by Reif Larsen
“They said I was the best they’ve ever seen.”
“They did?”
“It’s a chance of a lifetime, Tata. It will be my greatest achievement.”
“I’m proud.”
“Thank you.”
“You’ve become a man now.”
“Why does everyone keep saying that?”
“You’ll be careful?”
“Of course, Tata,” he said. “I’m always careful.”
“I can’t lose everything again.”
8
The next week, Danilo found a homemade postcard slipped beneath the door to the storage house.
Fig. 2.8. Postcard of Neutrino Collision, Hydrogen Bubble Chamber (1970)
From Røed-Larsen, P., Spesielle Partikler, p. 991
At first he thought it might be from Miša, and his heart began to race, but when he flipped it over there was no stamp or address, only the minuscule handwriting of his eldest:
Vraticu se uskoro.
—M.
“I’m sorry,” said Ilija later that day at the Rijeka. “Where did he go?”
“I’m not supposed to say.”
Ilija looked down at his hands, then reached into his bag.
“I wasn’t going to show you this. A friend found it. From last year. You said Miroslav had been in the papers.”
“That’s right.”
Ilija handed him a rumpled copy of Naša Borba, a leftist monthly.
On the cover was a picture of Miroslav and an older man, each holding a pipe; Miroslav’s was grotesquely larger than the other man’s. The older man was wearing some kind of peasant’s costume. He looked strangely familiar. The two men stood next to a wall, which was covered in a black-and-red graffito.
“Ja nisam takav sin oca,” it read—“I am not my father’s son.” This was also the title of the article.
“Who’s that other man?” said Danilo.
“He looks like you, doesn’t he? That’s what I thought.”
“But what does it mean?”
“Everyone said this was a big antiwar statement. I thought it was stupid. I didn’t realize it was him.”
Danilo read the article. In the accompanying interview, Miroslav claimed his graffito was not a play on the common phrase “Kakav otac takav sin” (“Like father, like son”), but rather that he was paraphrasing another famous graffito, seen on the crumbled wall of the Berlin Zoo in the aftermath of World War II: “Sind wir mehr als dieses Erbe . . .” (“We are more than this gift . . .”).
N.B.: But this doesn’t seem like a paraphrase.
M.D.: Well, exactly, exactly. We can no longer paraphrase our parents’ generation. And the generation before. We see what happens. We repeat their mistakes. Carnage.
N.B.: Would you say you have a political agenda?
M.D.: I have no agenda. I’m an artist.
N.B.: Surely everyone has an agenda, whether they’re willing to state it publicly or not.
M.D.: My job is to make my work. The audience can decide what it means. I can’t control their reaction.
N.B.: Do you think the artist becomes more critical to society in wartime?
M.D.: The artist is always critical to society, even though the artist must end up hating society. War happens when society forgets its artists.
N.B.: War happens for many reasons.
M.D.: War happens for only one reason: we cannot see past our own death.3
“No offense, but your son has always rubbed me the wrong way,” said Ilija when Danilo looked up from the paper. “I never knew where he stood. I never saw him with any girls.”
“He’s a good boy.”
“Yes, yes, of course. I meant no offense,” said Ilija. He grunted, clapping his hands. “Aye. I’m so constipated I could punch a horse. Gazur! Gazur . . . come here. Do you have something to get this train started again?”
• • •
DANILO BEGAN to collect newspapers. He started listening to the radio again. There were more reports of mass graves being found in Srebrenica. Even some of the Serbian press began to call it an atrocity, though others claimed it was revenge for a previous massacre performed by the Muslims. Perhaps sensing an endgame, had begun to slowly distance himself in his speeches from Radovan Karadžic and the Bosnian Serbs.
But no news came from Sarajevo. No news of a show in the library that was no longer a library. Danilo lay on his back and listened to the radio, but there was nothing. No mention of either of his sons. He lay among the washing machines and smoked and listened and waited.
Then, on August 28, a 120-millimeter mortar fell onto Mula Mustafe Bašeskije Street, just outside the busy Markale Market, in the heart of Sarajevo. Thirty-seven people were killed, and nearly one hundred wounded. The news over the radio was sketchy at first; the newsman initially claimed the attack had been perpetrated by Bosnian authorities on their own people, to garner sympathy from the international community. This would later be meticulously refuted during the 2006 ICTY appeal case of Stanislav Galic via a thorough analysis of the depth of the impact crater (22cm ±2cm), the angle of descent (60º ±5º), the bearing of the shell (20º ±3º), and the charge of the mortar (0 ±3), narrowing the Markale projectile’s origins to two possible positions above the city, both of which were held by Srpska troops in August 1995.4
Prompted by the Markale massacre, on August 30, after years of waiting on the sidelines, NATO began Operation Deliberate Force, a comprehensive air offensive against Bosnian Serb positions. Belgrade ground to a halt, wondering if the bombs would soon drop on them.
• • •
DANILO SAT in the Rijeka, listening to the peculiar silence of the city. Even Gazur’s customary cheer came off as oddly hollow.
“The river’s still beautiful,” he said. “No matter what happens.”
“Where’s Eder?”
“He left. He didn’t want to play the old songs anymore. So he quit and went to war.” Gazur waved his hand dismissively. “Bah! Now he can play all the turbo-folk he wants. This war kills me.”
“But a war can also be profitable, yes?” said Danilo.
“Nothing is worth the price of life, my friend. I would trade everything I have for peace tomorrow.”
Danilo drank his black currant juice and smoked. He put his hand on the morning’s newspaper but did not open it. The night before he had dreamed he was floating down a river. Not the Sava or the Drina, but a mighty river in a jungle. At some point he looked up and saw that the river abruptly vanished into thin air. In the dream, he wondered if he was actually inside one of Miroslav’s black boxes. Whether he was tiny now. He had awoken just before he got to the point where the water ended. He did not get to see what was beyond the box.
Ilija came out onto the terrace.
“Ilija,” said Danilo, surprised. “Come, join me. Let me tell you about my dream. You can tell me what it means.”
“Hello, friend,” said Ilija.
“There’s no music. Eder has gone to war . . .” He saw the expression on Ilija’s face. “What is it?”
“Your son,” said Ilija.
“My son?” Visions of Miša, shot in a field. “Which son?”
“Miroslav.”
“Miroslav?”
At this precise moment, Gazur came up to the two men, but, seeing their expressions, he froze, understanding everything, and withdrew.
Ilija wiped some sweat from his brow and grimaced. “I’m so sorry, my friend,” he said. “They found him in his flat. They said he had suffocated.”
“Suffocated?” Danilo’s body froze. “How?”
“That’s all they said. My friend’s a policeman. He called me just now. I went to the warehouse to find you.” Ilija shook his head. “This world is such shit.”
“But he was supposed to be in Sarajevo! Are you sure
it was him?”
“A neighbor found him in his flat. The door was open.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. My friend didn’t know anything more. He’s expecting you to call.” He handed Danilo a slip of paper.
Danilo looked at the number. “He didn’t even tell me he was back!”
“I’m very sorry, my friend,” said Ilija. “I wish I could do something more. His body is at the morgue in St. Sava’s hospital. I can drive you there if you’d like.”
Danilo sat. The breath was gone from his lungs.
“Danilo,” said Ilija. “I can drive you.”
“No,” said Danilo. “I’ll go myself.”
“This is no time to be alone, my friend. Life’s too short for this. We must be together.”
“Please,” said Danilo.
Ilija stood and then bowed in the old way. “Well, you know where to find me. Anything you need. I am here for you. No joke. Anything I can do.” He walked over to Gazur, and the two men talked and shook hands.
Danilo left money on the table, even though he knew that the juice, as always, was on the house. As he was leaving, Gazur approached, but Danilo ignored him. He kept walking across the road to the railing overlooking the Sava. A tugboat was crawling upstream, tugging nothing but itself.
Danilo imagined the river inside a great box. Imagined himself in the box. Imagined men beneath a black curtain looking in at him as they stood on a street corner.
He began to take off his clothes. Piece by piece, until he was in only his underwear. Then he climbed over the railing, struggling with his stiff leg. He jumped. The water was cold, not entirely clean, syrupy against his skin. He pushed himself out to where the current was and then floated on his back and thought about letting himself sink.
When he looked back at the bank, he could see Gazur, waving his hands, the white city rising up behind him.
• • •
SOMEWHERE ALONG THE WAY, Danilo had lost the policeman’s number. He did not go to the morgue as he knew he should. Instead he went to Miroslav’s flat in Voždovac. A small part of him hoped that Ilija had been mistaken, that the police had been mistaken, that someone had to be mistaken and that he would knock on the door and Miroslav would be sleeping and he would take a while before he opened the door, blurry-eyed, angry at the awakening, and Danilo would gaze upon him and the two would embrace and everything would be as it once was.
The door to the flat was just a door. Nothing to indicate that anything unusual had occurred on the other side. Danilo realized he had never actually been inside the flat. On several occasions he had met Miroslav here and they had gone out together on a walk, but Miroslav had never invited him to come in, a fact that now seemed odd.
Danilo knocked. There was no answer. He tried the doorknob and, to his surprise, found it to be open.
The flat was nearly spotless. As if someone had come in and swept the place clean. Surely this could not have been how Miroslav lived? If anything, his son thrived in a space bordering on the edge of chaos. Getting him to clean his room as a child had always been an affront to his sensibilities.
Danilo walked through the flat, laying his hands on the surfaces. There was a table with an empty bowl on it. A bottle of old milk in the fridge. The bookshelves were empty, save a single xeroxed article. Danilo picked it up. Something by Werner Heisenberg.
Where were all of his son’s books? He must’ve had books. He remembered seeing many books through the door the last time he was here.
A typewriter sat on a desk, a blank sheet of paper tucked in its roll. Danilo pulled out the sheet and found on its reverse side a small eye printed on the top of the page:
In the bedroom, a cheap bureau reinforced with tape. Also empty. The bed had been stripped. Danilo got down on all fours and looked beneath it. Nothing, except a landscape of lint and a stray yellow tube sock. He reached out and took hold of the sock. Squeezed it.
Danilo stood up. He sighed. He tried to imagine his son sleeping on this bed, opening the refrigerator, spending many late nights working on his black boxes. Had he made them here? Had he assembled all of the little pieces on this carpet? Had he breathed in his magic, closed the lid of the box, watched the elephant leap from the bridge for the first time?
Such miracles in such an ordinary place. He suddenly felt very close to Miroslav, closer than he had ever felt before. He rubbed his beard and inhaled.
On his way out, he opened the closet. Like everything else in the flat, it was empty. There was only the top of a yellow tracksuit hanging from a plastic hanger. Danilo was just about to close the door when something caught his eye.
On the shelf behind, in the shadows. He leaned in closer, blinked.
It was him. It was Miroslav. Tiny and true, no more than two centimeters tall, as if he had escaped from one of his boxes.
“Miroslav!” he said.
Miroslav did not move. He was lying on his side, his expression frozen in amused wonderment. Danilo saw then that a little white string was attached to his belly button. He followed the string. It ran down to the floor of the closet. Danilo got down on his knees. The string ended at the belly of another tiny man, also lying on his side.
“Miša!” he whispered.
Miša was in his uniform. His eyes were open but contained no life.
Fig. 2.9. “Danilovic´’s Umbilical Mirror”
From Røed-Larsen, P., Spesielle Partikler, p. 973
For the second time in his life, death would not reveal itself to Danilo Danilovic. The pretty young mortician at the morgue in St. Sava’s smiled sympathetically and said that his son’s case was still under review, and the body was not able to be viewed. This was how she put it: “not able to be viewed.”
“But he’s my son,” said Danilo, a level of desperation in his voice. “He’s my son. Do you understand? Please. If I cannot see him, how do I know he’s dead? You must understand.” He looked around at the rows of metal drawers. “Which one is he in?”
“He’s not here,” the mortician said kindly.
“Then where is he?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “He’s with some specialists.”
“Are you not a specialist?”
The mortician gave him a strained smile. “You will see him soon,” she said reassuringly.
This turned out not to be true. According to the records, an error in the paperwork had caused the corpse to be transferred to Višegrad, and it was subsequently lost in transit. But in that moment, against all his instincts, which wailed for some kind of proof, Danilo brought his hands together and tried to believe what she told him.
The mortician showed him to the exit. They paused in the hospital lobby.
“Do you know how he died?” asked Danilo. “He was younger than he looked. He was still very young. Maybe he wasn’t eating well. His mother was always worrying about this.”
“We don’t know yet,” said the mortician. Her mascara was smudged beneath her left eye. “It looks like he just stopped breathing.” She touched his arm in the same way Stoja once had. “I will try and find you some answers, Mr. Danilovic. I know how hard it can be.”
Danilo nodded. He wondered what life would’ve been like if he had had a daughter instead of a son. If this woman with her smudged mascara were his daughter; if they could have dinner together later at the restaurant around the corner as they always did; if she would bring her boyfriend for him to meet for the first time; if this boyfriend were charming but reserved, nervous that he would offend her father, of whom he had heard so much; if, only months after this first dinner, she would announce to him that she would marry this man and he would approve, first in words and later in spirit, ushering her down an aisle before men and God himself; if, barely a year later, there would be a baby cradled in her arms, the husband standing at a safe distance as the grandfa
ther leaned in close, knowing that life spills across generations in the simplest of ways, and as Danilo touched his grandson’s tiny sea-creature fingers, his daughter would look up at him and say, “His name is Danilo.”
“Oh, I almost forgot,” said the mortician. She reached into the pocket of her lab coat and handed him a small ziplock bag. “I was asked to give this to you.”
Inside the bag there was a small metal key.
• • •
AS PER RØED-LARSEN POINTS out at length in Spesielle Partikler (pp. 693–705), the official police report on Miroslav Danilovic’s death is a curious document. While it offers seemingly superfluous details about the “deceased wearing [the] lower half of [a] yellow tracksuit, seated in front of a bowl of milk,” it remains vague about the actual cause or essential circumstances of the death itself. One of the officers who signed the document, Officer Stanislav Radic, was later dismissed from the police force under suspicion of extortion and bribery. Miroslav’s obituary in Naša Borba, the only Serbian paper to carry an announcement of his death, was brief, if complimentary, mentioning the graffito and the cult of the black theater boxes. It did not reference a theater project in Sarajevo.
Røed-Larsen elaborates on Miroslav’s role in Kirkenesferda Fire, that group’s famous Sarajevo performance, which ran for only four nights in the eviscerated shell of the National Library of Bosnia, from August 24 to 27, before it was cut short by the Markale marketplace massacre. He writes:
[Miroslav] was perhaps the most talented of all the puppet-makers . . . more so, it could be argued, than Ragnvald Brynildsen, the original, or even Tor Bjerknes, who so beautifully oversaw the design of Kirk Tre in Cambodia with Kermin Radmanovic. What separated Miroslav [from the others] was his erasure of the connective tissue between puppet and puppeteer. His objects moved without intervention; they literally took on a life of their own, in which the puppeteer became just another spectator to the miracle at hand. (999)
Per Røed-Larsen, for all his thoroughness, fails to mention what happened to the rest of the family. After the war, Danilo Danilovic moved back to Višegrad. The farm had been untouched in his absence—all was accounted for except one thing: the elephant had vanished. He would eventually sell the farm and move to a house not far from the bowed shadows of the Turkish Bridge, which he would visit each evening until the day he died.