Читать книгу The Skinner's Revenge - Chris Karsten - Страница 18

Vlatko Galić had been playing cards, drinking, and boasting about real and imaginary military and sexual exploits the whole afternoon, and it was long after dark when he got out of the elevator on the seventh floor. When he pushed open the door of the apartment, he was greeted by the smell of gunpowder and brandy. The door was never locked. No one ever ventured onto the seventh floor.

In the light of the bare globe on the ceiling he saw Zoran propped up at the table, his head resting on his arms. He was snoring restlessly, his breathing laborious and sporadic. In the dim light Vlatko made out the blurred shadows of the paraffin lantern on the table beside Zoran’s head, the empty Slivo bottle, the butt of the AK resting on the floor, the barrel still in the breach in the wall, empty cartridges on the floor.

A fuckin’ war zone, thought Vlatko. Then he remembered the librarian.

He shook Zoran’s shoulder, crossed to the window and peered out into the moonless night. In the dim glow of the last streetlights in Vrbanja Street, he could barely make out the bridge. He turned back to the table.

“Zoran!”

Zoran raised his head, rubbed his eyes and his unshaven cheek, and pushed his fingers through his greasy hair.

“The librarian. Did he arrive? Was he on the bridge?”

Zoran yawned, exposing brown teeth. His fingers felt around for his black cheroots. There was the scratching sound of a match, the sharp smell of sulphur and a flickering yellow light. He blew out a thin stream of smoke and looked up at Vlatko.

“I got him.”

“Got him?”

“I think I shot the librarian. And a child too. A boy.”

“You needed two magazines for a father and son?” asked Vlatko.

“Fuck you,” said Zoran. “Let’s go take a look on the bridge.”

Taking a strong flashlight, they headed for the elevator and walked the few blocks to the bridge.

“There they are.” Zoran motioned with the flashlight at two dark mounds on the bridge. They approached, stopped. Zoran prodded one of the mounds with the steel tip of his boot.

“Sandbags,” said Vlatko.

“There’s blood here.” Zoran shone his flashlight on a dark puddle.

Vlatko stooped, picked up the book. “You empty two magazines on a librarian and his son and all you have to show for it is a bloodstain and a book?”

Vlatko opened the volume of poems and the light shone on the receipt from the bicycle shop, made out to Tomislav Borić at an address in Strossmayer Street.

“Come!” said Zoran.

“Where to?” asked Vlatko.

“We’re going to look for them. We’ve got their address.”

They knew where Strossmayer was – everyone knew Strossmayer. It was not a neighbourhood where Serbian fighters or snipers from the Romanija corps felt safe. But Vlatko and Zoran were neither armed nor in uniform. All they had was a knife, a receipt and a volume of poems. And it was dark.

They found the building and knocked on a door on the second floor.

“Tomislav?” The face of the woman who opened the door was expectant.

“Is Tata back?” came the excited voice of a little girl.

The woman tried to slam the door, but before she could make a sound Vlatko’s hand closed over her mouth. “Shh … ” he said, his drunken breath on her neck.

At the same time Zoran’s hand closed around the little girl’s mouth.

Vlatko kicked the door shut from the inside, whispering to the woman in his arms: “Who else is here?”

She shook her head, her eyes wide.

“No one?”

She shook her head again.

“Tomislav Borić? Where is he?”

The woman mumbled something behind Vlatko’s hand. He eased his grip slightly, put his ear to her mouth, listened, felt her soft curves through the fabric of her dress. Thought about the whore who’d never arrived.

“He’s not here,” said Vlatko.

“Do you have a son?” asked Zoran.

She nodded.

“Is he with his father?”

She nodded again.

“And they’re not home yet?”

Nod.

Zoran took the knife from his pocket, flicked out the blade. He pressed it against the rosy cheek of the terrified child.

“I’m going to take my hand away from your mouth,” said Vlatko. “If you cry out or try anything funny, he’s going to cut your child’s face.”

When he took his hand away, the woman staggered back. He laughed, his eyes on her heaving bosom. He looked at Zoran, who was also grinning widely as he held the little blonde girl in his arms.

* * *

Milo stowed his water cart in the boiler room of the apartment building. He waited at the door for two men in worn leather jackets and dirty jeans who were on their way out. He wiped his wet cheeks with the palm of his hand and wondered whether he should have waited for Dr Buzuk after all.

One of the men laughed as Milo stepped aside for them to pass. Their cheeks were unshaven, their hair unwashed, and the one with the bleached hair had a tattoo on his neck. It looked to Milo like the gaping jaws of a dog or wolf.

In their apartment his mother and sister were waiting for him and his father to return. Milo wasn’t laughing. He bore nothing but sadness in this city of tears.

He smelt the sweat and dirt on the men’s clothing and bodies. One of them stopped, turned and gave him a suspicious look. It was not the one who had laughed – this one had a mean face. His lips were drawn back in a snarl, exposing rotten teeth.

When he leant towards Milo, the smell of alcohol was strong on his breath. “Why are you out so late? It’s almost ten.”

The curfew began at ten and lasted until six in the morning.

“Where do you live? Which apartment?” asked the one with the bleached hair and the dog’s head tattooed in his neck.

Milo was streetwise. He’d developed a nose for the shameless filth that had taken over the city. “I don’t live here,” he muttered.

“What are you doing here then?” asked the one with the rotten teeth.

Avoid the eyes, Milo had learned. Eye contact was not good. It was disrespectful, challenging.

“I’ve come to fetch my homework book,” he said with lowered eyes.

“Is that blood on your clothes?” asked Dog Tattoo.

Milo nodded.

“Whose blood is it?”

Milo shrugged. “Bomb.”

“Where?”

“Omladinska.”

Dog Tattoo seemed satisfied. He would know. Omladinska was five hundred metres from the BiH presidency, a target for the 122mm howitzers from the hills of Mojmilo and Vrace. If people still chose to live in apartment buildings in that vicinity, it was their own fault. The howitzers weren’t accurate and the Serbian gunners didn’t care about collateral damage.

Milo saw the stains and splatters in the dust on their shabby boots and on their trouser legs. They had blood on their clothes too, he noticed. They could be BiH renegades, either Croats or Bosniaks. His father had tried to explain to him the vague dividing line between friend and foe, the complex racial politics, the concept of ethnic cleansing. The two men could also be Bosnian Serbs who had come in search of new targets and were on their way back to their field guns in the mountains. A few nights ago, before he had decided to cross the Vrbanja bridge with a volume of poetry, intent upon pleading the cause of the National Library, his father had told him that searching for an answer to the events in Sarajevo was like searching for a face in a smoke-filled mirror.

“Where’s your father?” asked Rotten Teeth.

“Omladinska.”

“Where the bomb was?”

Milo nodded without looking up.

“Where does your father work?” asked Dog Tattoo.

“Oslobodjenje,” Milo lied.

“The newspaper building?”

Milo nodded again. The Oslobodjenje building was on the west side of the city, far away from here.

“Are you lying?” asked Rotten Teeth.

“Leave him, Zoran,” said Dog Tattoo. “He looks stupid – the bombs must have fried his brains.”

When they had gone, Milo dragged himself up the stairs. At the door he hesitated, took a deep breath and steeled himself to tell his mother about the events on the bridge. Hopefully Kaya would be asleep.

His hand reached for the door but remained hovering in the air when he saw the stains on the doorknob in the dimly lit corridor. His brain reluctant to register that he was looking at congealed blood.

He pushed open the door. His mother did not come to welcome him, neither did Kaya. The apartment was quiet. In the dark, a strange smell lay over the familiar, comforting scents of his home, like an invisible layer of fog. Beneath it he sensed an amorphous harbinger of doom.

“Mama!” he called into the silence.

The dark apartment … His mother would have lit a lamp if there was no electricity. She and Kayla wouldn’t have sat waiting in the dark. Had there been a power cut? No, there’d been a light in the foyer where the two men had questioned him.

He felt for the switch. “Mama! Kaya! Where are you?”

The apartment had two bedrooms, one for his parents and one where his grandparents used to sleep. The three children had slept on the old carpet in the lounge. At night they’d rolled out their bedding and in the morning rolled it up again. After first Grandpa Juro and later Grandma Brana had died, he, Jasmina and Kaya had moved into the second bedroom. After Jasmina had been killed by a bomb splinter, he and Kaya had slept in the second bedroom, often in the same bed.

He found them on his parents’ bed. He stood in the doorway. For a moment his brain refused to make sense of what his eyes were seeing. He had no idea who the naked woman on the bed was. She was frail, her legs and arms like sticks, each rib clearly visible under the milky white skin. Her eyes were open, staring at the ceiling. Bloody mucus had trickled from her nose and the corner of her mouth, down her chin.

No, Milo thought, thank goodness it wasn’t his mother. His mother wasn’t so skinny, his mother spoke to him and comforted him, and when she hugged him, her body felt warm and comfy.

His gaze shifted to the little girl next to the woman. She, too, looked pale and fragile. He found it unbearably sad, this forgotten doll without clothes. Her blonde hair was tousled and on her cheek was a reddish brown smear.

Milo put his back against the wall and sank down on his haunches, then sat down on the floor. From there he saw only the woman’s face in profile, and her hair that was spread over the pillow under her head. Her arm had fallen from the bed and dangled to the floor. He stared at her profile, then up at the ceiling to see what mesmerised her so.

He looked back at the figure on the bed and his eyes followed the arm to the floor. In her hand was the Gospa string, rosary of peace. Her fingers were twined through the beads, the silver Jesus crucifix just touching the floor.

Milo leant back against the wall. Soundlessly began to shake. On hands and knees he crawled to the bed and reached for her hand. Her skin was warm to his touch.

Her eyes open, but she did not speak.

“Mama,” said Milo.

Then he understood. It didn’t strike him like a blow to the chest. Instead, it was as if layers were being peeled away, as his mother used to peel onions, until every layer had been stripped and the full horror of the day lay exposed.

He sat down next to the bed and felt a new sensation. Not sorrow: he had depleted his capacity for sorrow on the long walk from the bridge, his father on the back of his water cart. This new sensation was a dense black shadow descending. It encompassed all the hatred and helplessness he’d felt on the bridge but had been unable to identify.

He removed the rosary from between his mother’s fingers and clasped it in his hand.

Suddenly there was a sound. He raised his head and heard it again: a groan. His mother lay motionless, unblinking.

Then he heard the softest gasp.

Milo jumped up, saw the movement on the bed beside his mother, the lips stirring, the narrow chest rising and falling.

“Kaya!”

He rushed around the bed, pulled the sheet over their naked bodies, clutched his sister’s hand, called through the apartment, his shouts ringing out, through the front door, through the thin walls: “Help! Help!”

They came. Everyone knew the librarian and his family. Someone was dispatched to call Dr Buzuk, while willing female hands tended to the bodies on the bed.

“Poor Milka,” said a neighbour.

“Put a blanket over Kaya and keep her warm,” said another.

“Where’s Tomislav?” asked a third.

“And Milo? Has anyone seen Milo? He was here a moment ago.”

Milo heard the voices, but didn’t react. He had slipped through the crowd, out of the apartment, into the night.