by Douglas Hurd
Yaroslav soon discovered that Vukovar had not been gloriously recaptured by the Croatian army, as they had been led to believe in Split. It was true that the town and surrounding area, together called Eastern Slavonia, would return to Croat administration next New Year’s Day. The national chequered flag already hung limply here and there in anticipation. But for the present under the Dayton Agreement the district was directly run by the UN and the joint Serb/Croat police force which the UN had recruited. The UN headquarters had been established next to the overgrown Jewish cemetery on the edge of Vukovar. Yaroslav made friends with the elderly crippled Croat who sold melons and fizzy drinks from a stall opposite the barrier at the headquarters entrance. The blue helmets were good customers off duty, and the old man held a revolving fund of gossip about the camp and its ways. When they needed to fill a job from the local community the UN first posted a notice in Serbo-Croat on a board alongside the sentry box which also provided information about the hours of water and electricity rationing and (in the early months) of curfew. Within an hour or so the same vacancy would be broadcast on the local UN-run radio and would be filled within minutes, given that unemployment in Vukovar stood at eighty per cent. The advantage lay with the qualified applicant who actually read the notice-board and presented himself in advance of the broadcast. In this way, after ten days back home Yaroslav was recruited as assistant mechanic for the varied and mostly ancient UN vehicle fleet. He was still less than he had been, a municipal engineer, but definitely more than a waiter.
Maria was not as pleased at the news as Yaroslav had hoped.
‘Good,’ she said, but there was no smile. She was scraping a large purple rough-leafed cabbage which was all the market had offered that morning. Stefan was well enough, but for fear of mines she did not let him run about in the garden. For the same reason Yaroslav had left it as a wilderness. Yaroslav knew that Maria was thinking of the crèche at Split, of Stefan toddling happily with the other babies, of the occasional orange or banana she had been allowed from the larder of the Bella Vista Hotel, an institution which in retrospect gained daily in splendour.
That night Yaroslav could not sleep, partly because of the stifling heat, partly because he worried about his wife’s worries. They were lucky of course, compared to so many others – alive, housed, reasonably fed. He knew she had been upset by the stories of houses set on fire, and by the way the Serbs had fouled and scribbled blasphemies on the walls of the church at the end of the road. She had glimpsed a wider world, even in that dreary hotel on the Adriatic, and could not reconcile herself to the fears and hatreds of Vukovar. He watched her face turned towards him on the pillow. Moonlight touched her cheek, and added to his melancholy.
A noise in the garden took him to the window. They had nothing much to lose, but a burglar would not know this. What he saw at the end of the garden made no sense. A burly man was in the corner, near the wreck of the old tool-shed, digging quickly. The clink of his spade against a stone had alerted Yaroslav through the open window. He moved quickly down the stairs, thinking hard. Could the man be laying a mine, but why? More likely looking for something buried, a hidden possession, a body perhaps, though this village had seen less slaughter than Vukovar itself. Yaroslav had no gun, but took from behind the door the big cudgel which he had cut for Maria so that she would have some defence in his absence. His bare feet made no noise on the garden path. The big man turned, but not in time. Yaroslav hit and tripped him in the same movement before the intruder had time to raise his spade in self defence. He fell heavily, striking his head on a stone and losing consciousness for a minute. Yaroslav felt almost comic anticlimax as he looked around for an explanation. No land mine, no treasure, no corpse – just a trickle of white new potatoes from the torn soil.
The first potatoes,’ said the big man as he came round at Yaroslav’s feet. ‘In the eyes of God they are mine.’
‘Who are you?’
‘I planted them in the spring.’ He raised himself on his elbow, showing no fear.
‘You are the man who lived here?’
‘My children have no food now.’
‘But you went back to Knin.’
The Serb laughed and made to rise.
‘Stay there,’ said Yaroslav, raising his stick.
The Serb got up regardless.
‘My name is Boris. I will not fight a man for potatoes.’
‘You never went back to Knin.’
‘What is at Knin? The ruin of my house which the Croat soldiers burnt to the ground. Three fields of stones, a wood. The graves of my murdered parents. It is my duty to tend the graves, and avenge the deaths. But my first duty is to my living family. There is nothing for them at Knin.’
‘So?’
‘So we live in a shack I built in the wood beyond the churchyard. The bushes are thick there, and the authorities have not found us. There are six families there now.’
Yaroslav thought. Serb outcasts at the end of the street would be bad enemies. Already there was talk of the extremist White Eagle militia preparing to renew the war once the UN left. Anyway, he liked the man.
‘You may keep the potatoes if you answer me a question.’
‘I will try.’
‘Are there mines in the garden?’
‘Mines – here?’
‘Some families have bought mines cheap and laid them to protect their chickens from thieves.’
‘Do you take me for a savage?’
‘You did not cultivate the garden, though you are a farmer.’
‘We Serbs are too proud to dig. They gave me two fields and some old cows.’
‘The cows are gone?’
‘We live on the money I got for them.’
Later, back on the moonlit bed, Yaroslav was glad that at least men no longer killed each other for a kilo of new potatoes.
Because he worked for the UN Yaroslav had advance notice of the entertainment which the UN organised three days later in the football stadium between their village and the town. All children, Serb and Croat and Ruthene, were invited with their parents. The advertisement boldly proclaimed free ice cream and frankfurters. Yaroslav knew that the frankfurters had been flown in at great expense from a big American base in Germany. The sun shone. The stadium was only two thirds full. Despite the attractions and the sunshine, many in Vukovar were simply not yet ready for light-hearted fun with foreigners or (even trickier) with each other. The UN Administrator, Jacques Klein, had been a reserve American general. From this career he had preserved a taste for organised showmanship which he used that day to good effect. Stefan, held up by his mother, watched in admiration as the Administrator entered the stadium in a carriage drawn by four horses, preceded by a resplendent band of Pakistani pipers. He was accompanied by a silver-haired man who had, it was said, once been British Foreign Minister. The Administrator solemnly welcomed the crowd and declared the entertainment open.
For two hours Yaroslav, Maria and Stefan enjoyed themselves in a way that was entirely new to them. There were swings, merry-go-rounds and slides. Russian special troops loaded structures of brick on to the chests of their comrades. Ukrainian paratroopers swayed down from the skies. Serb and Croat children danced in their national costumes. They performed separately, but the rush for the frankfurters was in common.
Stefan was becoming tired, his face well smeared with tomato ketchup. The family decided to turn for home. As they moved towards the stadium exit Yaroslav recognised the Serb Boris bustling towards him.
‘There has been a fire in your house,’ Boris exclaimed, mopping the sweat from his forehead.
Maria gave a cry.
‘Do not worry, lady,’ said Boris. ‘We saw the men, and my children and I took water from your well. There is some damage, but the fire is out.’
‘This is the man who lived in our house,’ explained Yaroslav, but Maria was out of hearing, dragging Stefan behind her as she hurried towards what she supposed to be the realisation of her worst fears. For Maria so far th
ere was no reason to suppose that their lives would stop their downhill slide. So she was genuinely surprised to find their house standing and undamaged. The water from the big buckets which Boris and his grown-up sons had used had swamped the small carpet in the living room. Their half-broken sofa was badly charred and still smoking. So were the small heaps of straw which the arsonists had used to start the fire.
‘They must have known you would go to the UN entertainment, so the house would be empty.’
‘But how did you happen to be so close? The fire had hardly begun.’
Boris conferred in a whisper with his eldest son, then turned back to Yaroslav.
‘We of course could not go to the stadium. We are non-people, registered now only in Knin. If anyone in authority had seen us … So for us also it was a good opportunity to come to your home again.’
‘To do what?’
‘Do not be stupid, Yaroslav. Please think clearly. After all, why should we come with large buckets to your garden?’
‘There are still potatoes down by the tool-shed.’
‘Exactly. Carrots also, and perhaps a few beans if they are not smothered by the weeds. We are still hungry.’
Maria could not follow any of this. Yaroslav had not told her of the battle of the new potatoes. She looked at Boris with deep suspicion. He was unshaven and there were tears in his coat.
‘But who set our house on fire?’ she asked accusingly.
None of them had noticed that their schoolteacher neighbour, the sardonic Serb, had joined the group.
‘I can answer that. They were three youths, wearing White Eagle armbands. They were, I think, drunk. They broke into the house and lit the straw but ran as soon as they saw this man and his sons approaching. The UN police came quickly and caught them in the road a hundred metres beyond my house.’
‘But how did the police know so quickly what was happening?’ asked Yaroslav.
‘You forget that I have a telephone,’ said the teacher proudly.
‘You rang the police?’ Yaroslav was remembering the teacher’s comment on the earlier fire.
This time, yes, this time I rang them.’ The teacher’s glasses again gleamed. ‘I thought that by now it was time to end such foolishness and lock up those drunken idiots.’
That evening Yaroslav and Maria discussed over and over again every aspect of the day’s events as they mopped and cleaned the house. Finally Yaroslav put the carpet back on the dried floor.
‘We should go to bed.’
‘Yes, to bed.’
It was another moonlit night.
‘There are no mines in the garden. I should have told you. Boris assured me.’
‘Then we can grow vegetables properly, not in some Serb wilderness.’
But it was a joke. They had shared glasses of slivovic with Boris and his family before they departed.
With my salary I can almost afford to buy some new tools. A spade at least, and a fork.’
They climbed the stairs in silence. Stefan was breathing easily in the cot which Yaroslav had made. A final question was necessary.
‘We can stay, Maria?’
‘Yes, Yaroslav, we can stay.’
A Note on the Author
The Rt Hon Lord Hurd of Westwell, CH, CBE enjoyed a distinguished career in government spanning sixteen years. He was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he obtained a first-class degree in history and was President of the Cambridge Union. After joining the Diplomatic Service, he went on to serve at the Foreign Office in Peking, New York and Rome. He ran Edward Heath's private office from 1968 to 1970 and acted as his Political Secretary at 10 Downing Street from 1970 to 1974.
He later served in the governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major; following terms as Minister of State in the Foreign Office and the Home Office, he became Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (1984-85) and Home Secretary (1985-89) before his appointment as Foreign Secretary in 1989. He was MP for Mid-Oxfordshire (later Witney) from 1974 until 1997.
Upon his retirement as Foreign Secretary in 1995, Lord Hurd joined the Nat West Group and is now Deputy Chairman of Coutts Bank. He is also Chairman of British Invisibles and Chairman of the Prison Reform Trust charity. Viewed as one of the Conservative Party's senior elder statesmen, he is a patron of the Tory Reform Group, and remains an active figure in public life.
Hurd is a writer of political thrillers including The Image in the Water, and a collection of short stories in Ten Minutes to Turn the Devil. He lives in Oxfordshire with his family.
Discover books by Douglas Hurd published by Bloomsbury Reader at
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Ten Minutes to Turn the Devil
The Image in the Water
This electronic edition published in 2012 by Bloomsbury Reader
Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square,
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First published in Great Britain 1999 by Little, Brown and Company
Copyright © 1999 Douglas Hurd
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eISBN: 9781448209774
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