Читать книгу The Skinner's Revenge - Chris Karsten - Страница 14

His father picked up the book on the table.

“I borrowed it from the library,” he said, “to go and show them.”

“How will a borrowed book protect you?” His mother sounded unconvinced.

“It’s a volume of poetry,” his father said, as if a book of poems could protect him against snipers’ bullets.

“Don’t go his mother begged, her fingers fumbling with the beads of her rosary.

“It’s a volume of Aleksa Šantić’s poetry,” his father continued.

“Will they know him?” his mother asked. “Will those savages know about Aleksa Šantić?”

“He’s one of them. The Serbs still sing his ballads.”

“Ballads about love in a city of death?”

“Perhaps they’ll spare the library if they see it also contains the poetry of Aleksa Šantić.”

His father paged through the book. Milo saw he was using a receipt as a bookmark – a receipt for two bicycle wheels.

His father looked up when his mother said: “You want to save a building with a book in your hand? You’ll risk your life for books?”

“At the Eastern Institute only ash and soot remain of more than two hundred thousand documents and manuscripts in four alphabets, some of them from the eleventh century.”

“It’s not your job, Tomislav. You’re not a saviour of books and buildings. You’re my husband, the father of our children. We need you.”

“I can’t be a man if I close my eyes, or a father if I fold my arms.”

“I love you, Tomislav, but you’re a librarian, not a hero.”

His father sat with the book in his hand, the volume of poetry by Aleksa Šantić, from the library where he worked. He looked like someone who spent his life among books. His long fingers were made for turning the pages of old, delicate documents. His skin was thin and yellow, like parchment. Behind the lenses of his spectacles, his eyes were pale as water, as if reading had drained all of their colour.

“I’m not a hero, and there’s very little risk. They gave me permission to state my case in Lukavica. With Aleksa Šantić’s volume, I want to show them that the National Library is a repository for all Balkan documents, including those by Serbian authors.”

“And you trust them?”

For as long as Milo could remember, the Gospa rosary had been within reach of his mother’s hands, no matter how busy she was.

“They’re not all savages, Milka.”

“No? Their mortars destroy churches, cathedrals and mosques, they shoot people queuing for water and bread, their snipers kill mothers with babies crossing the street, or family members mourning at a child’s grave. What do people like that care about books, Tomislav?”

“I have to try,” Milo’s father insisted. “If I don’t succeed, if they laugh at me and chase me away, I haven’t gained or lost anything.” He was silent for a moment. “Two days ago a mortar fell through the library atrium’s glass dome. It didn’t explode and not much damage was done. But that’s just the prelude.”

“I’ll go with you, Tata,” Milo said suddenly.

He looked at his mother and saw the defeat on her face. She’d had the same expression at the funeral of his grandfather Juro. He’d been in a queue of people at the water pump in Bistrik when a mortar exploded next to them. At Grandma Brana’s funeral his mother had been totally crushed. Grandma was killed when two 120mm mortars exploded near the bread queue in Vase Miskina Street. His father had had to summon Dr Buzuk to treat his mother after Jasmina’s death. That had been the worst.

“You’re not going, Milo,” said his mother.

“Just to the near side of the bridge, Mama.”

“I want to go too! Can I go with Tata and Milo?” asked his sister Kaya, nine years old.

After Jasmina’s death, Kaya trailed behind him wherever he went, even got into his bed at night to sleep with him.

“You’re both staying here,” said his father. “You have to look after your mother.”

“Just to the bridge,” said Milo. “I’ll wait for you under the bridge. I’ll be safe.”

“If Milo goes, I want to go too,” Kaya insisted.

“Kaya, you’re staying here,” his mother said decisively.

The children’s mother had delicate features and a slender figure. In Sarajevo everyone was slender, except the UN soldiers with their blue helmets. And the overfed Serbian commanders.

“Mama … ” Kaya whined.

“What time, Tomislav?” asked his mother.

She liked to tell the story of how they’d taken Milo with them when they’d gone to get the rosary. He was two years old and couldn’t remember that trip, but he was familiar with the story of his parents’ pilgrimage to the village of Medjugorje in Čitluk in the west of the country, near the border with Croatia.

“Five o’clock,” said his father. “I have to be at the bridge at five.”

“And you’ll come back straight after your discussions?” asked his mother.

“Straight after,” said his father.

“Straight after,” said Milo.

Milo’s father had helped him with his handcart – his water cart, as Milo called it. One day after work his father had arrived at the apartment in Strossmayer Street with two bicycle wheels. The next day he’d brought the axle, the day after that the wooden planks and draw bar.

In the boiler room in the basement of the building, Milo and his father had assembled the water cart. It was a good cart, even though it was just a wooden platform with two wheels and a handle which Milo used to pull it through the streets. His grandpa Juro had liked riding on it. They’d put the empty containers and plastic bottles on the trailer bed and his grandpa had sat at the back, his legs dangling, waving at everyone he knew as they’d made their way to the water pump.

On that fatal day his grandpa had joined the water queue in Bistrik in the morning, before Milo had come home from school. They’d buried him in the Lav Cemetery, between the Olympic stadium and the Kuševo Hospital.

He had also helped his grandma onto the back of his water cart and taken her to the bazaar in search of vegetable scraps: beetroot, potatoes, parsnips. That was before food ran out entirely and the residents of Sarajevo began to eat grass, like beasts of the field. He was at school when she’d joined the bread queue near the Planika shoe store in Vase Miskina. They’d buried Grandma Brana next to his grandpa in Lav.

When the bomb had exploded on a snow-covered slope, he’d been on his way to fetch Jasmina from where she and her school friends had been playing with their sleds in the snow. He’d brought her back on his water cart. Jasmina’s grave was in Turbe.

Milo went nowhere without his cart. If you had contacts on the black market and knew where to look, you could always find coffee and cigarettes, flour and rice and liquor. Even petrol, stolen from UNPROFOR’s warehouses and depots.

His father never rode on the back of Milo’s handcart, not even after he’d sold their tiny Yugo Sana. It was a small car, the capacity of the engine only 1300cc, yet it had been big enough for an outing to the mountains for the parents and their three young children. But his father hadn’t been able to afford the car since the war.

They would have to walk to the bridge today. If the trams had been running, they could have taken the No 4 to Skenderija. But nothing was running any more. So that afternoon they walked along the river bank, chatting, past other bridges crossing the Miljacka River, the water cart’s handle in Milo’s hand.

“The bridges of Sarajevo are treacherous,” his father said conversationally. “On June 28, 1914, Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife at the Latinska bridge and set off the First World War.”

It was summer and the water in the river was shallow, brown and smelly.

“At the Vrbanja bridge, Suada Dilberović and Olga Sučić were shot and killed – the first victims of the siege of Sarajevo.”

Milo had a bad feeling. He thought of his mother’s rosary and was comforted by the idea of the string wound around her fingers. She said the Gospa rosary held a message of peace. They paid regular visits to the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, only a few minutes on foot from their apartment at the top end of Strossmayer. While his mother held the rosary between her fingers, Father Trtić preached and prayed for peace. Milo saw no peace around him, only violence and bloodshed.

“Tata,” he said, “tell me again about that vision you and Mama witnessed.” He’d often heard the story, but could never get enough of it.

“You mean the story of your mother’s rosary?”

Milo nodded. It would be good to hear the story of peace again, especially as they were on their way to a treacherous bridge. “Did you see her yourselves?” he asked.

“No,” his father said. “She has appeared only to six children. The first two were Mirjana Dragícevíc and Ivanka Ivanković. It was at about six on the evening of June 24, 1981. The two girls were just outside Medjugorje, on a hill known as Podbrdo. Suddenly a beautiful young woman with a baby in her arms appeared to them. During that first meeting she didn’t speak, but beckoned, as if she wanted to be sure that the girls had seen her. After that, she appeared to four more children. The six children say they see her regularly. She brings them messages of peace to share with the world. People believe the young woman is the Holy Virgin Mary – that’s why they call her Gospa.”

“I wish I could see her.”

“Perhaps we’ll go back to Medjugorje when the war is over … ”

They followed the northern bank of the river until the bridge came into view. Then Milo’s father stopped and put his hand on Milo’s shoulder.

“No further, Milo. Wait behind the sandbags at the wall, the one with the bullet marks.”

“Tata … ”

“Yes, Milo?”

His father took off his spectacles and polished them with a white handkerchief. Milo noticed beads of sweat on his father’s forehead, saw the trembling muscle in his cheek.

“I’ll wait for you, Tata.” He had wanted to say “pray”. He wished he’d brought his mother’s Gospa beads.

“Thank you, Milo. You’re a brave boy.”

“Tata … ”

“Yes?”

“You will come back?”

“Of course I’ll come back, Milo. Don’t worry. I’ll be back before dark.”

His father was doing his best to smile, and he squeezed Milo’s shoulders reassuringly.

“Maybe Mama is right,” Milo said. “Maybe you shouldn’t go onto the bridge, Tata. It’s not your job.”

“Your mother is right – I’m no hero, Milo,” his father comforted him. “So, don’t worry, I’m not going to pull any stunts. I’m just going to ask them to think carefully before they shell the National Library. That’s all. I’m going to show them the volume of poems and tell them we shouldn’t destroy one another’s cultural heritage. If they refuse to listen, I’ll come straight back. I won’t start arguing.”

Milo looked over his father’s shoulder and saw a sign riddled with bullet holes warning the public against snipers: PAZITE, SNAJPER! The signs had been erected all over the city in places regarded as danger zones, or snipers’ alleys.

“What’s the time?” asked Milo, his eyes on the façades of the buildings on the opposite side of the river.

“It’s time,” said his father. “It’s five.”

He used his white handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his brow, and then peered around the sandbags at the road over the bridge. Milo’s father turned back to him, put his arms around him and hugged his son tightly. Then he took a deep breath and stepped out from behind the protection of the sandbags.

Milo took another look at the buildings across the river. “Here’s the book, Tata,” he said.

“Ah, thanks, I almost forgot the most important thing.”

“The handkerchief is the most important thing,” said Milo.

“Stay behind the sandbags, son. I’ll be back before dark.”

From behind the wall and the sandbags, Milo’s eyes followed his father’s first hesitant steps across the bridge. Though there was no traffic nor were there any other pedestrians in the street or on the bridge, Milo knew that many eyes from many windows would be following his father’s halting progress.

When Tomislav reached the middle of the bridge, Milo thought everything was going to be okay. His eyes were riveted on his father’s back, the right hand with the white handkerchief raised. In his other hand, the book. He walked slowly, not looking around. His eyes fixed on the road’s surface.

Suddenly Milo heard the sharp whizz of a bullet and a thud as it struck the bridge, ripping out a chunk of concrete. He hadn’t heard the crack of a shot being fired, but he instinctively recognised the sound of a sniper’s bullet. He saw his father stop, the white handkerchief fluttering in his hand.

Then the sound of a second bullet striking the bridge.

Milo knew about flash suppressors, but he searched for the flash from the barrel of the sniper’s rifle. Was that a puff of smoke high up against the wall of the Visoki Predstavnik building?

His anxious eyes returned to his father’s petrified figure on the bridge, both arms now raised high in the air: in one hand, the book, in the other, the handkerchief.

They’re just trying to unnerve him, Milo thought. They wouldn’t shoot him – he had permission to cross the bridge. The Serb commanders were expecting him.

His gaze shifted again from his father to the building where he thought he’d noticed a puff of smoke. Then he saw another puff and simultaneously heard the buzzing sound like an angry bee, and the dull thud.

Milo counted the windows. Seventh floor. The smoke was not coming from a window but he knew about the slits for the snipers’ rifles. This rifle had no flash suppressor.

Don’t move, Tata, Milo prayed softly.

Three shots had been fired. Something was wrong. These weren’t just warning shots. Not three. In the late afternoon sun he saw the shadow of the rifle’s barrel on the wall of the building.

“Tata!” he shouted. “Come back!”

His father turned his head, looked in his direction and took a few backward steps.

“Run, Tata!”

Tomislav turned, stumbled.

Zing!

Milo began to count as his father broke into a shuffling lope back to the safety of the sandbags, the book and handkerchief in his outstretched hands.

Zing!

Eighteen counts between shots.

Suddenly Tomislav stumbled and spun in a half-circle. He lowered his arms and slowly slid down on his haunches as if he was tired and needed to catch his breath. But then he got up, took a few staggering steps, slid down again.

“Tata!” Milo screamed. He could no longer see him from his hiding place behind the sandbags, and he guessed his father was now sitting or lying down.

“Come, Tata! You’re almost here!”

Zing!

Milo began to count again: fifteen counts, to be on the safe side. His legs were numb, his muscles paralysed, there was no air in his lungs, his brain rattling in his skull.

Three … four …

He got to his feet.

Six … seven … Out from behind the sandbags, a plain target for the sniper’s rifle.

Nine … ten … Running up the incline to where the bridge began. His father wasn’t sitting, he was lying.

Twelve … thirteen … His father turned his face to Milo, his cheek caked with dust. “Back, Milo … Go back.” His voice was hoarse.

Fifteen … sixteen … Milo scurried back like a cat, dove for cover behind the sandbags.

Zing!

This one had been meant for him. The sniper had found his position.

Milo hoped his father would stay where he was. Tomislav was a clear target for the sniper on the seventh floor, but the sniper’s attention had been diverted now. If his father didn’t move, the sniper would focus on Milo. He would wait for a chance, a movement, a glimpse of a body part.

And it would turn into a waiting game. It was still hours before sunset, before Milo and his father could try to escape under the cover of darkness.

“Tata! Can you hear me?” he called towards the bridge.

He listened. Nothing.

Louder: “Tata!”

No reply.

Milo felt a rising panic constrict his throat, set his heart pounding. Perhaps his father was wounded. Perhaps he was bleeding to death on the bridge. But he didn’t dare leave the cover of the sandbags and the wall. If he came out, he was dead, that much he knew. And he was his father’s only hope.

Milo was thin but tough. All the children of Sarajevo were. Experts at survival. If he was going to save his father, Milo couldn’t wait for darkness to fall. He tugged at a bag filled with sand and rolled it down onto the wooden bed of his water cart. The planks creaked. He didn’t know how strong the axle was, how many sandbags the trailer could take before it broke. He rolled a second bag on top of the first one, heard the creaking sound again, more menacing now. He decided not to take a chance with a third one.

He pushed the cart out from behind the wall, his eyes on the seventh storey. He saw the puff of smoke, heard the dull thud as the bullet slammed into one of the sandbags on his cart.

Taking shelter behind the two sandbags, Milo crawled, pushing the heavy water cart along the bridge, his progress agonisingly slow. Between shots, he counted. The tempo was quicker now, the bullets less accurately placed, as if the sniper’s patience was wearing thin.

When he reached his father, he noticed the blood.

“Tata … ”

His father was gazing up at the twilit sky, eyes half closed. Through his slightly parted lips a white tooth glinted wetly. Without his glasses, his father’s eyes looked strangely pale. The glasses lay under his head, one of the lenses shattered. A corner of the white handkerchief was still between his fingers but the book had slipped from his other hand. On the cover his long fingers had left red smears.

“No … ” sobbed Milo, lifting his father’s head in his hands.

From under the cart he peered at the façade of the building where the invisible sniper was hiding. Then he lay down next to his father. His body was still warm, as if he was just sleeping.

For a long time Milo lay by his father’s side. The bullets thudding into the sandbags were dim sounds from another time, another world.

Then it was quiet, and the silence wrenched him from his stupor. He pushed himself up on his arm and peered over the sandbags at the building. He sat cross-legged as he folded the arms of his father’s spectacles and put them into his jacket pocket. Then he reached for the white handkerchief and wiped the blood from his father’s forehead and hair.

Milo turned his face to the west. In the last light of the setting sun the mountains of Bjelašnica and Igman were deep in shadow. The hazy sky was changing colour, like blood poured into water.

He stretched his legs and lay back down. Placing his hand on his father’s cheek, he felt the beard stubble against his palm. He didn’t close his eyes, but lay watching as the light faded and the sky over the bridge and city became darker.

While Milo was waiting for the night, a seed germinated amid the chaos in his mind. His mother had been right, he thought: no one could be trusted. In the dirty street, on the bridge where his father’s blood was congealing in the sand and dust, he knew that everything had changed. Henceforth their lives would be irrevocably different: his own, and the lives of his mother and his sister Kaya, who was only nine years old.

Once there had been seven of them in the poky apartment in Strossmayer but, like every other family in Sarajevo, their numbers had diminished. His grandpa had been mowed down in the water queue, his grandma in the bread queue. But worst, until today, had been Jasmina in the last snow before summer, on the slopes of the Jahorina mountain, the site of the women’s skiing events during the 1984 Winter Olympics. His mother had grown quiet after Jasmina’s death. His father too. Everyone had become quieter. There was no more laughter in their apartment.

He didn’t know how long he had lain there. When he opened his eyes, night had fallen over Sarajevo. Against his hand, his father’s cheek was cold.

Milo sat up slowly. Here and there, far apart, streetlights were still burning. He grunted softly as he tipped the first sandbag from the cart, more loudly with the second one. His father, like everyone else, was emaciated, but Milo still struggled to get him onto the cart, on his back with his legs dangling down the back. Grasping the handle, Milo took one last look at the now dark and sinister shape of the building from which the shots had been fired. Then he dragged the cart with his father’s body off the bridge, around the sharp corner with its protecting wall, sandbags and warning signs, to the embankment and back along the river to the old town.

In Baščaršija, in an alley behind the Sebilj fountain, now dry, lived Dr Buzuk. Dr Buzuk would know what to do. He would help lift his father off the cart and carry him inside. Dr Buzuk would take care of his father and when that had been done, Milo would walk to Strossmayer, where his mother would be anxiously waiting. She and Kaya.

He thought of the fear on his mother’s thin face as he pulled the cart carrying his father’s body over the cobblestones, past the cathedral square, along Ferhadija, into the old town. His head lowered, he was unaware of the mute faces behind the lace curtains at the windows. Everyone knew Milo and his water cart; they had all known Tomislav Borić.

* * *

“You can wait here, Milo. Would you like some tea?”

Milo shook his head. Dr Buzuk had examined his father and summoned the hearse from the Kuševo Hospital over the citizens’ band radio.

“I’ll take the message to your mother.”

Milo shook his head again. “I will. I’ll tell her myself.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“No.”

“Wait until I’ve finished.”

“No.”

“Well, take these two sleeping tablets. It will be a great shock to her.”

“She’s expecting it.”

“Give her the pills. See that she takes one tonight. Do you want one as well?”

“No.”

“Cry, Milo. It’s the only thing that helps. You must cry. Don’t keep it bottled inside.”

“I have to be strong for my mother. And my sister.”

“I’ll come to the apartment as soon as they’ve fetched your father. Wait there for me. Tell your mother I’m on my way.”

Milo walked out into the night. He pulled his empty cart through the narrow alleys, wondering how he was going to break it to his mother that his father wasn’t coming back, that she’d been right: not even a book of Serbian poems could fend off Serbian bullets.

But she’d know that immediately, he thought. She’d see it in his face, in the tears on his cheeks, the trembling of his body. His mother had expected it, and when he opened the door, she’d know she’d been right.