“The hotel has power nearly all the time,” he said. “We’re priority…whatever that means… You should move out too,” I heard him say, and I thought of you. I snapped back: “How would I telephone the desk? Where would I get cups of tea?”
I stared up, over the rooftops, the trees and the snows. Phil said nothing.
I said: “I don’t trust this. I don’t trust this not to start again.”
“I just can’t stick that hotel.”
“Can’t you?”
Phil shuddered. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I’ve spent too long there.”
“It’s not so bad.”
“You can never get away from anyone.”
“Who else is around?” I asked. But Phil said, “Nobody: it’s as quiet as the grave.”
“Not even Muffy?” I said it, even before I thought about what Muffy had told me three weeks ago, the day we’d left, in Split. Phil played his spoon over the pale brown scum on his coffee, then pulled out a cigarette. He offered me the packet. He lit them both, and slowly inhaled, and then, still staring at the table, he said: “She rang me to say she wasn’t coming back. She said she needed a break.”
I wasn’t surprised. We’d been sitting in Muffy’s hotel room, as the sea darkened to violet outside, drinking cappuccinos and eating Croatian ersatz Toblerone. It was like when she cried over John the Spy’s wife and kids that last night in our room in Tuzla, a year ago, before she went out to see him and didn’t come back. Except of course I knew Muffy much better now. “Phil’s such a romantic nit,” she’d said. “We never meant to. It just happened. He’s got Lena and the baby. Oh God. Fuck the cappuccino, let’s open the minibar. Pass me the wine… He’s not an arsehole, like
Ed. He can’t go collecting wives from every war…”
I thought she’d start to cry, but she poured herself a drink and took a large slug: “I’ve been here way too long. I should go home to Sheridan and have some babies. I’m 37. Be careful you don’t stay too long… Miss Molly…”
“But I like being here!” I’d said. That’s not the point, she’d said. I said, “I haven’t been here as long as you. And I’ve got Amir…” She gave me a look – and said, “What does he have when you’re gone? He doesn’t turn into a puff of green smoke you know, the moment you check out of the Holiday Inn.”
I felt sick. I remember you saying to me, I miss you. I’m lonely…
Phil’s voice broke in: “What else did she say?” With pathetic hope.
“Nothing,” I said. “Just that she’d been here too long.”
“Too long…” he turned his head. Across the park, a woman was walking with her child down the street, and an old lady, with a plastic bag, was panting up the other way. Every now and then they’d glance up to the hills. “I wonder whether that old woman thinks she’s been here too long?” he said.
“Well, she’s wrong,” I said, when he didn’t say anything else. I picked up my coffee and looked across at the children playing in the grass, the woman wandering up the street, at Ibrahim, happily busy in his bar, then up at the mountains, above their dark fuzz of trees that presumably still hid the guns, even if they didn’t happen to be firing this week. The mountains ignored us, soaring shining to the sun. “She should be here for this.”
“Yes,” he said. “She should be here for this. Come on, Molly. Time we went back to our ship.”
You weren’t at the hotel. You rang to say you’d be late. I was getting worried, and Phil was saying, fuck it, let’s get him to meet us in Jez. And I was just about to ask, what’s Jez?, when there was a knock at the door. There you were, silhouetted against the dim lights from the lobby, your shoulders broad in the doorway, your eyes, those black treacle eyes, hidden in shadow but the swoop of your lashes lay on your cheeks and your smile, your kooky smile, those rambling Bosnian teeth. I leapt up, and ran into your arms. When you kissed me, and I smelt you, and the scent of you hit the back of my nose, I threw my head back, looked up at you, and forgot all about CTV and Edin and whatever else you’d been doing.
In the end, I didn’t see so much of you that month. You were working with Edin most of the time. It made more sense that way. You worked for me towards the end of each week but, actually, I didn’t need you so much anyway. I spoke the language now, enough to get by; the snipers weren’t really shooting, so I could walk around, and if I needed a car, the taxi rank had returned opposite the Presidency.
Besides, the new UN commander had changed things for me too. He moved his headquarters into Sarajevo itself, from that old school in Kiseljak, into what we called, in true colonial style, the Residency. He said he wanted to be closer to the centre, but also, since Sarajevo had long been a French fiefdom, with French troops and a French general as Sector Sarajevo commander, the move had the advantage of putting the French nose out of joint, which seems to be a good part of any British military policy.
As for us, for the British press corps, it meant that our war suddenly changed. Being British, the new general needed or wanted (or thought he did) to use the British press. When his headquarters moved to Sarajevo, his staff obviously came too. Instead of the Frogs having a monopoly on bored soldiers to ply with drink and us Brits having to go all the way to Vitez for that, suddenly we had a whole pool of British officers on site, living at the centre of the storm. It’s all terribly tribal, this stuff: the way you get good information is never in interviews or press conferences but slowly, over a few drinks, in a potent fug of empathy and adrenalin. Maybe, if my French had been better, I could have got the French to talk to me, but to be honest, before you build the kind of trust real indiscretion needs, you need a strong common bond: sex is good, and so is sport, but actually race memories of Marmite and Doctor Who do pretty well. And, unlike various journalists like loony Pierre-Marie or pouting, eyelash-flapping Chantal, I did not have the French equivalent of that. So I could write what I liked about human misery and do my weekly chats with Ejup Ganic – the government minister who spoke the best English – or even poor old General Divjak, the Sarajevo Serb commander who’d stayed behind to help the siege, but was never quite trusted by his Muslim colleagues so tended to have a lot of time on his hands; you could lay bare for me the soul of Sarajevo, but until this point I never had access to what the western powers were planning next. Of course, I could have had an affair with one of the French and built up trust that way, but I was in love with you. Besides, imagine if I’d picked the wrong one? A Swedish journalist friend did have an affair with one of the Brits the General brought in. She said unfortunately she discovered too late that he was far too thick to be able to tell her anything (you need intelligence for indiscretion: clever people think they can trust their own judgement, and besides, they are vain and they want you to know how clever they are) and he wasn’t even gorgeous enough to make up for it, but it would have been very undiplomatic to give him the boot. She was very relieved when his tour of duty came to an end.
So I spent much more time, then, talking to British soldiers.
And possibly less time talking to you.
I helped you move house. I wrote a piece about it: life in Sarajevo slowly grinds back to normal – if you could call it normal, still surrounded by men with guns, who were just choosing not to shoot. Edin’s flat was halfway up one of the tower blocks, down Sniper Alley, just beyond the Bridge of Brotherhood and Unity. It had an enormous sitting room with vast picture windows, all, of course, boarded up; a fantastic view of the hills, and huge holes where the bullets had come through, and matching holes in the stereo and the bookcases on the other side of the room. The bathroom had taken a rocket through one wall, tiles and bits of concrete still lay in shards in the shower and pale orange dust from the walls over everything like a Kodak light filter. “Good for ventilation,” you said.
You told me the flat got water and electricity every other day so we chose one of those days to do the move but I still refused to get in the lift, just in case. We had to send your stuff up in shifts. We f
elt a bit like a couple in a mortgage ad – wiping cobwebs off each other’s chins, or in this case, cement dust – at least I did. Being brought up under communism, you’d never seen a mortgage ad. Then Aida, one of the girls you’d known at CTV, turned up with some coffee and a packet of PX Jaffa Cakes, all lipstick and high heels and a superior pout. Actually, for about the first time, I was quite glad to see Aida. I liked her seeing us together, moving house.
So our days settled into a new kind of routine. I’d be with you from Saturday night, late, after the last edition had gone to press, and stay till Tuesday, because then it didn’t matter if I couldn’t get to a phone. Obviously, there was no phone in the flat, or rather no line. The phone was still there, Early Learning Centre orange and about as much use as a toy. But on Tuesday, I’d have to go back to my spaceship. And you’d say, oh, Molly’s been kidnapped by aliens again. Sometimes I’d come back for the night, but the last two weeks, I hadn’t seen you till Thursday.
Phil found a house too, but he hadn’t moved in yet. The snowdrops were coming out, and even the icicles were starting to drip.
Then, after three weeks, the Herald told me I had to leave. More than that. It was a massive promotion: giving me a staff job, sending me off all over the world. But in London, on the desk, and not based in Sarajevo any more.
It was the week I was doing the psychological legacy of the war.
“Where’s Amir?” said Phil, who dropped me off at the loony bin. “Oh, I don’t really need him for interviews now,” I said.
Phil paused. “Are you still paying him to be your driver?” I blushed: “It’s not very much. He gives most of it to his mother. I haven’t had time to change things yet.” It seemed rather churlish to stop.
Phil rolled his eyes. “See you at one. We’re going to go to the pizza place for lunch. Just make sure they don’t keep you in there.” He waved at the loony bin’s gloomy Austro-Gothic façade.
I walked down from the hospital to the pizza parlour. It wasn’t just the pizza place that was a sign of change. It was a beautiful day; sunny, and the snow still on the mountains, with a breeze that was fresh enough to whisk the smell of rubbish away although, as I looked around, I noticed even the rubbish wasn’t like it used to be. Somebody must have started clearing it up. People were wandering around carrying plastic bags; chatting, being served coffee on Ibrahim’s terrace. Tiny green shoots were spouting in the UNPROFOR general’s Residency gardens. Soon the white portakabins would be invisible from the road. It was like that bit in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, when the ice starts to thaw, and all the small furry animals go around saying “Aslan is on the move.” I told Phil that later at lunch, but he said that line always made him think of the end of constipation.
Some soldiers were lugging away the gym-locker sniper barricades from the big crossroad by the mosque. The street I’d sprinted over, with you, and so many times on my own. I thought of all the people who must have died putting them up, and all the people who’d died on that road since because, although better than nothing, the lockers weren’t very effective. I felt tears welling up in my eyes. Maybe I should track one of the families down, I thought. I ran across the street anyway – it would be almost too good a joke not to kill someone the very moment the sniper barricades were being dismantled.
The pizza parlour was safe from any renegade snipers at least, tucked under the crags above the old brewery, across the river. I ran across that bridge as well. The building had wooden walls and those standard un-siege-friendly picture windows, two of which were still UNHCR plastic; the others still had the gleam-and-putty smears of freshly replaced glass. It sat on the edge of one of those little streams tumbling down from high beyond the frontlines, whose water the Sarajevans refused to drink, even in the worst of the war, on the grounds, they said, that the Chetniks were shitting in them upstream.
Through the window I could see Valida and Phil. At their table was Ed, his white hair bobbing up and down, as he gesticulated, pen in hand, a notebook by his fork. Valida smiled when I caught her eye: she’d been staring out of the window looking drawn and fed up. The waitress greeted me with obvious excitement. She only had four other customers and they were foreigners too. The carpet stuck to my feet but there was no discernible smell of pee. But the place was still cold enough for Phil to be in his coat.
Ed gave me a hug. “When did you get here?” I said.
“Molly. Still here… My dear child! Straight off the plane this morning,” he said. “Breakfast in Split; lunch in Sarajevo.”
“We bumped into him wandering the streets like a tourist,” said Phil.
“I was. I was just gawping. What a change. I’m over-dressed. I’m the only hack still wearing a flak jacket.”
I said: “You know what they call it here? Half-time…”
“I couldn’t believe it when Phil said you were all going out for a pizza. A twenty-dollar pizza! When I think how much a cabbage cost a month ago…”
“Oh, the pizzas used to be good here before the war,” said Valida.
“How long are you here for, Ed?” I asked.
“Yeah, and why?” said Phil. “It’s so quiet. I’d have figured you’d be in Rwanda…” He stopped. I looked at Valida. We weren’t supposed to be talking about Rwanda – it was the rival war.
Henri had rung Valida two days ago, on a satellite phone. He said he was in Gomer, just over the border from Rwanda, in a refugee camp full of mass murderers and he wasn’t coming back to Sarajevo. He’d also mentioned that Muffy was in Gomer too. You’d said to Phil: “I thought she wanted a break.” Phil didn’t say anything. It was Valida who said, “Sarajevo’s not fashionable any more…” and then she went out of the room, and I didn’t see her for a day. I’d said: “Henri could have let her know before he left,” but Phil had made a face and said, “But he didn’t know he’d be sent to Rwanda then…”
Ed didn’t notice the tricky silence. He never did.
“Christ no. I hate Africa. All those fucking insects. And no-one in America gives a shit.”
I thought I heard Phil say, “Except the black people,” but maybe I was wrong, and I agreed with Ed about the insects.
“Anyway,” he said, “us magazine journalists, we like it when it’s quiet. People are so grateful to talk to you. I hate the goat fuck you get on a rolling story,” he slugged his beer. “I guess I’ll be here a couple of days. Then Pale, I think, and then up to Belgrade.” I could almost see the ten thousand words spooling out. “I’d rather shoot myself than be in Rwanda again.”
“Have you been to Rwanda?” I asked.
“It wasn’t called Rwanda then…it was…” I can’t remember what he said, but one of those colonial names that sound like “Bananaland”. “They put me in prison for a couple of weeks… Look, here are our pizzas.”
By any non-war standard, they were sad bald things, a splat of tomato sauce, a faint smear of cheese, a few sad slices of plastic pink ham, but that didn’t stop us four gasping with greed.
“So what’s actually going on?” I said.
“Where?” said Ed.
“Rwanda,” I said. “I don’t understand.”
Ed looked past me, out of the window, beyond the hills. “Rwanda. Rwanda,” he turned back. “There are two types of people in Rwanda, the short people and the tall people and once every decade or so the short people cut off the legs and other extremities of the tall people. That’s it. That’s Rwanda.”
“That’s it?”
“That, believe me, is all you have to know.” He ate a piece of his pizza. “This,” he said, waving another piece about on his fork, “Is actually quite good.”
“How do you explain us?” Valida suddenly said.
Ed wasn’t even embarrassed. He carried on stoking pizza: “Now that gets complicated. Because there are three sides, and that’s one too many. And the readers can’t get their heads round the fact that the Muslims are the goodies. So every time I write about this place, I have to reiterate the fa
ct that nobody expects Valida to walk around in a burqa. And that she drinks alcohol.” But actually, I had never seen Valida drink and her pizza didn’t have any sad pink slabs of ham.
“How was your shrink?” said Phil, because no-one else spoke.
“Have you been to see a shrink?” said Ed.
“I’m doing something on the after-effects of war… you know… so I thought I could put the mental stuff in with rebuilding everything.”
“Did he say anything interesting?” Ed picked up his pen.
I didn’t want to talk about it, so I was glad when Valida said: “He let you go? After talking to you? He didn’t lock you up?” “Oh, ha ha ha…”
Ed made some notes in the little book he had on the table.
“It’s a good thing Phil didn’t go,” said Valida. “They’d have locked him up for ever.”
“I couldn’t have his number now, could I?” said Ed. I was slightly irritated, but I had learnt a lot from Ed. Then he asked to borrow you. I explained you were really working for CTV now; it wasn’t up to me, you didn’t really work for me so much anymore.
Valida said, “My sister, Aida, might be free.” But I said, I was sure that you would work for Ed. I knew you loved Ed; he was famous and paid you a fortune.
“You guys not together anymore? Sorry to hear that. But I guess it was kind of inevitable. These things never really work.”
“Oh, no! We are! He’s just not working for me so much.”
Ed looked embarrassed. “Oh. Sorry. Well, I said it now.”
I stared out of the window at the jumbled streets, a minaret, and the old fort silhouetted on the hill against the mountains, and thought about the man in the loony bin.
“It’s such a pretty little town,” I said. “Sometimes you forget that.”
“It’s great,” said Ed.
“I preferred it before,” said Valida.
The Girl in the Film Page 20