The Girl in the Film

by Eagar, Charlotte

  “The water’s a nightmare,” I said. Your mother looked utterly bewildered as I broke in, as if the war could have nothing to do with me. “We don’t have any either. I had to carry loads up from the restaurant last night. Five flights of stairs.”

  Or I had been supposed to. It wasn’t that I’d forgotten, I’d just drunk so much with Phil last night that somehow the water hadn’t seemed to matter that much. Even though Robert’s last words to me, as he went upstairs to finally write his piece, were: “Whatever you do, don’t forget the water. Like Phil said, sharing a room in Sarajevo can be pretty gross.” But, then, I didn’t really understand what he meant; and anyway, I was too busy, like a new girl, drinking the whole thing in.

  Even in twenty-four hours, I could see the Holiday Inn had its own hierarchy: based partly on the importance of your news organisation and partly on residence. Like the BBC, Reuters, CNN and the New York Times had kept a bureau here, with their correspondents rotating in and out. The British broadsheets mostly had stringers – retained correspondents. It was just that most of them had gone off to Tuzla. As a freelancer, on my first day, writing a one-off for a British tabloid, I was pretty low (although not as low as the ex-marine freelancing for the Anchorage Bugle, it became apparent from Muffy’s sneer, who lived in an apartment in town and had never been known to file). Muffy, who worked for one of those East Coast American papers read by earnest people who care about world affairs, explained a lot of things, like whether to wear your flak jacket in bed (“I never do,” she said, “but people have been known to. I never even wear mine inside”).

  Anyway, being the product of embassies and the English public school system, hierarchies make me feel at home and this was like being let in to the cool gang at school. I’d always been towards the nerd end of the cool-o-meter before: nudging the Chinese physicists. Johnny used to say if I hadn’t been pretty, I would have been a total dork.

  But these people were far too clever to have ever made the real cool gang either. Like me, they’d have been the swots; worked hard, passed exams, only smoked behind the bike sheds if they had a contingency plan. Got the work/drink ratio right at university, been conscientious and ambitious in their careers, and had now broken away to form their own autonomous cool gang in this freezing hotel, where snipers pinged bullets outside the windows and the night was bisected by the green slash of tracer fire. Chainsmoking, downing the whisky people brought in and always talking the story, in circles, the story, so it was just like being at university but we were all reading the same course.

  “You’re mad to leave Sarajevo once you’ve got here,” said Phil.

  “Would you stay if you had a string?”

  And I said: “Like a shot.”

  So it wasn’t surprising that the water slipped my mind. Robert had said four or five bottles, but, by the time I left Phil, it seemed far too much. I only took two. It didn’t seem to matter too much anyway. Cleaning my teeth or my face seemed totally pointless, and I couldn’t have flushed the loo because it would wake Robert, so the fact that there was no water made no difference to me either. I really couldn’t see what everyone complained about. I didn’t even feel cold.

  I probably wouldn’t have woken Robert at all, in fact, if I hadn’t tripped over my bag. I had decided not to use my torch as it would ruin my night vision. I said “sorry”, and “it’s only me”, and then “go back to sleep”. Although I took advantage of having woken him up to look for my pyjamas. I couldn’t find them for a bit; they seemed to have changed shape and got much noisier. Then I drank straight off one of the bottles of water I had carried up. I put the other bottle by my bed, got into my pyjamas, which kept on crackling, and went to the loo, shutting myself into the pitch-dark box to minimise the incredible noise my pee seemed to make, found my bed and went to sleep, the moment my head touched the pillow, just like one of the Famous Five.

  When I’d woken this morning, my eyeballs felt like they had been poached in vinegar and rolled in sand, and the fumes were slowly expanding and crushing my brain. I rushed to the loo, and sat, with my hangover crap, cooling my forehead on the tiles of this pitch-black box. And then there was nothing to wash it all away – all your hooch, that disgusting Holiday Inn wine, and the whisky Phil had weaned me onto by the end. And the only water was five whole floors down.

  “Our water is two streets away,” I heard you say. “And snipers shoot us as we run back.”

  Your mother smiled and looked proud, you blushed, she repeated it, nodding at me. “She says to tell you I have made cart,” you said. But you looked embarrassed. “To pull water home,” you explained.

  I was still hungry. There was some risotto left in the pan; our servings had been only the size that rich women push round smart restaurant plates. I couldn’t stop myself staring at it, but it obviously wasn’t on offer, because your mother got up and put some coffee on. I remembered wistfully the cheese I still had stashed in my room from the supplies Robert and I had bought in Split. And I thought of Phil, asking me if I’d eaten before coming out; no, I said, they’re giving me dinner. He’d made a face and said: “Better to always eat something before you go round to Sarajevans for dinner.” But I hadn’t bothered because, God help me, I was worried that, after all those last decent meals, I had put on weight.

  You must have seen my glance. Because you said: “Is for father. He is on frontline. He come back soon.” Your mother spoke some English, because she understood that; she closed her eyes quickly, then nodded at me, as if anything else would be too horrible to think.

  I was glad it was dark, because you couldn’t see me blush.

  “Where is he?”

  There was a silence, then you said: “Zuc.”

  We both knew there’d been a lot of fighting up there today. I’d watched it from the BBC office, with a mug of Nescafé in my hand, after Phil had driven me back from the daily UN briefing. He’d called it “the nine o’clock follies” but I thought it was more like a weather forecast, and the military spokesman had certainly said it was stormy on Zuc. Peering round the window frame, perched on Phil’s desk, I could see the plumes of smoke, curling up through the snow-covered pines, to be lost in white wisps across the azure sky. Seconds later, we would hear the blast. So beautiful, so far away; it was hard to believe that real people were manning those guns, they should have been plastic soldiers, about an inch and a half high.

  Your mother had gone quiet again. She sat smoking, and picked up her whisky. Finally she started to speak, and the good humour of earlier on had gone. “It’s terrible,” that’s what you told me she said. “Grozny. Terrible. How can we live like this? Cabbage costs twenty Deutschmarks in the market. How can we live?” That was pre-euro of course, and it was all in Deutschmarks, and there were 2.5 of them to the pound. For some reason, the dollar was virtually worthless here.

  The water boiled, and she picked up the shiny packet I’d given her and went to the stove. “Coffee… real coffee…” you translated as she spoke. “I have not had real coffee for months. Thank you for this.” She spooned it into the water, and poured the coffee into tiny cups, keeping the grounds back with a spoon. She repeated, as you had yesterday, “Eighty Deutschmarks, one kilo for coffee. Sugar… thirty Deutschmarks. How can we live? We have no sugar now.”

  I thought of the sugar bowls sitting on the dining room tables of the Holiday Inn, the sugar I didn’t take because I didn’t want to get fat.

  “I can get you sugar,” I said. “We have it in the hotel.”

  You said something to your mother who shook her head.

  “She says the Holiday Inn is another world.”

  There was a sound from the front door. You leapt to your feet but your mother pushed past you, out of the door. I could hear her crying “Murat, Murat, Murat!”

  You said to me: “Is Tata. He is home.”

  The man who came into the kitchen was in camouflage fatigues, as so many men of his age were here. He had grey hair and the greyness of exhaustion show
ed in his skin. He had his arm round your mother, and as she looked into his eyes, his smile pushed its way through the weariness. They walked towards you, and he gathered you into his other arm. I didn’t need to speak Serbo-Croat to understand what he said. It was just “my son,” which is nearly the same.

  Perhaps he was just too tired to have noticed me, but you took him by the arm and did the introductions. He was almost too tired to look surprised. Or perhaps the war had knocked all surprise out of him.

  “Dragomir je,” he said, and nodded at me.

  “Dragomir je,” I said in return. Then he turned away. He sat down at the table very carefully, as if he was worried he would not be able to control his descent. His wife said something about pigeons. He smiled, stroked her hand, and used his other to prop up his head. She put a plate in front of him and handed him a fork. It took a while before he lifted the first mouthful, as though getting the fork to his mouth was too much to do. Then he tasted it, looked up at her, smiled, “Vrlo dobro,” and had another mouthful. You could see it was a fight for him not to shovel it in. She watched him eat with such intensity; as if she were scared if she looked away, he might vanish, maybe into a puff of smoke, and curl up to the crags below which he had been fighting all day.

  This was a thousand poems, I thought; the warrior returns. I had scanned it in Latin, struggled over it in Greek, admired its chiaroscuro in Italian galleries and wept as I watched it played out on screen. But I had never yet witnessed it in real life.

  He had probably eaten half his plateful before he saw the bottle. “Visky! ahh.” His wife poured him a glass. I heard her mention my name, because he turned to me and said “thank you” in heavily accented English.

  “You speak English?” I said. He shook his head. “Deutsch. I Russki? Gavarete pa-russki?”

  I shook my head back. He turned to you.

  “He wants to tell you something,” you said.

  “OK.”

  But having said that, your father didn’t seem to know what it was. He pushed his fork round the plate for a moment before he began. You translated as the sentences came.

  “He says when he was boy, his father have one house in woods. We shoot pigeons in woods…” your father broke off; he looked almost angry… “Even pigeons are thin now with war, he says… He wants to know what you are doing here?”

  “I’m a journalist,” I said; I felt embarrassed again, it sounded so silly: “I’m writing a piece about the anniversary of the siege.” Your father snorted.

  “A year ago he says he just finish one film for TV, with best director in Yugoslavia. About his trees… My father is professor of forestry. Now director of film is in Beograd, making propaganda… He says he is still with his trees, but now he is in trench in frontline in woods… He wants to show you film. He says has video but no electricity… He says before war we have one of best National Parks in the world, virgin forest. Now, all is mined. He wants to know, when it will change?”

  You and he looked to me as if I might know the answer.

  As I said, “I don’t know,” I felt failure dig its fingers into my heart. I glanced at your mother, but she was just staring into her glass.

  “He says he will show you his film, when electricity is back.”

  “I would like that,” I said. Then I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  His eyes lit up when your mother offered coffee. “I cokolada,” she said and Amir gestured at me. Your father smiled, leant across the table and shook my hand.

  “He says you have made him a special welcome home feast. He says you can come again whenever you like.”

  The food seemed to have reinflated him. He looked at me, and raised his glass.

  “Zivjeli!” He knocked some back. “Look, me Mujahadeen.” He jabbed at his nose and rolled his eyes. He had your dark hair, dark eyes welling out of the same pale skin, although his skin had been weathered by war. In truth, with his profile sweeping from his high forehead to the bridge of his nose, he looked very much like the Turkish warriors his ancestors must have been, galloping north, ramming their scimitars deep into Europe. He drained the whisky and put his glass out for more.

  “Fundamentalist. Crazy.” He tapped the side of his head; in the next bit all I understood were “Islamic” and “Maria”. You spoke.

  “The Chetniks say we want to make Islamic state here. Is crazy. Why he want Islamic state, he says. He not want my mother to wear…” I met your eyes as you trailed your hand over your mouth.

  “A yashmak?” I said, but I was looking at your lips.

  “Yashmak. Is Turkish word?”

  “I guess so,” I said. Murat twitched his head in denial.

  “He say my mother is Christian.” Maria gave a sad laugh and spoke.

  “My mother says she is not Christian. She was good communist.”

  This time I let you walk me home. Your mother insisted anyway: the whisky bottle was over half gone and she had reached the expansive hospitality stage.

  “Sarajevo is for walking,” she said. “Was. It was beautiful to walk.”

  Your street was a ravine, deep in its shadow, just the stars sharp in the blackness above. We walked to the corner and the view opened up. It was another majestic night. I looked, as I found I was always looking, up to the hills: the houses, clinging to their lower slopes, the darkness of the pines rimming the cliffs, hiding God knows what kind of threat; the moon, and the snowfields stretching up until they cracked against the starlit sky. Down to the Presidency to the right, through the blankets limply straddling the street.

  You grabbed my hand. “Here we must run.”

  So we ran. When we reached the other side, you didn’t let go. We walked hand in hand for 200 yards. “Run here!” you said. “Big road. This is very bad…” You waved at the blankets, again, hanging from the power lines, and lumps of ice lying in our way; the twisted sign-posts, the shattered windows of the flats opposite, all like a black and white film, in the silvery light, and moonbeams again, gleaming off the dome of the Pasha’s mosque, half hidden in shadow at the mountains’ foot. We ran and ran, laughing like lunatics, the way you do when you’re afraid and with a friend. Then we walked, still holding hands; walking until the next bit of open ground, with the railings, and the gym lockers beneath the mountains and the moon. “Run,” you said, and we ran again, and this time when we stopped you put your arm round my shoulder. “It’s cold,” you said. And then you said, “This pancir feels very strange.” You thumped it and laughed. I laughed too. And wanted to stroke my head across your chest. But I didn’t. I just carried on walking.

  We walked till we reached the end of the flats. There we stopped and peeped round, to where the moonlit mountains opened up; in the straight-sided gully between the blocks, beneath blanket shrouds, the road to the Holiday Inn zigzagged around its gym locker chicanes. Beyond it, the vast open square, the twisted bus stop and the hotel itself, dwarfed in the blackened shadow of the parliament beyond.

  “I’ll go on my own from here,” I said.

  “No, I come with you.”

  “It’s stupid,” I said. “You’ve just got to go back.” I had a stab of fear at the thought of you running this way. “It’s bad enough to do this once.”

  “I said I take you home; so, I take you home. Anyway, all snipers are drunk or asleep. Listen, is quiet.” It was true. Nothing stirred in the frozen night, then suddenly, the silence cracked. Somewhere, someone was playing jazz, and laughter drifted over the snow.

  “That’s music,” you said.

  “There’s a piano in the dining room of the Holiday Inn,” I said. I still thought that noise was pretty then. “One of the cameramen was playing it yesterday.”

  “Let’s run to music,” you said.

  So we ran, hand in hand, through the chicanes and dashed across the open stretch to the back of the hotel. We were laughing again when we reached the back door. Then we stopped, and suddenly we weren’t laughing at all. You took my other hand, and we stood t
here for a moment, saying nothing. Then, as I had known you were going to do, all night, since we first met, yesterday afternoon, you kissed me. I kissed you back, the pair of us, safe, in the shadow of the hotel. You pushed me away.

  “I must go home. Go inside.” But that wasn’t what I found myself wanting at all. Then you said, “When can I see you again?”

  “I have to go back to England soon. My newspaper won’t pay to keep me here.” I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving this place – I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving you.

  You kissed me, again, for longer this time, breaking off to say my name, and then kissing me deeper, the tentative exploration changing to assumption of control. I felt my stomach twist, my core turn liquid, my mouth sing with the taste of your spit. I opened my eyes and stroked your cheek, and suddenly Johnny seemed a lifetime away.

  “Are you here tomorrow? Can you come tomorrow?” You pulled away. I swallowed and said yes; I knew then that, whatever the paper said, I would never leave. I could have stood here kissing you, in the dark, all night.

  You kissed me quickly again, then you turned and ran – I watched you through the moonlight, crunching over the ice, the taste of you still tingling in my mouth, long after you were lost to me behind the chicanes. Till tomorrow, I thought. I’ll see you tomorrow.

  But of course I didn’t. I went to Tuzla instead. But I didn’t know, when you left me, that Robert was about to give me his job.

  Mujo was shot in his leg. The doctors said they would have to cut it off. Mujo said: “I Insist my friend Suljo does the operation.”

  When Suljo came, he cut off the leg, and both Mujo’s arms.

  The doctors were horrified: “What have you done?”

  Suljo said: “You don’t know my friend. He would just fiddle with the wound until it got infected.”