and…” stuttered the librarian, “and there was a girl who once borrowed Lorca’s poems, but she hasn’t yet returned them.” The commander cautioned them to retreat to their shelters because at any moment the afternoon session of gunfire would begin. The enemy stopped its shooting at around 11:00 in the morning and this tacit cease-fire would last until 4:30 in the afternoon. Why sweat out there in the heat of the day? asked the enemy commander once when they’d spoken to each other over the radio, we have plenty of time for fighting when the sun isn’t beating down quite so fiercely. “A genteel man if I may say so,” said the commander to the radio and telegraph operator and that prompted him to wonder where the operator was now that he’d sent him to change his clothes. He should be leaving now, thought the commander, because at least one of the enemies won’t be trying to kill him. As for the other—or others, who knows how many were out there—he couldn’t say. If the united Europe had broken asunder, and if clashes had begun in a number of the countries with pro-European against anti-European forces, it would be realistic to imagine that there might be dozens of potential and/or genuine adversaries. It wasn’t clear to him how the radio and telegraph operator planned to get home, but he understood this feeling of misery, self-pity, and self-accusation, because he, too, had been away from home when his father died and until recently he’d been blaming himself for that. As if his father would have survived had he been by his side, thought the commander. He came across the radio and telegraph operator who, dressed in his civvies, was kneeling by his belongings. The commander thought the man might be praying, but it turned out he was actually asleep. The commander touched his shoulder and, bringing his lips to the man’s ears, he said: “It’s time!” The operator started, rammed the back of his head into the commander’s mouth and both of them swore. “Scram,” said the commander, “they’re about to start.” The radio and telegraph operator scampered off down the hill. He stopped for a moment before turning into the forest, straightened, thrust out his chest, and flew into the woods. A little later three shots rang out and though the chances were fifty-fifty, the commander was almost certain the radio operator was still running. You could see right away, thought the commander, that he was one of those people bullets didn’t want to hit. There aren’t many folks who enjoy that kind of luck, though they’ll pay for it elsewhere, as things tend to go with good and bad luck. Life is impartial, it plays no favorites. If a person is offered something that is not equally accessible to all in equal measure, they’ll also be given something bad, meaning they’ll be greater losers in other realms. So the radio and telegraph operator, say, was spared the bullets, but he often tripped and fell, and it may have been a fall that additionally shielded him from bullets. The radio and telegraph operator may have stumbled exactly when the fingers of three snipers were on their triggers, and his tumble removed him from the enemies’ field of vision. But why shoot at him when he was merely passing through, peaceably, in civilian dress? That is what the commander wanted to know, and he’d have given anything to find out who was hiding in the forests around the checkpoint. At the moment when the shells began to fly, a thought popped into his mind that would come back to haunt him many times during yet another sleepless night. And what, said the thought, what if there never was a war to begin with, if all this was just somebody’s huge experiment, an attempt to test the mettle of various categories of soldier in an atypical situation? Perhaps the victims had already been marked in some way in advance and they didn’t protest being chosen to leave the scene of life so early. The commander curled up in an even tighter ball in his hole, listening to the malevolent whistle of shells. One exploded not far from him and covered him in a mound of dirt. Then silence, and the sound of someone crying. The person wept and shouted a few times: “Mama, oh, Mama!” After a while the weeping changed to whimpering that sounded as if it would never stop. The commander tried blocking his ears, but the whimpering was merciless and nothing could stop it. A little later the enemy’s weapons thundered again, and then, when they subsided, there was no more whimpering. It had been a direct hit, the commander later ascertained, but though a complete identification of the remains was not possible just then, he was certain this was the young soldier who not long before, on this very spot, had been sobbing in shame for having soiled himself out of fear. So it is, thought the commander, that nature makes its selection, leaving the toughest and most tenacious, and then his gaze shifted from soldier to soldier, and he had to admit that the demands of natural selection were truly bizarre. He’d expected to see a dozen of the most vigorous soldiers, the healthiest, most robust, most determined, but instead he saw a motley group with the tall and short, fat and skinny, sour and bright-eyed. “How many of us are left?” he asked the junior officer who checked his pad. “All together,” he said, finally, “nineteen.” “Maybe we should split into two groups,” said the commander, “and steal away from here by night somehow.” “But,” said the junior officer, “which route do we take? There are enemy forces all around us. If we go to the right, downhill, we’ll run into the ones who shot at the radio operator: on the left are the ones who attacked us from the forest and did so treacherously, from behind, while facing us are the first enemy units who mowed down that group of unarmed soldiers in cold blood while hitting us so savagely with all their different weapons. If they’d had an atomic bomb they’d have dropped it on us, they wouldn’t have even waited to check which direction the wind was blowing, or where it would blow the radioactive dust.” “How about over there,” said the commander, and pointed to the most distant part of the forest, and a wide meadow near it. “Ah, yes,” said the junior officer, “what’s there?” “Nothing and nobody,” said the commander, “just what we need.” “But how do we go from here to there?” asked the junior officer. “Isn’t that area perfect for hunting rabbits?” The commander scratched his sweaty head. “If that’s so,” he said, “we’ll have to think of ourselves as rabbits; it’s our only way of getting out.” “But what about our dead?” Asked a soldier when the commander and junior officer told them of the still half-baked plan. “We can’t leave them to the enemy!” “For God’s sake,” said the commander, “they’re dead, and we aren’t about to disinter them.” “Oh yes we are,” shouted the soldier, raising his spade high in the air and calling out, “Who is for taking them with us?” Most of the little spades waved high above their heads. “But if they see what we’re up to,” the commander played his last card, “they’ll know we’re preparing to leave.” “No, they won’t,” barked the necrophiliac soldier, “because we’ll pretend we’re just tidying up the graveyard, and we’ll pretend that they are up at the top of the hill and the graveyard is right at the bottom, and they won’t have a clue what we’re doing.” The commander threw up his arms in a gesture of surrender and sat down on the nearest chair. He could do nothing more than look on while the “deadly rebels” marched down to the graveyard. He was suddenly left alone, which had always suited him, but he’d found this easy to forget these last few weeks. Everything is so easily forgotten during wartime, even that commanding officers were ordered to assign duties to their soldiers, preferably in teams, if only a team of two. What matters, as stated the order that was circulated to all the officers who were kept in combat readiness, is that no one be allowed to distance themselves and as soon as someone is noticed growing distant, they should be steered, at all costs, in the proper direction. At what cost? All costs. Yes, sir! At ease! The commander thought he heard gunshots, but when he opened his eyes, nothing. Devil take it, thought the commander, there must be something, while twigs were snapping behind his back. He grabbed his revolver and, with the chair, toppled over onto the ground. He was about to shoot when he saw Mladen waving his arms almost frantically and shouting something, and the commander barely managed to reverse the pressure of his finger on the trigger. “Are you mad?” he asked Mladen. “You could have been dead by now.” “Lightning never strikes a beech tree,” laughed Mladen, and then, looking around, he asked where the others were. “At the graveyard,” said the commander. “Every last one?” asked Mladen. “Yes,” said the commander. “How did they manage to kill all of them at once?” asked Mladen. The commander said he hadn’t understood the question and only then did he get the gist. “They’re in the graveyard,” he said, “but they aren’t all dead.” “What are they doing?” asked Mladen. “Bidding their fond farewells?” “No,” said the commander, “they’re readying the bodies for transport.” “For transport?” repeated Mladen, astonished. “What? They had it with war and wounded each other and now they’re lolling around in hospital beds?” The commander carefully related some of the more recent events and the moment of deciding they’d leave. “I could no longer play the rabbit in the hunting grounds,” said the commander, and besides, our forces were halved, and fifteen soldiers gave their precious lives—for what? Could somebody tell me for what?” Sounds reached them of excited voices, among them women’s. Soldiers soon appeared leading two young women. They’d found them at the graveyard, said a soldier, though it now looked more like an archeological site from the Middle Ages. What were they doing? the commander wanted to know, and did they say anything about this place? We didn’t understand them, Mr. Commander, sir, and we think they’re speaking the same language the refugees spoke. The commander needed a moment to recall the refugees, but he couldn’t remember their language. Then somebody mentioned the lady translator and this drew the commander’s lips into a grin that he hastily suppressed, though not hastily enough, at least not for the soldiers standing by his side. No, not that side—his other side. The commander recalled how she’d whispered incomprehensible words in his ear, and later, in a somewhat throatier voice, she’d said them in his language. The commander’s cot was narrow and one of them had always been in danger of tumbling to the floor, but she’d twist up high or lean down low, and kept the balance. He wondered, looking at the two girls standing there in front of him, whether they’d know any of these skills, but their free, cheerful glances told entirely different stories. They were the advance team, sensed the commander, but he couldn’t sniff out what would be coming after them—a new day, a new human being, or new words, something unheard of. The girls pursed their lips as if they were about to say something, then looked at each other and giggled. Why hadn’t the soldiers raped them down by the graveyard and left them there to guard over the emptied graves and toppled crosses? He felt a surge of strength well in him and wondered whether it might be best to pull out his pistol right there and kill them both without a word or any commentary. He even dropped his hand to the pistol grip, but his pistol told him, “Don’t you dare! Understood?” “Understood,” whispered the commander, and then looked around: it would be terrible if anyone caught him conversing with his pistol. They’d immediately declare him mad, which would be silly—weren’t soldiers expected to become one with their weapon, to treat it like a close cousin? In public life this is called a double standard, thought the commander, or: do what I say, not what I do. No matter which way you look at it, life is worth less than a wooden nickel; there’s always someone standing over your head and noting what you’re doing, turning life into a list like those long lists one writes when going off on the weekly or biweekly grocery shopping. Of course, all this has nothing to do with the army, nothing whatsoever, and yet the army is so vital for everyone. It would be easy to say that the army is foisted on the state like a cuckoo bird’s eggs, that society has embraced the army as a necessary evil, except it revolves around the question of war. War is so unnatural, so different from all else, that no one in their right mind can grasp why war would be a part of human culture. The commander turned—he ought to love war at least a little, being a man in uniform, but he couldn’t bring himself to. Never would he admit this to his soldiers. But he also couldn’t abandon them to this hell. So like a good fairy he hovered over their preparations for departure. Everything was supposed to look as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on, because who could say how many observers and spying eyes were trained on them. The soldiers took turns at their regular duties, the cook cooked up hot dogs for supper, the commander fiddled with the dials on the radio and bobbed his head to the rhythm of the various languages coming over on it. Meanwhile the other soldiers were loading up their backpacks, pretending to inspect the contents or getting their dirty clothes ready for the laundry. The two girls were still alive, sitting on the ground, tied to a tree, while the commander again thought there was only one solution for them: a bullet to the brain. He was horrified by his thoughts, but still he felt his hand jerk and inch toward his pistol. At one moment his fingers even brushed the grip, and the meeting of skin and metal seared him as if it were an open flame. This is a sign, thought the commander, that I must go no further. He turned to look around him but no one was watching, no one speaking to him, they were all busy with their jobs and seeing to their own troubles. Then they switched places, the ones who’d been packing pretended they were sentries and observers, while the others, dodging behind charred ruins and tent flaps, readied their munitions and cleaned their uniforms and boots as if sprucing up for a parade. The evening settled down around them like a sheet scattered with crumbs doubling as stars, thought the commander, and felt he could fall in love at that very moment. It’s a lucky thing women don’t serve in our army, he thought, and his mouth went suddenly dry though it had just been full of spittle. The commander imagined a girl curled up on the edge of his cot, and he made her turn to face him and smile. She threw off the cover, sat up straight, and spread her arms. Lie down, shouted the commander, lie down! But too late. The bullet struck her on the back near the heart and she flailed as she fell. The commander whimpered as if about to cry, but he held back the tears. He had nothing against tears, he even felt soldiers ought to cry and tears were a handy way of easing burdens, but he also felt that an officer, meaning, a soldier with rank, must never weep in front of his subordinate officers and ordinary privates. Someone else might deduce, thought the commander, that I am strict and squelch feelings, both those of the soldiers and my own, but nothing could be further from the truth, I’m as soft as cotton, thought the commander, or even softer. He poked his arms and legs with a finger, but nowhere did he feel softness. He squeezed tendons, muscles, bones, and skin, but they were hard, firm, and prepared for every possible further turn of events. If you’re not prepared for every eventuality, you’re prepared for nothing, no matter how differently he might think, thought the commander. He made the rounds of the soldiers and checked each of them, one by one. It wasn’t easy. Tears welled, his stomach clenched, his handshake was limp, and his heart, the old traitor, pounded like a rabbit’s. “We’ll wait a little longer,” whispered the commander into each soldier’s ear, “till dark, and then we move.” He’d squeeze the soldier’s shoulder and bring his lips to their cheek. Each time he did, he’d feel the cheek tense, the skin fear his touch. But maybe it’s always like that, though