by Alen Mattich
“Gentleman you’re here to see. Otherwise you’ve wasted a trip from Zagreb.”
“I’m afraid my appointment is for tomorrow.”
“Was. Isn’t now. Now it’s now.”
It took della Torre a moment to process what the man had just said. He stubbed out his cigarette and followed him out the door. It looked like his date with a bottle of slivovitz would have to wait.
The bodybuilder headed away from the river. The two men loitering at the door followed behind.
“I thought the Hotel Danube was in that direction,” della Torre said, pointing back towards the river.
“It is,” said the man.
“My meeting’s meant to be at the Danube. Tomorrow.”
“Maybe it was. Isn’t now.”
“So would you mind telling me where we’re going instead?” he asked, straining to stay polite.
“Ribar.”
“And that’s a restaurant, I take it.” Della Torre found himself slightly out of breath, trying to keep pace with the man. Any quicker and they’d be jogging. “So there was no point in setting up the appointment. How did you find me, by the way, or did you follow me all the way from Osijek?”
“The gentleman stays well informed. And he doesn’t like to be predictable. Doesn’t want to make it easy for the Serbs,” the man said.
Della Torre could understand why. Especially around these parts. Horvat had been agitating against Serbs living in Croatia ever since he’d come back to the country, about a year before. He was a hero to the nationalists in the Croat government. Not least because he was rich, having built up a pizza empire in Canada.
A few months earlier, Horvat had taken a more direct approach to local politics, after growing tired of the local police’s efforts at keeping peace between the two nationalities. Together with a couple of like-minded friends, he’d fired a clutch of rocket-propelled grenades into a Serb village on the outskirts of Vukovar. They’d damaged a garden wall and, it was claimed, slaughtered a coop full of chickens. But, more importantly, Horvat had made plain his political intentions. For him, nothing short of war would do, and he was doing a fine job of paving the way.
In a part of the country where Serbs and Croats were so heavily integrated, neighbour turned against neighbour. Enmity and fear replaced the accommodations of everyday life. But rather than being prosecuted for the assault, Horvat had been feted by Croatia’s ruling party. Before, he’d had the leadership’s ear. Afterwards, it was said, Horvat had them by the balls.
The Ribar was in the vaulted ground-level cellar of a thick-walled nineteenth-century farmhouse located in Vukovar’s suburbs. The restaurant smelled of cooking cabbage, damp, and saltpetre. The walls were panelled in dark wood. Somebody had made an effort at lifting the atmosphere with amateur copies of Old Master landscapes done in pastel, together with a soft-focus tropical beach print, which showed a setting sun lighting up a religious sky. It made della Torre think of bloodstains.
Horvat was standing at the bar in amiable conversation with what looked to be the owner. Other than a few paramilitary types like della Torre’s newly acquired friend, the restaurant was empty. Horvat spotted him, said something to the man behind the bar, and they both laughed.
“Ah, the gentleman from Zagreb who’s come all this way just to have dinner with an old, insignificant guy,” Horvat said with a show of bonhomie. Della Torre affected the most insincere smile he could without being outright rude.
Horvat was based in Zagreb. He could have seen della Torre there any minute of any day of the week. But by demanding that della Torre drive to the far end of the country for the meeting, Horvat was making a point. What the point was or why he was making it, della Torre had no idea. Maybe he was sending a message to the rest of military intelligence.
“Marko della Torre,” he introduced himself, taking Horvat’s hand.
Horvat was a little above average height for a Croat, and they tended to be tall. He was thin, with the wrinkled, yellowy face of a heavy smoker. He had white hair, dark eyebrows, and a mouth that was permanently turned down in one corner — the residual effects of a stroke from years before — giving his speech a slight slur.
“What will you have to drink?”
“A Karlovačka,” della Torre said, naming the pale beer he always drank.
“A Karlovačka it is, then,” said Horvat, holding a pack of Sobranies towards della Torre. Della Torre declined the pastel-coloured cigarettes, the only brand he couldn’t bring himself to smoke. Horvat shrugged and lit one for himself. He held the cigarette between the index and middle fingers of his right hand, between the palm and the knuckle, so that when he came to draw on it, his hand covered the bottom of his face.
“So you’ve quit since this afternoon?” Horvat asked. It seemed his spies had briefed him well.
“I’m trying to cut back. Figure I might live longer.”
Horvat laughed. “My boy, it’s not smoking that’s going to kill you,” he said, pointing at the fresh scar on della Torre’s arm.
“I can only hope I’ve changed my ways early enough,” della Torre said, surprised that Horvat seemed to know about his wound. He wondered if Horvat’s mercenaries were very different from the hired assassins who’d almost done away with him.
“Here, let’s sit,” Horvat said. They moved to a table lit by a faint spotlight near the opposite wall. He didn’t introduce della Torre to any of the paramilitaries, nor did any join them.
“We can speak English,” Horvat said with a strong accent. “Twenty years in Winnipeg. The language is good for something: nobody else speaks it around here.”
That was true. Yugoslavs learned German or Russian at school. Only academics and people who worked in the tourist industry, mostly on the coast, spoke English.
“Fine,” della Torre replied.
“We can order some food. Or is it too early for you?” Horvat asked.
“I could eat now,” della Torre said. “Think their baking is any good here?”
“Sure,” Horvat said, uncertain as to why della Torre had asked.
“Then I’ll have one of those . . . what’s it called? You know, the flat bread with tomato sauce and cheese sprinkled on top, cooked in an oven?” della Torre said.
Horvat looked at him for a long moment before allowing a little smile to break on the working half of his mouth.
“You like pizza. I had pizzerias all over Manitoba and Saskatchewan, some in Alberta, Ontario; one even in Montreal. Excellent pizza,” Horvat said.
He was mocked among the anti-nationalist intellectuals in Zagreb, who called him the pizza man. But if it bothered Horvat, he never showed it. Pizza had made him rich.
“They don’t do pizza at Ribar,” Horvat said, calling their host over with a look and a flick of the fingers. “I will order for both of us, something traditional.”
He got quick revenge by ordering cabbage leaves stuffed with pork in a heavy sauce for della Torre. Traditional winter food. Horvat chose grilled fish for himself.
“So, maybe I should explain why I asked to meet you. Or maybe not. You are investigator. It will give you mystery to solve.” Horvat laughed a granular smoker’s laugh, punctuated with a cough. “You are very interesting man for me, very interesting,” he said, dropping articles the way Yugoslavs who learned English later in life usually did. Even ones who’d lived in English-speaking countries for twenty years. “I know you were investigator for UDBA. When I was in Canada, I had to move to Winnipeg because of UDBA. We political activists were always in danger.”
Della Torre nodded. The UDBA had been notorious for its attacks on dissidents and whoever the government called terrorists. Their assassins had struck in almost every western European country, as well as the U.S., Canada, Australia, and even South Africa and South America. Della Torre had never heard about any attempts on Horvat. Then again, he wouldn’t have unless they’d be
en successful.
The dishes arrived promptly. Horvat’s whole fish had been grilled and covered with an oily sauce of garlic and parsley and was served with boiled, cubed potatoes and chard. It looked edible. Nice, even. Della Torre’s was two fist-sized lumps of ground meat wrapped in boiled cabbage leaves and covered in an anemic cream sauce that tasted of stock cubes. For a while he vacillated between hunger and apathy. He tried to console himself with beer and slices of chewy white bread. But hunger eventually won. The food went down like rubble.
“Before UDBA you were lawyer,” Horvat said.
“You’re well informed.”
“Ah, I like interesting people. Before you were lawyer you were commando, no?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me about commandos.”
“What’s there to tell? After university I did my national service, and while I was in basic training, I got pulled out because some people heard that I spoke American English.”
“Yes, you speak English like American.”
“I guess the years I grew up there were formative enough for me to keep my accent.”
“Your father writes very good English. I don’t like . . . always what he writes, but he writes well. He writes Italian too. You speak it?” Horvat said with a curious smile.
“Yes, I guess most Istrians speak it. Italian TV is more entertaining than the local offering. Frankly, it’s amazing any of them speak Serbo-Croat,” della Torre said.
He was slow to notice the change in Horvat. The older man’s expression went from benign to closed, and was filled with fury in the space of four syllables.
“Serbo-Croat? These are two different languages,” Horvat said, switching back to Croatian, his voice rising so that it stilled whatever other conversation there was in the restaurant. “It is a subversion created by the Communists to destroy our Croatian language. And it is an affectation of Istrians to speak Italian. They are as Croatian as I am.”
Della Torre looked down at his stuffed cabbage, pulling some meat from the wilted white leaf with the tip of his fork.
“But we were talking about your time in commandos,” Horvat said in English, the storm passing as quickly as it had built.
“They wanted somebody who spoke American English so that when the Americans invaded, they could drop me behind the enemy lines, where my job would be to commit sabotage while blending in. Or something like that.” The Yugoslav government kept its people in line by keeping alive the threat of an invasion by the Russians or Americans. As a country that was Communist and yet had broken with the Soviet bloc, positioned right between the East and the West, it balanced on a geopolitical tightrope. To be sure, there were plenty of advantages. Russians and Americans could be played off against each other so that concessions could be squeezed from both — finance, cheap oil, a blind eye to Yugoslavia’s vendetta against its dissident émigrés. But it also made the country a prime candidate to host the start of the next world war. Then again, maybe Yugoslav waiters were just the people to serve canapés at Armageddon.
“And would you have? If America invaded?”
“No,” della Torre said. “I’d have welcomed them.”
“Good,” Horvat burst out. “Good for you. Give those Yugoslav bastards poke in eye. And how did you find it in commandos?”
“Hard. I barely scraped through basic training. I think they made it easier for me, and then when I got my lieutenancy, my men carried me. I was without question the worst officer in the whole of the commandos since the Second World War.”
Horvat laughed. “Oh, it wasn’t so bad, from what I hear. Your men were quite fond of you.”
“They get sentimental about their mascots.”
“Is that what you were, Gringo?” Horvat said, enjoying della Torre’s surprise that he knew the nickname.
“Yes,” he said.
“You married Jew,” Horvat said. Della Torre’s face must have registered shock, because Horvat immediately held up his hand. “Is okay, is okay. I understand. Every young man makes mistakes. You are now looking for divorce. I know. You don’t want children with this woman. I understand. You become more mature. Maybe is time to find nice Croat girl, have children with her,” Horvat said, talking over della Torre’s horror. Until then, he’d felt merely distaste for the man opposite him. Now it was disgust. Loathing.
How did he know so much about him? And why?
And yet whatever Horvat did know he didn’t really seem to understand. Della Torre wasn’t leaving Irena. It was the other way around. And no, he didn’t want children. Not with anyone. But if he did have children he could only imagine having them with Irena.
“I was friend of Svjet’s,” Horvat said, watching della Torre. Svjet was constantly being dug up out of della Torre’s past, an unhealed wound. The deepest form of unhealed wound: shame.
“Oh?” Della Torre’s fork hung in the air for a brief moment and then, with huge effort, he ate. He could taste only gristle in the ground meat; vinegar in the salad; flat, bitter water in the beer.
Svjet. Another Croat dissident. Another old man.
A painful memory from the first time della Torre had gone to London, more than a dozen years before. He had taken a postgraduate law course paid for by the Zagreb prosecutor’s office. He hadn’t been there long when he’d been approached by the Montenegrin, one of UDBA’s most notorious operatives.
He’d been at his shared flat, studying after breakfast on a Saturday morning, when the doorbell rang. He’d answered. The man standing there was almost as tall as him, more solidly built, wearing an unmistakably east European suit. He’d asked to see della Torre’s passport before identifying himself with an UDBA ID.
He came in but wouldn’t accept a coffee or anything. He just stood there and said, “I have a job for you. You are to get to know a man called Svjet. He goes to the Croat Sunday service at the Brompton Oratory. Introduce yourself. Become familiar with him. Don’t tell him you were sent. Let him believe it’s because you’re lonely for Croat company. In everything else be honest with him. Tell him who you work for and what you’re doing in London. He’ll understand.”
That was it. And della Torre did as he was told. Who was he to refuse an order from the UDBA? And such an innocuous one. But there was nothing innocuous about the UDBA. Even then he knew it.
When his law course had ended and he was about to leave London, the Montenegrin visited della Torre again. He’d handed della Torre a file and told him to deliver it to Svjet. The Montenegrin said it contained details about the UDBA assassination of another dissident in Paris a couple of years earlier. Again, della Torre did as he was told, dropping the file with Svjet before returning to Zagreb, telling him, truthfully, that it had come to him by way of someone he knew in the UDBA. Soon after, Svjet told his wife and daughter he was off to Trieste to meet someone about the file. He was never heard from again.
“Yes. Well, when I say ‘friend,’ I don’t mean we agreed on everything,” Horvat continued. “We had differences, of course.” Croatian dissidents were notorious for never being able to agree on any one position. There were as many firmly held beliefs, unshakable convictions, as there were émigrés, each one at war with the next over who was the biggest patriot, who had the purest notion of a true Croat future, who’d suffered more for their faith. None would compromise. “But I used to visit him in London. Or we met in Munich. Many Croats in Munich. Before, I think, you met him. Croatian exiles everywhere, we were like brothers. We had common enemy.”
Della Torre forced himself to look up from the food, to hold Horvat’s eyes. His breathing was shallow and he felt the prickle of sweat on his palms.
“Then he disappeared. You were in London. You knew him there before he disappeared.”
“Yes. I was studying international law,” della Torre said, in a slow monotone. “Then I was with the prosecutor’s office.”
There was a long silence. The first of the evening.
“Lost your appetite?” Horvat asked with amusement.
“No. It’s just that I guess I wasn’t in the mood . . . for stuffed cabbage.”
“My fault. I’m so sorry for having chosen badly,” Horvat said, pleased with himself. “So you met Svjet in church?”
“Through the Croatian mass at the Brompton Oratory,” della Torre said. “They have a chapel where they do an early Sunday morning service in —” He paused. “— in Croat.”
“Bravo. But you don’t seem to me to be a very religious man. Nothing to be ashamed of. Religion is mostly for women. You were student. You didn’t get up early on Sunday for body of Christ, blood of Christ, eh?” Horvat said.
No, thought della Torre, it wasn’t religion that got him up and across town at that early hour. It was fear.
“I know why you did,” Horvat said.
Della Torre looked around the restaurant. He counted at least seven paramilitaries and remembered seeing another three at the door.
“Excuse me,” he said, standing up and walking towards the back of the room.
One of the paramilitaries caught Horvat’s eye and followed della Torre to the toilets, watched while he tried to force out a dribble of urine. He’d dried up. Evaporated. His mouth. His piss. He thought he could feel the blood in his veins turn to dust. Svjet, he thought to himself. Svjet. Would the man’s ghost never leave him alone?
He washed his hands and walked back to the table as though he were following a procession of tumbrels.
“We were talking about Svjet, I think,” Horvat said.
“Yes.” Della Torre lit a cigarette.
“I think I know why you went to mass. To meet Svjet, no?”
He blew smoke through his nose. “Yes.”
“I knew it,” Horvat laughed with glee. “You see. I knew it. I caught you. An old pizza man caught the UDBA lawyer. You see?”
Della Torre rolled the end of his cigarette around the ashtray, shaping the ember into a cone.
“Admit it, you didn’t go to church to pray.” Horvat made a show of putting his hands together and looking heavenward.