“Is very dangerous here. Run very fast.”
Another crack. I was suddenly terrified. I think it was the first time I realised what I was about to do, but you didn’t notice, you carried on explaining. “It’s dark. Really they cannot see you. And maybe they are drunk. They always drink in evening. But run. Always, when you see the mountains. There is one very bad place.
But you must just run.”
You kissed me again, and this time it just missed my lips.
“I wait till you get to other side of road.”
“Yes.” My heart was pounding, the spit had gathered in my mouth, and my stomach felt watery and sick. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said.
“Run.”
I ran. As fast as I could, as I dared, skidding over the ice. I didn’t want to be a sprawling target in the slush. The moonbeams on the snow were lighting my way, but that meant anyone who wanted could see me too. I ran until I reached the shelter of the other side. When I turned, you were still there. You waved, I waved back. “Run!” you yelled. So I turned, and ran again.
I ran up the hill, keeping to the left, so I ran deep in the shadow of the flats. I didn’t have to run, the hills couldn’t see me, but I wasn’t sure enough to stop running yet. I ran past a turning down to my left, I hardly looked, I didn’t dare, but I still saw a glimpse of mountain between the bullet-riddled sheets strung across the alley. I ran on, and then suddenly the flats fell away to my left, and for maybe fifty yards, the view of the mountains opened up. Below some railings was a playground, at least I think it was that, but I didn’t stop to look; a row of gym lockers, leant against the railings, tried to block off as much as it could of the view. It must have been beautiful, with the moon on the snow, and the fir trees black, hiding their secrets on the crags, but I just ran. I didn’t give myself time to look, with the moonlight shining in jets through the holes in the gym lockers. I ran and ran, my flak jacket thumping up and down, till I reached the flats on the other side. And then I stopped. Even I could tell they couldn’t see me here. If I could live that last fifty yards, I could live through anything.
I walked, but fast, until I reached the next gap. I poked my head round and pulled it back; there was the Holiday Inn, down below, maybe a hundred yards away. I hadn’t even spent one night in it, and yet when I saw it I knew I was nearly home.
There was a slope, covered, as much as it could be, with the now familiar gym locker and hanging sheet routine. The lockers were arranged in rows, like interlocking teeth, so you could slalom your way through the chicane, and stay out of sight as long as you could; the ones in the background of that photograph.
At the bottom, the slope opened up into a large open space of grass and cement. There were no gym lockers here, no hanging sheets. The space was too wide. There was nothing to hang the sheets from. At its centre was the Holiday Inn, set like a postcard, against the mountains beyond. I took a deep breath and I started to run.
Mujo and Suljo are talking in their trench.
“Do you know Haso is dead?” Suljo said. “He was shot by a sniper.”
“Where was he hit?”
“In the finger,” said Suljo.
“Well, why’s he dead?”
“He was picking his nose.”
IV
It was dark by the time I crunched back up your stairs. I meant to come earlier, in the afternoon, but I couldn’t. I had to work.
You didn’t understand that. You never really could.
I heard voices through the frosted glass as I knocked. I swallowed as your footsteps approached, to keep the butterflies from choking me.
I put my face up at an angle as you opened the door – I thought you’d kiss me hello, as you’d kissed me goodbye – not anything else, just a social kiss. But instead, you stood back and said: “I thought you not come.”
“I’m sorry.”
I didn’t need your face to see how angry you were. Your voice sounded tight, and your shoulders were rigid against the faint glow of light.
“You said you come with photographer but you did not come.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again, but I was surprised, really, not sorry. “I had to work.” But you turned away from me, and I followed you into the hall. That must have been the first time I felt angry with you – I thought, I’ve risked my life to see you tonight, and you are sulking because I couldn’t come this afternoon. I was working… I didn’t have a choice.
“I thought you decided to stay with your friends,” you said, and I caught your scent. It was different today. A cleaner smell. Not that you’d smelt bad yesterday – it was too cold to sweat – but your hair was featherier against the light. “I thought you not come.”
“They’re not my friends,” I said; “I hardly know them at all.”
I could see them all, breath vapour and smoke in the candlelight; sitting in Phil’s office, high up on one of those galleries, room 309 of the Holiday Inn, after dinner last night. Huddled in their fleeces, their little woolly hats, drinking the whisky and wine Robert or someone had brought in from Split. “You don’t want to drink the wine here if you can avoid it,” said Phil. “You don’t know where it’s been.” “But we do know,” said an American girl with a ridiculous name. “We’re in a siege. It can only have been in the cellar of the Holiday Inn. Unless you think – gasp – the management has been smuggling!” And she put up her hand to her mouth in mock-shock like one of the girls in Scooby Doo. She looked like one of the Scooby Doo girls too, the clever one, with the glasses and the bob. Everyone laughed; they always seemed to be laughing at things she said; they must have been in-jokes, because most of them went over my head, although I definitely found them funnier as the evening went on.
We’d sat chain-smoking, feet up on the glass coffee table in the candlelight, the room full of waving arms, as people took turns to hold forth – names like Karadzic and Mladic – the Bosnian Serb sports psychiatrist-turned-president and his bull-necked general – bandied around by people who’d actually met the guys. “Met them! I’ve had Karadzic read me his poetry!” said the American girl. “And Mladic has this huge boil on the back of his neck. Last time I was itching to just give it a squeeze…”
Robert, on what Slobo – as everyone called President Milosevic – was really up to in Belgrade these days; the American girl on whether we really all ought to be in Tuzla; Phil pointing Tuzla out, far in the corner of one of those maps of Bosnia stuck up on nearly every wall: ethnic maps and political maps and maps where the UN thought the frontlines were, marked “United Nations: not to be shown to members of the local population” as though, said the American girl, someone who’d lived there all their life might suddenly say “so now I know where Tuzla is”. Every now and then, there’d be a knock, and someone would come in and ask Phil if they could use the phone; I already knew the phones in the rest of Sarajevo hadn’t worked for a year, but Robert explained that the BBC had one of the only two satellite phones in the hotel, and charged £8 a minute for other journalists to use it, “Thank God,” said Phil, “otherwise I wouldn’t have any friends.” He’d wave to it in the corner and say: “Just write it down – the Beeb will bill your paper direct.” I’d noticed, last night, that he didn’t offer everyone drinks, although most people seemed to want to hang around. Valida just sat there, on the grey draylon sofa with Henri, not that you could see it was grey in the candlelight reflecting off the smeary glass.
I’d felt a bit shy at first, but Phil had waved me in: “This is Molly,” he said. “She’s here for the News.” And they nodded, and seemed to take me as one of them, although so far, most of them didn’t really talk to me.
This evening had been exactly the same. I kept looking at my watch and I knew I ought to leave, but somehow it was very hard to make myself actually stand up. I’d been looking forward to coming: to see you again, to spend time with you, to spend time with Sarajevo. I’d crashed from interview to interview with Phil today, but I wanted to get to know Sarajevo, I wanted to
know its soul. Doing interviews with Phil wouldn’t be enough for that. But every time I thought I ought to leave, someone poured me another glass of wine. The American girl, Muffy, she seemed to be called, although that sounded rather unlikely but I’d met so many new people these last few days, said I was mad to go out tonight. I said I’d promised. But she said, it’s too nasty today. Listen to the snipers. We all stared at where the plastic sheets hung in the window, as if we could see the noise amongst the mountains silhouetted against the moon. There was an answering run of cracks. In our silence, we could hear Phil signing off, in his bedroom next door: “This is Phil Kennedy, for the BBC, in Sarajevo.”
Phil came back in as Henri – Valida’s boyfriend, I’d realised by now, and the photographer I’d sent round to you this afternoon – was saying: “You see. You’re mad. Eez a shooting gallery out zere,” and Phil said in fake French, “shooting gallerrrrrrrrEEEEEEEE…”
“You don’t die, just because you said you’d go for dinner,” said Muffy. And Valida suddenly spoke: “If you say you go for dinner, you should go.”
I nodded, and smiled at her. “I think so too.” For the first time, she gave me a little smile back. There was an embarrassed silence. Muffy just shrugged. Phil gave me a long hard look, I stared back. Finally he said: “Don’t worry, I’ll give you a lift.” But part of me wished I could have stayed; we could hear their laughter echoing right down the atrium.
But I didn’t. I came here. And all you did was sulk.
You were still sulking as you introduced me to your mother, but she was so pleased to see me it almost made up for the ill-will I could feel simmering at my back.
Like Phil’s office, your kitchen was full of candlelight, the thick smell of cooking meat; I could feel my saliva beginning to collect. I was starving. I’d eaten nothing since lunch, apart from a Mars Bar at about five, and a few crisps at the BBC. It was warmer than the hall, but the woman standing by the window still needed her coat. She was slim (she later told me she had lost twenty kilos in the war – the Sarajevo diet, she said. Sarajevo is my gym) and her face must once have been lovely but beneath the same thick foundation and lipstick that Valida wore, you could see the darkness of this war furrowed deep in her skin. As she turned to me, I saw the glint of gold at her ears, and a pendant round her neck. Your mother had put on her best clothes for me.
You introduced me. We shook hands. And then nothing was said. You were too sulky to speak, and your mother and I had no way to talk. We gestured at each other – she glanced at you, but you were just glaring at me. So I handed her the plastic bag I was carrying instead. At least I knew the Serbo-Croat for that.
Her eyes widened when she opened the bag. “Kafa, cokolada, whisky, cigarettes,” she said as she pulled them out onto the table. “Mollee!” she stared at me in amazement. And said something else. I glanced at you. You had changed now – you looked too confused to sulk.
“My mother says is too much. It is too much.”
“It’s not,” I said. I knew it wasn’t, because Phil had given it to me. Take these, he’d said, you can’t go to dinner in Sarajevo empty- handed; he’d gone to a cupboard by the side of the door. In the twilight I could see rows of stuff like Marmite, boxes of PG Tips and blocks of cheese. He shrugged when I said I’d pay him back; he said I could buy him some stuff at the PX. I didn’t ask what that was. I felt a bit thick, but I did tell him I could pay him back with the spare cigarettes up in my room.
“Too much,” you looked angry again, but it was a different kind of anger; you didn’t seem to be angry with me. When I looked at you, suddenly I could see that you’d shaved. “You did not have to do this.”
“It’s nothing,” I said. “I was given it by a friend. I’ll just get him some more.” I didn’t understand then why you looked so confused.
Your mother had lit herself one of the cigarettes, and was staring where the moonlight striped in through the shutters from the snows outside. You lit one too. I pulled out mine from my bag. Have one of these, you said, they’re yours, waving the packet at me. But I said, no, thanks, they’re too strong, as I lit myself a Silk Cut.
Then she spoke: you laughed, then you said: “She wants to know when you leave.”
“Tuesday,” I said, and I felt sad as I said it. Your mother’s face fell.
“She says Tuesday is too soon. She says thank you very much.”
“I know,” I said. “I wish I could stay.”
You laughed. You translated and your mother laughed too.
“She says everyone else here wishes to leave.” She took another drag, and spoke sadly to me, before fixing her eyes back on the shutters again.
“She says before war she always try to give up. Now is no point to give up, but she never has cigarettes.”
It was maybe a minute before your mother came back to life.
“Whisky!” she said, and picked up the glasses on the table.
“Or maybe you prefer our slivovic,” you said, and your voice was heavy with irony. I didn’t know what to say. I hated slivovic. But I didn’t want your mother to waste her whisky on me. So I said slivovic; but that was obviously wrong. You looked astonished and your mother’s face fell.
“You can’t mean that,” you said, as if you thought I was lying. Your mother laughed. She said something which sounded like, she likes our slivo. You didn’t translate, but I could get that much.
“I don’t mind.” I just wanted to do the right thing. But she started pouring us all whisky anyway. She rolled it round her mouth, sighed and said something else, then lapsed back into silence again.
“She says she hasn’t had whisky since the war began.”
You and I didn’t speak. It was one of those silences it became embarrassing to break, the tensions growing as the silence went on, to snap back on whoever broke it first. It hadn’t been like this yesterday. I suppose it was your mother, but then she didn’t seem to notice it. She seemed lost somewhere, drawing memories into her lungs.
Finally she stubbed out her cigarette, and checked her watch. She looked very sad as she moved over to the stove. I think my stomach rumbled in relief; I had been drooling from the smell ever since I walked in.
There was a heavy black pan on the side of the stove. She took the lid off it, prodded it, and put it onto the heat. You apologised, as you put some pickled carrots on the table.
“I love carrots,” I said but actually I’d had pickled carrots for every meal for the last two days, and back in those days I hated pickles anyway.
You shot me a suspicious look.
“In England,” I said, “we say carrots make you see in the dark.”
“That is good for Sarajevo.” Then, for the first time that evening, you smiled at me; your kooky teeth lit up your face, and you leant over and stroked my hand. I didn’t pull it back; I let you hold it and smiled back into your eyes, and as I smiled, I felt nothing could ever go wrong again.
“I thought I never see you again,” you said.
“I said I would come, so I came.”
If your mother hadn’t arrived with a plate, I don’t know when we’d have moved. But before I ate, I knew there was something I wanted to do. I stood up, and said, “Can you give me a hand?” Then I uncrunched the Velcro at my waist and pulled my flak jacket over my head. You took it from me, brushing my hair, and propped it up against the wall. It slumped, as though it had been shot, and the white label on its chest suddenly seemed self-important and silly: Molly Taylor, Evening News, A+ (for my blood group, not my performance as a hack, but I was new enough out of university to like the mark).
“It’s just in case…” the foreign editor had said, and neither of us had finished the sentence…
You smiled. “Much better. Before, you look like…I don’t know, little animal,” you mimed it, “with shell and little head.”
“A tortoise…”
“Yes, tortoise. Now you look like girl.” I blushed, but you had already turned to the stove.
Th
e food on the plate you handed me was a brown mess of rice. You both were watching as I lifted my fork. I schooled my expression, just in case. But it lived up to its smell.
“This is the best thing I’ve eaten in Sarajevo.” Your mother blushed. You didn’t add that I’d only got here yesterday, and my only other food had been a watery soup, the pickled carrots, of course, with a strange flat meatball thing the Holiday Inn had served, both at dinner last night and at lunch today. I didn’t know, of course, then, that it was all they ever served. Nor, then, did I know I’d be grateful for it.
“Mama is top chef at war cooking. It is pigeon from yesterday.”
I thought of the sad-eyed bird staring at me with hope mixed with resignation from its cage.
Your mother laughed and spoke. “Poor pigeon. But,” you shrugged as you translated, “she says, is war, what you can do?”
I got the recipe off her, before the evening was out. It was a good enough excuse to get out my book; I knew I had to. I knew I wouldn’t remember it all. I was worried it would be like yesterday, when you hadn’t seemed to like it when I started to write. But it wasn’t, and your mother wanted to tell me how her life had become: the monthly rations doled out by the UNHCR, standing in line for her tins of tuna, oil, milk powder; the flour they gave, so full of maggots, she said, you called it protein powder.
“Before war,” you explained, as she broke off, “my mother says you must know. We have communism here, but not like in Romania or Russia. We had good communism…we have everything we want… we have mountains, we have sea. We can travel, go to Italy on holiday. If Polish and Czech people come here, we are like kings to them, but now… now we are worse, much worse than people in Poland or Russia.”
Your mother listed the endless chores of the war: queuing for bread, foraging for something to burn in the house, queuing for water down in the street – water to drink, water to wash, water to flush the loo. No wonder, I thought, you didn’t shave much.
The Girl in the Film Page 8