“They can only survive by telling themselves something altogether different. That’s why they see you as the evil one.”
“So you are those who survived,” I said finally, breathing hard. I covered my ears to block out the penetrating rumbling that made my whole body shake, but now it was resonating deep inside me.
“We are the last of the will-o’-the-wisp folk, the Candle Bearers, the forest dwellers. We’re the ones waiting to be taken. That’s why you see us, but the others don’t. You’re of our kind.”
With a rumble, the first of a dozen or so tanks on their way from the Varaždin barracks toward Slovenia passed between me and the silent group. They were going to occupy the border between Austria and Italy. The group just stood there. They watched me while the green-gray behemoths thundered through. People came out of their houses, peered over their fences. They were used to fear. This was a moment of relief because they could now point to an enemy—now everybody could feel it, not just us villagers. Now nobody would care that we were killing ourselves.
13.
On my way home I managed to pass unnoticed. I became an unremarkable detail in the picture everybody was staring at, spellbound, from their front yards. The column of tanks had passed, but they’d left ruts in the pavement on the main road. I heard that teachers in a neighboring village had tried to pull soldiers out of the tanks, shouting: “What’s gotten into you? Who are you going to shoot? Is there anyone here in need of defending?”
There were rumors that some numbskull had thrown a beer bottle at a tank, and it screeched to a stop and pointed its gun at the people.
My mother and sister were also at the fence. I didn’t know whether they were crying because of the tanks or because of me. I grabbed Mom by the hand. “They said at school that Franz is dead. They think I made him die. I ain’t going back there, Mom, please say I don’t have to!”
She told me, tenderly and firmly, looking away, “We’re going to Zagreb. We’ll pack up and leave as soon as we can, as soon as they say the road is clear. We ain’t staying here. People’re dying, there’re tanks on the roads. Things ain’t as they should be. Everybody’s gone plumb crazy.”
Granny wailed with all her strength, she yelled at Mom that there was nowhere as safe for us as here. Even my big uncle cried. Mom just stared at the ground, hunched her shoulders up high as if she wanted to plug her ears with them, and went into the house to pack our things.
“Anywheres is better than here,” she said softly.
I sat down on the ground by the fence. The metal roar could still be heard in the distance, but I could also hear what the neighbors were saying.
“He said, ‘Kill yourself.’”
“No way.”
“He did, it’s true, yesterday at the soccer field. They’re all saying it.”
“And he pushed him, I saw it. I’m sorry for the little Klanz boy. He was a decent sort, always said hello on the street.”
I pushed my schoolbag away, lay on my belly behind the fence where nobody could see me, and thrust my teeth into the dirt, the cursed black earth. I gulped it down angrily, the way Franz had the night before. Time to go to the river. Franz would be waiting there for me. I wanted to hug him and sink with him into whatever place there was for those of us who were damned, into the deepest mud. That’s where we belonged, in a grave with a greasy, dark bottom. And the spears of the marsh reeds would keep watch over us, and blind fish would guard the solemn quiet of the grave in that dark and ghastly peace, under the water lilies, waiting for winter and the ice. Coincidence could not be what had brought us there.
And I would’ve gone, too, if our neighbor Tonči hadn’t found me and brought me into our house.
“Take him away from here. He can’t stay,” he said, and left without a goodbye.
The buses weren’t running through the village that day, so we had to wait for the next morning. Mom made a few anxious phone calls, first to friends from Ljubljana, and then to a man in Varaždin. Finally she told my sister we were going to Zagreb. She didn’t know where we’d stay or how we’d manage. My sister asked how she’d go to school there when she didn’t know anybody.
Mom didn’t let me out of her sight. When we got into bed around midnight, the bags were all packed in the hallway, and we could hear Miška calling my name from the road. He yelled for me to come for him, he was ready. He wouldn’t stop, so Mom covered my ears with her hands. Soon after that everything went quiet, and in my head I only heard, as I had that whole day, Franz’s voice.
In the early morning, before five, we stood at the bus stop a few feet from a group of workers. The pavement was rutted from the caterpillar treads on the tanks, and everything was covered with little black rocks. The stench of oil was still in the air. Aside from that, there was nothing to justify us feeling uncomfortable. At one moment someone from the half dark remarked: “That’s right, take him away. We don’t want him here no more.”
“Oh, hush up, Vajnč, he’s only a kid,” said a woman’s voice, a little softer.
“Well, fuck him—we were kids, too, but we knew what we were doing. I’ve had it with all of us being quiet.”
“Fuck off, Vajnč. Can it.”
Mom reached out to stop my sister when she started toward them. We went to the back of the bus, Mom and me on one seat, my sister on another. When we passed the graveyard, I closed my eyes, and for a moment I could picture Franz’s funeral the next day. They’d also bury Zvonko “Democracy” Horvat, and people would stand on the street and talk about the tanks, the border crossings, and how they’d been doing such a great job laying down fertilizer. Franz’s mom would be dead drunk and silent, and his old man, the idiot, would go on, loudly, so everybody could hear, about how Franz was a moron because he didn’t tend to himself proper. And everybody, at least for that moment, would see him as a good man. When I opened my eyes, I caught sight of Bacawk and Chickichee. They were standing by the roadside at the very edge of the village. They didn’t wave, they didn’t call to me, they just stood there, silent, and watched me leave.
EPILOGUE
“How strange to see you. After all this time.”
“I’m a little dizzy. This whole thing reconnected me to reality… you know, if you read it…”
“I did. What can I say?”
“No need to say anything, that’s not why I—”
“Before, all I wanted was for you to stop lying. Now I’d give anything to think the things you wrote here were lies. Does anyone else know about this?”
“Nobody. Just you and Stjepan Hećimović.”
“Who’s Stjepan Hećimović?”
“A new friend. Long story. Actually a short story, but that’s beside the point. I’m going to send it to the woman who’s studying the case.”
“Damn it, you have no idea how much I hated you when you sent me this. It was, like, what does he want now, after everything I’ve been through?”
“And now you feel differently?”
“I don’t know. I still don’t quite understand what this is. What we’re doing, you and I, here after all this time, after all the shit.”