by Roy Kesey
Soon he was standing at the midpoint of a wide avenue, and a sign on a nearby wall called it the Stradun. At one end was a high portal, and mounted above it was a bronze clock whose arms were figures of ancient gods. According to the clock it was a quarter after one. There was a church held together by scaffolding, with a clean round hole perhaps five meters wide in its roof, as though some tumor had been removed and the wound had not yet healed. To his left was a cluster of cafes, each with its radio playing a different song.
The city as a whole was less damaged than he had imagined. Masons and carpenters were at work on the ragged edges of the houses that had been hit. Shattered tile and splintered wood had been swept into piles in the corners of the courtyards. There were women with wet hands hanging sheets from clotheslines. From somewhere came the sound of a piano, the music filling and emptying like tide pools.
He passed a massive villa that was missing most of its windows. The balustrade on the upper courtyard had been broken in several places, and the wide terraced gardens were clotted with weeds. An empty fountain held a tall male nude, headless, and Joško could not tell if the damage was old or new.
On the far side of the villa he found a stairway leading up the north wall. At the top was a turret holding an ancient cannon. Far off, the sun was burning into the sea. Closer at hand was an island, barren on its right side and dark with cypress on its left. Below him was a group of people gathered on the rocky shore. Some of them slept, and others were playing cards. Children dove into the rigid blue.
There was no way out of the turret except back the way he had come, and once down he couldn’t find any other staircases leading to the houses above. Then from a shuttered window a woman’s voice called to him, demanding to know what he was doing on her patio.
- I’m looking for the house of Klara and Mislav Petan.
There was a long quietness, and one of the shutters opened. The woman appeared, a stained towel wrapped around her head.
- And who are you? she asked, her voice softer than before.
- I’m Klara’s brother, Joško.
A fly buzzed at the hole in his head, and he brushed it away. The woman stared at him with an expression he did not understand.
- Take the alley to your right, she said. It leads straight to the bottom of their stairs.
The woman stepped back from the window and closed the shutter. Joško walked up the alley, and its paving stones were covered with fine white dust. He climbed the stairs to a terrace. The door leading into the house was ajar, and its trim was hanging loose.
He took three quick steps to the threshold, pushed the door open and saw what was left of the ceiling: a fringe of red slate, jagged as broken teeth, and beyond the wreckage a gutted moon hung from the sky. His legs gave out as he stepped into the room, and he staggered sideways, fell, landed hard on his side. He stared at the cracks in the walls. Too late, he thought. Too late.
A moment later he heard a noise behind him. Joško got to his knees. Standing on the terrace was a heavy-set man wearing a black fedora, pressed wool slacks, a perfectly white long-sleeved shirt.
- You are Klara’s brother?
- Yes.
- I know how all this looks, the house and the roof, but Klara is fine. She and Mislav weren’t getting on so well, I guess. She packed her things and left for your parents’ house. That was the day before the shell hit.
Joško leaned back and smiled.
- I’m afraid Mislav wasn’t so lucky.
Joško tried to look sad, and could tell that it wasn’t working. The old man fanned himself with his hat, took a blue silk handkerchief out of his pocket, wiped the sweat from his forehead and looked at Joško carefully.
- Are you going to be all right?
Joško nodded. The man folded his handkerchief and replaced it in his pocket. Joško closed his eyes and listened to the footsteps echoing down the stairs. He had his next mission, but everything was so far away.
9.
The walls seemed to shudder. Joško looked around, but everything was still. Sweat dribbled from his hands and face, and he stood unsteadily, fell, stood again, and the room rushed around him.
His rucksack had overturned and its contents were scattered among the remains of the house. He grabbed at his canteen and found it empty, stumbled to the kitchen sink and turned on the tap. Nothing came out. He fell and could not stand, crawled to the bathroom, clutched at the basin, and nothing came out there either but there was water in the toilet, and he cupped his hands and drank.
The walls rippled and cracked, tiles dropped from the fringe of roof overhead and shattered on the floor around him, plaster rained down and now Joško understood. He hurried to the living room and started gathering his things. A third shell exploded, and he jumped to the open door, down into the courtyard and up the street, and others were running with and against him, pushing and screaming toward somewhere safer.
He fought his way down an alley, falling and catching himself and running again, out into a wide avenue. The cafe lights shut off one after another around him, and the avenue was a lake of sharp white music going gray. Up a cobbled street, a fourth explosion, a fifth so close that it threw him to the ground, and he landed on a middle-aged woman. She was dead but her eyes were open. Joško got to his feet, knelt back down to close her eyes, looked up at the massive bronze clock above the portal, and according to the clock it was still a quarter after one.
He took off running again, up a long narrow street and out the city gates. A jeep clipped his rucksack and spun him around. He righted himself and ran up the hillside until he was gasping and staggering and could not run any more.
Step by step, he climbed through the dusk to the ridgeline. He stumbled across it, slid a few meters down the far side, and came to rest. He set down his rifle and lay back. The silence grew thick and slow and wide.
He started walking, and the noise of his footsteps chipped holes in the night. His thirst tightened and rose in his throat, and heat flared in his chest, in his head. The hill steepened and turned to shale and Joško was falling, down the escarpment and into a gully, and there was no water but his hands landed in cool mud. He rubbed the mud onto his face, onto his neck and arms and chest. It was not enough and there was nothing else.
* * *
By dawn, all he could think of was water. He stopped to dig through his rucksack and of course his canteen was empty but he found a bag of figs, all of them smashed and dry. He scraped a mouthful of reedy pulp from the bag, and had to spit it out to keep from choking. He tried again, and this time he was able to swallow.
When the pulp was gone he tried to remember how far it was to the last village he had seen on his way to Dubrovnik—two kilometers at least, maybe more. He got to his feet and started north along the ridge, afraid of falling, afraid of what might happen if he stopped. He walked, and the horizon began to swell with light. An hour, another. The sun stretched into the sky. He walked, and the heat settled like wool on his shoulders.
Then his legs seized and faltered, and he fell. He stared at his legs, willing them to lift him. They did not. Wondering if this was the place the world had chosen for him to die, he looked out over the flatlands below. Against the sun’s glare he saw the far low shadows of buildings.
The shadows lightened and disappeared, took form and reached for him, disappeared again as he stumbled forward. Abruptly he was there, on the outskirts of a dusty village. Beside an empty corral he found a spring surrounded by agave with spines as long as fingers. He knelt and brought the clear sweet water to his mouth, but his throat closed in on itself, would not let the water pass. On his third try, a slight trickle found its way down. Another trickle, another, his throat opened and he was drinking freely, as fast as he could.
He filled his canteen and stood up. It was time to find his way back to Jezera. He would tell his stories at school, would be visible now, would be known. Klara was waiting, and the two of them would walk the tide pools together again. He would find s
hells for her, the most beautiful shells she had ever seen.
He took a step, and the spines of the tallest agave caught at his shirt. He pulled, and the agave held him; he jerked away, and his shirt tore. Holding the two tattered edges, he felt no longer whole. He searched through his things and found a small plastic bag that held a needle tucked into a spool of white thread. He pulled the needle out and attempted to thread it, but could not see the needle’s eye. He took a deep breath, tried to focus on the tiny hole, but his hands were trembling, everything blurred and spun, he dropped the needle and fell to the ground.
For a time there was nothing in his mind but flecks of brown and white that moved like iron filings drawn by a magnet. The flecks were on the verge of forming a pattern, of showing him something, when the magnetic field collapsed and the flecks scattered and swirled, a tiny sandstorm, and he was nothing inside of it. He could not remember what he had been doing, could not remember anything he had ever done, was certain only that none of it mattered, that nothing he could do would make it matter.
Then sifting through the sandstorm was a noise. Joško opened his eyes, and the world spread out away from him, and the noise became a song. He did not understand the words, but it was the voice of the girl, and it was coming from far to the north.
For a crippled moment he considered ignoring her altogether. He already had a mission. The girl had abandoned him once, and might do so again. But her voice rose in pitch and volume, rose until the sound was more a scream than a song, and Joško knew there wasn’t much time.
What happened was this: There was once an old woman, many years a widow, who lived—
I know. But this is a different story. Just listen.
There was once an old woman, many years a widow, who lived in a village called Otok, east of Sinj. She was a good-hearted person, and the war made her feel, more than anything, very, very sad—sad for the dead of her country, and for the dead of those who attacked her country. She was one of those rare spirits who feel all the pain in the world, and choose to go on living anyway.
She did what she could for everyone around her, baking loaves of bread with flour she could not spare, and leaving them on the porches of the houses whose doors bore the black ribbons that speak of death. Then one afternoon as she was returning home, artillery shells began to fall, and as she opened her front door there was an explosion that threw the old woman off her feet.
‘My!’ she thought. ‘That was close!’ She got up, straightened her clothes, went into her house... and found that it had no roof. The shell had struck her very home.
Late that evening the enemy was driven back and Otok was saved. And strange though it might sound, the old woman learned to be thankful for the shell that had taken away her roof. In the daytime, sunlight poured through the hole and warmed her face, and at night she could see the stars and hear them singing, precisely as God intended.
Then the winter came.
Part 4
10.
Joško spent the night curled up in a bare vineyard outside another dust-sotted village. At sunrise a woman came out of the house, walked to where he lay, stood over him. He told her that everything was okay, that he had a vineyard too, and had always taken good care of it. The woman said nothing. He got to his feet, brushed the soil from his clothes and gathered his belongings.
He climbed a low promontory, and below him was a road and a wide, sullen river. Fifty meters away both the river and the road swept to the north. He stumbled down the incline and across the road to the riverbank, and followed the water upstream.
Whenever he heard a car coming he hid in the reeds that grew tall and full along the bank. Kilometer after kilometer, and through all of it, the viscous time and heat, his cheek fluttered like the broken wing of a small bird. He listened to the voice of the girl, and her singing grew distant at times, fading altogether now and then. Each time it faded he entreated it to come back, and sooner or later it always did.
The lowlands rose into hills, and an hour later he was deep in the cleft of a valley. Here the river was brown with rancid mud, but the sun was raging overhead; he knelt in the shallows and drank until nausea welled up from his stomach and singed the back of his throat.
He stood and looked at the bluffs to either side. They were so blue and beautiful he almost fell, and it had been so long since he’d eaten. He pushed on, the bank growing thinner and thinner until there was nowhere to walk. He picked his way along, jumping from boulder to boulder. Then a town of gray stone appeared above him.
He fought his way up from the bank, stretching from handhold to handhold. At last he crossed a path with shallow stairs cut into the side-hill. He followed the switchbacks until he reached a road that led into town.
The first person to see him was a fat young boy who sat on a bench spitting olive pits into his hand and sucking them back into his mouth. The boy squealed and gagged and ran toward his mother, who had emerged from a nearby house and stood hunchbacked and furious on the sidewalk.
Joško crossed to the far side of the street. All around him he heard doors slamming and curtains being drawn. He didn’t understand why until he saw his reflection in a shop window: blood and mud and dried sweat, his torn shirt, his matted hair.
Farther up the street, overlooking the town square was a strange round church, and the spike of its minaret punctured the low sky. In the center of the square was a well, and he drew a bucket of water. He took out his bandana and washed his face and neck, scrubbed his hands and arms, took off his shirt and washed his chest and what he could reach of his back.
A small group of women gathered around him, and they were dressed in clothes Joško remembered having seen somewhere before—blouses that swirled with bright colors, loose pants tied with drawstrings. He put his shirt on and pushed his hair out of his eyes.
- I’m very hungry, he said to the one who stood closest. Do you know where I can get something to eat?
One by one the women walked away. Joško didn’t blame them. He filled his canteen, rinsed out his bandana, picked up his rifle and rucksack and continued through the town. Most of the buildings were skeletons. Shattered roof tiles covered the ground like shale. In the center of the block was a large gray hotel, its façade a labyrinth of bullet holes.
Wooden shacks lined the sidewalk, and sitting inside them were old men selling postcards and trinkets. Light came through the holes in the roofs, and glittered around the heads of the old men. Joško stopped at one of the shacks. The old man had one postcard left. It was a beautiful picture of a long white bridge arcing over a river of dense blue-greens. Joško took it and asked its price. The man said nothing. Joško thanked him and put the postcard in his rucksack.
In the middle of the next block he found a bakery. He wiped his boots on the mat and stepped inside. There was no one at the counter but the oven was lit. He stood and waited, and finally a tall white-haired woman came out from the back.
- Hello, Joško said.
The woman’s eyes went from fear to hatred to disgust.
- What? she asked. You have taken everything, and still you want more?
Joško was too tired and hungry to explain that he had never been to the town before.
- Something to eat, he said. Anything.
He opened his rucksack and took out his envelope of bloodstained bills. The woman reached for the envelope, looked inside, and threw it into the oven behind her.
- You shell our village and kill our sons, and now you offer me money? What makes you think I would take money from you?
Joško watched his money burn, shook his head and opened his rucksack again. Inside he found the medal he’d been given in Šibenik. He took it out of its plastic case and squeezed it in his hand, tighter and tighter until he began to tremble. But of course he had no choice.
- Will you accept this?
The woman took it, looked at it carefully, and closed her eyes.
- Of what possible good is this to me?
- I don’t k
now. Perhaps you could sell it, or give it to your children. Children like bright things.
She stared at him for a time, then handed the medal back.
- I have no more children, the woman said. But you can have three rolls. That is all I can spare.
- Do you have the kind with poppy seeds?
- No. They are all plain, but very fresh.
She picked three rolls out of a bin and placed them on the counter. He thanked her, put them in his rucksack, went to the door and turned back. The woman was still watching him.
- After the war, he said, perhaps you will have other children.
- I am too old to have any more children.
- Yes, but I once heard about a woman who was ninety years old, and God came to her and gave her a child.
- That is nothing but an old story.
- It might still be true, though. Some stories are true, you know.
He smiled, and the woman slipped away from him into the back of the store.
* * *
Joško followed the road through what remained of the town. A strip of shell-pocked pavement stretched down toward the river, and to one side he saw a thick white pillar. On the pillar was a plaque, and the symbols on the plaque were from an alphabet he had never seen.
Beyond the pillar was a bridge, or what had once been a bridge. There was a platform of dusty white stone leading into the air, but there it stopped, reaching into emptiness like the stub of someone’s arm. Joško began to cry, quiet gasps at first, then sobs that wracked his body. The girl started singing, and this helped him to catch his breath, but her voice was again distant, and when the song ended he heard nothing more.
Thirty meters upstream, the river cut hard to the east: he would have to find some way across. He stepped past the ruined bridge and edged down a path worn into the bank. A bright span glimmered before him, but as he raised his eyes, his foot caught on a rock. He slid several meters on his chest, and stopped short against some sort of cold metal mesh.