by Ivan Srsen
The first time an air-raid warning caught me at the office, I watched in surprise as everyone around me leapt up from their desks, rushed to the exit, and, jumping two or three steps at a time, rushed down into the cellar. Fortunately, the only one left in the empty offices was my female coworker with whom I’d gone up on the rooftop, and that worked out just fine because we didn’t have to worry that someone might walk in on us before the all-clear sounded.
6.
I was driving back home from work in my car, and just when I turned onto our street I saw Čedo and his wife coming out of my garden. I knew immediately that I was the only person they could be looking for (they couldn’t have gone to talk to the old woman who lived on the ground floor), but I was also surprised because Čedo hadn’t stopped by my place since we were teenagers. They noticed my car, and stopped to wait for me. By the time I pulled up to them, grabbed my bag and things from the backseat, got out, and went up to them, Kruno came staggering from the other direction. All four of us found ourselves in front of the entrance to my yard.
I said, “Hello!” and just then noticed that Kruno had a pistol tucked into his belt. “What are you doing with that?” I asked, pointing to the gun.
Kruno opened his blazer and said nonchalantly: “Oh, nothing. It’s just a flintlock.”
That was more than I could take. In a moment my pulse was pounding, and blood shot into my head.
“So that’s what people are carrying now, huh? Every yokel carries a pistol, just as yokels used to carry fountain pens around, to have them protruding from their breast pockets! Just in case you need it, right? If some piece of prosciutto starts giving you problems. Or a slice of salami. You use it to open beer bottles, right? A flintlock, you say. A horse pistol! A flintlock is about the same as a horse pistol, it’s just that ignorant yokels don’t know this. You’re off to join a band of highwaymen. Watch out—the way you’ve got it tucked in there, you might end up with no balls!”
I was inspired and couldn’t help myself. Kruno tried babbling something, but just gave me more opportunities to ridicule him. Čedo and his wife froze and didn’t utter a peep, but I didn’t let up at all. Though he was taller than me by a head, he’d had respect for me since he was seventeen when I’d kicked his ass for picking on Brankica and Vesnica, two girls from the neighborhood. He must have wished he hadn’t shown his face.
After a couple of minutes, Čedo tugged his wife by the hand, mumbled something, and they hurried off. But I didn’t let Kruno get away. I kept him there until I’d told him everything I thought about carrying guns, and that was quite a bit.
When Kruno left, I still couldn’t calm down. I went into the house, let my dog out, and we went over to Nikša’s to put an end to my bad mood with some good whiskey.
“Well you don’t know, do you?!” Nikša said. “Last night you didn’t sleep at home, or the night before. Both nights we had air-raid warnings. When the warnings sounded, Kruno went out in the street and started yelling up at Čedo, Where are you, Čedo, you Chetnik?! He cursed his Chetnik mother and father, howling so it echoed up and down the street. Get back to Serbia! and stuff like that. I felt like going out and doing whatever it took to shut him up, but how could I in the dark? I’ve got night blindness.”
Instead of calming down, I got more enraged. If I’d known this, Kruno wouldn’t have gotten off so easily. I struggled to keep myself from running over to his house, because I knew it wouldn’t end well—either I would have strangled him or he would have shot me.
7.
That evening I took the dog out for a walk through the woods. A fairly strong wind was blowing and the treetops rustled with the wind and it almost sounded like a waterfall above my head. Suddenly the sirens wailed. I turned around and started home.
I came out of the woods on a path that leads between two houses to the street and heard Kruno. I didn’t see him because there was no moon; only the stars were shining. So I turned toward him based on his voice. At about fifteen meters away I could also finally make him out: a black figure in the shade of the treetops opposite Čedo’s house. I didn’t have a lot of time to decide what to do.
It was clear to me that I wasn’t going to get him to quiet down by talking to him. He howled to shout down the wind, and not even a pig would listen to what he was yelling.
“Where are you, Čedo, you Chetnik?! Fuck you and your saint’s day too! Are you off to Knin to chop trees down across the road?! Fuck your dead Serbian mother and her rotten tits!”
I could tell that the content of his rant was borrowed from the current media hoopla, and it got its strength from his despair at having to keep living in a single room with his mother while overhead Čedo was spreading his apartment over a whole floor; at the fact that Čedo had graduated from college and had a decent job and Kruno eked out a miserable existence; at the fact that Čedo had a beautiful wife and sweet children, and Kruno couldn’t find anything decent to bang. In his yells I heard the cries of a child who had to sit in a room with his mother while the other kids played outside below his window, the echo of everything good that had slipped away from him and everything bad that had befallen him in place of those unattainable things. Everything was clear to me, including that there wasn’t anything to be said about it.
Kruno couldn’t hear anything other than his own howling, especially over the swaying branches above his head and all around him. A piece of a fallen branch, about a meter long and as thick as a sausage, lay two or three steps behind him. I walked up to him silently from the side and then moved behind him, bent over without pausing, got ahold of the club, and in a single motion, rising up from the ground and putting all the strength of my body into the blow, I whacked him on the top of his head.
He fell silent in the middle of a word; his knees gave way and he collapsed. I tossed the branch next to him, turned around, and went calmly back home. The wind felt good because it cooled me down.
8.
I went into my dark house (during air-raid warnings no one was allowed to turn on any lights that might be seen through the windows) and started preparing something for my dog to eat, when the doorbell rang. Who could that be at this time of day?
I went down to the ground floor, unlocked the door, and wasn’t really surprised to see Čedo. He started talking without saying hello: “Please, can I bring my family over to your place?”
“Of course,” I said without asking why. He immediately turned and ran off.
I waited for them in front of the door. After a few minutes, Čedo and his wife appeared, each carrying a sleepy child. We climbed the stairs in silence and went into the main room of the apartment. I lit a little cemetery candle so they could see a little at least and only when we’d sat down did I ask: “What’s going on?”
“Whenever there’s a warning, some people come into my house in search of weapons. There’s nothing for them to find, but every time they throw everything around and mistreat my wife and children . . . Fortunately I wasn’t ever at home. I was away on business. I don’t know what would happen if they caught me at home.”
It didn’t make any sense to assume anything or for him to tell me any more details. It was clear to me what the three Mad Max characters were looking for on our street.
“A few days ago I wanted to ask you if we could stay at your place whenever there’s a warning, but then Kruno came along . . .”
His wife didn’t say a word the whole time, but you could see she was completely panicking—she was trembling all over. The children, who’d probably been woken up suddenly, were just as afraid.
“What are you going to do now?”
“I don’t know.”
We sat and said nothing, each occupied by our own thoughts. I didn’t have any helpful advice for him. Of course they could stay with me whenever they wanted. I didn’t need to tell him that.
“It’s not even safe here . . .” said Čedo finally. “If they come looking for me, and I’m not there, Kruno will know right away where I’
m probably hiding. You’re the only one of my friends in the area who lives alone, and he’s seen me here . . .”
His wife started softly crying and looking around, as if someone might burst in at any moment.
9.
“I have to get to Sesvete!” Čedo suddenly announced, as if he’d been stung by a wasp. “They’re waiting for us there. I said I’d come tomorrow and get my family to safety, but this warning caught us by surprise. I didn’t expect there to be a warning tonight . . . There were two short ones already during the day—”
“How are you going to get to Sesvete?” I asked, interrupting him. “That’s all the way on the other side of town. The taxis aren’t running.”
“I’m taking my car. We can’t stay here.”
“Don’t be an idiot. Driving is prohibited during an air-raid warning. And how will you drive in the dark anyway?”
“I have to!” he shouted, resolute in his desperation. He got up and called to his wife, “Let’s go!”
I couldn’t keep them from going, so I went after them. They were carrying their children and only then did I notice that they were dragging a small blue bag that probably had their papers and bare necessities. We went out of the yard and when we made it to where my car was parked I said: “Stop! I’ll take you there.”
Čedo looked at me in astonishment. “How will you drive us there? The city is under a blackout. Driving is prohibited, and you’ll have to make it back too.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I have scotopic vision.”
“What’s that?”
“It means I can see in the dark.”
“I’ve never heard of that,” Čedo said.
“Now you have,” I told him. “And now you’ll see too.”
10.
I put them in my car and we drove off. It was really dark and I drove slowly, maybe twenty kilometers an hour, but managed not to turn onto any one-way streets or prohibited lanes. I wasn’t afraid of coming upon another vehicle, but instead we encountered pedestrians walking in the middle of the street because there was no traffic. Every so often we passed by defensive positions on street corners, mostly sandbags stacked in circles, over which the barrel of a machine gun protruded. Some streets were blocked with antitank obstacles, and we had to snake our way around them. Now and then we passed by groups of armed men and I had to slow down so none of the jittery ones would take a shot at us.
On one street we were stopped between some antitank hedgehogs by some armed men in unfamiliar-looking uniforms. The barrel of an automatic rifle poked in through the window and pushed against my temple.
“Where are you going?”
Čedo froze next to me. I answered without missing a beat: “Journalists!” and waved the press pass that we had all received in the company, whether we were journalists or not. They couldn’t read it in the dark, but I sounded self-confident enough to get the barrel pulled back immediately. Fortunately they hadn’t seen the children lying beside their mother in the backseat, covered with blankets. If they had, we would have had some explaining to do, and who knows where we would have ended up.
We were stopped in the same manner two more times, but when we reached Kvaternikov Square the warning was over. The danger of someone stopping us and harassing us about why we were on the road had passed. All that remained was the possibility that someone would stop and harass us for no reason, though it was considerably less likely. In place of a total blackout there was now a partial one. All turn signals, traffic lights, and other lights were masked over with black tape, except for a slit the width of a finger on headlights, which was more than enough. On the empty roads we reached Sesvete in no time. I entered into unfamiliar territory. Čedo led me, saying, “Left,” “Right,” “Straight ahead,” and finally we stopped in front of some house. His wife carried one child, took the other by the hand, and immediately darted off into the house. Čedo and I were overcome with exhaustion. We shook hands without a word, and then embraced, standing there for a few moments clutching one another, and then parted in silence.
That was the last time I saw him. I heard that he stayed in the house in Sesvete for about a month until he received papers allowing him and his family to leave for the Netherlands. They split and, as far as I know, never came back, not even for a vacation.
11.
I no longer remember how I made it home. I didn’t go to work the next day; I slept until noon. I was awakened by my dog, who wanted me to let him out into the garden. I went down in my pajamas and as I waited for the dog to do his business, Kruno came walking down the road. His head was wrapped in a gleaming white bandage.
“What happened to you?” I called out.
“Nothing,” he said, unable to look at me and hating every word that I pulled out of him. “A branch fell on my head last night. It must have been the wind.”
“Don’t tell me you went out during the air-raid warning in that wind!” I said, smiling from ear to ear. “This weather is dangerous. Be glad it didn’t gobble you up!”
Along with my special ability to see in the dark, I suddenly had a feeling that I’d gained another—to see darkness during the day. The day was sunny and nice, everything was bright all around, but it seemed to me that everything had gone dark, that the darkness was thickening and that it was a darkness that we would not be able to get rid of for a long time. I shivered at the terrible thought of a biblical night in which many good people would disappear. I remembered how my grandfather used to say, “War is a bad thing because it creates many more wicked people than it destroys.”
A few months later Kruno received a mobilization call. Panic-stricken that they would send him to the front, he shot himself in the leg with his own revolver. I’m sure he managed to get himself a pension as a wounded volunteer in the Homeland War—since he finally moved out of that room, he must have gotten an apartment somewhere else as a veteran.
12.
The war came to an end. With time new tenants settled in the neighborhood. Now they were mostly foreign diplomats and local gangsters—it was hard to tell who was worse. Yugoslavia broke up into seven states. Those states seem funny to me. Say, Croatia. I always break out laughing when I come to the border right after Samobor. Imagine a state with a border only twenty kilometers from its capital city! Crazy. You say it’s forty? Sorry, forty. That’s much more serious.
Around five years after the story I’ve just told, the company that employed me began to work with some printing press in the Slovenian town of Kopar. The Slovenes proved to be a pain in the ass. They only spoke Slovene, and the guy with whom I had to work most often was the worst of all. Svetozar! First, until not too long ago, all Slovenes spoke Croatio-Serbian (or Serbo-Croatian, or whatever that language is called). How could they have forgotten it in just five years?! Second, that Svetozar used particularly crazy Slovene words and it was often almost impossible to understand what he was saying. And his name was Svetozar—typically Serbian! I resolved to only speak Croatian, and he could deal with it as best he knew how; but he even more resolutely spoke back in Slovene. He wouldn’t give in. A few times when there were problems at work I switched to English, which I spoke better, and he answered in German, which was easier for him. Hardly anyone at work caused me more problems than he did. There was no chance of him ever meeting me halfway, and he never missed an opportunity to spite me.
That continued until one day when my phone rang at work. I picked up the receiver, and though I recognized the voice, I couldn’t believe what I heard on the other end of the phone: “Hey, Mr. Scotopic Vision!”
“What? Who is this?”
“Svetozar from Kopar!”
“What did you call me?”
“Mr. Scotopic Vision! That’s who you are!” He started chuckling heartily.
“Maybe I am. How could you have known that?”
“Čedo in the Netherlands is my cousin. We met up last weekend in Vienna. I mentioned you and he told me everything—how you drove him during the air-raid war
ning, through the blackout . . .”
I was suddenly filled with a stark attack of intuition.“Svetozar, where are you from? Kopar?”
He began to chuckle again, and then turned serious: “From Gospić.” Serbs in that Croatian town certainly have seen happier days than those in the fall of 1991.
And from that moment on there weren’t any problems. My boss was surprised at how our collaboration with the Kopar printing press improved and continued without incident; they even lowered the prices. It was great. But for me, Svetozar’s sudden transformation somehow meant more than the removal of the problems at work. I had that deceptive feeling that there was finally a light at the end of the tunnel.
Numbers 1–3
by NADA GAŠIĆ
Zvonimirova
Translated by Ellen Elias-Bursac
There is only one building in Zagreb more fear-inspiring than the one where I live: a big, long, gray building visible from afar at the intersection of Držićeva and Vukovarska; its visibility is quite a plus compared to the building where I live; my building can be easily ignored. The other building is the more interesting of the two because it is known for an urban legend purporting that the movie The Trial was shot there; yes, The Trial, based on Kafka’s novel, directed, as I recall, by Orson Welles, and it was said that Alain Delon ran through those very corridors. I may be the only person who remembers the scenes shown on TV here while TV was still black-and-white.
This building where I now live is not, at first glance, so very peculiar. It is not the longest, nor the shortest, nor the ugliest, nor the seediest; there is no information about it on the Internet, not even the most basic explanation of where its name, the Fišer building, comes from. Yet really it couldn’t be weirder. It has two entranceways and two street numbers: number 1 and number 3. There is no number 2.