leged enemies, the commander would quickly find himself in a pickle. And even exile, whether forced or self-imposed, wouldn’t save him. Had the weather been just a little more agreeable, he’d have gone, long ago, to a village by a shore. Which shore? we asked, the shore of a lake or the sea? Whatever, said the commander, whatever. We chose a boat. The weather was sunny and mild, no one was in a hurry, it was warm, July or August, we could hardly wait to stretch out and bask. The commander did a double take and saw he’d been left completely alone. He’d been asleep behind a bush, probably why they’d abandoned him. They have no idea, in fact, where I am, thought the commander, though they were all sure he’d be back. He always came back, so why not now? Then a gust of wind blew by and brought with it fragments of a commotion. The commander licked his finger and raised it into the air. Their fate, he thought, depends on which way the wind is blowing, and he set out in the direction it came from. He pushed his way through the bushes and came upon his soldiers, gathered around a hole in the ground; at the bottom there were sharpened spikes and on them were impaled three—three!—soldiers. The legs of one were still jerking and the soldiers were barely able to convince the commander that these were nothing but belated reflexes of the muscles and tendons, like a headless chicken lurching madly about the yard. They’d been walking down the road, they explained, and nothing hinted at the likelihood of a trap or threat. The pit was dug smack-dab in the middle, so sooner or later somebody would have fallen in. But who dug it and when? asked the commander. He’d have given anything for a proper answer, but apparently this was not sufficient. Some things are worth their weight, some their length, and some the degree to which they’re absent. The more absent it is, the more costly a thing becomes—such a paradox. The commander finally realized that a buzzing sound he was hearing was coming from enemy soldiers who were streaming, in total disarray, down the slope and talking intensely, and the multitude sounded like the buzz of bees. The commander stepped back and cocked his head to the side, trying to stretch his field of vision to encompass all the participants. He tried to imagine his life elsewhere, but what reached him was the hum of the enemy’s discontent, and he sought out Mladen: “If this continues,” he said, “we’re plunging straight into chaos.” Their duty, the commander went on, was to settle on a secure route that would take him and the soldiers to safety. Mladen asked him, cautiously, how he knew which route was a good one. He didn’t, said the commander, but he was absolutely certain he knew which of the routes was no good, so by the process of elimination it would be easy to ascertain which were viable, or at least had been viable at the outbreak of the conflict. What was expected of him? asked Mladen. The commander rubbed his chin and eyes, he was tired, terribly tired though he stood there and smiled, and it could be said that he wasn’t present, or, perhaps, he was more present than ever, and he told Mladen to take two soldiers and lie in wait for the enemy riffraff that was obliterating everything as it passed through. The idea was for Mladen to fake a battle and keep moving to entice the enemy to follow him, not along the route their men were taking, but along another that splits off and leads across a ridge at some distance. On that path there were several huts and an old mill. A stream used to run in a torrent through there, especially in spring, and spin the water wheel, but then the stream dried up, leaving behind it a narrow ravine. If Mladen could lure them into the ravine, they wouldn’t change direction until they’d realized their error, and by then it would already be night, or at least late evening, and this would allow the commander to cross the ridge at a much lower point, after which they’d have only a few miles left to the place where all units would assemble. Mladen nodded tersely and went off to find the soldiers. There weren’t many left, and nobody, but nobody, was eager to accompany him. Mladen coaxed, pleaded, begged, made promises, but the soldiers had had it. “Somebody else can play,” said one. The commander heard the words and was dismayed. Direct insubordination meant only one thing: a court martial and, probably, execution before a firing squad. The commander was overcome by an abrupt headache. He went over to the soldier who’d refused Mladen’s summons and asked him whether he had any ibuprofen or aspirin. The soldier dipped a hand into a pocket and brought out a small white pill. “I wasn’t asking for a sedative,” said the commander. “If there’s no proper medicine, any pill will do,” said the soldier with a sudden grin. The commander shrugged, swallowed the white pill, and later, truth be told, he felt much better. He’d never learn whether it was the sedative or his immune system rebounding, but so it was with many things: there could be no talk or whining here: you took things as they were or you didn’t take them at all. No negotiating or bargaining and wasting time on nonsense. This is life—thought the commander, wrapped in the white veil of the sedative—not literature. As if confirming his words, shots could be heard being fired somewhere behind his back, exactly where Mladen was supposed to be drawing the enemy away onto the wrong route. “Aha,” whispered the commander to himself. “If only we’d had the time to dig a pit trap for them, they’d all be in it now.” But if there was anything they’d been short of in this war, it was time, and when he gave it a little more thought, the commander had to recognize that the speed of events simply did not allow him to come to a timely, fitting assessment, to weigh them in their elemental and cosmic meaning, especially in the cosmic, because there everything was pure, untainted by malice and envy. The shots behind his back grew sparser and soon they stopped altogether. There were two or three spurts of gunfire, the sort usually used to finish off the wounded and superfluous soldiers. The commander trembled with a sudden bitter taste in his mouth and hurried the troops. Some ten minutes later, however, they had to stop and wait for him to vomit. He retched long and hard, his face drenched in an icy sweat. His belly swelled and clenched though it was already completely empty. He crouched by a beech tree and a soldier held his brow till the commander told him to stop. As soon as the soldier withdrew his hand, the commander sank to the ground next to the pool of vomit. As far as he was concerned, the war was over and he was prepared to lie there to the end of the world, but reality was something else and it compelled him to get up, so he summoned the strength and struggled to his feet as if he were rising, at the very least, from the dead. He stood there and stared at the soldiers standing before him: six soldiers, two corporals, and Mladen, who at that very moment stepped, blood-soaked, out of the brambles. “Where is my deputy?” asked the commander, but no one could say. He’d simply disappeared, period. No asking around would help and, besides, whom to ask? There is a misleading and heart-wrenching notion of war as the ideal time for forging friendships, rich with opportunities for self-sacrifice and dying for one’s ideals, when, instead, these notions are all part of the farce that is war. War is a business like any other and these stories are merely a manifestation of efforts to consign the truth to oblivion, whence it will only be allowed to emerge once it conforms to the government’s truth, but the honest truth would never accept that, and doesn’t even now. “My dear soldiers,” began the commander, but he stopped immediately because he felt tears welling. The commander, as is well known, had nothing against tears coursing down a man’s cheeks, but he believed there are moments when one may cry in public, while crying at any other time would not do for men, and this moment was one when he was supposed to be spurring them all to finish their combat mission, to inspire them not to give up on life before their time, and one cannot do this with tears in one’s eyes, right? The commander plucked a blade of grass and nibbled at it, sucking out its bitter sap, until the bitterness calmed him. “My dear soldiers, fellow combatants, brothers, the end of our part in yet another pointless war is upon us. We had no idea what we were fighting for, nor who our enemy was, and to be honest, we don’t know what we’ll find back home. I hope our houses are still standing, cozy and intact, like when we left them. The last stretch will probably be the most challenging: all the factions will be assembling here, and when faced with the absence of an enemy, troops often turn on one another. In any case, I wanted to warn you, whatever happens, do not break into song. There is always one of our number who doesn’t appreciate that particular song and who will be out for revenge for no other reason.” He stopped, he’d meant to say more but couldn’t remember what. The soldiers applauded, and he ordered them to disperse. From afar they could hear the rumble of trucks and tanks that, apparently, had not bought into the pretense of Mladen’s feigned combat, but guessing that he wanted to mislead them, had chosen the right path. “They’ll be here any minute,” repeated the commander, and Mladen, urging the remaining soldiers to disperse and get going uphill, along the route that would bring them home the fastest, as the commander had, apparently, announced in one of his earlier speeches when there were twice as many of them. They came over for a hug, but he shooed them off. “Once we make it home there will be time for that,” he said, and brushed away a secret tear. It was time for him to go, the rumble of motors and caterpillar vehicles was so loud that he felt as if he were perched on a roof, waving a little flag with the coat of arms of some country during one of those big military parades. Up he shimmied into a tree. He climbed till he reached the densest part of the canopy, where nobody could possibly spot him, but he could still find the occasional gap between leaves to afford him at least a partial view of what was going on. He was surprised when he realized how vast a military force had been sent to chase down his handful of soldiers, as if liquidating his men was the primary objective of the military and civilian leaders. Hadn’t the Nazis, once it had become clear that they were losing the war, proceeded with a panicked liquidation of the Jews, as if the outcome of the conflict depended only on that? In another, perhaps more courtly time, he would, by now, with full confidence, have sat down with the commander of the enemy troops and, over tea, or, why not, schnapps, traded anecdotes from their school days at the military academy, until they finally shook hands and congratulated each other on a well-earned victory or an amicable defeat. And each would then return tidily home to their impatient wives who, what with the long wait, had, probably, shown so much willingness to annex the new territories that everyone, in an odd way, was a little sorry the war was ending. Suddenly, right beneath the tree where the commander had, shall we say, nested, shouts went up. Through a gap in the leaves, the commander could see three of his soldiers. They were waving a piece of white cloth and walking slowly down the hill. When they reached the meadow they’d left only minutes before, on their way home, one of the tanks rolled toward them. Was it sniffing them? The gun barrel swiveled toward them, but then the tank kept rolling on. The soldiers, who hesitated longer than they should have, suddenly realized what the tank was up to, but by then it was too late and it rolled right over them, stopped, and reversed. The commander bit his hand to hold back the sobs and to stop himself from sliding down the tree, hot with the desire to give them what for. They’d kill him before he had the chance, of course, to pull a hand grenade from his boxers. He was left waiting and hoping there’d be people interested in a future project in which there’d be a role left for him to play the venerable gramps who’d been living in his coffin for years, but lovely Mistress Death wouldn’t show her face. And then the enemy soldiers brought in their dogs. A dog loped right over to the tree where the commander was hiding, but nothing interested it beyond lifting a leg and spraying its mark; in a few days’ time the mark would send a black bear scampering back to where it had come from because it wrongly assumed the scent was left by a grizzly (and it wasn’t keen to run into a grizzly). The dogs raced off into the woods and soon their urgent barking could be heard, followed by gunshots and shouts. The commander was able to see the two corporals: the one covered in dog bites and gore was left to the dogs, while the other was sat down at a collapsible aluminum table and questioned quite calmly. And while the first corporal was dying in horrible agony, the other corporal sat cozily on a chair and responded with civility to the questions. They asked him for his name, what did he do, any brothers and sisters, how long had he been serving in the army, did he enjoy war, and other things to pass the time of day, his favorite writer, favorite actress, wife and kids, was his mother alive, and his father—was he retired, did he send him letters or postcards, and who were the smokers in his family? While he was answering, the corporal would occasionally gaze up into the treetop above, and at one moment, as he was staring at the mottled leaves, he was certain he’d seen someone’s eye. He blinked and the eye was gone. This must be the eye of the Lord, and the corporal felt now God himself was looking after him. True, the eye reminded him of somebody, but of whom? As if through a fog the idea occurred to him that it was the commander perched in the treetop like a good-luck woodland sprite. Perhaps he might be able to climb up there once he’d finished with the questioning and pay him a visit. Then he told himself he was crazy, how could the commander be up in the tree, he was no owl hiding from the light of day, nor was he a songbird that had stopped chirping for a moment to peer down at a corporal who hadn’t learned yet how to say “my death,” but was studying hard and was a diligent student. And when, after some ten additional, courteous, and totally pointless questions, a knife flashed in the hand of the investigator, and he told the corporal he’d now be given his prize for his cooperative spirit. The corporal gave a slight smile, said he’d be glad to share his prize, threw himself with lightning speed on the investigator, wrested the knife free, and in what was almost a single move, slit the man’s throat and in the same continuous sweep slit his own from ear to ear. The commander nearly found himself down there by the aluminum table, he was so wrapped up in the drama that had been playing out before him. Who knows, maybe he really was an owl and could see better in the dark than by the light of the sun? He’d wait for night to see; he wasn’t going anywhere. He wondered how many of the soldiers were still alive, and he thought of Mladen and another two or three. And the cook? Really, where was the cook? Our cook is a fine cook, we all repeated, as if that fact—that the cook cooked well—was the standard response that included defense from any criminal proceedings that might have pertained to the cook, in uniform or civilian dress, regardless. But no one, not even the commander, could accuse the cook of a thing. There was that once, recalled the commander, when the hamburgers were not quite soft enough, but one doesn’t go before a court for that, especially not a court martial. Beyond that, a few soldiers once criticized him for spending too much time in the kitchen, in the hot seat and center of all life. The cook’s answer was simple: “I like listening to the radio,” said the cook, “and the reception is best there.” This, regarding the quality of the reception, was later confirmed by the commander, who also liked to listen to the radio and often went to the kitchen, he said, “for the good reception.” He now cocked an ear, certain that among the various planes and helicopters flying overhead he’d be able to discern the sound of the motor of the plane that was waiting for them at the airport in K. to bring them to the capital