Heart of Danger

by Gerald Seymour

  "The front line was already north of our village. It was not possible to go by road. We were isolated in Rosenovici. The fighting was all around our village and at night we could hear the guns, and in the days we could see the tanks of the Partizans moving forward on the main road, but the war had not yet come to Rosenovici. We felt some safety because we had always had good relations with the Serb people in Salika. We put our trust in those good relations. They were our friends, they were our neighbours, they were our work colleagues. We felt that they would speak up for us. We were no military threat to the Serb people in Salika, there were very few guns in our village, we could have done nothing to intervene in the war .. ." Her name was Maria. She shared a room with her sister that would have been small for the occupancy of an officer cadet. She said her sister was in the city that day, searching for work. She said that she had been secretary to the export manager of a furniture factory in Glina. She said that she was divorced. The room was spotlessly clean. Penn thought she had little to do, a refugee, but clean the room. As he listened, his eyes roved over the room, and he saw there were no ornaments, nothing of the past of a woman he estimated to be in her mid-forties, no bric-a-brac, nothing to sustain memories. "She came with a boy from Australia. She came because he returned to his home. When the war started there were many boys who came back to their country. I suppose they wanted to help, wanted to fight. They were not soldiers, this boy was not a fighter. We believed we would be safe, and when we found that we were not safe, then all the roads to the north were blocked. It was a Tuesday night when the artillery guns and the tank guns were turned on Rosenovici. Some people tried to flee that night, they went into the woods and they said they would try to walk in the woods and the hills until they reached the lines of the Croatian army. I don't know what happened to them. The rest of us, we thought that it was a mistake by the regular army to fire on our village, we thought that there would be liaison with Salika, with our friends and neighbours and work colleagues. We thought they would tell the Partizan officers that they should not fire on us. They fired on our village all through the Wednesday. There were only rifles in the village to shoot back at them. It was on the afternoon of the Wednesday that her boy was wounded .. ." Seeing Mary Braddock in the kitchen, drinking the coffee, feeling the warmth of the Aga, listening to the calm telling. The sixteenth birthday party, and Charles away on business, and Mary trying to do the right thing, and inviting in the teenagers of her friends in the village on the Surrey/ Sussex border, and buying a new dress for Dorrie, and Dorrie not wearing it, and the village boys from the council houses crashing the evening, and Dorrie dancing. "Across the lane from the church was a big farmhouse, Franjo's and Ivana's farmhouse. It was the oldest building in the village, it had the best and the biggest cellar. It was where the wounded fighters were taken. It was the fighters who were hurt because they tried to hold a defence line, they could not hide in buildings. Some were hurt, dead, some were hurt, wounded. She brought him back from the defence line to the cellar in the farmhouse of Franjo and Ivana. She was so small and he was a heavy boy and he could not help himself. She carried him back across the fields from the defence line and the snipers were shooting at her, and we could hear their voices, the snipers, and they were shouting to each other and making bets as to which would hit her. She brought him to the cellar and she went again across the fields to the defence line to bring another back .. ." Dorrie dancing. Dorrie in her jeans and black T-shirt. The boys, her friends, smoking their marijuana and passing the pills, and the teenage kids of Mary's friends drifting away and frightened. Mary coming from the kitchen, helpless and control lost, and Dorrie on the oval walnut-veneer table that had cost Charles 2,800 at auction and stripping out of her jeans and the T-shirt and her pants as she danced. Mary standing in the doorway, stunned, silent, seeing Dorrie's shallow breasts and seeing the straggle of the coming hair, hearing the splintering of the antique table. "She was alone with the wounded fighters all through the Wednesday night. By the time the darkness came on the Wednesday night, the Partizan snipers had come so close that the farmhouse of Franjo and Ivana was cut off from the rest of the village. We could not reach the cellar and the boys there were too hurt to make their own way out. She could have come. In the darkness she, alone, might have managed to come. I think she chose to stay .. ." The council house boys clapping their hands, speeding the dance, the white flashes of Dorrie's body. The dance finished when the table had collapsed and splintered. Dorrie drunk, Dorrie smoking, Dorrie popping the pills, Dorrie swearing abuse at her as she stood stunned, silent, in the doorway. Mary had told it calmly. Mary had said that it was done to hurt her. "It was on the Thursday afternoon that the village fell. On the morning of the Thursday, before it was light, many people had left the village, gone with what they could carry into the woods. I and my sister, we could not go, our home where we had sheltered was close to the store in Rosenovici and that is on the east of the village and it was open to the shooting from Salika. "There were very few of us left in the village when it fell. I had thought that it would be the regular troops who would come into the village when the flag was raised. There was a sheet tied to a stick and it was held out from a window of the store. It was people from Salika who came into the village, it was our friends and neighbours and work colleagues. They came across the bridge from Salika. They all wore uniforms, but I knew them as the carpenter who had made the table for my kitchen, and the gravedigger who had made the grave for my father when our own gravedigger was ill, and the postman who brought the letters to our village, and others that I knew, and commanding them was the man who was a junior clerk in the co-operative at Turanj. They took everything that we had, our wristwatches and our earrings and our necklaces and our money. They put us onto a lorry and they took us to a camp at Glina, what had been the prison there. I urinate blood because of what was done at Glina "And Dorrie, what happened to Dorrie?" "She was with the wounded in the cellar of Franjo's and Ivana's farmhouse when the village was taken .. ." "What happened to her?" The tears streamed on the woman Maria's face. Jovic said, "She doesn't know. She has told you everything that she could know .. ." Penn had been hunched forward on a small hard chair, and he had been writing hard. He sat back. He saw the face in the doorway, and the shabby washed-through uniform. He did not know how long the van driver had been listening, the man with the full and round face and the cropped skull and the tattoo on his neck. The woman, Maria, was speaking, and she had taken Penn's hand with urgency. She was choking the words. When he looked back to the door the face of the van driver was gone. He realized what the tattoo was, the wings and the parachute. Gone. Jovic translated, without emotion, without expression. "She was an angel. She stayed with them when no one else stayed with them. She was an angel in her prettiness, and an angel in her courage .. ." Penn squeezed the woman's hand. He followed Jovic out into the sunlight. There were children playing, kicking a ball, there were women hanging out washing on lines slung from the trees that were in first blossom. Jovic asked, cool, "It will be good for your report, yes?" The potential reader had to know the man. If the man were not a composite, not a picture, then quite impossible for any future reader of the file to comprehend. Not easy, damn difficult, to make the picture. Henry Carter, sweating now because Library was so damned hot, tried to make a shape of the morsels available. NAME: Penn, William Frederick. DOB: 27 May 1958. FOB: Cirencester, Gloucs. PARENTS: George Wilberforce Penn (farm labourer) and Mavis Emily (nee Gordon). 4, the Farm Cottages, Ampney Crucis, Nr Cirencester, Gloucs. EDUCATED: Driffield Primary, and Cirencester Comprehensive (name unlisted), 5 O levels, A levels in Geography and History.

  EMPLOYMENT:

  SUBSEQUENT

  EMPLOYMENT:

  MARRIED:

  MARITAL ADDRESS:

  HOBBIES: RECREATION: INTERESTS: SUMMARY:

  Home Office 1978-1980, clerk grade. Security Service 1980-1992 (resigned). Worked in F Branch (Subversives) and A4 (Surveillance). "Capable officer in area of field work, but
limited in ability to analyse complex material." .. . (Join the club, young man!) .. . Resigned after being informed by Personnel that progress into General Intelligence Group was restricted to academic graduates.

  Alpha Security Ltd, Wimbledon, SW19, as private investigator.

  Jane Felicity (nee Perkins) 1989. 1 son, Thomas Henry, DOB 9 January 1993. 57B the Cedars, Raynes Park, Surrey.

  None listed. None listed. None listed.

  Had reached a plateau at Security Service. Was unwise to challenge promotion system. Could have continued at existing level. Perhaps believed he would be persuaded to stay, to withdraw his resignation. "Deeply wounded' that no such persuasion was offered? (my note HC).

  Not much there, damn all there, the old desk warrior thought, and absolutely nothing there to give prior warning as to how the young man would react when confronted with that bloody awful place, with that surfeit of bloody awful misery.

  More for Penny to type up when the dragon, the day shift supervisor, went for her rest-break and canteen tea.

  He had a great bank of experience, seldom mined and seldom tapped, and it was a lesson he had learned .. . The dull men who were without hobbies, the ordinary men who were without recreations, without interests, usually managed to confound with surprise .. . God save the dull and the ordinary and the boring. God protect the human species from exciting and unique and fascinating men .. . that was a lesson Henry Carter had learned.

  If it had not been for the war he would have been the mayor.

  The Headmaster stood at the back of the hall of his school.

  There was an order in these things, and the appointment to office of mayor would have come, that year, to the Headmaster, if it had not been for the war.

  All of the village had gathered in the hall. A meeting was held in the school every month. He had never spoken out before, he had never stood up before to be counted, but he thought that as Headmaster he would be listened to. His was a position of importance in the village community of Salika, he believed it his responsibility to speak.

  Because of the war, Milan Stankovic, nothing more than a clerk, was mayor. And not mayor for a year, but now in his second term, and there would be a third. Milan Stankovic, nothing more than a clerk, was mayor because he commanded the Territorial Defence Force, because he controlled the black market, because he could provide gasoline or diesel or spare parts or crop seed, because he killed. And the bodies had been dug up and taken away, and the Headmaster felt the confidence to speak.

  He was at the back of the hall and standing alone. He would have to crane on tiptoe, when he spoke, if Milan Stankovic were to see him. Nothing more than a clerk, and sitting in a fraud's uniform at the table facing the audience of villagers, and beside him were the carpenter and the gravedigger and the one who had delivered post when there were letters to be delivered, before the war had come. The carpenter and the gravedigger and the postman also wore the uniform of soldiers, they were the new elite of the village. He had not talked to the Priest, had not confided that he would speak at the meeting, he had no trust in the Priest.

  The Headmaster believed a new age of darkness had come to the village. It was his duty to speak. He was a small man with sparse greying hair above a short beak nose that held his iron-rimmed glasses. When he stood on his toes, when he could see Milan Stankovic, the image was blurred. His glasses should have been changed, but it was not possible now to get the replacement, because of the war. He had taught many of those who sat between where he stood and the table, and they followed, like sheep, a false deity. He thought it his duty to denounce Milan Stankovic.

  He felt no fear .. .

  The Priest should have been beside him. Of the men in the village, only he and the Priest had known higher education. He felt the Priest slipped from the responsibility of duty. He had a text, as the Priest had a text each Sunday. The text had been taken from an anthology of quotations, in the English language, that had been a treasured companion since his graduation from the university. Mr. Edmund Burke, 1729-1797, political theorist: "It is necessary only for the good man to do nothing for evil to triumph." He had been across the bridge two weeks before when Milan Stankovic, who was a clerk, had been to the junket in Belgrade, he had seen the digging and seen the bodies lifted from the grey-black earth and seen them bagged. He had felt the disgrace of his village. That sense of disgrace was the keener because he had looked into the face of the elderly American who had supervised the exhumation, and seen contempt. He was sixty-two years old. He was respected throughout the village.

  He was not afraid .. .

  They sat in front of him, they stood in front of him, the sheep. They agreed to everything proposed by Milan Stankovic. Hands -rose in acceptance of what was proposed. They needed leadership, the sheep. The man who had been a clerk was beaming a smile and gathering together his papers, and there was a pistol at his belt, and his uniform was washed clean. The chairs were scraping. Little knots of villagers were sliding forward to beg favours. He did not understand how a good woman, Evica Stankovic, could share a life and a bed with such a man. He loathed the man, he loathed the power of the pistol at the man's belt.

  It was the moment the Headmaster chose.

  "Before we go, before we leave, there are matters that should be discussed .. ."

  Shoulders swivelled, heads turned towards him, and behind the table the smile faded. He spoke out loud, and he stood on his toes that he might be seen by all.

  "Not one matter, several matters .. . Your children go to the school, my school. At the school we have insufficient books. For children to learn it is necessary they have books. I had discussed the shortage of books with the UNCIVPOL officers from Petrinja, and the UNCIVPOL officers had promised me they would raise the matter with UNHCR, attempt to get more books, but those UNCIVPOL officers were harassed, sworn at, blocked, threatened by the militia of this village. It was the grossest stupidity to block the UNCIVPOL officers, and I will get no books for our children to learn from .. ."

  The silence was around him. When he ranged his eyes across the sheep, when he caught their eyes, they looked away. Evica Stankovic, she had looked away.

  "We should not be led, my friends, by men of the grossest stupidity. Nor should we be led by men who stain the name of our village. We should elect our leader, to speak for all of us, by a vote that is private and not by the vote of the bullet .. ."

  He looked far ahead. Milan Stankovic stared back at him. He could not see the detail of Milan Stankovic's face, but he believed he saw surprise.

  "We are a people who know suffering. Close to here is the great forest of Petrova Gora where our glorious Partizans fought with such courage against the fascist Ustase of the Great Patriotic War. Close to here, in Glina town, is the church where our grandparents were burned alive by the Ustase. Close to here, near to Petrinja, is the site of the concentration camp where the Ustase slaughtered the children of our grandparents. And we have here, amongst us, a new group of Ustase who stain the name of the Serb people .. ."

  The Headmaster saw the movement at the table. The table was pushed back. Milan Stankovic advanced on him. The sheep scattered their chairs and moved aside to make a space for Milan Stankovic to reach him. Evica Stankovic was among those who moved their chairs aside. He had come to make a denunciation and now his voice rose.

  "I saw, you saw, the old American who came to Rosenovici. There was a report about him on the foreign radio. He is a professor of pathology, he is an investigator of the dead. Because of what he searched for, what he found, and took away, the name of our village is shamed .. ."

  The fist of Milan Stankovic, standing in front of him, blocking his view of the sheep, was clenched on the handle of the pistol worn in the opened holster. "We are disgraced, all of us, because of the wounded at Rosenovici .. ." The pistol whipped into the face of the Headmaster. He felt the stinging pain, and the blackness blurred in front of his eyes. He fell. There was no hand among the sheep to halt his fall. He was on his knees. Th
ere was wetness in his eyes. He saw the blood splatter below him. He groped his hand for his spectacles that lay close to the shined boots. "We are all criminals because of the wounded at Rosenovici ..." He saw the sole of the shined boots cover the lenses of his spectacles. He heard the crunching of the broken glass. "What they promise on the foreign radio is that acts of criminality will never be forgotten .. ." The shined boot hacking into his ribs. The Headmaster gasped, "Wherever we run .. ." The shined boot belting into his chin. A whispered voice, "Wherever we hide .. ." A fist in the collar of his jacket, lifting him, and the tightness of his tie around his throat, and the punching starting, and the kicking. "Never forgotten .. . our shame .. ." The death of the Headmaster's voice. They let him drop, and when he had fallen they kicked him some more. He saw above him the gravedigger, the carpenter and the postman, and he saw Milan Stankovic bend and wipe blood from the toes of his boots. And behind them the hall of the Headmaster's school was emptied. The chairs were scattered without formation, abandoned. None had spoken for him, the sheep. He lay a long time on the floor, after they had gone, and he did not know for how long because the watch on his wrist was broken ... He held, clutched, his secret, the secret was the location where a survivor of the destruction of Rosenovici still lived. The telling of the secret to the Canadian of UNCIVPOL had been the payment for the promise of school books ... He lay a long time on the floor until he had the strength to push himself up to his knees and his elbows, and he gathered together the cracked shards of the lenses for his spectacles.