The news then took me to America, where people still appreciate a good miracle. A devastating earthquake had hit Los Angeles. Footage from a helicopter showed a bridge broken in half. Desperate people were clinging to a twisted steel framework and paramedics were trying to pull them up. Just as it looked as if the valiant rescuers would succeed, the ground shook again. A red pick-up rolled backwards, hitting another car. And, seconds later, dozens of vehicles came crashing down on the paramedics and their desperate rescuees like an avalanche of metal.
‘Los Angeles is in flames and people are trying to flee the city in panic,’ the anchorman said.
A new report followed with another human drama. A residential building was ablaze and firefighters were trying in vain to climb up to a group of occupants who’d sought refuge on the roof. Rescuers on the ground held a safety net and called out to the desperate people to jump. They threw themselves off, one after another, and were caught down below by evidently well-trained Californian firefighters. But an old lady refused to jump. Although the CNN cameraman was filming from his shoulder while running through the crowd of onlookers, I could make out in the unsteady footage that the lady was holding a tiny dog in her arms. In the end she finally jumped, but fear had a hand in things – she came down hard on the lawn, a good five yards from the safety net. The camera zoomed in on her crushed body. A Scottish terrier slipped from her arms, which would never move again. One of the firefighters triumphantly held aloft the little dog, like a shaggy trophy. ‘It’s alive!’ he shouted. The bystanders clapped, and the camera closed in on the bewildered animal licking its paw.
Fox News showed images from New York. Manhattan woke up to find itself under water: experts couldn’t yet explain why, but the sea level had risen dramatically. Whereas the CNN reporters focused on the despair which the abrupt and violent acts of nature had driven people to, the right-wingers on Fox News emphasised the optimism of their born-again viewers. The preacher in a megachurch in Texas announced euphorically: ‘We told them and they didn’t believe us, but now the End has finally come, rejoice, O Christians!’ and behind him a gospel choir of fat black ladies blared Jesus is coming, hallelujah! In a student dorm in Iowa, two boys from respectable Wasp families sang It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine accompanied on acoustic guitar by a stoned, raven-haired Tanita Tikaram lookalike.
MTV reacted promptly and to the point: Strummer roared London is drowning and I live by the river, while an autocue at the bottom of the screen advertised the upcoming MTV Apocalypse Awards.
A stuffy Euronews correspondent reported from a mountain peak in Switzerland on avalanches which had buried villages in the valleys. I also learned from him that Holland had been struck by a tsunami. The information coming in spoke of hundreds of thousands of dead. Their correspondent in Russia reported about a doomsday sect, breakaways from the Orthodox Church, who saw the dreadful cruelty of nature as a sign of the Second Coming of Christ. Emaciated-looking Ivans and Natashas with colourful headscarves, who were obviously doing their best to look like matryoshka dolls, were hurrying to hide underground. Their reading of the Bible seemed to be that only those who buried themselves alive would survive the end of the world. Be it because of the rush or out of laziness, these God-fearing folk didn’t dig their own holes but hid in one which turned out to have been excavated by Gazprom as part of a new gas pipeline. When the believers refused to leave the company’s land, the Russian president sent in the army, who mowed them down and threw them into another pit which wasn’t Gazprom’s. The reporter openly voiced his revulsion at this inhumane act of the Russian authorities, but it seemed to me that the believers had achieved a significant symbolic and practical victory. They were under the ground, so they’d got what they wanted.
I turned off the television because there was a knock at the door. It was Salvatore.
‘Please forgive me for coming unannounced like this, I know you don’t like visitors,’ he said and extended me his right hand; in his left he was holding a butcher’s knife. ‘Your neighbours are waiting for me down at the cow. I told them I needed some knives from your place and would be straight back. I know we’ve never had much to do with each other – we’ve hardly ever spoken. But I hope you’ll understand: I just need a little of your time.’
Salvatore had the stature of a serial killer from a horror film but the manners of an academic. I invited him in because I have a soft spot for politeness, which is a rare virtue in this mountainous and uncultured country. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that I’d left the gate to the property open in the rush to get to my drink. One careless moment and people invade your world, I thought: and not just anyone, but people in bloodstained butcher’s aprons!
‘Life is harsh,’ Salvatore said when I’d poured him a drink and sat him down on the couch. He’d never been shown mercy, nor did he expect any. Whoever counted on mercy came to a bad end – he’d seen it many times. Today he sat and drank with me. There was no respite. Whatever happened, life always had to go on. One month earlier he’d suffered a great tragedy, one which would’ve destroyed most other people. But even as a boy he’d learned to live with loss: to mourn for a moment, and then soldier on. The dead can bury the dead, right? And before long he was back at work. If people don’t have work they delve around in their past until life caves in on them. But he wasn’t one to philosophise, he said.
He wanted to tell me about his tragedy. He arrived at the shopping centre in Bar at six o’clock each morning. The parking lot was empty. For years he’d been the first to arrive at work, although he had to drive there. He got out and leaned against the car, lit a cigarette and looked up at the bluish slopes of the Rumija mountain range. After years of looking, one glance sufficed to tell him what time of year it was.
He liked to watch the slopes burning in the summer light. The midsummer glare is merciless. It’s different in September, when the days are shorter and morning comes later. Then the light is velvet, as if everything is shrouded in haze. In September the world looks like the old pictures which they write about from time to time in the paper. The people in those pictures are usually naked and have a sleepy look. He thought he looked like that too when he examined his face in the rear-view mirror of the red Zastava, he told me.
Salvatore’s eyes were bloodshot and dull. He watched films until late at night and also drank, but only a little more than moderation, he emphasised. A man had to have an outlet sometimes. His wife and children were asleep when he returned from work; he didn’t disturb them. He wasn’t one of those men who got drunk and maltreated their family, he said. He sat in front of the television and thought about things. Different things. He had a few beers. It’d been like this for fifteen years since he’d been working at the shopping centre. At first he only worked one shift. But then their second son came along, the eldest started school and life became ever more expensive. He began working weekends, but that didn’t bring in enough extra income. Then he agreed with his boss that he work two shifts: from seven in the morning till ten in the evening, seven days a week. His children lived like all the others: modestly but without want. He knew his life wasn’t like that of other people, but that was the price he had to pay so his children could have a normal life. That’s just the way things were. His father, too, had slaved away from dawn till dusk to raise him. People struggle and then die. That’s just the way things are, he said.
He never rang when he came home. He made sure the door and the lock were well greased so they wouldn’t squeak when he opened them, sneaked into the hall and locked them again. He turned the television down low so only he could hear it. When he went to the fridge or to the bathroom, too, he was careful not to wake the family. Over the years he learned to go without being heard. He even managed to get into bed without waking his wife. When he went to work in the morning, they were still sleeping. He opened the door of the children’s room a little and looked at his sons. Dragan was already thirteen and resembled him. Mirko was still small. Ch
ildren at that age look like their mother.
‘When I drive to Bar, I imagine their alarm clocks ringing,’ Salvatore said. He pictured Dragan, half-awake, stumbling towards the bathroom. After him Mirko came running, complaining that he needed to go urgently. Mirna, his wife, was already in the kitchen frying eggs. She’d contracted chronic arthritis as a young woman and every movement caused her pain. But she had a normal life with a husband and children. Like every other woman.
‘When we got married I told her: “As long as I’m alive I’ll make sure you can enjoy a normal life. You’ll be able to live like all other women,”’ he said. He imagined them eating, going to the fridge and taking out the jam and milk he’d bought the night before on the way back from work. Breakfast was over; now the boys got dressed and ready to leave for school. Before they left the house, Mirna gave them a euro each. ‘This is from your Dad,’ she’d say, and they’d run off cheerfully down the street. ‘I see all that while I’m driving,’ he said.
He’d smoke a second cigarette. In the distance he heard a Lada and knew it was the cleaning lady being brought to work by her husband. Like every morning, they’d say a polite hello and she’d unlock the front entrance. Then he’d go to the cold room and she to the cleaning storeroom, and they wouldn’t meet again until the next morning.
As he prepared the meat for the day he heard the other shopping-centre staff arriving, through the cold-room door: Mirjana from the fruit and vegetable section, who was now engaged and spent the days making plans for her marriage; Zoran from the purchasing department, whose wife had been diagnosed with cancer and who wandered from doctor to doctor, getting deeper and deeper into debt, searching in vain for a cure; Branka from the health and cosmetics section, who had problems with her alcoholic father; and Aida from the bakery, who had a mute child.
He also heard the voices of the regular customers. For example, there was a lady who they knew by her first name, Stela, whose son had moved to Canada. He married a black woman there. Stela objected, but he didn’t listen. Even as a child he’d been obstinate, she said. She begged him not to get hitched to that woman. Now he was punishing his mother by not getting in touch for years. Every morning Stela would buy her two croissants and then rush home: ‘I have to get back – just imagine if he rings while I’m out!’ she fretted day in, day out.
Although Salvatore spent most of the day in the cold room, he knew everything about those people. It was as if he listened to a radio programme about their lives all day. They chatted, argued, bitched and rejoiced about things, and he listened to it all just as if he was out there with them. At first it’d been hard to get used to the chill and isolation of the cold room, but over time he realised that it didn’t matter. When he heard how hard other people’s lives were and how they struggled, he was ashamed that he’d complained about his life so much.
Every morning, first thing, he sharpened the knives. He took his time and did it meticulously. ‘You can see yourself in my knives like a mirror,’ he said. He couldn’t stand blunt knives. The blade had to pass through the meat without resistance. The cut had to be straight and clean. He was horrified when people mangled meat instead of cutting it. Some almost seemed to hate the meat they cut. It was as if they let out all their frustration on the pieces of veal and pork they got their hands on. One look at the cuts a butcher made would tell him what sort of person he was. An angry, resentful person was easiest to recognise. Butchers like that always made more cuts than necessary. They cut and realised it was wrong. Then, in their rage, they cut wrongly again. They ended up rending the meat like a wild animal. He’d seen butchers like that: if their wife had offended them or their children didn’t respect them, they stabbed the meat and tore at it. There were ones who bellowed as they cleaved the meat. Some made a real mess in the butcher’s shop: they dragged the pieces of meat across the floor, stamping on them and kicking them. But not him: he left all his problems at the cold-room door. When he finished work, he left everything spic and span. It was as clean as in a hospital, he said.
Until noon, when he had his first break, he made sausages with lots of garlic; then he prepared burgers and three sorts of meat patties. Next he marinated meat in oil, salt, pepper and herbes de Provence – but not paprika because it would dominate the taste. He filleted pork, cut beef for soup-making, and set aside prime-quality fillets and rump steak. It was like that in the summertime: however much you prepared, the café owners bought it all.
He would take a bottle of beer out of the fridge and sit down on the bench behind the butcher’s shop in the shade. He smoked two cigarettes and watched the cows and sheep tottering about the meadow, torpid from the heat. Mirjana would come and sit next to him. She would bum a cigarette like she did every day.
‘What are you up to?’ she asked one day.
‘Watching the animals. I could watch them for hours. I grew up with animals: we had cows, sheep and goats at home,’ he told her.
‘I don’t like animals – they scare me,’ she said. ‘When my husband and I have kids and they’re a few years old, maybe I’ll get them a dog. I’ve read that dogs are good for kids. Children who grow up with dogs become better people because a dog has the traits of a good person. The dog brings them up to be good, in a way. A dog is OK, but I’d never let a cat into the house. I’ll invite you to my wedding. Will you come – you and your family?’ she asked. Then she threw away the butt and returned to work without waiting for a reply.
He glanced at his watch: twenty past twelve. He had time for one more cigarette. He stared at the cows which were now lying in the meadow. They didn’t move or give any signs of life. He was musing on how they looked almost like rocks, when he was roused from his reflections by a voice calling his name. Turning, he saw two police officers standing beside him. Come with us, was all they said.
When they were driving in the police car he tried to find out where they were taking him, and why. The men in uniform said they were under orders not to tell him any details. The car pulled up in front of the mortuary. ‘Even then I didn’t know, even then I didn’t think,’ he said. Only when he’d set foot inside the mortuary did he notice that he still had his apron on. He’d been working all morning and the apron was blood-smeared, as was the cap which he kept on all day in the cold room. They’ll think I’m a psychopath, he thought. He was relieved when he saw the mortuary was empty and no one could be intimidated by his appearance. At the end of the corridor he saw Mirna. She ran towards him, all in tears, and threw herself into his arms. ‘Dragan’s dead,’ she howled, ‘someone’s killed our son,’ she screamed and dug her fingernails into her cheeks. The blood mixed with her tears and she smeared it over her eyes and hair in her anguish.
Then the doctor appeared. He also had a bloodstained white apron and a cap. The only difference between them was the gloves the doctor wore, Salvatore said. The doctor instructed the police officers. One took Mirna to the toilet so she could wash and calm down, the other accompanied Salvatore and the doctor to the autopsy room. On a metal table in the middle, illuminated by a neon lamp, lay his son.
‘Twenty-nine stab wounds, probably made with a knife, and three slash wounds: two short ones on the chest and a long one which tore his stomach,’ the doctor explained.
‘It was a blunt blade – an ordinary kitchen knife like you can buy at any market,’ Salvatore told him.
‘How do you know?’ the doctor asked.
‘You can see I’m a butcher,’ Salvatore said.
He asked the doctor and the policeman to leave him alone with his son.
Through the door of the autopsy room he heard Mirna crying and the voice of the policeman trying to console her.
‘I know how you must feel: I also lost a child. But you have to calm down. If I’m not mistaken, you have another boy? You have to settle down and keep going for his sake,’ he said. Their voices receded – they’d probably gone outside for some fresh air.
He sat down on the bench in the corner and looked around the
room. It was clean and everything was in its place. The sharp implements were neatly arranged on a long table. The panes of glass in the door were immaculate, without the fingermarks which are always a tell-tale sign of negligence. The floor tiles had been polished. The only stain on them was a little puddle of blood from his son’s right arm, which hung down from the autopsy table.
Salvatore got up, raised the boy’s arm and laid it alongside his body, parallel to the arm on the other side. ‘That was how Dragan slept: stretched out and flat on his back,’ he said. He pulled up the white sheet to cover his son’s body. On the shelves he found some paper towels. He wiped the blood from the floor and shone the tiles with a moistened towel. Then he sat down on the bench in the corner again.
It was cold in the room. He could see the steam of his breath. ‘For a moment I thought I was back in the cold room and everything was alright. As if it was still morning and the whole day lay ahead,’ he said.
Chapter Four
which tells of books and a conversation in Saint Anna’s Hospital, presents the multiple murder from a different angle, and shows us Fra Dolcino fleeing the wrath of the Church and finding refuge in the Franciscan monastery on Bojana River
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It was the article about the library fire which finally opened my eyes. The papers and Web portals were full of headlines about the killing of the Vukotić family, which is why I didn’t notice it earlier. I find it unforgiveable that such a tragedy is reduced to a spectacle to be served with morning coffee. All the pain and fear of the murder victims, and all the sorrow and despair of those who survived them, is transformed into a product to increase newspaper circulation – a topic of conversation to while away the time and be utterly forgotten as soon as the front pages scream in bold about a new murder. Every day we do and say unforgiveable things, without our hand or voice trembling. We defend our right to the unforgiveable with the utmost decisiveness. Doubt and trepidation only come when fear takes over and when our lives, which we once claimed a sovereign right to and defended at whatever cost, have slipped completely from our control.
Coming Page 4