Pretty Birds

by Scott Simon

  But Tedic came back credibly. “I have so many broken windows and mortar holes in my apartment, I gag on the fresh air,” he said.

  THE HOME MINISTER licked a finger and tried to smooth one of a score of crinkles on his soiled silver London tie. “What do we have here?” he asked finally. “A series of lucky, improbable, unrelated shots, or a pattern?

  “Have you heard the Knight?” asked Tedic.

  The Home Minister shook his head.

  “His words would encourage the latter view.” Tedic read some lines from a transcript. “Perhaps they are just words,” he said. “Okay. Just yesterday morning our friend begins playing Peter Tosh. Brothers of scorn in exile for so long, we need majority rule. Early morning dew, fight on, et cetera.” Tedic’s Caribbean accent was unconvincing.

  “A favorite of my daughter’s,” said the Home Minister gloomily. “Twisted to become a Serb anthem with steel drums.”

  Tedic ran his finger over a new paragraph. “Okay. Then he says, ‘You know, Muslims, there’s something your government won’t tell you. They don’t think you deserve the truth. You are dolls in a shooting gallery to them. They force you to dodge bullets and go hungry until they can strike their deals and fly into lush exile in the south of France.’ ”

  “If we get to choose,” the Home Minister interrupted, “I’d prefer Florida. I find I’m always cold.”

  “Winter in San Juan, summer in Gstaad is how I’ve arranged my fantasy life,” said Tedic. “Our friend goes on. ‘What do you think they’re doing,’ he asks, ‘when they jet off to conferences in Vienna and London? They don’t come back waving peace treaties, do they? No gifts for you. What has your mixed-ethnic assembly of Muslim fanatics, Serb stooges, thick-skulled Croats, and anteater-nosed Jews actually done?’ ”

  “Well, this thick-skulled fanatic,” observed the Home Minister with an edge, “hasn’t been to so much as Zagreb since the start of things.”

  “He has a phrase coming up,” said Tedic, scanning the next section. “ ‘They have only gotten your friends and family killed. They have only made you starve and freeze. The Americans have a new grinning possum for president. He wouldn’t fight for his own country. What makes you think he will risk any precious, pink-assed American boys for your lives?’ ”

  “He’s got a point there,” said the Home Minister.

  “ ‘Here’s what your government won’t tell you, Muslims.’ ” Tedic put the Knight’s voice back into his own. “ ‘We can hit you anywhere. All those barriers and blind spots? Mere decoration. They are fortifications for fools. Their barricades are as flimsy and worthless as toilet tissue—if you remember toilet tissue. And your leaders know it. Ask around. Every week people are getting shot in what are supposed to be safe zones. The truth? No place is safe. We Serbs have a viper here who can thread a bullet into your brain even if you lock yourself inside the basement vault of a bank on Branilaca Sarajeva Street. He is that good. His bite is fatal. He is that poisonous. Where can you turn? How can you breathe? Every step you take—’ ”

  “It should not be difficult to guess the musical accompaniment,” the Home Minister interjected, signaling that the point had been made. “Every breath you take?” The Home Minister’s voice rose in a question. “Every move you make, step you take, I’ll be watching you?”

  “Sting,” agreed Tedic. “Like the sting of the viper.”

  “Let’s not get carried away with metaphor,” said the Home Minister. He rose from his seat and began to slap his own arms against the gloom and frostiness of the basement.

  26.

  AMELA AND IRENA were able to talk the next week, and the week after that. Zoran would stand next to his cab while the girls went back and forth for ten minutes of conversation. Amela had found the Q from January 1992. It had pictures of the Q Awards ceremonies at Abbey Road Studios.

  “There’s a picture of a guy named Lou Reed,” Amela said. “Short and wrinkled.”

  “Our parents like him,” said Irena. “Over.”

  “Seal likes him. Seal got best newcomer award. He looks sooo damn sexy.”

  “Tell, tell. Over,” said Irena.

  “Purple velvet coat, pure white shirt, unbuttoned, diamond necklace, and black leather pants,” Amela said, describing it. “Big, big diamond buttons on the crotch. Oh-ver.”

  “Oh, my,” said Irena. “Over.” She pretended to fan herself with one of her grandmother’s old winter gloves.

  “An article on the fifty best albums of last year. Over.”

  “Who?” asked Irena. “Over.”

  “Elvis Costello, Billy Bragg, Nirvana, Ice-T.” Amela’s voice clicked out as she used both hands to turn a page.

  “Lenny Kravitz?” asked Irena. “Over.”

  “For sure. Over.”

  “Talk about sexy! Over.”

  “Sean Lennon with him. Do you think he would be famous if he was Sean Jezdic? Sting, of course. The Soul Cages. Over.”

  “Sean grew up quick,” said Irena. “So young when his father got shot. Sting is still sexy. But do you remember a single song from that?”

  “Neil Young and Crazy Horse—a live tour album.” Amela’s voice clicked out again for a moment. “Oh, God, he is an old fuck. Why does he drive our mothers wild?”

  Zoran turned around and signaled to Irena. “Tell your friend that we old fucks like Neil Young,” he said. “There are a lot of old fucks in the world.”

  “Oh, God!” Amela suddenly exclaimed. “A story. Strange. Group in Nottingham. Carcass. Heard of them? Over.”

  “Never,” Irena said.

  “Me neither. Their stuff is hard-gore in English. Over.”

  “Porno? Over.”

  “No, gore,” Amela said. “Like a wound, my driver says. They all hide under long hair and wear black. One guy says, ‘No one likes to talk about it, but rotting is a pretty exciting process.’ Over.”

  “Oooh,” Irena sneered. “It is not. Over.”

  “Want to hear their big song?” asked Amela. “Over.”

  “Sure. Over.”

  “ ‘Vomited Anal Track.’ Over.”

  Irena laughed until she began to cough up old cigarette smoke. By the time she had fumbled the microphone back into her hand, Amela’s laughing voice had sputtered back on.

  “Listen. I’m thinking,” she said. “Keep this secret. Can you trust your driver? Over.”

  “For a carton of cigarettes, sure.” Irena glanced over at Zoran and grinned as she used to grin at players she bumped. “I get paid cigarettes,” she added.

  “There’s a spot at the airport,” said Amela. “People can wave at each other. Over.”

  “Of course. I’ve heard. French soldiers out there. Over.”

  “Our boys, too. So what if we both showed up sometime?” Amela said. “Over.”

  “At the airport? Over. To wave? Over.”

  “To wave,” said Amela. “I’d like to show you something, too. Over.”

  Irena peered at Zoran’s face as if he held some answer. She could think of only one thing. “Of course,” she said. “We can figure that out. To see you? It’s over a hundred yards. Over.”

  “I guess. Over.”

  “And you’ve got to be careful. Everyone has a gun out there. Over.”

  “We will.”

  “To see each other? Amazing! Over,” said Irena.

  Both girls had variable schedules. They could be called in to work for the day or the night. But, as it happened, both could usually figure on being free at six at night, when there should be enough light to get to the airport, and enough to see each other wave. Irena said that the falling darkness would actually help mask their routes to get safely back to their cabs and apartments.

  “You are so clever!” Amela enthused. “You should be a general, not a clerk. Over.”

  “I’m not cut out for brewery work,” said Irena. “That’s for sure. Seeing you! Amazing. Over.” They agreed on a date two weeks from then.

  IRENA FIGURED THAT the price of a
carton ought to include a brief stop before she was delivered back home, and prevailed upon Zoran to stop first at the central synagogue. There was a room in the basement where old clothes were stored. Clothes were given out freely to anyone who could offer a convincing case for need, but you had to make the case. Synagogues in New York, Paris, and London had collected bales of discarded tweeds, socks, and boots. But the Serb siege stymied delivery. The thin stocks there now were mostly the unintended bequest of dead people. The synagogue sent people in to receive their donation before squatters and scavengers—who, to be sure, also needed clothes—could help themselves.

  Irena found an elderly man with an unexpectedly powerful torso sitting on a folding chair, reading a yellowed copy of the Guardian. More James Joyce letters had been released in Dublin, but not, Irena gathered from the headline, all that had been promised. Seven-year-olds were being tested in Leeds; their parents were upset. The West, thought Irena, where people fight over a writer’s old notes and seven-year-olds don’t get tested by gunfire.

  “Excuse me,” she said.

  The man looked up, but barely.

  “I have a friend,” she said. “He is embarrassed. He needs clothes. He is cold.”

  The elderly man seemed to welcome the diversion, even as he discouraged expectation. “I just can’t give clothes out,” he said, rising from his chair. “We have to make sure people really need them. We don’t want to give out clothes and see them sold on the black market.”

  Where they might be exchanged for food, thought Irena, but kept the observation to herself.

  “He really needs them. He has just one set of everything, and it’s falling apart.”

  “Who is your friend?” the man asked skeptically. Irena could see that it was not only his broad arms that had gotten him assigned to the storeroom.

  “No one special. I mean, quite special, but no relation. He lives in our building.”

  “Got a name?”

  “He is too embarrassed, I told you.”

  “Why doesn’t he have clothes?”

  “He was—we all were—driven out of Grbavica with nothing.”

  “That’s what everyone says,” the man said.

  “I’m telling the truth,” said Irena. “I am Irena Zaric. Number Three High School.”

  The man grunted and brought his thick arms closer to his sides.

  “The basketball player.” It was a declaration, and Irena returned it simply.

  “The same.”

  “Your friend,” he continued. “Perhaps there are other forms of assistance he could use. He is eating?”

  “Fairly well, yes. We help out.”

  “We serve lunch here for elderly people.”

  “He is not that elderly.”

  “No one asks for birth certificates,” said the man.

  “He is embarrassed, I keep telling you.”

  “What does he eat?” Irena was taken by surprise. It was a case she had not expected to make.

  “What we eat. Beans, rice, canned stuff. Grass and leaves, when it was warmer. Powdered cheese and milk. Olives. Whatever. “

  “Has he ever gone on the black market? You can get clothes for olives.”

  “He doesn’t get out. He is embarrassed, I keep saying.”

  “You’ve given him what you can? I think it’s a Talmudic saying. We should do all we can to help others before we ask others to help.”

  “It sounds like the Koran, too,” said Irena. “We have given him socks and stuff. But—we took over our grandmother’s place. She didn’t keep men’s clothes.”

  “Your grandmother—Gita Zaric?”

  “Of course.”

  “I haven’t seen her,” said the man.

  “She is dead,” Irena said, and sensed that the game had suddenly turned in her favor.

  “I’m sorry,” the man said after a pause. “I hadn’t heard. There are too many to keep track. This man. How tall?”

  “A little taller than me. We can’t stand up much in our building.”

  “How old?”

  “Forties, I guess. Like what’s-his-name—Brian Wilson. But not as fat.”

  “Hoo,” said the man. Irena thought she could detect a stifled smile. “We have nothing that big. No one here is that big anymore. Your father—can’t he help him out?”

  “My father—I explained, all of us—left with just the clothes on his back.”

  “Why didn’t he pack a case?”

  “We did. All of us. We were robbed, too.”

  “That’s easy to say.”

  “Because it’s true.”

  “Kids will do anything these days to get money for beer, smokes, rubbers, drugs. If I give you clothes, and you sell them, understand: you can only fuck me over once. Does your father know you’re here?”

  Irena tried to fight back tears, then realized that she didn’t have the strength. The man became fuzzy, and when she finally spoke she had to bite off the words between sobs and sniffles.

  “You nasty old son of a bitch!” she yelled. “The clothes are for my father! My father is digging shit holes! He’s wearing shreds, and they’re falling apart! I see him shivering in the middle of the day, like an embarrassed little boy who has wet his pants. He sleeps all the time, because he’s bored! And cold. His mother is dead. My brother is—God knows where by now—wrestling with Serbs in some bloody forest. I’m only trying to get my father a warm shirt and a pair of pants with no holes. And you—you, you mean, dumb, overbearing bully—guard this pile of old rags like they were the crown jewels!”

  Without another word, the old man turned into the storeroom and came back with a heavy dark blue cotton shirt, thick gray cotton pants, and a pair of gray socks. He placed the clothes on his chair and shuffled slowly back into a closet. When he returned, he had a ribbed coffee-colored woolen sweater in his arms, topped by a dark blue ski mask.

  “The mask,” he said quietly, “may help your father when he digs. The sweater is a little worn, but fine.” He pressed his thumbs down into the ribs of the fabric. “Thick. Feel it. Warm. Burberrys’, a good name. It belonged to Mr. Levi. He got it on a visit to New Jersey,” the man explained as he presented the pile to Irena, but turned away from her. “May your father wear it in good health.”

  He sent Irena off with the old Guardian he had been reading, and a Jerusalem Post besides. He told her to come to back if she needed anything, anything else.

  IT GOT SO cold that the Zarics rarely went anywhere in the apartment but the living room and the bathroom. Mrs. Zaric moved their cookstove under the window, but burned it only at a low temperature. Smoke could draw sniper fire. When Irena returned home, she put the clothes and newspapers into her grandmother’s old bedroom, where she sometimes retreated for a few minutes of privacy. Her parents understood; indeed, they welcomed an hour or two to themselves. Irena quietly tucked the shirt, slacks, socks, and ski mask into a drawer and held the sweater under her arm when she rejoined her parents in the living room.

  “I found this at the brewery,” she announced to her father. “No one minded—they all said I could bring it home for you.”

  Mr. Zaric rubbed his thumbs over and under the thick shawl collar.

  “It’s a very good garment,” he declared. “Maybe twenty years old. Designed in Britain, made in Hong Kong—the best of both worlds. Are you sure Dr. Tedic said it was all right?”

  “He said he wouldn’t even know it was gone.”

  “How did it get there?” Mr. Zaric asked.

  “No one seemed to know,” said Irena. “Things get left. People don’t know where else to bring them. Everyone supposes that whoever owned the sweater is dead. So you may as well wear it. Something so warm shouldn’t be wasted.”

  Mr. Zaric thanked his daughter, and asked her to thank Dr. Tedic. He kept the sweater on his lap as he listened to an afternoon newscast from London and drifted off to sleep in a small pool of winter sunlight.

  IRENA WENT TO work early the next morning. She rolled the man�
�s shirt and trousers under her coat and slipped the ski mask into a pocket. She kept the Guardian and the Jerusalem Post, crumpling and yellowed, under her arm.

  She rolled all of her new acquisitions into the sleeves and legs of Dragan’s smock as she donned it in the back of the brewery truck. She folded the Guardian in half and tucked it into the belt of the smock. Allah be praised, she thought to herself, that Dragan liked his pita and strudel. She slipped the pages of the Post behind her, so that it fell over the small of her back.

  There were two tall blue modern buildings in Marindvor, just over the river, known as Momo and Uzeir, after two characters in a continuing series of Bosnian jokes. (Momo breaks wind while he’s standing in front of Uzeir in a water line. “Pardon the fart,” says Momo. “That’s all right,” answers Uzeir. “Where did you get the beans?”) The buildings were referred to as skyscrapers. Indeed, Sarajevans sometimes called them the Twin Towers, although they were a fifth as tall as the towers of New York’s World Trade Center. Momo and Uzeir—no one knew which was which, who was Serb and who was Muslim—had been headquarters for an energy company.

  The buildings were rigged with sprinklers that were thought to be as sophisticated and effective as any in, say, Toronto. But when they were bombed during the first days of the Serb assault, their water reserves had already been tapped by thirsty citizens. The fires had raged up and down unchecked. The flames burned away all papers, carbon copies, telephone messages, blueprints, schematics, family photos, memorandums, lamp shades, paper plates, manila folders, orange envelopes, and cevapcici wrappers. The blaze melted telephones into puddles of ooze, and linoleum-topped steel desks and foam-rubber chairs into scorched skeletons. The heat baked the stain-free nylon carpeting down to a squirrel-gray powder that stank of cold ashes and charred plastic.

  Tedic hesitated to send snipers up into Momo and Uzeir. The buildings’ floors were mostly bare. Flames, winds, and mortar fire had blown out most of the floor-to-ceiling windowpanes. Effective concealment seemed impossible. And yet both buildings were well situated across from Serb emplacements that had been set up between the airport and Grbavica. Molly and Tedic had worked it out.