Supposing that his duty must lie in submission to the brother’s cold hatred, ready to answer any questions if it would bring the man peace — in fact it appeared to inflame him — he complied, told and clarified. When the brother first began to interrogate him (he had awaited his coming for many days), he endured it calmly, even after it became apparent that rather than being, as he had foolishly imagined, “helpful,” he was simply accused; but when the brother demanded that he tell and retell each detail of Ivan’s death, which on his own account he absolutely could not bear to think about, he shivered for an instant. No doubt this bore out the brother’s already completed judgment.
As for the sister, whose questioning took place over the telephone, and was therefore indefinitely protracted, she instructed him to call her again tomorrow at one-o’-clock. Every time he called her, it cost him a hundred dollars. He was trying to do right by that family; that was what he would have wished for in their situation, to have his questions answered.
Explain to me again just why you took that turn, she said.
So he did. He had explained it to her four times.
And you were sitting in the back seat? Why weren’t you up front with my brother?
Ted was the driver.
You say my brother was your interpreter. So why didn’t you take the rest off his shoulders?
Ivan asked the Spanish battalion for directions. He asked again at the Croatian checkpoint. In each case, he was satisfied as far as I could tell—
But you didn’t help him verify these directions?
As you know, I don’t speak the language. He didn’t ask for help. He just said, okay, we turn right just after the final checkpoint—
Then how do you account for what happened?
Ivan directed us to take a wrong turn.
A wrong turn. And all this time you were sitting in the back seat, doing nothing.
That’s right.
My brother was working for you. He trusted you. I don’t know anything about the man who was driving, but I do find it significant that you had them doing all the work while you sat in the back seat.
Put it any way you care to.
And now you’ll cash in. You’ll have your dramatic story.
Sure. I’m cashing in every time I call you.
Just what do you mean? Tell me exactly what you mean by that remark.
I mean that I’m trying to answer your questions as patiently as I can. By the way, Ivan was working with me, not for me.
You hired him as your interpreter.
I got the magazine to agree to pay him a fee, yes.
You persuaded him to go.
I invited him to go. He liked it over here.
You lured him to his death.
You know what, Jeanette?
You killed my brother. You’re just as responsible as the men who shot him. I want you to admit it.
I don’t see it that way.
So you’re a coward as well as a—
Jeanette, go to hell.
He hung up the phone.
Sweet trees were growing up through roofless stone ruins. His wife smiled at him wearily.
Now that he had come back to where it happened, he could not stop remembering Ivan’s sister, to whom he must have been a leader of unearthly power, since he could lure a man to his death for unstated reasons, conveying him, and Ted also, right into a sniper’s nest, like a prostitute who inveigles drunks into some lonely ambush of robbers, then flits away unharmed. The sister had definitely been the most plainspoken of all his judges. But the rest unanimously implied what she had asserted: he was more than he supposed himself to be. In the market, the old man selling cherries kissed a tomato and gave it to his wife. A man was selling pens made of shell casings; was he familiar? A man sat playing the accordion. And the American or survivor or whatever he was said to himself: If only I’d truly had such power! Well, I did, to my accusers at least. For once in my life I got to be a leader.
His ex-girlfriend Victoria, who had gone to school with him and Ivan, was the only one who ever wrote to say that she was sorry. She was dead now. Remembering this, he felt his love for her return, as a dull lost yearning.
His anger at Ivan’s brother and sister fluttered like those white butterflies over the elderberries. He forgave Sam again, then hated him. If he ever happened upon Sam again it would be perfectly all right between them. As for Zrinko, he had become one more denizen of a bygone foreign land, so that his hateful and threatening behavior need not be taken personally.
He could not remember the first time he had seen Ivan or even what they had meant to each other when they were boys.
Perhaps if he had made up his mind to take some attitude, not about Ivan’s family, or the consequences to himself, but about that double death itself, which belonged not to him but only to Ivan and the other man, he might have been better to himself and others, but precisely which thought or feeling would have accomplished this? Or what if he had simply set out to remember Ivan from time to time? Well, he would not. He disbelieved that he had meant that much to Ivan, or even that Ivan had respected him; Ivan had been too far above him. And so it could have been said that he rejected peace, which is scarcely more or less than sleep.
Without his glasses Ivan had looked much younger; this was surprising. But perhaps the leader had never seen him in life, in which case it would have only been the dead Ivan that he knew. Ivan was smiling in all his press cards. When he smiled, the corners of his mouth did not turn up. In this respect his signature was the same, for it hurried across the empty space, narrow and flat. He was not handsome but his face was kind. There had never been wariness in him. The official stamps on the press cards remained unfaded. In these photographs Ivan had stopped being a man and become a boy, gentle and careless, much younger than the one who had survived him.
In the morning he woke up happy that they were leaving the place. The day was still cool. His wife’s knees hurt; he kissed her. At breakfast he ordered a coffee, and the woman smiled at him. He smiled back. His wife returned to the room to organize her suitcase. She was looking very tired. It seemed to him that he could not bear to outlive her. The woman brought his coffee. She was very pretty, and had sweet friendly eyes. He tried to speak a little of her language as he once used to do, and she laughingly encouraged him. Traces of words rose up on his tongue.
The coffee was Turkish, of course: bittersweet, blacker than dirt, thicker than paste. He felt joyful to taste it. Hoping to take his wife back to the market if there were time, and perhaps to buy her some plums, he drank it quickly. Again the woman was smiling at him. He wondered whom she loved. Now she was in the kitchen; he heard her singing. A little sorry to go away, he left a fine tip and went out quietly, not wishing to trouble her with anything. At once he forgot her face. He was worrying about his wife, so at first he did not hear the rapid footsteps behind him on the street. How could those have anything to do with him? But the young woman, out of breath now, had come running after him, just to say goodbye.