Last Stories and Other Stories (9780698135482)

by Vollmann, William T.

  The signal bar ascended; the bus entered the new country. At this moment Ivan used to get as excited as a child. On the righthand side of the road, a man stood behind his car, holding out his passport while two white-clad officials peered beneath his car, presumably for contraband or bombs.

  His wife was tired. He stared at ivy on a ruined wall.

  3

  On the Rijecka Krupa road the Cyrillic had been blacked out by hand on the bilingual sign for Sarajevo-Mostar. He had seen that years ago, in Kosovo, where an old Serb had told him: We must live here. We have no choice!—and a pretty young Serbkina whose family had lived and died in that place for three centuries had said, smiling bitterly: I can’t walk across that bridge anymore.— Had they blacked her out yet?— Evidently some good Bosnian wished to assert that Rijecka Krupa likewise was not and had never been Serbian.

  There were grapes fat on their arbors, figs and pomegranates. He wife took pleasure in the apricot and peach trees. Here came the tower of a mosque.

  At the next road sign the hand on the spray can of paint must have trembled, for black mist wavered over Cyrillic and Roman alike. Here came the yellow sign for Karatok; the Cyrillic had been sprayed out again. For some reason he could not pay close attention to anything but the signs. Now swelled the sign for Medjugorje; he remembered that place all too well; his wife pointed out an onion field. The sign for Kelpci remained stencilled in both languages, but at the sign for Čapljina the Cyrillic was blacked out as before. Knowing what that might again portend, he endured the clenching within his chest. On the trees by the bus station the peaches were already pinkening. They passed a troop of young soldiers brown-green in camouflage, who marched happily swinging their arms; he felt sick.

  A soldier approached, with his duffel bag pressing him from shoulder to hip; he walked in small weary steps. Then the bus pulled away, past grubby white and tan apartments which had not been scorched full of holes; laundry hung over the balconies; but a moment later they passed a brick building with darkness punched through it. (This was his wife’s excursion; he had not expected to feel anything.) At least in this zone the local talent left the Cyrillic on the road signs undefaced. On the high point by the river rose an old wall and a stone tower. A pair of tour buses were parked below, on the edge of a poppy meadow. His nauseating dread increased. His wife saw white potato blossoms.

  The semiarid hills ahead had an evil appearance to him, simply because he remembered expecting to be shot.

  At Buna they drew up to a long narrow concrete bridge or dam, which resembled the place, but was not, he realized. He had thought to recognize it right away, but of course landscapes do alter in eighteen years, particularly in war zones.

  He could not recall whether they had come into the city before it happened. It seemed so, because he remembered photographing Croatian soldiers on the west side. In a steel cabinet in his office he still kept the negative strips; on his return he might take them out and place them under the loupe, although it would be preferable never to see those images again. His wife closed her eyes; she hated the heat, and the seat hurt her back.

  Three women stood at the side of the road, selling cherries, and he remembered the two pretty rose vendors with whom he, Ivan and Ted had flirted in the last minutes; the girls had given them each a flower, and he could not remember what he had done with his; probably he had affixed it to his bulletproof vest. The other two roses must certainly have remained in the car. There had been a Croatian checkpoint before they met the rose vendors. Then they had entered No Man’s Land.

  4

  Now they had arrived. His wife felt very tired. He changed money at the bus station, and then a taxi rolled them past a scorched building improved by time into a mellow ruin.

  It was very humid, the roses practically wilting in their little planters. At the hotel, the waiter asked if it was their first time in this place. They ordered lunch. At the next table a young couple were holding hands. He had already quarreled with his wife, and felt bitter and furious that she could not understand him.

  The muezzin’s call to prayer wavered beautifully over the river. He saw two birds in the sky. The green river descended the steps of its straight stonewalled channel.

  The young couple gazed stupidly into each other’s eyes; they held hands; he could hardly endure it.

  His wife stared down at her wineglass, while he remembered how after days of submissive waiting for Ivan’s family to claim the body and ask of him whatever questions they cared to—hence the inquisition from Ivan’s brother, who naturally sought to establish through circumstantial proofs the guilt of the hated survivor, followed by dinner with the well-mannered, exhausted old mother, in company, of course, with the brother, who, it was made clear, held him accountable not only for Ivan’s death, but also for declining to take the blame for it—he found himself home again, some weeks after which he came to be drinking with his friend Sam, whom he admired for being a more mature person, in possession of many adventures and sufferings; and Sam, whom he had first introduced to Ivan and who had not paid for any of the drinks, now rounded on him, shook his fist, and said: Don’t think I’m forgetting about Ivan; someday I’m going to revenge myself on you!— Since Sam was drunk, he contained himself. A month later—the next time they had met—he said: Sam, I’m going to ask you to apologize to me, which Sam readily did, at which point he forgave him. Now he unforgave him. He wished to punch Sam in the teeth. Then that too passed, and he waited for his wife to finish her wine. How he hated sitting here! But lying down in the room would be worse. Actually it was interesting here; he was glad for these people that tourists had begun to come.

  High up on the far side of the river wall, the old foreigner in a silly hat was showing his old wife something. The foreigner stretched out his hand and pointed, as if he had been to the place he indicated, or somehow had something to do with it.

  His wife ordered another glass of wine, probably out of loneliness, while he remembered how en route to the place where he would await Ivan’s mother and brother, he had returned to Zagreb, because he and Ivan had left their extra suitcases in Zrinko’s apartment, and Zrinko said: Tell me one thing. The radio said that you were in another car, and Ivan was following you. Is that true?

  No. We were in the same car. Ivan was in the front seat, and Ted was driving—

  He had never been able to fight for himself. His childhood had taught him to bear with the threats and aggressions of others, and this fatalistic patience, which many mistook for compliance, had served him equally well in his profession. He raised his hands to be searched by secret police of any stripe; the insults of uniformed killers he answered with mildness; even when someone touched a bayonet to his throat he held no grudge, because what good would that have done? The killers were what they were precisely because they overreacted. Whatever he did feel announced itself within him afterward, if at all. So Zrinko’s questions did not anger him then. For one thing, Zrinko was his friend; they had met through Ivan; Zrinko evidently needed to be told the sequence of events, in order, as Americans would say, to “bring closure” to his grief; hence it was the survivor’s duty to comply and explain, all the more so since he was fond of Zrinko.

  You swear that you were in the same car?

  I swear, he listlessly replied; his trousers were still clotted with Ivan’s blood.

  All right. If you had been ahead in another car, leading Ivan to his death, I would have killed you.

  Zrinko drove him to the bus station. When he thanked him, Zrinko said: I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for Ivan.

  He never saw Zrinko again.

  His wife signed the bill. He longed for her to say something loving, take him by the hand, “help” him; he knew quite well that there was no help in such matters. Just then he could hardly endure his grief and bitterness. Had he voiced it, perhaps she might have embraced him, as he clearly comprehended, but he lacked the
power to take charge of himself. Anyway, if he waited, the feeling would depart. He blamed her for nothing. Wasn’t he a grown man? They rose and crossed the Stari Most, which had been beautifully reconstructed, evidently with United Nations funds. How had the joke run? When that Serbian commander destroyed this bridge, he consoled his staff that in due course, Serbs would remake it: wider, more beautiful and even older than before! It rose in an inverted V over the green river. Tenderly he helped his wife up the slanting stairs; her joints were weak. There came thunder, rain, the lovely green smell. To him the grass upreaching, the swallows and the rain on the roses all seemed new, but not the narrow evergreens rising up the steep arid mountain; that horizon was hideously familiar.

  A Spanish woman with a seashell belt and a leather purse like a uterus touched the bright brass writing-pens made out of shell casings. The vendor offered her another and another. She gazed at each one with doe eyes.

  5

  On a streetwall it still said USTAŠE DUBROVNIK,* and on another, ULTRAS 1994. He could not remember which brand of cigarettes Ivan had most frequently smoked. Middle-aged women in checkered hijabs were photographing one another on the Stari Most.

  These white butterflies flickering everywhere like ashes in an updraft, he lacked all recollection of them although it had been this time of year, that same sweaty light, with those arid yet forested mountains across the river. There were more roadside fruit stands than before, new shopping centers and gas stations, but plenty of the same old smashed houses. On the trees the figs hung green over the river. It seemed peculiar how much he had forgotten, especially after Ivan’s brother had hounded him so closely over what might as well have been every turn in the road, from the very starting-point where that United Nations pilot, smiling faintly, reached into his camouflage-flavored breast pocket, pulled out a manual the size of a combat Bible, and edified them with a diagram of some creepy wilderness of fortifications, remarking: That’s what those Serbian checkpoints look like. I prefer to fly myself.— He could fly, while they were only journalists. After waiting two days, the three of them made the decision together.— So you admit that you convinced my brother to take that road, said Ivan’s brother, smiling with triumphant hate.

  6

  Supposing that his duty must lie in submission to the brother’s cold hatred, ready to answer any questions if it would bring the man peace—in fact it appeared to inflame him—he complied, told and clarified. When the brother first began to interrogate him (he had awaited his coming for many days), he endured it calmly, even after it became apparent that rather than being, as he had foolishly imagined, “helpful,” he was simply accused; but when the brother demanded that he tell and retell each detail of Ivan’s death, which on his own account he absolutely could not bear to think about, he shivered for an instant. No doubt this bore out the brother’s already completed judgment.

  As for the sister, whose questioning took place over the telephone, and was therefore indefinitely protracted, she instructed him to call her again tomorrow at one-o’-clock. Every time he called her, it cost him a hundred dollars. He was trying to do right by that family; that was what he would have wished for in their situation, to have his questions answered.

  Explain to me again just why you took that turn, she said.

  So he did. He had explained it to her four times.

  And you were sitting in the back seat? Why weren’t you up front with my brother?

  Ted was the driver.

  You say my brother was your interpreter. So why didn’t you take the rest off his shoulders?

  Ivan asked the Spanish battalion for directions. He asked again at the Croatian checkpoint. In each case, he was satisfied as far as I could tell—

  But you didn’t help him verify these directions?

  As you know, I don’t speak the language. He didn’t ask for help. He just said, okay, we turn right just after the final checkpoint—

  Then how do you account for what happened?

  Ivan directed us to take a wrong turn.

  A wrong turn. And all this time you were sitting in the back seat, doing nothing.

  That’s right.

  My brother was working for you. He trusted you. I don’t know anything about the man who was driving, but I do find it significant that you had them doing all the work while you sat in the back seat.

  Put it any way you care to.

  And now you’ll cash in. You’ll have your dramatic story.

  Sure. I’m cashing in every time I call you.

  Just what do you mean? Tell me exactly what you mean by that remark.

  I mean that I’m trying to answer your questions as patiently as I can. By the way, Ivan was working with me, not for me.

  You hired him as your interpreter.

  I got the magazine to agree to pay him a fee, yes.

  You persuaded him to go.

  I invited him to go. He liked it over here.

  You lured him to his death.

  You know what, Jeanette?

  You killed my brother. You’re just as responsible as the men who shot him. I want you to admit it.

  I don’t see it that way.

  So you’re a coward as well as a—

  Jeanette, go to hell.

  He hung up the phone.

  Sweet trees were growing up through roofless stone ruins. His wife smiled at him wearily.

  7

  Now that he had come back to where it happened, he could not stop remembering Ivan’s sister, to whom he must have been a leader of unearthly power, since he could lure a man to his death for unstated reasons, conveying him, and Ted also, right into a sniper’s nest, like a prostitute who inveigles drunks into some lonely ambush of robbers, then flits away unharmed. The sister had definitely been the most plainspoken of all his judges. But the rest unanimously implied what she had asserted: he was more than he supposed himself to be. In the market, the old man selling cherries kissed a tomato and gave it to his wife. A man was selling pens made of shell casings; was he familiar? A man sat playing the accordion. And the American or survivor or whatever he was said to himself: If only I’d truly had such power! Well, I did, to my accusers at least. For once in my life I got to be a leader.

  His ex-girlfriend Victoria, who had gone to school with him and Ivan, was the only one who ever wrote to say that she was sorry. She was dead now. Remembering this, he felt his love for her return, as a dull lost yearning.

  His anger at Ivan’s brother and sister fluttered like those white butterflies over the elderberries. He forgave Sam again, then hated him. If he ever happened upon Sam again it would be perfectly all right between them. As for Zrinko, he had become one more denizen of a bygone foreign land, so that his hateful and threatening behavior need not be taken personally.

  He could not remember the first time he had seen Ivan or even what they had meant to each other when they were boys.

  Perhaps if he had made up his mind to take some attitude, not about Ivan’s family, or the consequences to himself, but about that double death itself, which belonged not to him but only to Ivan and the other man, he might have been better to himself and others, but precisely which thought or feeling would have accomplished this? Or what if he had simply set out to remember Ivan from time to time? Well, he would not. He disbelieved that he had meant that much to Ivan, or even that Ivan had respected him; Ivan had been too far above him. And so it could have been said that he rejected peace, which is scarcely more or less than sleep.

  Without his glasses Ivan had looked much younger; this was surprising. But perhaps the leader had never seen him in life, in which case it would have only been the dead Ivan that he knew. Ivan was smiling in all his press cards. When he smiled, the corners of his mouth did not turn up. In this respect his signature was the same, for it hurried across the empty space, narrow and flat. He was not handsome but his face was kind. There had
never been wariness in him. The official stamps on the press cards remained unfaded. In these photographs Ivan had stopped being a man and become a boy, gentle and careless, much younger than the one who had survived him.

  In the morning he woke up happy that they were leaving the place. The day was still cool. His wife’s knees hurt; he kissed her. At breakfast he ordered a coffee, and the woman smiled at him. He smiled back. His wife returned to the room to organize her suitcase. She was looking very tired. It seemed to him that he could not bear to outlive her. The woman brought his coffee. She was very pretty, and had sweet friendly eyes. He tried to speak a little of her language as he once used to do, and she laughingly encouraged him. Traces of words rose up on his tongue.

  The coffee was Turkish, of course: bittersweet, blacker than dirt, thicker than paste. He felt joyful to taste it. Hoping to take his wife back to the market if there were time, and perhaps to buy her some plums, he drank it quickly. Again the woman was smiling at him. He wondered whom she loved. Now she was in the kitchen; he heard her singing. A little sorry to go away, he left a fine tip and went out quietly, not wishing to trouble her with anything. At once he forgot her face. He was worrying about his wife, so at first he did not hear the rapid footsteps behind him on the street. How could those have anything to do with him? But the young woman, out of breath now, had come running after him, just to say goodbye.

  THE TREASURE OF JOVO CIRTOVICH