Best European Fiction 2014

by Drago Jancar

  Yes, I swear, the fact that all of them would be having fun, carousing and smoking without having to hide from any teachers, while I lay in the damp earth, was something that upset me no end, despite the heroic death I’d scripted for myself. Many were the times when I wept on my own account, sorely bewailing my fate. And with good reason, as I think is obvious . . .

  Nevertheless, because all the books said that it was a blessing to die for the motherland, I did my best to swallow this dreadful injustice.

  It ought to be said that this idea of dying for the motherland didn’t just pop into my head out of the blue. At school, we were taught that the great pioneers had all died long ago, winning great wars, seeing through wonderful collectivization campaigns, and in other—equally heroic—circumstances. And so it was obviously the done thing to die for something, or, best of all, perhaps: someone. Without question, each of us tended to imagine our own deaths as grandiosely as possible, without neglecting the appropriate sound effects or, of course, lighting.

  A battlefield is a wonderful place for that kind of thing. I don’t think they’ve ever beaten it. On a battlefield you can die in hundreds of different ways: ripped to shreds by an exploding grenade or shell, squashed under a tank, mowed down by machine-gun fire, bayoneted by a fearsome foe, put up against a wall and shot, marched into a gas chamber, and so on. I had chosen for myself, in all modesty, a commonplace—but consistent and reliable—bullet. And I have to tell you that this death seemed quite heroic enough to me.

  But then, of course, I came to understand that for the motherland—if you have a motherland—you have to live, you’re even duty bound to live. Thereafter I understood—and this was something even sadder, albeit magnificent—that it is not at all easy to live.

  Well, that was much later. But back then children were taught to die, whatever the cost, for their motherland, as soon as they could stand upright. People were dying anyway, of course, all the time, children and the elderly, young women and men in the prime of life, but their deaths weren’t really anything to cheer about. You might say they were tedious deaths, absolutely ordinary, no more festive than walking to school or visiting the dentist. For me, at least, after one or two experiences, I got so bored of these kinds of death that I would give all the funerals in the village a wide berth. Of course, it’s another thing entirely when a head of state dies. Then there are all kinds of delegations, generals, honor guards, children bearing flowers. Everybody sighs and wonders who will be unanimously elected in place of the deceased and, as a result, when the next interesting state funeral will be.

  Still, all told, nothing could really beat a soldier dying on the field of battle. What a pleasure it would be to behold!

  Well then, thinking of myself as a good pioneer, I had made a firm decision to sacrifice my tender young life for the beloved motherland. And this is why the motherland, as I understood it, had to resemble a very beautiful and kind woman. There was such a woman in our village. So, after I had died for her, the motherland would clasp me to her warm breast, as she had eagerly embraced so many others . . . not that I had these things in mind at the beginning of my career as a martyr, but I’ll admit that the breast-clasping did come to occupy an important place in my fantasies later on.

  You can see I had a lot of far-fetched ideas in my head, back then.

  As there were plenty of men around the village who had been left cripples by the Great Patriotic War, I got it into my head that a real man had to have a minimum of one arm or one leg missing. And if all his limbs were still in place, he should at least have a limp. Less than that was out of the question.

  Perhaps my hapless fellow villagers wouldn’t have made such an impression. But I had happened to see a movie starring a particularly noble hero with a particularly fine limp. This brave and noble knight, or maybe he was a revolutionary, unless he was a pirate or some other kind of bandit, only had one eye, into the bargain, and I must say that he looked very good with that black patch of his, tied around his head diagonally. I had tried to gouge one of my eyes out, but the operation proved to be rather complicated and, above all, painful. Limping, though, was well within my power. I would go outside, and if I spotted someone coming, I would start dragging my leg, with a most solemn mien. And because limping is no simple task, I would hobble now on my right leg, now on my left, depending on the situation.

  The noble hero in the film limped even when he had to run away. And the strange thing was how often he had to show off his prowess as a sprinter. His leg didn’t bend at the knee and to see him run was highly comical. You would have thought it was a camp bed that had broken into a run, or maybe just a telegraph pole with a prop. Whenever I felt like playing the invalid, I had a mind to break into a run at the first opportunity. A hobbling run, obviously. Unfortunately, this ideal was to remain unfulfilled, like so many others. In the village there were plenty of smart alecks, who (precisely at the moment when I was limping in a more—how should I put it?—in a more artistic way, I suppose) would sneak up on me from behind and bawl something in my ear. The devil knows how, but the knee of my ailing leg would abruptly regain its flexibility, and, before I could realize it was all just a stupid prank, would surge forward, bearing me away as fast as the wind.

  Anyway, I ought to acknowledge that limping brought me no spiritual or physical satisfactions and, shortly afterward, after certain tragic events (tragic for me, obviously) involving dogs and the sundry village pranksters, I gave up on this way of asserting my individuality. What used to happen with the dogs is a tale in itself, because almost all the mutts in the village knew me. Usually, when they saw me, and if I was walking normally, said curs used to greet me from a distance with a humble wag of their tails, or else they would desperately seek shelter under fences or in other out of the way spots. But a mutt is still a mutt. At exactly the moment when I had mustered all my inner resources and begun feigning a limp just like in the movies, the mangiest cur of all would pounce on me ferociously. It would make me a laughingstock, because the attack, inexplicably, would always take place in the presence of eyewitnesses. If there was no one around, I could limp for days on end without any fear, because on those days the dogs always had business elsewhere . . .

  Well, much later, when I resumed this occupation, this time impelled, let’s say, by a constitutional infirmity, I had to conclude that this limping business is neither romantic nor pleasant. Quite the opposite.

  This is how the wheel of life revolves, allowing each individual to taste all things, sweet, bitter, or merely bitterish. One of the lessons life teaches us is never to precipitate events. Life and history have their own natural course. And if you’re not lame for the time being, you ought to be thankful with all your heart, because it might just happen that the future will offer you the chance to experience the pleasure you formerly craved . . .

  TRANSLATED FROM ROMANIAN BY ALISTAIR IAN BLYTH

  [Montenegro]

  LENA RUTH STEFANOVIĆ

  The New Testament

  It was Veseljko’s first day at work, or rather his first night. Bedewed with sweat, he stood at his post in front of the premier’s residence in his black boots and blue woolen police uniform, a size too big. The premier was in fact on annual leave and Veseljko had just been temporarily assigned to replace the regular security guards until his return. That morning he’d been to a meeting with the commander, who explained to him the significance of the position and the responsibility it involved. The commander also made it clear to him that he owed a debt of gratitude to his relative from the north of the country for recommending him in the first place. Veseljko now knew that he owed his relative a favor, while his relative owed one to the commander; that’s how these things work.

  So at ten in the evening Veseljko arrived at his new workplace for the night shift. He and the guard from the evening shift passed each other without exchanging a word, and Veseljko took up his post. He’d been given a short briefing about the setup there and told that the head of security
would explain his duties to him in detail later.

  The guard at the high-impact first checkpoint and the one at the rigorous second checkpoint considered Veseljko’s duties at the third and last to be purely ceremonial; to date, no undesirables had ever made it past the tough guys at the first two checkpoints, so you could say that Veseljko was just at his post pro forma—a job for which he was indebted to his relative from the north after his poor marks in the final exams at police academy.

  Veseljko was of medium height, chubby, with a belly that hung over his leather belt; his neck was short and thick, and his whole appearance, including his large, square head with bristly light brown hair, was reminiscent of a big, sluggish animal, perhaps a castrated old bull, for whom frisky heifers had long ceased to present any challenge, and for whom the proverbial waving of a red cape in his face would have been a minor and ignorable irritation at best. His big, bulging forehead seemed to overshadow his tiny, deep-set blue eyes. A prominent nose and full lips rounded off his figure, which the Almighty appeared not to have made too much effort on—possibly He had more important work to do, or maybe Veseljko’s turn came right at the end of the working day, when it’s a known fact that people and gods alike try to knock off as soon as possible and don’t worry too much about the finer details.

  Veseljko was born on the slopes of a gray mountain in the far north, the fifth of seven children; contraception was still not widespread in the Kingdom of Black Mountain last century, and the birthrate in those poverty-stricken regions was enviable. The same couldn’t be said of the conditions in which the numerous children produced by this environment were raised, but they weren’t acquainted with anything different or better, so they grew up as best they could, to the accompaniment of strange songs sung to the sawings of the one-stringed gusle. The closest elementary school was four kilometers from Veseljko’s native village and his mother would chase him there with a stick every morning so he arrived for classes on time; she hoped he’d use books and knowledge to forge himself a path to a better reality than the one into which he was born.

  It would be too much to say that there was anything interesting to tell about Veseljko’s lot during his years at village elementary school or later during his training at police academy. Almost anyone’s life is worth turning into a serialized novel when seen with sharp eyes and a healthy imagination, but our hero was uninspired and uninspiring in the extreme. Veseljko knew he had to get through the academy because otherwise even his influential northern relative wouldn’t be able to find him a job in the city—and there were no jobs at all in his native village. The academy was tiring for him: most of the subjects were over his head, and the physical side of things fatigued him. But he found life at the student dormitory much cozier than at home and was pretty happy with the food at the canteen. He spent most of his free time sleeping or visiting his relatives who lived just a stone’s throw away. Since it was a small town close to the capital, they counted as townsfolk and considered themselves somewhat higher on the ladder than Veseljko’s immediate family, who were still just villagers. You couldn’t say he was particularly fond of that branch of the family, nor, for their part, were they especially glad to see him, but he went there out of inertia and they let him in out of habit. They’d ask for politeness’ sake how things were going at the academy, to which Veseljko replied Good, thus ending that part of the conversation. Then, with a substantial dose of malice, the family would recount private details of people Veseljko didn’t know, to which stories he would cock no more than half an ear. Afterward he’d watch television with his relatives until it was almost bedtime and then say good-bye until next visit. In the summertime Veseljko would take a coach back to his home village for three months’ holiday; a holiday by the sea would’ve been more to his liking, but his modest stipend meant that was out of reach, even though the coast wasn’t far. And so his four years of training passed, and he followed the usual career path of applying to join the Ministry of the Interior, which he was accepted into thanks to his connections (a further relative owed his father a favor), and the new job entailed a move to the capital, Podgorica.

  Like the majority of new policemen who hadn’t yet started families of their own, Veseljko lived in the Bachelors’ Hostel, a barracks adapted for this purpose. The building may have looked like a dump, but it represented a step up in the world compared to the small-town student dorm. Veseljko was assigned a bunk bed in a room shared with four other new colleagues, and the communal kitchen and bathroom were at the end of a long corridor that snaked its way from room to room toward the exit. Outside the front door of the barracks began a new world that was completely foreign to our hero—its café terraces, foreign music pounding from speakers, and scantily clad girls bewildered him. Until then, Veseljko had thought a world like that existed only on television, in some parallel reality that would never intersect with his. He wanted to be part of that colorful, cheerful world, although he knew he didn’t belong to it. The snippets of conversation he heard in passing seemed to be in a strange language and he didn’t understand what people were talking about. The shabby clothes he wore in his free time prevented him from fitting into this world, a fact of which he was painfully aware, but he couldn’t afford new clothes on his paltry pay; he set aside most of his salary for his impoverished family in the harsh north—he did this out of inertia, again, because everyone did it. He spent his free day each week walking the streets of the capital, which was quite sufficient to fill him with dissatisfaction and the desire for a better life.

  Veseljko hadn’t figured out how to achieve his goal yet, but his determination to succeed knew no bounds. It was in this mood that he arrived at the residence of the absent premier beneath Gorica Hill that evening. It was Veseljko’s first time in that salubrious suburb and along the way he saw sumptuous villas, chic women out with their pets, and flashy automobiles, all of which combined to give him his first real whiff of wealth and power; inhaling deeply, he concluded that this was exactly what he wanted. Although he still had no idea how to attain his dream, he was more determined to succeed than ever.

  But the events that ensued took a most unexpected course. At three in the morning, a vehicle pulled up on the street where the premier lived; it wasn’t a police patrol car but a most unusual chariot, and the three duty policemen there ascended in it to heaven; no one knows what happened to them up there, but after they came down, one policeman had lost his mind and another his religion, while Veseljko underwent a spiritual transformation and began preaching to the Montenegrins that their God was one, and all power rested in His hands; he rejected the false idols of political power and influence he’d previously bowed to and swiftly married an ex-prostitute, a former “fundfucker” who chanced to be nearby; when his colleagues objected and pointed out the woman’s wanton past, Veseljko spoke to them, saying Let he among you who is without sin cast the first stone at this once licentious, now demure woman, and they withdrew their objections; although one among them, by the surname of Judaković, from the tribe of Iscariot, denounced Veseljko to the head of state security; Veseljko was wrongfully accused of spying for an infamous terrorist organization, court-martialed, and shot.

  His body was laid in the chapel at Čepurci cemetery and closely guarded overnight by a special unit of the police because rumor of the righteous man and his death by treachery had begun to spread throughout the Kingdom of Black Mountain, and the head of state security had been warned that unrest was brewing. When the gate of the chapel was opened, under tight security, in the morning, Veseljko’s body no longer lay on the catafalque; while in the old, downtown part of Podgorica a woman vouched that she’d not only seen Veseljko alive and well that morning but had even spoken with him while descending the stone stairs to the river; according to her account, Veseljko then graciously took leave of her, darted across the water as fleet as a gazelle, and disappeared from her view on the other side. Veseljko would later be represented in iconography as a tall man with long, graceful limbs, blon
d hair, regular features, and large eyes of deep blue; the special unit that had watched over the chapel in the city cemetery that night would develop into a military order that protected Veseljko’s widow and child born after his martyrdom and legitimate canonization.

  Until the end of his tragic life, the head of state security would suffer from unbearable migraines and curse his miserable fate; history would despise him as much as his associate, the informer Judaković of the tribe of Iscariot, who betrayed the righteous Veseljko. Veseljko’s colleagues from night shift would compile his biography from memory, which over time became increasingly influential and increasingly fictional, having less and less to do with what really happened; they say that the former special unit, which evolved into a knightly order and began to support itself by loaning money on interest, owed its influence to the miraculous power of a relic—Veseljko’s service belt, which in some mysterious way had ended up in its possession. Sometime later, the minister of the interior himself would accuse the knights of the special unit of being a notorious fifth column; he would have them insidiously tortured to coerce them into signing false confessions to fabricated crimes and then sentence them to death by firing squad. But that’s a different story.