Diary of Interrupted Days (12 page)

“That girl, tonight. She’s a friend of mine,” she said.

Her head moved towards his shoulder so slowly that he was not sure if she had fallen asleep or just wanted to lean
on him. Then he felt her tongue on his neck. He let her slide it towards his ear and when she bit him gently, he turned to her, took her face with his hand, and opened her lips with his tongue. It was a slow, deep kiss. He felt oddly surprised by the slowness, as if the war had dictated urgency and despair and they were doing this the wrong way. He felt her hand on his crotch and helped her unbutton his pants. It was easy for her fingers to find their way through his military underwear, with no buttons and a long slit in front. He briefly felt cold on his dick as she pulled it out. Then a warm palm protected him, and she lowered her head and took him into her mouth. As he leaned his head against the wall, his last distinguishable thought was that he was alive.

“I think it’s better if I relieve the three of you from patrol right now,” Pap said. “The Candyman isn’t happy and neither are his people. Frankly, I think he feels humiliated. I wouldn’t want to be in the skin of those monkeys that you arrested. Not because of what they did, but because they allowed themselves to be arrested by reservists.”

Johnny remained silent. Pap and he were alone in the office of the orange house.

“Until the dust settles, you can stand guard on the outskirts of the village and sleep in the outpost with a few other soldiers just in case. You do understand it’s for your safety?”

Johnny nodded.

Pap sighed. “I would recommend you for some sort of honour but you don’t want people to know you’re here. That’s fine—we don’t want them to know we’re here either. Later we can reward you for something done on Serbian territory. The catch is that it must be made public and then you become a symbol for the media. Is that okay with you? You’re an idol to the kids anyway, why not add to it?”

Johnny lowered his head. “There’s nothing I need to be rewarded for,” he said. “They were torturing that girl. They would probably have killed her in the end. And Goran deserves the reward more than I do.”

Pap nodded. “Very good answer. Okay then, Goran it will be. You’re free to go.”

Johnny turned to leave, then said, “Captain?”

“Yes?”

“It’s not the uniform. It’s not war. It’s this particular war. I can’t tell my fans that any of this is okay.”

Pap did not answer.

The streets were deserted. It was quarter to eleven. What do people do in a place like this? No public library, no bowling alley, no shopping area, only local joints. Some of them had television sets but they played the news all the time, and all the news was as ugly as usual, more than usual.

Johnny decided to go back to the small place where he had met Eyebrows and Tablecloth Shirt. There was nobody in the restaurant when he entered. The serious woman brought his coffee, a piece of bread, and several boiled eggs on a platter. She put them on the table and went back
behind the bar without a word. He saw some old magazines on the shelf under the TV, got up and picked a few to flip through. Bill Clinton, New American President. The gun in the hairy hand, the absolute horror of helplessness on the girl’s face. Her lips around the steel. The Federal Assembly of Czechoslovakia had voted to split the country in two: Couldn’t we have an amicable divorce, too? He raised his head, stared through the window at the deserted, ice-covered street. The girl will be fine. Time heals everything. No—time is only a reef that slows down the waves of memories. The girl will be fine. She has to be fine. The only thing that pleased him was the aggression afterwards—Goran’s moves, the blood, the tight, tight cord around the men’s hands. Kicking them before the backup arrived. Yes, kicking them in the sides, in the knees, pistol-whipping the one who shot at Goran. He did that. And Mile let him go on longer than needed, dangerously long, before pulling him away and calming him down.

Mira had been in the back of his mind since he woke up. He was not sure of the way she was present in him. He knew how she wasn’t. Not as love—but not as a notch, either. He had never hidden anything from Sara. She knew how rock tours operate, and told him that she did not want to hear any details from him. And, she said, if she ever heard details
about
him, that would mean the end. But Johnny loved her and there had been nothing to hide until now. Until now? Had he already decided to hide it? He was surprised by how some autonomous male centre in his brain had retreated into defensive mode. Mira had not chosen him last night. The night had chosen
him. The ugliness, the horror. And for those same reasons, he let it happen.

Half an hour later, he was in Mira’s house. She was out, so he went to the storage room, took his shaving kit from his backpack, and headed for the bathroom. Another soldier came out as he was approaching.

“Johnny,” he said. “We’re standing guard tonight. I have it written down somewhere who goes where, but I think you’re in the woods. Get some sleep.”

Johnny took a long shower. When he finished he found Mira in the living room. She was reading one of the German magazines, a coffee cup in front of her.

She asked, “Are you hungry?” Her face showed no emotion, but her question made him blink. It was so simple, so basic, yet nobody had asked him for such a long time.

“I’ve already eaten,” he said.

“You didn’t have to—we’re supposed to feed you.”

He sat next to her. “Are you okay?”

“You mean about last night? Are you?” Her look pierced him.

“I have a girlfriend back in Belgrade. I never—”

“Neither have I,” she said. “I have a boyfriend in Munich. So if you ever have a gig there, be careful what you say between songs.”

Their eyes locked, longer than he had planned. Hers were serious, and blue, and just a tad shinier than normal. He hugged her.

“Thanks,” he whispered.

She smiled at him. “Maybe we didn’t waste our money after all.”

“Seriously,” Johnny said, letting go. “Thanks.”

Before she could say anything more, her father entered.

“I hear you’re on guard tonight,” he said. “We’ll keep it quiet around here so you can get some sleep.”

Around seven, Mira’s father woke the four of them up. They had dinner with the family, and then they picked up their guns and went to the orange house, where a sergeant gave them instructions. It was a little after eight when they took over for their four-hour shift.

Johnny did not like his position but there was nothing he could do about it. The forest started some three hundred yards from the last house to the south, unfolding by the side of the local road. It wasn’t large, probably a few hundred yards in diameter, but there were also small patches of trees farther south and west. If someone wanted to enter the village unnoticed, this was the best way.

The wind created enough of a murmur in the trees to keep him on his toes, but there were also small animal sounds, birds, voices drifting from the village, music and laughter…. How would he be able to detect steps approaching in the night? After half an hour, he was able to distinguish the sounds better, but every now and then he heard a strange noise that more often than not sounded like a cautious footfall.

He was supposed to remain standing so he wouldn’t fall asleep but also so that the officer who brought the change of guard would see him from a safe distance. Still, after thinking he heard slow steps for the third time, he improvised a seat from fallen branches and lowered himself behind one of the bigger trees. Looking up, he could see
the stars through the branches. He tried not to think of the time.

Time was against them, thought Sara. No matter how hard they fought not to think about it, even the name of the restaurant reminded them: the Last Chance. It was in the park next to the state television building, and although they could have met at other places in the vicinity, they decided on the Last Chance simply because that was the place they used to go when they all still worked for Belgrade Television.

Although more journalists and editors were being suspended every month, fewer people were showing up for these sessions at the bar. Sara realized why after half an hour of sitting in the shabby room full of smoke, surrounded by former colleagues who were drinking much more than they had the month before. They were all acting as if it was due to the coming holidays, but she knew better. When you are a journalist, you are a junkie. Your whole system depends on the daily input of news and—equally important, if not more—your output of digested information. Having only the input with no means of giving it back had started to eat all of them from the inside out.

The noise was unbearable. People kept interrupting one another, cracking jokes that nobody found funny. Yet everyone laughed loudly. Sara ordered a cognac simply because she wanted to do what everyone else did. Her corner of December had been agonizingly quiet and she had hoped that by coming here she would find a little harmless distraction. Besides, these people were still among the best
informed in Belgrade and might have heard something about Johnny.

Miki was a freelancer who came to the regular bar nights to show support, he said. He specialized in war zones. For several years now, he had had no problem selling his footage to whomever he chose. He had covered the Gulf, the Tuareg rebellion, the civil wars in Algeria, Georgia, and Sierra Leone, and he had just returned from Tajikistan. The only conflict he refused to cover was this one in Yugoslavia. When a producer from CNN asked him why, he responded that he would not be able to go to the front without taking a gun and shooting at everyone involved. “I can’t stand people with guns in the orchards” was the sentence that was often quoted in the Western media and brought him some sort of fame.

He and two other women—Vesna and Gordana—were sitting at Sara’s table. The women were showing signs of considerable interest in Miki, their backs straight, their voices a touch more husky than usual. Either he was accustomed to this, or else he did not want to show that he noticed, or perhaps he was not interested—Sara could not decide which. As usual in Belgrade, after the Western media turned their attention to his work, Miki’s popularity surged. He was praised not only for his courage and his integrity but for his rugged good looks, his long black hair, his build, his hands that could strangle a bear yet were so gentle to the touch. Nobody was exactly sure who he did touch, however, since he guarded his privacy and was rarely seen at parties.

But tonight he was here and talking mostly to Sara. At first she did not notice, but the other women started giving
her looks. When Miki excused himself and went towards the bathroom at the back of the restaurant, Vesna said, with a hint of envy in her voice, “Sara, he’s ripe.”

“He reminds me of Johnny,” Gordana added.

“Don’t be mean, darling, “Vesna said. “He’s totally different.”

“Well, not so much physically. But he’s also an alpha male and, you know, he’s a fighter, too.”

“Darling, you wouldn’t put up a fight.”

They all laughed. It was true, Miki did have something in common with Johnny—Sara felt that, too. Miki’s reports were brutally honest, just like Johnny’s music, and had some poetry to them too.

A waiter brought another round of drinks to their table as Miki returned, and the next half-hour passed in friendly banter. When the two women excused themselves to go and sit with another group, Sara suddenly felt exposed. Miki’s eyes kept falling somewhere in the area of her lips and she could not help but notice sporadic glances from the others. He must have noticed too since he said, “Why don’t we take a walk?”

She thought about it for a moment. Everybody would see them leaving and everyone would think the same thing. But really, who cared? Miki paid the bill, and they left the Last Chance.

In the small park, only a few dog walkers braved the cold.

“Sara, why don’t you come and work with me?” Miki said.

“Work for you?” she repeated.

“Not for me,
with
me. There is plenty of stuff you could do, everything from research to going on camera. You know how I hate talking to the lens.”

When she was silent, he added, “You do know they won’t take you back, not while this war is going on, right?”

“I know. But if I start working for someone else, they will take that as an excuse to cut me off completely. If I get foreign money, that will be that. And what about when this is all over? Then what?”

“You could work as a fixer for some of the correspondents. They would pay very well to have someone like you. Nobody will know.”

“Miki. It’s so easy to soil your diapers. I will know. I need to live with what I do.”

They left the park to cross the Boulevard of Revolution.

“Is it Johnny?” he said.

“What about Johnny?”

“You know. The stories.”

“About him being with the Candyman? I’ve heard them, yes. Do you really believe he would do it?” She had intended this ironically but it didn’t come out that way.

“In a war God dies with the first shot. You cannot trust people, and there is no truth in anything. The animal in us eventually leads us to survival, nothing else.”

She looked at him sideways. “Aren’t you lonely thinking like that?”

“I’m still alive thinking like that.”

They walked downhill towards the Yugoslav Drama Theatre. A boy was selling roasted chestnuts on the corner. Sara bought two packets and handed one to Miki.

“Johnny was drafted,” she said. “All I know is that he was transferred to some place in the northwest and that’s where I lost track of him. Someone is spreading rumours for propaganda reasons. People are refusing to take part in this war so the regime is using its favourite criminals. If they could make young guys believe that the Candyman can recruit people like Johnny, tons of hotheads will volunteer.”

“Sara—is he still alive?”

“I would know if he wasn’t.”

Miki nodded.

“Johnny thinks that war is a time when only faith can save you,” Sara said. “Perhaps not in others, perhaps not in God, but you have to believe in your own system. Everyone is screaming at you: warmongers, peaceniks, the media, authorities, terrified people, your children, your parents, everyone. These are deafening times—your own thoughts get stifled in all the noise. I guess that’s how your animal starts to lead. The only way to silence all those screams is to listen to yourself carefully. Deep down, each one of us knows who we are. Stick to that, and you’ll be fine. That is part of the reason why I believe Johnny is fine—I know that he always hears his inner voice.”