Girl at War: A Novel

by Sara Novic

  “Oh, don’t start.”

  He smiled his crooked smile and ran a finger across my cheek. “Seriously though.”

  “Isn’t there anything you want to know?”

  “Everything,” he said. “But not tonight. We have time. Tonight let’s just do this.” He slipped his arm beneath me, and I laid my head on his chest.

  I listened to his heartbeat slow. “Brian?” I said after a while. He didn’t respond. I slid from his bed and searched his desk for a piece of scrap paper. Sorry to leave. Been having trouble sleeping.

  I took a detour to the library. I was nearly finished with Austerlitz and needed a new book. The circulation desk was about to close for the night, and the work-study girl scowled when I walked in and showed my guest pass. I found myself typing “Croatia” into the catalog database, and followed the resulting call number to the Eastern European section at the back of the stacks. I pulled the biggest nonreference book—Black Lamb and Grey Falcon—from its place on the shelf and thumbed through the first few pages in the volume of over a thousand. It had been published in Britain in the forties, and I was wary of what kind of light a dead Englishwoman might shed on modern-day anything, never mind a country so drastically changed as mine. But when I turned to the dedication page my breath seized at the stark precision of its single sentence: To my friends in Yugoslavia, who are now all dead or enslaved. I snapped the heavy cover shut.

  The book hadn’t been checked out since 1991, and the work-study girl made a point of looking me over before stamping the due date card with the twenty-first century. I thought of the person who’d borrowed it more than a decade ago, when I was still across the ocean. A journalism student, I decided. An overeager one, looking for some deep background to inject sense into an article about ethnic cleansing.

  I went home but didn’t open the book again. I could not shake the thought of friends gone missing. I turned on the computer and trolled the Internet in search of Luka. I’d done it only once before, but finding no trace of him had sent me into a weeklong depression and I’d forbidden myself from making it a habit. Now, I reasoned, I couldn’t feel much worse. But Luka’s life, if he was still alive, had produced no techno-footprint. At two in the morning my roommate, Natalie, came home drunk and fell asleep with her shoes on. I walked to the bodega and bought a Coke and a frozen burrito. Going to bed now would surely bring on another set of nightmares, so, sufficiently caffeinated, I went to the common room, turned the TV on loud, and read Rebecca West’s book until the sun came up.

  —

  Over the next few weeks I told Brian pieces of my story—the sandbags and air raids and snipers in Zagreb, the Četniks in the forest, and the little village afterward. He was patient and didn’t push me if I stopped mid-thought, but it didn’t matter; I could feel myself slipping, and had no way to contend with the fact that all his kindness and understanding could not fix me. Each night I’d wait for him to fall asleep, then return to my dorm to pace the halls. Once I stumbled over my shoe and woke him.

  “You can stay, you know. Elliot’s probably at Sasha’s for the night.”

  “I don’t want to keep you up.”

  “You have work to do? You can turn the desk lamp on.”

  “It’s not that. The dreams I told you about. I wake up yelling.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “I do.”

  “But if we’re going to live together—”

  “Brian, don’t.”

  “A few bad dreams are no big deal in the grand scheme of things.”

  “Look, I’m sorry. I just can’t have that conversation right now,” I said. I fumbled with my shoelaces in the dark and left.

  —

  “There you are,” said Professor Ariel when I appeared in his doorway one afternoon. “That big research paper in Brighton’s class keeping you busy?”

  “Yeah, sorry. And I’ve been reading…something else.”

  “Come, sit.”

  I put Austerlitz down on his desk.

  “Lovely, no?”

  I nodded.

  He leafed through the volume. “I find the symbolic use of train stations throughout to be his most successful integration of photos. What have you dog-eared here?”

  “Gosh, I’m sorry. I don’t even remember doing that.”

  “The wily ways of memory.” He chuckled. “Not a problem. Here.” He handed me the open book, and I skimmed the page I’d bent. It was easy to find what I’d been trying to save.

  “This,” I said. “ ‘I had never heard of an Austerlitz before, and from the first I was convinced that no one else bore that name, no one in Wales, or in the Isles, or anywhere else in the world.’ ”

  “What do you like about it?”

  “The isolation, I guess. That he can describe an emotion so perfectly, without any adjectives.”

  “A rare talent.”

  I passed the book back over the desk and nodded again.

  “What do you make of his critics?”

  It hadn’t occurred to me that there could be critics of such a writer. Brian was one thing, but he hadn’t even read the book. “What do you mean?”

  “He’s got no new material. That it’s just more of the same.”

  “Of course it’s more of the same. What else is there to write about when you have this?”

  “That is the counterargument,” Professor Ariel said.

  —

  By mid-April the gray skies were receding, and I tried to let the sunny weather permeate the vacant feeling inside me. Brian attempted to coax me into talking about what was bothering me, and in response I picked petty fights with him until we had spiraled into a cycle of bickering and making up. I studied more than I needed to just to fill time. There were only three weeks left in the semester, and then I could get out of this city.

  One night Brian and I ate Chinese takeout in his bed. He was reading an anthropology textbook, and I held Black Lamb and Grey Falcon open on my lap but could not concentrate. I was running out of time to decide whether we should live together. The dreams showed no sign of letting up, and I continued to pull away from Brian in every moment I most needed him.

  “Do you think two people are meant to stay together forever?” I said.

  Brian looked up with a tentative smile. “Did you read Us Weekly in the supermarket line again?”

  I glared at him and he mumbled an apology.

  “Some people do it,” he said. “My parents are still married. Yours, too. I mean, your parents in Gardenville—”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “So what’s got you worked up then? Trouble in Rebecca West paradise?”

  “I’m not worked up,” I said with a sharpness that suggested otherwise. “It’s just, housing deposits come due next week. I don’t know what to do.”

  Brian closed his book and moved closer to me on the bed. “I’ve got an idea.”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “So you have bad dreams. We’ll deal with them. Maybe they’ll even go away. Is that really what you’re worried about?”

  “Worrying isn’t rational. No one makes a conscious decision to freak out about something.”

  “Look, you’ve got a lot on your mind. And you’re not sleeping, and finals are coming up. I get that. But these nightmares—all this stuff—it’s no reason for us to put our lives on hold.”

  “Yeah, that’s it. I’m overreacting.” I was being unfair, I knew, but could not stop myself. I was so tired of his being even-keeled in the face of all that was upsetting and ugly and illogical. I wanted a reaction out of him. “Maybe I’m even hysterical. A hysterical woman,” I said.

  “Whoa, Ana, I didn’t—”

  “I know you didn’t. You didn’t have to—I can tell you’re thinking it.”

  Brian dropped his chopsticks into his carton of noodles and stood. “You know what? Fine. I have been trying and trying with you, but you just refuse—I’m not sure I can take this anymore.”

  “I
think we need some time apart.” When I saw the words reflected on his face I wished I hadn’t said them. “Maybe we could just take a break, and talk again in a couple weeks.”

  Brian didn’t say anything.

  “Brian, I’m sorry. Really.”

  “Okay. Can you just—” He nodded toward the door.

  —

  I left Brian’s room and walked Fourteenth Street all the way to the Hudson. In the gutter someone had dropped a pen and I eyed it uneasily. For years I had forgotten about the mines disguised as litter, but now I was staring at someone’s trash half-expecting it to explode. I cursed Sharon and the UN for stirring up trouble. Telling my story was supposed to be a good thing but it had just made everything worse. And now I’d been terrible to Brian and lost him, too.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I said. I yanked at the necklace Brian had given me, but it held fast and my neck stung where the metal dug into my skin. I unclasped the chain and balled it up in my fist. The river glowed auburn with the lights of Manhattan and Jersey City. I considered throwing the necklace in the water. Had I died in the forest, at least I would be with my family and ignorant of such profound loneliness. But then there was Rahela. I dumped the chain in my coat pocket. Not knowing what else to do, I called my mother.

  Laura answered in a groggy voice. “What’s the matter?”

  “Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize how late it was. Did I wake you?”

  “No, no, it’s okay. What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know.” I could feel my voice cracking.

  I let Laura whisper placations into the phone but knew she could not console me.

  “I think—I want to go home.”

  “Do you want me to come get you?”

  “No. I mean I want to go back to Croatia.”

  “What?”

  “Just for the summer.”

  “Honey, I’m not sure that’s a good idea. It’s dangerous.”

  “The war’s been over for ages.”

  “Only two years since Kosovo.”

  “So what am I supposed to do, hide out in Gardenville forever?”

  “But a trip like that—do you think it makes sense to open old wounds?”

  “Open them?” I almost laughed.

  “I just don’t want to see you hurting again.”

  “I’m already hurting. I am at a standstill with this shit. I’m never going to get better. Not like this.”

  “Look. You’re upset. Take a day to cool off and we’ll talk more—”

  “I’m not asking your permission,” I said. “I just need you to send me my passports.”

  I hung up and kicked the curb until it hurt through my boot. “I’m sorry,” I said to the river. The wind off the water was frigid, and I turned up my collar against the cold.

  In the dorm Natalie was asleep, and I got into bed, too, staring through the dark at the speckled drop-ceiling tiles. I hadn’t slept more than a couple hours a night for over a month, and the dream bodies were encroaching on my consciousness. Even before I’d dropped fully into sleep I felt their cool, rubbery skin against mine as surely as I did the cotton weave of my sheets. I threw back the blankets and stood too quickly, setting the darkened room spinning.

  Lurching to my desk, I shook the mouse; the screen hummed to life and Natalie rolled over. In the glow of computer light I tore a piece of paper from my notebook and wrote a letter to Luka. I filled the beginning lines with perfunctory hellos and inquiries about his family. I wrote that I was living in New York City, which I knew would impress him, and that my visit to the UN had set into motion a twist of events that had made going back unavoidable. Basically, no one here knows who I am, not even me, and I think coming home might set me straight. The word home looked strange on the page, but I left it. I was trying to sound positive, or at least not on the verge of a mental breakdown. I think of you often. Not knowing whether you’re alive drives me crazy some days. So email me, or write me back, or something. And I’ll see you soon. I listed my contact details at the bottom of the letter, folded the paper into thirds, addressed the envelope to his parents’ house, and stuffed it in my schoolbag. Then I entered the Web address of a discount airfare site I’d seen on a commercial replayed over and over during one of my all-nighters, emptied my bank account of a summer’s worth of Kmart labor, and booked a ticket to Zagreb for the day after school let out.

  5

  It wasn’t until three weeks later, as the plane was cutting through the clouds over the Balkan Peninsula, that the trip seemed like a very bad idea. Luka hadn’t written back, hadn’t called or emailed. I had to find out what had happened to him, but the closer I got the more I worried about what I would discover. Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, which I’d effectively stolen from the library, felt leaden in my lap. I’d packed stupidly, I thought, with the type of retrospective clarity I’d been experiencing in bursts throughout the night of fitful plane sleep. In the end Laura had mailed me my American passport, but not my Yugoslavian one, which I’d need if I wanted to get a new one. When the flight attendant handed out customs cards with checkboxes labeled “Citizen” or “Tourist,” it struck me that Croatia was a country to which, technically, I’d never been.

  I shouldered my backpack, descended the stairs, and crossed the tarmac toward the graying building of Zagreb International. The mass of concrete tapered out into two skinny terminal arms. Three other propeller planes were parked opposite the one I’d just disembarked, and from the looks of it the airfield was at full capacity.

  Despite a concerted effort to keep myself calm—the war had been over for years now; we were practically a member of NATO goddammit—I spent my first minutes on the ground waiting for something to blow up. Inside the terminal, the yellow Information signs cast a sallow light through the hall. My sneakers clung to the dirty tiles, sticky with humidity and spilled soft drinks. All these years later and the place had yet to shake its Eastern Bloc aura—the posturing with size and cement, a woman with a brash smear of cherry lipstick she can’t quite pull off. I made my way past a cluster of confused tourists to the front of the immigration line. I liked the power that came with pushing through a crowd, the kind of shoving that would be unacceptable in America. I didn’t say excuse me.

  “HelloDobarDan,” said the customs agent when I reached the window. He put a hand out in request for my documents. Upon receipt of my American passport he mumbled something in broken English and reached for a stack of immigration forms.

  “Dobar dan,” I tried. The words were rough in my throat. “Kako ste vi danas?” I’d conjugated the phrase formally but correctly, and stroking his mustache, he looked me over as if I’d presented him with false papers. I met his gaze. He returned the blank forms to the top of the pile.

  “Welcome back,” he said in Croatian and waved me through.

  Outside families were coming together. A set of toddler twins in matching sunglasses flung themselves at an elderly man. A young man in a Dinamo jersey flagged down his weary fiancée and lifted her off the floor in their embrace; the color crawled back into her cheeks when they kissed. A man in a dark suit met another in like clothing. At first they looked like corporate associates, but when they hugged and clenched their jaws, I recognized their reunion immediately as the business of burial. I looked away.

  The baggage carousel squeaked along at a lethargic pace. Many bags had been strangled with industrial-grade plastic wrap. I spotted my suitcase, relatively unharmed, heaved it off the belt, and walked out into the open lot.

  The airport was far outside the city, so I handed my bag to a man in an official-looking reflective vest and boarded a bus marked ZAGREB CENTAR. I realized it was a mistake as soon as the driver requested twenty kunas, too much for a regular bus ride. It was probably a private company designed to scam tourists, but I hadn’t seen any other public transport in the lot, and my suitcase was already in the belly of the bus.

  “I haven’t changed any money yet,” I said to the driver in English, suspecti
ng he’d take the news better that way.

  “Two-zero kuna to Autobus Station Zagreb,” he said, palm out. I handed him a five-dollar bill, which he pocketed without issuing me a ticket.

  After a stint on the new highway between the airport and city, I exited Autobusni Kolodvor and walked into the city center. Zagreb seemed both smaller and more beautiful than the simulacrum I’d constructed in my head. Red and yellow tulips bloomed in beds across the city, and the cobblestone walkways, soaked in summer sun, looked cleaner than I remembered. While people on the street were clothed in fashions long passed in America, they looked well fed, with no outward signs of distress. Only the occasional shelling damage in the building façades gave any confirmation that a war had taken place.

  I continued down Branimirova, a street that had become unrecognizably commercial. Boutiques peddling jewelry, jeans, and cellphones had cropped up to create an unbroken, mall-like storefront. I thought of the gifts I’d brought for Luka and Petar and Marina—things I’d found new and exciting in America when I’d first arrived—and felt embarrassed. From the looks of it, they’d imported everything already.

  Hotels, big international ones, stood behind the market. I knew the city must have had hotels when I was young, but I could neither remember them nor imagine who would have wanted to stay in them. On the left Glavni Kolodvor came into view—Zagreb’s Grand Central, everyone joked, though in reality it was older than the New York terminal.

  Until this point I’d been walking straight, avoiding the question of an exact destination, but soon I’d have to turn off if I wanted to go to Luka’s parents’ house. Property usually only changed hands via inheritance, so it was unlikely that they had moved. Luka would be there, too; students lived at home with their families while attending university. Was it better to go and get it over with, or stop at the hostel first and try to wash up? Should I try to find a pay phone with a phone book to see if his family was even still listed? I decided it was best to go look for him right away—chances were slim that a hostel shower would put me in a clearer state of mind. But the weight of whatever I might find there was slowing my steps. The prospects of having lost or coming face-to-face with the person who’d known me best were equally terrifying.