eard 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, thought the commander, when a man kisses a man, in war or peace, in an amorous encounter or a farewell to a warrior whose fate was long sealed, this is as unchanging as Greek myth. The commander would have been glad to imagine himself as Zeus, especially as the Zeus who’d turned into a swan, but then he hastily spun around, certain everyone must be eyeing his crotch. The commander was wrong, as was obvious to all of us but not to him because even if we’d wanted to stare at him there, and we didn’t, we wouldn’t have had much to see. The dark was as thick as dough, affecting every thought we entertained, every step, not to speak of our mood. But the commander had resolved that we’d play the game, he placed his people in positions, ordered us to set out the manikins that were designed, the next morning, to mislead, though the commander knew the deception wouldn’t last long, the motionlessness of the manikins would first stir suspicion, and then this would swell until the enemy commander finally chose three or, maybe, four, or even five soldiers—never underestimate the enemy—and in total silence, like true professionals, they’d traverse the distance between their positions and the checkpoint, but in such a way that not a single blade of grass would shiver, not a branch would sway and not a bird would flutter skyward, stirred from sleep or luring those strange creatures away from her nest and fledglings. Yes, thought the commander, as far as birds are concerned, people are indeed strange creatures, nothing more, and if things stood differently, if birds and people truly were buddies, they’d now be hidden away somewhere, carefree and certain that no one would ever find them. No, thought the commander, no one ever will find us, and then, by mysterious pathways, the thought popped into his head that he should whisper a warning to the soldier walking in front of him that if a flare were to be fired off they should freeze and stand that way until the light faded. He added: “Send it on,” and he saw the soldier lean toward the soldier in front of him, and just as the message reached the head of the column, they could all see the slender trail of a flare mounting in the sky and then blazing and spreading its phantasmal, wan light across the slope. The rigid, frozen soldiers looked like enchanted ballet dancers in a grotesque dance. Many of them found the muscles on their legs trembling and the light of the flare seemed like it would never dim. But no flare lasts forever, they are all transient, as are we all, thought the commander, as are we all. The soldiers barely had the time to stretch before a new flare had them freezing again, clinging to the nearest vegetation. “Down!” spat the commander to the shadows in front of him, and the soldiers, as if they could hardly wait, plunged to the ground. The flares lit the sky and the clearing several times and then stopped. The dark was still thin for a little longer, and then it thickened again around them like a curtain. The commander straightened slowly, rose to his feet, and drawing his head into his shoulders, strode to the head of the column. Just then they clearly heard the ringtone on somebody’s cell phone and the first notes of the popular song “Marina” jangled like a bomb blast. Where had this phone come from when they’d been without electric power for days? “Hello?” said a voice in the dark, and then they could hear the phone being flipped shut. “Wrong number,” said the same voice, defensively. “Turn off that piece of shit,” ordered the commander. He was doing his damnedest to sound fierce and stern, but it wasn’t working because he was also remembering how once long ago at the seashore he’d held a girl with ashen hair by the hand while that very song drifted their way from a hotel. He could even remember the words: “For days I’ve loved Marina, but her cold glances hurt me….” Then, for the first time, he wondered what point there was to a war in which you don’t even know who your enemy is, or why you’re fighting, or whether a peace treaty has already been signed, or who will end up envying whom: the dead—the living, or the living—the dead. Later on, in the woods, on the ridge, the commander chided himself for the defeatist thoughts, but they offered him some brief comfort. To be honest, war is a holy mess, we all agree, there’s no dispute. Every war is like that, the just and the unjust wars, the wars of conquest and defense, war on land and war on the sea, and war in the air and war underground, all of them are the same. War is shit, that’s that, period. Later, on the ridge, the commander would feel shame at these words, changing nothing. There is no particular use for words, read the commander a long time ago in a story by a local writer. The story had stayed with him for years, especially a scene in which the mother pricks her finger with a needle and then explains something to her daughter, and, in the end, the mother licks the welling blood from her fingertip. The commander winced: yes, he had been exposed to many deaths, both day and night, but the needle prick to the fingertip made all the deaths seem pointless. Meanwhile the soldiers had come up to a twisted old fence that once probably served as a border crossing. In a whisper the commander cautioned them not to approach the fence and even ordered them to stand back. He huddled with Mladen and a corporal and they concurred: the fence was the last barrier and the enemy would have focused on it. No matter how hard they tried, however, the commander and his advisers could not agree on the next step. Dawn would soon be breaking, thought the commander, and he was at a dead end. A little later, in front of everyone, he whacked himself on the head and said now he understood. He spoke softly into the dark and sounded as if he’d never stop. In short, he explained he’d suddenly seen through the enemy’s game. They’d figured the troops would assume the fence to be mined; he and his soldiers would be expected to detour around the fence and proceed, together, beyond it. Therefore, said the commander, we feel the fence itself won’t be mined, but there will be pressure action mines planted alongside it on both sides to catch us when we go around it; the closer we stick to the middle section the safer we’ll be. And as soon as he said this, the commander walked right up to it, threw his leg over the fence, and then, when nothing happened, called the others to follow. Alone or in pairs, the soldiers hopped over and soon it was behind them. The commander went back for a last look. He really wanted to toss a heavy rock sideways to set off one of the mines, but the blast would have given their location to the enemy. Better not, they thought, each of them, the commander and the soldiers. There are happy little moments like this of harmony, and everybody felt it. Far away before them the sky began to tear apart, and out of the crack gushed the bright, still sheepish, light of dawn. The commander summoned Mladen, told him to take another soldier and scout out what was going on around them. “You have ten minutes,” said the commander, “because they’ll see they’ve been hoodwinked, and they’ll do their level best to find us.” And so it was. First they heard shouts and random shots, then it was alternating bursts of gunfire and shell blasts. The checkpoint, thought the commander, has been obliterated. The shooting thumped a little longer, hand grenades blew and shells whistled, and then just as the shooting died down, everything reverberated with an explosion. “Yes,” whispered the commander, “oh, yes!” The magazine of weapons and munitions they’d left behind had just gone up, taking with it, hoped the commander, five or six enemy soldiers. Ah, the commander’s thoughts continued, if someone had told me I’d in any way, at any time, and in any place actually desire a person’s death, I’d never have believed them, but he was a soldier and he knew no one comes home unchanged from a war. It was good that he was surrounded by people in whom he had full confidence, at least he could trust them never to inform on him to the authorities or the police, though he always needed to be cautious, because if somebody reported him for having been earnestly sympathetic toward our al