They rounded the corner rapidly and then Amir stamped on the gas as they traversed the sniper’s field of fire, and the American looked up into the four window-rows of the building across the street but they were black and grey without any revelations, and the car whipped safely round the next corner, and Amir, slowing, said: Someday we’ll get that sonofabitch. — They came into the Stari Grad more sedately than when Enko had driven the other night, but Amir kept gripping the steering wheel hard, with the fat barrel of the M48 pointing greyly forward between them. The American liked him better than Enko. He never asked for advances.
They climbed the stairs. Vesna’s apartment was very crowded that night. A tall man was shouting: How can we stop them with fifty rounds? Fifty rounds, just fifty rounds!
Vesna rushed up to him and touched his hand very gently. — Don’t worry about it now, brother, she said.
The man stared at her. Vesna led him to a chair.
Something almost gentle came into Amir’s face as he gazed at Vesna. He leaned his rifle inside the closet.
As soon as Vesna moved to another guest, the drunk stood up, muttering: Fifty fucking rounds—
Shut up and give me a cigarette.
Where’s Enko?
With Bald Man, and you should be, too. Hey, you, Mr. Fifty Rounds! What’s your name?
Kambor. Who are you?
Don’t you know who Bald Man is?
Of course.
Then you’d better learn who I am. I’m Muhamed. I’m in Bald Man’s squad. If you need ammunition, go to Bald Man. He’s got so many more rifle grenades—
Not for me, for everyone! The men on the frontline with fifty rounds—
Why aren’t you on the frontline, asshole? Amir, brother, what do you have for me?
Amir gave the man a hundred Deutschemarks. The American went to greet Vesna, who smiled at him with a brilliance in whose meaning he could almost believe. Awkwardly he asked how she was, and she replied that a neighbor had been killed, not a close friend, but as it turned out someone whom she missed more than she would have guessed.
How did it happen?
She was queuing for water at the brewery, when a shell…
I’m sorry.
And the funny thing is that she was Serbian! Well, at least we’re all equals here.
Vesna, have you met Bald Man?
Oh, yes! He’s always smiling. He’s good for his neighbors and friends. He’s good with the people that he’s good with.
Such as Amir and Enko?
Yes, reliable men like them.
The American sat drinking and listening, sometimes recognizing that someone had said something very important which out of respect for them all he would not write down in their presence but do his best to remember exactly (the night silently torn open by a faraway shell-flash which could not keep the night’s flesh from cohering again); he assumed that none of them knew why what they said could matter to other people and times; after all, how could it be of more than temporary value to them themselves who already understood the shells? Perhaps after ten or twenty years, should they survive so long, they might grow sufficiently fortunate as to forget the significance of what people said in such a situation, and then, if he had written it down and they discovered and read it, it might mean something new to them, and even lend them something like fulfillment.
Presently the poet found him, and with relief those two shy men sat down together to enumerate the beauties of the Slavic woman. The American thought that his friend seemed sad, perhaps even by nature. They drank together.
And how was the frontline? asked the poet.
Not bad. And how was it at home?
How can I complain? When the Nazis were here, my grandparents used to eat beech bark.
Now, Olga Ilic, the poet began to explain, when they accused her of collaboration with Bulgaria, she was imprisoned and then she experienced a nervous crisis, because she was a very sensitive woman. So sensitive and so beautiful! Vesna resembles her in both these qualities, I believe.
Would you say that Olga Ilic was kind?
You know, I feel as if she could have been my wife, or maybe my sister. During the Hitler war she lived in a suburb of Belgrade, bombed out of her house and terrified that an American or British shell would get her. Don’t you think she was one of us?
When the next shell exploded, not so far away, a young woman went rigid as if she were playing the violin, because this type of life was still new; and the poet gazed on her with pity in his beautiful eyes.
That afternoon Amir had chauffeured the American to the morgue, where he had set about first seeing and then knowing that those children were dead — thank God he’d never known them, so he wasn’t compelled to feel much, at least not immediately; he could write about their openmouthed yellow-green faces without being hindered in his work by personal considerations. The details, being precious in and of themselves, since they were the manifestation of the real, would array themselves, and express the sad horror they represented, without his needing to be tortured by it. A photojournalist may look at his negatives ten years later and only then be infected with the anguish they record; for word-workers it is the same only different. He knew enough not to expound on this subject at Vesna’s, even to the poet, who continued praising Vesna in the guise of describing Olga Ilic, while the lost American sat listening to other conversations around him, trying to remember them forever, so that something, anything, could be made of this:
We still have ten crates of tracers from the Viktor Bubanj Barracks.
Why won’t we harden that checkpoint?
Bald Man says they’re shelling Konjic worse than ever.
Was he there?
Of course he was, shitface. Bald Man goes where the brigades can’t.
Then why doesn’t he liberate Konjic for us? Armchair hero—
… Killed them both on the Vrbanja Most, after giving their guarantee. And ever since then my sister’s not right in the head. She and Zlata were classmates—
Don’t worry, brother. We’ll get our revenge. Those Serbian girls are going to learn how to make Bosnian babies.
A shell came hissing, and everyone fell silent. The experienced soldiers relaxed first, shrugging their shoulders as they listened for the explosion, which sounded far away when it finally came.
Mirjana’s fingers were shaking. She saw the American look. — Nerves, she said with a smile.
He said: I envy the people who can understand what they hear. It must give them a few extra seconds of peace—
The brunette nodded, her ringed fingers flashing as she raised the glass of slivovitz to her lips, and then she said: At the beginning it was funny for us, and we didn’t even know what a grenade was, so we would be on the balcony trying to look. So we learned that this kind made a buzzing sound, and one made a hissing sound, and on the ninth floor of our building there was this one Serb who would always cheer anytime there was a bombing; he would shout, oh, they got it! I remember how he would cheer—
What happened to him?
Oh, he’s still there, but he doesn’t cheer, at least not so loudly, because we got fed up—
Now Amir approached him and said: Enko’s waiting for you on the landing.
The American went out.
Give me an advance, said Enko.
How much?