The Templar Inheritance

by Mario Reading

  Two kilometres out of the village, at an abandoned quarry, there was a snarl up. The truck containing the young women stopped. Lumnije, her hands shaking, lifted the tarpaulin to see where they were being taken. She saw the truck containing the dead men tipping its contents into a shallow trench. She thought she saw her father and her brother tumbling with the others. She could not see her mother, although she knew she was with them. As she watched, the Serbs threw cornhusks onto the piled-up bodies and lit them. Soon, great plumes of smoke rose into the air. The heat from the fire was so intense that the rubberized tarpaulin of the truck she was sitting in began to smoke.

  The truck lurched forwards. Lumnije hugged the girl beside her. The girl hugged her back. The two young women remained that way, clasped in each other’s arms, for the remainder of the two-hour journey.

  TWO

  It was the captain himself who came for her. For some time now Lumnije had been hearing the screams of her friends and other women she did not know as the soldiers raped them. She had retreated far inside herself to a place nobody could touch. A dark place, of shadows and mist and the shortages of winter. A place which bore no resemblance to the substance of her normal dreams.

  ‘You. Come with me.’

  Lumnije followed the captain. It was the first time she had been outside the room in thirty-six hours. She had been having her period, and this had saved her from the initial free-for-all that had occurred a few minutes after they arrived at the Rape House. Now she knew that it was her turn.

  As she walked through the main rooms of the house she saw naked girls walking around in a daze – some with blood down their legs, over their breasts, on the inside of their thighs. Some were being made to clean with mops and brooms and besoms. Some were lying on the floor as if dead. There were Serb soldiers sprawled everywhere, drinking rakia and beer and smoking Domacica. As she walked behind the captain the soldiers called out to her, and made foul movements with their hands. Lumnije thought the captain would hand her over to them, but he continued walking and she followed him. What else could she do?

  He took her to a private room in the back of the house and told her to undress and lie on the bed.

  ‘I am a virgin,’ she said.

  ‘You are all virgins,’ he said. ‘That is the point of this.’

  ‘I do not understand,’ she said.

  ‘You do not need to understand. You are not a human being. You are Albanian. You were born a whore. I am merely here to remind you of this. Has your period ended?’

  Lumnije nodded.

  ‘Then you stay here sixteen days. I’ve decided to make you mine. I don’t like sharing. So you remain in this room. I come in. I use you. If you fight, I give you to my soldiers. If you cry, I give you to my soldiers. If you try to talk to me when I don’t wish to be spoken to, I give you to my soldiers. Do you understand me?’

  Lumnije nodded.

  Later, when the first rape was over, she sat on the bed in the corner of the room and thought about her father and her brother and her mother. This became her pattern. Outside, she could hear the screams of the other women as they were taken by whoever felt the urge.

  ‘You are lucky,’ said the captain one day.

  ‘I am lucky?’ said Lumnije.

  ‘Yes,’ said the captain. ‘You could be with those other women. Instead you are safely in here with me.’

  Lumnije curled up on the bed and hid her head inside her hands. She could feel the captain watching her. Could feel his eyes travelling over her body.

  Lumnije hated her body. Hated her femaleness. Hated the way her hair fell across her face. She wished she might obliterate all that made her desirable to men, but she knew that was an impossible dream.

  So the captain came back. Sometimes he was drunk. At these times he used soft words when he was raping her. But the soft words did not help. They only made it worse. She wanted her father’s soft words. Her brother’s kisses. Not this man’s. She wanted her mother’s arms round her – to smell the starch in her apron – the dough on her hands from the bread she was baking. Not this man’s hands, which were rough, and intrusive, and cold as grave ice.

  ‘Why sixteen days?’ she asked him once.

  ‘So you get pregnant,’ he said. ‘Have a Serb baby.’

  ‘Why?’ she said.

  ‘Why?’ he said. ‘I do not know why. Why is there always a why? Think yourself lucky. Have I mistreated you?’

  Lumnije stayed silent.

  ‘You fucking Albanians have no idea,’ the captain said. He sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘You know how many I have killed these last six months?’

  Lumnije shook her head.

  He held out his hand. He pointed to the palm with his other hand. ‘Imagine that is full of rice. That is how many I have killed. And still there are more of you. Like locusts. Like ants.’ He raised his hand as if to hit her.

  Lumnije turned towards the wall. She waited a long time. Eventually she heard him get up and walk to the door. He stood there, too, a long time.

  She did not turn round.

  Finally, without a word, he left.

  THREE

  On the fourteenth day of her incarceration Lumnije tried to commit suicide. She tore up the bed sheets and knotted them into ropes. Then she tied the ropes together and attached them to the light. She made a rough noose and placed it round her neck. Then she stood on the bed and jumped off.

  Her weight brought the light bracket down. She lay on the floor and looked upwards at the hole left in the ceiling.

  One of the soldiers came in. He looked at her lying there, and then at the trailing light. He dragged her to her feet by the rope, and for one moment Lumnije thought that he would take her out into the main room and give her to his brothers. But he contented himself with beating her about the arms and shoulders. She was the captain’s woman. More would have been inappropriate.

  He unknotted the rope and left her lying on the bed. Five minutes later the captain came in and beat her some more.

  ‘Will you try this again? If so I give you to my men now. Take your clothes off.’

  Lumnije shook her head. ‘I will not try it again.’

  ‘You swear to this on Allah’s head?’

  Lumnije nodded.

  The captain threw something on the bed. ‘Look. I brought you a shawl.’

  ‘I do not want a shawl.’

  The captain looked at her for a long time. Then he left.

  Lumnije picked up the shawl and threw it into a corner of the room.

  That night, with no sheets left, she was forced to retrieve the shawl and use it to keep warm. The captain came in around midnight, drunk, and raped her again. As usual, he spoke soft words to her. As usual she closed her ears and her heart to anything he said.

  ‘Are you pregnant yet?’

  ‘How can I know,’ Lumnije said. ‘Don’t you understand women? How we work? How can I possibly know?’

  She would never have spoken to him like this when he was sober.

  He looked at her and made a sign of disgust with his hand. ‘You are not a woman. What am I thinking? You are Albanian. I kill Albanians.’

  ‘Then kill me. Kill me like you killed my mother and my father and my brother.’

  The captain looked at her in horror. ‘I have a son,’ he said. ‘And a wife.’

  ‘Then I hope somebody kills them.’

  They looked at each other across the bed. Lumnije was beyond hatred. Beyond fear. Now she simply existed. Two more days, she told herself. In two more days he will let me go.

  ‘I like you,’ he said, on the eve of the sixteenth day. The day of her release. ‘You suit me. That’s why I have given you special privileges. I take no pleasure in breaking in new women. I take no pleasure in rape. So I have decided to keep you.’

 

 

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