‘Where’s Javor?’ I say when she lets me go. Along with the other men of Gost we have joined the territorial defence forces. So far all we’ve done is show up in the school gym for nightly meetings. A representative from the Crisis HQ in the Town Hall informed us the new National Guard was handling the situation. They have taken up a position south of the town opposite the army in the north. In between lies Gost. The army want to reach the coast but we stand in their way. Each side has roadblocks you have to pass through, on the road north and on the roads south out of Gost. Same questions, but different answers for each.
‘He’ll catch you up.’
‘Don’t bother. We only want people who can shoot straight.’
This makes her smile. ‘He’s not so bad.’
‘You were better.’ I point to the bowl. ‘This is good.’
‘I’m going to decorate it.’
‘I like it this way.’
‘What does it matter? Nobody’s going to buy it.’
‘One day.’
‘One day, sure.’
Duration, after all, is the whole point of a siege.
The storm over the town rumbles day after day. Some people have already left Gost. They left before dawn and after dusk, without telling their neighbours and they left their pets behind. How did they know? The rest of us didn’t see it coming. Now it’s impossible to leave. Too many refugees. There are the roadblocks and checkpoints. Both sides are happy to shoot you. A dog or a cat in the car is a sure sign you’re getting out and that means trouble. The abandoned dogs sit outside their old homes waiting to be let in.
I borrow books from the library on the days it is open. I read about sieges. Constantinople. Delhi. Mafeking. Paris. Dien Bien Phu. Leningrad.
The siege of French forces by the Viet Minh in their garrison Dien Bien Phu took place in 1954 and lasted for exactly fifty-four days. In the middle of that fifty-fourth night the brigadier general in Dien Bien Phu radioed his commander and asked permission to surrender. You’ve done magnificently. Don’t spoil it now by hoisting the white flag, said his commander, three hundred kilometres away. OK, replied the besieged man from his valley hole surrounded and overlooked by tens of thousands of enemy soldiers. I was only thinking to save the wounded. There were five thousand at that time, you understand. Well, see you soon, replied his commander.
French soldiers named their strong-points after women: Beatrice, Gabrielle, Isabelle, Elaine. The men decided to hold off the enemy as long as possible and allow the men in Isabelle to make a run for it – they had the best chance, you see, but only seventy made it anyway, so it was for nothing. Ten thousand were taken captive, force-marched to prison camps across the country. Most of them died on the way.
Nobody had expected the Viet Minh to use nineteenth-century tactics.
In Dien Bien Phu planes dropped rations and the men crept out under the barbed wire into no man’s land to fetch them and were shot to bits. The citizens of Paris ate the animals in the zoo: Castor and Pollux, the elephant pair, were shot through the eyes as nobody could lay hands at the time upon an elephant gun. Only the zoo’s big cats were spared because of the difficulty of approaching them, also the monkeys: people thought they looked too much like humans. Parisians developed a taste for horse meat, which continues, as well as dog, cat and rat meat, which does not. Photographs of Paris during the great siege: people sitting in restaurants with napkins tucked round their necks, munching on rat blanquette accompanied by the last bottles of decent wine.
A heavy mist slides between the trees and across the sloping ground. The tree trunks are slick and black, thick odour of rotting leaves, and – mingled with the cold morning air and the sharp scent of pine – the snap of cordite. A deadly hush. I am alone. I tread with care, weight on the outside of my foot. The dampness helps, softens the ground; the heavy air smothers small sounds. The deer are nowhere to be seen, but I sense them behind the mist, smell their moist breath, see the flash of a liquid gaze and feel a trembling footfall, twitching hide and hair, the quiver of a haunch. They are watching the shape-shifting patterns of mist. At the first tree I pause, wait and listen. I peer through the trees into the almost darkness. Forward, forward, step by step.
Minutes pass and still no sight of the deer. They must be retreating ahead of me, herding uphill. I stop and look the way I have come. The mist is beginning to clear in patches, here and there shafts of sunlight reach the forest bed freeing curls of vapour. Underfoot the ground is soft, springy and damp. The upper tree line is several hundred metres away. I’m closer to the soldiers’ camp than I have ever been though still a good kilometre away and the wind is in my favour.
Out of nowhere a deer barrels across my path: a young male on the edge of panic, the smell of musk and fright all about him. He’s there and gone. It gives me a jolt, a squeeze to the heart. I wait a minute or two before I begin to move steadily in the direction he went. A mature doe comes racing towards me, passing within metres, fleeing some threat, or she’d never come so close. Only a few times in all my years have I been so close to a live animal. Seconds later a group comes racing through the trees, a second group bolt past going the other way. I am caught in the middle of a stampede. There’s something comic about it: the deer, their sudden leaps and graceless crashings, and when they stop they stand around as if they’re embarrassed at their own behaviour, before the madness goes to their heads again and they’re off, ricocheting through the trees.
Something has spooked them – not me, though by now they’ve surely scented me, which is no doubt adding to the general confusion. I wait in the shadow of a tree. There’s no longer any point being here. Nothing can happen now, the deers’ blood is up – I won’t get close to the herd today.
Movement. There’s another animal in these woods. Smaller, nearly as fast as a deer, a softer footfall. It scatters a group of deer and lurches round in a circle before heading back towards them. A dog: a youngster of two or so with huge paws, ears streaming behind him, tongue lolling, the thrill of the chase gone to his head; he races straight past me, the deer have his eye and he’s heady with the scent of them. I don’t recognise him as belonging to anyone in Gost and he doesn’t look like a stray. A hunting breed, well fed, well cared for, totally undisciplined.
The sound of voices. Singing and shouting. Soldiers singing drunken songs. A late-night session has turned into an early morning hunt, but none of them is sober enough for it. The dog is out of control. This is bad for me. The big problem is the dog. At the moment he’s too bound up chasing deer, but the minute I start to run or even move that will all change. If I stay where I am, which I don’t have any choice but to do, he could still come back. I’m pretty sure he’s seen me, he’s just not that interested while there are deer to chase. I stand still and count my breaths.
Three, four minutes pass. I hear the hooves of the panicked deer, catch glimpses of them through the trees. The men’s voices rise with the power of the song, fade and start over. There are two, no, three of them, their singing so tuneless it’s only on the second run I recognise the song as ‘Hajde Da Ludujemo’. Last time I sang it was at Javor and Anka’s place after the party at the Zodijak. I think of how we used to all join in. I think about what would happen if I did so now. I smile.
And then the dog comes back.
This time he sees me, he’s bored of deer he can’t catch, he comes over. A nice dog, glossy and fit. I imagine one of them found him, or stole him somewhere along the front line, from one of the villages where some guy, who may be dead now for all I know, bred him and the rest of his litter.
I put out a hand to him, which is what he wants. Just to say hello. So long as I keep him quiet it can still be OK. Ignoring him will only make him more interested; anything as foolish as trying to hide would have started him barking. I stroke his muzzle and ears. In a quiet voice I tell him to sit. He sits and looks at me expectantly.
I order him to lie down. He does. He waits, looking for his reward. When he figures it isn’t coming, he looks around for an escape and then rises slowly, hoping I won’t call him back. When he thinks he’s clear he bounds away to look for his master.
The singing grows fainter. There are only two of them at it. Another song. They’re moving away, heading to the camp, needing to get back in time to sober up, with a long day murdering civilians ahead of them.
When I judge it safe enough I move. I don’t head back the way I came, but move diagonally downhill, taking advantage of the cover of the trees for as long as possible. It is later than I would like and there’s too much light in the sky. This is a new danger. I have to get out of the woods and across no man’s land without being seen. I start to jog, slowly enough to keep an eye out, fast enough to cover the ground.
I am still in the woods when I come across him. I stop and take cover behind a tree. Standing with his legs apart and his flies undone, pissing against a tree, unsteady on his feet, he sways forward and then back, holding onto his cock as if for balance and staring at the jet of piss. This guy is one of the drunk hunters who’s been left behind by his friends. Only two voices where there had been three. My mistake. I’d assumed they were all still together, but no – here he is, number three, in my way, taking a leak while the sun climbs higher and higher with every second. Soon it will break the horizon. I feel a small jet of rage.
I am barely in his eye line, I move noiselessly until I am out of it. I am less worried about being seen by him than I was by the dog. The guy is dead drunk. I move behind one of the pines and wait for him to finish. He seems to take for ever. I lean against the tree and watch. He shakes the final drops from the end of his cock. I wait for him to zip his flies and stagger off, but he doesn’t. He leans his back against the tree, standing in his own patch of piss, and begins to stroke his cock.
I wait and the waiting goes on, because the guy is drunk and his cock is stiff, but not stiff enough, so he rubs harder and harder but he still can’t make himself come. He tugs at it a couple of times and stares as though his dick has never let him down this way before. I think he’ll give up and stick it back in his pants but he doesn’t. What is he? Nineteen? Twenty? He can go on playing with his dick for hours. He changes hands. I think: Here is my enemy. I am watching my enemy masturbate.
The sun is rising. Above the horizon the sky is whitening.
My enemy. I could tell you I think about the shell that landed on my father’s row of shanty huts; the explosion left him pumping blood when he should have been eating the meat paste sandwich carried by his daughter who is now lying on her back on the grass, the arms that carried the plate blown off. My father was killed at once. Daniela took five hours to go, her whole body shook in a long death rattle. The expression on her face was as if she had done something wrong, like an animal caught in a trap, crying without making any sound. I could tell you I think about all of that, but I don’t. I think about the sun and the dawn which is almost over. I stare at this guy wanking in the forest. I have a silencer on my rifle. His friends will have reached the camp a kilometre away. I raise the gun and it’s the easiest shot I have ever taken.
As for the soldier, he dies with his cock in his hand. I might have waited for him to have one last blast, but then, to be honest, I’d waited long enough.
15
The bowl I’d watched Anka take from the kiln days before is now a deep blue, the colour of sea when the water reaches a certain depth and the sun is high, when you sail over rocks. Fish of different sizes swim head to tail around the inside of the bowl, slender and pale. The bowl is like nothing I have ever seen Anka make, completely different from the thick, brightly painted pieces she makes for the shops. With the small tool in her hand, Anka scrapes at the fish and to each she gives gills, scales. An eye. Every so often she pauses to blow the dust out of the inside of the bowl.
I watch in silence. When she is finished I carry the bowl into the blue house for her. Cardboard and cloth cover the windows, the mirrors are taped across. The plates that used to be displayed on the dresser have been put away. On the table the blue bowl, looking suddenly immensely fragile.
Later in the day I ask Javor, ‘How are the folks?’
‘I was up there today. Roof needed some work. They’re OK.’
‘The house was hit?’
‘Shrapnel.’
He worries about his mother who was due to travel to have an operation at the district hospital a while back. The hospital in Gost is too small. The operation had been scheduled and then cancelled when travelling became difficult. Javor’s father is head of the post office. I told you this. A job he’s been in ten or more years. I’d last seen him at my father’s funeral five weeks ago. He’d brought Chivas Regal and said a few words in the church, the first time I’d ever seen him there, because the family usually worship at the Orthodox. My father had always thought he was about as decent as a boss could get. Too many people got their jobs because of who they knew. My father liked the fact his boss had once been on the floor sorting mail, just like the rest of them.
No post now for five weeks.
I’ve brought over a lark and a pigeon. Anka has stewed the birds whole, there is gravy dark with blood. Anka tells Javor not to put the prices at the Zodijak up any more.
‘Tell Fabjan,’ says Javor. ‘He doesn’t care. He says we sell rakija and beer, not baby milk.’
I’d been in the Zodijak just that morning. Krešimir had been there, too. He’d ignored my nod, as he does unless someone’s looking. When he said goodbye to Fabjan he shook his hand, patted him on the shoulder. Fabjan is fast becoming an important person in Gost, it’s as easy as that. Krešimir behaves with Javor as he does with Fabjan, but I’ve sometimes seen Krešimir give Javor the same low stare he gives me. And I never see Krešimir at the blue house. As far as I know Anka goes alone to visit her mother and brother at the house in town. Maybe this is the only way they have to keep the pecking order alive. Fabjan, who’d hardly bothered to look up when Krešimir left, asked me to help him heft some crates up from the cellar. Every bar in Gost is closed or on the point of it, and yet the Zodijak seems to have a limitless supply of beer, vodka and brandy. This fact I’m sure is connected to the soldiers of the National Guard who I see drinking there in the evenings. Fabjan keeps their glasses filled. When they leave he shakes their hands and this time it’s Fabjan who pats the other men on their shoulders and tries to persuade them to stay, have another drink. One for the long road back to the checkpoint.
Javor and Fabjan are joint owners of the Zodijak but Fabjan takes all the big decisions and mostly this suits Javor just fine. Two things he hates: conflict and hard work. Not that he’s lazy, it’s simply that he’s never had to try too hard. His father is influential, his business partner has ambition enough for both of them. As a young man he walked a straight line from the love of his mother to the love of his wife. He does not lie, because he doesn’t need to. He has never been betrayed; he has never been frightened.
In silence we sit at the table and pick the last shreds of meat from the hollow, ivory bird bones. Anka is thinner, the shadows under her cheekbones have deepened, her skin is pale even though it is summer. For all her outward robustness, there’s a new delicacy about her. She is more beautiful than before. She uses her index finger to wipe the gravy from her plate and lifts it to her mouth. No bread for a week now. We dine on woodpecker and lark, like the kings of long ago, like the Parisians who dined on the elephant meat, on Castor and Pollux. Eating has become our only pleasure. We talk about food all the time.
‘Asparagus, veal saltimbocca,’ I say, describing the food in a hotel restaurant I worked in briefly. ‘With mozzarella and ham from Istria.’ The chef in that restaurant was an Italian and good, but it was attached to an ageing hotel whose corridors smelled of mould and toilet cleaner: the vast restaurant was more often empty. That
nobody came to eat his food didn’t seem to bother him in the least; he executed every order as though he were cooking for a duke. ‘Once in pity I sent through a fake order. Nobody was in the restaurant and the manager was asleep in the office behind the front desk. I took the order, I served it to myself. I ate it. Veal saltimbocca. Asparagus. Another time he made squid ink risotto for the two of us, he told me it was his signature dish. They made it in a lot of the restaurants I worked in but I never tasted it so good.’
As you see we did a good job of holding on to the lie of civilisation.
‘You need a haircut,’ I say to Javor. The soft brush of his hair has grown lank.
‘I told him the same,’ says Anka. ‘You know what he says?’
‘I grow it as an act of protest,’ says Javor. ‘When we are free I will cut my hair. I will also go to the movies, eat fucking maraschino ice cream and demand an audience with the Pope.’
While I listen to all the things Javor never knew he wanted, I look around. There is Anka’s bra hanging to dry at the top of the banister, the picture of her grandparents on the dresser: her grandmother in mud-caked man’s shoes, a wedding dress, her hair framed by the points of a star, on the couch a grey cat reaches out to touch the air with a single paw. ‘Don’t go,’ says Anka, when I rise to leave.
‘I need to, it’s late.’
‘To where? Stay.’ Javor punches me lightly on the arm. ‘It’s dark. Not safe to be out.’
‘As safe as staying.’
‘True.’ The window shutters, closed tight against the night, maybe even the dead eye of a rifle sight high in the hills. Javor stands to switch off the single light above the table before he opens the door.
I walk home slowly. Across the fields the houses of Gost are hidden by the darkness: not a single light, not a single sound, except the whisper and smell of the trees, no movement save for a pair of bats leaving their roosts. I walk on listening to the sound of my footsteps. I imagine the arc of a shell coming from the hills, the blue house blown apart behind me: the slender fish on the sides of the bowl, a golden star and the grey cat flying through the night sky.
The Hired Man Page 19