The Poison People

by Alex Makepeace

  I couldn’t stay any longer. I couldn’t stand it. I got a bus back to Yugoslavia, walked across the border while most other people were going the opposite way. Made it to Pristina, Kosovo’s ‘Serbian capital’. It was terrible, half the place was up in flames, the other half in chaos. There was no electricity, running water. It was even worse than I had imagined. My parents were furious.

  “We thought you were safe in London,” lamented my mother. I had to laugh.

  “But Mama,” I said, “you were always asking me to come back!” She slapped me hard across the face. I can still feel the sting now.

  Papa was a lawyer. Real estate mainly. Mama taught chemistry at the high school. But school was out, much to the delight of my little sister, Lena. It was all a bit of an adventure to her, even as we sheltered in the basement of our block, the walls shaking with every explosion and the plaster covering us in a fine sheen.

  “You look like ghosts!” I remember her laughingly pointing. None of it seemed real—this was a city kid, an educated, cultured little ex-communist. Twelve years old, she had no sense of her own mortality, not even when we stepped outside and saw the impact of those so-called precision bombs, pieces of people flung about with the masonry. She was more bothered about the power cuts that meant she would miss her favourite TV shows.

  But Papa didn’t want to leave; his whole livelihood was tied up in this city the British and Americans were systematically tearing apart. He was afraid that if he did he would never be able to return, the Albanians would simply take everything. That was Papa—a mix of shrewd and naïve. He was quite right that the Albanians would take what they wanted, but whether he stayed or left would make no difference.

  Anyway, Mama insisted she would stay with Papa but we—me and Lena—should leave. “Who knows what will happen,” she said. “Milosevic is a fighter, maybe he can call their bluff, but best be on the safe side. Things aren’t getting any easier and war’s no place for young girls.” I was to take the car and drive the pair of us to our aunt’s in Budapest. We stocked it up with all our best stuff, all the family heirlooms as well as the good TV and Lena’s hi-fi, which she couldn’t bear to leave behind. We were just about to go when I heard Papa’s voice from inside the flat.

  “I don’t believe it! I don’t believe it!” We rushed inside. Papa was standing over the radio, shaking with rage. “He’s sold us down the river!”

  Milosevic had capitulated to the western powers. He had agreed to withdraw our forces and let the British and Americans in. And the Albanian terrorists, of course, they had won everything.

  After a brief family conference, we decided to stick to our guns. But already I was beginning to get an inkling that Papa’s faith in any kind of legal authority would be sadly mistaken—I guessed justice would apply only to the victor. But he wouldn’t leave, nor would Mama, and we were sent on our way.

  But as soon as we headed off I began to feel something, a kind of sensation I had never experienced before—a kind of dread, I think. There was something in the air. The land seemed bleached of colour, even the sky was kind of . . . cracked. I actually stopped at one point to clean the windscreen, check for damage, but no—the sky itself seemed broken, starred like glass. I felt panic well up inside me. I knew now we had to get out of this place. Evil was gathering here, it wasn’t safe for us puny humans, dashing across the countryside.

  I think Lena felt it too, because she turned off the pop music, said, “I don’t like it here, Magda.”

  “It’s okay, Lenishka, we’ll be away soon.”

  “Tell me more about London.”

  “Well, London,” I said, slowing down as we came up behind some Yugoslav army tanks, “it’s like the biggest city you’ve ever seen.”

  “Bigger than Belgrade?”

  “Yes, much bigger.” We were waved around the tanks and joined a queue of civilian traffic crawling up the mountainous road. “If you arrive by plane at night time the whole city is lit up. The streets look like rivers of molten gold.”

  “They’re made of gold?”

  “No, my darling, of course not. That’s all the street lights—they’re orange.”

  “Why would they be orange?”

  “Because that’s how they have them there.”

  “I would like to go to London,” she said. “Will you take me there?”

  “Of course,” I said. “If you like.”

  We drove on. It seemed like all Serbian Kosovo was on the move south—getting the hell out. I thought of Mama and Papa, how alone they must feel in Pristina, sitting there trying to make sense of what was happening, trusting that the allies would restore some kind of order before the Albanians slaughtered them in their beds.

  Another hold-up. This time the glorious liberators. We heard the thud of their helicopters before we saw them, then there they were—sweeping down and landing along the road. Soldiers jumped out, levelling their guns at us. Others fanned along the road, checking for booby traps. I realised—we were stuck there. I looked at our luggage-laden car jammed in the middle of the queue of similar refugees and had a sinking feeling—we could be here for hours. I got out and lit a cigarette. “Give us a smile,” yelled one of the soldiers. I turned back to the car.

  After the helicopters came the tanks—so much larger than those of our own boys, I realised: they would have opened them up like tin cans—and then the trucks. An endless, limitless line of trucks marked UN, their drivers decked out in pale blue helmets and flak jackets, while us—the refugees—waited in our little gully for them to pass.

  It was as the tail end of the convoy was passing and we were beginning to restart our cars that Lena said, “Magda, look.”

  KLA, the so-called Albanian freedom fighters, were coming over the hill, their Kalashnikovs held aloft. A wave of panic swept through the convoy and we all tried to get moving, but it was no good. Although our car started okay, one up ahead had stalled and we were stuck.

  A cacophony of horns and revving motors, but really, we weren’t going anywhere.

  The Albanians came running, some tumbling, down the hill. Lena was getting hysterical now, screaming, they’re coming, Magda, they’re coming!

  “I know,” I said. “I know!” But what could I do? The car lurched forward into the one ahead, but there was no way out. I looked up as the last UN trucks passed by, but they hadn’t even seemed to notice.

  The Albanians gathered at the front of the convoy, laughing and joking. I guess they were waiting for the UN to disappear. As soon as the last truck had gone, I noticed a bit of a commotion.

  They were ordering everyone out of their cars, but some people wouldn’t budge so they opened the doors themselves and began to pull them out. Women mostly, some old men. A child darted past us. People began to cry and shout in panic. A gun went off, fired into the air, I think.

  Lena had begun to make this high-pitched kind of squealing noise. Come on, I said—I grabbed her hand—we’re going to have to run for it.

  But Lena was working herself up into some kind of hysterics. She pulled her hand away, squeezed her eyes shut. Began to rock in her seat. I grabbed again at her arm.

  “Come on! I yelled.

  The Albanians were getting closer. A man tried to get between them and his wife but was thrown aside. A rifle was pressed to his chest while his wife was shoved across the bonnet of their car. Her dress was pushed up around her pale thighs as a couple of them held her down.

  LENA . . .

  Yet even as I was pleading with my little sister, trying to pull her away, I was lifting up the door handle, I was pushing open the door.

  LENA, I said, but she wouldn’t budge. The Albanians had begun to rape the woman now, her eyes squeezed shut like my little sister’s. Some others were amusing themselves by pissing over her husband.

  “She’d better not have the clap,” one of them joked. “We’ll know who’s to blame!”

  LENA, I repeated like a prayer. Yet even as I did so, I was letting go of her, I was b
eginning to slip through the door.

  LENA, my little sister, my Lenishka, but you were still in the car while I was keeping low, close to the tarmac, only my hand now left inside the compartment, still trying to reach you.

  LENA, but even that was gone now. I was gone, moving quickly along the line of cars, heading for the tree line.

  LENA, I looked back to see the Albanians reach our car, smash the glass with their rifle butts, lift her wriggling, writhing body out through the hole as she screamed, she screamed for me.

  MAGDA. But Magda, her big sister, her sole protector, was still moving, through the undergrowth. Keeping low, keeping safe. Looking out for herself.

  Later, of course, I came to realise what had happened. My bug had taken hold of me. The human in me really had no say, was dragged, bodily as it were, away, as I would have dragged Lena if it had all been down to me, or placed myself between her and the Albanians as the husband had tried, offered myself up to them—anything to spare her. My life even, my whole life. Every little bit.

  But I had not done so. Instead I had acted in the most cowardly, craven, despicable manner. My last memory of Lena was seeing her disappear behind the car, a mob of Albanians scrapping over who would go first.

  That was my last memory altogether, it turned out, until I found myself trudging with a mass of other refugees towards some kind of encampment. It was growing dark. I settled myself on an upturned box by a brazier. A woman crouched down, tried to speak to me. But although I could take the words in, I couldn’t process them. My native tongue was like a foreign language. This woman, this whole world. A foreign language in a foreign country.

  Gradually consciousness began to return and with it what had happened. Horrified. I wanted to get back to Lena, return to the convoy, yet every time I began to set off, back into what was now hostile territory, I would undergo some kind of collapse. My body would just not let me. I would sink to my knees, begin to lose consciousness. So, instead, I questioned everyone who came through the camp. For days I stood at the entrance, stopping everyone, yet incapable myself, it seemed, of venturing any further.

  I posted Lena’s name on the board, next to my parents’ and my own, as if I too was some kind of missing person. But I was afraid to call Mama and Papa. Afraid to tell them what had happened—afraid and ashamed.

  Weeks I was there but heard nothing. Nothing of Lena, nothing of the convoy. I never have. What are a few Serbs, after all? A few women, children, old men? I can see the Albanians now, figuring—we’re the good guys, they won’t be interested in what we get up to. There’ll be no Hague tribunals for us lads!

  When you Westerners yelp over your 9/11s, your 7/7s, it makes me smile. It must make me and every other victim of your so-called good wars smile. The very moment the Albanians were raping my little sister by the roadside, the people who had paid for it with their tax money, with their votes, were sitting outside pavement cafes, enjoying the London sunshine. The prime minister was probably giving a speech about a new fucking era. You were all feeling pretty good about yourselves. Not so good now though, eh?

  Anyway, I decided to kill myself. I thought hanging would do. Have you ever thought about killing yourself? When I had toyed with the idea in the past—I mean, not seriously, but just in that if-I-had-a-terrible-terminal-illness kind of way—I had always thought, well, it would have to be sleeping pills. Something to help me drift painlessly off to sleep and never wake up. I mean, who wants to suffer?

  But when it came down to it, I decided hanging was the thing. Regardless of whether I could get hold of any medication, the idea of breaking my neck or, better still, slowly strangling myself to death, seemed preferable. If I could suffer just some of the agony my little sister went through then in some strange way that might go towards making up for things.

  I got hold of some electrical flex. The camp was in an old army quarters near the border with Serbia proper. It wasn’t one of those UN ones. I mean, no one gave a shit about us evil Serbs, right? It was just an ad-hoc setup. Empty, rotten dorms with no bedding, a beaten-up toilet block with the facilities torn out, just a hole in the ground, thick with shit. It was here I decided to do it.

  I’d noticed a series of pipes running across the cubicles, some of which still had their doors attached. I waited until after midnight, when it was quiet, then headed for the block carrying a torch, a bucket and the flex. It doesn’t take much, you know, to kill yourself, if you really mean to.

  I went to the cubicle at the far end, pushed the door open. I almost gagged. Flies swarmed all over me, seeking out my mouth, my nostrils. It was foul, but I persevered. I laid the bucket on its end and stepped gingerly on top of it, then through a cloud of bluebottles sought out the piping with my torch.

  I bound the flex around the pipe and tested it for weight. It seemed pretty sturdy. I mean, I wasn’t that heavy anyway, I remember thinking. I still had my vanity! I had already fashioned the noose, had even rubbed it with Vaseline to ensure it didn’t catch. I didn’t want any false starts.

  I can’t say I was thinking anything in particular as I prepared to slip the noose over my head. It all just seemed totally appropriate—the stink, the flies, the darkness. An appropriate place for an appalling human being to end up. But having the noose in my hand, its tip actually brushing my nose, at the point of placing it over my head, I just froze. I desperately wanted to place it over my head, was willing my hand to do so—it was shaking with the effort—but the harder I tried, the harder something inside me seemed to resist. I began to moan with the effort, crying out. Then I felt myself slipping.

  The next thing I can remember is being carried out. Someone saying: Is she alive? Another: They’ll need to give her a shot, all that crap.

  Then I was in a hospital. I could tell it was military on account of the green walls. I had apparently hit the back of my head but x-rays indicated there was no lasting damage. They were worried about septicaemia, though of course they needn’t have been. I was all too healthy for my liking. The same bleak reality of my survival stared back at me every place I looked. I began considering alternative options, but even as I was doing so, I couldn’t help considering the circumstances of my failure.

  I was maybe beginning to get an inkling that something else was going on inside me. First the convoy, now this—but I had never considered myself a coward, and neither did I feel like one, either when I was with Lena in the car—I had meant to take her with me or stay—or in the cubicle, when I had had every intention to do away with myself. It wasn’t fear that made me flee or stopped me from killing myself. It was as if something else had a hold of me.

  “Doctors say you’re lucky I found you.” He was about 40, in the pale blue uniform of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. “Any longer and you’d have been dead.” He didn’t seem especially pleased that I was alive, however. He was simply being matter-of-fact about it. He sat looking at me as if awaiting payment.

  “You’re from Kosovo,” he said, when I didn’t respond. “Pristina. That’s all finished now. It’s all over. What will you do?”

  I turned away from him, towards the wall. I heard him get up, felt his hand on my shoulder, his rough fingers upon my chin. He turned my head to face him.

  “You’ll come with me,” he said. And two days later, I did.

  Dragan was a small-town thug who was hoping to make it big out of the war. He wasn’t actually from Kosovo, but Novi Pazar, a small town near the border. Like most of the MIU he had contempt for the law but saw the opportunity for rich pickings. Patriotic too, keeping those fucking Albanians in check. Of course, it hadn’t quite worked out like that and now it was back to the drawing board. Well, not quite back—there’s opportunity in another fellow’s calamity, he always used to say. This is what he figured—the allied occupation would require soldiers, and what did soldiers always need? Women.

  While the current situation was unfortunate, why not turn this particular calamity into an opportunity? The lawless situation on the Serbi
an border created the perfect conditions for providing this service, while the plentiful supply of unattached, poor and traumatised females meant that supply could meet demand at a very attractive premium.

  But he and his pals had to organise quickly to take advantage of market conditions. Even before the guns had fallen silent, they had rented a pair of apartments just a short stroll away from the border crossing. Of course, the crossing guards had to be in on this, but it was preferable to having to deal on the other side of the fence, where of course the Albanians would rule the roost.

  I had the honour of being one of his first whores. I let him take me from the hospital to the bar where we met his associates. I didn’t have much to say. They were all rather edgy—I mean, they were just starting out, so to speak. Pimping women was a more subtle, not to say sophisticated, business than cracking Albanian skulls—and they hedged around the subject at first. They were keen to flatter me, assure me a “preferential rate”, all that jazz. I didn’t care. I was only interested in cigarettes and booze and anything else I could get my hands upon. When they realised this, they loosened up a bit, felt they could speak more openly. I remember one of them saying, “She’ll have to lose the bandage, you know,” meaning the dressing at the back of my head, “before we can start up.”

  “I know, I know,” said Dragan, waving his hands. “She’ll be great, won’t you, my beauty?” He pinched my cheek like an affectionate uncle. I just stared out of the window through a fog of blue smoke.

  Dragan and his pals were soon doing booming business over the border. The French, Belgians, they were the most regular customers. After a while some Americans, and British too. I was seeing maybe seven, eight customers a day. I never cut a deal with Dragan, was never a prisoner as such—there was no need for any of that. I didn’t have anywhere to go and he could have replaced me whenever he wanted. Times must have been good for pimps just after the war. There were a lot of women like me who were desperate, or didn’t care.