“That’s a good idea,” said Amy. “Let’s get three glasses of wine.”
I’d forgotten the fact that Americans don’t really drink. Four people; you are going to need a bottle at least. After five minutes of discussion it was decided to order some red. It was I who insisted that we got a bottle. By this time I was actually having difficulty being polite. It’s not that I’m an alcoholic. I just like having a glass of wine in my hand if people want to talk to me about the war, and I could see that I was going to have to talk about the war rather a lot this evening.
“I’m drinking far too much in Sarajevo,” said Fenella, sipping at her glass.
“Well you won’t be alone there,” said Zach, and knocked back his beer. “I think I’ll have another of those.”
Then he turned to me, “So, Amy says you were a journalist?” It was apparent that was little recommendation to him.
“Yes…” I could feel my stomach clenching up. “I still am a journalist.” I suppose I am. “What about you?”
He shrugged it off with a: “Oh, I was just an aid worker,” with the false modesty of someone who says, “Oh, I just look for the Holy Grail” … “Who do you write for?”
“Well, I don’t do that kind of work anymore. But during the war, I worked for the Herald.”
Although, like a good liberal, he gave the Herald its due, it failed to stop the inquisition. “Were you in Sarajevo?”
“Most of the time. I suppose. But I also travelled a lot.” I could smell the sickly chemical tang of the armoured Land Rover; see the burned beams black against the snow…
“I covered the whole area, really…”
“And when were you here?”
“Well… during the war.”
“Were you here all the time?”
“No… No… Not all the time.” I mean, I wasn’t was I? That was the whole problem.
A shiver of contempt crossed his face: “A lot of journalists came and went.”
“I suppose we did a bit.”
I looked away, and round the restaurant. It obviously wasn’t a place for romance. Each table bore its matching pairs of middle-aged couples; men with plumped, sallow faces, great haunches straining at their maroon suits. Their attendant women, foundation-dead skin and wrought henna-ed hair, were talking amongst themselves. I felt afraid, and I didn’t know why.
“Where were you?” I turned back to Zach.
“Oh, nowhere as exciting as you,” he said, in a flat voice. “Mainly in Central Bosnia.”
“Where?” I asked.
He shrugged and looked out the window: it was a good twenty seconds before he spoke. “A nasty industrial town. It’s called Zenica.” His face was set and hostile in the night beyond the glass.
Suddenly I was furious. “Did you stay in that ghastly brown hotel by the river with the scary glass lift?” His head snapped round.
“How do you know that hotel?”
“I told you: I worked here during the war.”
“And you came to Zenica?” His hostility was turning to bewilderment.
“I said I covered the whole area.”
“I lived in that hotel for months…!” he said.
Our wine arrived. I drank my glass with relief.
“Shall we order?” said Amy.
I looked back at the menu. “I don’t know what any of these things are.”
“You don’t?” said Amy.
“No.”
“But they have this food everywhere…”
I shrugged. “There wasn’t much food here in the war.”
Zach said, “The lamb’s always good… Did you ever go to that place on the Jablanica road? By the lake?”
“Oh yes…”
Amy broke in: “Oh my God, did you see that thing in Oslobodjenje this morning?”
“No,” I said just as Zach said: “Yes.”
“Don’t you read Oslobodjenje?” said Amy. “You should….”
Oh God. Like I should know Bosnian food and have spent more time in Zenica and not lived in the Holiday Inn and never left you and read The Bridge over the Drina in the original and hung out with Bosnian intellectuals instead of just taking you into my own world, and walked into Gorazde and learned Serbo-Croat – sorry, Bosnian – fluently with all the case endings and the irregular verbs, not just picked up enough to have pidgin conversations. And married you when you wanted me to and not moved back to England and lived here all the time and carried water back to our apartment and not stopped being a foreign correspondent and gone to Kosovo and Sierra Leone, and kept in touch with your parents after I had left and not abandoned your mother yesterday to be sad and drunk and alone. I should have married you and let you escape to London…
“What thing in Oslobodjenje?” said Fenella.
“They’ve found an enormous mass grave. It’s the biggest one since the war. About 500 people…”
Mass graves are so sad. And they smell. The side of a skull, a wrist, a bit of tartan shirt sticking out of the orange clay; the forensic scientists, in their expensive anoraks, taking notes in the pit, as the rain drizzles down; the locals, in the blue boiler suits, wielding spades, like the seven dwarves. The six-foot bulges of the white plastic bags, numbered in scrawled black marker pen and heaved into a truck. The man with his gnarled hobbit face, picking something up and carefully wiping off the mud before he gave it to me… an ID card he’d found, Hassan something… born in 1963; he had a short beard, dark eyes, and plump cheeks. The card said he had been an engineer. And it’s not just mud. I found a tooth in the sole of my boot.
“…near Tuzla…”
“Tuzla! But that’s Muslim!” I said.
“It’s near Zvornik,” said Zach; the scorn in his voice had gone.
“They’re surprisingly close… just over the old frontline.”
“I can’t imagine Tuzla being close to anywhere.”
Zach was with the UN, Amy said, now, based in Mogadishu.
“He’s really important.”
He blushed. “Not at the moment. I’m being a bum.”
“Not a bum! He’s doing a PhD on conflict and post-conflict economics,” she said.
I swallowed: that’s why I felt afraid. All the men in this restaurant were fat. Only gangsters were fat in the war.
“You could do a lot worse than ask a few people here tonight,” I said.
“Why do you think I came back?” he said.
“Do you think there are people who were involved in the black market here tonight?” Amy sounded shocked.
“Yes,” said Zach and I together, and then we both laughed.
Dinner turned out quite jolly after that. Zach said he’d take me on a guided tour of what he tactfully described as “Men who’d done rather well out of the war…” Black-market war profiteers – “Like the Beverly Hills homes of the stars – the guy who ran the tunnel. He’s got some pad. And have you seen…” he named a senior Bosnian politician who we’d got to know quite well…“He lives in a fucking palace.” “Oh dear,” I said.
As Amy said, “He’s not in politics anymore.”
“He doesn’t need to be,” said Zach. “He can afford to retire.” He smiled at me: “Shall we get another bottle?”
It was at the end of my rendition of General Mladic singing “Twenty-four hours from Tuzla”, that Fenella said: “I think you’ve got a fan.”
I turned and the hairs stirred again on my neck. A man by the fireplace was staring at me. He was not fat exactly, but a big man who’d got bigger. There was a brass-blonde beside him, in a black shiny top like Didi’s, with gold chains round her neck and deep bags beneath her eyes. He smiled at me, then leant over to the man opposite, who turned round to stare at me as well. I started to look away, but something snagged at my mind. I looked back. I knew him. I didn’t know who he was but if I had to place the instinct, I would say I had liked him.
“That’s Franjo,” said Amy; she sounded impressed.
“Franjo…?” I looked at him again.
“It’s his restaurant,” she said.
He gave me another slight smile, surprisingly shy for a man of his bulk. The blonde smiled too and gave a tiny lift of her hand. Above their heads were a Kalashnikov crossed with another sort of rifle, and over the fireplace, a large plaque, with some kind of pistol, a regimental badge, and a couple of photos tucked into its edge, of men in uniform grinning and holding guns. On the plaque was written in poker work Légion Étranger. Francuski Dom… of course.
I said: “He’s a Croat…”
“Franjo’s Sarajevan…” said Amy.
“He may be Sarajevan but he’s Bosnian Croat. He was in the French Foreign Legion and he was based in Sarajevo during the war.”
“How do you know?”
“I recognise him. He was the French general’s interpreter. Excuse me.”
He stood up as I approached; gave a bashful smile and held out his hand. I remember him, from press conferences, checkpoints, various parties; that night in Jez, when his mate had gone ballistic, he’d been helping the waitresses hand round a tray of candles; the first night I’d been out with Hal… I’d hardly thought of Hal for days.
“It’s Franjo, isn’t it? You worked for General Nissent?”
“Yes,” his fingers gripped mine. “You were journaliste.”
We smiled at each other. Neither of us spoke. Then we both opened our mouths. I got in first: “So, how are you?”
“Can’t complain…”
“This is your restaurant? It’s great…”
“Thanks,” he gave one of those shrugs of pleased self-deprecation. “So, are you here for work? Is something happening?” His gaze was a question of complicit excitement.
“No…” I laughed at myself, “I’m on holiday…”
He laughed too. “Looking up your old war buddies?” He used drug, the Serbo-Croat for comrade.
“The ones that are left… everybody’s gone…”
“That is the story of Sarajevo,” the woman gave me a little smile.
“You are well?” She asked as if she desperately wished me to be…
“You remember Tanja… my wife?” She did look familiar… “From Jez…” she said, and smiled at me.
“Of course!” The waitress with the tray. “Hello. How lovely!… How are you?” I wrung her hand. She clung back. Neither of us spoke. We smiled at each other. It was a relief when Franjo said: “How long are you here for?”
I don’t know myself. How could I tell him? “If there is anything I can do.” He got out a card. It said Franjo Ivanovic, the restaurant, and a mobile. “I mean it. Really…”
“Thanks,” I said, and got out one of mine. “How’s…” What was the name of his psycho friend, the other bodyguard… “Vince, how’s Vince?” I asked.
Franjo gave a grin. “Vince’s fine. You just missed him. He was over here the other day.”
Well, I’m not sorry I missed Vince. I handed him my card. He read it out: “Molly Taylor,” and the name of my magazine. His smile started to ebb. He stared down at the card and then back up at me. I waited for him to speak. When he didn’t, I said:
“I used to work for the Herald…”
The silence went on. Tanja looked up at him surprised but he just stared at the card. Worry flitted across her face. She turned back to me. I could see whatever we three had been feeling together bleed away.
“I’d better…” I looked back at my table; Amy and the others were watching us.
“Yes. Yes.” Franjo raised his eyes to mine. The smile returned but now it seemed automatic and his eyes, which had been anxious, now went blank, like eyes I had known in the war.
“Good luck finding your old friends,” Tanja fl uttered; she cast an anxious glance at her husband.
“It’s not so easy,” I said. “Everything’s changed.” The uncertainty vanished.
“Oh yes,” she said emptily, and her hand went to the gold chains at her neck. “The war changed everything.”
Mujo was fishing and he caught a golden fish. The fish said to him: “I am a magic fish. Let me go and I will grant you three wishes.”
Mujo said, “No way, we are going straight to the goldsmith.”
VII
This morning I went for another walk. I walked past the library, past the cathedral, past the bridge where Gavrilo Princip stood to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Apparently he was so scared he peed while he was taking aim.
I carried on walking deep into my war. I walked along the river, with the hills rearing to my left, past the Presidency, past the fat cream mosque, over the wide crossroads, where so many people died. I walked down Sniper Alley, where I could never even have driven, except in an armoured car, past the apartment blocks, fresh glass gleaming from their shrapnel-scarred walls. All the time, I kept sneaking looks sideways to where the Serbs had been. Past the grey spiky church – I couldn’t remember if it was Catholic or Orthodox, but I do know that a sniper shot someone on its steps. Past the UNIS towers; from this side of the street, the workers bustling through its shiny office doors looked surreal beneath the top ten storeys, still blackened skeletons with their shattered glass.
The Holiday Inn sat over the open patch of grass, as silly as it always looked; the spaceship, you called it. I stopped at the edge of the grass. There was a new glass café bulging out, with tables and chairs dotted outside. Our old door didn’t seem to exist anymore. They’d be using the front door, by the fountain, round the other side. A waiter walked out with a tray of coffee cups. Why don’t I do that? Why don’t I just go and have coffee?
I didn’t recognise any of the café at all. I wasn’t sure if this was because it was a new addition or whether it was a restoration of something so destroyed that it had faded from memory by the time I arrived, but whatever it was, it was rather a relief.
I ordered a cappuccino and stared up at the hills. I felt silly that it was making me feel so dramatic and weird. But it was. I wasn’t making it up. I drank my coffee, still not very nice, but nowhere near as vile as it used to be. Then I got up and walked down a marble corridor, past a business centre and some souvenir shops, until the roof soared away and I was in the atrium once more.
It was as gloomy as it had ever been. Even in peacetime, it wasn’t properly lit and the dust-draped chandelier was dark at noon. I stood stock still, staring up into the shadows. But the plastic sheeting had gone from the plate-glass wall beyond, and the ice-queen shards no longer trembled in their frames. The fountain chortled away outside.
I was halfway up the first flight of stairs before I realised the lift must work. I climbed. I was knackered; I’m much less fit now than I was in the war; wearing that flak jacket was like living in my own gym.
I came out onto the gallery and walked towards the banisters. I could feel you standing beside me, holding my hand. We hung together staring down into the world beneath our feet, the woolly hats passing by below: the cameramen, the reporters, gathering to leave for the briefing, the odd person trying desperately to check out, Muffy by the bar, surrounded by her lovelorn court of photographers. I wouldn’t even have jumped if Phil had thumped up the stairs.
I walked round to room 309. The door was shut. I heard a sound from inside. For a moment I was tempted to knock, to try and explain to whoever answered why I was there; but I didn’t. It was probably just the maid, but even if it had been, I don’t think I could have explained.
I turned and hung over the rail again, staring down. My head was hurting, like a huge boil on my brain. If I pressed any more, something might spew out… what? Pus? Memories? You? A great terrible craving for a war which had killed hundreds of thousands and ended five years ago?
I swallowed. I understood completely how people can believe in ghosts. I had brought them with me and they were all in my head.
I went downstairs. I walked, of course. I couldn’t have taken the lift.
I ordered a cup of coffee at the horseshoe bar. The waiter was tall, and dark, with skin the grey of
the atrium’s light, and sorrowful eyes: he looked slightly familiar, as everybody did.
“Did you work here in the war?” I asked, as he gave me my coffee.
“Yes.”
“I was here too. I was a journalist here.”
He met my eyes, then shook his head: “I am sorry I don’t remember.”
I felt as if he’d put up a “Private No Entry” sign.
I took my coffee over to one of the mushroom seats and stared at the ammunition factory across the square. They’d put the roof back on that as well.
“Excuse me…” I turned round. “You were here in the war?”
It was another waiter; he was tall and dark like the last. He looked at me nervously.
“Yes,” I said, equally nervous back.
“I remember.” We gazed at each other and gave a shy smile. He did look familiar. I think he really did. There was a pause, then he asked me how I was, so I said fine, and I asked him and he said fine too. Then we smiled rather intensely, for a few seconds, until another customer called him over.
“Sorry,” he gave an awkward smile. “I must go.” Suddenly I felt bereft. Then I realised it was actually a relief. All my post-war encounters were this banal. We had nothing else to say. I was here in the war. So were you. We probably never even had a conversation before. I was one of the loud journalists who laughed.
I loved his war and he probably hated me and it. But I was just terribly glad he wasn’t dead.
When I asked for the bill it was he who hurried back. This time he was smiling as he handed me the slip. “You are back in
Sarajevo?”
“Just for a bit.”
“For work?”
“No. For a holiday.”
He laughed. “You are staying here?”
I laughed back. “No. I can’t afford to if I am paying myself.”
“Very expensive now.”
“More expensive than in the war.”
“Of course. We have water now.” He giggled at me. I giggled back.
“Maybe see you again.”
We both smiled. “I hope so.” I held out my hand. He shook it, then walked back to the bar. I realised I did not know his name and he didn’t know mine. I might never see him again but it didn’t really matter. But I also realised he didn’t hate me at all.
The Girl in the Film Page 34