Pretty Birds

by Scott Simon

  “I will be okay,” she said. “It’s too dark to see your car, or my head. I know the missing trees make it easier for snipers. That’s what we’ve been told across the way.”

  “Over here, snipers may or may not hit us,” Irena reasoned. They could have been discussing Descartes, the Chaldean Empire, or any number of half-remembered things from their classes. “Cold hits us all. So we play our chance of getting shot against the certainty of getting cold.”

  Amela settled back in the seat and rolled the window up halfway. “We’ve been getting a little cold, too,” she said softly. “There’s an embargo. Fuel can be hard to come by.”

  Irena squeezed her friend’s hand more tightly. They waved their fused fists back and forth playfully, from their chests to their chins.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” said Irena.

  “Hard to come by,” said Amela. “Not impossible. We’re fine.”

  Zoran turned the taxi into Sarajevska Pivo Street, along the west side of the brewery. Every few weeks, the brewery set out bins of all the trash that couldn’t be burned. Trash collection in Sarajevo had become as unthinkable as postal delivery. Swarms of rats had taken over entire buildings for the spreading empire they now claimed along with flies, worms, moths, and fleas.

  A small boy scuttled over a mound of cans. There were bean cans, cooking-oil cans, powdered-milk cans, Spam cans, and yeast cans, their lids curled back, gasping.

  “Even the cans look hungry,” Irena joked.

  The boy was five or six years old, discernibly sandy-haired even in the dying light, wearing grubby green pants cinched around the waist with somebody’s old burgundy tie, and a man’s blue nylon shirt wound around him like a sheet. He picked up a can and peered through it as if it were field glasses, looking for bits of beans or Spam crusting along the seams. He was young enough to fit his whole hand into the can and, every few cans, he brought out his hand with great excitement, and licked oil or powder off his wrist, knuckles, and fingers.

  “Oh,” was all Amela said.

  “He’s hungry, that’s all,” said Irena. “Bless him. We see him from time to time.”

  “His mother lets him out?”

  “He lives in a basement on the next block with a few other people,” Irena explained. “His mother? Who knows where.”

  “That happens a lot,” Zoran volunteered.

  Amela watched the boy scamper down one mound and up another.

  “I don’t have a thing to give him,” she said. “Not even a candy or a stick of gum.”

  “He’s having his fun,” Irena assured her. “He will get more out of the garbage than he could from your pockets. As long as the snipers leave him alone.”

  They got out of the car on the back side of the building, which was blocked to snipers. Irena took Amela by her wrists and looked at her. She was beautiful. But Irena had always known that. What made her wince was that Amela still looked lovely. Her face was full, soft, almost blushing. It had the pink flush of hope. Irena felt that her own skin was tight and white, like a corpse’s. Creases now slashed the skin around her eyes and pulled tight across her forehead. Sometimes Irena could feel her skin squeezing against her bones.

  “I hadn’t noticed before,” she told Amela.

  “What?”

  “Wearing the winter coat, I couldn’t see. But you look so much”—Irena hesitated for a moment—“rounder and healthier than we do on this side.”

  “I haven’t been hungry,” said Amela.

  “I haven’t either,” said Irena. “Only a few nights. But I see now, I am like a bird. And not Pretty Bird,” she added with a smile. “He eats fine, thanks to you.”

  Amela slipped her right hand into the pocket of her jeans and brought out a small, glossy bronze tube. She pulled off the top and gave a half turn to the base until a sculpted tip emerged, a glistening candy red. Irena was reminded of the bullets in her clip.

  “A dash on each cheek,” Amela suggested. “We smear it in.”

  Irena was touched.

  “But let me show you the latest advance in women’s beauty,” she told Amela. “You won’t find it in Vogue.” Irena rolled her fingers against her chin. She asked Zoran for a pin.

  At first the driver turned up the empty palms of his hands. Then he turned his thumbs down at his belt. “One keeps my pants together,” he said. “That’s kind of necessary.”

  “I’ll just borrow it,” said Irena.

  Zoran turned, his back to the girls, and fiddled with the flaps on his pants. “I’ve lost so much,” he said simply, reaching back with a safety pin pinched between his thumb and his forefinger.

  Irena took the pin and unclasped it. She held up her left thumb and pricked it with the pin. A drop of blood gleamed. She blotted it against her left cheek, gave her thumb three or four shakes, then pressed it lightly against her right cheek and turned to Amela.

  Amela’s eyes shone as she smudged the red into the flesh below Irena’s eyes. “Lasts longer than Revlon, I’m sure,” she said, as Irena solemnly pressed her thumb into Amela’s left cheek, then right, as if she were lighting candles in church. Zoran looked away. With both her thumbs, Irena rubbed the blood over her friend’s plump cheekbones until the color seemed to match her pink skin.

  “Ready to meet Prince Charles,” Amela said quietly.

  “Maybe Scottie Pippen,” said Irena. They took each other’s hands, clasped their arms around Zoran, and walked down the ramp into the brewery.

  TEDIC HAD TURNED the ground floor of the brewery into a beguiling party space. Stubby white candles had been melted on the bottoms and stuck to odd-sized wooden tables. The flames spit and sparkled off the sides of the copper brewing vats. Brewery personnel had laid out slices of Spam, sectioned so thin that they clapped tight around the rim of the serving plate, which was secured at the center by old soda crackers turning as soft as dampened cardboard.

  Tedic was beaming. He had showered, shaved, and was strutting like the lord of the manor welcoming his minions. He had kept his shiny black leather coat spread authoritatively across his shoulders, but put on a white shirt underneath, soft and unblemished as fresh cream. He smelled of someone else’s Givenchy. He was standing with a red-haired woman of a certain age, whom he introduced as Zule.

  Irena had a hand on Amela’s arm as she presented her. “My old teammate,” she said. “You said I could bring a friend.”

  “Of course!” Tedic’s enthusiasm was genuine and detailed. “The great Divacs. The best passer on the team. The whole league, I might say.”

  “Dr. Tedic was the assistant principal at Number Four,” Irena explained. “Also the assistant basketball coach.”

  “You would not remember me,” Tedic assured her. Amela smiled shyly.

  But Zoran shook Tedic’s hand without introduction. “We are old friends,” he said.

  “I am an old customer,” Tedic clarified, with no apparent chagrin. “More than once, Zoran has picked me up in my stocking feet when I was turned out of a girlfriend’s place in the middle of the night.”

  The Mexican brewer who Irena had seen around the ground floor and basement now edged into their circle, wearing a square-cut English blazer with gleaming brass buttons imprinted with some borrowed coat of arms. The metal in the buttons alone—Irena had developed something of her father’s eye for such appraisals—could have given her bullets for a month.

  “Jacobo,” Tedic said simply. “He has come from a long ways away to help us improve our production.”

  Jacobo shook hands all around.

  “I have never met a Mexican,” said Irena. “What do I say?”

  “Hello does fine.”

  “Is that what Mexicans say to each other?” she asked.

  “Hola.”

  Irena tried out the word.

  “Hola. Hola. Ho-la.”

  “Like a native,” said Jacobo, and Irena thought that she and Amela had both blushed slightly, even through their rouge.

  “Where are you liv
ing?” Tedic asked Amela. The question was expected for anyone who had been in Grbavica, and Irena and Amela had prepared an answer.

  “A few blocks away.”

  Don’t lie, Tedic had once advised Irena. I mean this tactically, not morally. You can go crazy trying to keep lies from getting crossed. Find the kernel of truth you can say. Then you will at least be sincere and believable.

  “How are you getting by?”

  “Fine. There are moments.”

  “Of course,” said Tedic, who had turned back to Zule. Irena hoped Tedic would conclude that it would not be gallant to ask her guest anything further.

  Tedic asked Zule, “Ever had these girls as your guests?”

  She smiled and shook her head.

  “Superb basketballers. Irena works here in the brewery, and we are lucky to have her. Amela?” Tedic inclined his head so that Amela might choose to complete his sentence.

  “I help out where I can,” she said. “You know how it is.”

  IRENA’S EYES HAD already alighted on serried ranks of wine bottles. The reds seemed to gleam like rubies—or as Irena imagined rubies—and the whites had the glow of yellow gold.

  “From our guests. You should try it,” Tedic encouraged. With a wave of his hand, he invited Irena and Amela to help themselves. The girls lifted the bottles as if they were dolls, examining them for different features.

  “Oh God, they’re French,” gushed Amela. The light inside the bottle dimmed when she lifted it; the wine seemed to darken to the color of blood.

  “Beaujjjolllais,” she announced, trying to soften the j and trill the l for authenticity.

  “I’ve got a Côtes duuu Rrrhône here,” said Irena.

  “Is it like the difference between red and green Smarties?” asked Amela.

  “That’s no difference,” Irena pointed out. “This is different grapes, not just colors.”

  “More like the difference between Marlboro and Camel?”

  Irena had already scooped up a small stack of waxed paper cups. “No reason not to conduct our own investigation,” she declared. She poured a splash of the Côtes du Rhône into two cups, which the girls tapped together.

  “It is so amazing that you’re here,” said Irena.

  “Amazing.”

  They swallowed together.

  “Smoother than Slovenian,” Amela said. She took another sip thoughtfully. “I don’t think the Slovenes have Côtes duuu Rrrhône.”

  “I could like this,” said Irena.

  “White wine is what athletes are supposed to drink after they stop working out,” said Amela. “It doesn’t put on weight the way beer does.”

  “I’ll never stop working out,” said Irena. “When this is over, I’m back to my routine.”

  “Me too,” said Amela.

  The girls drained their cups of Côtes du Rhône at the same time.

  “I’d like to invite you over, you know,” said Amela, staring ahead into the flicker of candles against one of the brass cauldrons. “It’s just difficult. Even if you could sneak across.”

  “I understand. I’ve figured that out, too.”

  “My parents love you. No one we know has a problem with Muslims.”

  “A lot of people we both know have a problem with Muslims,” Irena pointed out. “I guess that’s why I’m here.” She could feel the wine redden her face, and she laughed to release the tautness in her voice.

  Amela had been running her fingers along the neck of a bottle of white wine when a large man startled both girls by stopping on his heels and turning back to them. “If you’re going to drink piss, dear,” he admonished Amela, “at least make it Sancerre.”

  Their host was huge. Sir Sasha Marx wore a black suit over a black turtleneck sweater. The slimming effect of black was overmatched. His belly proceeded past the flaps of his jacket like the prow of a ship pulling against its anchorage. His red jowls engulfed the ribbed collar of his turtleneck like a lava flow. When he took up the bottle of white wine, it looked like something from a child’s tea set in his stout fingers.

  “Muscadet is a drink for grandmothers having a Christmas lunch at Fortnum’s,” he declared. “Not young starlets.”

  Irena was quite sure that she and Amela were blushing now. “Actually, we’re not actresses,” she said.

  “Ah, real people,” remarked Sir Sasha. “I’m Sasha Marx.”

  “We know,” said Amela.

  “You didn’t expect me to be so portly. I can tell.”

  “Yes, we did,” Amela answered, then reddened deeply. “I mean, Giancarlo’s Full House used to be on here.” Sir Sasha had played a widowed opera tenor who marries a Manchester policewoman with seven children and a sheepdog named Dr. Watson. They open a restaurant and much warm hilarity ensues.

  “Oh, Christ. Off for years, but that show follows me around the globe. Checks do, too, thank God. Remember, ducks. The camera always adds ten pounds.”

  Amela and Irena were taken aback just long enough for Sir Sasha to laugh and splash out big-handed portions of his recommended wine into their cups.

  “You may recognize some other faces around here, then,” he explained. “I keep telling the young folks, ‘Your careers are pitiably dependent on your pathetic beauty. Whereas mine can withstand the depredations of time, drink, and lack of talent. As long as there is so much as a single production of Henry IV,’ I tell them, ‘on some backwater provincial stage, this fat fuck of a Falstaff has employment!’ ”

  He used the girls’ agreeable laughter as a kind of exit theme.

  “Sasha Marx!” said Amela. She squeezed Irena’s hands again.

  “Not quite Toni Kukoc,” said Irena. “But my mother loves him.”

  There were three small, sweating grayish bricks on plates on the table, embellished with limp green strands of parsley.

  “All we can’t get here,” said Irena. “Food, medicine. And someone finds parsley.”

  “People are taking bites from the brick,” Amela noticed.

  “It’s Olga Finci cheese,” Irena explained.

  Amela eyed the brick with amusement.

  “Cheese?”

  “Condensed milk, garlic powder, salt,” Irena explained. “Onions, when possible. Heat it, cool it, let it sit out for three, four days.”

  “Olga what’s-it’s-name is a Dutch recipe?”

  “I doubt it,” said Irena. “One hears she was some kind of chemistry teacher.”

  The girls stood facing the block of cheese as if it were a dead rat that one of them would have to find the nerve to tap with a stick.

  “You get first pick,” Amela suggested.

  “You’re the guest,” Irena countered. She shaved a half inch of the springy mass onto one of the soft crackers and held it out to Amela.

  Amela took it into her mouth in a single bite, and followed with a quick jolt of Sasha Marx’s Sancerre. “Definitely a chemistry experiment,” she said through painfully parted lips.

  THERE WAS A rapping of knuckles against tables, and taps against beer bottles. The Home Minister wanted to make a few remarks. He was wearing his one set of graying London pinstripes, further frayed by grime and the tug of the crutches he now needed to walk. But tonight he wore no tie against his cheerless white shirt, and let the collar fall open so that a small portion of his collarbone was nearly visible.

  Tedic had been merciless. “Oh, my word,” he had exclaimed, slapping a hand against his head. “Have you become a reggae singer?”

  “Our guests are artists and bon vivants,” the Home Minister had said stiffly. “I’m hoping to blend in.”

  Irena and Amela could make out only every few words. There was still much scuffling of chairs and shushing of conversation by the time the Home Minister began. He said he was deeply grateful that Sir Sasha and his players were joining with Sarajevo actors to present a play that was so poignant and important all over the world. And then he stood aside so that Sasha Marx’s immense black-suited shoulders and Volkswagen stomach filled the sp
ace.

  “I want to thank the United Nations,” Sir Sasha began, and silenced a ripple of snickers with a sharp glance from his great rubber ball of a face.

  “The United Nations,” he repeated slowly. “For letting us in to this besieged city. The United Nations is only as staunch as the spines of its membership. Which seem to be made of that very same thin shitty gruel of a cheese which has been laid out for our delectation,” he said with a smart flick of his hand.

  There were laughs and claps all around.

  “The U.N. has assigned French soldiers as the protection force here in Sarajevo.” He paused, and jutted out his chin. “Protection,” he mused, and took another, longer pause. “Odd word. Don’t seem to have protected much, do they?”

  The tinkling of laughter was like the thrum of a motor for Sasha Marx. He shifted forward onto his right foot. “They seem first-rate lads. Taut and disciplined. I’m sure much like our British boys and girls assigned elsewhere in Bosnia. They haven’t protected very much, either. We have our own experience with French soldiers, after all. Let me ask our Bosnian friends. Would you know why there are so many trees along the Champs-Élysées?”

  There was a pause as small, speculative mutterings made their way around the room.

  “Because the French Army is so very fond of retreating in the shade,” Sir Sasha declared.

  Hoots and applause broke over the room as Sasha Marx made a show of trying to outshout them. “Oh, I’m so very sorry! There goes my chance for the Légion d’Honneur! Wait—what’s that? I already have one! But I am not a political man,” he said sorrowfully. “It is not the world I know best. There was once a production in the provinces.”

  Sir Sasha’s associates rocked back in expectation of a story.

  Amela leaned in toward Irena, her eyes glimmering. “I cannot believe,” she said, “that we are lucky enough to be here.”

  “Macbeth,” Sir Sasha went on. “Portrayed by a saturated old stage star. When the King was informed, ‘The Queen, milord, is dead,’ our star knew that the time for his turn had struck. He came downstage to deliver—can we call it the best-known monologue in theater? I think so. But he was terrible. Awful.”