Diary of Interrupted Days

by Dragan Todorovic

  Definitely, this was a great time to jump out of his skin. The only good thing about sitting here in the backwoods was that the notion of war had thinned out. Weapons and uniforms, trucks and orders—yes, all that, but other things too: listening to the wind and the murmur of dry leaves, watching the endless movie of the clouds, engaging in the small talk, the crude jokes, or escaping it all in his thoughts. How long had it been? Johnny had to count the days. More than a week for sure. Ten days? Eleven? It was December.

  The drizzle that had come in short intervals all morning stopped and an easterly wind picked up. When the sun appeared, people crawled out from the factory to warm their bones.

  Johnny stayed inside, writing. The even rhythm of his hand and the slow dripping of thoughts lulled him to sleep. He woke up with a strong erection. He could not recall anything from his dreams and the stubbornness in his crotch surprised him. His first thought, almost automatic, was that he had dreamt of fucking with Sara, but there was no way of being certain about it.

  He used to be good at remembering his dreams. Several times, the scenes he had dreamt were so powerful that he felt compelled to write songs about them. There had been a dream behind “Angel of Revenge.” In that one, a woman with beautiful lips—who was his lover, his mother, his sister, and himself—told him of the injustice done to her by a group of soldiers guarding the gate to her house. He had felt terrible anger, and had killed them all with his bare hands. When he was finished with the last one, she came over to him, touched his eyebrow, raising it, and said, “I am your destiny now. You can fuck me.”

  But he hadn’t been able to remember his dreams since they’d brought him here—as if the contrast between the world of dreams and the reality around him was so big that it evaporated the fine tissue. As if the dreams needed a softer landing than he could afford them now.

  He was headed towards the bathroom when some soldiers came back in talking loudly.

  “Something is going on outside,” one of them said. “About thirty people in brand-new fatigues arrived with several Jeeps, one with a heavy machine gun mounted on it. The Candyman got out of that one and went to see the captain. They’re distributing food outside. Go while there’s still good stuff.”

  Johnny went outside and stood in line. Someone ahead of him said that an order had been given to get ready to move after sunset.

  “Finally, some action,” said one of the paramilitaries, a broad-shouldered man in his mid-twenties who sat next to Johnny after they got their food. He wore a red bandana and green sunglasses and introduced himself as Black.

  “Johnny, how come you’re with us?” Black asked.

  “I was brought here with the others,” Johnny said, “like cattle, on a truck.”

  “Thought so. I watched the concert in the square.”

  Johnny turned to him. “Then how come you’re here?”

  Black didn’t answer.

  The rain started suddenly as if it had been ordered to do so. The two of them moved farther back under the bush and continued to cut off and chew on pieces of smoked meat.

  “Black,” Johnny said after a while, “have you already—?”

  “Been in combat? Yeah. Good stuff, if you’re the right man. Like nothing else. I personally think I’m a better man because of it. When it starts, you are transparent to yourself. You have nothing to lean on, except a bullet. It clears your head.”

  “But shooting at other people …”

  “There’s not much to it. Nothing personal. You and the guy who’s shooting at you—you are just men at work.”

  He looked at Johnny, pursed his lips. “If you mean what you say in your songs, you should be okay.”

  Johnny thought for a while. “I’m not sure about one B-side.”

  Black laughed.

  “Seriously, how did you get here?” Johnny asked.

  “I volunteered. I was a graphic designer in Belgrade. My grandfather, on my mother’s side, was from this area. As a kid, I used to spend my summers here. When this mess started, I thought, Who gives you the right to fuck with my childhood? So I decided to come. My old man is a retired soldier. He tried to keep me from doing this but when he realized I was serious, he said, ‘Find the most experienced commander.’ I asked around, and heard that the Candyman was gathering his troops. Only two other Lions besides me have never been in jail.”

  He swallowed the last bite and folded his knife.

  One of the paramilitaries whistled and Black stood up. As he left he said, “One more thing, Johnny: after battle, don’t look around too much.”

  The rain stopped as suddenly as it had started and the diffuse light withdrew before the falling darkness. The place where Johnny was sitting was dry and there was no one close to him, which suited him fine. He thought about that last sentence of Black’s, but couldn’t find any key to it, and gave up. He watched the glimmering lights in the scattered houses in the distance. Do those people know we are this close? he thought. If they do, do they feel protected or are they shivering now?

  For a second he thought of writing a letter to Sara. What would he say? He felt like Jonah, only the animal that swallowed him was not a whale but a wild black dog, full of fleas, with rabies foaming out of his snout and blood in his eyes. The only good thing was that the dog already had him in its intestines and wasn’t crawling around his house waiting to kill.

  What would happen if he sneaked through the woods, covered in mud and darkness, and just deserted? He looked around. Quietly, the paramilitaries had taken up posts around the perimeter of the camp. Probably because they were the only group here with combat experience. Probably not in order to prevent strange ideas.

  The two sergeants were crisscrossing the clearing, quietly ordering the conscripts to gather in the middle. Johnny got up and joined them.

  The captain was concise: “There is a village three miles away. The Croats are the majority there and they are terrorizing the few remaining local Serbs, mostly old folks. It used to be just threats and extortion, but the situation has suddenly worsened—an old man was dragged out of his home and his throat was cut. They left him lying in his yard, as a warning. They want all the Serbs to leave. Our sources in the village claim that the Croats have planned further actions for tonight. Our enemy is not a regular army—we are the only regular army in this area. Our duty is to protect those civilians. The enemy wear black uniforms and are well armed with modern weapons. They number about thirty-five to forty people, some of whom are suspected to be mercenaries with significant combat experience. The Lions will attack the village from the east and we will close the exit on the other side to cut the enemy off. Our task is to expel the thugs from the village, arrest as many of them as possible, and eliminate those who resist. Don’t shoot them if they surrender, but do not risk your lives. Make sure you see their arms high.

  “The attack will start at twenty-one hundred.

  “One more thing: you are fighting for your country. You gave your oath to protect it. Now is the time. Fifty years ago, Croatia took Hitler’s side. Their blackshirts are butchering again. Don’t expect any mercy from them because you won’t get any. Imagine that your grandparents are in that village, waiting for their throats to be cut tonight. You are their only hope. Fight well and good luck, soldiers!”

  In the past several days Sara’s face had become thinner and sharper. Her skin, always so radiant, had lost its glow. She used her makeup well, but Boris saw shadows beneath her eyes and her lips were tightly pressed together. She always tilted her head when she was talking, and now the light of the sconce above her made shadows move on her face like storm clouds. “What if they make him shoot people, Boris?”

  “Sara, I am doing everything I can, really. I told you—the only answer I could come up with is that he was transferred to some unit on the border with Croatia.”

  “I could go there with a TV crew, pretending that I’m doing a story …”

  “And then what? No, that’s ridiculous. Nothing is going on in
Croatia now. Besides, I’m sure he’ll find a way to let us know where he is. We can only wait.”

  It was a stupid thing to say, Boris knew. Even he did not know how to wait, or what to wait for.

  Boris had found the right people through his mother and he had done everything to find Johnny. Almost all the traces of the conscript party had been destroyed except for a single link to a shadowy unit rumoured to be under the Candyman’s command. And that he had no heart to tell her. His fucking fault.

  The night was wet and cold and smelled of unknown soil, of threatening trees, of strange animals. They approached the village from the west. The column of about a hundred people did not make much noise. The Black Lions were mostly ahead but another not so small group was at the back. A few hundred yards from the first houses, the men in front of Johnny stopped. The paramilitaries took the northern route around the village and the soldiers moved farther south. By Johnny’s new Rolex it was twenty minutes to nine. His hands were cold and stiff. His gun was the same weight as his guitar. The houses before them were big and white with many large red tractors next to the stables and cars in the driveways. A rich village. Now.

  The wind suddenly changed direction. Two dogs started barking fiercely and then several others joined in. A horse neighed in one of the stables.

  It was twelve minutes to nine. Johnny hoped that nobody would come in his direction, that he wouldn’t have to shoot at all. The leather strap on his gun was identical to the one on his Stratocaster, which Boris had given to him. Sara, I’m fucking dying tonight, or killing someone, which is one and the same. The wind changed direction again and the barking turned into a growl. A sergeant signalled to Johnny to stay put behind the second to the last house. He knelt in the wet grass, felt around him, and lay down. There was a wooden fence twenty yards in front of him and behind it one of the dogs continued to bark madly, not fooled by the sudden absence of the smell of strangers. Johnny’s bowels howled so loudly he was glad for the dog. A light came on on the upper floor. A sheer curtain hung from a small window in the middle. Boris saw an old man inside. The dog was jumping at the fence. The old man had an empty look on his face, as if his only job was to urinate. Johnny’s stomach was cold and he tried to find a better position. He put his gun on the ground and inched forward on his elbows. His left hand suddenly felt hot and Johnny pulled it back and squeezed it with his other hand, feeling blood on his fingers. There must have been some broken glass in the grass. He drew his hand closer to his eyes, hoping to be able to see the wound in the bit of light coming from the window, but the light flicked off. Just as Johnny reached into his pocket looking for something to stop the bleeding, the shooting started.

  Sara watched Boris reaching into his pocket for something to stop the bleeding. Nothing. He grabbed the end of the tablecloth and pulled fast. It almost worked: only two glasses fell on the floor. “Shit!” he said. People turned to stare.

  “Shit!” Sara said, squeezing her wrist with her hand. The cuts on her palm were not too deep but there were several of them.

  “I’ll fix it, hold still.” Boris ripped a strip off the tablecloth and folded it into something that resembled a bandage and wrapped her palm with it. “Does it hurt much?”

  “No,” she said, checking to see if the blood had stained her dress, “it’s just that everyone will say I was wasted.”

  “Who cares?”

  “Maybe the glass was already cracked or something. I just squeezed and it went to pieces.”

  She had not wanted to come. The annual design awards show was always a bore and most people were there only to get drunk or to get laid, or both. But Boris insisted that it would do her good to go out and he invited her to accompany him. And so they went together. The party was at a villa surrounded by embassies. Its pool hadn’t been filled with water for the past twenty years, so the organizers corralled guests into it and set the stage on the grass beyond. The prize night had been a low-key event for the past few years, but it was wartime now and people responded disproportionately to anything even remotely like fun. The number of guests crowded into the pool made for some rather intimate encounters. When a woman behind Sara started talking about the paramilitaries, and how—can you believe it?—even Johnny was with one such unit, actually, the worst of them all, the Candyman’s team, Sara squeezed her glass hard. She did not want to repeat this preposterous lie to Boris. Because what else could it have been?

  One early evening before the war had begun, when spring had already started kicking, Sara and Johnny had made love instead of going to a theatre premiere. Afterwards, lying naked, entangled, they listened to the traffic noise. After a while, Johnny went to his stereo to put some music on. Squatting by the shelf with the discs, his back turned to her, he said, “They are clogging the arteries.”

  “What?” Sara said.

  “The politicians. They will take us to war, they don’t care. It is clear they don’t know how to run the country and they can’t stay in power long. War is a great solution for them, perhaps the only chance they’ve got. But war doesn’t mean only death and destruction. That happens on the front. What happens in the rear?” He pulled out a disc, put it on, and returned to bed. Satie floated above their heads.

  Leaning on her elbow, Sara reached over him for her glass of wine. “What about the arteries?”

  “Listen. Satie is flowing through the air, between the leaves of the chestnut tree and down the street, like clear water. What do you think will happen when the war starts? When fear pushes us all in different directions? There will be speed, and selfishness, and paralysis, and hatred. That slime will replace blood, and the gunk will make it impossible to take a step. The blood flow to the brain will become a trickle, there will be no strength in the muscles, no possibility of an erection. And then this system will stick a giant cock into our asses and screaming with joy as it fucks us will be an obligatory patriotic duty.”

  No, no, it wasn’t possible at all. Not Johnny. Not her Johnny.

  The cab was waiting outside. Boris helped Sara in and then eased himself into the backseat next to her. He gave the driver directions to her apartment.

  Sara did not turn her head to him.

  “Sara?”

  He slowly put one arm around her shoulders and hugged her. She said, “I’m not crying, Boris. I’m just confused. And maybe afraid, I don’t know.”

  Boris sighed. “I’ve talked to the people at the Canadian embassy, Sara. I’m getting out of here.”

  She turned to look into his eyes.

  Johnny tried to look away but could not. The man’s eyes and mouth were open—he seemed disconnected rather than dead. Johnny couldn’t see any blood on his clothes and he thought for a second that maybe he had been frightened to death. Then he noticed the dark stain on the left side of his chest.

  He got up from where he was crouching and headed for the house on the left where all the windows were lit. Its inhabitants, very likely the whole family, were out in the back yard talking to several soldiers from his unit. He got only a few steps before his intestines erupted with pain, forcing a yell from his throat. He bent over as if he had been hit and started throwing up. It lasted for an eternity. Finally, he felt someone kneel beside him and cup his forehead with a palm. It was a strong hand and though the touch was neither gentle nor friendly, Johnny felt better instantly. His breath slowly returned. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and muttered, “I’m okay.” He stood up and found a young woman in front of him, wearing a bulky sweater and jeans tucked into leather boots.

  “You need some water,” she said. “Come with me.”

  Following her into the yard, Johnny heard one of the villagers say, “Give him a shot of brandy, Mira.”

  In the house, Mira showed him to a chair in the living room and went to the kitchen. The walls were white and bare, the furniture dark and shiny, the gun on the coffee table in front of him small enough to be hidden up a sleeve.

  She returned with a pitcher and a glass. “Sip it slo
wly,” she said, putting them on the table.

  “Thanks.”

  She sat across from him while he drank his water as instructed.

  “City boy?” she said.

  “Belgrade.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I’m a musician.”

  “Not much singing around here.”

  He put the glass down. She was staring at the rifle that he held across his knees.

  “Your lock is off.”

  He made a reflex move to button up his fly and she doubled over with laughter.

  “Boy, did we waste our money.”

  He laughed too. It was a strange sensation.

  “Is this your gun?” he pointed at the pistol.

  She nodded. “My father got it. It even has a silencer.”

  “You know a lot about guns.”

  “I knew nothing until recently. Would you like some coffee?”

  “I haven’t had one in days. I don’t know if I should.”

  “Your stomach is probably fine now. It was just fear. Let me ask my folks if they’d like some, too.”

  There was an icon of Saint George on the wall above the television in the corner, hung so close to the set that it was impossible to watch anything on it without seeing the icon at the same time. On the shelf under the screen was a photo album, and Johnny toyed with the thought of getting up and flipping through it, but he still felt nauseated and decided to sit still. He noticed several German tabloids next to the album. Great—people are fucking, divorcing, and getting high elsewhere. The night is narrow, the night is always local.

  She returned with some empty brandy glasses in her hand. “They don’t want any,” she said, heading to the kitchen. “I’ll fix some for the two of us.”

  He stood up and went after her.

  As she found the cups and sugar in an old sideboard, he asked, “Did you say ‘money’ before?”

  She put a small pan on the stove. “Yes.”