Training was thought to be the key, but that thought was wrong. You could train a farmer, or a man who worked a lathe, to be a good shot. It took a month, and used up a lot of bullets, but at the end of that month, he could hit a cow’s head set up on a stake three hundred yards away seven times out of ten. But an ankle? A child’s ankle? A child’s ankle at a thousand yards? Training couldn’t do that. Something inside made the man or the boy who could do that. Something that made him calm and still and able to feel the beauty of the moment, and so gentle with his touch that he could move the hair from the face of his sleeping lover without waking her.
THE BOYS. IT was always the boys. They would go to the streets, to the junctions that they knew were dangerous, overlooked by ugly high tower blocks or dark impenetrable tenements. And they would run. The joy of it was to hear the pretty sound of the bullet as it glanced off the road behind them. They knew it would mean a twisted ear from their mothers; worse, much worse, from their fathers, those who still had them. A thick leather belt and how many cracks on the bare arse? Five? Yeah, in your dreams. Ten? If you’re lucky. And there was always a busybody to tell. Some old bitch in black, or a kid sister trying to buy herself a favor, or the fucking old stationmaster, with nothing better to do now there were no trams.
He had new running shoes. They’d come from Germany. He had an uncle there and God knows how, but a parcel had got through. Sneakers had always been totemic in Mostar. Only the best athletes, on the books of one of the state athletics bodies, when such things still existed, would have decent ones. Even the crappy ones made in East Germany or Czechoslovakia from plastic, and not even good plastic but shitty plastic, lumpy and sweaty, were valued here in poor Mostar. But oh, Adidas, or Nike, or Puma sneakers! Even the simple recitation of the names was enough to get a shudder, like a milting stickleback down in the Neretva, from any boy. And that was before the fighting. Now boys wore their brother’s old shoes, or their father’s, or sometimes no shoes at all.
If truth were told, he hadn’t liked the new sneakers. They were too flashy; they tried too hard. Too many colors, too many stripes. The sole had a pointlessly thick heel of sponge for extra bounce. He liked a simpler shoe, one that just said, Yeah, I can run, not Look at me, I cost more than you earn in a month. But the other boys didn’t care about that. They all wanted to touch them, smell them, even taste them. One said he’d let him feel his sister’s tits in exchange for a go. Others offered food, cigarettes, vodka. But he was thirteen and didn’t smoke and didn’t drink and still thought (but only just) that there was something effeminate about wanting to be near girls and kissing them and all the rest of it.
It was to quiet the other boys down that he agreed to do it. The traffic lights were long dead: the power cut off, the lights shot out for practice. But they provided a focus for sport. Run the lights, sixty meters, one side to the other. Ten seconds, perhaps, for a quick boy, with time to gather speed in the cover of the eastern approach.
The building that overlooked it from across the river was pitted with shell marks and bullet holes. Its windows were almost all gone on this side. But it was where the best of them lay and waited. How many? Three or four marksmen, perhaps, with their scoped, single-shot sniper rifles. Another twenty or thirty in support, casually sitting around and smoking, playing cards, listening to the radio, their Kalashnikovs and heavy machine guns balanced against the walls and concrete pillars. A handful of families still lived in the rooms facing away from the river.
Midday, they thought, was a good time to do it. A proper challenge. The sun was high and fierce, the shadows short. There were four of them. One of the other boys made him take a gulp from a bottle of plum brandy. Another stuck a useless cigarette behind his ear, for later. He hadn’t worn the sneakers on the walk there, just his old boots. Now he pulled them on, drawing the intricately tied laces tight. And he had to admit they felt good. Soft, and yet they held the foot properly, supported the arch. He couldn’t hear what the others were saying. He was quite calm, but he knew he would never do this again. He had grown out of the game. Whatever his father said, it would soon be time to take a place in the line, defending his family, his people.
A standing start. He had always been fast out of the blocks. It might add a second to the time, but what was a second? He squatted down, to some jeers: Look at him, you’d think it was the Olympics. Those shoes have gone to his head. Joining in the joke, he asked for a starting pistol, for one of the boys to shout bang.
Bang!
There were people around, farther down the street. At the shout and the laughter, they looked. Madness. But boys will be boys. And look at that one run across the junction, through the old lights. Long-legged, starting low, now growing. Good-looking boy, too. And see those shoes of his. Cost a pretty penny.
He was flying now. Five meters. Ten. Fifteen. He took his first breath. Almost into the shelter of the buildings there.
IT WASN’T THE shout of bang that made the sniper concentrate. He’d been concentrating all the time. He was dry, though the men around him sweated in the heat. His pattern was five minutes looking through the site, five minutes gazing above it, for a wider view.
The running shoes caught his eye.
The boy was a little old for the technique. He thought about nailing him in the chest. Or a head shot. The deliberation cost him two seconds. No, those shoes were too tempting. He tracked the runner and smoothly moved the crosshairs down the slender torso, down the moving line of the thigh to the knee, down farther to the ankle. A breath. Squeeze. A breath. Look over the site.
HE DIDN’T HEAR the shot. The shooter was too far away. At first he thought, with a curse, that he’d tripped, that something had caught his foot. He was spread-eagled on the road, looking and feeling ungainly. The boys would laugh, spoiling everything. He tried to get up, but his leg wouldn’t move. And then, after a heartbeat, the pain. He looked down. He saw that his sneaker had come off. Wildly, he searched around, and was relieved to see it a meter away. Thank God. He looked back to his foot. It was all wrong. The bottom of his trouser leg was bloody and torn. His mother would kill him for that. They were his best jeans. And his foot, his ankle. Just a mess. Flappy bits of skin. Some jagged white bone, so white, so clean. He tried to drag himself toward the buildings, ten meters away. He was so heavy, so tired. And it hurt so much. And then the unmistakable sound of a bullet hitting the road centimeters in front of his face. Lie still, it said. He lay still.
It was very quiet now. He could hear the fast-flowing river, almost pick out the sounds of individual eddies and little cataracts. He’d played there so often. They all had. Croat kids, Serb kids, Muslim kids: just kids then. No one knew or cared what you were. What counted was who dared swim across or who could piss farthest into the stream.
How long did he lie there? His perception of time kept stretching and contracting, so it could have been days or seconds. The road was warm against his face, but his body felt cold. There was a quick pattering of feet. One of his friends was beside him, lying flat. Insane courage, he thought. Can you move? the boy asked. No. Go away. They’ll kill you. Come on, try. Go away, please go away. They’ve gone for your family. Come on, please try. I can’t. Go away. The other boy was crying. Come. Before they shoot you. But he knew it was already too late; the surprising thing was that they hadn’t nailed him already. And then the boy was away, scampering, zigzagging furiously. Waste of time. They’d be up there in the flats, laughing about it, three scopes on him. More bait. But no. He was safe. Why?
Perhaps, he thought, the war is over. He remembered his father telling him about when the Herzegovina Croats had tried to get more independence back in the early eighties under Tito. The Marshal, he’d said, came down and knocked heads together. Compromised with those who were prepared to compromise, chucked out the ones who weren’t. That was his way. That was how Yugoslavia had stayed together, no fighting, no real trouble. Compromise; allow self-determination and autonomy within the federal structure; ba
ck it up with an iron fist. But the Marshal was dead. And the world he made, putting two fingers up to East and West, was dead with him.
NO ONE COULD stop his mother. She ran all the way from their flat to the junction. A mile, in ill-fitting sandals and her housework clothes. She was always so careful about how she looked when she went out. He was proud of her. Some of the boys said they thought she wasn’t bad for an old lady. He had a fight with one boy who said he’d fuck her if she asked nicely and gave him cake. She ran, and she lost one of the sandals, and so when she reached him she also had one bare foot. She hunched her body over him, protecting him from the sun, from the bullets, from the war.
They all belonged to the marksman who tagged the first one; that was the rule. Sure, if things got hairy, or if circumstances demanded it, anyone could join in, but the basic law was that they were yours. He’d let the other kid go because he wanted the family there. Could there also have been something in him that admired the courage of the little one, so scrawny yet prepared to dash out like that, right under his nose? Or did he know him from before? No. Nothing cluttered his thinking. He was pure, pellucid.
The bullet entered the mother at the collarbone. It traveled down through her body, through heart, lungs, intestine, liver, and bladder, slowed and stopped somewhere near her spine. She was dead before her full weight landed on her son.
His father got there minutes later, with two of his friends from the factory. He was a strong man, broad across the chest. He’d refused to fight. He blamed the trouble on the local bigwigs who wanted to grab as much power as they could from the crumbling wreck of Yugoslavia. They were all the same: all crooks and con men. He wouldn’t join the jackals in tearing apart the carcass. They’d tried to bully and scare him into joining the militia, even threatened his family. He’d nearly killed one of them with a wrench, and after that they didn’t bother him.
He could see his wife was dead. The boy had rolled her off him and was stroking her hair. He knew that if he went out there he had very little chance of getting back. He was the real prize: a man, not that slender boy or the woman. It was two o’clock now. Six hours till it was dark. The boy might be dead by then as well. He turned his back on the scene.
Ten minutes later he returned with the Lada. It belonged to a neighbor. He’d explained what the situation was and the neighbor handed him the keys without question. There was no point driving it out into the junction. If the sniper didn’t get him, they’d machine-gun it or hit it with one of the 40-mm antiaircraft cannon they had up there. that’d make a mess of the Lada, hunk of crap that it was. Not even Yugoslav crap. Russian crap.
He got the men to push it from the side street, building up enough momentum to reach the boy and the woman, with him running crouched behind it. There was a slight incline here, and it should be enough to keep the car moving. His plan was to grab the boy, staying behind the car, and carry on until they reached the other side of the street. The other men had told him, once, not to do it. He said he would, and that was that. They all knew that they’d do the same, in his situation, and he knew that he would have tried to talk them out of it.
He slipped the brake and they all pushed, eight of them now. Soon they were running flat out. A meter before the safety of the buildings gave way to the lethal space, they gave one last push. He tried to steer through the open door, but it was tricky with the car going so quickly. The last thing he wanted was to roll into the two figures, lying together, one dead, one alive. The police would call it a road accident and have him for dangerous driving.
It was going well. They were lined up just right. He’d only have a second to swoop and pick up the boy, but he was strong and the child weighed nothing. He didn’t think about his wife, the woman he’d loved for twenty years, loved through the years of passion and fury, through the years of hardship and toil, with her nagging him about his dirty boots and getting drunk. He’d had his chances with other women, and yes, he’d wanted them, but the thought of her rage and, worse, her sorrow, had always stopped him, kept him clean. Well, now her toil and fury and rage and sorrow were all gone. But the boy lived, and the boy must go on living.
HE SAW HIS father running, crouched low behind the boxy Russian car. He’d always known he would come, always knew he, the famous joker, would think of a trick. He’s here, Mum, he said, he’s here. He’s come for us. It’s all right now, it’s all right. No need to cry.
The car was level, its bald tires hissing on the tarmac. Almost without pausing, the father scooped his great strong arm under the boy and pulled him close. He didn’t look at his wife. He looked straight ahead to where the buildings were casting their protecting shadows.
The boy’s eyes changed when he saw they were leaving his mother behind. Dad, he whispered. There’s Mum. You’ve forgotten Mum. Don’t leave Mum. The man looked at his son. No, of course he couldn’t leave Mum. He turned and sprang back, still holding the boy. He reached out and grabbed his wife by the hand: He would run dragging her behind him. It would be hard but he could do it. As he began to move again, the last few inches of the car’s trunk slid beyond him. He would catch up with it in two strides. He stood taller to move more quickly, dragging the woman, carrying the boy, and the one waiting, the one calm and nerveless at the window, shot him in the head.
THE OLD WOMAN’S story ended. It had taken an hour to tell.
Alice closed her eyes. “Thank you,” she said. “So the boy, the one who was shot in the leg, that was Matija. And his mother and his father. To see them die like that. The horror of it is . . . beyond me.”
The woman froze suddenly. “Shot? Are you mad?” She stood up. “My Matija was never shot. There was no bullet swift enough to catch him.”
The burning passion that Alice had seen no longer looked like rage. It now seemed—perhaps it had always been—a kind of joy.
“I don’t understand,” said Alice, cowering now, as the fierce old woman stood over her.
“Don’t understand? Don’t understand? My boy, my Matija, he was the best of all of them. He was the one they all wanted to be. He was the finest shooter. He was the most calm, the most serene. He killed more Croat dogs than any man, and he was only a boy.”
Alice now was in shock. Her mind struggled clumsily to absorb and process what the woman was saying. She began to shiver. The flat was icy cold.
“But his parents—you said they were dead.”
“Dead, yes. A bomb from a gun—a mortar, if that is the right word—killed them in their bed on the first night of the war. That is why I sent my Matija to shoot the dogs. He had been the champion of his school and had represented his region in the competitions at shooting.”
“And how did you get away?” Alice spoke, but the voice came from miles away.
“I knew it was all finished for us in this town. They exploded our beautiful bridge, do you know? It was our symbol of everything. And because his mother and father were dead it was possible for us to become legal refugees, not like these people who sneak here, that I see on the television, brown and yellow and all colors.”
Alice stood up. “Thank you for your time,” she said, struggling to stay calm. “I have to go now.”
The woman herself was now entirely normal again; the fervor and fierce pride had passed away.
“I hope it was of help to you to hear about my boy. It is my tragedy to be alive and alone now. Such a silly way to die, on a road like that. After all the danger he lived in. Now that Mostar is quieter we could go back. But our bridge is still just stones in the water. I might go back myself. Just stones in the water.”
Alice couldn’t look at the old woman. She wanted desperately to get out of there, out into the cold air of the street. But there was something she wanted to know.
“The other boy. The one Majita shot in the ankle. The one with the bright running shoes. What happened to him?”
“Oh, pah!” said the woman, angrily, making a dismissive gesture with her hand. Alice noticed for the first time that it w
as knotted and twisted with arthritis. “What do I care for that boy? He lay there in the road behind the car, with the dog and the bitch, until it was dark, and then they took him away.”
“Was he still alive?”
“More alive than my poor Majita is.” At the door she said, “Well, goodbye. If you would like to come again, please do. I enjoyed our talk.”
Alice couldn’t bring herself to reply.
ALICE DIDN’T KNOW where to go, but she knew it wasn’t home. She walked blindly through the streets of Hackney, crowded now with people setting out on their Saturday-night adventures. Pubs were filling up. Raucous laughter seemed to come at her from every angle.
He was a monster.
The boy she had loved so completely had killed women and children, shot them dead. Dogs, the woman kept saying. Shot them like dogs. But where did people shoot dogs like that? She looked for a rise of feeling, for the overcoming of love by hate; she wanted to feel it surging in her, flushing out the contamination. Hadn’t she sought this, or at least something like this? She had finally faced her ghost limb and seen it as a lie, a phantasm, a ghoul. Shouldn’t everything now be all right?
But there was nothing. The stone she dropped into the well of her heart gave no reassuring plop. Streetlights and gaudy neon signs leered at her. People flowed around her, speeding up and slowing down in time to some weird flaw in her consciousness. They weren’t really there, they were the fictions of her senses, bundles of colors and forms conjured by the operation of neurons and chemical transmitters in her brain. No, there was nothing, nobody, just the swirl and flux of meaningless sensation.
Slave to Love Page 23