There’s movement in the window. A change, a slight shifting in the light. A shadow behind the plastic where before there was no shadow. Her finger covers the trigger. All she needs is for him to show himself for an instant. To make a move that will tell her who he is. It’s a small thing. Just another one of the small things that are not small things. The sum is almost tallied. One more movement is all it will take.
The music stops. Arrow doesn’t remember having heard the last few minutes, and can’t say whether the cellist has finished, or if something has happened. She keeps her focus on the fourth-floor window. Her universe consists of one square metre of plastic. And nothing happens. Nothing moves, nothing changes. Ten minutes go by. When she looks down to the street the cellist is gone.
She sinks into the floor, unsure of what has taken place. She was sure he was there. Now she isn’t so sure. Why didn’t he fire? He had the shot. He must have had the shot. It doesn’t make sense. Why hang around for another day? A trip into enemy territory is dangerous and uncomfortable, something to be kept as short as possible. If the shot is there, you take it and get out. But he didn’t.
She feels as though she’s failed, though she knows she hasn’t. Her job is to keep the cellist alive. Nermin said so himself in those exact terms. Whether an enemy sniper is killed is not the issue. The cellist is alive. He will be there tomorrow. So she hasn’t failed.
Arrow wonders about the two girls who laid flowers in front of the cellist. Do they hate the men on the hills as much as she does? Do they hate them for being murderous bastards, killers without remorse? She hopes not. That’s too easy. If they hate the men on the hills, then they are forced to hate her too. She kills just the same as they do. On days like today when she doesn’t kill, she feels a loss that reveals a hostility within her that goes deeper than a lack of remorse. It’s almost a lust.
She hopes that the girls, and the rest of the city, hate the men on the hills for the same reason she does. Because they made her hate. They started a war, saying that the people of Sarajevo hated each other, and the people fought back, saying they didn’t, that they were a city without hatred. But then the men on the hills started to kill and mutilate and destroy. And little by little they got what they wanted, a victory as clear as it would be if they could drive their tanks through the town. They made her, and people like her, hate them.
Hours later, when it’s almost dark and Arrow considers it safe to leave the apartment, she walks past the bouquet the two girls left, and sees that it’s part of a larger offering of flowers that have been placed at the feet of the cellist, in the place where the shell fell. Some are wilting. She now understands what the girls were doing. What she does not understand is how it’s possible that she hasn’t noticed the pyre of dry flowers until now. Arrow turns away and walks towards her apartment, knowing she’ll be back tomorrow.
Kenan
IT IS ALL KENAN CAN DO TO LOOK UP AT WHAT REMAINS of the National Library. Though the stone and brick structure still stands, its insides are completely consumed. The fire has left sooty licks above each window, and the domed glass ceiling that stood proud atop the building for a century has shattered to the floor. The tram once turned a semicircle here, offering a comprehensive view of the iconic building. It was one of his favourite places in the city, though he wasn’t a great reader. It was the most visible manifestation of a society he was proud of. Now the tram tracks serve no purpose and show only what’s been lost.
The men on the hills made the library one of their first targets, and they took to their task with great efficiency. Kenan didn’t know if it was shells that started the fire, or if someone smuggled in a bomb as they did in the post office, but he knew that as it burned they fired incendiary shells at it. He went there when he heard it was burning, without knowing why. He watched, helpless and useless, as this symbol of what the city was and what many still wanted it to be, gave in to the desires of the men on the hills.
Fire trucks arrived, and they became targets, shot at by unseen snipers. Shells were launched at them by an army that had once sworn to protect the city. The firefighters battled the flames for as long as they could, until they were ordered back by some commander who saw the futility of the situation. Kenan saw one fireman, probably in his late twenties, stand by himself and watch the inferno rage. He didn’t move at all until, exhausted, he caved in on himself, fell to his knees. His fellow firemen rushed to him, thinking a sniper had hit him. As they helped him to his feet and led him away, Kenan saw that his cheeks were streaked with sweat or tears, and his lips were moving, silent, in a way that made Kenan think he was praying. For days afterwards, the ash of a million books floated down onto the city like snow.
At the time, Kenan believed the fireman was overcome by the loss of the library, but he now thinks what brought him to his knees was his inability to do anything to save it, or even slow its loss. When Kenan’s children ask why this war is happening, why people are being starved and shot at, and he can’t answer them, when he sees them suffering and there is nothing he can do about it, he sees the fireman in himself and he wishes someone would pick him up and carry him away. He cannot collapse, though, because his children look to him to reassure them that everything will be fine, that the war will end, that they will all survive. There are times when he doesn’t know how he manages not to evaporate, how his clothes don’t fall to the floor, emptied of what little substance he was filling them with.
He rounds the corner, and the Šeher Ćehaja Bridge lies ahead. He stops and adjusts his water bottles before taking shelter behind one of the library’s great supporting arches. He scans the hills, not quite sure what he’s looking for, but wanting some sort of reassurance that there’s no one with a gun trained on the bridge. After a few minutes, a man and a woman come around the corner. They look at him, suspicious, but don’t stop. They head towards the bridge, and Kenan considers calling out to them, but there’s nothing he can say that will be of use. Telling them there might be a sniper watching the bridge is a little like saying the sun has come up this morning. So he lets them go. They can be his guinea pigs.
They are almost casual in their approach. They don’t look up at the southern hills, they don’t stop. When they reach the bridge they pick up their pace a bit, more than a fast walk but not quite a jog. The woman moves a little faster than the man, and he speeds up to stay beside her. As they near the middle of the bridge Kenan feels an overwhelming sense of doom, is sure that shots are about to come, they’re both going to be killed. But the shots never come, and the couple make it to the other side. They slow down a little, perhaps feeling they’re out of danger, though Kenan knows they can still be hit. They’re not safe until they’re behind the cover of the buildings, but the couple either don’t know this or don’t care.
A woman comes up behind him. She’s in her early fifties, he thinks, her hair mostly grey, though that’s not a good way to tell anymore. He never knew how many women put colour in their hair until the war came and hair dye became another commodity for black marketeers. Kenan looks at the woman again, thinks maybe she’s younger than he first thought. She might even be his age. There is no way to tell what the war has done to age her.
She has a four-litre water jug in each hand. She acknowledges Kenan, looks at the bridge. “Is it safe?”
Kenan shrugs. “A couple just went over and no one was shot. But who knows.”
The woman sees his water canisters. “Are you going to the brewery?”
“Yes.” For an instant Kenan wonders if she’s going to ask him to get water for her, but knows even before he’s done thinking it that he’s being irrational. “You?”
“If I can. The hill is steep, so I stop and rest a lot. But I’ll make it. It’s the bridge I don’t like.” She looks again at the bridge, then the hills.
“I think it’s safe.” He considers asking her what she looks for in the hills. Maybe she knows something specific that he doesn’t.
The woman doesn’t respond, a
nd Kenan gets the feeling that he is intruding on her privacy, even though he was here first and they are in no way in a private place. He wants to be away from here, though, so he picks up his jugs and takes one last look at the bridge.
“Are you going now?” she asks, standing up straighter.
“Yes.” He hesitates, unsure of what she wants from him, or if she wants anything. “Do you want to go together? You know, safety in numbers?”
She appears to be considering his proposal. He wonders which one of them is a more appealing target, then stops himself. This is no way to think.
“No,” she says. “I think I’ll rest here for a while.”
He nods to her and steps out onto the street. He is glad to be moving along. He isn’t sure what just happened, but there was something about the nature of this interaction that unnerved him. He moves as quickly as he can, a slow jog at first and then faster. His feet hit the bridge, and he knows he’s now exposed. He zigzags a little, right then left then right, then runs in a straight line, attempting to create no pattern in his movements. The trick is to keep your movements random but not frenetic. He once saw a man move too quickly to the side in an attempt to be evasive, and his foot slipped out from under him and his ankle snapped. He lay in the street for several minutes until someone came and helped him to safety. Although no shot ever came it just as easily could have, and the man would have done most of the sniper’s work for him.
Kenan’s water bottles thump against each other, and though it’s not a loud noise it sounds to him like the beating of drums, and this frightens him, makes him think someone is hunting him. He runs faster, much faster than he thinks is safe, but terror has wrapped its arms around him and he can’t help himself. The end of the bridge is just ahead, and his foot catches on a cleft in the pavement. It seems like he’s going to fall, but he doesn’t, somehow, and he recovers himself enough to stumble across the rest of the bridge to the protection of a small building to his left.
He sits there, wheezing, his lungs hot and dry, until his breathing slows, and he pulls himself to his feet. He glances back at the library and sees the woman looking at him. It’s too far for him to be sure, but he imagines she’s laughing at him. She is, he realizes, using him as her guinea pig, just as he did the couple before. Did he reassure her, he wonders, or make her more reluctant to cross? She doesn’t move from shelter, so he assumes he didn’t instill any confidence in her.
In front of him is a café he used to go to, the Spite House. The story is that it used to be on the other side of the river, on the right bank. When the Austro-Hungarians regulated the flow of the Miljacka it was in the way, but the owner refused to allow it to be demolished. He agreed to give up his piece of land only on condition that his house be moved, brick by brick, across the river to the left bank. In addition, he demanded a bag of ducats, out of spite. Kenan’s never been sure whether the story’s true or not, but he doesn’t think it matters. What he wants now is for the men on the hills to come down and put every building back the way it was, brick by brick. If they can cough up some money too, who is he to say what is spite and what is reparation? He looks at the now closed restaurant and laughs a little at the thought. The men on the hills will come down into the city for only one reason, and it won’t be to make things the way they used to be.
He picks up his bottles, puts the rope over his shoulder, then stoops to pick up Mrs. Ristovski’s bottles as well. He can’t understand why she insists on these particular containers, why she can’t switch to ones with handles. He knows she’s old and set in her ways, but it’s not as though she’s been using these containers to carry water all her life. She’s been dealing with the water shortage for exactly the same amount of time that he has, but without having to make the trek down a hill, through town, across a bridge, up another hill and home again. If anyone should be set in his ways it’s him.
He remembers meeting her, almost seventeen years ago. He and Amila were in their early twenties, just married, their first daughter only months old. They moved into their apartment on a dreary spring morning, and in the afternoon they heard an insistent knock at the door they would come to know well.
Kenan opened up and found Mrs. Ristovski standing there, looking much the same as she did today. She thrust a potted fern into his hands, stepped forward, removed her shoes and looked at him.
“I am your neighbour, Mrs. Ristovski,” she said. “Do you have any slippers?”
Kenan introduced himself, handed the plant to his bemused wife and rooted through several boxes until he found a pair of slippers.
“They’re a little small,” she said as she jammed her feet into them, “but they’ll do for now. Next time I’ll bring my own.”
They sat on the sofa Kenan’s parents had given them as a wedding present while his wife made them coffee. Mrs. Ristovski gave him a long list of do’s and don’ts regarding the fern, which he listened to as attentively as he could. The baby was sleeping in the next room. He mentioned her presence several times and spoke in a soft voice, hoping Mrs. Ristovski would follow suit. But she grew louder every time she spoke, until it seemed to Kenan that she was shouting.
His wife returned with the coffee just as the baby woke, screaming. She scowled at him, as though it was his fault Mrs. Ristovski couldn’t keep her voice down. When Amila was gone, Mrs. Ristovski took a small sip of her coffee and wrinkled up her face. “That’s quite a holler your baby has. I hope you and your wife aren’t as loud.”
Kenan assured her they were not, and the rest of the visit passed more or less without incident. She returned once or twice a week from then on, usually in the evenings when Kenan was home. He followed her instructions about the fern as well as he could, but it deteriorated rapidly in his care. This did not escape Mrs. Ristovski’s notice. On a subsequent visit, she looked at the dead fern, shook her head and said, “I hope you’re better with children than you are with plants. They are considerably more difficult.”
Kenan later learned that every time someone moved into the building, Mrs. Ristovski brought them a fern that without exception died a few weeks later. The common opinion was that it had somehow been poisoned, doomed from the beginning, but Kenan never really believed it. He had, however, noticed that her apartment itself had no plants of any kind.
He often found himself defending her to others, half-heartedly, reminding them that her husband had died fifty years ago and she’d been alone ever since. But the more he thought about it, the less that seemed a good reason for her bitterness. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-five when she was widowed, which was certainly young enough to begin a life again. He didn’t have a clue what had made her the way she was, if it was losing her husband in the war, the war itself or something that happened after. Maybe she was always like this.
None of this explains why he is here with her impossible bottles today, he knows. He made her a promise, but he has broken promises to others and suspects he will again. He can’t even pretend to like her, and while he is a little afraid of her, he isn’t so intimidated that he needs to bow to her every wish. If he is honest with himself, he has no idea why he keeps bringing Mrs. Ristovski water.
It’s time to get moving. The brewery isn’t much farther, just a bit west and then south up the hill. He crosses the street and cuts through an empty lot, taking cover where he can find it. As he climbs the hill, water runs down the street from the taps at the brewery. The trail of those who have come before him reminds Kenan of the traces slugs leave in a garden. A truck with an enormous plastic tank in the back passes him, honks its horn, forcing him to the side of the road. There are a lot more people in the street now, most laden with the paraphernalia of water collection, and they too are forced to the side of the road for this truck and several others that follow soon after. It is a pilgrimage, a parade, all of them rats of Hamelin. When the bright red hulk of the brewery comes into view, he feels both happy and apprehensive, because although he has at last arrived at his destination, he knows
he has a long way to go before he is home again.
Dragan
“DO YOU THINK,” DRAGAN ASKS, “IT’S WORSE TO BE wounded or killed?”
He’s not sure why he asked Emina this question. It seems almost frivolous, like asking if it’s better to be boiled alive using water or cooking oil.
He leans against the boxcar, and she faces him, her back to the street. Every so often she shifts her weight from one foot to the other, as though she can’t find a comfortable way to stand.
“I think,” she says, her eyes moving towards the intersection, “it’s better to be wounded. At least that way you have a chance to live.”
“It’s not much of a chance,” he says, wondering why. What possible point could there be to this conversation? But the words keep on coming out of him, and he can’t seem to stop. It’s like picking at a scab.
“What do you mean? A chance is a chance.”
“There’s not a whole lot the hospitals can do for you. They’re low on supplies, low on people.” He doesn’t know for sure that either of these things is true, but it seems likely.
“I think they’re fairly well equipped. It seems a lot of people are wounded and don’t die.” He can see that his criticism bothers her, that she doesn’t want him to be right. Her neck has got red, and she’s moved away from him, ever so slightly.
“If they’re so well equipped, then why are you risking your life to deliver medicine that’s almost a decade old?”
He’s scored a direct hit. She steps back, takes her hands out of her pockets and raises them to her chest. For an instant Dragan wonders if she’s about to strike him. He wouldn’t mind if she did. He knows he deserves it.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I don’t know why I said that.”
She doesn’t move. She stares hard at him without blinking. He doesn’t know what she’s looking for. He tries to appear contrite, tells himself not to say anything, to be quiet. Nothing he can say is going to fix this.