Diary of Interrupted Days (7 page)

“Hello, Father,” Boris said.

“Hello, Boris.”

It had been three and a half years since he’d seen his father, except on television. His hair was still black, aside from some grey in his sideburns and at his temples. There were two deep lines at the corners of his mouth that Boris didn’t remember, but his grey eyes had the same edge as always in the same square, masculine face that Boris had hoped for when he had entered puberty, and didn’t get.

Boris glanced at his mother. There was nothing new on her face—they met for coffee once or twice a month, always at her request, always in the same café—but it seemed that she had acquired some of her husband’s aspect. He saw it only now, with the two of them next to each other: the same stiffness of their necks, their lips thinning with age and turning downward at the corners, their eyebrows somehow lighter and readier to lift.

It had taken her three days to soften up the old man enough for Boris’s visit.

The coffee was bitter and strong, served in large cups, just the way the General liked it. Only Mother’s cup was her usual small one.
Look, husband, even my coffee cup is smaller than yours.

They each took a sip. There was no ashtray on the table. The General did not allow smoking in his home. It was like meeting an old love: the breakup was painful but time does its tricks, and you sit down over a coffee, hoping that everything will be like it used to be, but then she puts
three cubes of sugar in her cup, the thing that always drove you crazy, and you start with, “So?”, the word she hated with a passion.

“How is it going?” Boris asked.

The General looked at him over his glasses, then took them off, slowly, methodically, folded them and put them into a narrow leather sheath.

“Swell, as always,” he finally responded. “You?”

“Not bad.”

Mother pushed the plate with vanilla cookies she had baked towards them. “Boys,” she said, “have some, they are still warm.” Neither responded.

The scent of vanilla filled the room.

“Look,” the General started, “this must be difficult for you, I can gather that much. And you are my son. I don’t want to make it harder.”

Had Mother prepared him? Did she know something? From whom? Will this be that easy?

“The times are good for bad people, and awful for everyone who has some brains.” The General sighed. “In such times, we have to help one another, otherwise we are immoral. I think it is great that you are here. I salute that.” He allowed himself a smile.

“Thanks,” Boris said.

Dear Mom. Dear, dear Mom. He hadn’t told her why he wanted to talk to the General, but perhaps she had talked to Sara, or even Johnny—who knows?

“Your mother told me about that attack on you. Those men must have been on drugs, or insane. In any case, you should put it behind you.”

“I already have.”

“Good.”

“His new exhibition has just opened,” Boris’s mother said.

“Mother—”

“No, no, she’s right,” his father interrupted. “I should go see it. It’s been too long since I saw any of your works. There are no silly pictures of us this time, I hope?” His father’s face actually softened into another smile.

“No,” Boris said, “these are sculptures.”

“Good.”

All three of them sipped their coffee.

“Have you heard that your old friend Maestro, the theatre director—?”

“Yes, I know who—”

“He became a secretary in our party.”

Boris raised his eyebrows.

“Precisely,” said his father. “I had the same reaction. I mean, he’s dedicated to our cause, that’s fine, but he doesn’t have any sort of political experience.”

Why was the General telling him this?

“Many people do not realize that we have much more power than it seems from the outside. Milosevic and his party are running the show, but our party was founded by his wife, and she has huge influence on her husband.” The General’s tone was content. He ran his fingers through his hair. “We don’t hold too many important positions in the current power structure, but it suits us—most of us prefer to be guerrillas, as you know.”

Guerrilla? He had been an army general.

Boris’s father reached for the plate and took a cookie.

“We don’t need propaganda, we need people who know how things are done. Some separatists in Bosnia and Croatia want to destroy our country, and we have to protect it. It is a very simple, very clear situation.”

Boris knew his father enough not to interrupt him. Instead, he looked at the bookshelf behind the General, and it looked the same as always: the same set of lonely virginal books that will never know the pleasure of being held open. Except … there was no
Gulag
there now.

“What happened when the Fascists came to power in Spain?” The General raised his finger to underline his words. “All the leading intellectuals lined up against them. The international brigades. You learned about it at school. When Hitler signed the pact with the Yugoslav king, all our leading intellectuals took up arms. Poets went to the woods, painters, sculptors! Now there are hundreds of people volunteering to go to Bosnia and fight. People of all ages and backgrounds.”

“Now, now,” Mother said. “Don’t get too excited, your gout will flare up.”

The General looked at her, incredulous, then turned to Boris: “That’s your mother—we are saving the country, and she doesn’t want me to aggravate my gout.”

In spite of his words, he reached out to pat her hand. Boris thought that he should remember that detail.

“I was very angry when your mother told me about that attack. But I have to tell you that you were in the wrong place, in my opinion. I don’t understand those musicians. Against the war! Against what? Against the fight for freedom? They are blind. Their friends are somewhere in the mud
losing limbs for their country, dying, but they don’t want their guitars to get rusty—they have to play their music. It’s pathetic.” The General waved his hand, dismissing them all as hopeless. “And, of course, the criminals and lunatics and junkies came to give their support, and attacked you.” He spread his arms wide: a perfectly logical explanation.

Boris suddenly felt tired. So this is how they had read his call: the black sheep wants to go blond again.

The General continued his monologue, but Boris stopped listening. He finished his coffee, waited for a pause long enough to insert an apology, then stood up.

At the door, he stopped, turned around, and said, “Father, thank you for this.”

The General, standing by the table, smiled. “No problem, son.”

Vanilla in the air. Sweet and bitter. Switter. Closing the door gently behind him.

The stairs.

The exit.

The street.

Outside the big window of the bookstore café on the Square of the Republic, people moved fast, driven by the northern wind. The majority of passersby were in dark coats, as if Boris was watching an old black-and-white movie.

“Where is he now, do you know?” he said.

Sara shook her head.

Johnny’s gathering point was in a camp outside of town, on the highway to the south. He had called a few times during the first week, but now silence.

“It’s my fault.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Boris.”

“No, it is, it really is. First I took you both to that stupid party where they spied on us. Then I was too stubborn to ask the only person who could do something for help.”

“Let’s just try to find him. I’ve heard all these stories.”

“What stories?”

“That they say they are just doing a military exercise but then they smuggle some of the men across the border to fight.”

Johnny understood now why everyone around him was drinking. When his brain was not bleary with drink, he needed no other enemy.

He was lying under a barren tree, covered with dry leaves. The mud caked on his uniform and his face made him invisible to anyone who did not know where to look. He was aware of the irony: he looked like a hardened soldier but only because he had tripped and fallen. How long ago, he was not sure. If he could only lie here for several months, it would be over.

He had taken a cab to the gathering spot. The man who drove it was Johnny’s age, knew his music well and was delighted to have him in his car. His adulation soothed Johnny, and when he got out of that cab, he thought he was ready for their stupid military games.

The feeling kept him going for the first few days.
Everything was as they had promised: there were no photographers, no obvious propaganda being made, just serious-looking officers doing the drill. Not many people had been drafted, though, and the barracks were half empty.

Strange things started happening late in the evening of the eighth day, just as everyone expected to be released. A Jeep and a black car arrived at the camp after dinner and the officers disappeared from the cantina. An hour later, the men reported to their barracks, and their officers read the instructions for the next day. They were to perform an emergency exercise. In the case of a sudden attack from Croatia, reservists were to be transported to the area around the Danube as quickly as possible. That would be the aim of tomorrow’s exercise—to clock the time needed. All reservists were expected to adhere to the emergency rules, which meant, among other things, that communication with the outside world was forbidden from that moment on. The lines from both public phones in the camp had been cut.

They were dismissed and went to bed immediately afterwards, but no one in Johnny’s room fell asleep. In the dark someone said what everyone was thinking: “This might be it, brothers. They’re lying to us—we’ll end up in Bosnia.” That’s where the slaughter had moved to.

The next morning, they got up early, did some funny gymnastics, went to breakfast, and reported for weapons practice. They remained on the range until late afternoon. When they got back, they cleaned their weapons and packed their rucksacks. There was a break before dinner, but instead of using it to get some rest, most
reservists stood around in groups, tense, smoking and discussing various options of running away. Dinner was at seven. Half an hour later, a siren sounded. The officers started yelling and everyone ran to their barracks, grabbed their bags and their weapons, and gathered before a line of trucks that had entered the yard. Ten minutes later, Johnny was sitting on a wooden bench in the back of a truck, swaying and bumping as the small convoy turned off the main highway onto a poorly lit local road. But they did drive northwest, towards Croatia, where a ceasefire had held for most of a year. Those near the tailgate kept peeking out from under the tarpaulin, reading out the names of the towns they passed: Indjija, Karlovci, Palanka, Deronje.

“They can’t do that to us, send us to Croatia,” the man who sat next to Johnny said.

“Why not?” said another. “We’re already conscripted. If we run now it would be deserting and we’d end up in front of a military court.”

“Yes, but we’re not at war with Croatia. We’re only sending weapons to the Serbs who live there so they can defend themselves. If someone saw us, Milosevic would have to admit Serbia was taking part, and it would mean huge troubles for him.”

“Well, my ass tells me that nobody will see us, comrades,” said the company joker. “If they continue driving us across fields like this, I will come off this truck walking like John Wayne.”

Nervous laughter.

Johnny kept silent. His gut was telling him to jump off
the truck the next time it stopped, but his brain kept reassuring him—there was no way they were being driven to the front. The night was now silent and the villages they passed through were asleep. Some of the soldiers around him laid their blankets on the wooden floor of the truck and tried to nap. Johnny wadded his blanket against the metal bars behind his back and closed his eyes. He drifted in and out of sleep, his dreams short and feverish.

“Apatin,” said someone. “Surely we’re almost there, wherever it is.” The trucks kept driving.

“We are entering the swamps,” said a harsh voice several minutes later, as if commenting a football match on the radio. A short while later, the truck stopped.

“Fuck,” said the same harsh voice again.

“What?”

“Boats are waiting for us. Croatia is on the other side.”

A second later the tarpaulin at the back of the truck was yanked aside. Three men stood looking up at them. One of them had a few stars on his shoulders.

“Good evening, soldiers,” he said. “I am Captain Pap. You might be asking yourselves what is going on. In short: you are needed here, so we brought you here. We won’t stay long, only until the local Serbs get organized and secure the area. That’s the good news. As usual, there is more bad news than good. First, we do not exist here. You cannot tell anyone where you are. Not now, not ever. Second, we don’t start anything—whether we fight does not depend on us but on the madmen on the other side, and there are plenty of them. Third, I am your commander. Wake up now, but stay silent, and keep your heads
low. We are about to cross the river. You will get ammunition on the other side and then we will continue on foot for several miles. No talking until I tell you. No lighters or cigarettes. We are entering the war zone and joking around could cost you your life. All clear? Good. We’ll head out in five minutes.”

The canvas fell, cutting off a piece of night and leaving it inside.

It was half past four when they got to their camp, which consisted of a group of tents in a glade deep in the forest on the Croatian side of the Danube. Pap ordered several of them to stand guard and sent the rest to sleep. Like the others, Johnny fell asleep in his uniform.

He did not know how long he’d been out when someone shook his shoulder, but judging by the weight of his eyelids, it was probably no more than a couple of hours. In silence, they were led out of the camp. Johnny could hear the distant crowing of roosters. Two hours later, they came to a small clearing around a shack and Pap gave them the at-ease signal. Most of them sat down under the trees, laid their equipment on the ground, and tried to get some more sleep. Pap and the two sergeants who had joined them went into the shack and stayed there.