by J. C. Burke
‘My own people, Demon,’ he says. ‘They come looking for me. Not Bosniaks. Not Croats. Serbs. Serbs who live in Australia. Who be living here long, long time. Maybe Ozzie Serbs who go back to their country to fight war. I think they would like to see me.’
‘Why?’
‘In war you be soldier or you be traitor. I both. But I proud to be traitor not soldier.’
‘I don’t get it.’
Miro’s trying to slide a cigarette paper from the packet but his fingers are shaking too much.
‘Let me,’ I offer.
He slides the pouch of tobacco across the table. ‘You see my hand no good these days.’ Miro holds them up; the wide palms, the thick fingers nicked and scratched from pigging. ‘Once, I proud of my hands. Tanic men have big, strong hands.’ I see the boar in the back of the ute, it’s neck rotated. ‘Everyone in my village know this.’
I can feel him watching my fingers as I roll and slide the tobacco-filled paper.
‘There was one man in my village called Irham,’ Miro tells me. ‘We go to school together and play soccer. His sister Najwa very, very pretty. In summer times we swim and make jump off bridge together. I like that best because Najwa scared and hold my hand. Irham make best cigarette in my village. His mother and father grow tobacco leafs in garden. Irham bring leafs to me, chopped and fine ready for cigarette. Best quality.’
I pass the rollie to Miro. He doesn’t take it. Instead he opens his lips and I lean across the table, putting it in his mouth then striking the match for him.
‘Pour rakija for me, Demon.’
After I’ve filled his glass I stare into my lap so Miro can smoke his cigarette and sip his drink with dignity. I don’t look up until he starts talking again.
‘Last year of war I see Irham,’ he continues. ‘Irham living in camp with Moslems, Bosniaks. I ask if Najwa okay and he say, yes, she go to Germany. It is good. I am happy. Happy. But next day I digging grave and I see Irham dead.’
I sit there like a mute. I have nothing to offer Miro except to listen.
‘Dejan, my boss, he see me talk to Irham. He know Irham too. And Najwa. We all from same village. But we not his friends. Irham, Najwa and me, we think Dejan, pfff.’ Miro’s fingers flick the table like he’s brushing off an insect. ‘Like,’ he says. ‘Like fly. He steal from all our houses. We know this. But now, in war, he big bully boss and he do what he, he …’
Miro stops mid-sentence. The silence kills me. I stare at the orange tablecloth until it swirls and spins and hurts my eyes.
‘Bastard.’ Finally some noise. ‘Bastard!’ Miro thumps the table with each word. ‘Bastard! Bastard! BASTARD!’
Then he closes his eyes like he’s trying to compose himself, like he cannot speak another word until he does. But my eyes are open and I can see the tiny flare of his nostrils sucking up the air.
One of the dogs yawns. The tap outside drips. Apart from that it’s silent.
I fill my glass along with Miro’s. But he’s right, I can taste it now; it’s not his best rakija. Or would sweet tea even sit sour on my tongue tonight?
‘Miro,’ I whisper. ‘Miro, you, you don’t have to tell …’
Miro raises his hand to stop me. ‘Please, Demon. I must speak. I must. But it very hard for me to say these things. You must be patient.’ Now his eyes are open and he continues his story. ‘Dejan know Irham all his life. He could turn other way, let Irham escape into mountain. Into safe Moslem land. But instead he shoot Irham and he make me dig his grave. Many, many days I think I will kill him. But he not worth bullet in my gun. So I wait. Then, after war maybe two years, one man come to see me. He lawyer. He ask where Dejan is. They want him because he know many things about bigger fish. You understand what I say, Demon?’
‘I think so,’ I reply. ‘Did he want to make some sort of deal with you?’
‘No,’ replies Miro. ‘But I say I not speak unless protection for my family. If they lock me in prison or shoot me, I no care but I do for my family. You see, there no secrets in village. Everyone know if someone go to Hague. So that is deal I make and for first time I go on aeroplane, to Holland.’ Miro reaches for the brandy. This time his hand is steady as he pours. ‘Ah, we nearly finish.’ He holds up the brown bottle, swishing around the last drops of liquid. ‘It no problem. There more under bed.’
‘So you went all the way to The Hague to give evidence about this bloke Dejan?’
‘At Hague I wear best suit. It brown with small white stripe, very smart. I buy before war for wedding of my sister. But it too big now. I have to make hole in belt for my pants no fall down,’ Miro says, shaking his head as if this small detail amuses him. ‘Every day for two week I go to court. Every day I walk past big, big fountain – so much wasting water – and sit in room and answer many, many questions about what I do. But best bit is when judges ask what big bully boss do and where he live now.’
‘Did they find him?’
The points of Miro’s teeth pierce his tongue as he smiles. He picks up the bottle, raising it to me like a toast and says, ‘That why it make me happy to be traitor, not soldier, Demon.’
A yellow line of fat sits around the edge of our bowls. Pieces of beef and potato stick out of the stew’s gravy, which has turned to a glossy brown jelly. I have no stomach for food or drink. I haven’t even moved from the chair. I want to move. I want to get up and walk around the kitchen freely like Miro does but I can’t. It’s like my limbs are locked.
Miro’s drowning himself in plum rakija. He’s almost sung a whole Bon Jovi album. Now he staggers around the kitchen hugging the second bottle to his chest, singing ‘Bed of Roses’ in a mix of English and Serbian. But then, he has had years to digest what he’s told me tonight. He has slept and dreamt and lived it. Miro is right, my world is very different to his. I almost feel embarrassed, like I’m just some soft little white boy – a pussy.
Miro finishes the song with a dramatic crescendo then takes a bow. Again I clap, but my applause is growing thin. It’s time to get out of here. I can smell trouble.
‘Demon!’ Miro yells as though I’m all the way over at the water tank. ‘Is truth you no like Bon Jovi because of your father? Or is lie too?’ He’s standing over me, shouting the question in my face. I wait for him to walk away before I wipe the spit from my eye and answer.
‘No, that’s true about my father and Bon Jovi. He loved them. That’s why I hate them.’
‘Oooh,’ he moans. ‘I hope it lie.’
‘Well, it’s not.’
‘What your father’s favourite song?’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘We ask your mother.’
‘I don’t think that’d be a good idea,’ I mutter.
Now Miro’s back. He sits on the table, his foot kicking the leg of my chair. ‘But you like dog aaand,’ he says, pointing his finger in my face, ‘… aaand you no like to kill. Yes.’
‘So?’
‘You fat. You like my cooking.’ Miro grins. I’m trying to lean away from him but he reaches over, grabbing onto the neck of my t-shirt and almost lifting me out of the chair. ‘So no kill, scared of gun, love dog, fat,’ he’s saying, while the brandy in his other hand dribbles down my chest and into the waist of my jeans. ‘So you are just like him. Ti si isti kao on. I knew.’
‘Look, I don’t understand what you’re saying,’ I answer. My hand is on top of his. I want him to stop pulling at me. But Miro’s swaying left and right, twisting the top of my t-shirt into an enormous knot. ‘I think I should go.’
I try to stand up but Miro pushes me back into the chair. A fountain of rakija spills from the bottle. Now my t-shirt’s drenched and the brandy fumes make me want to gag.
‘Why you go?’ Miro says in a baby voice. He staggers over to the sink and drops the empty bottle in there. ‘You no my friend any more?’
‘No, Miro,’ I say. ‘It’s just time for me to go. Okay? It’s all good.’
‘You no like me because I tell truths.’
‘Miro. Everything’s fine. I just need to get home. Check on Mum.’
I’m standing up now, lifting the wet t-shirt away from my skin, trying hard to only breathe from my mouth.
‘We make salami, Demon?’ His hands are clasped in front of him and he leans into the shelves, peering up at me like a little boy. I’m smiling hard, trying to let Miro know that nothing’s changed between us. It would only take two steps and I could put my arms around him, tell him it’s okay. But I don’t because I’m afraid.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ I say. ‘Salami day.’
Miro turns his back like he can’t stomach the sight of me. He leans his torso over the sink and I wonder if he’s about to be sick. ‘Before you go, get bottle from under bed,’ Miro mumbles. ‘Thank you.’
I step out of the kitchen and into the night. A fine rain spits down on me like pins dropping from the sky. But I stand here a while because now, out of the kitchen, there’s space to breathe.
Sara trots up to me and nuzzles his wet nose against my palm. ‘Yeah, mate, I want to get out of here too,’ I tell him. ‘I’ll get the old man some more rakija and then I promise we are gone.’
Miro came back to the caravan for the second bottle of brandy, which must be the reason the clean piles of washing are scattered all over the bed. But that’s not it – why does this room feel completely different to how it felt a couple of hours ago? Is it because when I came into the caravan earlier tonight I thought I knew him, this person whose clothes were neatly folded?
For a while I sit on the bed among the socks and jeans. I’m looking around at the other things in the room, trying to know this man. But the place is almost bare. There’s a brass clock sitting on a shelf; the old wind-up variety, the hands frozen on five-thirty. Stuck on a mirror is a postcard of rolling green hills dotted with terracotta rooftops. There’s no sign of his family. No photo frames sitting on the dresser. No sou venirs of his past. Just the Rolling Stones t-shirt, and it’s still perfectly folded the way it was before.
I peel off my wet shirt and put it on. Then I squeeze into the gap between the wall and the bed and pull out another bottle of rakija.
‘Here we go,’ I say, walking into the kitchen and putting the third bottle on the table. Sara sits in the doorway, waiting for me. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
Miro still leans over the sink. His shoulders seem to rise and stay there a full minute before they fall and his breath escapes in a long sigh.
‘Are you okay?’
Miro turns around slowly, like an old man, gripping onto the counter to keep his balance. But when he sees me his forehead collapses into his face, dragging down his brows, a map of lines cutting across his skin.
The realisation comes so suddenly it’s like I’ve just been slapped across the face. The Rolling Stones t-shirt. The guy who Miro was with, the guy who took up so much space in the photo that I nearly didn’t see the AK-47s, was wearing this exact t-shirt except that in the picture it was black and new.
I freeze as Miro walks towards me in measured steps. His breath is thick with brandy and tobacco; I can feel it blowing into the hollow of my throat. Softly his fingertips brush across my face and I stop breathing. But his arm drops and he walks to the table.
‘There one story I not tell.’ His voice is soft, distant like he’s lost it somewhere inside of him. ‘And maybe, maybe we cannot really know each other until I tell you this. Sit. Please.’
He eases himself into the chair. ‘I know boy like you. Ti si isti kao on,’ he says again. ‘Just like you.’ On each finger he starts to list the similarities. ‘He fat. He young. He love dog. He scared of gun. He no like to kill. Just like you, Demon. But he like Bon Jovi and he like Rolling Stones.’
I tell him, ‘I’ve seen his photo.’
‘Ah yes. Photo in wallet.’
I nod.
‘I like Irham very much,’ Miro says. ‘I no happy when he die. But I go to Hague to get revenge on Dejan for much more than killing Irham and making me dig his grave.’
‘Was that Irham in the photo?’
‘No. It Pavle, boy I meet in war. Boy like you,’ says Miro. ‘Ti si isti kao on. Just like you.’
‘Is he the one that used to get the stomach-ache, from the beans?’
Miro chuckles. He sits back in the chair, folding his arms. His eyes are fixed not on me but on something just behind me. I’m not sure he sees me at all.
‘One day, it great day,’ Miro begins. ‘Pavle and me find pig. Can you believe, in middle of war, no food, no nothing, but we find pig and I shoot of course. Pavle won’t. No!’ Miro has found his voice. His words are falling out, toppling on each other like he’s been storing up this tale, patiently waiting for the right time to tell it. ‘We have few days off in village like holiday. No fighting, no hiding in hills like sniper or up all of night waiting for enemy. It like before war. We trade for some herbs and for using smoke house and Pavle and me, we make salami. Best salami ever. The first mouthful I taste was like melting but bit of spice. It very very good,’ Miro says. ‘You will see, Demon. You will like too.’ Then Miro asks me. ‘How much you think one packet of American cigarette cost on black market?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘You guess.’
‘I really have no idea.’
‘Fifty dollars. Not Ozzie, American dollar and this long, long time ago. We sell all salami we make for ten Marlboro cigarettes,’ he says.
I’m nodding but I’m not sure if it’s a good or bad trade.
Miro starts laughing. He throws his head back and claps his hands. ‘You know what Pavle say to me? He take one drag of smoke and he look at me and say, “Niko, we rip Bosniaks off. American cigarette taste much better than salami.”’
‘So what happened after that?’ I’ve lost interest in going home. I’m back settled in the chair waiting for the story to go on. ‘Did you and Pavle go back to the war?’
Suddenly it’s like a curtain goes down on Miro’s face, like the blue’s draining out of his eyes and he’s gone. ‘We return to Dejan and war.’ His voice is lost again, as if the sound is coming from the soles of his feet. I have to lean over the table to hear what he’s saying. ‘Two day later, Pavle die.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper.
‘Dejan play veeery loud techno music and we do what they say “cleaning up”.’ I quickly look down at the table so Miro doesn’t see me swallow. ‘It very bad. Very bad. So many men and boy. So many –’ Miro pauses. One hand is out in front of him as if he’s trying to find his balance. ‘Pavle, Pavle say he no shoot gun any more. He say to Dejan, enough. He even have blisters. He put down gun and go and sit under tree. I think he is crying. So I go to Pavle. I say to him we have to keep going or Dejan will kill us too. Then Dejan put down gun too and he tell Pavle, “Come with me.” They gone long time. Dejan come back but Pavle no come back.’
‘What? Are – are you saying?’ My mouth is dry, parched like I haven’t had a sip in days. It’s hard to form the words. ‘Are you saying Dejan – killed – him?’
My hands wrap around the sides of the chair. I can feel my heart beating, pounding against my ribcage.
‘Dejan no kill him. He beat Pavle. Beat him very bad. But he no finish job. I go looking for Pavle and I find him. He suffering, suffering so much. It terrible to see him like this. I kill Pavle. I give him peace.’
Miro sits there. His lips are pressed against his hands like he’s kissing them.
‘You tell me, moment before you die, that what make you most afraid,’ he whispers to me. ‘And I say to you, it darkest moment for everyone.’ His hands fall onto the table. ‘Now go home to your mother, Demon.’
THE KETTLE’S ALMOST BOILED. BUT I’m not getting up. Not yet. I’m sitting at the kitchen table fumbling with the pieces of Mum’s glass cat that broke when I slammed the front door.
Maybe Miro can help me fix it. He’s good with his hands. I saw the way he delicately stitched up Sara’s leg that night. Or should I
be calling him Niko?
I slide the broken pieces away and stare outside at the wet concrete. Finally the rain’s stopped and the only sound is the hiss of the water heating. There’s so much going on in my brain that’s it’s gone numb. Yet it’s not numb enough to let me sleep or stop certain words from lingering. Words like ‘cleaning up’ and ‘maybe you won’t want to be my friend’ and ‘I killed him’.
Since I left Miro’s place and drove down the long track back onto the highway, I’ve been careful not to dwell on such things. As I made the turn into Strathven and lightning flashed across the sleeping town, I promised myself that what Miro told me tonight would not change anything between us. Why should it? He has told me his secret like I told him mine.
The early birds have started up their morning song. It must be time to close my eyes and drift away from this world, if only for a little while. But will I sleep or will I just float in the space between?
Last night Miro said the words again: ‘It’s the darkest moment for everyone.’ Now I know what he really means and he’s right. The man that Steven and Billy Marshall shot, the man looking at me a split second before he died – that was my darkest moment.
When Miro sits by the water tank and stares out at the hills, when he kneels by the fire trying to stifle his screams – that’s who he must be thinking about. Pavle. Pavle and his darkest moment.
Miro said the dead are not forgotten; the dead follow, and he’s right about that too. The man they found floating down the Clancy River, I think he’s with me all the time. Sometimes he’s not so obvious. There may be a few hours or an afternoon when I don’t think of him or see his face. But he’s still there a few steps behind.
I remember Mrs Fryes calling for Princess Anne the First that night. She stood on the verandah calling and calling, banging the tin of cat food with a spoon.
People don’t just drop off the earth without anybody noticing. I’m sure of that now. We’re not forgettable. So who has reported this man missing? Is it his wife? His mother? They must wonder where he’s gone, wonder if it’s something they did to make him slip away like that.
