“And what’s this?” I asked, pointing to a photo of Serbian and British officers standing around a big cannon.
“British war mission. Members of the Royal Navy. They organized a blockade of the Danube and defended Belgrade in 1915 from the Austro-Hungarian flotilla that was bombing the city day and night. Admiral Ernest Troubridge was in command. That’s this guy here. And next to him is his second-in-command, Lieutenant Charles Lester Kerr. This one right here.”
The archivist wasn’t as useless as he’d appeared at first glance. He seemed to know his way around a few things besides vinyl records.
“But who’s this next to Kerr and Troubridge? This guy in the Serbian uniform?” I asked when my eye fell on a handsome, tall officer with a neatly trimmed beard and, strangely, for the time, long hair tied back in a ponytail.
“That’s Major Nemanja Lukić, a Black Hand. One of Apis’s close associates. Real fucked-up guy.”
I stared at the face in disbelief, feeling a mixture of surprise and horror.
So, that was him. Aćim Dugalić’s killer. Apis’s friend. Real fucked-up guy.
“He was killed on the Danube quay when Major Dragutin Gavrilović led the famous attack telling the soldiers that their regiment was to be sacrificed for the defense of Belgrade, and that they didn’t need to worry about their lives anymore, because they were about to end… Though there’s some data about him that appears later, in World War II.”
“Like what? After he was dead?”
“Ah, fuck it. Maybe there was an administrative error. Or maybe he’d just been injured and not killed?”
I picked up a photo to take a closer look. It was of Lukić again, in a more relaxed setting. He was sitting in the garden of a kafana with company; there was a sign that read, Gostionica Atina, the Athens Inn. On the back was written, Niš. June 1944.
“See anything interesting there?” asked the archivist.
“Oh, very much, my friend… Look — he hasn’t aged a day.”
My tubby friend put on his glasses and studied the photograph. “Maybe it isn’t him,” he said. “Maybe it’s his son.”
“Is there anything about him having kids?”
“From what I know… no.”
“Then it’s got to be him.”
“But that’s… not possible.”
I paced the streets of gloomy Belgrade. As I walked three ambulances passed me. Their sirens were lost in the distance, dissolving into the cacophony of voices and sounds. The city was weeping and singing at the same time. The jackasses from city hall had already put up the Christmas lights even though it was only the start of November. Belgrade sparkled and trembled with unnatural colors, and there was that neon blues that appeared every fall. My hometown reminded me of an aging musician who pours out the rest of his talent into the bucket or the bottle.
The same as me. Except for what I’d been up to today.
I felt a huge emptiness in my chest. I was sorry for the old lady who I’d have to tell the truth about her father to. A new lie on a heap of old ones wouldn’t be worth anything to her, or to me.
I stopped to light a cigarette. That was when someone whacked me in the head. I stumbled and got another whack. I fell face-first onto the sidewalk. Someone grabbed me from behind like a rabid dog.
“What’s up, fucker?”
I raised my head, and saw the same chickenshit from the Gusan, the one with the big-assed wife, standing over me with a baseball bat in hand. The taxi driver, passerby, friend from the army… ah, fuck it. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t figure it out. The lights on the street gleamed faintly off his bald head. He’d jumped me good. He even knew where to do it. There wasn’t a living soul around us. Just me and the moron with the rubber brain and the baseball bat.
“Now I’m gonna fuck you up so hard you’ll remember me your whole life,” he hissed.
“Can I smoke my cigarette first?” I asked.
“Sure, you can smoke, man…”
He turned, then stopped, staring off somewhere behind me.
From the darkness, fate emerged, a man in a long black coat who I only managed to see the back of.
He approached and grabbed the baseball bat my attacker was holding. It snapped like a dry branch.
The moron stared at the man, his mouth hanging open. He looked as if all the blood had rushed out of his head.
“All right,” said the stranger. “March!”
The bald guy tossed aside what remained of the baseball bat and strategically withdrew without saying another word.
The stranger stopped, took out a silver case, and lit a cigarette. He looked into the darkness, waving away the smoke. Then he turned. I stared into the face I’d seen in the century-old photographs. My heart skipped several beats.
Nemanja Lukić just smiled and said, “Good evening, Mr. Malavrazić. I hear you’ve been looking for me?”
We sat in the Zlatna Moruna.
I wouldn’t have been surprised if Lukić had told me that he’d been there a hundred years before, with the Black Hands, planning the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo that kicked off World War I. Not much would surprise me about this man. He was unusually animated, in great shape, his movements somehow fluid like a cat’s, his eyes piercing like a vulture’s. But his hands… well, maybe I’d overdone it the past few nights with the drinks, but they reminded me, strangely, of claws.
He ordered each of us a cognac. I didn’t care much for that shit, but who’s nuts enough to argue with a guy who could crush a baseball bat in his bare hand?
He smoked a cigarette, remaining silent.
“How did… How did you find out about me?” I asked cautiously.
“The maître d’ at the Manjež.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
“You went to Jefimija?”
“I did.”
“What are you going to tell her?”
“The truth.”
“And what’s the truth, Mr. Malavrazić?”
“Well… that her father was killed on Apis’s orders.”
“That isn’t true. Apis didn’t order anything.”
“So you didn’t kill him?”
“No.”
“So… he just showed up, headless, on the banks of the Sava?”
Lukić sipped a little cognac. He looked thoughtfully out the window for a second, then said, “A friend of mine, a British lieutenant named Charles Kerr, came one night with an order for us to create a distraction. He intended to sink an Austro-Hungarian ship. He was looking for volunteers… Seven reported.”
“Including Dugalić?”
“Yes, including him. It was a very risky operation. We had to sail in the pitch black so the Germans wouldn’t spot us. We managed to plant the explosives. Charlie was very adept at that, a true pyromaniac. And then…”
“What?”
“A steel wire that had bound two trucks snapped, and one solder was literally sliced in half…”
“And it beheaded Dugalić?”
“That’s right. We never found the poor guy. But Dugalić’s headless body washed up the next day on the shores of the Sava. Some locals found him. Took him to the hospital. To Ryan.”
“So that means we can name the Austro-Hungarian king Franz Josef as the killer?”
“You could also claim that it was an accident. Dr. Ryan did so after we told him what had happened.”
So, that was the truth. The whole truth, intact, told from the mouth of a man who gave me the creeps. I could imagine how my grandfather reacted when this guy visited him in the Glavnjača and told him to keep quiet.
I sat in a salon in the old lady’s home. The walls were decorated with antique wallpaper and a mass of framed photographs, watercolors, and oils on canvas. On the eastern wall was a painting of St. Nikola, and under it an officer’s saber. I guessed that it had belonged to Aćim Dugalić.