A motorcycle pulled alongside the car, gliding to a stop, and Bogdanov, his head bent under the yawning lid of the trunk, looked over to see the goggled moon-face of a young partisan, shouting to him above the clatter. Okay, he’s coming, said the soldier, tossing the sweep of his golden hair back toward the city, and they studied each other for a moment, the youth’s expression obliquely curious and reassuring. Bogdanov, preoccupied, was uninterested in the implicit offer of an elucidation. Was death coming? Yes, probably so. He glanced politely over his shoulder at the empty road behind him, the hint of a distracted smile on his lips, and then returned his attention to the contents of the trunk. The soldier revved his engine and went ahead.
He unlocked a portmanteau and opened it like a sacred book to a text composed of Swiss francs and American dollars, stuffing the front pockets of his coat with banded packets of hundreds of dollars. Even drug-addled hooligans like these peasant soldiers knew a dollar was a dollar in every language, and in any hand money was strength, money lubricated intransigence and clouded moral choices and, like a pointed gun, invited men to rethink everything. He folded and relocked the portmanteau and, from its concealment under a throw rug, removed the shotgun and closed the trunk and went to the front of the car and spoke with the boy. Out, he said, close the door, stand right here, take the gun. You know how to use it, don’t you? You’ve seen men do it. Hold it like this, at your waist. These are the triggers, two of them. Pull one, then find your next target and pull the second one. Don’t aim, point. Stand right here and wait for your mother to return. If she doesn’t come and soldiers come you let them get close and then step out from behind the car and let them have it. You can do that? Yes? Good. Then run like hell into the fields.
Where’s my mother? Stjepan asked. What’s happened to her?
Nothing has happened, said Bogdanov, encouraged that the boy was not frightened but peevish. I’m going to get her now.
He searched in the car for the short iron bar cut to the length of his forearm and the loaded Luger pistol he kept beneath the seat, their cold familiar weight like a consensus between thought and action. The bar went up the left sleeve of his shirt, its lower tip secured in the leather band of his wristwatch; the Luger was hidden under his coattail between his belt and the small of his back, its muzzle playing coldly between the broad cheeks of his ass.
Wait here, he told the boy again, and marched back to the checkpoint, each resolute step multiplying the lethal potency of his raging sense of honor, which he knew to contain until the exact moment it would prove itself most effective against unthinkable odds—bad odds merely an inspiration to the quick-witted, and no quality found in a man’s character better defined the distance between winning and losing than self-control. Who’s coming? he chanted to himself. I’ll tell you who’s coming, Turk. The old fuck is coming. Boys, the lion is old and sleeping, but go ahead, kick him awake, see what happens. He will shit in your mother’s milk.
The last time he had killed a man he had broken his neck, but he did not intend to break the Bosnian captain’s neck. Good news, he called out, striding back toward the soldiers, who could not be bothered to peel their spellbound eyes away from the depraved spectacle of the captain and the woman, his groaning mouth nested in her hair, his red elastic cock bouncing from the fly of his pants, her dress torn open to her waist and her bra drooped into her lap, the captain with one hand fondling her left breast and the other fondling himself, half-erect, trying to jerk off.
Comrades, good news. New instructions from the colonel. I am to give you money. American dollars. How much do you want?
The three soldiers nearest to Bogdanov each found himself holding a two-inch stack of green currency, a magnetic wedge of good fortune driven into the wood of voyeurism, their uncomprehending expressions lighting up with generous increments of greed as they understood what was happening. Dollars, said Bogdanov. One hundreds. American. Go on, divide them up, and he spun away from the ensuing scramble and hurried with bloodthirsty enthusiasm toward the oak tree, waving the three remaining packets above his head—Captain, for you, American dollars. How much do you want?—and then the last few steps between them he came like a charging bear from the forest of his deception, unseen, single-minded, berserk.
Almighty Christ, he wanted to wring the life out of this Bosnian scum, who was not to be interrupted at any cost from his formidable depravity. You fucking animal, he panted, incredulous, trying to subdue the captain. Even in the vise of a choke hold, the iron bar in Bogdanov’s sleeve strapped fast against the captain’s windpipe, he would not quit masturbating. At the same instant the boy’s mother felt the weight of the driver added to the captain, who sank his unclipped fingernails into her breast and she screamed in pain, biting his knuckles, her hands prying at his as he strangled above her, his body bucking still and more rabidly against her. Bogdanov used his thumb to gouge an eye, applying every ounce of his strength to the bar, cutting off the man’s air and the captain, writhing in the throes of his perversion, spasmed warm pelts of his ejaculation down the pallid knobs of the woman’s backbone. For a moment his body rippled with the aftershock of its crime and then he slackened in the clutch of Bogdanov’s murderous rage, expiring in ecstasy.
When Bogdanov eased the pressure on his throat a blast from the captain’s elbow struck the pit of the old man’s stomach and suddenly they were off her, stumbling backward toward the fire, the captain’s head slinging froth and drool, pop-eyed, rearing and thrashing like a man with electrodes clipped to his balls. Gurgling, he clawed at the forearm crushing his windpipe, boots kicked off and legs swimming in the air, Bogdanov unable to free his right hand from the contest but then he did and out came the Luger from his belt and he began pistol-whipping the captain senseless in front of his men, an audience jaded beyond Bogdanov’s most optimistic expectation. Perhaps not surprisingly the captain’s men displayed a reservoir of tolerance for violent antics, counting money with a cynical lack of both urgency and loyalty, looking over occasionally to check the progress of the beating, in no hurry to rescue anyone.
Unnoticed coming toward them was the boy with the shotgun who stopped and stood transfixed by the sight of his mother seated at the piano, radiant in her nakedness. His memory would hold her in this pose, a vision that over the years his imagination would enshrine and render beatific, this image of his mother and her persecution and its torturous gift, a permanent and consuming secret excitement, hidden in the darkness of his soul.
She watched teardrops of blood weep from her breast onto the ivory keys, mesmerized, listening to a girlish voice in her head fretting about her performance, her inadequate interpretation of Pamina’s acquisition of strength, wanting to shame her for clumsy sequencing and phrasings not to mention forgetting the notes, her fingers convulsing with inchoate Mozart, three chords of one thing and three chords of another and somehow a trickle from Strauss’s Salome, growing perplexed by her inability to fit them together, unable to find the place in her mind where she kept the music that was the repertoire, precocious and virginal, of her adolescence, there at the headwaters of her self, now a turbulent cascade flowing nowhere. What’s happened? she asked herself, her fingers printing a gibberish of blood across the keys.
Marija, stop, Bogadnov said, breathing hard from his strenuous work. Get up, cover yourself. He supported the half-conscious captain with his forearm still clamped under his chin, the gun in Bogdanov’s right hand flat against his jaw. This man is my hostage, he yelled out.
Old man, we don’t give a shit, said a soldier. You’re both crazy bastards.
We’re Serbs and Croats, said another soldier. We’re sick of this Turk.
Go ahead, take the Sultan with you, said the first soldier. Give us the rest of the money and get out of here. The corporal picked up a rifle and raised it tentatively at the pair but took the advice of the soldier who had ridden the motorcycle now warning him that the co
lonel was coming, don’t get involved. The soldiers argued shares and Bogdanov helpfully reminded them of the packets he had dropped near the piano, extending the advantage he knew not to trust more than another few minutes.
Marija, please, hurry, said Bogdanov, his strength drained and the captain senseless in his arms. Pull up your dress and come. Boy, he ordered, get back to the car.
Horrified, she returned to life, looking around to find her son staring at her. Stjepan there with the soldiers, armed with a gun he could barely hold steady, watching her with a similar intensity as if he too found her to be an object of his nascent desire. She rehooked her bra and held the flap of her torn dress against her chest and rose from the bench shaking, furious at the child for being there, watching, fixated, absorbing her abasement, a little mascot to the men’s depravity. Go to the car! She made a beeline for him, screeching, as if the child were to blame for this nightmare. Goddamn you, I told you to stay in the car! and then she had him by the back of the neck, pushing him roughly back down the road, and he did not understand his mother’s anger and was terrified by its tornadic shift to hysteria.
At the car, she made him put down the shotgun and get the blood-stained washcloth she had held to his head. A filthy crow did his mess on me, she told the boy, scurrying to appease the shrillness in his mother’s voice. Take the rag and clean it off. And now, scrubbing his mother’s skin to a fiery pink, he understood the problem—somehow his mother had torn her dress and a bird had crapped on her back. Is it off? she said, her body beginning to heave with sobs. Is it off? she demanded, and he scrubbed harder and the two sedans came down the road from the city. Then he heard his godfather talking with the archbishop’s driver and shouting orders at the soldiers and walking back toward the two of them and Stjepan picked up the shotgun.
Boy, do you know how to use that? said the colonel, challenging Stjepan with a look of amused skepticism and then ignoring him to remove his linen jacket, Stjepan staring at the shoulder holster at the top of his withered left arm. He held the coat out to his mother, who seemed to slip into a trance and let her dress fall open and pulled down the blood-patched cup of her bra to make him see her breast’s crescent of throbbing welts. The colonel pinched his eyes closed, stroking the furrows of his forehead, and then opened them again. With his good arm and the stick of the other, he tried to help her, creating a strange, dipping minuet between the two of them, and like a child she let him guide her palsied arms into the sleeves and, fumbling one-handed, button up its front.
Marija, he said, I will give you back your dignity.
My dignity? she said, wagging her head ruefully. Your honor! Give that back to yourself.
He told the boy to come with him and her mind blinked off and she let them get halfway down the road toward the soldiers before she grasped his intention and ran to catch up and stop this madness, arguing frantically, Davor, he’s eight years old, he’s a child, dear God look at him he’s a baby, you cannot do this, I won’t allow it, Stjepan go back to the car, but the boy gave her a look that he wasn’t going to listen and with spite in his voice Davor replied that an hour ago she herself had sworn her son to vengeance against his own godfather. He stopped and shook his finger in her face and the boy continued walking. You want to raise the child as an assassin? he asked. Good. Let’s begin.
Davor, let him be, she implored. I forgive you.
With weary fatalism, Bogdanov hugged the captain from behind, uncertain of the changing circumstances. The stern-faced agents who had executed the priest in Karlovac had drawn their pistols but kept them lowered, waiting, and the soldiers stood penitent off in loose formation, also waiting, all eyes on the boy’s advance, wondering what this was about. Then the boy’s mother rushed forward to take the shotgun from him but he would not readily give it up and the colonel took it out of their hands and turned his scalding attention to the archbishop’s driver.
Bagman, you are standing on your grave. I suggest you move.
Bogdanov released the captain and stepped away and offered to surrender his pistol to one of the agents but the agent did not want it. The bloodied captain swayed on his feet, his head lolling but his eyes upraised with a slippery focus on the colonel, a lithe but plain-faced man who, before the war had bitten into him, would not have attracted much attention on metropolitan streets thronged with office workers and bureaucrats. Who is second-in-command? Starcevica asked. The question seemed innocuous enough. Here, said the churlish corporal, stepping out of the ranks, and the colonel ordered him arrested. The rest of you, he said, let me remind you that you are Tito’s men, and let me advise you of my disappointment in that fact.
Comrade Colonel, interrupted the captain.
This man is guilty of criminal dereliction, said Colonel Starcevica. Which of you will speak in his defense?
Comrade Colonel, said the captain, it’s like this. Allah and his prophet will not be joining us in the new Yugoslavia.
Comrade Captain, the colonel said thoughtfully, as though he found the pertinence of the captain’s observation worth considering. What business would Allah and his prophet have with the likes of you?
This is a mistake, said the captain sadly. Unacceptable.
Anyone? asked the colonel, addressing the platoon.
She is a Ustashe whore, said the captain with a disgusted laugh, pointing at Marija as she came up the road to stand behind Stjepan. Why all this trouble about a Ustashe whore?
The colonel told the boy that the Bosnian had dishonored his mother and must be punished and when he offered the child the gun Marija snatched it away, the driver obeying her shrill command to take her son back to the car. She took one step toward the captain, raising the shotgun to her shoulder, afraid to breathe.
One moment, please, said the captain, his arms bent at his side, palms up, to request the satisfaction of a final intimacy. He wanted to know the name of the wife of Kovacevic, her Christian name, but she could not answer and he asked the colonel—Comrade, may I know her name?—and finally he shrugged and resigned himself to the impenetrable silence of their judgment upon him.
Madame Kovacevic, thank you, he said, how beautiful the music, and she fired into his chest, the kickback from the double blast cracking her collarbone and throwing her to the ground.
Did I hit him? she asked, and Davor, looming over her, nodded with a worried look, helping her to her feet. When he began to lead her away she said Let me go, and went to examine her work and felt her hate transcendent, looking into the captain’s dying eyes, and she thanked God for granting a woman, a Croatian widow, this rare and exhilarating satisfaction of justice.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The grassy smells of midsummer, ashy shadows of carnage, pale sun. Hayricks, linden trees, a revival of orchards beyond the bone-jarring road. Bands of drunken but garrulous soldiers, drifting from one reprisal killing to another like holiday revelers. The solemn trudge of refugees into purgatory.
Fifty kilometers south of Karlovac, below the hilltop village of Slunj, the motorcycle stopped at an abandoned settlement of water millers. The self-important young partisan riding in its sidecar hopped out to tell Bogdanov he and his comrade were hungry and were going into town to find something to eat. Rest here by the river, he said with callow officiousness, until we return. Bogdanov parked in the overgrown yard of an old stone-walled mill and the boy got out to explore. Because the afternoon was warm and because he had spent his childhood jumping off the quays of Dubrovnik into the emerald Adriatic with all the other boys too young for war, Stjepan soon had his clothes off and was swimming in a pool between a foaming set of rapids, calling for the grown-ups to join him.
Bogdanov removed his suit coat and sat on the riverbank, watching the boy swim and listening to the sound of his carefree splash and laughter. How life skipped so quickly past death to seize small pleasures, and it seemed only yesterd
ay, no matter the season or weather, he had watched his sons frolic in the Sava River, practicing their father’s daily custom to exercise in water, the Sava or, when he made his rounds for the archbishop throughout the country, whatever nearby lake or river he could find. He had trained for the Olympics before the army put him in the trenches in 1914. He had taught his sons the sport of boxing, had taken them climbing in the Italian Alps. Even during the war he had hunted wild boar in the mountains, bringing the dressed carcasses out of the forest on his back. Never assume failure, Bogdanov had schooled his own boys, never accept the incompetence that festers from a weak, complacent will. Now his eldest son lay in a mass grave at Novi Sad, the second son assassinated by the mafia, and the youngest missing in action in the Ukraine, his daughter emigrated to Argentina and his grandchildren dead or among the rebels and his remaining loyalty parceled out to the ones left to save, the viscera of the Croatian phoenix, he had no doubt, to be reassembled by the future.
Marija remained in the car as she was, disheveled, remorseless, her body aching, spread out on the backseat with a fresh towel folded over her eyes and another under her head. When Davor Starcevica had walked her back to the car she recoiled from the excitement and awe in the boy’s eyes, the thrill of approval—Momma, did you kill the bastard!—and for the only time in her life she slapped him, hard and unrepentant. The colonel took care of him and that’s all there is to know, she told the boy. I never want to hear another word about it, and with nothing more to say to anyone she changed into the last dress she owned and lay down on the seat and covered her eyes and heard Bogdanov and Starcevica behind the car—You, old man, are going to give me something right now—and eventually Bogdanov got back in, striking a match to light a cigarette, and they left.
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