by Peter Barry
Complete control over another human being. Complete and utter control. With no ramifications, no consequences. No one to question what you do, no one to ever call you to account. Everyone else is doing it – it being everything and anything – so what does it matter if you do it too? Santo had said as much to me in my first month here; he’d told me about the anarchy.
What would you do with such complete control? What would I do now if I had Ms Diane here? Rape, torture, a lingering bloody murder with sharp knives – slicing, prying, picking, pricking – they all spring to mind, and not just for Ms Diane. Who is to say what you would do, what I would do, without restraint, with no lines drawn, no limits. Don’t throw the first stone, that’s for sure. Don’t set yourself up as being without sin, blameless, because you never know. You never know until you’ve been there. War never breeds the sanctimonious, that’s for sure. We’re all the same, not even deep down. We’re all the same on the surface, too. And you don’t know how you’ll behave until you’re there, until you experience war. You’ll only know yourself when you’ve observed yourself at times like these. Then you’ll understand how complicated people are, how they’re often contradictory, always surprising, never predictable.
In the shadows on the other side of the room Stevan sat, hands clutching a woman’s matted hair, forcing her face down onto his lap. I walked across and stood over him. He looked up, right at me, but didn’t see me. There was nothing sly about him now, no need to sidle; he was a different man. He looked demented, his eyes opaque, a crazy grin on his lips. He had retreated to somewhere deep behind his eyes. He was certainly not there in front of me.
I walked through to another room and saw red-haired Ranko stubbing, stubbing, stabbing his cigarette out on a woman’s breasts. She did not cry out, just gasped, almost as if with pleasure, or was it because she was beyond caring, beyond pain? There were marks all over her breasts, they were like wooden ashtrays, seared and sagging. These men had no imagination, so they copied each other. One man had used this woman as an ashtray, and every other man had come along and thought, ‘Ah yes, that’s a good idea. Why didn’t I think of that? I shall do the same.’ And now it was Ranko’s turn.
The men wanted to punish. They were here for their own gratification, but they wanted to inflict pain on others while they took their pleasure. That was their pleasure, to inflict pain on others. They were drunk, with alcohol, but also with bitterness and anger. They were beside themselves (beside themselves: where does that come from? Does it mean that they’re outside of themselves when they become emotional, standing beside themselves watching what’s going on?) – beside themselves with the desire for vengeance. They wanted to wreak havoc, to punish someone, anyone, another, for the situation in which they now found themselves. They were taut with anger, stiff and unyielding. The anger they felt for themselves was vented on another, elsewhere, with stiffened members. It was revenge. On women, on the blameless – because they’re blameless. Men felt their own suffering and now wanted others to suffer, especially women. Women were to blame for everything. Women were to blame for this, the farmhouse, here and now. It was their fault that they were here. They brought men into the world, so it was their fault they were here. This was no time to be petty, but yes, she was the first to eat the apple, too. Women subjugate men, if not brutally with words, then with tears, with silence, with whispers and caresses, with a look, even by their absence. They’re in control, no question about it, the whores. But not now, not here, not in control here and now. This was different. The tables had been turned. Now, they’re silent, they have been silenced. In every room I visited, they were pinioned, pinned down and ploughed, impaled by men who were no longer subservient, men who were brutally rampant. Termagants tamed by tumescent men. End of story.
I was in what used to be the kitchen. What were they cooking up here? It was probably the biggest room in the house. There was a fireplace in the middle of one wall, and the logs were crackling merrily. It was too homely, I thought. Men sat around the room drinking, their faces in shadow, their laughter muted. They jeered and leered. Some had women at their feet, discarded temporarily, until they were needed again. The women were all naked, although one or two held a piece of clothing to her breasts in a hopeless attempt at decency or modesty. They sat like Mary at the foot of the Cross, inconsolable. They were covered, coated, caked in mucus and slime, like animals, but not of their own choosing. The men were sanguinary, the room sanguinolent. A shriek of pain came from upstairs, interrupting all the sounds of the room I was in. The men looked up briefly before turning back to whatever they were doing. A few laughed, as if the scream might have been put on for their amusement. Two men were dragging a woman up the stairs at the far end of the room. Why bother to go to another room, I wondered. I saw Radomir, beautiful, boyish Radomir from the seminary, seated in a corner, alone, fingering his rosary. He was watching everything going on around him. A cynical, devilish smile on his handsome, angelic face, unaware of me. It’s impossible to know someone, I think – impossible. Impossible for a novelist to create such a character, or at least to make him believable.
Avram, slobbering, pushed a bottle into my hands and beckoned me to follow him. He went upstairs. I could go up there too, I told myself, simply to observe. I could watch. Could there be more to see? I could gather material. It would be research. It would be valuable experience.
I was not a character in a novel, at the mercy of an author, at his beck and call, a marionette of his mind. I was not a fiction, not a figment of someone’s imagination. I am the author. I am my own master – that’s what I told myself. And I made to follow Avram.
At the foot of the stairs, glimpsed through one of the kitchen doorways, was a woman. She resembled some road victim, horizontal, spread-eagled and in messy disarray. She was being pulled roughly by some fellow – manhandled – but it was as if she was anaesthetised against what was going on around her, even happening to her. It was like she wasn’t there. What really struck me was that in the split second she turned her head – so fleetingly I scarcely saw her – she saw right through me. I wasn’t attracted to her or anything, absolutely not. She wasn’t even good looking. Far from it, she was old enough to be my mother. It was the way she looked through me.
It was then I decided to walk out of the farmhouse and head back to camp. No one saw me leave, but that didn’t bother me. I was happy to be by myself.
I’d seen enough.
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Santo is beginning to bore me. In that respect also he’s like Mulqueeny. Just now, lying on his bunk across the room from me, he said. ‘Why did you not ask me to go to the farmhouse with you?’
I’d sensed that something had been bugging him. ‘You weren’t around.’
‘Why did you go with that arsehole Nikola?’
‘He was one of many.’
‘We’re friends, aren’t we? And friends do things together.’
It strikes me more and more that the man’s a fake. He doesn’t believe in what he’s doing. He’s too easily swayed by those around him, and everything he does – the sniping, the visits to the farmhouse, even his joking around – is all an act. I’ve seen his sort in the school playground: they go along with the other kids because it’s easier than standing up for their own beliefs. They pretend.
‘We are friends, aren’t we, Englishman?’
He sounded pathetic, but I was tired. I answered, without conviction, ‘Yes, sure.’
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A strange pastime I indulge in sometimes – another strange pastime of mine – is to go through the list of famous authors who have been rejected. They’re an elite club, of which I, also, am a proud member. I find it encouraging.
Watership Down was turned down by over twenty publishers. The L-Shaped Room was rejected time and time again, as was Lampedusa’s The Leopard. The Commitments was returned by so many people, Roddy Doyle eventually published the book himself – and it went on to become a best seller. Go
ne with the Wind was rejected eighteen times, as was – probably correctly in my opinion, Jonathan Livingston Seagull. The Naked and the Dead, one of my favourite novels, was returned to its author by no fewer than twenty publishers. Stephen King’s first five novels were all rejected, including Carrie. George Orwell (Animal Farm), James Joyce (Dubliners), D.H. Lawrence, Patrick White and even the great man himself, Count Leo Tolstoy, were all rejected at some time in their lives. Agatha Christie’s first novel was rejected by about seven publishers. She was supposedly so demoralised that she almost gave up. And in one of the most unbelievable mistakes of the modern era, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies was turned down by around twenty (that magic number again) publishers.
Those are just some of the novels on my list that weren’t recognised when they were first put out there on the market. There are many more. Those dismissive publishers must now – hopefully – be spewing with envy, self-loathing and regret. They’ll be tearing their eyes from their sockets for being so short-sighted. And they’ll be doing the same because of me one day. ‘Why didn’t we spot Zorec’s talent? It’s so obvious now, with hindsight. How could we have made the mistake of sending him so many rejection slips?’
I read an article recently in which a publisher mourned the good old days. He said that once it had been possible to judge a novel from the first page, but now, thanks to the proliferation of writing schools and creative writing courses, it was necessary to glance at a few more pages. He found this irksome – that was the word he used, irksome. ‘Everyone has a modicum of talent,’ I think was the way he put it.
What’s important is that I find my own unique voice. And I’ll find it here in Sarajevo. The sniper novelist hasn’t been done before, and that’s what will make me stand out. In a world gone crazy for novelty, peopled by the mentally deficient for whom the first page of a novel has become the equivalent of the ten-second sound bite, I will deliver.
Once I hatched plots to trap literary agents and publishers, like everyone else, from what I’ve heard. Should I leave a few blank pages after the first page? Should I insert an incredibly rude or crude message a few pages into the manuscript? Or a bribe? Should I insert something that they simply couldn’t ignore, which would tell me whether or not the manuscript had been properly studied?
I also imagined typing out a few pages of War and Peace, along with a synopsis of the plot, then submitting it to see if the manuscript was rejected. I considered doing the same with Hamlet and Ulysses. More to the point, if those books had never been published and were submitted cold now, today, would they be accepted, or would the authors simply receive a standard rejection slip? ‘Thank you for your submission, but your manuscript doesn’t fit with our current list.’ Maybe those particular submissions would be deemed of sufficient interest or merit to justify the inclusion of a few encouraging words with the rejection slips.
‘Dear William, Your Hamlet is interesting, but is it realistic to have the protagonist kill his own mother, and his uncle? Our reader also has concerns with the number of bodies at the end of your play: four altogether, with another two offstage. It doesn’t make for a happy ending, and our readers do like happy endings.’
‘Your novel (entitled War and Peace) is a most interesting story, but we have no place for historical novels on our list at present. (See attached submission guidelines for your future reference). Also, to be perfectly frank, we find your novel has too many long-winded and intrusive digressions about philosophy, agricultural management, politics and religion, which we feel hold up the flow of the story. We suggest you delete some, if not all of these sections, as you would then have a more marketable novel.’
‘We’re sorry, but none of our readers could understand your novel, Ulysses. (What are you on, do you mind us asking?) It might also prove a worthwhile exercise if you were to learn the basic rules of punctuation – especially towards the end of your book, where you seem to have given it up completely. We suggest you might benefit from investing in a copy of Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style.’
No, I’m not comparing myself to Tolstoy, Shakespeare or Joyce; just making a point.
The publisher’s reader, that’s the one I blame. What does he know? He sits in his musty bachelor pad (I’m incapable of imagining a reader having a partner), surrounded by manuscripts. There’s a general air of poverty about the place, resulting from his perpetual struggle to earn a crust. The study area is dilapidated. At one end of the cheap second-hand desk is an old computer, while at the other end a pile of unread manuscripts overflows onto the threadbare carpet. In the middle is an ashtray full of butts. The reader’s own manuscript, his baby, the ugly fruit of his withered loins, the bastard on which all his hopes rest, incubates in the computer.
Novelists manqué shouldn’t be doing this for a living. They shouldn’t be allowed to see the novels of their rivals. They shouldn’t be invited to pass comment, let alone criticise, the progeny of their competitors. What are they going to say, what? That this man is such a talent, much better than they, that his plot is excellent, his writing masterful and they’re generally in awe of his ability? Is that what they’re going to say? I think not. They may believe this, but they’re going to keep it to themselves if they do. Their mean little conniving, scheming minds will quickly work that one out. ‘Why should I assist him? Why should I give him a leg up when I can’t get published myself? Why should I hold out a supportive arm when all I get is rejection slips? Why should he be favoured, instead of me?’
A reader is more likely to help himself to my ideas than help me. Imagine reading a manuscript that has a great idea in it, a really good, original plot. If the reader chooses to reject it, even better, chooses to be scathing about it, and if – which is likely – he doesn’t see the book ever show up in the bookshops, he could pinch the idea for himself. Why even wait a couple of years? Why not change it around immediately: rewrite some of the characters, alter a few of the situations, put it all into his own words, and send it off to a publisher? Who could resist having that put down on a plate in front of him? Certainly not a cunning, two-faced, frustrated, bitter and twisted reader, that’s for certain. They’d be onto something like that quicker than they could burrow up a publisher’s backside.
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On 28 June, we celebrated the most important, if not the most sacred day of the year in this part of the world: Vidovdan. It’s in honour of the Battle of Kosovo back in 1389, when the Serbian kingdom was defeated by the Ottoman Empire. Today Milosevic still raves against the hated Muslims for the defeat at Kosovo six hundred years ago as much as he raves against the hated Croatians for siding with the Nazis just fifty years ago. Those are his twin justifications for all of this, for the siege, the war, the murder and mayhem. It’s revenge, no more, no less.
If there’s a higher interest, a worthwhile cause, can that be made to justify everything? These men hang onto their higher interests like little flags they wave in the air as they head off to slaughter their enemy. But are the people they’re fighting even the enemy? Some of them are attempting to slaughter their friends, some their own families, but if they’re carrying their little flags it doesn’t seem to matter. The slaughter itself is their raison d’être, this higher interest is their excuse.
It was strange to celebrate a defeat, but after endless glasses of Slivovitz, and barbecuing a whole pig over the fire, it did begin to seem sensible, natural, possibly even desirable.
I was also celebrating – without telling the others – the release, after several weeks, of some UN peacekeepers, amongst them some British men, who’d been used as human shields by Radovan Karadzic to prevent further NATO air strikes on Pale and Gorazda. I’m not aware of feeling any allegiance to my country of birth, so was puzzled that I felt any pleasure at their release. I’ll have to try to work that one out.
Despite all the camaraderie, the dancing and singing, the campsite is one of those crowded places that somehow manages to throw into sharp relief the so
litariness of man. I’m very aware that just to the north, on the other side of the hill, barely visible against the night sky, is a city, also crowded, silent and black, hiding in the darkness from us, making us feel even more secluded than we do already.
It certainly tends to dampen my feelings of jubilation.
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Early this morning I crawled to one of the apartment windows facing the city. I suspected I’d be the only sniper in position at such an hour. With luck I might catch a careless citizen out collecting water or bread, one of those who trusted that every Serbian sniper would still be asleep, nursing a Slivovitz hangover.
As I slowly raised Gilhooley – also up early and, as always, enthusiastic and keen to get down to work – above the window ledge, he was suddenly wrenched out of my hand and flew, doing a complete somersault, back across the room. I stared at him over my shoulder: the top of his head had been blown off and his dark glasses lay skew-whiff across his woollen face. I was shocked. As for the headmaster, he looked traumatised, possibly dead.
‘Mr Gilhooley, are you all right?’ I whispered. Inching my way back from the window, I picked up the stick on which his head had perched, also the damaged balaclava with articles of clothing now protruding from it. ‘Thanks, Gilhooley. That could’ve been me.’
‘I wish it had been,’ he said in his usual supercilious tone. He sighed. He sounded as if Fate had dealt him a poor hand.
Were those to be his last words, I wondered? It was certainly typical of him to be so self-preoccupied at such a time, not sparing a moment to consider my feelings, my miraculous escape from Death’s embrace. I grinned nevertheless, relieved that he was still alive. But he was in a bad way, with half his head missing and his pulse weak, if not non-existent.
