had to drive my wife down to Rovijn to see her sister, and by the time I’d picked up her order from the butcher’s and got it home, well, you know how it is.” He was flustered.

  Usually nothing very interesting happened in this part of the world. Mostly tourists getting into car accidents and the occasional theft. Specialist squads down in Pula or Rijeka dealt with the serious stuff, such as drug trafficking or crime rings, while political matters were left for the UDBA. Or had been.

  Della Torre shrugged. Both men stood there looking at each other for a while.

  “So, how is it in Zagreb?” the captain finally asked.

  “Gloomy. The war’s coming and nobody knows how to avoid it.”

  “Yes.” The captain nodded. “We’ve started losing tourists and gaining refugees. Something tells me they won’t be nearly as good for the economy. And it’ll make us busier.”

  Della Torre raised his hands in what he hoped was a sympathetic gesture. Though it could also have been taken to mean “So what?”

  They fell silent again. Della Torre really knew no way around the question, so he attacked it straight on.

  “You wouldn’t know why I’m here by any chance, would you?” he asked.

  “You don’t know?” the captain said.

  “No. Frankly, I was hoping you might tell me.”

  “I only got word last night that somebody from Zagreb would be coming sometime today,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “I wasn’t expecting anyone till the afternoon. They usually don’t come until the afternoon. Had I known it was you, I’d have arranged something. We could have met up over a coffee somewhere civilized, maybe brought the old girl along, you know how she likes to talk family. But she’s in Rovijn till Sunday.”

  Della Torre belatedly remembered that the captain’s wife was a distant cousin. Everybody in Istria seemed to be a cousin. Or married to one.

  “I’m sorry to have missed her.” Della Torre tried to remember whether he was sorry or not, but the woman wouldn’t come into focus. It probably meant she wasn’t too bad.

  “Actually, since you’re here, I might as well fill you in. You’re family and all, and I can trust you,” the captain said, though as he said it, he wiped his hand on his trouser leg and wouldn’t raise his eyes from della Torre’s Italian blue silk tie.

  He shut the office door and pulled out a couple of shot glasses and a bottle of homemade slivovitz from his filing cabinet.

  “I know it’s early, but a little sip can’t hurt, can it?”

  Della Torre acquiesced. It was traditional to have a swallow of something strong, coffee or alcohol or both, before sitting down to talk business. Whatever the time.

  “I’m not quite sure how to say this, but I think we’re being put into a difficult position here. A really hard one,” the captain said, the words inadvertently bumping up against each other.

  “Yes, I’m afraid it’s the same everywhere,” della Torre said. “Having to choose between Croatia and Yugoslavia — this new Shangri-La or the country you’ve been taught all your life is your homeland and which you’re sworn to defend.”

  The captain nodded in a slightly embarrassed way. “Yes. Yes, of course there’s that. But there’s something else too.”

  “Oh?” said della Torre.

  “Well, you see, they’ve been taking my officers, my policemen. Zagreb, that is . . .”

  “I guess they’re building up units for the war. Maybe, with God’s grace, we won’t need them. But we have to have an army when we’re being faced with the JNA,” della Torre said, trying to justify what was happening everywhere, the mobilization of Croat men. The JNA, Yugoslavia’s national army, would be a formidable enemy.

  “Oh, of course. That’s only right. We all have to muck in. No, it’s just that . . .”

  He paused.

  “That Poreč needs experienced senior officers to stay at their posts?” della Torre prompted.

  He was sympathetic. He’d have felt the same way as the middle-aged man in front of him. In fact, della Torre felt exactly as he suspected this other man did. Nobody wanted to go to war, to be in the sights of a Serbian machine-gunner. Here was a veteran cop, used to handing out parking tickets and signing insurance forms for Germans who’d had their cameras stolen. Not for B-movie heroics.

  But the captain bridled at della Torre’s implication.

  “No. It’s not what you think. If those people in Zagreb want me to do my patriotic duty, they can have me. My kids are all grown up, and hell, I might even be useful. I may not be a great leader of men but I can navigate bureaucratic bullshit, and unless things have changed from my national service days, there’s plenty of bullshit in the army,” he said. “No, the problem is they’re sending my men, Istrian boys, to the front lines and they’re filling the posts here with kids from Zagreb and out east. Connected kids, if you know what I mean. You look at their surnames and ask them a few questions, and the lot of them have a father or an uncle in Parliament or high up in government.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cast aspersions,” della Torre said.

  That the politicians in Zagreb were protecting their kin by giving them soft jobs well away from the action while making Istrians stand in their place was an ugly revelation, but maybe not surprising. If there was anywhere likely to stay safe from the impending war, it was Istria. The province had precious little strategic value except as a holiday resort, and no Serb population to speak of. And if things got too hot there, it was only a short ferry ride to Venice.

  “No, I can see why you thought I might be looking to . . . you know, to get out of army service. I mean, who wouldn’t,” the captain apologized in turn. “I know there’s nothing you can do about it. But it worries me. And it’s not just because they’re looking for a safe place to hide their sons. Zagreb doesn’t trust us. Maybe they sent you to listen for rumblings of discontent. I’ve spent the last thirty years in the force keeping my mouth shut. Hell, I kept it shut even before that, when I was a kid. But if we’re going to be a new country, if all those checkerboard flags are meant to mean something other than a new bunch of the same old, it’d be nice to feel that they weren’t operating the same way as the Communists. Beg pardon.” He excused himself, with a look of surprise and shock at what he’d just said.

  Once upon a time, talk like that would have been a ticket to Goli Otok. Would it still? And if not, what taboo would replace it? In a country where even jocular priests might say, offhandedly, “May God fuck your mother,” and mothers shout at their wayward children, “Your mother’s cunt,” what would be forbidden once people were allowed to slander the Party? Would turning your back on Croat nationalism get you shot?

  The policeman poured himself and della Torre another finger’s width and
then shrugged. “Maybe the next time you come here, there’ll be somebody else in this office. Maybe things really aren’t changing.”

  Della Torre nodded sadly. He knew the captain spoke the truth. There were high hopes that by gaining independence Croatia might prove to be more noble than the thoroughly rotten country it was seceding from. But the people who’d taken control of the Croat government were Communists from the old administration. The old crooks were being replaced by not-so-new ones. He’d noticed how one or two UDBA men, from the dirty parts of the service, had shown up in senior posts in the new Croat government. Istria would be used as a fief by whatever faction, whatever political interests came out on top. A rich, quiet province to be milked and used as the politicians wanted.

  “No one will hear anything from me. At least nothing that’s going to make your life any more difficult,” said della Torre. “I think I’m in the same position as you now. Dangling a little. They sent me here without even telling me why. Who knows what they’ll want from me when I get back.”

  The captain got the same woman to make them coffees and dig up some biscuits. The two men talked a little more about the upcoming grape harvest and whether the rains would hold off. But it was a distracted conversation, and before long the press of ordinary police business impinged.

  When they parted, della Torre held the man’s hand in his a long time and asked that the captain remember him to his wife. He meant it. They were family here.

  • • •

  When della Torre got to the restaurant, his father was sitting alone at a table with a bottle of beer in front of him. He was toying with roasted nuts in a small dish, slouched in his chair, looking old again, worn, staring into the distance across the harbour. Shipwrecked on that big covered terrace. The waterfront had been abandoned, like della Torre had never seen before, not in high summer. The only other people there were a couple of older Germans sitting in silence over their coffees a few tables away.

  “Oh, hello, Marko,” Piero said, looking up and noticing his son only at the last minute. “You get everything done?”

  “I don’t know. I’m really not sure what I was meant to be doing,” della Torre said honestly. “You’re alone?”

  “Well, Rebecca wanted a swim and I thought it’d be a good chance to get one or two things done in town.”

  “Where’d she go?”

  “St Nikola,” his father said, waving over to the pine-­covered island on the other side of the harbour. Years before, it had been taken over by German, Austrian, and Italian nudists. “She said she was swimming there and taking the midday boat back. She has a little waterproof rucksack that she swims with. Ingenious.”

  “She must have some stamina,” della Torre said.

  His father hemmed in answer.

  The waiter came over and della Torre ordered a lemonade. There was no point in getting tanked up this early in the day; he could still feel the afterburn of the slivovitz.

  “So what do you think it’s going to be, Dad?”

  “What?”

  “The thing you seem to spend your life on these days.” His father seemed unsure how to answer, so della Torre continued: “The state of the nation.”

  “Oh.” His father looked relieved at the question. He sat up a little, giving himself space to wave his hands around, which he did when he became animated by a subject of close personal interest. “They’ve let the Slovenes go, but Croatia’s another matter. The Serbs want all the Serbs in Croatia to be part of Greater Serbia, which means chopping the republic into bits, especially if they want access to the Adriatic. Which they do. The army is led mostly by Serbs, so it’ll go that way. Croatia hasn’t got a chance unless it can pull the Germans and the Americans into the fight. The Germans are supportive, but they won’t fight. The Americans would fight, but now that the Soviets are falling apart, they’re not so interested. The Russians will support the Serbs, though they’ve got plenty on their own plate.”

  “Will it be war?”

  “It is war. The only question is whether our dear and noble Croatian leaders roll over and allow the Serbs to take big chunks of Croat territory or whether they put up resistance. If they roll over, the crisis will keep flaring up for decades. If they put up a fight it’ll be quicker and bloodier. But the result will be the same, unless Croatia can get the Germans actively involved or make the Americans think it’s worth their while to help. The Americans might respond to being bribed. Except we have nothing to bribe them with. There’s no oil and not a hell of a lot else besides pretty scenery, and they have enough scenery of their own. We might be able to use moral suasion, but a lot of innocent people would have to die first before a sense of outrage forced the Americans to notice. Or we could try blackmail.”

  “Blackmail? You mean like catching the ambassador in a clinch with a male prostitute?”

  “Probably something bigger than that. But don’t ask me what. I can’t even imagine,” his father said with an elaborate shrug.

  “Maybe if we told them Elvis is still alive and living in a Belgrade brothel,” della Torre said.

  His father waved a hand at his son. “Don’t be absurd.”

  “Or that the Yugoslavs helped to fake the moon landings,” della Torre said.

  “Could you imagine if Yugoslavia had had a space program?” His father shook his head.

  “We’d be world experts in fireballs and crash landings.”

  “The space capsules would have all come with cigarette dispensers and ashtrays, and we’d have invented a way of propelling them with slivovitz,” his father added, throwing himself into the joke.

  “And when they got there, our astronauts would have spent their time trying to claim asylum so they didn’t have to come back. Though the lack of cafés might have put them off.” Della Torre called the waiter over and was met with a surly shrug. “Maybe we could threaten to destroy the American service industry by sending them all our waiters.”

  “Ah, well, they know how to smile in theory, that’s all that counts.”

  Della Torre grew more serious. “So we’re screwed one way or another,” he said. They’d had variations on this conversation for years.

  “These are the Balkans. The Balkans are always screwed,” Piero said.

  “I guess at least Istria will be fine.”

  “You think so? The Serbs might not take much of an interest, but when the Croats over there —” He waved his arm in the direction of the east. “— get pushed out of their lands, they’re going to want to go somewhere. And they’re going to want to find a new bunch of people to tell what to do.”

  “Yes. I got that message already this morning.”

  “Back when it was a struggle between Zagreb and Belgrade, they left us alone. Once Belgrade wins that particular fight, Zagreb will have plenty of time to devote itself to other problems. Besides, they’ll need to tax somebody. Look, you can see them over there. The Serbs.” The senior della Torre motioned towards the sea, where a warship sat silhouetted against the horizon.

  “Looks like a cruiser,” Rebecca said from behind them. Both men half stood from their chairs.

  “Dad said you were coming in on the midday boat.”

  “I decided to swim back. It was easy, no current and warm water. St Nikola was quite dull. Sea urchins and Mediterranean pines all get a bit samey after a while,” she said.

  “You mean one prick’s much like another,” della Torre said.

  Rebecca cocked her eyebrow. “Something like that,” she said.

  She took a towel out of a bag next to the senior della Torre, squeezed the water out of her hair, and then pulled on a long shirt.

  “Shall we order some food?” Piero said.

  When they got back to the house, della Torre decided on a shower and a siesta.

  His skin was dripping when he shut the door from the hall to the little room behind him.
With the shutters closed and a breath of cool air coming through the slats from the room next door, he was at last comfortable.

  He threw himself on the single bed. The springs complained under his weight.

  “So, did you get what you needed to do done this morning?”

  She was speaking from her room, though he could hear her clearly through the louvred door.

  “To tell you the truth, I’m not really sure what I was meant to be doing this morning,” he replied, hardly having to raise his voice above a normal tone.

  “They sent you all the way from Zagreb but didn’t tell you what they wanted you to do?”

  “No. I belong to the army now. So there’s going to be a lot more of this in my life.”

  “Didn’t you ask?”

  “Oh, I asked. They’ll probably send me back when they’ve remembered what they forgot to tell me. I don’t mind.”

  There was a silence.

  “You know, your picture doesn’t do you justice,” she said. “You’re even better looking in person.”

  “Ummm. Thanks,” he said.

  He was at a loss for which picture she could possibly be referring to. The only one on display in the house was the one his father had taken of him on his twelfth birthday. He was standing next to his mother at the university campus in Ohio where his father had taught. They’d been on their way to a restaurant for lunch, a rare treat. Or maybe coming back from it. It was his mother’s last photograph.

  The only other possibility was that Rebecca had found a passport-sized snap somewhere in the room, the kind that was used for official documents.

  “It’s pretty nice and cool in this room. Have you got air conditioning there?”

  “It’s fine,” he said. His heart started to beat a little faster.

  “Well, if you wanted to get a little . . . cooler, you’re welcome to join me.”

  “Thanks,” he said and after a huge effort of will, he added: “But I think I’d better not.”

  “If you change your mind . . .”

  She stopped talking after that. But he heard her moving on the bed regularly and breathing in time. She made a sound like a suppressed cough. He lay there, willing Rebecca to say something to him. Eventually he spoke to her, but it was too late. She was asleep.