I Hate Martin Amis et al.

by Peter Barry

  ‘Zorec. Milan Zorec.’

  ‘Ah yes.’

  I sat down in my chair and gazed around me. I was pleased with myself, I was making progress. I was one up on all the other writers whose works lay scattered in various piles around the office.

  Everything was quiet. Outside the window was the distant, perpetual drone of London traffic. A patch of dull grey sky was sewn onto the gap between the top of the window and the roof of the building opposite. Someone in the street below shouted, and I could hear the distinctive sound of a lorry reversing. I picked up the nearest manuscript. It was written by someone in Sussex – Horsham, I think. It was called The Barking Cat. I hated the title. The synopsis started off something like: ‘My book is about a bunch of New York Mafiosi who go with their wives and children for a holiday in London.’ It didn’t sound too promising, but then anything that starts, ‘My book is about …’ isn’t going to sound promising. I didn’t understand the significance of the title, nor the connection with the Mafiosi. I flicked to the first page. ‘Luigi pumped the London cabbie for his life story, but hadn’t reckoned on the famous British reserve.’ I threw the manuscript back on its pile. I agreed with that particular decision of Mr Mulqueeny and his gang of readers: instant rejection. Too obvious. My book was much better than that.

  The literary agent came back into the room. He still looked very nervous. He had nothing in his hands. ‘Diane is looking out your reader’s report. Of course, you have to appreciate the report is confidential. You understand we can’t give you the name of the person who read your book.’

  ‘Why not? I only want to talk to him.’

  ‘It’s out of the question, I’m afraid. We have to preserve our readers’ anonymity.’

  ‘It’s not that I want to argue with him or anything. I simply want to hear where he thought I went wrong.’

  ‘I can tell you that, but I absolutely cannot give you a name and address. Some of our would-be authors get quite upset when their manuscripts are rejected.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  He smiled faintly and his eyes flickered to the broken vase on the floor.

  A few minutes later there was a commotion in reception. A door banged, and there were voices. A few seconds later the receptionist came tentatively into the office, followed closely by two policemen. Mr Mulqueeny looked at me quizzically, waiting to see my reaction, then gave a quick smile and shrug as if to say, What else could I have done – you gave me no other option. I should have realised. I stared at the two policemen. I was angry with myself for not having foreseen him acting in such an idiotic manner.

  He rose to his feet. ‘This man is quite crazy. He threw that vase at me – look at my trousers! And all over these manuscripts. And now he’s threatening me.’ He preened himself, pleased to have survived what he perceived as his ordeal, and yet I hadn’t done half of what I’d imagined doing. The policemen asked me to accompany them down to the station. I shrugged. One of them even produced some handcuffs. I said they weren’t necessary. He looked disappointed.

  As we were leaving his office, Mr Mulqueeny called out to me. I turned. ‘The person who read your book by the way – I think you should know – she said you had a mediocre talent. She also said: “I feel I’ve read this before.” Those were her exact words, Mr Zorec – that your book was hardly original.’ Like a child who has reached the sanctuary of ‘home’ and is intent on baiting his playmates, he grinned at me from behind his desk. I almost expected him to stick out his tongue and say ‘Nyah nyah ni nyah-nyah!’ If the police hadn’t been there I might have killed him at that moment. He was lucky.

  When we walked through the reception area, the girl behind the desk, Diane, standing next to the young man, started to giggle. She had her hand up to her mouth. She was fucking laughing at me. I’d have killed her on the spot, too, if the police hadn’t been there.

  So I ended up in prison, in a police cell. I spent the night cooling my heels – now where does that expression come from? I had to share the cell with a drunk driver and a down-and-out (who stank). I was released in the morning because Mr Mulqueeny didn’t press charges: he’d simply wanted me removed from his office. I was cautioned not to go anywhere near the literary agent’s offices again. For a time I toyed with the idea of going back. I imagined what I’d do to them all. The Oxbridge graduate never featured greatly in these daydreams; I’d simply shoot him. Mr Mulqueeny I’d tie to his chair while I fucked his receptionist, Ms Diane, the one who’d laughed at me, on his desk in front of him, amongst all the rejected manuscripts. Then I’d kill the literary agent by stuffing manuscripts down his throat and up his backside and setting fire to them. They wouldn’t have seen any of that before, oh no. In fact the only reason I didn’t do any of this was because I suspected there was a strong likelihood of being caught, and I didn’t want to spend years in prison for such worthless people. Especially not then, after the idea of going to Sarajevo came to me.

  But for awhile I dreamt of getting that receptionist back, of giving her a warm reception, of getting my revenge on Ms Diane. I’d make sure she wasn’t so quick to laugh at me in the future, that was for sure.

  Back to Contents

  There’s the definite feel of a finale about the scene, as if soon the curtain will fall and the audience – us up in the hills – will be able to go home. The war has reached its autumnal stage. It has grown into a tragedy, even though I’ve grown to regard it more and more as a comedy – of errors. The war is flawed, it’s a lost cause, the siege has reached the point of terminal decline. I’m reminded of the final day of a school term, with everyone preparing to leave. The kids’ minds (if kids can be said to possess such a thing) are elsewhere, the work has been pushed to one side.

  Today, 29 August, I returned to the Vraca memorial park camp in the evening to be told that thirty-eight people had been killed in Sarajevo’s main marketplace, the Makale. It’s the same marketplace where sixty-nine people were killed in another mortar attack about eighteen months ago. The funny thing is, it’s supposed to be a safe area. So much for the UN.

  I gather we’re blaming the enemy – and why not? That’s how it’s done nowadays: you commit an atrocity, then tell the world’s media that the enemy killed themselves for the publicity, to try to win the sympathy vote. I’ve never understood this dodging of responsibility for one’s actions; to me it doesn’t make sense. If you commit an atrocity, why not admit to it? When that Pan Am jet was blown up over Lockerbie, everyone ran around denying they’d done it. But someone must have done it, and been proud to have done it, so what’s the point in remaining silent? If you feel so strongly about a cause that you’re willing to blow up a planeload of people, but refuse, once you have the world’s undivided attention, to admit you did it, why place the bomb in the first place? The IRA always admits to its bombings, and I like that. ‘Yeah, sure enough, pal, it was us that did it. We put that bomb in the pub that killed eight people and maimed fourteen others, and we’re more than happy to admit it.’ That kind of talk makes sense to me.

  The rumour is that one of the batteries on the eastern side of the city lobbed the offending mortar into the marketplace. The question, if anyone can be bothered to either ask or answer it, is: were they ordered to fire at the innocent people out shopping, or did some bored artilleryman fire the shell into the marketplace to liven things up? For what it’s worth, I think Mladic gave the order. He may even have fired the gun himself. It’s pure Ratko, exactly the kind of thing he loves doing. Killing people is his forte, and a whole crowd of shoppers in a market would have had special appeal.

  Around the campfire they were all talking about the marketplace slaughter. Something different had happened, and the men regarded it as a break from the usual routine. Like me, they were pointing out that Mladic always concentrates his guns on civilian targets. He’s been doing it for the past three years, telling his soldiers to shoot only where there’s flesh. What they do, in fact, is no different to what I and the other snipers do e
very day. It’s all relative. No one objects if a team of snipers succeeds in killing thirty-eight people in a day, but when a mortar does the same thing, everyone gets upset. Can someone explain the difference to me? Once, when Mladic was visiting camp, I heard him say, ‘It’s the quickest way to get them to surrender. Kill the ordinary people and it’ll cause such an outcry it will make them give up the city. Anyway,’ he added, winking at one of his aides, ‘that’s exactly what they are, ordinary, so what does it matter?’ I don’t understand why everyone feels the need to discuss this Makale thing endlessly. It’s as if they’re determined to justify their actions. I don’t see any need for that. It doesn’t worry me at all if there’s little reason and no excuse for what I’m doing. Why should it? Mallory climbed Everest because it was there. I’m killing the inhabitants of this city for the same reason – because they’re there.

  Nikola, as usual, was disagreeing with everyone. ‘Just the day before the Makale bomb, that pig Richard Holbrooke said he’d bomb us to the negotiating table. That’s what he said: ‘I’ll bomb the Serbs to the negotiating table.’ So it’s obvious enough he did this. He wants the world to hate us even more than they do already by making out we bombed those shoppers. One day he says that, and the very next day the market is shelled. And the following day US planes just happen to be ready to bomb us back to the Stone Age – to punish us. That’s the word they used: to punish us. It’s too much of a coincidence.’ The men who were listening to him wavered, like the crowd in Julius Caesar, many of them nodding and muttering that he could be right. The giant, Bukus, who’d wandered over to listen to the discussion, shook his head impatiently and shouted, ‘Fuck the lot of them, that’s what I say. Who’s coming up to the farmhouse?’ And he strode off, obviously having more important things on his mind than politics.

  Nikola blames the disaster on international public opinion. He says the UN, the US, the UK and Europe, who have all stood by and done nothing over the past few years, have now said enough’s enough. Those mealy-mouthed spectators are becoming impatient with the Serbs. There’s been too much bloodshed, that’s their opinion. It strikes me as a bit late for the appeasers, the Western powers, to get upset about the amount of blood that’s been spilt. They’ve sat on their hands and been humiliated by Serbia for as long as I can remember, so why show concern now? Maybe they have a limit to the amount of blood they’ll allow to be spilt. Like nine hundred gallons is OK, but one thousand gallons, that’s too much. The bombing of the marketplace was a mistake – if we did it. We pushed them too far. There’s been such an outcry about ‘the barbarians besieging the city’ that the West now feels obliged to take action. They can no longer afford to keep their heads buried in the sand. The British, the Americans and the Europeans are finally realising that you can’t remain uninvolved, can’t negotiate, can’t say, ‘Hey, let’s sit down and chat about this,’ with people like Milosevic, Mladic and Karadzic. Those three individuals are up to their elbows in blood and still busy, busy, busy killing their enemies and turning their backs on the peace conference.

  That doesn’t mean I’m not upset now that the UN has started to bomb us. Luckily, I’m not in Grbavica. It’s bearing the brunt of the UN bombing runs. I’ve spent much of the day looking across the city as the jets streak overhead, holding my breath until, a few seconds later, there’s an explosion and smoke erupts from within the huddle of buildings. They’re bombing other positions around the city too, but less severely. I hope they don’t hit the big farmhouse.

  I wonder what Mladic and Radovan Karadzic will do. To start with, it might be a good idea if they talked together. It’s being said they hate each other now, Mladic calling the President a corrupt war profiteer and refusing to talk to anyone but Milosevic. He’s also promised, without consulting Karadzic, that if the UN bombs our positions around Sarajevo then he’ll bomb London. Great, I think, fantastic! That would be interesting, although I can’t see Milosevic agreeing to such a manoeuvre, even if they’re capable of it. Mind you, if it did happen, I’d immediately write to Bridgette and tell her that the bombing raids had been arranged by me in the hope of wiping her off the face of the map, blowing her and her creative right out of their bed – the ultimate lover’s revenge. She’s so naive she’d probably believe me. And then, of course, there’s also Ms Diane …

  One thing for sure is that the beast of war is out there, loose in the land. I can feel it. There’s blackness everywhere, the rumbling of God knows what, like something out of Conrad: anarchy, the breakdown of the rule of law, men roaming the land slaughtering each other amongst smoking ruins. The horror, the horror!

  I recall Santo, many months ago, muttering something about how we all believe we’re good until a war starts, but it’s only when it does that we truly find out who we are, only then that we know for certain whether we’re good or bad.

  ‘There’s a wild beast in all of us, Milan,’ he said, half turning to rest a hand on my shoulder, as if to make sure I didn’t escape the truth he was about to reveal, ‘and most of us are only too happy to let it out if we do not have to answer for its actions.’

  When the barriers come down, that’s what he was saying, when the restrictions, rules and laws are removed, when we have no one to answer to but ourselves, that’s the time when we find out the kind of person we are.

  Me, I think I’m bad. It’s not necessarily some amazing insight, but I think that’s the kind of person I am – bad. And now’s the time to prove it to myself.

  Back to Contents

  Yesterday morning, without telling anyone, I returned to my place in the forest, back with my neighbour, Mr Stinky. And that evening I made my move. I left a few things in the tent I knew I wouldn’t need – amongst them my notebooks and The Information. I put enough food for one night into my rucksack, and headed back to Grbavica, to the less busy, easterly edge of the suburb. I moved into an apartment on the sixth floor of a block. It meant I could see further, but also that I was further from my targets, not that I was too concerned by that.

  Today, a little before noon, I started downstairs. I moved in a dream, my mind quite blank, as if hypnotised. I carried only my rifle. Because the stairs were at the back of the building, facing towards the mountains, I was out of sight of any enemy snipers in the city. At the foot of the stairwell I paused. No one was to be seen. I edged along the outside of the apartment block and stopped at the corner. About fifty yards away, on a slight elevation, was a bungalow. It must have been quite grand once upon a time, with its extensive gardens and small driveway, but the surrounding walls were now mostly destroyed, and the garden was bare of everything except weeds. Between myself and the house was open, rough ground that offered virtually no cover. To my right was a minor road that ran around the lower slopes of Mount Trebevic until it joined the main road to Pale. Scarcely anyone used it nowadays: for the locals it was too close to the front line, and for the besiegers there were better, less exposed roads that would take them in the same direction. There was little chance I’d be seen from this road. I crouched low and ran across the open ground, stopping only when I was directly behind the bungalow. I realised one of our snipers was inside, although I didn’t know who. The building was low, the gaping window holes perfectly aligned with the city streets below. It was a great position for sniping. There was no sign of activity, but then one hardly expected to see or hear any signs of life coming from a sniper’s eyrie. I knew it would be unlikely for anyone inside to be looking out the back, unless he happened to be taking a break. A sniper wouldn’t worry about any activity from that direction, that was for sure – his own side, his supposed friends, were behind him. The ground fell away before me, not steeply but gradually, to another apartment building, very similar to the one I’d just left, and my destination. I walked, almost casually, my rifle at my side. The road had veered away to the right and I was out of sight of any snipers in the city. Momentarily, I relaxed. Once I was close to the rear of the apartments I became more cautious. From here I knew it
was dangerous territory: reaching where I wanted to be meant exposing myself briefly on two sides. The main danger was from UN and Bosnian snipers in the city, who observed these buildings and the surrounding ground continually. There was also the man himself. If he recognised me I’d be safe, but if he mistook me for one of the enemy he’d kill me without a second thought. There was also possible danger from a third source: if the guns behind me, in the mountains, got their calibrations wrong and a shell fell short of the front line, it could land right on top of me. It had happened before. It wasn’t likely, and there was nothing I could do about it anyway, so there was little point worrying.

  I wanted to get to an area about a hundred yards diagonally in front of the block of apartments in which he was positioned. It was in a kind of no man’s land down near the river. I knew the layout of the ground there: it was riddled with ruined outhouses, sheds and bushes. Shell craters, mud, weeds and rusting machinery lay in between. If I made it that far, there’d be plenty of cover, but it was reaching there that was the risk.

  I was feeling very calm. I skirted around the back of the apartments, keeping some distance between myself and the building, and ducked behind a hedge. Bent double, I made my way to the end of the hedge, crouched down and waited. Twenty yards away, across rough ground, was a wooden shed – or the remains of one. Only a few planks of wood still stood upright on each of its four sides. If it hadn’t been situated in such a dangerous spot, it would have disappeared completely by now, used as firewood. I ran across to it. For a fleeting moment I wondered if this was worth the risk, and the possibility entered my head that I’d gone mad. My main worry, of course, was that he wouldn’t be there. I knew it was his favourite sniping spot, but I also knew he moved around quite a bit rather than stay in the same place every day. That would risk drawing attention to himself.