“I only have to read a story, and I finished that on the bus.”
“Are you sure that’s all your homework?” Alina asked.
“Of course I’m sure. Now can I play the piano?”
Tolek said, “You can practice before supper, but afterward, I want you to reread the introduction to equations. You need to know the basics before you can move ahead.”
“Yes, Tata. May I have some juice, please?”
“Of course,” Alina replied.
“Thank you, Mama.” The boy took a glass from the cupboard and opened the refrigerator. “What’s this?”
Alina looked over his shoulder. “What’s what?”
Tadzu pulled out a bundle wrapped in newspaper spotted by grease. “This.”
She opened it enough to see inside. “Sausage? You bought meat?”
“It’s my severance pay. Two kilos.” Tolek sneered, “For twenty fucking years of work, those cholerniks give me two kilos of sausage and a handshake!”
“Watch your language, Tolek.” Alina set the bundle of sausage on the counter. “What were you practicing yesterday?” she asked Tadzu.
“A Chopin prelude. I’m only learning it.”
“It was nice, wasn’t it, Tolek? Why don’t you go and play that?”
“But you study after supper,” Tolek reminded him.
“Yes, Tata.”
The boy went into the living room.
Alina folded open the newspaper. “We can get six meals from this,” she said and sliced off some links. She measured oil into a frying pan, lit a second burner, and started peeling garlic. In the living room, Tadzu warmed up by repeating the opening chords of the Chopin piece before settling into playing it. “He has talent,” she remarked.
“He needs to learn practical skills,” Tolek replied, and was ready to dump the potato skins into the trash when she stopped him.
“Give me those. I can make a broth with them.” She quartered the potatoes he had peeled and dropped them in the boiling water. “Lilka telephoned this morning. She’s worried about Aleks.”
“She’s always worried about Aleks.”
“He’s started working for Jacek again.”
“At least he has a job.”
“He’s a bad influence on the boy.”
“Jacek’s his father. You can’t change that.”
“He’s not been coming home some nights and Lilka is worried.”
“He probably has a girlfriend. Lilka should worry if he didn’t at his age.”
“She says he’s secretive.”
“After you and I met, I didn’t always come home, and I was only a year older than he is.”
“A year at his age means a lot of growing up still to do.”
“Were we so much more grown up? Remember the risks we took?”
“I remember,” Alina replied, recalling all their deceptions, but as quickly as her memories of happier times flooded back, so did her worries. “Oh, Tolek, what are we going to do now? How will we manage?”
“I said I’d look for a job until we get visas.”
She had pushed him enough; she didn’t want an argument, and he was ready for one. He rarely was, but his day had been a special strain. He knew, better than anyone, the job prospects for a second-rate scientist let go by a government-sponsored and lackluster institute: none. He’d be lucky to sell newspapers.
“I’ll fry the sausage with onions. Would you like that?”
“It’s all we have, isn’t it?” Tolek slammed his fist into the table. “After forty years we finally got rid of those sonofabitch communists, and look at us, eating potatoes and onions like we’re goddamn peasants, and happy when they throw us a scrap of meat!”
“It takes time for things to change. We have to be patient.”
“Be patient, and live on what? I didn’t go to jail for some cholernik to hand me two kilos of sausage and tell me he’s sorry but I’m out of a job.” Tolek grabbed the vodka bottle off the counter. “I’m going to listen to Tadzu.”
From the living room, Alina heard him say sharply, “Play some Mozart, will you? It’s more cheerful.”
She started peeling onions, listening to a Mozart sonata that Tadzu had memorized the prior spring. She remembered how the mourning doves had cooed on the window’s ledge as she listened to him practice. She peered out the window into the gelid twilight. When the weather warmed enough to call it spring, she would open the window and strew breadcrumbs on the ledge, hoping the doves would return. She imagined them, gray and plump, pecking at the crumbs, occasionally splaying their tail feathers in a gluttony-induced courtship dance.
Alina started to slice an onion. Her eyes stung, and she wiped away tears with the backs of her hands. Again she looked out the window, imagining the cooing of the doves. Of course she hadn’t heard them. Only silent snow steadily layered the ledge.
She cut into a second onion and wiped away more tears. Just as she hoped the doves would return, she worried they would not. All her hopes, it seemed, were only her worries reversed. She sliced another onion and another, letting the tears run down her cheeks.
Listening to Mozart, she cried.
Listening for the doves, she cried.
Listening to her own hopes, she cried.
CHAPTER TWO
GENERAL DRAVKO MLADIC PRESSED HIS substantial weight against the stubborn window. If left to him, he would leave it open through the bitter winter, but his wife Ulia feared sickness from cold. In her soul she was a peasant, and for superstitious reasons badgered him to leave the windows closed until the almond trees blossomed. She couldn’t explain why; it was just something she knew should be done. That afternoon, leaving work, he had passed through Belgrade’s cheerless neighborhoods and glimpsed the first white flowers in the wooded outskirts where the privileged cadre lived. When he arrived home and announced his intention to open the window in his study, Ulia, clattering pots on the stove, crossed herself.
The window groaned and sprung open, surprising the pigeons nesting on the ledge. Dravko shooed them away and with a rolled up newspaper sent their nest tumbling into the hedge below. He flared his nostrils and sucked in the fresh forest air to dispel the odor of the blood sausage cooking in the kitchen. The smell, too reminiscent of headquarters, nauseated him.
His phone rang and he picked up the receiver. “Mladic,” he said.
“Drrrravko,” he heard, instantly recognizing Sergej Ustinov’s voice. Only the physicist could make his name sound like a French perfume.
“Hello, Dr. Ustinov. It’s a surprise—” A burst of static made it impossible for Dravko to say more. He couldn’t determine if it was real or made by the physicist blowing into the receiver.
It stopped long enough for Sergej to say, “We have a bad connection. I’m going to Moscow. The lines are better from there. I’ll try on Monday.”
The line went dead.
The signal had been received.
The physicist had always said he would cross on a Monday.
“Why Monday?” Dravko had asked him.
“Because the guards are drunk on Mondays, drinking off their hangovers from the weekend. Everybody knows on Mondays you can cross for vodka. Ha!”
Dravko opened his window wider. An early moon floated over the birch trees. He liked this time of evening, before the neighbors turned on lights that flickered between the chalky branches and spoiled his sense of being alone. He needed this time, when destiny left him alone long enough for his soul to catch its breath.
He had met Dr. Ustinov a year earlier in another birch grove while attending a secret conference of arms merchants from the former Soviet bloc countries. Their patron was in its death throes—a death few would mourn—and all agreed that it was collapsing under the weight of bureaucrats pilfering the communal pie until mere crumbs remained. Bribery had become so widespread that it figured in setting government salaries: corruption (communism’s spin on capitalist savvy) had been the hallmark of success. But General Mladic had welcom
ed the Soviet Union’s demise for another reason: it was an opportunity for Greater Serbia to reassert herself, unfettered by Russian overlords and eventually cleansed of non-Serbs.
During a break between the conference’s tedious speakers, Dravko escaped into the forest that surrounded the mountainside spa and came upon a man urinating. When he finished his business, the man turned back around, and Dravko recognized him as the tall spindly man with unruly hair he’d seen shuffling through the spa’s corridors—stoop-shouldered as if carrying the weight of the world’s worries. The man smiled, revealing a mouth full of teeth reinforced by gold scaffolding. “Have you noticed how your bladder becomes more insistent with age?”
“Luckily not yet.”
“You will. Ha!” He extended his hand.
Obviously the man had not washed his hand, and Dravko grasped it reluctantly. Worse than unwashed, it was limp, and he let it go. “I am Dravko Mladic.”
“Yes, yes, I know, head of the State Security Service for what remains of Yugoslavia. Of course I did not anticipate that we should rendezvous in the woods.”
“I apologize, but should I know you?”
“Of course not. I am Sergej Ustinov.”
“Dr. Ustinov, next on the agenda?”
“It’s the first time I have seen my name in print.”
“Everyone has heard rumors of your project, but no one has ever seen you.”
“I am rarely permitted to leave Kosmonovo, and if you believe the maps, my town does not exist. We are only a forest, and every map that purports to pinpoint Kosmonovo always puts it in the wrong spot. Somewhat like your elusive Serbia, which has disappeared from the map. Ha!”
“There you have touched on a sore point.”
“Purposefully.”
“Purposefully?”
“I intended to meet you. Not while peeing in the woods, of course. Ha!”
“Yes. Ha.”
“I should imagine that you are preoccupied with your situation at home. War seems certain.”
“Our war has already started, but like your Kosmonovo, it is hidden.”
“It’s because of my project that I intended to meet you.”
“Why is that?” Dravko asked.
“Because I can put Serbia back on the map.”
“Yes?”
“Yes. But we must discuss it later. I have a presentation and I don’t want to be late. It’s my first public appearance in twenty years.”
“Are you nervous?”
The physicist shook his head. “No. I feel liberated. Shall we walk back together?”
They set off along the muddy path. Sergey held a branch aside for Dravko to pass. “Are you enjoying the conference?” he asked. “Of course they never import enough women. Ha!”
The conference pavilion loomed over the trees in an uninspired joining of concrete slabs. They entered the lecture hall and the moderator waved in their direction. “The brilliant Dr. Sergej Ustinov.” The physicist hurried down the aisle, trying to tame his asteroidal hair.
He gripped the lectern and waited for the assembled men and women (there were many stern Soviet women among them) to quiet down. “I don’t exist,” he began, “and if you say otherwise, or repeat what I am going to tell you, possibly you will cease to exist, too.” He enjoyed their uncertain laughter and used the moment to push his loose teeth into alignment. “What I am going to tell you is true, unlike the truth you read each morning,” he continued, referring to the Russian newspaper whose name meant Truth, which everyone knew was laced with falsehoods.
“The first effort to build a portable atomic bomb was the Davy Crockett, tested by the Americans in 1958. It weighed thirty-five kilos and looked something like this.” Sergej raised his long arms in the shape of a fat egg. “It was not something that could be moved undetected or be hidden in an airport locker. Since then, we have been in a race with the Americans to build a truly portable bomb. Gentlemen, I can report today, we have won the race.”
Applause, and then more applause, and soon everyone was on their feet, cheering in a way they hadn’t cheered for too long; as they had for the Soviet Man until he became myth. Sergej waited for them to sit back down before he continued. “We have designed a new beryllium reflector, which has enabled us to reduce the critical mass of fuel and thus miniaturize all other components. A conventional nuclear bomb requires twenty-five kilograms of U-235 uranium. My design requires only ten kilos. That brings the total physics package to under twenty kilos. A suitcase bomb, gentlemen, that a fit man can carry without obvious effort. One in each hand if he is muscular. It is the perfect ultimate weapon.”
Indeed it was the perfect weapon! thought Dravko. Having one in his possession would secure his destiny. The film that often played in his mind’s eye started to run. A film in which each scene was a step on the path to his glory: reigning over a free Serbia. Around him, the men in the conference hall repeatedly broke into applause, and Dravko heard them to be his own cheering crowds. Raised on a platform, surrounded by an honor guard of handsome soldiers, anointed by fate: that was the destiny he previewed each time the film played in his mind.
Dr. Ustinov launched into the bomb’s specifications and tactical advantages, keeping the audience spellbound despite the lengthening hour when their thoughts usually turned to vodka and overbooked hookers. “Overnight, any country or terrorist group can become a nuclear power,” he boasted. “No more inconvenient ballistics or expensive guidance systems. Just set the timer and boom. Goodbye Washington! Goodbye London! Goodbye Anyplace!”
Dr. Ustinov retreated from the podium to an explosive ovation.
Dravko pressed his way to the front of the lecture hall. “A remarkable achievement,” he congratulated the physicist, “and intriguing. If we could continue our earlier conversation, I have questions.”
A smile spread across Sergej’s face. “Of course you do.”
They weren’t to be asked at that moment; the physicist was swept off by conference organizers, but not before they arranged a rendezvous for the next day. That night a fierce ice storm pelted the pavilion, rat-a-tatting on the roof and exacerbating Dravko’s habitual sleeplessness. He tossed on dreams of greatness and turned on fears of failure, and only toward morning had he managed to fall asleep. When he awoke, the world had turned white. Ice covered everything. Too late for breakfast, he made his way down the pavilion’s treacherous steps and entered the forest. The sun shimmered in the trees and cast off rainbows, and the ice-encased leaves—autumnal reds and yellows—sounded like wind chimes in the light breeze.
He found Sergej in the forest where they had met the day before with his head tipped back, looking at the top branches of a tree. “Do you know birds?” he asked as Dravko approached.
Dravko searched out the bird and said, “It’s a common wren, I should think.”
“Nothing is common that can fly. To be able to escape borders—to fly away—that’s my dream. And I shall, because you have big dreams too.”
“But not too big if I have the right … resources.”
“Yes, yes, the right resources. And if I had wings I could fly. Ha!”
“If I had a suitcase bomb, the threat alone has deterrent value. NATO would never risk losing Paris or London.”
“Unfortunately there is only one bomb, and it’s not for sale. Shall we continue to the source?”
“The source?” asked Dravko, confused.
“Of the spa’s hot spring.” As Sergej stepped past Dravko to lead the way, he whispered, “They have listening devices in the woods close to the conference hall.”
They followed a creek upstream and occasionally crossed it. Vapor clouds trailed off the thermal water. Twice Dravko slipped and soaked his feet. Past a concrete dam where wide-mouthed pipes carried the sulfurous water to the conference center’s spa, the path became steeper and the stream ran faster, its gurgling the only sound in the snowy forest. Sergej easily navigated the icy scree on his long legs, and without warning he yelped gleefully as
he bounded over a boulder. Dravko heaved himself after him and dropped to the other side.
“The source!” the physicist cried out.
A natural dam had created a pool where the subterranean geyser bubbled up. Sergej yanked off his shoes, and his clothes fell around him until he was naked. Scrawny and pale, he tiptoed into the pool, where he bent his long legs and squatted until his genitals floated like a wad of dead leaves on its surface. Once accustomed to its prickly heat, he sank to his shoulders. “Undress quickly,” he instructed Dravko, “and you won’t notice the cold.”
Hesitantly Dravko removed his shoes. At headquarters, nakedness was feared, a state of vulnerability. He slung his coat over a branch, plucked at the buttons on his shirt—stretched tight from an unremitting diet of sausage—and clumsily removed his pants. Dravko fretted over his own masculinity: the men in prison, shrunken by fear, were unreliable barometers for how he measured up. Loosely shielding himself with his hands, he slipped sideways into the thermal water.
The physicist laughed. “I would have thought you a proud man, Dravko. I suppose everything cannot be learned from the files.” He sank still lower, until the water lapped against his chin. “Ahhh … this is beautiful … beautiful … and we can be sure that there are no listening devices, and if there are, the sound of the water will mask our voices.”
“You are so afraid?”
“It is they who are afraid.” Sergej tapped his temple. “Afraid of losing this. My brain is a national treasure. Ha!”
“Of course I know your reputation.”
“The price of my reputation, can you imagine what it has been? It is not just my bombs, no, Dravko, it is my genius. Like an animal I have been caged and mated. The eugenicists, Dravko, they are mad scientists, it’s their secrets they don’t want told. There are so many things you can’t know. How they picked Natalya to be my wife because she, too, was brilliant. How we tried to love each other, and had children, a boy who is autistic and a girl born dead. For the state it was a bad experiment and they sterilized Natalya, not wanting to waste my seed. That’s right, Dravko, I have been harvested like wheat. A quota to meet each week in a dingy lab. I’ve made love to the same women in the same magazines so many times they feel as worn-out as my wife. Can you imagine what it has meant?”
The Fourth Courier Page 4