The Small Boat of Great Sorrows

by Dan Fesperman

  Amira looked out the window of the café, as if gazing at something in the distance. “Even now there are mornings when I wake up and the first thing I think of is Hamid. And then I remember right away that he is dead. Hamid is dead. I have to say it out loud to stop thinking it. The days that start like that are my busiest, my most efficient, because I never want to stop for even a second. Grief as a job skill. They ought to teach it in training.” She stubbed out her cigarette. “It would be a nice slogan for the government, just like one of Tito’s. ‘Peace, brotherhood, and sorrow, for a better tomorrow.’ ”

  Henrik’s voice piped up from out of nowhere. “Success at last.” He carried a china cup of steaming coffee, placing it with a rattle in front of Vlado.

  “Finding a waitress was one thing. Finding one who would actually help was something else altogether.”

  Amira looked up at Henrik with a smile that, while warm enough, came from some other place than where she’d just been traveling, and Vlado was chilled by the transformation, though he wasn’t sure if it was on her behalf or Henrik’s. Perhaps both. Somehow Vlado doubted she’d told the man about Hamid. She seemed to confirm this suspicion with a quick glance, a look that sealed a tacit understanding. Henrik restarted the conversation, and a few moments later Vlado stood up to leave. He was due to meet Pine back at the hotel in fifteen minutes.

  “You will phone me again before you leave?” Amira asked. Vlado couldn’t think of a decent answer, other than to say, “Yes, I’ll try.”

  “Then take one of my cards.” She fished one from her handbag, then scribbled her home number across the bottom. As she gave him the card she clasped his hand, briefly but tightly, and once again he thought he saw the beginnings of tears. “You’re working for the right people,” she said, voice lowered. “Put a few of those bastards away for me, will you?”

  Vlado nodded, glad he didn’t have to tell her about the suspect from 1945, although he supposed that Matek had played his own role in lighting the fire that had consumed them.

  He took a roundabout way back to the hotel, completing his circuit of the city with a stroll through the old Turkish Town, with its low tile rooftops and thatched masonry. Passing the faces in the streets, he wondered how anyone who’d survived the war could ever move beyond it as long as they stayed here. Say what he would about Berlin, it at least gave him some distance from the grief. He thought of Hamid and his heart sank, and he wondered uneasily who else might have been destroyed in his wake. He remembered the boy’s face watching him from around the corner of a door, staring with widened eyes while Vlado had stood in a tentative embrace—his first and only—with Hamid’s mother. Vlado’s stomach knotted, and he stopped to lean against a signpost that was still tattooed with slugs from sniper fire. He wanted to vomit but couldn’t. Then the wave of nausea passed and he walked on, face covered in sweat. How long could one survive in this sea of loss, he wondered, without drowning?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  When Vlado reached the hotel a few minutes later, Pine was waiting outside his door, arms folded, smiling tightly, a file folder in one hand. He followed Vlado into the room, tossing the folder onto the bed and shutting the door.

  “One last thing you need to see before we get started,” he said. His voice sounded strange, quieter, a hint of strain in it. “It won’t be easy reading, I’m afraid. I would have let you see it sooner, but, well, orders from upstairs.”

  Vlado sank gently onto the bed. His earlier excitement at being home was gone, replaced first by grief over Amira’s story and now by rising apprehension. He knew all too well what he was about to read. So here came the revelation he’d been dreading, the name of Popovic catching up to him at last. But what Vlado still couldn’t figure was how it all tied in to the case. Or perhaps there was no case at all, and everything had been an elaborate pretense to lure him here on some other, more dangerous chore, with Popovic as leverage.

  “Tell me,” Vlado said, gesturing toward the folder. “Once I’ve read it, are you going to arrest me? Or hold some sort of charges over my head?”

  Pine squinted, genuinely puzzled. “Arrest you? I think the better question is whether you’ll arrest me. For withholding evidence. More likely you’ll just want to punch me out. And if you do, you’ll find me in the hotel bar.”

  Pine shut the door behind him, leaving Vlado more confused than ever. He opened the folder, still expecting to see some sort of report on his own recent whereabouts. But when he began to read, his first reaction was puzzlement, followed by relief.

  The name at the top was ISKRIC, JOSIP.

  It meant nothing to him. He wasn’t sure he’d ever even met an Iskric. Perhaps one in school growing up, but nothing more familiar than that. And from the dates it seemed clear this was another tale from World War II. Iskric had been born in 1922, a year before Matek but in the same remote corner of the country. Vlado skimmed the lines below, looking for something to jump out at him, something to solve the mystery Pine had suddenly dropped in his lap, but there was nothing extraordinary. It seemed to be a mirror image of Matek’s dossier: officer-academy education in the Yugoslav Army. Joined Ustasha movement. Disciplined by army for nationalist activities. Joined Croatian Home Defense Army after declaration of Ustasha dictatorship. Served in the same unit as Matek. Involved in Kosarev Mountains offensive in early 1942. Twice decorated for bravery. Reassigned to Jasenovac concentration camp, May 1942. Promoted to lieutenant. Placed in charge of guard squadrons. That would have made Iskric Matek’s equal. Hometown boys still in tandem. Vlado kept reading.

  Fled Croatia April 1945. Captured by British forces in Wolfsberg, Austria, along with two others. Interned at Fermo DP camp, Italy, released June 1946 into custody of Pontifical Relief Commission. Yes, it was the same track, with only a few minor variations. Perhaps Iskric was a potential witness, and maybe they were going to pick him up as well, an extra bit of work that Pine had waited until now to spring on him. In fact, maybe there were even more suspects he didn’t yet know about, and they were destined to be here for weeks instead of days. The thought was troubling but not insurmountable.

  From 1946, Iskric’s career continued to track Matek’s. The two must have worked together in Rome. They even repatriated the same year, 1961. But by then Josip Iskric, like Matek, had a new identity.

  His new name was Enver Petric.

  Vlado stared in disbelief. Then he recalled Pine’s sheepish attitude from a moment ago, and now he knew why. He calculated the man’s age. It fit. He continued reading, dazed, knowing exactly what would come next. Enver Petric had relocated to Klanac, a village south of Sarajevo. He’d married the following year, and in 1963 his wife had given birth to their only child, a son, Vladimir. Nickname Vlado.

  Vlado could have filled in the rest but kept reading anyway, in numb fascination. Moved family to Sarajevo in 1968. Employed by a machine shop, promoted to foreman in 1974. Died 1983, survived by wife and son. Son graduated Sarajevo University 1984. At outbreak of hostilities in spring 1992 was employed as an inspector detective with municipal police force, assigned to homicides. Wife and child evacuated to Berlin, where he joined them in early 1994 following investigation of local corruption.

  Vlado closed the folder, still shocked. He needed to stand, to pace, to wail like an animal, but all he could do for the moment was stare at the folder, and at the name typed so neatly at the top: JOSIP ISKRIC.

  So this was what happened when you didn’t come back home on your own terms, he thought, temples throbbing. You learned of the death of a friend’s son, and your role in it. Then you learned of your father’s genocidal past. And what did that make him, other than the blundering son of a murderer, a man whose accidents killed children, as well as a man who helped killers hide and bury their victims.

  He felt haunted by a strange sense that his personal history had suddenly been altered as punishment for his own recent crimes, as if Pine were some cosmic messenger who would now disappear into the ether, along with the assignment
and the entire tribunal. Stepping into that old bunker in Berlin had made him slip into some uncharted place where old scores are settled and justice is absolute.

  The radiator below the window kicked into action with a hiss of steam, and he jumped, startled. He reopened the folder, touching the papers as if they might somehow be proven fakes, a forgery. The cop in him cried out for details, facts, witnesses. He drew his right hand across the ribbed bedspread and looked to the window, into a blue sky where the sun shone and gray hills rose in the distance.

  Everything was real, all right. So much for his worries about Popovic. This was the great secret they’d held out on him, their means of leverage in trying to lure Matek into the open. Hire the son of the man’s old comrade, then throw in a demining concession for good measure. If that was even really part of the operation. Maybe all they had was Vlado, the family tie. They’d found his name in some file and thanked their lucky stars that he was so available, this outcast in Berlin who so desperately wanted to go home. And a cop into the bargain.

  Then he remembered his conversation with Pine, only two days ago. Vlado had spoken glibly of his father’s basic goodness and honesty while Pine did nothing but nod, the smiling American, letting him rattle on like a fool. And with that thought his panic simmered quickly to a boiling anger—at Pine, the tribunal, anyone who might be handy.

  Breathing rapidly, he stood, volcanic, wanting to smash a wall, slam a face. He would burst down the stairs two at a time, find Pine in the hotel bar, and fall on him like a predator. Ram the man’s head onto the table until the teeth of his smile rattled to the floor. Men in suits staring openmouthed while he glowered above the fallen man, catching his breath, as their cell phones rang.

  But he took only one step toward the door, then stopped, turning, compelled instead by some deeper, nameless emotion that he knew he couldn’t fight. He stepped toward the window, gazing out at the blushing horizon and the mountains he knew so well. Out there was his father, buried, beyond reach and accountable to no one, speechless against these monstrous charges.

  Vlado raised his right fist high, like a hammer, then cried out, a gurgling roar that ended with a pounding blow high on the tinted brown glass. There was a dull crunch as the entire room seemed to shake, and suddenly the window was crosshatched by a thousand tiny cracks, radiating like a map grid from the point of impact. Just like the war, he thought, staring with odd fascination, when every window was smashed and gone, covered by sheets of plastic. And for an eerie instant of déjà vu he was transported back into the siege, alone in a single room, cut off from wife and child with nothing but shell fire for company.

  The detonation of his anger complete, the implosion now began. How could he have let his father fool him all those years? Shouldn’t there have been a sign, some telling moment? He thought of every cutthroat or killer he’d ever arrested, and the smug certainty with which he’d always approached them, fancying at times that he could actually see the guilt glinting in their eyes. He thought he’d even detected that quality in Haris. Yet for the guiltiest one of all he’d missed everything.

  He groped for a memory of his father, the calm man who’d always seemed so rational. Vlado remembered visiting the workshop as a boy, accompanying his father on the daily walk home for dinner. Sparks flying from a grinder, the hum of the motors and the whirling leather belts. The agonized noises and the smell of hot oil, yet his father a tranquil and solid presence, intent on his work. You saw it in the way others approached him, deferred to him, and you sensed his quiet pride. Those moments had spoken to Vlado far more than his father ever had, and they had remained as his final judgment on the man’s basic values and common sense. Good with his hands, everyone had said. But now that phrase was twisted into something terrible.

  Vlado sat on the bed, spent, watching the horizon darken through the cracked glass. He felt as if he’d just run ten miles. So he lay on his back, folding his hands across his stomach, laid out for viewing. Then he shut his eyes. They were dry, yet as strained as if he’d sobbed all afternoon. Listening to the everyday sounds of the traffic from the streets below, he felt a bereft numbness descending like a heavy blanket, and he eased himself into a troubled antechamber of sleep, seeking whatever refuge was available.

  Then he dreamed. Nothing coherent at first. Just faces and sites from his past. Friends he hasn’t seen in years, making their way through the city. And now he is in the crowd with them, walking purposefully. They are trooping toward a soccer game, one he must have actually seen long ago, because he already knows the score, hoarding it from the others. He knows the outcome of each play even as it unfolds. The field is emerald green, a thrilling surface onto which red and green uniforms pour, the players taking their places, excitement high in his throat as he shouts. The ball pings from foot to head with the springy tap of leather, the crowd rising so that for a moment he can’t see the field, nothing before his eyes but a wool overcoat and someone’s hat, the smell of their cigarettes and cheap beer. He is a child now, too short to see over anyone, and his friends are gone, but strong and able hands take hold under his armpits from behind, lifting, thrusting him into the sunlight. It is his father, he knows, although he cannot see the face, doesn’t want to look. He lands easily atop the big shoulders, staring down now at all the hats and bald heads afloat on this sea of excitement.

  “Look, Vlado. Look!”

  It is his father’s voice, years younger than he last remembers it, excited, calling his attention back to the game. “We are going to win!”

  Vlado turns his eyes to the field and sees a hundred or more people in kerchiefs and dark rags, long coats, flat caps. It is an army of peasants, all facing the far end of the stadium. Shepherding the rabble are helmeted soldiers in creased gray uniforms, men carrying long rifles with bayonets that gleam in the sunlight. And down at the front, ordering them hurriedly, hands moving briskly, is Vlado’s father, whose face is now plainly visible. He looks impatient, shouting commands that Vlado can’t hear above the din of the crowd.

  The people move toward the goal at the far end, herding toward the white posts and yellow netting, where now the head of the procession is descending into the earth, into a great brown opening of turned soil, marked at the edges with crosses and crescents, and even from his perch in the stands Vlado feels the chill and dampness of that opening, as if the earth were exhaling from deep below the surface.

  A thumping noise begins, the beating of a drum, steady and insistent, and a voice calls his name.

  “Vlado. Vlado, are you in there? Vlado?”

  Vlado rolled over on the bed, blinking in the darkness of the hotel room. It was Pine, pounding on the door.

  “I’m okay,” he croaked in reply. “I was asleep.”

  He stepped sluggishly to his feet, feeling as if he’d been asleep for hours, then opening the door to a face creased with concern, even alarm.

  “Sorry,” Pine said, speaking fast, running his words together. “I was worried that you . . . that you, might have left or something. I thought maybe, I don’t know. I also came to apologize. I’ve been trying to figure out for the last three days exactly what I would say to you when this moment came. The best I could come up with was that I was only following orders, which told me all I needed to know about what I’ve been a party to.”

  “Don’t waste your breath,” Vlado said, coming more fully awake.

  “Fair enough.”

  “And don’t try to explain yourself.”

  Pine nodded, saying nothing.

  “I can’t do this, you know. Not after the way it was handled.”

  Pine nodded again, biting his lip, still standing awkwardly in the open doorway, Vlado blocking his way. “Okay. I guess I figured that might happen. Okay.” He paused, as if waiting for Vlado to say more, or to at least step aside. When neither happened he continued, if only to fill the silence. “I’ll see if there’s a flight back to Berlin tomorrow. I won’t try to talk you out of it. You’ll be paid for the last two
days, of course.” Vlado scowled. “But do one thing for me, will you? Or do it for yourself.”

  Vlado said nothing but nodded, as if granting permission to speak.

  “Try and think about how you’re going to feel about all of this in a week. It’s horrible, especially to learn it like this. But it can’t be undone, and I just want you to think about whether or not you might feel differently later. Because if you change your mind, well . . . by then, the whole operation will be over. It will be too late.”

  “You’ll go after him anyway, you mean. This man, Matek. This . . . friend of my father’s.”

  “We’ve got no choice. I’ll just pose as the demining guy myself. I’ve already got the fake business cards, just in case this happened.”

  “Your ‘classified’ Plan B,” Vlado said with derision. It wouldn’t work, and they both knew it. Not with someone as wise to schemes and ruses as Matek. Deception was how he made a living.

  So let it fail, Vlado thought. Let the old bastard keep being an old bastard a while longer. In a few years he’d be dead anyway.

  “What about Andric?” he asked. “They’ll carry out the raid anyway, right?”

  “I guess. Assuming I can grease the skids at this end.”

  Vlado sighed. Already he could see what was coming. The arrangement would fall apart, Andric would remain free, and he’d have played a role. Living up to his father’s good name.

  And what of Matek, for that matter. The man would die on his own terms. Worse, he would die with his secrets, which Vlado now wanted to know more than anything. Telling the tribunal to go to hell would be throwing away his only chance to find out more about what had really happened, and why.

  Then why not keep working, he asked himself, not as a good soldier or even as an opportunist seeking resettlement and a new job, but as a son seeking vital leads into his past. Once Matek was captured, Vlado would participate in the debriefing whether the others liked it or not. Pine would probably let him, if only out of guilt. If his questions annoyed the others, they could fire him. Tomorrow would mark the end of his short career with the tribunal anyway. And for the moment he didn’t wish to consider bringing his family back to Bosnia. The information in the file had changed everything. He didn’t want his daughter growing up anywhere in the path of his father’s bootprints.