by Jane Brittan
‘Oh yeah. Of course. The mortgage. The gas bill was overdue so they just emptied the house and pissed off without me.’ I’m being a bitch. ‘Sorry,’ I say. He smiles and I go on, ‘I’ve been thinking about it. I think they’re in trouble. I think in the past they did something – or saw something – really bad and maybe whatever it is has finally caught up with them.’
‘What sort of thing?’
I roll over and pull the newspaper cutting from my pocket. I wait a moment before handing it to him.
He squints at the paper in the torchlight. ‘Who are all these men? Soldiers?’
‘I think so. That one’s my dad.’
‘Yeah? What was he, like a mercenary?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What does it say?’
‘This bit says Scorpions. I don’t know why, or what it means. The rest is just a list of names. But I can’t find his name there.’
‘So maybe it’s not him?’
‘It’s him. It’s just a different name.’
‘Where did you find it?’
‘In the attic at home. That’s where I was when you called me.’
Again I feel that bleakness overwhelm me in a kind of icy embrace.
‘You don’t look like him – your dad,’ he says.
‘I know.’
‘Do you look like your mum?’
‘No.’
He looks at me and I can see that he’s wrestling with whether to ask the question: the one I’ve locked up in a drawer deep in the back of my mind.
I cut in: ‘You live with your mum, don’t you?’
He’s quiet for a moment. ‘Um … yeah. Sometimes, yeah.’
‘Sometimes?’
‘She stays away sometimes. Men. I’m on my own a lot, I mean I manage. It’s not a problem.’
‘So where’s –?’
‘My dad?’
‘Yeah. Do you see him … much of him?’
‘He lives in Germany. He’s married with a baby.’
‘Oh right.’
‘I see him about twice a year when he comes over.’
‘Oh.’
He shifts position and I catch something in his eyes that I haven’t seen before.
‘When he comes over, he stays with us and they always get drunk and end up in bed together and they seem to think that’s not going to be a head-fuck for me at all. I know they’re adults and there’s no law against it but I can’t get my head round the fact that Dad’s got a kid back in Germany and he’s cheating on his wife with his ex-wife. But last time he was here he took me to Wembley to see England play.’
‘So was that OK? The football?’
‘I hate football. And he knows it, but he’s a big Arsenal fan. He left after that – went straight to the airport – and I spent the evening with Mum in tears because she’s still in love with him. Classy guy.’
‘I had no idea.’
‘How could you? No one does. I don’t talk about it.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You’re doing it again.’
‘What?’
‘Saying sorry.’
I smile and look down. ‘Busted.’
‘Actually it’s good to talk about it – makes it seem more normal. Anyway you changed the subject. We were talking about your parents. What do you think is going on?’
‘I wondered …’
‘What?’
‘Well, I guess when something like this happens, when everyone you thought you knew turns out to be not what you thought at all, then maybe that means I’m not what I thought at all either.’
‘You’re not making sense.’
‘If my parents aren’t who I thought they were; if they were – I don’t know – pretending, then what does that make me?’ I wait. ‘D’you see where I’m going?’
‘If I’m honest, not really,’ he says.
I breathe, ‘I’m just starting to wonder if … if I’m their daughter at all. You know, if everything else is messed up, if everything else is a lie, then why not that?’
‘So you think …?’
‘I don’t know. In some ways it would really make a lot of things clear. Although why would you adopt a child you didn’t want or even like?’
‘Why? Is that what they were like? Shit Sanda. That’s rough.’
His voice and the kindness in it make me want to cry again. Quickly I hand over the photograph, the one of the child.
‘This was all they left.’
He takes it and turns it over in his hands. He looks at it for a long time without speaking then he says, ‘Is this you?’ I nod. ‘But the name on the back, who’s that?’
‘Senka. Senka Hadžić. That’s my grandmother’s name apparently; at least that’s what my dad told me.’
‘You don’t believe him?’
I shake my head. ‘They’ve done this to me. They’ve lied to me. Why should anything be true any more?’
He nods gravely and hands back the photograph, and I think about those bone fragments of memories of my childhood and they’re dust. White ash.
‘You know, you can find out if you’re … adopted. They have to tell you.’
I look at him. ‘Maybe.’
‘What is it?’ he says.
‘I’m just thinking, if I was adopted – and this is me in the photo – and my Dad was some kind of soldier in the war there …’
‘What war?’
‘In the early nineties there was a war in Bosnia … you must know that.’
‘I heard something about it maybe …’
‘Well, there was a war – it started in 1992. The Bosnian Serbs wanted an independent Serbia.’
‘Who won?’
‘Who won? My God. That’s so like a boy.’
‘Well – it’s important, isn’t it?’
‘Everyone and no one. They just made peace I think.’
‘OK. So, maybe you were an orphan. Maybe your real parents were killed in the war and your dad – I mean your adopted dad – found you and adopted you?’
‘God, I really need to know.’
‘So who’s this Branko then? If they think I’m helping you for him, then … well, he must be someone you know.’
‘I don’t know anyone called Branko.’
‘You sure?’
‘Yes. Maybe they were confused. Or making it up.’
Joe looks away.
Just then the van slows and brakes and Joe drops the torch, which goes out. I hear a fist banging on the side and the doors open.
‘OK, get out,’ says Andrija.
We’re in a fenced car park with trucks and trailers all around us. In the toilet block, I wash my face and smooth my hair. Once we’re back in the van, they give us sandwiches and water. We start up the torch again and try to settle down. Joe is asleep at once but, exhausted as I am, it’s a long time before I can go to sleep, and several times in the night, I wake to see the torchlight flickering and dying as the battery gives out.
Early in the morning, they wake us and the sandwich and toilet routine is repeated. We cross two borders in one day. I know, because before the crossing points, we’re bound and gagged. At one border, the doors are opened and a torch flashed over the van contents. I even see the face of the border guard, heavy set with a black moustache. I chew and spit at the foul-tasting cotton gag to make some sound.
The next time we’re allowed out, we’re in Austria.
I can taste blood in my mouth.
We sleep then till we’re woken by the van bumping and rolling over ground that doesn’t feel like road, and when it comes to a halt and the doors are opened, it’s dark. We’re led out into a grassy clearing surrounded by tall spruce trees. Andrija gives us a bag of crisps each and we tear into them. I can hear water in the distance, and strange bird calls sound in the cold night air. Joe takes a blanket from the van and puts it round my shoulders.
Andrija and Boris pace about the clearing talking in low voices. Boris carries a rifle. Andrija tries his phone
a couple of times. I find myself wondering whether he knows much more than we do.
I can’t stop thinking about dying here in the forest, imagining falling onto the hard brush, my blood leeching away into the pine needles, my eyes open and staring. I shiver and all I can hear are my teeth drumming in my head.
The thing is I’ve never kissed a boy. And the boy I’ve dreamed about kissing practically every day since I first saw him is standing right next to me; except he might as well be a million miles away.
I turn to him in the oily darkness but he’s looking straight ahead. I follow his gaze. Headlights strobe through the trees. A very old and battered Range Rover comes into view. The sides are pocked with holes and one of the back windows is shattered. I force myself to breathe.
9
Two people get out of the car. The first is a big woman – broad rather than fat. She has a man’s body: barrel chest, wide back and sturdy legs. She looks old although her hair in the headlights shines bright orange. She wears a fur coat that looks like it’s taken about a thousand small mammals to make. Her companion is tall with a shaved head. He’s wearing a camouflage jacket and army boots.
A long and heated conversation follows. They’re talking about Joe and how he wasn’t part of the plan. They speak quietly but I’m sure I hear the word ‘Branko’. All the while Boris is pointing the rifle at us in a rather half-hearted way.
My mouth is stale and my stomach boils. I put my hand out to Joe and he takes it, locking his fingers through mine. His eyes are steady.
Eventually Andrija and the woman come over to us. She folds her arms and her mouth is set while he speaks.
‘This is Madame Milanković. She is … she will take you.’
‘Where I belong’. Is this where I belong?
‘What’s going on?’ I say. Joe is still as a rock but I feel the blood thumping in his wrist. I say in Serbian, ‘We’re not going anywhere until you tell us what you’re doing. You can’t do this.’
Andrija mutters something which I don’t catch, then turns away and spits on the ground.
‘Mirko, put them in the car,’ says Milanković. The tall man steps towards me. Joe gets between us and rams him in the chest with both hands.
‘Run, Sanda!’
We crash though the undergrowth but we don’t get far. Boris catches him across the back with the butt of the rifle and he sprawls headlong onto the ground.
‘Joe!’
I stop and I go to him but Mirko gets there first. He sweeps him up in one powerful motion and carries him to the Range Rover. I try to follow but Milanković has me kneeling in front of her with one hand pressing vice-like on my neck and her knee in my back.
I see Andrija and Boris hovering uncertainly until Milanković says, ‘You can go.’ Boris shuffles off and climbs into the cab.
Andrija hesitates a moment, looks back at me, scuffs the ground with his boot and leaves.
As the tail lights of the van disappear through the brush, I see Mirko striding towards me from the car. He reaches me quickly and heaves me over his shoulder.
I start screaming. I’m screaming and it’s like someone else is doing it. It’s like I’m outside my body and floating high above the forest, listening to the sound tearing up into space.
Mirko opens the car door and tosses me in. I plummet back down to earth.
Joe raises his head, his eyes half closed. He reaches out, finds my hand and grips it. And then I’m quiet again. He sinks back against the seat.
We’re going at speed through pine forests, over dirt tracks, past tiny hamlets, tumbledown houses with broken roofs; I see snow-frosted mountains way in the distance. We’re thrown together then apart as the car careers round sharp bends. We make our way up and up, and the gears squeal and crunch as we skid on. Joe’s head is lolling forward, and every so often he emits an ugly groan. From time to time, Milanković snaps at Mirko who grunts assent.
Then, with the moon high in a black night sky, we turn a corner and pull up through iron gates into a steep drive.
Ahead of us rises a kind of castle: tall grey turrets with evil little windows squinting down at us; steps up to a great door. The windows on the first two floors have bars on them. A large sign is bolted to the gatepost: Zbrisć Sirotište. A ringing starts up in my head because I’ve heard the word sirotište but I can’t place it. I’m still thinking about it when I catch sight of a child at a ground-floor window. His head is shaved and he watches the car with wide, dark eyes in his pinched face. As the iron gates clang shut behind us, the meaning comes to me: orphanage.
The car has child locks so we have to wait to be let out. I can tell Joe’s as scared as I am; I can see the muscles in his forearms tightening and his fists round on his thighs.
‘It’s OK,’ I say. ‘They’ll let you go now.’
‘I don’t think so,’ he says, ‘I think they want both of us.’
The door on my side is opened by Mirko. Milanković waits in the car while I’m hauled out onto the ground. He yanks me up and frogmarches me towards the door. I’m kicking and hitting at him for all I’m worth and yelling Joe’s name. All I hear are Joe’s muffled shouts and an impotent thumping on the windows of the car.
In minutes we’re inside. I hear footsteps hurrying over flagstones. Mirko lets go of me and dusts himself off. Again footsteps, but different: a fat slap of rubber this time and a figure comes into view. A thin woman with bleached hair piled up in a beehive. She wears overalls and rubber boots like she works on a farm. She takes hold of my arm while chatting to Mirko.
After a minute, they exchange a curt good bye and she steers me away down a shadowy corridor.
She takes me to a concrete cell with a low arched ceiling and bolts the door behind us. The room smells of bleach and is lit by a single bulb. At one end, is a tiled section of floor and wall and at the other, a table and two chairs. On the table is a small brown parcel tied with string.
She says nothing. She sits at the table, crosses her legs and gestures to me by plucking at her clothes that she wants me to strip. In spite of the cold, I’m burning. I want to refuse but I can see it’s pointless. I make up my mind I won’t cry. Slowly I bend to untie my shoelaces as she touches up her lipstick. The floor is wet and there’s nowhere dry to put my clothes. I leave them in a heap, carefully tucking the photograph and cutting I’ve carried from London inside a sleeve. I stand there in my bra and pants, shivering and rubbing my arms, my flesh blue and goose pimpled.
She looks up then and comes around the table to face me.
‘Everything,’ she says. She waits while I peel off my underwear. I must not cry. I must not cry. I fold my arms across my body and shuffle back towards the tiled wall. She twists me around to face the wall with my palms flat against it.
And then water. Cold water: a force like I’ve never known pummels my back and legs. She shouts at me to turn, and holding my arms across myself to protect my frozen body I do as she orders. She grips the hose in both hands and the icy jet rams against my face and nearly knocks me off balance. I brace myself against the wall to stop myself falling.
Just as suddenly, the water is switched off; she throws me a towel and I start to rub myself dry.
She opens the package on the table to reveal a set of clothes and motions to me to put them on. I ignore her. I’m dry now.
I wind the towel around me and I say: ‘Where’s my friend? Where’s my friend? I want to see him.’
Her mouth contorts into a sneer. ‘You’ll find out soon enough.’
Rage surges through me and I spit at her. Time slows and in the moment of peace before she hits me, I watch the bubbles of my saliva crawling down her rouged cheek. Her lips are slightly parted and a curl of spit licks its way into her mouth. She snaps her mouth shut.
The blow lands hard on my face. She shakes her hand a few times as though to soothe the sting. Something in me, some small defiant part of me, gives me the strength to hold my ground. I meet her gaze and again, very calmly this time, I
ask, ‘Where is my friend? What have you done with him?’
She curses in response and goes out, locking the door behind her.
I take out the clothes. They consist of a garish collection of hand-me-downs that smell of stale dishtowels: flared cords, boots, a knitted jumper with a zip, a T-shirt that says ‘University of Michigan’ on it, and a pair of men’s socks. I gather up the cuttings and stuff them into the pocket of the cords.
The woman returns with a large pair of blunt scissors and cuts off my hair. And when it’s done, she steps back and looks at me in an odd way as though she’s about to say something but then thinks better of it. She goes to the door, beckons me. I pick up the little bundle of my old clothing and follow her down dimly lit corridors with doors opening off them into wide rooms like hospital wards or dormitories, full of beds packed tightly together. Many of the rooms are lit by candles, and I can just make out indistinct shapes huddled on beds and in corners.
Every nerve in my body, every cell, is like a lit match, fizzing and spitting.
Everywhere the floors are wood or stone and the high ceilings make the place almost as cold as the outside. The walls are bare and giant hides of peeling paint spiral away from them. In places there are even holes like some massive fist has punched through from the outside, and the freezing wind saws in as we pass. I stop at a mottled mirror and I don’t recognise the person staring back at me: my hair stands up in tufts, bits she’s missed hang down around my ears, my face looks thin and drawn and there are dark purple shadows under my eyes. My parents have done this to me. My family.
Finally I’m locked in a room and left to sleep on a thin mattress. I wake at dawn and lie there watching the dust motes glittering like beads in the light.
I need to get away as soon as possible, to find Joe and get out. Because of all I’ve lost, somehow losing Joe, and the kind of idea of Joe, matters more than anything. Where nothing is sure any more, where everything that means something turns out to be false or compromised, Joe is real. Now they’ve taken him too.
Later, I’m sitting on a rickety child’s chair outside what looks like an office. I’m with the beehive woman from last night who knocks at the door. She looks nervous. The door opens and she drags me into the room where Milanković is standing waiting. The office is a complete contrast to what is outside it. The floor is carpeted, a lamp gives out a soft glow, and there are curtains rather than bars at the window, a huge pink cabbage print that Mum would have loved.