The male ward was located on the second floor behind a wide door with frosted glass. The nurses’ station was directly behind it, on the right-hand side. Milena knocked.
The matron, Sister Dunja, had the telephone pressed between her shoulder blade and her ear and was massaging her foot. She looked tired when she glanced up and said into the receiver, ‘I’ve got to go now. Be good and don’t mess around, you hear me?’
One of the bank of lights on the wall started to blink and at the time a muffled buzzer sounded. Sister Dunja ignored them. She slipped her foot back into her sandal and said, ‘Come in, Mrs Lukin. I need to have a word with you anyway.’
Shock made Milena freeze in the doorway. ‘Has something happened? Have there been complications?’
‘Your uncle is fine. It’s to do with your mother.’ She straightened her nurse’s cap and closed the door behind Milena. ‘That is to say, it concerns the homemade remedy that she brought him yesterday.’
Relieved, Milena breathed easy again. ‘He had complained of rheumatism,’ she said. ‘My mother swears by this old recipe for joint pain.’
Sister Dunja nodded grimly. ‘Schnapps made from plums, mixed with camphor, rosemary and some sort of roots, right? The gentlemen definitely approved.’ She picked up a notepad and recited, ‘Loud singing, and Mr Stojadin hyperventilated.
Only when the night nurse made him breathe through a paper bag could he breathe normally again.’ She screwed up the sheet of paper and threw it into the bin. ‘We don’t want to make a mountain out of a molehill. Even so, if this gets out I’ll lose my job. So, please: no alcohol on the ward, in any form whatsoever. Please tell your mother, and in future check what you bring in. We’re so short staffed we can’t have our eyes everywhere.’
‘Of course.’
‘I’m counting on you.’
‘That goes without saying. It won’t happen again.’ She felt uncomfortable being told off by this woman who worked her fingers to the bone for the good of the patients and for scant reward. She had a haggard face, even though she wasn’t that old – not yet thirty. No wedding ring, perhaps even a single parent. Ashamed, Milena turned around and made to leave. In the doorway, she changed her mind.
‘I almost forgot.’ She put down her bags and rummaged for a particular tub with a red lid. ‘I brought you some of our blueberry pastry,’ she said. ‘Homemade, with healthy honey. And with our thanks for going out of your way to care for my uncle.’
Sister Dunja took the plastic tub with a nod of her head; a smile flitted across her face. ‘You really didn’t need to.’ She weighed the container in her hand for a moment and then put it down on top of a pile of well-thumbed magazines. ‘Your uncle is a very nice and charming patient. And he’s actually quite easy to deal with, by the way.’
His room was situated at the end of the corridor, the last door but one. It contained six beds, three on each side. Vera had not rested until her brother had been transferred here from Niš, as she had insisted on the best specialists in the whole of Serbia operating on the fractured head of his femur. The fact that it had been a clean, uncomplicated break, which the doctors in Niš could have treated very easily, was of no comfort to Vera. The big loser in all this kerfuffle was Aunt Isidora; she had to make the long journey from southern Serbia to see her husband.
Uncle Miodrag had the bed by the window on the righthand side, with a fine view of the old trees. One disadvantage, though, was that it was draughty. Vera had tried to improve things by cramming ‘war sausages’ – old duvet covers stuffed with rags – into the gap between the two windows – much to the annoyance of the nurses, as they had to remove them every time they wanted to air the room.
And then there was the floor: the old lino was ripped at the edges, especially below the metal skirting boards – breeding grounds for all sorts of vermin and bacteria, which Milena’s mother regularly disinfected. But Vera’s even greater fear was that, confined to his bed, her beloved brother would develop bedsores – he, of all people, who was always so active, and used to dash around tending to his bees, roses and vines.
As a precaution, Milena got hold of a special knobbly mattress cover, which was supposed to help improve circulation and which – with the help of the nurses – she manoeuvred into position between the sheet and the mattress. If that didn’t work, she still had some good silver adhesive plasters from Germany at home in the medicine cabinet.
‘You’re late!’ yelled Uncle Miodrag.
She kissed him on the cheek, and he muttered, ‘I thought Adam was coming with you today. What’s happened to him?’
‘He has classes in the afternoon.’
He had shaved, and smelt of expensive cologne. She put her newspaper down on the blanket and started to unpack. ‘How are you feeling? What did you have for lunch?’
He counted on his fingers. ‘One piece of meat, the size of a biscuit and hard as shoe leather. With some kind of purée on the side – vegetables, I think. The usual soup to start with; Boško’s convinced it’s warmed-up dishwater. But the pudding was halfway decent, at least.’
Milena unwrapped a plate, a glass and some cutlery from the chequered tea towel, pulled the nightstand over to the bedside and started laying the table. Uncle Miodrag took a piece of cheese and said quietly, ‘Dimitrije talks about rapeseed all day long. He wants to switch to rape because he thinks when Serbia joins the EU he’ll grow rich on rapeseed oil. But he’ll have to wait a long time before that happens.’
‘Eat the parsley, it’s good for your blood pressure.’ Milena poured a glass of cinnamon milk. ‘I mean it. I don’t want them to end up giving you statins. Vera would have a fit.’ She started to make up cheese sandwiches.
‘No sweet today?’ Uncle Miodrag reached for the newspaper.
‘I had to use the blueberry pastry to buy off Sister Dunja, because you caused such a ruckus here yesterday! No more compresses in future, d’you hear? Not even if your joints hurt like hell. How are they, by the way? Are you in pain?’
The visitors who entered the room at that moment and politely said hello, laden with flowers and sweets, were all here for Kosta Popovi, a small, well-groomed man with a tanned forehead and receding grey hairline who was in for a hip replacement. The hullabaloo they kicked up may have been the reason why Boško, the factory worker from Kragejevac, had quit the room as fast as his crutches would carry him.
Somehow she had grown fond of all these men. Mr Stojadin, earplugs in place and white as a sheet, was always immersed in books on nineteenth-century European social history when visiting hour arrived. The man with the clipped moustache, who was in the bed at the end of the row, never had visitors and never said a word. Uncle Miodrag claimed he was an Arab and his clan was far away. Milena got the feeling she’d seen him somewhere before.
She swept up the crumbs and packed away the used cutlery in a piece of kitchen towel. She was sure – though she said nothing – that all the leftovers would be polished off by the time the next visiting hour came around, and that Uncle Miodrag, who could not possibly eat all that food on his own, would have shared it with his roommates. Tomorrow she’d bring fresh supplies.
‘As I said,’ Milena continued, pouring more milk, ‘Aunt Isidora will arrive on Sunday. We’ll pick her up from the station and then we’ll come straight here.’
Uncle Miodrag had disappeared behind the newspaper, anchoring it as a wall between the left and right hands of his outstretched arms.
‘Uncle Miodrag?’ Milena leant forward. ‘Is everything all right?’ She laid her hand gently on his arm and repeated, ‘Uncle Miodrag?’
He gazed at her expressionlessly, as if he were far away, and opened his mouth to speak – but no sound emerged. He handed her the newspaper. Set in bold type, the headline jumped out at her: Serbian compatriots murdered in Kosovo. Below, slightly smaller, was the sub-head: Police left in the dark. Ethnic motives cannot be ruled out.
Milena frowned, put on her glasses and read the article: ‘A Serbian couple
have become the victims of a murderous attack in the former Serbian republic of Kosovo. According to local police reports, the incident occurred on Friday last week. Both victims were killed by a shot to the back of the head in their house in the village of Talinovac, near Ferizaj (Serbian: Uroševac). A spokesman reported that cartridge cases, 7.62 mm calibre, were found at the scene. The Kosovan Albanian Regional Prosecutor has begun an investigation under the supervision of the multinational protection unit Kosovo Force (KFOR). Read more on page 4, news; editorial on page 7.’
The colour photograph showed a green, hilly landscape, with a few scattered houses, all very picturesque. Next to it were two more photos, this time in black and white, small like passport photographs and slightly out of focus, showing two elderly people. The caption read: Miloš and Ljubinka Valetić returned to their homeland and immediately met their deaths.
Uncle Miodrag’s voice was hoarse. ‘Please tell me, does it really say Ljubinka Valetić?’
Milena let the newspaper drop and looked at him in surprise. ‘You know her?’
‘She had the most beautiful eyes in the world. I wanted to marry her.’
‘What?’
‘That was long before your Aunt Isidora.’ Uncle Miodrag spoke very softly. ‘Ljubinka Višekruna, she was then. I’m afraid I wasn’t good enough for her, so she took up with that Valetić instead.’ He sat up straight with a pained groan. ‘And now she’s dead, they say? Murdered?’
Milena looked at the photograph: an old woman with hair loosely combed back, and a slightly crooked mouth as if she were feigning a smile – which gave her an air of shyness, of a girl, as far as one could tell from that grainy image, at least. The man in the other photograph looked more severe, more determined, though not unfriendly. He had a noble, almost aristocratic air. It may have been something to do with his posture, or his slender nose, which was slightly too long.
‘Miloš and Ljubinka Valetić,’ Milena murmured, and turned to the fourth page. ‘Are you sure you’re not mistaking them for somebody else?’
‘I know that she went to Priština with him back then,’ Uncle Miodrag replied. ‘I believe he got a post there. A totally unprepossessing guy, that Valetić; I don’t really recall much about him.’
Milena smoothed down the page. ‘Miloš and Ljubinka Valetić were two of a larger group of returnees, it says here. They were part of the EU programme. They only left Kosovo and came to Belgrade in 2000. Back then they were refugees.’
‘They were refugees here in Belgrade, the most beautiful city on earth, and voluntarily returned to that pandemonium?’ He shook his head. ‘Why? Just because of some EU programme? Didn’t they have a life here?’ He reached for the newspaper. ‘Does it say anything else? About who did it? Or what exactly happened?’
Milena ran her finger over the column as she read aloud. ‘The Kosovan Albanian government spokeswoman condemned the murders and demanded a no-holds-barred investigation of the crime, which ran completely counter to the values of the society of the young state of Kosovo.’
‘Hear, hear.’
‘The rights and liberty of each individual, irrespective of their ethnicity, must be respected and protected. The Kosovan Albanian prime minister and parliamentary president also condemned this act of violence. A search of the neighbouring houses of both Serbian and Albanian families was ordered and carried out, but nothing relating to the crime was discovered. There are no reports of any conflict between the retired murdered couple and the local Kosovan Albanian residents.’
Uncle Miodrag pressed his thumb and index finger against the bridge of his nose and said, as if talking to himself, ‘Why didn’t she get in touch with me when she got into trouble? I was in southern Serbia the whole time, very close by, always in Prokuplje, never anywhere else. Isidora and I – we would have helped them out, for sure.’
Milena looked at the photographs one more time. The landscape was idyllic, there was so much open country there. How great did people’s hatred have to be to kill two old people in so brutal a fashion – people who had most of their lives behind them and meant no harm to anybody? She looked out of the window, at the branches and the first emerging green leaves.
‘Do you know whether they had any children?’ asked Milena.
Uncle Miodrag didn’t answer. He was white as a sheet and staring up at the ceiling with its big round lamp fitting.
She softly squeezed his arm. ‘Get some rest.’ She folded the tea towel and stowed the cutlery away in her bag.
‘She was so…’ As he groped for the right word, he turned his head to look at Milena. ‘She was so totally different from your Aunt Isidora.’
She looked at her uncle with great tenderness, surveying his wrinkles, the finely drawn map of lines around his mouth, nose and eyes. His lips were dry and his cheeks sunken, and the hospital-induced paleness of his skin showed up an abundance of blotches, which she had not noticed before. She carefully brushed back a thin strand of hair from his forehead. She would do anything to ease her uncle’s grief.
‘Go, my child,’ Uncle Miodrag said. ‘It’s time. Adam will be waiting for you.’
She nodded and folded the newspaper.
He raised his hand. ‘Could you leave that here, please?’
Reluctantly she put the paper on his bedside table, bent down and kissed him on his forehead. ‘Tomorrow you’ll get your blueberry pastry.’
She had reached the hallway and almost closed the door behind her when she glanced back one more time.
Uncle Miodrag had fixed his gaze on the trees and had his right fist pressed to his mouth. She had never seen him cry before.
She pulled the door shut quietly and set off down the hallway. She walked fast, almost breaking into a run.
✴
The sun shone from the west down Count Michael Street, illuminating the colourful façades, the stucco, ornamentation and pilasters – the splendour of the nineteenth century, a time when the people here had long wished for the Habsburgs to go to hell, but still emulated their architectural style.
Milena steered a zigzag course around the people idly ambling along at the end of the day, pressing their noses against the large shop windows. Tourists swayed to the rhythms of catchy English pop and Russian folk tunes, played by a street musician with a rough voice, guitar and amplifier. He profited quite handsomely from the change the tourists got from the popcorn booth and tossed into his battered hat. Milena turned into a side street, Vuk Karadžić Street, where it was far quieter.
At the end of the street on the right was the Red Rooster. It wouldn’t be long before the young people started sitting outside again at the bar, sipping espresso macchiato and Aperol Spritz and exuding an atmosphere of coolness, success and affluence. Only the building behind them didn’t really fit this picture.
When the sun was at this low angle, this old barn of a building robbed the square of its light, and its sad grey-brown colour cast a sombre mood over the scene. The holes in the plaster – in places as large as a square metre – disfigured a façade that must once have been very beautiful. Huge plywood boards covered some of the rotten windows on the ground floor, and were the only indication that somebody was actually aware of the dilapidation, apart from those poor so-and-sos who actually worked there, like Milena and the other employees of the Institute for Forensic Science and Criminology.
Milena, moreover, knew what others didn’t even suspect: that the entrance hall had a beautiful vaulted glass ceiling, and that the walls of the staircase and the hallways were painted pale yellow. There were moments, gazing at the stucco ceilings and walking over the creaking parquet floor, when you could imagine yourself in a castle. Milena felt at home in the institute. And she would have felt even more comfortable there if her office on the first floor – the last but one at the end of a long corridor, and a former box-room – had had central heating.
She closed the door behind her, and hung her bag on the chair and her coat on its hook. As her computer started up and the p
rogrammes opened, she crawled under the desk and switched on the electric heater. Then she clicked on her web browser, put on her spectacles and opened the online version of Kurier newspaper.
Death in Kosovo, read the tabloid headline. Retired couple brutally murdered. The photographs of Miloš and Ljubinka Valetić were the same ones she had seen in the broadsheet newspaper Politika; the only difference was that here they were even bigger and more grainy. Milena scrolled through the text. Acts of repression against Serbian residents of Kosovo had reached new heights, and the security of the Serbian citizens there could not be guaranteed. The editorial in the Vreme newspaper was statesmanlike: it appealed to international representatives and local institutions to clear up this crime as quickly as possible and to ensure a quiet, secure and dignified life for the Serbian inhabitants of Talinovac and all other places in Kosovo. Milena clicked on the Blitz, another scandal rag. Again, the faces of Miloš and Ljubinka Valetić leapt out at her. Serbian couple executed – why? Suddenly, there was a knock at the door.
Boris Grubač was not the kind of boss who waited for a ‘Come in!’ and Milena had long given up trying to teach a man of almost sixty to behave properly. She preferred to stare at the screen, count to five and turn to him with an expression on her face that hopefully made it clear to him that she was very busy and he should keep it brief.
His shirt was so tight around his waist that he might have just polished off a huge helping of the Bosnian stew that his wife Itana so lovingly prepared for him. His face was unusually flushed and his thinning hair, which now grew luxuriantly only in his ears and nostrils, stuck sweatily to his skull and temples. ‘My dear Ms Lukin!’ he trumpeted, causing a light mist of spittle to descend on the desk and keyboard. ‘I’m delighted that you’ve decided to grace us with your presence here today after all.’
It was pointless reminding Grubač that she had already done battle today with the students and professors at the law faculty, who were either chronically lazy or fantastically selfimportant. Grubač himself was proof positive that lazybones and pompous asses could be one and the same person. But today something had clearly happened to upset that equilibrium. Grubač was like a pressure cooker which had to let off steam, the quicker the better.
Peony Red Page 2