The Heaven Trilogy (66 page)
But today Janjic could not imagine fire. Today he thought only of cold death. A knot rose to his throat. The cemetery was shrouded by a dozen large poplars. Behind those drooping leaves stood a tall cross. And on that cross . . .
Janjic descended the hill, his heart beating like a tom. Now the unseen forces that had driven him from the village reached into his bones, raising gooseflesh along his arms. He’d heard an Orthodox priest pray for protection once. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” Janjic whispered the prayer three times as he approached the tall trees.
Then he was beside them, and he stopped.
The gray cross stood tall beyond dozens of smaller crosses. A black dog nuzzled the earth at its base. But the body . . . The body was gone. Of course. What had he expected? Certainly they would not have left his body for the birds. But then where had they laid his body? And the child’s?
Janjic stumbled forward, suddenly eager to find the priest. Tears blurred his vision and he ran his wrists across his eyes.
Where are you, Father? Where are you, my priest?
The earth had been disturbed at the foot of the cross; heaped into a smooth mound roughly the length of a body. A tall body. And next to it a smaller mound. They had buried the priest and Nadia at the foot of the cross.
Janjic ran for the graves, suddenly overcome by it all. By the war and the monsters it had spawned; by images of peaceful women and delighted children; by a picture of the little girl falling and the priest hanging. By the echoes of that laughter and that final resounding boom!
The tears were so thick in his eyes he could not see the last few yards except for vague shapes. The dog fled and Janjic let his body fall when his boots first felt the ground rising with fresh dirt. He fell facedown on the priest’s grave, sobbing from his gut now, clutching at the soil.
He wanted to beg forgiveness. He wanted to somehow undo what he had done by visiting this peaceful village. But he could not form the words. He gasped deeply, barely aware of the dirt in his mouth now. Every muscle in his body contracted taut, and he brought his knees up under him. It felt like death and he welcomed it, completely oblivious to the world now. He slammed his fist on the earth and sobbed.
Forgive me, forgive me! Oh, God, forgive me!
Janjic lay there for long minutes, his eyes clenched against an assault of images. And he begged. He begged God to forgive him.
“Janjic.”
His name? Someone was speaking his name.
“Janjic.”
He lifted his head. They’d gathered in a semicircle at the entrance to the courtyard, ten meters off, the women and the children. All of them.
Nadia’s mother stood before him. “Hello, Janjic.” She smiled with ashen lips.
He pushed himself to his knees, raising up on shaky legs. The world was still swimming.
“So you have come back,” Ivena said. Her smile had left. “Why?”
Janjic glanced about the villagers. Children gripped their mothers’ hands, looking at him with round eyes. The women stared without moving.
“I . . .” Janjic cleared his throat. “I . . .” He reached his hands out, palms up. “Please . . .”
Ivena walked forward. “The priest didn’t die right away,” she said. “He lived for a while after the other soldiers left. And he told us some things that helped us understand.”
A ball of sorrow rolled up Janjic’s throat.
“We can’t condemn you,” she said, but she was starting to cry.
Janjic thought his chest might explode. “Forgive me. Forgive me. Please forgive me,” he said.
She opened her arms and he stepped into them, weeping like a baby now. Nadia’s mother held him and patted his back, comforting him and crying on his shoulder. A dozen others came around them and rested their hands on them, hushing quietly in sympathy and praying with sweet voices. “Lord Jesus, heal your children. Comfort us in this hour of darkness. Bathe us in your love.”
And their Lord Jesus did bathe them in his love,
Janjic thought. He continued to shake and sob, a tall man surrounded by a sea of women, but now his tears were mixed with warmth.
When they had collected themselves enough to stop the crying they talked in short scattered sentences, decrying what had happened, consoling each other with talk of love. Nadia’s love; Father Michael’s love; Christ’s love.
When they had stopped talking, Janjic walked over to the cross. Bloodstains darkened the gray concrete. He gripped it with both hands and kissed it.
“I swear this day to follow your Christ,” he said and kissed the cross again. “I swear it on my own life.”
“Then he will have to be your Christ,” Ivena said. She took a small bottle the size of her fist from Marie. A perfume bottle, perhaps, with a pointed top and a flared base.
“Yes. He will be my Christ,” Janjic said
She held the bottle out to him. It was dark red, sealed with wax. Janjic took it gingerly and studied it.
“Take it in remembrance of Christ’s blood, which purchased your soul,” she said.
“What is it?”
“It’s the priest’s blood.”
Janjic nearly dropped the vial. “The priest’s blood?”
“Don’t worry,” another spoke. “It’s sealed off; it won’t bite. It holds no value but to remind us. Think of it as a cross—a symbol of death. Please accept it and remember well.”
Janjic closed his fingers around the glass. “I will. I will never forget. I swear it.” A great comfort swept through his body. He lifted his hands wide and faced the sky. “I swear it! And I too will give my life for you. I will remember your love shown this day through these, your children. And I will return that love as long as I live.”
His prayer echoed through the courtyard like a bell rung from the towers. The villagers looked on in silence.
Then somewhere, behind one of the mothers’ skirts or under sister Flouta’s rosebushes, perhaps, a small child giggled. It was an absurd sound, foreign in the heavy moment. It was an innocent sound that danced on strings from heaven. It was a beautiful, lovely, divine sound that sent a tremor of pleasure through the bones.
It was a sound that Janjic would never, never forget.
IVENA CLOSED the book and smiled. Glory!
For the third time that hour, the phone rang in the kitchen, and this time she walked to get it. She plucked the receiver from the wall on its fifth ring.
“Yes?”
“Ivena. Are you all right?”
“Of course I am.”
“I’ve been calling for an hour.”
“Because I don’t answer my phone you think I am dead, Janjic?”
“No. Just concerned. Would you like me to pick you up?”
“Why would you pick me up?”
“The reception,” Janjic said. “Don’t tell me you forgot.”
“That’s tonight?” she asked.
“At five-thirty.”
“And tell me again why I must attend. You know I’m not crazy about—”
“It’s in your honor as much as mine, Ivena. It’s your story as well. And I have a surprise I would like you to share in.”
“A surprise? You can’t tell me?”
“Then it would no longer be a surprise.”
She let that go.
“And please, Ivena, make the best of it. Some of those there will be quite important.”
“Yes. You’ve already told me. Don’t worry, Janjic; what could an old woman like me possibly say to upset important men?”
“The fact that you even ask the question should be enough.”
“Pick me up, then.”
“You’re sure?”
“Of course.”
“Five o’clock?”
“Five is fine. Good-bye, Janjic.”
“Good-bye.”
She hung up.
Yes indeed, Janjic Jovic had written a brilliant book.
“I tell you that in the same way there
will be more rejoicing in heaven over
one sinner who repents
than over ninety-nine
righteous persons
who do not need
to repent.”
L
UKE 15:7 NIV
“What a terrible thing it is for children to see death, you say.
We have it all wrong. If you make a child terrified of death, he won’t embrace it so easily. And death must be embraced if you wish to follow Christ. Listen to his teaching. ‘Unless you become like a child . . . and unless you take up your cross daily, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.’
One is not valuable without the other.”
The Dance of the Dead, 1959
JAN PICKED Ivena up in his limousine at five and it quickly became obvious that she was in one of her moods.
“I’m not sure I’m in the spirit for silly surprises, Janjic.”
“Silly? I hope you don’t feel that way when you’ve seen it.”
She gave his black suit a look-over, not entirely approving. “So. The famous author is honored again.”
“Not entirely. You’ll have to wait.” He grinned, thinking of what he’d planned. In reality the event was more like two rolled into one. Roald’s idea. The leaders wanted to honor them and he had this surprise for them. It would be perfect.
“I read the part of Nadia’s death again this morning,” Ivena said, staring forward.
There was nothing to say to that. He shook his head. “It’s still hard to imagine my part in—”
“Nonsense. Your part is now the book.”
They rode in silence then.
The war had ended within two months of that most sobering date. The history books read that Tito’s Partisans liberated Sarajevo from Nazi occupation in April of 1945, but the war left Yugoslavia more bloodied than any other country engaged in the brutal struggle. One million, seven hundred thousand of her fellow citizens found death; one million of those at the hands of other Yugoslavs. Yugoslavs like Karadzic and Molosov and, yes, Yugoslavs like him.
Janjic spent five torturous years in prison for his defiance of Karadzic. His imprisonment had proved more life-threatening than the war. But he did survive, and he’d emerged a man transformed from the inside out.
It was then that he began to write. He had always been a writer, but now the words came out with gut-wrenching clarity. Within three years he had a three-inch stack of double-spaced pages beside his typewriter, and he’d confidently told Ivena that no one would publish them. They were simply too spiritual for most publishers. And if not too spiritual then certainly too Christian. For those publishers who did publish Christian material the pages were far too bloody. But they did contain the truth, even if the truth was not terribly popular in many religious circles. At least not this part of the truth. The part that suggested you must die if you wanted to live. He doubted anyone would ever publish the work.
But he wrote on. And that was a good thing because he was wrong.
He finished the book in June of 1956.
It was published in 1959.
It topped the
New York Times
bestseller list in April of 1960.
“There are times to forget, Ivena. Times like today. Times when love tells us that it’s worth even death.”
She turned to him. “So your surprise today has to do with love? Don’t tell me you’re going to ask her?”
Janjic grinned, suddenly embarrassed. “I’m not saying a thing. It wouldn’t be a surprise then, would it?”
She
humphed,
but her lips curved with a small grin. “So love is in the air, is it? My, my. We can’t seem to escape it.”
“Love has always been in the air, Ivena. From that first day. Today I begin a new journey of love.”
She smiled now. “You have much to learn about love, Janjic. We all do.”
THE HOTEL’S grand ballroom was crowded with well-wishers, sipping punch and smiling in small groups an hour later. Seven tables with white embroidered tablecloths and tall red candles hosted enough shrimp and artichoke hearts to feed a convention. Three large crystal chandeliers hung from the burgundy domed ceiling, but it was Karen who shone brightly tonight, Jan thought. If not now then in a few minutes.
He watched her work the guests as only the best publicists could—gentle and sweet, yet so very persuasive. She wore an elegant red dress that flattered her trim figure. Her lips parted in a smile at something Barney Givens had said. She was with the leaders in the group—she always gravitated toward the power players, dazzling them with her intelligence. The twinkle in her brown eyes didn’t hurt, of course. The subtle curve of her soft neck, stretched in laughter as it was now, did not impede her influence either. Not at all.
Working as the publicist for one of New York’s largest publishing houses, Karen had come to one of his appearances at the ABC studios, more out of curiosity than anything, she’d said. The image of the pretty brunette sitting on the front row stayed with Jan for weeks, perhaps because hers were the most intelligent questions asked of him that night. Evidently the experience had impacted her deeply and she’d read his entire book late into that night. Exactly one month later they met again, at a lecture upstate, and this time Roald’s scheming had come into play. Three months later she’d left New York for Atlanta, intent on igniting a new fire under
The Dance of the Dead
. They’d hired her as both agent and publicist, on a freelance basis. The brilliant publicist five years his junior had sparked a second wind to a waning message that launched the book into its third printing. Then its fourth, and its fifth and its sixth printing, each one expanding to meet the demand she had almost single-handedly created for his story.
Ivena might be right when she suggested that Karen was
a highbrow woman,
as she put it, but in many respects Jan owed his career to her
highbrow
brilliance.
Karen suddenly turned her head and caught his stare. He blushed and smiled. She winked and addressed Barney without missing a beat. This time Barney and Frank beside him both threw back their heads in laughter.
Jan leaned against the head table, admiring her. At times like this she could make his knees weak, he thought.
Ivena stood across the room talking to the ministry’s accountant, Lorna. She wore a simple yellow-flowered dress that accented her grandmotherly look. But Jan was deceived by neither her white hair nor her gentle smile. They weren’t talking cross-stitching over there—Ivena never talked of such trifles.
Drink her words deep, Lorna
.