Okay! Dino flung his arm up above his head. Okay, then we will fight back, let's play on!
What? General Mikado made a disgusted face.
You want to shoot down unarmed men? I can believe even worse of you, I don't know how I'd have held my own lads back if we'd been quicker getting to our weapons. But the game isn't finished yet! There's the second half still to come! If you're enough of a soccer player, then let's go on playing. And if we turn the game around, and you're still man enough, then no one here gets executed. If your lot win . . . he said, looking around at his men and straightening up, then you'll stay a fucking miserable murderer all your life!
And Dino Safirović, who had been chucked out of school because Latin and the classics are important in the education of the young but hard drinking is not, pulled his gloves more firmly over his fingers. And Dino Safirovic, the lover of Cicero, who had volunteered because he thought alcohol wouldn't be so readily available at the front and he really did want to dry out, clapped his hands so hard that the dust flew. And Dino Safirovic, nicknamed Dino Zoff, the cat of Trebevic, looked General Mikado in the eye and spat: come on, then, come on!
Kiko made it two-one with a header in the fourth minute of the second half, just as there was a considerable explosion in the valley. He scored with another header five minutes later, but this goal, like its predecessor, was disallowed for allegedly being offside. This head of mine, said Kiko, slapping the back of it, was damn well not offside.
But it was no use. General Mikado had accepted Dino Zoff 's challenge with some amusement, on condition that he himself didn't just play but also acted as referee. I don't have any yellow cards on me, he said, so there's only a bullet waiting for anyone who complains.
An obvious foul on the goalkeeper preceded the score of three-nil to General Mikado's team. As a team, the Serbs were playing with such fierce determination that you might have thought their lives, and not their opponents', depended on the result.
Kozica made it three-one with a long shot that sent the ball straight into the goal. A minute later Kozica was being carried off the field with an open wound on his forehead, having been knocked off his legs by one of the touchline soldiers and then beaten with the man's rifle butt. After that the Territorials stopped attacking down the wings.
In the sixtieth minute, Mickey Mouse and Kiko collided. They both fell to the ground and the game went on. Since Mickey Mouse, six feet, nine inches tall, had been marking the Territorials' best man, Kiko hadn't had a chance of another header. After the collision they both stayed sitting there, gingerly feeling their chests. Kiko made a face: lucky thing we have ribs, he said, and Mickey Mouse nodded: yes, ribs come in useful. His eyes wandered uneasily over Kiko's face; he took a deep breath and let it out again. The big man was about to stand up, pushing off from the ground with his fist, but Kiko grabbed hold of it and whispered: that's right, Milan, stand up, don't stay down there, don't stay sitting down again.
No? said Mickey Mouse in surprise, opening his mouth wide, and when Kiko next headed the ball he certainly was not sitting, but stood as if rooted to the ground. He didn't leap into the air, the ball bounced and it was three-two.
After this successful shot, with the Territorials now only one down, General Mikado managed to foil all their efforts to get anywhere near his team's goal. Every tackle was said to be a foul, the whistle blew every time there was an attacking pass. Every throw-in went to his team, even for obvious clearing kicks that landed out of play.
Two minutes before the end of the game Kiko forced his way through on the inside left, avoiding any kind of physical contact. He swerved, he dodged, he leaped. With the last of his strength he centered the ball in front of the Serbian goal and took a harmless shot at the goalpost. The Serbian defender on the right kicked the air, Mickey Mouse missed the ball on the bounce, the rest of them, friend and foe alike, either slid past the ball or were too surprised to react, and so it rolled to Meho's feet. Meho had done nothing during the second half but wander around the pitch, lost in thought, muttering to himself as if hypnotized: it can't be so difficult, Audrey darling, it can't be so difficult.
So there lay the ball at his feet, but Meho didn't even look at it; he was staring eastward, enraptured. The sound of heavy artillery fire came from the valley, metallic, hollow. Moving in slow motion like an action replay on TV, Meho shifted his weight to the left and easily clipped the ball into the goal with his right leg, acting as if the movement had nothing to do with him. This is for you, he murmured, reaching under his shirt, a goal for you. Eyes shining, he put the photo of Audrey Hepburn to his lips and whispered: hey, real Hollywood stuff, Audrey love, oh, fuck me, what a happy ending!
Meho had been in the States in 1986, the only time he had ever been to the West. He'd saved his wages as a brick layer for five years, living with his father and never spending money unnecessarily. Evening after evening he had watched American films, mostly thrillers, horror movies, and films featuring Audrey Hepburn. He learned to swear in English and could order coffee without an accent.
After scoring his goal, Meho wandered over the field with his head tilted back. The game went on, the ball hit him in the back once, but Meho wasn't interested in that, he was interested in the sky. Someone shouted his name. We are the champions, replied Meho in English. Arriving at his team's penalty area he stopped and put out his hand to see if it was raining. Wrinkling his nose, he crossed his arms over his chest, as if rain really were falling and it was cold. Someone fell at his feet, there was excitement, uproar, a whistle, a salvo of gunfire.
A group of players had gathered around General Mikado. Only when someone fired into the air did the men scatter. Penalty! shouted the general, taking the ball. Dino Zoff shook his head, that was never a foul! he protested, and gazed at the ball that was now lying at the requisite point. General Mikado stepped up to take the penalty himself.
You shut your stupid mouth! the Serbian goalie snapped at Dino Zoff from one side. He had run all the way across the pitch from his own penalty area after the alleged foul, got one of the touchline soldiers to give him a pistol, and was now aiming it at Dino from the left-hand spruce tree. Maybe you can stop the penalty, he said, squinting along the pistol, but can you stop a bullet too?
General Mikado grinned, jerked his thumb in his goalie's direction, and took a run-up.
Meho had turned his back to the penalty kick by this time and had moved away from the penalty area. He didn't look back. Perhaps they're just shooting in high spirits down there, he told his Audrey, perhaps it's because this filthy war is over and they're celebrating. Audrey looked like a boy with her short hair. She was wearing black and leaning against a white wall. Meho looked up from the photo and glanced absently at the place where some beech trees grew on the edge of the plateau, and the cart track took a sharp curve to the left before beginning the steep descent into the valley. The wind rose in the east and grew stronger. Meho, already near the trees, could see the wind making the leaves tremble. Meho was trembling too, even more than he had trembled in the forest when surrounded by mines. The gust of wind cooled Meho's face amid the tears that came after a shot rang out behind his back from the Serbian goalie's pistol, followed by a sharp sound like a very loud slap. Oh, fuck these bloody waterworks, muttered Meho, rubbing his eyes, but the tears wouldn't stop.
The crowd was murmuring behind him, then there was a shout of glee, then sounds and cries that the weary Meho probably didn't hear at all, and could hardly have made any sense of, just as he wouldn't have been able to tell Serbian from Bosnian jubilation, people cheered in much the same way in this country. And even if he had seen the goal that was greeted with such cheering he couldn't have said for certain from this distance whether the ball had flown sixty, seventy or even eighty yards before going into the Serbian goal. For any moment now Meho would have reached the beeches at the far end of the clearing. He would look down into the valley, although from a height of over thirty-two hundred feet it's as difficult to tell
war from peace as it is to tell the words and laughter of your friends from the laughter of your enemies. But the view was impressive: indescribably beautiful, Meho whispered to Audrey seconds before he was shot down. The bullets hit the number ten on the red and white shirt. It had been worn by Dejan Savicević on 29 May 1991, when Red Star beat the French champions Olympique de Marseille in a penalty shoot-out in the final of the European Cup.
The Serbian goalie had driven tears to Meho's eyes with his first shot and two bullets into his back with two more shots. The first shot was meant for Dino Zoff, but it had missed him by a few inches and hit one of the spruce-tree goalposts. The goalie had fired too soon, the noise took General Mikado's mind off his run-up, his penalty shot crashed into the right-hand spruce tree, and the ball rebounded straight into the arms of the motionless Dino Zoff. He looked incredulously from one dismayed marksman to the other, then from one goalpost to the other, and last of all to the abandoned goal at the far end of the pitch. Then he kicked the ball with all his might.
Well, hurricanes fuck me! Meho would have greeted the lurching trajectory of the ball that scored this goal with those or similar words. It may even be that the same gust of wind that first dried his tears also gave Dino Zoff 's shot the impetus it needed to end up in the Serbian goal. General Mikado froze rigid amid the cheering of the Territorials, clearly not sure what to do next.
Our ball! Goal kick! he said. No one heard him, so loud were the jubilations over the three-four score. Goal kick, that wasn't a goal! He whistled through his fingers, but only when the Serbian goalkeeper's second two bullets hit Meho did everyone fall silent around him. The general pointed at the Serbian end. No goal! No goal!
Gavro joined in with Mikado's shrill whistling, extended it, raised it to the key of F major, linked it to a series of light, catchy, childish tunes, unexpectedly turned it into a waltz, then suddenly launched into a wild csárdás—and while his composition gained in color and speed Dejan Gavrilovic, known as Gavro, sat down on the grass.
The csárdás stung Mickey Mouse into action. Don't just sit there, he growled at his teammate who had fetched the ball out of the goal. Mickey Mouse took it from him and marched across the pitch. Don't just sit there, he called rather louder. Two more Serbian players joined Gavro and, like him, gave no sign of wanting to play on.
General Mikado's throat flushed red with fury, and when the general, who was in fact a lieutenant, had spent most of his life laying tiles, and was married with four daughters whose first names all began “Ma,” took aim to hit Gavro on the back of the head for the third time that day, the whistling man's hand seized the tiler's wrist. The csárdás swung into Spanish dance music, don't you ever do that again, said Gavro's eyes, and the flamenco sang the refrain. Gavro whistled, Mickey Mouse marched on, and Marko knocked his own goalie over and took the pistol away from him.
Well, fuck me if it isn't Muhammad Ali! would have been Meho's praise for Marko's simple left hook. As it was, General Mikado was the only one to curse—fuck it all, what the hell's going on?—when his goalie hit the ground and his striker shook the pain out of his hand. What's the big idea? shouted the general, biting Gavro's fingers as they held tight to his wrist, what do you lot want? Goal kick! he ordered Mickey Mouse, who was carrying the ball to the middle of the field. One by one his players sat down.
So it's mutiny, is it? laughed the general. Deserters! He lashed out. I'll have you court-martialed! The men on the touchlines also sat down, although some of the soldiers got their guns ready, not sure whether they ought to aim at their own side too.
Most of the Serbian soldiers just looked at the ground, not as if they were afraid of their commander, but as if they were embarrassed by this angry man with his hairy back. As if they were ashamed of something, as if they had just been asked a very simple question and didn't know the answer. General Mikado's entire neck was now one large red patch. Shoot them all down! he shouted. Give me my fucking gun! He stepped back and spun round. No one stopped him, no one answered the very simple question. The Territorials stood there too, as if they were merely props on this stage where a short, powerful director with a bare torso was ranting and raging at his actors.
No one could find an answer to the very simple question—except for Mickey Mouse. Most questions had been too hard for him at school, at home his father had beaten exclamation marks into his back with his leather belt, and here behind God's feet there were no questions, only orders. Milan Jevric, nicknamed Mickey Mouse, put the ball roughly on the kickoff position, placed his foot on it, and thundered the answer above the soldiers' heads, above General Mikado, who had got hold of a gun but hesitated to use it, above the field, above the trenches, above Meho's dead body, above the beech trees, above the wind and above the valley; he answered it in as loud and clear a voice as if, with this one great shout, he was going to give all the answers to all the questions he had never been able to answer before.
It's four-three for them, replied Mickey Mouse, answering the simple question. They're leading, he pointed out, but maybe we can turn it around in extra time, he said thrusting out his lower lip, maybe we can still score.
His words got the Serbian defenders to their feet, the Serbian midfield players rose too, and the Serbian striker poured plum brandy down his throat in such quantities that Dino Zoff looked longingly at him.
Mickey Mouse did the defending by himself; all the rest attacked. Gavro, as the new referee, gave eight minutes' injury time. The Territorials defended with ten men and whacked every ball back into the Serbian half. Not too hard —the mines. The balls promptly came back again. Mickey Mouse persistently kicked them long and high back to the attackers. In the last minute the Territorials counterattacked, Kiko failed to get past Mickey Mouse, who was everywhere now, even in goal. Mickey Mouse's answer instantly followed, for Mickey Mouse had now learned the trick of giving answers. He snapped up the ball and dribbled through the Territorial ranks as if he'd grown up with Maradona instead of a muck-fork. The veins on his throat were bulging; he ran down two Bosnian defenders and kicked the ball toward Dino Zoff's goal from a good hundred feet away. The gigantic man put all of his power into this one shot, and the cry he uttered after it sent dozens of birds flying up from the forest. And the ball, that dirty, poorly mended ball, flew across the clearing toward Dino Zoff's goal.
Gavro whistled for the end of play at 5:55 P.M. Mickey Mouse's shot was the last in the game. The players dropped to the grass. The echo of the whistle died away. No one cheered. Heavy silence welled up from the valley to the plateau. Weapons were quietly picked up. Marko tilted the schnapps bottle over Dino Zoff's mouth until a few drops moistened his lips, mingling with the blood on them.
Ah, slivovitzum bonum deorum donum! Did I keep it out? lisped Dino Zoff, handing Marko a tooth. The sun cast the long shadows of trees on the clearing behind God's feet, behind God's feet in military boots, behind God's feet with the blisters coming up on them, behind God's dribbling feet.
I've made lists
A cat with its tail in the air purrs around my legs in a yard among high-rise buildings on the outskirts of Sarajevo. A young man is getting ready, with his back to me. He removes his jacket. He stretches. There's a ball lying beside him. The cat looks at me. The cat licks its paw. The man throws the ball up in the air. The ball lands on his head. And lands on his head. And lands on his head, four, five, his arms are bent, and every time, seven, eight, the ball lands, nine, ten, he ducks his head, eleven, twelve. A large, shaven, Bosnian head, thirteen, sends the ball up in the air, fourteen, lets it take a quick rest on the flat back of his head, fifteen, sixteen, there's a scar at the nape of his neck. Nineteen, twenty repeated movements of his upper body, twenty-three, twenty-four bouncing balls, the cat mews, the man's crutches slip on the concrete, the muezzin begins chanting at thirty, thirty-one. The man moves his upper body only slightly before making contact with the ball, thirty-five, thirty-six, I don't need to see his face to know I've found him, thirty-eight, thirty-nine,
the crutches scrape on the asphalt, forty-four, forty-five. If I'd been a magician who could make things possible on the summer day when Edin and I sweated in the school yard waiting for him, our sweat falling on the asphalt, the asphalt melting in the sun, then I'd have made it impossible for that day ever to end, forty-seven, forty-eight, and I'd have given the little girl on her bicycle the balance of a circus acrobat. Kiko on crutches, Kiko in a white shirt and jeans, the left leg tied together under his stump, Kiko Number Nine, Kiko the iron head of the gentle Drina, fifty, fifty-one . . .
Up in Kiko's small apartment on the fourteenth floor we drink coffee, served by his wife Hanifa in flower-patterned cups and saucers. No crocheted tablecloth, no brightly colored sofa in front of the TV, no TV, no clock ticking loudly to be heard when we fall silent. A bright, plainly designed apartment with parquet floors and cherrywood furniture.
Yes, says Kiko, it was my last game as a pro. I'd said I'll kick three goals all with my weak left foot. The guy let in a fourth so he'd win the bet, but because of that one, they went down to relegation position. But no one was relegated that year. Only the country was relegated. Soccer made no difference.
Then the war broke out and Hanifa went to Austria and studied design.
Then the war broke out and the goalkeeper that Kiko had betted against was on the bench in the Turkish second division.
Then the war broke out and a very popular folk singer gave a concert for the soldiers, the wounded and the politicians. You had to pay to go, and the wounded said later it had been a bloody awful concert: after they'd paid to go in there was no money left for beer and they certainly weren't letting the politicians buy them drinks.
How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone Page 22