I Am Radar

by Reif Larsen

  As she got down to the main road, she saw a car stopped in front of four men armed with machine guns. She caught her breath. The men had strung barbed wire across the road. They were talking to someone in the car, which she could see was stuffed to the brim with suitcases. Through the back window she could see a small white dog. It seemed to be barking, but she couldn’t hear any sound. One of the men saw her coming down the road on her bicycle, and he waved with his gun for her to dismount.

  “Oy,” said the man, approaching her. He was wearing camouflage and a traditional Šajkaca army hat, like the ones she remembered seeing in history books. This had to be one of those White Eagles that everyone was talking about. She had never seen one of them up close before.

  “What’s your name?” he said. He had a splotchy mark on his temple, the color and shape of an overripe raspberry. She could see how young he was. Young and foolish, just like Miša.

  “Stojanka Danilovic. I live there,” she said and pointed back to where she had come from. She wanted to tsk this boy for dressing up in such a stupid costume. For playing games. Why had his mother let him do such a foolish thing?

  He asked to see her ID card. Stoja reached into her pocket, but even as she did this, she realized she had left the card on her bureau. She had picked up the card and then set it down when she put on her earrings. She could see the card lying on the wooden bureau. She could see the grainy photograph staring back at her, her smile that was not quite a smile. She hated that picture, though Danilo had said it was not far from the truth.

  “I don’t have it,” she said, her heart dropping. “I left it on the bureau.”

  “What?” he said, moving closer.

  As calmly as she could, she explained to the young man that she was the wife of Danilo Danilovic, that she lived just over the hill, that she had not planned on seeing anyone, she was merely trying to ride to the river, “to get the air back into my lungs.” This was how she said it. She was a Serb in good standing, she said. She was an Orthodox Christian. A believer. Had he not seen her holding vigil at her manoualia in St. Stephen’s? She pulled out the little silver cross around her neck to show him. A gift from Danilo. She had never been more grateful for it than now.

  She thought that everything would be right then. This stupid boy would understand and let her go and she would turn her bike around and tell Danilo all about this. The White Eagles are everywhere! she would say. And they are using children to fight for them!

  But the young man did not wave her through. He looked concerned. He took a step forward and grasped the cross in one of his hands. He was close to her now. She could smell the rancid stink of alcohol and dried meat on his breath. God bless, how could they let such a boy drink? The boy’s fingers, covered in a deep layer of grime, fumbled with the small silver object. He turned the cross over, as if to find proof of its authenticity on the reverse side. When she looked up at him, he was not looking at the cross but at her.

  “Please,” she said quietly. “God bless.”

  “You’re a liar. I can hear your accent,” he said and ripped the chain from around her neck. Her head snapped forward. She could feel the burn on the back of her neck where the chain had split.

  “Please. Listen. I’m a Serb. I promise,” she said, and tried not to let the fear split open the seams of her words. What he heard was true: she had been born in Trebinje, near the Montenegro border, and so her accent was foreign. Not quite foreign, but peculiar.

  Oh Danilo, Danilo, what shall I do? This boy has no idea!

  “You’re lying. You carry this cross to hide yourself.” He held up the necklace. “You should be ashamed.”

  “I’m a Serb, I swear to you. I’m a devout Christian. I hadn’t been until recently, but now it’s all I have. My sons left me. My youngest is your age. He’s fighting like you.”

  “You’re an old, filthy, lying whore is what you are,” the boy said. He stepped forward and grabbed the space between her legs. The force with which his hand moved emptied the air from her lungs. His lust, fetid, like a whiff of curdled milk. The blindness of his fingers, kneading at her. He brought his mouth very close to her ear, breathing raggedly, the raspberry splotch on his temple trembling with each pulse. She was gathering her strength to scream when he pushed her to the ground.

  “Here’s another Turkish whore for Lukic,” he said to the others.

  “Fine, fine,” said one of the soldiers. “Let’s go back. It’s enough for now.”

  They loaded her into the back of the truck with a mother and a daughter whom they had taken from the car. Stoja recognized them from the market. They were Muslim, she knew. The mother’s name was Remiza. Remiza was holding on to her daughter’s hand so hard that her knuckles were turning white. Remiza’s husband stood by the car and watched them go, his hands on his hips, his face registering nothing at all.

  The truck drove through the valley and then turned up a steep road. A stream flowed nearby, the water thick with bright green algae. There was no wind in the trees, and she could smell the thickness of the minerals in the water. Stoja tried to smile at Remiza, to let her know that she was with them, but the woman held on to her daughter and looked right through her.

  They came to a hotel, looming in a clearing of the forest like the hull of a great beached ship. The facade of the hotel was bright white, the top floors lined with concrete balconies, their railings painted red. All of the curtains behind the balconies were drawn closed. From somewhere there came a cry, and then silence. Around the hotel, men lay sleeping, sunning themselves. Some wore ski masks pulled up above their faces. Stoja had heard of this place. Before the war, people had come to heal themselves in the thermal pools. They had come from all over, as far as Austria and Hungary and Romania. Somewhere nearby, the Turks had built a hammam hundreds of years ago. The waters from inside these mountains could supposedly cure all ills.

  As they pulled into the parking lot, Stoja saw a girl come out onto one of the balconies. She had short brown hair, cut close to her head. The girl watched them come to a stop in front of the hotel and then disappeared back into the room.

  As soon as they were stopped, a man with black paint on his face came at them with a machine gun and ordered them off the truck. Remiza began to weep. She begged the man to take her but leave her daughter. The man leaped up onto the back of the truck and rammed the butt of his gun into her head. He did this easily, without effort. Remiza fell down onto her side. She lay there, unconscious. Her daughter collapsed onto her, weeping.

  “Shut up,” the man said to them. “When we want you to talk, we’ll ask you to talk. But we’ll never ask you to talk, so you will never talk.”

  He grabbed the girl by the back of her neck and pulled her off the truck. Then he turned to Stoja.

  “Please,” she said. “There has been some mistake. I’m a Serb. I’m like you.”

  “You’re nothing like me,” said the man.

  The last thing she saw before the darkness came was a red car driving up the hill, and in that split second she could not help but hope that whoever it was had come to rescue her.

  • • •

  IN THE AFTERNOON, when Stoja had still not returned, Danilo grew nervous. Maybe she had gone back to the church? He should have figured as much. Then he found her ID card on the bureau. He stared at her picture.

  “Stoja,” he said.

  Their truck was not working, so he ran over to his cousin Dragan’s house and asked him for his car. Dragan insisted on coming along. They first drove to the church but found it locked. They tracked down the caretaker, who opened it up for them, but the church was empty, the candles unlit. Danilo’s mouth went dry.

  They slowly drove down the road that led to the river.

  “There,” said Danilo, pointing. “Stop.”

  It was Stoja’s red bicycle. Leaning against a tree, as if waiting for its rider to return. An open suitcas
e lay by the side of the road, its contents strewn into the ditch. Children’s clothes. A little doll made of sticks and strings sat by one wheel of the bicycle.

  They searched up and down the road. All the way to the river and back, until it grew too dark to see. Their headlights began to make every mound, every irregularity, look like a possible body.

  “She’s not here,” said Dragan. “Maybe she went into town.”

  “Why would she go there?” said Danilo. “I told her not to go there.”

  “Maybe she had dinner with a friend?”

  “I told her not to go there. I told her just to the river and back.” Danilo brought his hands to his face. “Oh, this is my fault. It told her to go.”

  “It’s not your fault, cousin,” said Dragan. “We’ll find her.”

  They drove into town. Past burnt and gutted houses. A couch sitting upright against a doorway. The streets were deserted. Dogs running around, searching for scraps.

  A soldier came up and waved for them to stop.

  “There’s a curfew,” the soldier said. “Go home.”

  “I’m looking for my wife.” Danilo leaned over to the window. “She was bicycling today. She hasn’t come back. Her name’s Stojanka Danilovic. Have you seen her?”

  The soldier stared at him. He looked shocked. Then he raised his gun and pointed it at them. “You can’t be out now. Go home.”

  “But she’s my wife! She left her ID card. I’m very worried she—”

  “We’ve got to go back,” said Dragan.

  “But I’m just worried something’s happened to her. Have you heard anything?”

  “No one is allowed to be out.” The soldier’s eyes flicked back and forth between them. He was young, with a birthmark on his temple. They heard him click off the safety of the rifle.

  “Danilo!” said Dragan. “We can come back in the morning.”

  They left the car at Danilo’s house. Dragan tapped his cousin on the shoulder.

  “Everything will be all right,” he said. “What did your mother say? ‘The Danilovics are survivors.’”

  “My mother was a liar.”

  Danilo fell asleep sitting up, in a chair facing their bed. Before the sun had fully risen, he awoke, made himself some coffee, and washed his hands. Then he took down an alabaster jar that they kept hidden inside the ceiling. Inside the jar was a roll of deutsche marks. He took all the money and his wife’s ID card and drove Dragan’s car down to the police station in town, where he waited all morning for them to open.

  At eleven o’clock, a large man pulled up in front of the station in a small blue VW Golf. The man looked tired. He spent some time in the car before he struggled to pry himself from the front seat. He headed to the locked door of the police station. Danilo got out. He tried not to run.

  “Please,” he said, approaching the man. “My wife has gone missing.”

  The man showed no interest in this news. He busied himself with unlocking the door.

  “Please,” Danilo tried again. “There’s been a mistake. We’re Serbian. Here’s her card.”

  “I don’t know anything about this,” the policeman said. “Why are you telling me this?”

  Danilo took out half of the money in his pocket and showed it to the man. “Please,” he said. “There’s been a mistake. Can you help me?”

  The policeman, who walked stiffly, as if one of his legs could no longer bend, took Danilo down the block to an old hotel that smelled of dried sweat and blood sausage. A small radio was playing Herzegovinian folk music in one corner. The policeman left Danilo sitting in the lobby and headed upstairs. When he came back down, he said, “Lukic will see you.” He stood, waiting. Danilo reached into his pocket and gave him several more bills. The policeman left without giving any further instructions.

  Danilo waited in the lobby. Men came and went, many of them bearded. They wore all sorts of military uniforms. Sometimes their tops did not match their bottoms, as if their clothes had become mixed up in the wash. Many of them wore the patch of the White Eagles, and almost everyone carried a gun. He did not see the young man who had stopped them the night before.

  Finally, one of the men came into the lobby and motioned for Danilo to stand and follow him up the stairs. The man, smoking a cigarette, roughly patted Danilo down for weapons, then he pushed him into one of the hotel rooms.

  Lukic was a large, clean-shaven man, with a broad, flat nose and surprisingly soft eyes. He looked like a father who had not yet become a father. He smiled slightly when Danilo entered the room, and Danilo saw the flash of a rotten tooth that had turned blue. Lukic sat in an armchair. He wore camouflage pants and a grey sweatshirt that was marked by several indecipherable stains. The bed next to him was covered with ammunition and handguns of varying sizes. Danilo briefly wondered if this was how he slept, in a sea of bullets. On the table next to the bed, a lone plastic flower stood at attention inside its vase.

  In a voice that he tried to keep strong, Danilo said that he had known Lukic’s uncle in grade school.

  Lukic smiled. “Pluto.”

  “Yes, Pluto,” said Danilo. “He’s a nice man.”

  “He was a terrible man. A sadist. But he’s dead now,” Lukic said with a smile.

  “Oh. Well. I’m sorry to hear this,” said Danilo.

  “What can I do for you?”

  He told Lukic that he was looking for his wife, Stojanka, who had disappeared the previous day. He explained that her two sons had moved away; one had joined the Chetniks up in Croatia—he lingered on this word, Chetniks—and the other had moved to Belgrade to study at the university. His wife had been distraught for several months. It was unlike her to be so on edge. She was just going out for a little bicycle ride to clear her head and she forgot her ID card. Simple as that. He didn’t care what had happened. Or who had done what. He just wanted to bring her home.

  Lukic listened politely and took Stoja’s ID card when Danilo showed it to him. He studied it closely, holding it up to the light.

  When Danilo was finished speaking, he reached into his pocket and took out the money, which had somehow gotten wet. Lukic took the damp deutsche marks from him and dropped them on the bed without looking at them.

  “Go on,” said Lukic.

  Danilo shrugged. “There is nothing more to say.”

  Lukic picked at something beneath his fingernail and suddenly made a little chuckle, as if he had just remembered a joke. Then he looked Danilo in the eye.

  “Okay, so first you must know this: I like you,” said Lukic. “I like that you came here and had the courage to talk. So this is why I’ll tell you what I will tell you now. Otherwise, you have to know, you’d already be dead. So today is your lucky day. This is the first thing you must know.”

  Then he went on to talk about the war for a while, about the justness of their cause but also the difficulties of conflict, about how sometimes things happened that were regrettable, and that no one could be said to be responsible for these things when they happened in the heat of battle. It was difficult enough to maintain order in a town when no one knew whom to trust. Mistakes would inevitably be made. It was the way of things. But they were doing their best. Višegrad was in very good hands, this much he could say.

  Danilo grew impatient. “So then you know what happened to her?” he said.

  “I’m not saying that; I’m just saying you must understand the circumstances. We’re looking after many people right now. We’re making sure this country’s safe to live in. It’s not an easy job. The Turks let this place go to shit. So you must understand our situation.”

  “But she’s done nothing!” said Danilo, exasperated. “Stoja’s innocent!”

  “I understand your opinion. But I must disagree. She was without ID, as you say.”

  “I told you. She forgot it. She was just—”

  “And, as
you say, she looks like a Turk.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “She even talks like a Turk. And this is not my fault. This, of course, is asking for trouble. You can imagine how difficult it would be if all the Turks had no identification and they claimed they were not Turks and we had to check each one. It would be madness. It would not be good,” Lukic said, but very kindly, as if he were doing Danilo a favor. “You have to understand the Turkish mind. I understand this mind. It’s my business to understand the Turkish mind.”

  “What have you done with her? Please? Just give her back. I just want her back in the house. She’s a good woman. Her sons went away and—”

  “Why would you let a woman out like that without an ID? Don’t you love your wife at all?”

  Danilo fell to the floor. He clasped his hands together. “Please. I just wanted her to get some air. She was not herself . . . she was praying all the time . . .”

  “Look, look. I’ll see what I can do,” said Lukic sympathetically. He placed a hand on Danilo’s shoulder. “But if you want my opinion, it was her own fault for coming from a mixed family. This was a disaster waiting to happen.”

  Danilo stared up at him. He was filled with a sudden, unbearable hatred. He had never before felt such venom in his blood. If he had had a knife, he would’ve plunged it into this man’s heart.

  “Not all of it is your fault,” Lukic was saying, “but you must think about these kinds of things before you marry a woman like that.”

  “Like what?” Danilo could feel his body shaking. He was worried what he might do next.

  Lukic studied him calmly. “A man can never change who he really is.”

  “People change all the time,” said Danilo. “I’ve seen good people become very bad.”

  “Maybe they were bad to begin with,” said Lukic. He picked up one of the guns from the bed and began to play with it. “We’re making right what was wrong. That’s all. Nothing more. Now get out before you disappear. I’m being so nice right now my balls are beginning to hurt.” A man came back into the room. He grabbed one of Danilo’s arms and hinged it up into his back, painfully.