I Am Radar

by Reif Larsen

  “Or maybe everything is decided already. How do you know that they weren’t always going to end up like that?”

  Danilo thought about this. “That could be. Who’s to say how God works his plans?”

  “Is that a true story?”

  “Of course it’s true. Why would I make something like that up?”

  “It sounds like bullshit.”

  “I told you to watch your mouth.”

  “Sorry, but it does.”

  “You think I’m lying to you? Then what about the bridge? You think the bridge is a lie?”

  “What bridge?”

  “The Turkish Bridge! This is Mehmed-paša Sokolovic’s bridge! He never forgot the dream of his mother saying she must see him again, nor did he forget the image of the women wailing on the banks of the river as he was being taken away. This image haunted him for the rest of his days, and so when he became grand vizier, he ordered a bridge to connect the two sides of the Drina. The sad part of the story is that when he came back to see his bridge completed, his mother was already dead. It was too late. He, too, wept on the banks of the river, and dedicated the bridge to her memory. And it was the story of this bridge that won Ivo Andric his Nobel Prize. Stories are powerful things. But you knew this. You read his book in school.”

  Miroslav shook his head. “I pretended to read it. It was too boring to read. All I remember is about that black Arab who lived inside the bridge.”

  “What? You didn’t read it? But that book’s our history! Andric is our most famous writer! How could you not read it?”

  “How do we know Andric wasn’t also full of bullshit?”

  “Miroslav! I won’t say it again.”

  “I’m just saying. That was a novel. Everyone acts like this was true, but no one knows what was really true.”

  “How can you say this? You can see our history with your very own eyes. You can walk to the kapija of the bridge and read the inscription in Turkish from the sixteenth century. You can look out at the river and see. A river cannot forget. It remembers every person who has ever put their foot in it. It’s like a book of all time.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It is true,” said Danilo. “And this hammam—the one we’re in right now—this was also built by Mehmed-paša. We’re sitting in history. We’re sitting in the middle of the story. You can feel the water on your skin. So don’t tell me this isn’t true when it clearly is.”

  They sat. The waters steamed.

  “It’s a good story, Tata,” said Miroslav finally.

  “I’m not telling you any more stories,” said Danilo. “You can find your own stories.”

  Miroslav closed his eyes and thought of the Turkish Bridge, where he had learned to fish with wire and string. He wondered if a river could actually have a memory, then he held his breath and submerged himself in the scalding waters. For the first time in his life, he felt mind and body separating. He had found the secret. He floated above himself, among the clouds of steam, watching his body sink down and down, further and further, three thousand meters into the center of the earth, into a small, hot place from which all things would eventually arise again.

  • • •

  AFTER THE VISIT to the hammam, Miroslav stopped running completely. He hung up his pale blue trainers and did not touch them again. He no longer needed them.

  “What did you say to him?” asked Stoja.

  “Nothing, nothing,” said Danilo. “Children just change, that’s all.”

  “He needs to be with people his own age. He needs a girlfriend.”

  “Give him time. Boys will be boys.”

  But Miroslav did not find a girlfriend, nor anyone, for that matter. He became obsessed with building his robots. Soon the house was overrun with little four-wheeled electrical creations. The robots would wheel and bump into walls and fall down the stairs, and sometimes they would make strange noises in the night. He worked three jobs in town just so he would have enough money for his obscure electrical parts, which he ordered from Germany and sometimes Japan, because the Japanese loved robots more than anyone else in the world. He would collect these boxes, with their strange lettering, at the post office in Višegrad, and the postmaster would make the same joke every time about him being an undercover terrorist.

  One day, after nearly breaking his neck tripping down the stairs, Danilo stormed into Miroslav’s room, the offending robot in hand. “Miroslav! What’s all of this nonsense?”

  “They’re for my show,” said Miroslav.

  “Things can’t go on like this!” said Danilo. Then: “What show?”

  “You’ll see.”

  His “show” turned out to be a dark, post-apocalyptic production of The Nutcracker in the Dom Kulture that utilized six ambimobile rat robots and twenty-four ballerina puppets manipulated by a modified Jacquard loom. He performed the entire show by himself, his legs pumping the clattering loom backstage as he manically worked a board of remote controls. It was a veritable feat of athletic engineering, and he broke a pinkie on opening night. In spite of the injury and in spite of the Rat King badly malfunctioning and falling off the proscenium into an old woman’s lap, the play awed the small audience, for it offered that rare glimpse into a world blessed with only the echoes of humans. After a glowing, if befuddled, write-up in the local newspaper, the story of Miroslav and his performing robots was picked up by the national news station RTV Sarajevo, which referred to him as “Robot Djecak” and “Genij Višegrada.”2

  These nicknames would be lovingly recounted and modified at the Danilovic dinner table. Even if they did not entirely understand it, Stoja and Danilo could not help but have a certain pride in their son’s accomplishment. Maybe he had found his path, however unorthodox. Girls, friends, happiness would all soon follow.

  Due to popular demand, Nutcracker Automata came back and ran for a week of sold-out shows. It was the kind of production that would still be recalled by audience members many years later. At the final curtain call, Miša was the one to hand his brother a bouquet of roses, and Miroslav responded by having one of the ballerina puppets walk up and stroke his leg.

  It was a leg worth stroking. Miša had become a bruising center-back for the junior Drina HE football team. The beba džin was feared on football pitches throughout the land. Miša was almost twice as big as anyone on the field yet nimble enough to keep up with the skimpy strikers who tried to negotiate his turf, but more often than not would end up sniffling on the ground.

  He was a great fan of Drina HE’s senior side, Višegrad’s decidedly mediocre semi-professional club. Most of his friends followed the more glamorous Red Star Belgrade, but he steadfastly supported the local team, even if they had finished middle of the table for the past four years. His favorite striker was Vladimir Stojanovic, an absurdly talented button of a man who would play well only if he was allowed three and a half cigarettes at halftime—no more, no less. During the war, he would go on to have a successful career for Cosenza, in Italy’s Serie B, but for the time being he was happy to wow the home crowd with his God-gifted skill and his occasional histrionics. Stojanovic always went to his left foot—all the defenders knew this, and still they could not defend him.

  “Always to the left!” Miša would shout as he shot penalties at Danilo, standing in the cockeyed goal that Miša had sloppily painted across the barn. And this meant: I cannot be stopped no matter what you do. Miša was not naturally left-footed, but in honor of his hero he trained himself to use only his weaker foot. Eventually his weaker foot became his stronger foot.

  For his brother’s thirteenth birthday, Miroslav made Miša a mechanical piggy bank in which a football striker shot coins past an inert keeper, the coins always landing in the left side of the goal as the keeper looked on helplessly. Miša shot every coin he could find into the goal, and when the bank was full, he emptied it and shot them all again.
/>   • • •

  DURING THE first warm day in April, Miša and Miroslav went swimming in the Drina. Miroslav did not want to go—he was in the middle of working on his next production, a bold, self-penned sequel to Swan Lake, but Miša persisted, flicking at the patch of skin above Miroslav’s knee until he finally relented. They would swim and then go eat burek at the bakery above the bridge. They jogged down their road into the valley, through the farmland, feeling the earth slowly breathing beneath them, now that winter had finally come and gone. It was the first time Miroslav had run in some time, and though he was desperately out of shape, the movement made him miss his long runs, and he vowed to pick up the habit once again. They ran through town and then took the path north, by the shoreline to a bend in the river where the water was deep and still as it eddied back into itself.

  Miša quickly shed his clothes and dived into the water. When he came up again, he was almost halfway across the river. For not the first time, Miroslav stopped to admire the physical specimen that was his brother. A sense of pride tinged with jealousy that quickly parted into love.

  He took off his clothes and dived in, and the water was so cold from the snowmelt that he felt his heart stop beating for a second. He hung there weightless, half dead. And then he pumped his arms and swam down and down until his cheek touched the river bottom. A thick clump of mud pushed between his lips and into his mouth. An ancient bit of earth, wet from the weight of the water above it. Miroslav held on to the mud, rolling his tongue through it, feeling the muck and the grit separate out against his teeth. Beneath the water, with a mouthful of earth, Miroslav felt strongly that he was of a place, of this place. This sense of belonging made him shiver.

  He was in the middle of surfacing when suddenly he felt a hand grabbing on to his leg, dragging him back down. He panicked, kicking out wildly with his other leg at whatever had taken hold of him, but the hand would not let go. What was this? Was the earth reclaiming him for one of its own? Miroslav felt the last bit of air in his lungs draining away. He stopped fighting. He became certain he would die, that he would return to the bottom of the river and lie there forever.

  The hand released him. Miroslav pushed upward, breaking the surface and gasping for air, the mud pouring down from his lips. Miša came up next to him, laughing.

  “You’re such a fucker, Miša,” said Miroslav, panting, punching out at his brother.

  “It wasn’t me—it was the river troll.”

  “You could’ve killed me.”

  “Lighten up, burazeru.”

  Next to where they had dived into the water, a man appeared on the shore. They floated on their backs, and Miroslav felt the anger draining from him. It was difficult to be angry when floating on your back.

  He looked back at the man on the shore.

  “Miša,” he said to his brother. Miroslav started to swim over to where they had left their things, and suddenly he realized that the man was going through their clothes. Even from that distance he could see the man’s eyes: wild, like a horse’s eyes. The man had to be a gypsy. The gypsy had Miroslav’s wallet in his hands; he was opening the wallet and taking out his money.

  “Hey!” yelled Miroslav. “Hey, stop!”

  He was swimming back to shore when he felt a wave against his side and saw his brother shoot past him. Miša sprinted out of the water toward the gypsy, who looked up, startled at the sight of a giant running at him. And then Miroslav saw that the gypsy had a knife. He tried to warn his brother, but Miša didn’t hear him; he ran right at the gypsy and tackled him. They both fell, but Miroslav could see in the way his brother’s body recoiled in midair, like a snake’s, that he had been hit with the knife.

  “Miša!” he screamed. He ran up the beach and saw the blood, saw his brother sitting on the ground in shock, one hand cupped to his chest. The gypsy turned to Miroslav. One of the gypsy’s eyes was no good—it was the color of milk and pointed off crookedly to the side.

  “Jebi se!” yelled the gypsy and wildly whipped the blade at him. Miroslav jumped out of the way, his hands paddling the air to protect himself. His body was suddenly filled with a great electricity, the pads of his fingers throbbing with current. He saw something moving to his left, and then Miša was charging at the gypsy.

  “Get away from him!” roared Miša, swinging at the man with one of his hands. The punch missed badly, and then the gypsy was hugging Miša, and Miroslav saw him stabbing his brother in the side of the rib cage, just under his left arm.

  Miroslav was overcome by a wash of intense and very clear anger toward this man who was trying to do his brother harm. For the second time in his life, he felt mind and body part ways. He watched as his hands reached down and grabbed the dead limb of a willow tree, grasping the gnarled piece of wood as if he had always known it would be there. He watched himself as he swung the branch with all of his might. He watched as the gypsy, sensing movement out of the corner of his eye, turned back to Miroslav just as the limb came at his head. He watched the look of surprise on the man’s face, and then there was a grotesque sound of crunching bone, followed by a soft, inward squish, like a cantaloupe popping, and the man crumpled to the ground and did not move again. It felt as if he should react and writhe and scream from such a blow, but he did not. He was perfectly still. The right side of his face had folded into itself, the blood pouring out of a deep cut just beneath his eye.

  Miroslav watched himself standing there, heaving, and then he was himself again. He went to his brother, who was lying naked on the beach. Blood was coming down from the wounds on his chest, across his belly and onto his thighs.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, putting a hand on his brother’s shoulder.

  Miša swore. “Do I fucking look okay to you?”

  “Not really.”

  Miša pulled himself into a sitting position, wincing heavily with the pain. He looked at the gypsy, lying still at their feet. “What about him?”

  “Fuck him; we need to get you to a hospital.”

  “But he’s . . . ?” Miša did not have a word.

  Miroslav went over to the gypsy. He hovered a hand above his head, as if this would reveal some sign of life. He realized that such a gesture was silly. Before, there had been a living person. Now, it was obvious there was nothing.

  “He’s dead,” said Miroslav.

  “Dead?” said Miša. He winced again. “Like dead dead?”

  “What other kind of dead is there?”

  “What do we do? Oh shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.”

  “Miša! It’s not our fault. He came at us. You saw it. He had a knife. Look what he did to you!”

  “I don’t want to go to jail,” Miša moaned.

  “Miša, calm down. No one’s going to jail.”

  Miroslav looked at the dead man lying on the riverbank. He reached down and searched the gypsy’s pockets. He found the money that the man had taken from them, and much more. He thought about it and then took it all. Then he grasped the gypsy’s dirty hands and dragged him into the river. The body was surprisingly heavy. When they were deep enough, the water eased the body away, and a slow current began to carry it downstream. The gypsy floated, the river turning him slowly in circles, just the tips of his shoulder blades poking out of the water. They watched until the body disappeared around the bend.

  Miroslav came back to his brother. “We don’t say anything to anyone about this.”

  “Ya,” said Miša. “Okay.”

  “Never. I’m serious. It stays here. Nobody can know.”

  “Ya. Okay. Nobody.”

  “You swear?”

  Miša reached down and wiped the blood off his chest. He offered his hand. “I swear.”

  They shook.

  “Can you stand?” asked Miroslav.

  “I think so.” Miša got up, wobbling. His face was pale, his eyes loose in their sockets. They dressed carefully.
Miroslav tied his shirt around his brother’s chest and helped maneuver him back to the road, where a truck from Žepa picked them up and drove them to the small medical clinic in Višegrad.

  They told the doctors that Miša had been speared by a bull.

  “A bull didn’t do this,” said the doctor. “Do you think I’m stupid? Are you trying to say I’m stupid?”

  Lying on the examining table, Miša looked terrified.

  “Do you want us to show you the bull? We can go show you the bull,” said Miroslav. “I’m telling you, he was a crazy bull. Someone should really watch out for that animal, because this will happen again.”

  The doctor looked at him.

  “Are you the one who did The Nutcracker? With the puppets?”

  “Yes,” said Miroslav. “And robots. Puppets and robots.”

  “Did you see it?” said Miša from the table. “It was—ah!” He tried to sit up but collapsed back down again.

  “You must have a real imagination,” said the doctor.

  “Not really. It’s mostly fixing things. Like you do.”

  “Okay,” the doctor said and smiled. “Fixing things. Well. So do you remember if this bull’s horns were rusty by chance?”

  Miroslav said he didn’t remember. Maybe. They could’ve been rusty. He couldn’t say one way or another. The doctor sighed and ordered that Miša get a tetanus shot anyway, just to be safe.

  After stitching up Miša, he gave him a bottle of unmarked pills and told him to take three every four hours for the pain. As they were leaving, the doctor shook hands with Miroslav.

  “I hope that bull got some attention, too.”

  Miroslav realized his hand was still covered in blood.

  “The bull’s fine. Don’t worry about the bull,” said Miroslav.

  • • •

  WHEN THEY GOT HOME that evening, Stoja, despite herself, began to weep at the sight of her youngest son wounded.

  “A bull?” she said. “What foolishness! You could’ve been killed, Miša. And Miro, you let your brother get into this?”