by Roy Kesey
- Gusterica hasn’t been eating his food, and now I can’t wake him up. I think he’s dead.
The guard looked at Joško, then over at Gusterica.
- Shit. Okay. Go sit on your bunk, facing the wall. If you move at all, I swear to God I’ll put a bullet in your brain.
The guard unlocked the door, stepped into the cell and closed the door behind him. He walked over to Gusterica and put his hand to the man’s wrist.
- You asshole, he said, turning back around. He’s—
Joško slung the contents of the pail into the guard’s face and clutched at the man’s throat. The two of them fell to the floor, rolling in the stew of feces and urine, and the guard lost consciousness before he could get his pistol out of its holster. Joško kept his grip on the man’s throat a moment longer.
Now Gusterica’s eyes were open wide. He stared at Joško, and his mouth moved but no sound came out. Joško nodded, took the key ring from the guard’s belt and opened the cell door.
- Goodbye, Gusterica, he said. Best of luck.
His cellmate shook his head and started clawing at his mattress. Joško walked up the hallway, and all around him the prayers and ranting went quiet. One fat hand reached out to grab at his shirt. Joško stopped, looked at the prisoner, and the man drew his hand back in.
He found the storeroom, got the door open, took up his rifle and rucksack, turned around and met the second guard coming in. He drove the barrel of his rifle into the man’s stomach. As the guard fell, Joško flipped the rifle around and swung it down again and again until the man’s skull broke open.
Up the next hallway, into the lobby, and the clerk was standing in the far doorway, staring out at the morning. Joško brought his rifle back over his shoulder, drove the butt against the back of the man’s neck and watched him fall.
Across the compound a group of guards stood talking and smoking, and to his right Joško heard the rumble of an engine. He walked around the corner, saw a jeep with its hood gaping open, and a soldier leaning in so far that one of his feet was raised off the ground. Joško stepped forward. It was Magarac. Joško watched the man work, then reached up for the hood and slammed it down.
The engine coughed thickly and Magarac’s legs lifted, collapsing against the fender as the engine died. Joško opened the hood and pulled the body out. The fan had caught Magarac on the temple and peeled his face away.
- I’m sorry, Joško said.
The corpse did not answer. Joško dragged it over to the side of the building and stretched it out flat, taking care to fold one of Magarac’s arms gently under his head. He put his rifle and rucksack in the back of the jeep and climbed into the driver’s seat, turned the ignition key, and the engine spat and went silent. He turned the key again, and this time the engine hacked and sputtered, then roared.
Through the middle of the compound, past the circle of guards. The sentry shaded his eyes to get a better look. Joško took up his rifle, shot him in the chest, burst through the gate and out onto the road.
* * *
The wind sang around him, and Joško smiled as he thought of how soon he would be at his sister’s house. He reached back and pawed through his rucksack until he found what was left of the rolls he’d bought in Split. Ants had been at work on most of them, but at the bottom of the third bag he found several rolls that were still in fair shape. He pulled two of them out, and imagined his arrival in Dubrovnik: the gunboats were silent, and Klara was on her balcony, saw him walking toward her, came running down the stairs to embrace him.
The landscape went pale and dry as he flew along the ragged coast, slipping onto side roads when he could, shunting back down to the highway when there was no other choice. Hard bright cliffs grew from nothing to his left, and the sea mumbled and tossed to his right. He wondered if the spearfishing was any good here. Then the cliffs fell away, and a small village stretched along both sides of the road. He slowed when he saw children playing in a patch of sand nearby.
He counted the rolls he had left, checked his canteen and found it empty. He searched the sides of the road, and when he saw a stand with a sign advertising ripe tangerines, he pulled onto the shoulder and smiled at the pudgy woman who sat inside.
- Hello, he called. Is there somewhere around here where I could fill my canteen?
- Nothing is free, the woman said.
- And if I bought something first?
The woman shrugged, and scratched at the bristly black hairs that grew from the mole on her chin. Joško opened his rucksack, then saw a five-thousand-dinar note stuffed into a plastic box between the seats. He took the bill and held it out.
- What will this buy?
- Twenty figs, ten tangerines, or two melons.
Joško walked to the stand. The tangerines and figs looked good, but the melons were overripe, and some of them had started to rot. One was exactly the size of Hadžihafizbegović’s head, and near the base there was a crack that curled up to either side like a grin, as if the melon, at least, had gotten the joke.
- Ten figs and five tangerines, please.
The woman reached under the counter and came up with a plastic bag. She blew it open, counted the figs into it, took up four tangerines and dropped them in as well.
- You—
- Minus one for the water, the woman said. You want free water, go to the sea.
- Where’s the faucet?
The woman jerked her thumb around the corner of the stand, then covered her mouth and nose with her hand.
- You really stink, she said.
She took a closer look at his clothes, reached up and drew a heavy metal grate down between them. Joško found the spigot and filled his canteen. He washed his hands and face, his neck, his arms, and sprayed off his uniform as well as he could. As he walked back to the jeep he called his thanks to the grate. There was no reply.
A few kilometers farther on he came to a checkpoint, and it seemed that the soldiers were waiting for him. One stood in the middle of the road and signaled for him to stop. Another took out a clipboard, walked around behind the jeep, and shouted to the one in front.
Joško hunched as low as he could, slipped the gearshift into reverse and jammed the gas pedal to the floorboard. He felt the jolt of the soldier’s body, put the jeep in first and hit the gas again. A bullet shattered the windshield, and there was another jolt, a soldier flying up over the hood, catching on the top of the windshield and again on the tailgate, tumbling away. Other soldiers along the road began firing, and then Joško was past them, past a row of tents that hunched like khaki vultures, and now he was alone with the sea and its pinpointed light.
There would be other checkpoints soon, he knew. He tried the first side road he came to, but it dead-ended only a few hundred meters inland. He tried the next one as well, and it curled southwest and burrowed into the hills.
What happened was this: There was once an old man, a vintner, who lived outside the village of Kopačevo, midway between Osijek and the Serbian border. He had worked as hard as he could his entire life producing the finest wines in the region, and as a result he had always lived comfortably. His cupboards were well-stocked with fresh vegetables, his bins with flour and sugar and salt, and his coop with a flurry of fat hens. He had a brilliantly colored rooster the size of a goose, two sheep, and a cow who provided him with three liters of the richest milk every morning.
However, as the war passed through the region, fewer and fewer people were able to afford the old man’s wines. This did not worry him greatly, for he knew that sooner or later the war would end. He began to live frugally, eating at first two meals per day, and then only one.
When his money was gone, he began slaughtering his chickens, and they lasted him nearly a month. He killed the rooster as well, but the meat was so tough that he had to stew it for days on end. Now it was time to butcher his sheep, and he was not looking forward to the musky taste of their meat, but it turned out he needn’t have worried. On the morning he went to herd them in, one o
f them stepped on a landmine, and the following evening the carcass of the other was stolen from where it hung in his barn.
Thus, with winter coming on, the vintner was forced to slaughter his cow. He begged her forgiveness as he sank the blade of his ax into her skull. In recent months he’d had little with which to feed her, and as he butchered her he saw that now she had equally little with which to feed him: her haunches were veined and spare.
As if such troubles were not enough, a few weeks later the old man’s well, which for six generations had provided his family with clear cold water, suddenly went dry. Again and again he sent down the wooden bucket, and again and again it came up empty. For the first time in his life he became afraid.
The next day, he searched through his kitchen for something, anything, the smallest scrap to eat. He checked his pantry, his bins and cupboards. Finally he realized that he had nothing left.
Nothing, that is, but a cellar full of wine, a bottle from each of his many good vintages. He walked down the wooden staircase into the cool dry darkness, turned on the light, took the bottles in hand one after another, and tears slipped silently from his eyes.
As his Croatian neighbors had long since refused to pay what his wines were worth, he had no choice but to cross the border into Serbia. He chose eight of his very best bottles, placed them in his leather knapsack, took up his walking stick and set off.
It was a four-hour walk to the border, and another three hours to the village of Sonta. By the time he arrived the sun had set. His burden was not light, and he was very tired, but he knew that he could not rest. He made his way to the threshold of the most brightly lit house in town. There he knocked, and awaited his fate.
The man who opened the door was none other than the mayor himself. Gathered in his living room were the village’s wealthiest inhabitants, merchants who came each night to drink the mayor’s brandy and talk of better times.
‘Come in, come in,’ said the mayor. ‘There is always room for one more by my fire. Take a seat here with us, and tell us your story.’
The vintner sat down, and lowered his knapsack to the polished floor. He accepted a glass from his host, drank deeply, and said, ‘I come from Kopačevo, across the border.’
The room went silent, or nearly so; only the fire spoke, hissing words of warning. The vintner hesitated, then added, ‘You must believe that you have nothing to fear from me. I am simply an old man with nowhere else to go.’
The merchants began to protest, but the mayor silenced them. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘this is my home, and you are my guest. No harm will come to you here.’
The old man took another sip of brandy. ‘I have worked as hard as any man alive,’ he said, ‘to ensure that in my latter years I would live without worry. But the war has taken everything from me. My cupboards are empty. I have slaughtered my chickens, and even my milk cow. My well is dry. All I have left are the best of the wines I have made. I had hoped to savor them with old friends, and know that in the course of my life I’d brought something of value into the world. I offer them to you now in the more modest hope that you will pay a fair price, so that I might survive the coming winter and live to harvest again next year.’
The old man opened his knapsack and took out the eight bottles of wine. One by one he set them on the floor, turning them so that the labels could be read by all in the room.
The wealthy men of Sonta began talking excitedly among themselves, trying to guess the prices the old man would ask, and the extent to which they could bargain him down. But at a word from the mayor they fell quiet. He sent for food to be brought, and as his servant carried in boards of bread and cheese and roasted meat, the mayor drew out a leather purse that was already half full of bills. He made his way around the room, and from each of the gathered merchants he asked as much as could be spared.
The men grumbled at first, but in the end each gave generously, and by the time the mayor returned to the vintner, the leather purse was nearly bursting. ‘Keep your good wines,’ he said. ‘Take this for now, harvest well in the coming year, and may you repay us as soon as God and good fortune allow.’
So moved was the old man by their generosity that he cried, ‘Then let what I have brought be my gift to all of you!’ A corkscrew was called for, the bottles were opened one by one, and the merchants marveled at the color and clarity and flavor of each of the eight wines. When the last bottle was empty, more brandy was brought, and the men talked long into the night of the blessings that God granted even in these hardest of times.
As the fire died and morning began to glow in the windows, the others took their leave, and the mayor showed the old man to the finest of his guest rooms. In the deep feather bed the vintner slept as soundly as he ever had. In fact, he slept well into the following day. When he awoke and saw the afternoon light filtering through the trees outside, he dressed quickly and hurried into the living room. A satchel of bread and cheese and sausage was waiting beside the door, along with his knapsack, his walking stick, and the leather purse.
The mayor came out of his kitchen with a smile on his face. Much embarrassed, the old man apologized for being such a poor guest. ‘Don’t even speak of such things,’ said the mayor, as the servant brought a tray of coffee and rolls into the room. ‘You were very tired, and sleep is the only cure for such a sickness.’
The two of them ate and drank in comfortable silence. At last it was time for the old man to go. He embraced his host warmly and thanked him for all that he’d done, and the mayor wished him the most pleasant of journeys home.
The old man walked steadily as the afternoon faded into evening, stopping only when he reached the border. There, just before crossing over, he ate of the food the mayor had given him.
Hours later, as he picked his way through the final stretch of woods near his home, he noticed a strange reddish light playing off the clouded sky above him. Then he smelled smoke, and suddenly branches were breaking all around him. Flashlight beams scurled at his feet and up to his face, and a pack of Serb soldiers was upon him.
The old man was knocked to the ground, and the contents of his knapsack spilled onto the path. One of the soldiers snatched up the purse, and another the satchel of food. The others kicked the old man about the head and chest until he lay gasping and bloody on the trail.
The captain of the squad took pity on him, and commanded his men to stop the beating. ‘Wine!’ he shouted. ‘A sip of wine for the poor bastard!’
All of the soldiers laughed at this, and one of them brought a bottle to the old man’s lips. Though most of the wine spilled down his chest, the taste was oddly familiar.
‘Please,’ he sputtered, ‘please tell me, where did you get that wine?’
‘From the cellar of a house not far from here,’ said the captain. ‘We took all the bottles we could carry, and shattered the rest.’
‘But... but it is wine from my own cellar!’ said the old man.
‘If that’s the case, you’d better hurry home! We torched your house, and even now your vineyards are burning.’
Part 3
8.
Early light burnished the sides of the valley and glazed the branches of the olive tree under which Joško had spent the night. He fumbled through his rucksack until he found his canteen. As he drank the last of his water, he felt something snap and slip from around his neck. He lifted his shirt, and his abalone-shell necklace fell to the ground.
The broken leather thong was stiff and black with dried sweat. He tossed it into the grass, and polished the shell with his bandana. On the pearled inner surface he saw a reflection of the raw black outline of his eye, but upside down, elongated and strange. He rubbed the shell with his thumb and studied the reddish topside, its miniscule snags and cornices. He remembered a sea that had once been his, and other seas he’d studied in school. There were so many.
Dubrovnik was only a dozen kilometers away, due west back through the hills, and Klara would make him a new necklace. Joško tucked the shell
into his rucksack and fixed himself breakfast, building something like sandwiches from his four tangerines and the stale rolls that remained. The tangerines had turned to mush in his rucksack, but at least the mush was sweet, and what juice remained was sufficient.
Below him he saw a glint off the windshield of the jeep that had carried him so far and so well before the motor finally gave out. He thought of the singing girl, and wondered if someone else had found her. Why else would she have stopped singing? Were the two of them living happily together even now? He struck himself on the forehead, and got to his feet.
He stayed on the road until he saw an army truck coming toward him, then waded into the brush and headed for the lowest pass he could see, threading himself up through sandstone ravines. The creeks that had formed them had long since gone dry; in the deeper depressions there were moist mud banks, but there was no water to drink. Black wasps circled and landed and rose up to follow him, clinging to the sides of his rucksack until he crushed them one by one with his open hand.
By midday his cheek was dancing furiously. Everything around him was heat and dust and bleached gray stone. He broke into the open again, his clothes weighted with sweat, and fought to keep his balance along the hillside trails.
At last he reached the crest, and below him was Dubrovnik: the famous city wall stood high and bright. On a nearby bluff was a radar dish flanked by anti-aircraft batteries, but the dish lay on its side, pointing nowhere. He made his way to the bottom of the hill and crossed the road. For a moment he rested in the dense shade of the wall, staring at what was left of an old tractor, its wheels gone and its body pierced and scarred.
He rounded the corner and walked through the gates into a steep alley that led down toward the center of the city. The cobblestones were slick with dust and age. He didn’t know his sister’s address, but in her letters she had mentioned that her house was on the north wall, that her one regret was that she couldn’t see all the way to Jezera.