I opened it. In it were some papers and black-and-white photographs of a handsome man in a three-piece suit, with a mustache like Clark Gable’s. Taken a long time ago, before World War I. There was an obituary between the papers with the name Aćim Dugalić. The name didn’t ring a bell.
“That’s my grandfather,” said Hajji Pešić, as though reading my thoughts. “My mother’s father.”
“Uh-huh…” I shook my head, not understanding.
“He died — well, actually, he was killed — almost a hundred years ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
The old lady nodded her head.
I closed the folder, sipped some vinjak. I still had no idea what was going on.
“You have the autopsy report there too,” Hajji Pešić explained, waving away smoke. “The report from the head inspector who led the case…”
“Who cares about these reports after a hundred years?”
“I do, and so does my mother. The killer was never found.”
“And you’d like me to find him?”
“If you can…”
“Maybe I could, if you could get me a time machine.”
The old lady laughed.
“You can help us without that.”
“Me? But why me?”
“Did you see the name of the inspector who led the investigation?”
I opened the folder again, glanced down at the piece of yellowed paper. At the bottom was clearly written: Arsenije Malavrazić. My grandfather.
“So…?” said Hajji Pešić.
I looked at the old lady. Hey eyes shined with anticipation mixed with boundless sadness. I was suddenly reminded of the schnauzer that had died on me last year. Ah, what a dog…
“We’ll pay you, of course. How much?”
“Fifty euros a day, plus expenses.”
“Expenses meaning vinjak, cigarettes, and taxis, I suppose?”
“Tools of the trade.”
She opened her expensive bag and handed me an envelope. Inside was more than was needed, but I didn’t protest.
“Get yourself a new shirt,” she said, and stood.
She pushed her mother to the door with the waiter’s help. The old lady waved as they moved her down the ramp at the doors.
I ordered another vinjak and looked through the folder again. Aćim Dugalić in black-and-white photographs, smiling and long dead, the report from my grandfather that I’d study in detail later, the obit that didn’t say much except that he’d died young, not even twenty-five years old…
Then I looked at the autopsy report. Poor Aćim had had a spectacular death: he had been beheaded. At the bottom was written the name of the doctor who had examined the body: Dr. Edward Ryan, an American.
My old man had been a cop, working in the criminal justice department with the Belgrade police. When he retired, he turned to one thing exclusively: making rakija. But strangely, he never drank it. He left that to me. I knew why: when you grow up watching your own dad destroyed by drink, you get to thinking that you’ll never have a drop of the stuff yourself.
I found my father in the backyard, in front of the still. The house he rented was a few streets down from the Gusan.
My grandfather had also been an inspector. His mentor had been Tasa Milenković, the first school-trained Serbian policeman. He worked before and after the war in the Glavnjača.
It had been a happy spot. The Glavnjača was the nickname for the administrative building of the Belgrade police, but it was also the infamous prison where criminals and political prisoners were housed. Between the first and second world wars, it had been packed with Communists in particular. The police, like today, had been corrupt and in the pockets of criminals and politicians, so they served mainly as the cudgel of state authority and a good litmus test to show what condition the country was in. In the Glavnjača people were interrogated, tortured, and then killed. My grandfather himself had taken part in an incident where two inmates had barricaded themselves in a room with ammunition. They’d tried to negotiate with the city governor. Instead of negotiations, they got shot.
My old man kept away from all that and made an impressive career as an inspector in the criminal justice department. He nabbed scum and felons off the streets, rapists and killers, once he even caught a college professor who had raped a student. The guy got himself out thanks to his political buddies with a lot of pull. The girl withdrew her statement, and he walked out a free man. But he didn’t know how we Malavrazićes are. My old man waited a few months and then got in touch with two crooks from the block who owed him a favor. They almost put our respected professor in a wheelchair. He wasn’t raping anyone else after that. My old man called it “crime prevention,” which was, obviously, more important than the risk of a suspension.
“Come to see if I’m still aboveground?” he asked as a greeting.
“Don’t be like that…”
“Hand me the hydrometer.”
While he tested the strength of the rakija, not looking at me, he asked a question: “What did Hajji Pešić want?”
“Is the waiter from the Manjež snitching on me?”
“No. The maître d’. I got his son out of jail ten, no, fifteen years ago. He drank a little too much and stole a car and wrecked it.”
“Nice to see your old connections still paying off. How do you know Hajji Pešić?”
“She came to me as well. A few times. She offered money…”
“You refused, of course.”
“Of course. How could I not?”
“But why?”
He stood, threw two logs into the fire under the still, wiped his hands on his blue work pants, and peered intensely at me. “Because it’s better if no one finds out the truth.”
“Why do you get to decide that?”
He smiled ironically. He went into the house, and I sipped some almost-done rakija. It had a mild sharpness and a strong aroma of grapes. My old man was a master.
He came back out when I was already on my third glass.
“Don’t overdo it. It’s got methyl in it. It’s not fermented.”
“I noticed,” I said unsteadily, draining the glass.
He handed me a dusty, used notebook.
“What’s this?”
“Your grandfather’s journal.”
“Journal? I didn’t know this even existed.”
“Now you do. Now you can find out about your… hmm… employer. Why she’s hired you. Was the grape good at least?”
“The grape? Excellent.”
I took the notebook feeling some sort of sacred respect. And some tingling glee. Maybe I wasn’t a total loser after all. Something told me that I’d solve this case that even my grandfather hadn’t been able to.
Serbs and Americans had once been friends.
Then came the nineties.
I remember that sometime at the beginning of ’93 I saved a boy from a hanging whose only crime was that he’d worn a shirt with John Wayne on it, and so had insulted the pride and patriotic feelings of a few fans. I also remember that they’d had a good go at him before my colleague and I intervened. The legendary Duke on his chest had taken on blue and red hues, as though some hack artist had wanted to overlay his old black-and-white films.
And it had happened overnight. That hatred. Just like everything else in Serbia.
We grew up on John Houston, Frank Capra, and Don Siegel movies. All the girls were hot for Clint Eastwood. When you said “gentleman” you thought Gregory Peck. We all wanted to be Gary Cooper in High Noon. We wore Levi’s. Drank Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Listened to Michael Jackson and Madonna. Yul Brynner played the part of a partisan in Battle of Neretva, the most expensive film made in the former Yugoslavia. Robert De Niro sat on the steps of the Sava Center while he watched flicks at the Belgrade Film Festival, FEST, the largest showcase of films on the Communist side of Europe during the Cold War. They say that before the festival he’d gotten lost in southern Serbia and was taken in by some nice folks in the village of Čokot, a stone’s throw from Niš.