by Jane Brittan
‘You have no idea about me. No idea about my life,’ she says.
‘I know more than you think. I know what you did in the War.’
She flattens her back against the chair. ‘Oh. That. And you think you can judge me now? You don’t know anything. You know nothing about it. War is hard and it’s dirty and it’s complicated. No one is innocent. No one.’
I ask again, ‘Why did you take me?’
‘I told you why.’
‘You loved me?’
She purses her mouth in disgust. ‘I didn’t love you. You were nothing to me. You were like … like an animal, like a mule. You had a job to do and you’ve done it. It’s over. That’s why you’re here.’
‘A job …?’
‘Yes. You were doing a job; both of you. You were helping me punish someone. Dragan too – he was a part of it until he started to care about you and make a fuss.’
‘He’s dead.’
She shrugs. ‘That’s what happens when you start to think you can change things.’
‘He wrote me a letter. I think he loved you.’
‘Weak,’ she says. ‘Let me ask you. Where do you think strength really comes from? What gives a man the strength to go on, to endure?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘No, you wouldn’t. She might though.’ She gestures to Senka. ‘I’ll tell you. It is hope. You take away hope from a person and they’re empty: weak and empty.’
Kristina claps her hands and a low door is opened in the wall. Two men come into the room, dragging someone between them. His head hangs limply and his bare feet leave a thin wash of blood on the floor behind him. They manoeuvre him into a chair near Kristina, stand behind him, and one of them pulls back his head by his hair. He has a high, lined brow, even features and gold-green eyes that fill with tears as they meet mine. Right away, I feel something: a kind of force, a tiny pulse inside me that sets up a soft beat against my heart. At my side, Senka reaches for my hand.
He struggles to move but they have him pinned into the chair by his arms.
Kristina flicks her eyes at him and goes on: ‘I had hope once. Hope and love. Yes, me. But that was taken from me. An eye for an eye. This man,’ she gestures in his direction, ‘took my love, my hope.’
‘No,’ I hear from the man in the chair.
At once, she walks over to face him, bends and places a finger on his lips. She glances at me over her shoulder. ‘And I did the same to him. That’s fair isn’t it?’
‘Who is …?’ I say, although I’m sure I know the answer. I’m holding Senka’s hand so tightly, I can feel the web of tiny bones start to give.
‘This is your father,’ she says. ‘This is Branko Hadžić.’
‘Sanda, Senka, my God …’ he gasps.
‘And you – ?’ I begin.
‘Here he is,’ says Kristina. ‘And here you are. I wanted to show him one last time what he had and what he lost. He has nothing. I’ve drained him of everything, little by little.’
His eyes on her are pleading. She speaks to me. ‘You think you’ve had a hard time? Let me tell you a story, Sanda, about a girl not much older than you and what was done to her.’
Kristina sits back down, squeezes her hands together until her knuckles glow white. Branko twitches in his chair.
She waits a moment, then: ‘This girl was beautiful. She had soft skin and long blonde hair tied in a thick plait down her back. She came from nothing: from darkness, from pain. Her parents were ignorant, stupid, cold. They were jealous of her beauty, of the joy she saw in life. They kept pigs, they grew beet. That was all they had.
‘But she was clever. She had a hunger for knowledge, for learning. She wanted to be a teacher. She worked hard and she got a place at college. It was there that she met him. He was a young professor. He was tall, good looking, all the girls liked him, but he took a special interest in her. Oh yes.’ She looks across at Branko, who keeps his body still and taut.
‘As soon as she walked into his class on the first day, she knew he loved her, he couldn’t help himself. They talked for hours after class, walked in the gardens. He sent her letters, little notes. He taught her to love, she who had known no love in her life.’
Branko shakes his head. ‘It was all in your head. There was nothing between us. You’re lying!’ And to us, ‘She’s lying. I was kind to her, that’s all – I felt sorry for her, but she’s a monster, she’s not …’
‘Gag him,’ she says quietly. A filthy rag is fastened around his mouth and he slumps back. She looks at me and her eyes burn. ‘Yes. We were passionate lovers, thrown together.’
Branko’s shaking his head again.
‘I adored him,’ she goes on, ignoring him. ‘I would have walked through fire for him. I had so much love in my heart. So much hope. Can you imagine? Can you understand? But then he threw it all away on some Bosniak slut, another teacher. And all those promises we’d made to each other, all my hopes, were turned into dust.’
‘So, you –?’
‘The war had started. I joined the Serbian Radical Party then and I lost them for a while. I heard they’d had twin girls. And then in 1995, I saw her by chance on the Potočari road with a group of other women and children. And there you were – you and your idiot sister. And there and then I decided what I was going to do. I had Dragan shoot your mother and we took you both. But not before I told her why. She knew who I was.
‘I found him later in a transit camp. It was providence. I had him transferred to my camp and before I locked him up, I told him what I’d done, and how I was leaving the country.’
‘And Dragan? He went along with all this?’
‘Of course. I owned Dragan. He would have done anything for me.’
‘So what happened? What did you do?’
‘Branko stayed in prison for a long time, five years or more, long after the war ended. I saw to it from England. I wanted him where I could find him, you see. And every so often I would send him a little present.’
‘Present?’ I say.
‘Photographs. Of you … and her. I wanted him to know you were alive, growing up far away, having forgotten him; that he was never going to see you. I made sure they kept him alive. They had to watch him very closely. Many times he tried to take his own life but they stopped him. He’d still be in there but there was a change at the top and he appealed and they had to let him go.’
‘And he found you?’
‘He was getting very close. They warned me. Then I had a letter, and I knew it was time – time to return, to wait. He got to the house in London soon after we left, then he went to Zbrisć. He was easy to catch,’ she says. ‘I just told him I had you. I knew he’d come.’
I look at Branko. His eyes are brimming with tears again, and his shoulders are heaving. I go to him.
‘Keep away!’ She thrusts her chin at Goran, and he grabs me. ‘So,’ she says to Branko. ‘I thought you would like to see them one last time. Just so you know I kept them alive but apart. They’ve grown up not knowing each other, not knowing love, or kindness, or hope. Just as I did. You remember what I wrote to you when you betrayed me, that I would never let you forget?’
Senka is looking at Kristina with absolute hatred. I try to go to Branko again but Goran holds me back, nearly tearing my arm from its socket.
‘Please?’ I say. ‘Please let me talk to him! Please?’
Suddenly, Branko pushes himself off the chair and onto his knees. I feel Goran loosen his grip, distracted. We rush towards Branko, he opens his arms and just for a moment, his hands are on my hair.
‘Take them!’ Kristina shouts. We’re wrenched apart and taken out, leaving my father struggling between the two men. My throat is cracked from screaming.
Outside, it’s pitch dark: the only light comes from the porch lamp where drowsy moths bat and whirl, their wide, patterned wings making strange shadows against the stone steps.
The car that brought me is gone. In its place is a pickup truck. Goran shunts u
s over and gestures to us to get in. We stumble up the step into the trailer and turn to face him as he climbs up. He holds a length of coarse rope. Standing there in the back of the truck, looking down at the ground, I’m back in that dream. I can see it so clearly. It was in a truck like this that we’d been taken from our mother at the side of the road. I can see the woods behind her; I can see her agonised face, pleading, calling. I can see her as she falls.
Goran’s binding the whiskery rope around us. He’s pushing us down so we sit back to back tightly bound. A fury like I’ve never known rises up in me and I know if I can harness it, control it, I can beat this man. I’m determined not to go quietly.
When he’s satisfied with his job, he climbs in and starts the engine, and the headlights illuminate the forest around us. I see the brightness of a rabbit’s eyes caught for a moment in the glare. I stroke Senka’s hand as she sits stiffly at my back. I wonder what’s going on in her head. She’s hardly made a sound since he came for us.
The sharp sweet smell of pine surrounds us, and leaves dip and brush our heads as we pass. We’re on a narrow track taking us deep into the forest. An owl cries overhead and there’s the odd movement in the undergrowth as an animal runs for cover before us. In the cab up front, music is playing and I can just hear him tapping along to the refrain on the steering wheel. After a short while, we stop at a place where the trees have thinned out around a patch of scrubby ground. He gets out of the cab and pulls out a torch and a spade.
‘Shit!’ I breathe.
He comes around to the back of the truck and jumps up to face us. He sets the torch down pointing at us, and proceeds to untie me and bind up Senka again. She doesn’t utter a sound, her head still bowed, with its mad spikes of tawny hair shining in the torchlight.
He hands me the spade and goes to jump down, hauling me with him. ‘You dig. You are stronger.’
‘What for?’
‘Just do it!’ He turns the torch on me, and I set to work.
In spite of the cold, the ground is reasonably soft here, and I manage to clear away several clods before I hit compacted earth and rock. I get to my knees then, and start to pull up the rocks with my hands. I’m trying not to think about what I’m doing and why. I’m trying to think of what it would take to swing the spade and what damage I could do to his fat face.
I need to distract him – to bring him closer.
‘How deep?’
‘What?’
‘How deep has this got to be?’
He looks at me and says in a matter of fact voice, ‘Deep enough for two of you.’
I try again. ‘I can’t get this rock out. Can you help me?’
‘You not used to hard work? I should maybe get your sister.’
‘No! No. It’s OK. I can do it. Can you bring the torch closer?’
In answer, he simply points it into my face which makes things worse. It means I can’t see him.
I reach for the spade and dig on with him watching, and after what feels like hours, I have a reasonable hole, about six feet across and a foot deep. I get to my feet and brush myself down.
‘Good,’ he says, and he motions to me to climb down into it.
I keep looking at Senka, who sits motionless. He goes back to her, wrestles her bindings and lifts her unresisting body down.
He pushes her at me and I catch her as she stumbles in next to me.
Goran smiles. ‘Very touching. Twins. Twins with the strange eyes. I remember when they took you. I said it was a bad idea. I said they should shoot you like they shot your mother.’
‘You bastard!’
‘Bosniak animals. Filthy pigs. She had eyes like yours too. They shot her in the face.’
All around, the forest whistles and blows. And in the light from the torch, I watch a black beetle crawl out from under a leaf. I reach for Senka’s hand and I clutch it. Her fingers feel cold and dry and brittle.
She squeezes back and under her breath, she says my name: ‘Sanda. Sestra: sister.’
Now I know it doesn’t matter what happens. I have my sister, my family. And in my head, and on my skin, my father’s touch. His breath.
Goran pulls out his gun and takes aim. I close my eyes. I have no fear at this moment. I’ve come so far and I have my sister. I cling to her and wait for death.
Nothing happens. Nothing happens.
Then a crash.
I open my eyes. First, I see the torch on the ground, its thin beam raking the dirt. Then I see him. He’s lying face down, bleeding from a deep wound in the back of his head. I reach for the torch and turn it on, the gloom of the forest behind him. And, standing there, I see someone I thought I’d never see again.
‘Andjela!’ She looks like some kind of woodland creature. She’s covered in bracken and mud, her clothes torn and threadbare but she’s smiling.
‘How did you find us …?’ I ask.
Slowly, she tells me: ‘After Joe was taken, I went back to Zbrisć.’ She looks up at me and then away into the forest. ‘I had nowhere else to go.’
‘Oh, Andjela,’ I say.
‘They said I hurt Mirko – he nearly died. They said I was to be punished. I was so frightened. They took me to the House but I escaped. I’ve been out here ever since.’ And in an echo of Senka’s words in the attic: ‘Everyone knows this house. Everyone is frightened to be sent there. That woman …’
‘I know,’ I say.
‘I saw the headlights, heard voices.’
I swallow, think of Mirko: the glass in my hand, the soft push of flesh and muscle, the dark arc of his blood.
‘They blamed you for Mirko. Andjela, I’m so sorry.’
She shrugs. ‘It’s OK. But you – you have your sister. You’ve found each other. I’m happy for you.’
‘Thank you,’ I say.
Senka smiles.
‘But we’re wasting time,’ says Andjela. I clamber up onto level ground and help Senka out. Andjela’s already making for the truck.
Suddenly, I find I can’t move. It’s like the roots of the pines have wormed into me and I’m fixed to the ground. Andjela calls back urgently, ‘Come on!’
I wake up. We hurry to the truck and I climb into the driver’s seat and feel down for the keys as I’ve seen people do. They’re still in the ignition. From a few feet away, I hear a groan and shine the torch towards the noise. He’s lying at an odd angle in the dead leaves, his head a sticky mass of congealing blood, but on one hand the fingers are beginning to twitch and grope. Beyond him, I see the gun. No time to go back for it now. I turn the key and his lousy music booms out into the forest. I switch it off and after hammering several times at the pedals and gears, the truck leaps forward, then stalls and stops so abruptly that Senka bangs her head on the dashboard.
He’s on his feet now, swaying, blundering towards us like a zombie. He throws himself across the bonnet and bellows. Senka cowers in the front seat.
Andjela nudges me and says, ‘Come on Sanda.’
It’s down to me and I know it. I have one more chance to make this work. I switch the engine on again, shove my left foot at one of the pedals I’m guessing is the clutch, crank the gear stick, and eventually manage to thrust the truck into gear. We lurch forward – enough to throw him off the bonnet – and after two or three starts and stops, I find the accelerator pedal. I figure the braking bit will just come to me later. Right now, we need to be moving. And we are, cutting back through the track in the forest.
I momentarily take my eye off the path ahead and we slam into a tree. The bonnet buckles and steam starts to cloud out into the cold air.
‘Shit! Shit!’
I try the key and nothing happens. What an idiot! As far as I can see at this point, we have two choices: we can either sit here in the dark with the doors locked, or get out and run like hell. We choose the latter. I open my door and we jump down.
We set off through the forest with the bracken clawing and winding at our legs. I look over my shoulder to see he’s gaining on us.<
br />
We have to face him. End him. End this. A little further on up ahead, the ground slopes away into a kind of trench. I make for it, frantically beckoning for them to follow. We tumble into the trench and into a slush of wet leaves and mulch in the bottom.
‘OK?’ I ask Senka.
‘Yes. Yes I’m OK.’
‘Andjela?’
She nods, looking back anxiously.
To myself more than anyone else, I say: ‘Ambush. We’re going to have to ambush him. We need a stick. A big stick.’
I look about. At the top of the trench, snaking towards us like a long arm is such a stick. I grab it and pull it but it won’t budge. On tiptoes, in freezing mush, I waggle it backwards and forwards until it begins to splinter from its mooring. It breaks away with a creaking sound, leaving the end sharp and jagged. Perfect.
I can hear him now, his heavy panting. We crouch low, and wait. And wait. When he’s nearly on top of us, I stand up brandishing the stick and shove it square into his face. He staggers back and I’m out of the trench in an instant. I hit him again and again. He sinks to his knees, covering his eyes, his face streaked with blood. And again I raise the stick: it’s like I can’t stop, I can’t feel anything any more but this.
‘That’s enough,’ Andjela says.
But I find I can’t let go of the stick. My fingers are clasped so tightly, they’re stuck, frozen around it. She tugs at the stick and reluctantly, I let it go.
We move on fast, leaving Goran’s unconscious body behind. Ahead, I can make out traces of headlights from the road below.
And what now? Where now?
I try to think. But thinking is hard because I’m shaking, from my fingertips through my whole body. And I can’t stop it and I can’t think straight. I can see his face slacken and cave as I bring down the stick.
When we get to the road, I have to stop. I’m still trembling, and I sit down at the side of the road and wait for Andjela and Senka to catch up. Andjela puts her hand on my arm and squeezes it. I look up at her. She’s survived so much. She gives me hope that we’ll get through this too. And that’s enough for me.