Last Stories and Other Stories (9780698135482) (2 page)

T
hat green light and humid summer air, the cigarette scent of hotels, the way that as the women aged they widened and solidified and their voices deepened; and then the way that the weather so often altered so that the green light would go grey or white; the loud and prolonged clacking of the key in the lock across the corridor, followed by footsteps echoing smashingly down the stairs, the dogs' barking in early morning, all these stigmata of peacetime faded just as the shell-holes and bullet-holes should have done a decade ago, and the story of the lovers began.

Many men have been conquered by the way a Sarajevo girl parts her lips when she is blowing smoke rings, holding the cigarette beside her ear. Because Zoran had grown up with Zlata, he could hardly have said how or when he lost his freedom; but on a certain evening of green light, he found himself sitting beside her in the park, and while the birds sang, his hands went helplessly around her just above the buttocks; he was bending her backward, his tongue in her mouth; and she was pushing him away, after which her arm somehow fell around his neck.

On the following evening they were on the same bench, which he straddled, cradling her back and bending forward to kiss her on the side of the neck while she reclined against him; and the air smelled like flowers and cigarettes.

His face was large and strong. His skin was smooth. He kept his hair short, and his eyes were brownish-green.

Sometimes Zlata needed to torture her sweethearts a trifle to feel alive, to know that she was stronger than they. Afterward she felt remorse. She used to say to her elder sister: Maybe I'm asking of them something that they're not able to give me.— But from him she asked nothing except everything.

First of all, she informed him, she demanded that he believe in destiny. He promised that she was his fate. She slammed her tongue into his mouth. He gave her a copper ring. She gave him her photograph. Their emotions could scarcely be contained in the immense greenness of a Central European evening.

Her mother, who held a cigarette not quite vertically between two fingers, did not remind her that Zoran was a Serb, that being of but middling significance in those days; besides, she knew the boy and liked him.

If we live long enough, it may well be that our virtues turn into agonies; but the memory of first love sweetens with age. I know a former blonde now gratefully married to an adoring and understanding older husband, who smilingly steps away whenever she asks some past acquaintance for news of the boy, now a greyhaired father with a heart murmur, who slept with her no more than three times (she remembers each one), invited her to travel with him in a foreign country, then abandoned her there, returning to his other woman, with whom he presently lives on bad terms. He will always remain the former blonde's true love. And the husband smiles. With patient craft he invites her back into his arms.

It was with another sort of indulgence that Zlata's mother regarded her daughter's romance. If, God willing, something came of it, that would be all right. If not, there were other boys, some of whom even went to mosque.

They took a walk along the river, and somewhere, I cannot say how far from the
Vrbanja Most, he proposed. She replied that she must ask her mother.

She was wearing a low top, and her cleavage made him weak. He squeezed her round the waist until it hurt; she loved that. She was whispering into his face, and he was smiling. Seeing how they mooned over each other, her elder sister threw back her head in amused disgust and closed her dark eyes.

Sitting him down, Zlata's mother said that it must be a long engagement since they were so young; everyone would wait and see. But he knew that she was not angry. His mother went to see Zlata's mother and returned, saying nothing. His father put an arm around his shoulders.

Whenever Zlata had to go home to her parents, Zoran felt anguished, and gazed for half an hour at a time at her photograph, drinking in her long reddish hair and big round earrings, her brownish-green eyes beneath the heavy, sleepy lids, the almost cruel nostrils and lush mouth.

Her family lived in the Old Town near the library, so once the war started, the Serbs paid particular attention to that area, which did,
however, offer proximity to the brewery where one could get drinking water. Less fortunately situated people, such as Zoran, had to bicycle there, risking their lives to fill a water jug.

By then everyone had balcony gardens with tomatoes, cabbages, onions; and Zlata's mother was one of the first to learn how to cut a tomato into small pieces in order to plant them in dirt in a big black plastic bag. God willing, six or seven new tomatoes might be born. She taught Zoran the trick, and he showed his parents.

Zoran's brother got some real coffee, God knows from where, and Zoran took some to Zlata's family. Matters certainly could have gone otherwise. I remember being told about the man who killed two hundred people in Srebrenica; he was from a mixed marriage, but all the same they told him: You must do it or we kill
you.— There were other Serbs like him, and various Muslims and Croats did the same. But Zlata and Zoran held fast to one another.

After Zlata's teacher was killed by a sniper, the girl wept for many hours. Zoran sat beside her, holding her hand.

The Serbs had the leading position in our city, said her mother. We can't understand what drove them to shoot us.

Drying her eyes, Zlata told her: Don't say that in front of him. He's never been against us!

Zoran smiled meaninglessly at the floor.

Zlata's mother lit another half-cigarette. She wished to know if he were acquainted with any of these murderers.

Some of my old colleagues in the office are doing it, said Zlata, squeezing his hand. Now they even have Romanian girls who are snipers. Let's get off the subject.

Well, well! Your colleagues! Which ones? Do you mean Darko?

Never mind.

Zoran, let me just ask you this: What should be done with these snipers?

How can I know? I'm not a soldier.

The next day he cycled to the brewery, his mother in the doorway praying after him; and an antiaircraft gun stalked him lazily without shooting. He felt sweaty between his shoulderblades. Pale thunderheads cooled the humid greenish and bluish mountains where the snipers were. He threw down his bike, grabbed the jug, sprinted through the doorway
because a gun was often trained on it, entered the friendly dimness and queued for water. Then he rode to Zlata's.

The besiegers were shooting, Zlata's mother licking her lips for fear. He had never seen her look so ugly. They all sat staring out the window. Zlata pressed her fists against her ears. Suddenly the tendons arose on her elder sister's smooth white neck, and she grasped for the wall. They bandaged up her calf; it was merely a grazing wound. Zlata could not stop screaming.

The next day when there was no shelling, Zoran set out for the brewery, where a yellow-faced old man lay dark-gaping and bloody, filled the jug, then rode to visit Zlata. Broken glass grinned newly in the stairwell. The elder sister lay sleeping, with her thin lips turned down like the dark slits of her clenched eyes. Her hair clung sweatily to her forehead and her face was pale. Zlata was scrubbing the dishes, using as little water as she could.

Such a beautiful, quiet morning, said her mother, it's hard to believe. Perhaps they are preparing some surprise for us.

Zoran said: Even so, we will manage, with God's help.

Zlata, make some coffee. So delicious, his coffee!

Thanks, but we have plenty at home. Please keep it for yourselves.

Zlata, is he lying? How can there be so much coffee?

Never mind! said the boy, smiling in embarrassment.

Zlata's mother gazed out the window. She smoked half a cigarette. Presently she went heavily downstairs, and he took Zlata's hand.

She's getting fond of you, said the girl. That's why she left us alone. Are you happy?

Yes.

Then why don't you look at me? What's wrong?

Last night we didn't sleep well, he said.

Here also it was bad.

Perceiving that the hollows beneath his eyes were the same color as the stubble on his chin, she longed to kiss him. As she began to pull his head against hers, a shell smashed loudly down, neither near nor far. She began to scream.

Her mother rushed upstairs. An empty jar fell from her hand and shattered.

Zoran stayed long into the green evening light, holding Zlata's hand. But before dark he had to go home, because his family needed water. When he said goodbye, the girl could not stop sobbing. That half-cruel look of hers which he used to find so erotic had now entirely gone. She was ill. A machine gun chittered at him as he pedalled round the corner, but he swerved between the buildings whose dusty window-shards resembled scraps of grey cloth. Perhaps Zlata trusted too much in destiny, which he attempted not to think about. Passing the white profile of an Austro-Hungarian medallion upon a sky-blue wall which for some reason had not yet been shelled, he felt desperate at her suffering.

Just as when seen through the window of a rising airplane Bosnia goes blue and then blue-green, her indistinct patches of greyish-green, cut by whitish roads, now falling into shadow, so his anguish dimmed down once he made up his mind. His parents had two other sons to help them. He explained how nervous Zlata was becoming, and his mother said: Do whatever you can to take care of her.— His father said: That's right; you heard your mother.

What Zoran now contemplated was merely dangerous, not impossible. For example, fifteen years after this incident, the Muslim pensioner in the stained blue suit who sat on a bench beneath the trees on the north bank of the Miljacka told me that his son used to walk his puppydog every day no matter how many shells fell; and one afternoon he walked the dog across the Vrbanja Most and was captured, but the Serbs did not kill or even torture him. They sent him to Beograd. He did not even have to enter a prison camp. Right away a beautiful Serbian girl fell in love with him.— Now he is living with that same dog and that same girl in Florida! said the old man. The dog sleeps with them in their bed. If my son goes out to swim in the ocean, the girl takes care of the dog, and even though that dog loves her, he cries, he cries.

And of course Zoran was himself a Serb. Moreover, he had uncles and cousins.

There were friends to see, and friends of friends to pay off. Zlata's mother cried out: They can do anything to her, right in front of you! but Zoran shouted: They're human just like you! and she lowered her heavy head, remembering as well as he that not long ago the Vrbanja Most had merely been barricaded by Serbian officers with stockings over their
faces who threatened and gloated. In good time the friends of friends informed him of a certain telephone whose wire remained uncut; is it a consolation or a shame that there will always be such conveniences? He paid fifty Deutschemarks, black smoke slowly unclenching its infinite fingers over the hill, and called his cousin Goran, who congratulated him on not being dead. Zoran asked how the life was on their side. Goran answered: Everything is becoming better, and we have no complaints.

He mentioned Zlata, and his cousin was silent, then said: Yes, we remember her—not like the others, thanks to God! That would be no problem. Of course I can't watch her every minute.

We won't stay with you, and we thank you for your kindness.

It's good you understand.

When should we cross?

Thursday night, at ten-o'-clock. I'll be on duty at the Vrbanja Most.

Zlata knew that for the rest of her life she would remember that her mother was sitting at the table with the soap opera on; a man was deeply kissing a woman. Her mother opened the trunk of ancient dresses whose red had gone to russet, the gold embroidery along the edges dignified against the darkness. From them she chose a young girl's black dress embroidered with gold and silver patterns resembling the ones carved on ancient stones.

I know you can't wear it, her mother said, because you may need to run. But let's see how you look. I always thought . . .

Zlata turned away. Her shoulders trembled and she wiped her eyes. Then a machine gun fired mindlessly on and on.

Go with God, her mother said.— Her elder sister's head hung down.
The father had been killed months ago. As for the two younger girls, they began weeping and screaming.— Shut up, their mother said. Don't you want her to have her chance? Now help your sister get ready.

When Zoran came to fetch her, with all the money that his family could spare sewn inside the knees of his trousers, in her deep voice the mother demanded that he defend Zlata with his life.

I swear it, he said, and then she embraced him for the first time.

Zlata stared out the window. Under a half-clouded sunset the river was coppery, and the trees of the enemy hills began to thicken into a single
texture. She realized that the river was almost the same color as Zoran's eyes.— You've said goodbye! her mother shouted. Now go!

Congregations being perilous, no one accompanied them when they commenced their escape. Feeling their way down the dark street, they found a doorway to kiss in. Her tongue was in his mouth and his hand on her breast.

After this night we'll sleep always in one bed, he whispered.

What time is it?

Nine-forty.

My God, Zoran! We need to hurry now . . .

At five to ten they arrived at the bridge. I wish I could compare the Vrbanja Most to the white bridge in Vranje that a bygone Pasha built after his daughter drowned herself over the Serbian shepherd he had executed for the crime of love. Unfortunately, the Vrbanja Most lacks monumentality. What legends could there possibly be concerning this all too ordinary structure?

Fifteen years later I met Zlata's mother, who now lived alone in that apartment in the Old Town. Her hair was almost the color of cigarette smoke. She said: In this place people were taking care of each other. When we were living in the basements, whenever we got something to eat we would cook it and we would share it. Maybe after the war we became more selfish.