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A HIERARCHY OF THINGS

Under Pressure

1.

They’ve brought us to the frontline. Mud and fog everywhere. I can barely see the man in front of me. We almost hold onto each other’s belts lest we get lost. We pass between burning houses. The file trudges on alongside rickety fences. The mud sticks to our boots, stretches like dough. Lines seen for the first time are the best. Everything is new, unusual and hairy as fuck. Especially when you take charge of a position at night, and the next day, in daylight, you realise you’re sitting on the tip of a nail.

Charred beams are falling off roofs, sizzling in the mud. We trudge up a big slope. The grass is slimy with fog. Whenever someone falls, he brings the file to a halt and, as a matter of course, curses a blue streak at the motherland and the president. The very thought that we would sleep out in the open flares up my haemorrhoids. The guide, a military policeman, brings us up to the top of the hump. Emir and I take a shallow trench in which we find: a mattress and a quilt, mud-smeared, and a few fags, smoked down to the filter, nervously stuck into the soil.

‘Alright, lads! Freezin’, innit?’ a voice reaches us from the right-hand side.

‘Come ’ere and we’ll talk,’ replies Emir lying on the mattress.

A silhouette approaches from behind.

Hops into the trench.

‘I’m from the third battalion,’ he tells us as we shake hands.

‘Got a fag?’

I open a cigarette case full of Gales.

‘Ain’t they gonna see us if we smoke?’ asks Emir.

‘Nah. They’re far from ’ere, and the fog’s thick.’

Emir and I both light up, as if on command.

‘Now then, what’s the lie of the land?’ I ask. ‘Is it ’airy?

‘They ploughed the hill with shells earlier today. A fighter from the second company ’ad ’is cheek blown off by shrapnel. On Metla, a hump twice the size of ours, they ’ave a couple of ZiS anti-tank guns. They can shoot us like clay pigeons,’ Third Bat-Boyo recounts slowly.

‘So, survivors will eat with golden spoons, just like the president promised,’ heckles Emir.

‘Ain’t as bad as it looks,’ Third Bat-Boyo comforts him. ‘Gotta die someday any road’.

Fear creeps into me like mould. It’s shrapnel shave day tomorrow.

* * *

‘Your life line is broken in two places. You’ll be wounded twice, once severely,’ a Gipsy woman told me on one occasion. Dževada tossed the beans, read them, concluded:

‘A journey abroad is in your future, and glad tidings from afar.’

She’d tell that to everyone, since we were surrounded from all sides, and we wanted to escape the siege, that is, to travel abroad. “Glad tidings from afar,” that would usually mean a girlfriend who happened to be outside the noose when the siege started, or relatives who lived in Germany and sent money.

I’ve laid down a hierarchy of things:

1 war

2 alcohol

3 poetry

4 love

5 war again

Favourite ditty: Bed, you wonderful device, sleeping in you feels so nice.

Stupidest quote: War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it, Erasmus of Rotterdam.

Favourite colour: Blue, all shades of.

Favourite book: Plexus by Henry Miller.

Favourite beverage: Home-distilled rakia.

Favourite weapon: Hungarian Kalashnikov, ser. no. SV­3059.

Favourite dish: A bottle of rakia and a packet of fags.

Favourite quote: To become immortal, and then die, Jean-Pierre Melville.

Unfulfilled wish: For shrapnel to scar my face, so I look like a badass when I walk into a bar.

Then I fell asleep under the muddy quilt.

2.

‘Fiver says Steelio will make it across the field.’

‘Does it count if ’e’s wounded, or does ’e ’ave to be unscathed?’

‘As long as ’e makes it to that white ’ouse.’

Steelio, thus nicknamed on account of his studded heavy metal leather bracelet, is lying behind an openwork concrete fence. He’s covered his head with his hands. Fine concrete dust is settling on his hair. He’s made it exactly halfway to cover. Bullets from an M-84 machinegun hit the concrete posts, whizz through the gaps, stick into the ground. Steely gets up, takes a running start and is brought down by a burst. The gamblers are sitting underneath a quince tree deep in the lee of a four-storey house.

‘Steely, you alive?’

‘Alive my arse, ’e’s not movin’, ’e’s not even groanin’.’

‘Well it’s ’is own bloody fault, nobody made ’im dash for it in daylight, coulda waited for nightfall,’ the third observer gets a word in.

Steelio gets up again, moves his stumpy legs with all his might. It looks like he’s running on the spot, but then he finally takes off from his starting position. His mullet wafts in the wind. The M-84 is doing its thing, but Steelio finishes like Ben Johnson.

‘Go on, give us the fiver.’

‘Fuck off.’

‘Well, did ’e make it or what?’

‘’E did, yeah.’

‘Fair and square?’

‘Fair and square, yeah.’

‘Absolutely romantic?’

‘Absolutely romantic.’

Steelio, leaning on the cold wall of the house, takes broken cigarettes out of his pocket. With his shaky fingers he puts half a cigarette in his mouth and lights up. Fixes his hair. Flicks dust and soil off his fatigues. Blood returns to his face. Night falls like a trump card.

3.

Zgemba is flicking bits of human brain off the filo pie with his fingernail. He’s tearing pieces off with his right hand, dipping them into salt and putting them in his mouth. With his left he’s noshing on cottage cheese, from a white plastic bag splattered with a mixture of blood and brains. His mug is sooty from cartridge gas. In his lap he has a 7.62 mm light machinegun. Five minutes ago this trench was occupied by the autonomist rebels. A still warm corpse is hanging over the breastwork. A burst blew half of his skull off. I turn him on his back. From the inside pocket of his army green jacket I take out his wallet. I look at a passport-size photograph of him. He had a receding hairline. Large, melancholy eyes. With the sharp edge of the photograph I floss out bits of apple from between my teeth.

* * *

In the middle of the operation Deba lit a fire behind one corner of a house to dry his socks. He had left his rifle leaning against the wall at the other end of the house. The autonomists counterattacked. They caught Deba alive and unarmed. Tied his hands behind his back with steel wire and shot him behind the shed.

* * *

That evening, after we were relieved, we went to a kafana. We drank at the expense of the Fifth Corps, meaning for nothing. Zgemba chucked blue diazepams into a pitcher of rakia. We lapped it up from large tumblers. The landlord brought meze – pastirma and cheese – on the house. He had a good-natured mug. He seemed a seasoned host and caterer. The waitress, a Romanian, complained to him that we were drinking for nothing. He reassured her. Her teeth protruded from under her lips, with large spaces in between like on a rake. She said she used to date a bloke from our brigade, whom they used to call Pekar. After a few litres of rakia we started trashing the place. We shot the mirror and the shelves lined with bottles above the bar. Muffled by the noise, a turbo folk number was cheeping from the stereo. I tried to hit a fly swatter that was hanging from a nail in the wainscoting. In the beer garden we scattered the plastic chairs and tables. We butt-stroked a few locals who spoke up against our actions. We disarmed three policemen, lined them up in front of a hairdressing salon. The landlord drove us in his Lada to the schoolhouse where we were stationed, ten kilometres from the kafana. It started pouring outside. The wipers were sliding across the windscreen like pressure gauge pointers. Nothing else of note happened that evening.

From the Haiku Diary

I got drunk and fell asleep on the wooden stall where Jagoda displayed her groceries, in front of the Austro-Hungarian residential building in which I lived.

I was wearing light shorts and a T-shirt.

Mother saw me from the toilet window.

They brought me in holding me by the arms.

Washed my face over the tub.

I felt like a foreign object within a foreign object.

I looked like a weary robot.

* * *

My hands were shaking as I drank coffee.

Opposite the house.

At pizzeria Amfora.

It was completely normal that my hands were shaking.

Common alcohol tremors.

The coffee slid down my throat.

Rinsed the smell of last night’s beer and cognac.

It was day six of the war.

For the first time in my life I was a refugee.

* * *

In the toilet of the Café West I took off my Levi’s and sold them to the owner for a hundred million dinars.

The one million note had Nikola Tesla on it.

The five hundred thousand one had Josip Broz Tito.

Beer soon ran out.

One beer cost half a million.

We drank whisky.

The barman poured it from a five-litre bottle.

We didn’t notice when night fell.

Outside, cold water was pouring from a crude drinking fountain.

Soaking the hot asphalt.

The smell of linden blossom.

Honey in the air.

That’s all I remember.

* * *

For a morning that gives us the illusion of a fresh start…

Arrow-like rays of sunshine came in through the window

of the room above the Café Hajduk.

It was pleasant inside.

Warmth caught on the tips of my toes.

I put on fresh white boxers.

I took some notes and coins out of my jacket pockets.

I opened the window and reached out.

A fresh breeze blew into my face.

And that was no illusion.

I counted the marks.

The morning was made for that.

* * *

21 April 1992 (Tuesday), at 18:15, war started in my town.

In the garden of Café Casablanca I was drinking Sarajevsko beer.

I was wearing the latest model of Adidas trainers.

A pair of Levi’s.

A down jacket.

I hid at my uncle’s some thirty metres from the kafana.

He gave me a .357 Magnum and sixty rounds.

Which I put in my trouser pockets.

Some bullets had hollow points.

Those were the dum-dum bullets.

Shells and projectiles of various calibres were the soundtrack of the first day of war.

I saw a shooting star crash down across a piece of sky between the roofs of two

houses.

I made a wish.

For the war to end.

And to make up with my girlfriend.

* * *

’Ow much money ’ave you got?

Ten marks.

I’ve got five.

We can get pissed as newts.

* * *

We’re drinking beer from the bottle.

The floor is made of marble.

It radiates cold.

It’s sultry outside.

Nobody’s wearing a watch.

Because time is utterly pointless.

* * *

It’s wonderful being a refugee.

Means you’re a fifteenth-class citizen.

And nobody knows you.

You can take a piss in the middle of the street.

And go on your way.

The passers-by will say: ‘What an oik, a proper savage!’

‘Why didn’t they kill the lot of you?’

‘Why didn’t you fight?’

‘Cowards!’

‘Cunts!’

‘Have you no balls?’

Only sometimes the 155 mm howitzer shells whizzing across the sky remind them that there is no such thing as deep rear in this war.

* * *

A packet of Gales is 17 marks.

Partners are 20.

HBs cost 25.

Skopsko beer is 10 marks.

Ćevapi meatballs 20.

A sack of flour 1000 marks.

A kilo of coffee 330.

We’re surrounded from all sides.

But, there’s a substitute for everything.

Quince leaf can be smoked and costs zero marks.

Roasted rye coffee is a mark a kilo.

A bottle of reeky rakia is 10 marks.

Ćevapi are a luxury anyway.

Maize bread is tasty and cheap.

We’re still surrounded from all sides.

* * *

At six in the morning my mother plucked dewy pigweed in the nearby dales.

She brought the harvest home in her raised apron.

For dinner we had blanched pigweed with garlic, pigweed soup and pigweed salad.

I’m full of iron.

As strong as Popeye the Sailor.

* * *

I loll about on a grey humanitarian aid sponge mattress.

Ants are marching up the wall in wide columns.

I’m popping 10-milligram diazepams.

Sleeping twenty hours at a time.

In my room I practise walking with crutches.

My wounded foot still hurts.

I’m reading T.S. Eliot’s Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.

In the guest room Greta and Nađa are playing solitaire.

Mum is fiddling about with our wood-burning stove.

Dad is away on the frontline.

Behind our refugee house Mum planted onions, peppers, tomatoes.

We’re waiting for the garden to produce produce.

In front of our doorstep, Humpy Horsie is happily barking.

The sun is at its zenith.

* * *

From the last dugout to the left they wired us that Osman Jakušović had been KIA.

A sniper hit him in the forehead, by the hairline.

It was impossible to reach the farthest dugout on Padež hill.

That night they brought him down on a stretcher.

He woke up from cardiac arrest.

He mumbled netherwords.

Our hair stood on end as we listened to the dead man talking.

They took him to the rear.

He died in hospital after three days.

I never got to know him well.

I don’t remember his face.

He was a tall, muscular lad from the village of Stijena.

* * *

10 May 1992 (Friday)

Nothing has happened to me today.

* * *

The machinegun barks like a dog.

I’ve plucked a shirtful of cherries.

Bullets whizz above incandescent roofs.

They say a sniper’s been at it from the Old Citadel.

Here and there, 60 and 82 mm mortars operate.

From time to time a tank shoots a shell.

A rocket launcher lets out a volley.

I shudder if something explodes nearby.

Shudders creep up the spine.

Palms sweat.

I’m talking about normal things.

Like clouds, cherries or the river Una.

* * *

I have decided to write sparsely.

End of war not in sight.

Mon. – drunk.

Tue. – drunk.

Wed. – ditto.

Thu. – 0.

To Eternity

1.

The plan was quite simple: We would stretch out and form a firing line. The nine of us. The distance between each two fighters 5–10 metres. Frontal assault from the Standard Operating Procedures. Baldie will fire a rocket from his shoulder-fired Yugoslav Army Zolja launcher. That’s our artillery prep. We will rise up from the grass. Start shooting and shouting the Takbir as we dash for their trenches. Whoever survives, survives.

Now we lie about and smoke in the safety of our own trenches. We’re wearing our helmets, and our ammunition vests are stocked with thirty-round magazines. Baldie is slinging his Zolja over his back. Our mighty artillery. Faćo is the only one of us who has a rifle with a wooden stock. He says it’s his lucky rifle. The trenchies are offering us cigarettes and coffee, eyes ablink with happiness because they’re not participating in the operation. Everything for the commandos. Small talk, nobody mentions what is to come. As if we were going on a picnic, not a trench raid.

October wind musters out veteran beech and hornbeam leaves. As they fall, they brush leaf against leaf, rustling like Indian silk. The pines are indestructible. Their dark green needles comb the wind. We wait for the battalion commander to give the off via a Motorola. Night is in force. We’re in the forest, where our strange firing line in the shape of a horseshoe is formed. Below the forest runs an asphalt road. Further down is a great big hollow, as dark as King Kong’s gullet. Three hundred metres across the hollow our line continues. So we’re bulging into their line. An un-fuck-with-able salient exposed to guns of all calibres.

Baldie motions us to move. Hafura and I go on a recce, just in case, although midnight blue is the colour-in-chief. We head out of the forest. We walk like camouflaged ghosts, and sneak up to a stretch of stunted undergrowth. If somebody opens up on us, we’re fucked because we’re between the lines. We can only move by ear. We hear indistinct human speech. We hold our breath. Some kind of tapping sound is coming from their trenches. Dull thuds. As if they’re digging in. Now? What the fuck? Baldie approaches with the rest of the detail. We take up positions as planned and start to crawl. Golo brdo. Has there ever been a stupider name for a hump than Barren Hill? We close up to the spot. We can’t see their trenches. It seems they are just below the brow of the fell, on the last slope. Baldie gets up, telescopes the Zolja out. He takes aim, eyeballs it. The rocket flies above the hill and on to Zanzibar. He must’ve hit a barn or some such strategically significant facility. Doesn’t matter, it’s just a psychological trick anyway. Explosions stoke fear, and fear makes you see things, your eyes pop out and gleam white, like those of an ox about to be slaughtered.

We dash, we shoot, we shout.

Metres seem like kilometres in a marathon race.

Time stretches like the rubber strips on a catapult.

Tracers fly every which way.

Enemy fire slows us down.

We just lie on the ground, without any cover.

That’s it. Golo brdo. A dying range.

Hit the deck, graze the grass.

‘Baldie, me gun’s jammed, come over ’ere!’ yells Faćo.

Baldie kicks his gun clear. Faćo puts the rifle’s wooden stock in front of his face to shield his forehead.

‘Fuckin’ ’ell, it’s a tough one!’ I hear Hafura.

‘Tits up, this. Pull back!’ bellows Baldie.

No time to talk. We’re rolling downhill towards our line. We’re shielded from the bullets as we’re just below the shoulder of the hill. Hand grenades explode in the place we were a second ago. The blasts ring out like in a well. We reach the forest. None killed, none wounded. The recruit hangs his head, stares at the ground. His pale complexion lends him the appearance of a zombie. His aquiline nose, hanging from his face like an upside down butcher’s hook, turns him into a walking caricature. He bends over at the waist as he walks, as if to measure his insecurity with strides. To have a raw recruit in your unit is to be blighted by bad luck. It’s incredible how death sticks to them. At times I was convinced I could make out the sigil of doom on their faces.

‘All the king’s ’orses couldn’t take this fuckin’ ’ill,’ Hafura says.

‘Yep, it’s a tough one, fuck.’

‘Night raids are a lottery,’ Merva makes himself heard.

‘Everything’s a lottery: breakin’ the lines, holdin’ the lines, goin’ about in mufti on leave, you can catch death wherever.’

‘Nasty fuckin’ business, this,’ Baldie speaks up.

‘To top it off, me gun keeps jamming’, complains Faćo.

Baldie winks and smiles. We descend to the asphalt road.

‘Right lads, see ya, then,’ the guard from the dugout far left takes his leave of us.

We move in a group. We footslog like tin robots. We’re going back two hundred metres towards our rear. When we get there, the house we’re quartered in emerges from the murk. Merva and I take first watch. The others go to bed. We’re standing in front of the door looking at the green in front of the house. To our right gapes a large hollow. Our positions are some half a kilometre up the mountain. For all intents and purposes, we’re a picket. The dark thickens, like when a train suddenly flies into a tunnel.

‘Tomorrow, I mean in the mornin’, we’ll be attackin’ again, it seems.’

‘Gettin’ fucked is what we’ll be doin’!’

‘They’ve dug in down to the centre of the Earth, can’t scratch ’em,’ Merva moans to himself.

In the distance, a drunk is shooting tracers into the sky. I piss on the corner of the house. Live to fight another day. Me wanger.

2.

Same thing again. Only this time we’re attacking by day. What was the sky like? Was it sunny? I don’t remember. The uniform has a uniform unisex smell. The grass is wet and grey-green like the walls of a public lavatory. It is perfectly quiet those few minutes before the attack. The sounds of nature, too, die down. Or the brain doesn’t register them, focused as it is on one thing only: staying alive.

My body is like a sweaty clenched fist. The firing of the Zolja. Some shooting and shouting of Takbirs. We’ve cracked their line with unexpected ease. Hopped into their empty trenches. A twitch crumples up my face. Expanding bullets are popping like popcorn. Redžo Begić is kneeling on my right. Stalks of straw jut out from under an army blanket. We rummage through some army bags we find there. The owner of the one I’ve got is called Duško Banjac. His name is written in pencil on a piece of paper from a graph pad. We stuff cardboard packets of ammo into our pockets. A jet of thick blood spurts from Redžo’s mouth. He gurgles. His face assumes the hue of lye. At first I thought the bullet had gone through his mouth. We get him out of the trench and further, some ten metres below it, to cover. His death took only a few seconds. We didn’t even have time to bandage him. The bullet went through his chest from above. Ripped up his heart. We covered him with a shelter-half – when you see a dead man you’re reminded of your own mortality.

The recruit retches and chucks up slimy morsels of undigested food. We leave him with the casualty to wait for casevac to come from the rear and pick up the body. Fighters from the adjacent brigade have broken enemy lines on the right flank and burst into some houses level with Golo brdo. We’re making our way through short stalks of un-harvested maize. A shell lands between Hafura and Husin. Both go airborne, together with mown off maize stalks. Husin is wounded in the left shin, a wound worth three or four months of leave. Hafura is blast-injured. Baldie radios in that we have two wounded and one dead.

There is no worse feeling than having to press on with the opera­tion after a situation like this. Sickness and fear reach superhuman proportions.

We come across a body folded over the breastwork like a sack of flour. He’s wearing former Yugoslav People’s Army olive green coveralls. He is 30–35, has a long blond moustache and a new battle harness, which now has no bearing on his appearance. Blood is trickling down from his nostrils, as if he were a minor character killed in the first minutes of a cheap karate film. His wide open eyes stare at the rutted ground.

Thirty metres further on, we discover another corpse. This one is barely 19. He’s lying on his back. His underpants are around his knees. With dignity or without, the man is dead. No one flies off into the sky. The earth attracts bodies and lead.

* * *

An hour later, Pađen and I are prone behind a long berm. We’re controlling a hundred-metre stretch of the meadow. Shells stick into the soil in front of and behind us. I feel one is about to splash onto my back any moment now. Their artillery covers every inch of the ground. I wish I were a mole now. Chickenly panic creeps into me. I wish I could slough off my body, become ethereal. Rid myself of flesh, blood and reason. Become a thin translucent zero.

In fear dwelleth God.

I don’t pray to him, as the war has rendered his existence pointless. He is now most certainly in another galaxy. Snivelling in safety and solitude. Missing not a hair off his head. He’s stacked himself up a breastwork of metal planets. Repeating his creation experiment, because solitude is nasty and he wants to socialise. He needs some new creation: Manotaurs. He’s sick of humans. He has failed. Appalled, he has given up on the Earthlings. Shabby artist, that lad. Still, he did invent evil. If he ever existed.

Pieces of shrapnel, like Chinese stars, whizz all around us. If I saw myself in the mirror now, the shock would kill me. I change cover every now and then. I hop into a small depression, I get scratched in the wild brambles. Shells are landing there, too. Pađen is calm. He’s lying on his stomach, observing. From the rucksack on his back juts out the sword of a chainsaw. Below it, he tied a ghetto blaster to the rucksack straps.

‘’As that piece of rubbish got any batteries?’

‘I wouldn’t be luggin’ it to battle if it didn’t, would I now?’

‘Find us some music, so we don’t ’ear when a shell drops on us.’

Pađen turns the radio on. He twists the plastic knob. Goes through stations playing classical music: Bach, Beethoven, Rach­maninov. Piano, organ, violins, bassoons and clarinets drive me schizo. Horror has an agent in every cell of my body.

‘Fuck off with that jangle!’ I shout to Pađen.

The plastic dial moves on. Bowie’s Rock ’n’ Roll Suicide brings me to tears. I can see before my eyes a massive bar of solid wood. And a pint of foamy beer. A fluorescent lamp swaying above the bar, creating a sense of hovering. Everything is slowed down. Her greenish eyes sparkle, her lips swell pinkly before the kiss. I look at her face as we’re kissing. It becomes deformed with beauty. Give me your hand…, Bowie sings. The flashback to peacetime is cut short like when the film snaps in the middle of the screening. The dial travels on. The search for salvation is a soap bubble. Radio Korenica is playing a song with the following lyrics:

Dvor na Uni, Dvor na Uni, quaint little church upon a hill

That’s the place where, that’s the place where Serbs are breeding still…

The song is ideal for both laughter and tears. But shells are still dropping, stretching the mind. Now and again we are reduced to a state of feeble-mindedness. The belts connecting the drive wheels in our heads keep falling off. The clatter of the tanks a kilometre ahead is the most unnerving sound on earth. It’ll be the same thing again: squeeze your anus tight, shrink your brain to the size of a marble. We are lovely, innocent vowels spat out from the Devil’s mouth. Carry out the orders with the precision of a guided rocket. Act by inertia like a stray bullet. Be part of a stained glass window where the dominant colour is that of human mince. Hail to the homeland! Eyes right! The thud of the marching step. Ironed flags fluttering. Polished pips on the epaulettes gleaming. Hearts tick-tocking like clockworks.

‘Something’s well dodgy. They should’ve relieved us yonks

ago. Maybe they’ve pulled back and just left us ’ere?’ Pađen thinks out loud.

‘I suggest we slowly slope off. No point anyway…’

‘Fuck the point! And fuck whoever invented it.’

‘So, where do we go now?’

‘No idea.’

‘Crawl up our mums’ fannies.’

‘Best place to be.’

‘What if they’ve counterattacked?’

‘Then we’re fucked.’

* * *

Baldie takes down the muster roll. Troop strength: nine men plus pen-pusher. Absent: one at barracks (pen-pusher). Wounded: two fighters. Dead: one. On med leave: one in psych ward (recruit). At muster: five fighters.

We drink rakia and smoke in silence. Outside, fog captures acres of territory. Statistics reigns supreme. With great confidence it handles surplus and shortage. It measures morale, weighs men like heads of cattle. Standard deviation, plus/minus infinity.

Now We Get a-Rude and a-Reckless

1.

We’re digging up an Autonomist. Our razor-sharp shovels slice through the sloshy snow and stick into the makeshift mound. The soil is sodden sludge. The sound of metal stabbing the loamy clay breaks the winter silence. Around us, stunted spruces, dishevelled like Gremlins. They are slowly stripping off their overwhites as the snow thaws and falls to the ground with a thud. A southerly blows, but it’s still cold. The hands dry and crack, the fingers tingle. A magpie, in his black and white kit, zig-zags overhead. We lean onto the shovels to get the unpleasant business over with. Half of the mound is gone, and the rest looks like a scab torn up by a surgeon’s tweezers. Now and again, Beardo looks skywards, gets momentarily lost in thought, and then continues to dig. As if to apologise to the heavens for what he’s doing.

‘It’s all the same to ’im now, nothin’ bothers him anymore,’ mumbles Beardo.

‘’E’s not even a ’uman bein’ anymore. Just a corpse,’ I add. ‘Just some body, arms, legs, neutralised in accordance with the SOPs.’

The SOPs contain an explanation for everything under the sun in both war and peacetime. The definitions are clear, concise and precise, as if written by mediaeval scribes destitute of all inspiration. Ready! Aim! Fire! Eliminate enemy personnel with three short bursts. Reload! Discharge! Heel! Fetch! Dive to the right! The assault rifle is effective up to 400 metres, in case of co-ordinated fire by two or more firers up to 800… The SOPs are the finest encyclopaedia of the insanity of pedantry, SCH in tactical boots.

‘Ain’t easy bein’ alive, going about in the world in this body,’ laments Beardo.

A week ago, last time we were on duty, we buried the corpse where it lay. A bullet had ripped up the tendons on his right wrist. They poked out like severed power cords. Another bullet, the one which killed him, hit him below the left breast, near the heart. The blood was partially encrusted there, gelatinous. Above the entry wound, on his camo vest, hung a hunter’s pin badge, silver-coloured, slightly rusty. On the pin were two doubles, a hunter’s hat and an oak twig.

He lay on his back when we found him. Birds had eaten his eyes and the soft parts of his nose and ears. His eyelashes looked monstrous, trimming two empty eye sockets like sunflower petals bordering the pistil. His neck, swollen with decay, was locked by the collar of a camo shirt. I took the vest off him, in spite of the soldiers’ superstition that says never to take anything off the dead. He was thickset, with short, Teutonic-blond hair. About twenty-two. A sturdy village lad. The cold had conserved him, stopped further decomposition. Soon he was in his underwear and boots. After that we buried him. Nothing is more real than the human body when it starts to reek.

At home, Mum soaked the vest in cold water, to wash off the blood. The water took on the colour of rotting cherry with streaks of clay, the tub was a brimming blood bath. I left the pin in the drawer as a memento. I wasn’t thinking about soldier’s superstitions. Everything was happening to me for the first time.

Mum washed and darned the vest. I put it on like a proper frontline fop and went back on duty. Sometimes you think you’re invisible in camo, and therefore also indestructible. The better the camouflage pattern, the more invisible you are, and the longer you’ll live.

After ten minutes of vigorous digging we struck the corpse. We didn’t see any maggots, the soil was too hard and cold for them to do their thing. Only the bacteria of decay were patient and relentless. We wrapped him in a shelter-half and took him to the line. It was one of those specious ceasefires during which a sniper could easily send you to the happy hunting ground.

Between the lines, in a barn full of rotting hay, we met with the Autonomists. We rolled the corpse in on a wheelbarrow. They brought two sacks of flour, ten litres of cooking oil and a sack of sugar. A small fortune. We transacted the exchange, smoked a fag, shared a few words and went our separate ways. In war, when barter is practised, even a dead man has a price.

2.

Miki procured a matchbox of weed. We scrounged together a tenner. Bought a bottle of rot-gut. Some call this rakia powderpiss, because there’s a story going round that it’s made with soluble powder. That’s of no concern to us, what matters is that it hits you in the brains.

In the park, by the primary school, we’re smoking the weed, washing it down with rot-gut. Dusk rises like dark dough. The stars are twinkly flakes of bran. The dark matter is made of rye. Above the school entrance there is a placard: Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina – the guarantor of your survival. In the deep grass, humanoid statues are randomly arranged for display. All that culture is suffocating. It’s like peacetime.

Mama statue is holding a baby in her arms. Baby statue sleeps on the mighty tits that are green with mould. Its head is the size of a football. The weed and the rakia make the world twice as good. They bombard the brain with cluster bombs of rapture. The statues grow turquoise wings and soar to the sky like Wenders’s angels. My legs are full of lead. Miki is moving stars with his gaze. He’s really good at it. He’s rearranging the constellations. We sink into the dumps as if into a black hole. There’s also the reeds, when you snap like one.

‘Did ya see me bring that star down?’

‘Fuck it, let it suffer,’ I say to Miki. ‘Rock ’n Roll all night!’

‘Fuck a fighter that ’asn’t been wounded. ’old on a sec, mate, am I right or wot?’ Miki slams his fist on the ground, fixing my gaze, his eyes agoggle.

‘Right as pie,’ I reassure him. ‘The dumps and the reeds – brothers.’

Miki sheds tears the size of white small-grain beans. We share the last fag. The rot-gut is as sweet as kiwi juice, and there’s still some left. Puff, puff me, puff, puff Miki, right down to the filter. There’s always things that piss on your parade. Why not make half-metre fags? You smoke till you become tired, flick the ember off, take a little break then light up again. Absolute bliss: death by smoking. You’re going to get killed anyway, lung cancer or no lung cancer, who gives half a fuck?

‘I’m off to take a piss,’ says Miki. ‘Alcohol and weed/making spirits bright/what fun it is to drink and smoke/and piss whilst high as a kite,’ he sings.

‘Take one for me, too. And see that ya don’t step on a mine!’ I shout after him.

His gigantic shadow lags behind his body and turns the corner of the schoolhouse. A cuckoo is calling in code understood only by madmen. The rhythm of his elegy is akin to the tick-tocking of a clockwork bomb. Above the park is a road on which cars seldom travel. Their lights illuminate the schoolhouse windows and façade like searchlights in a concentration camp. We’re on leave for two more days, it’s as though we had two gold ingots in our hands. Nothing else matters: news from the front, or whether or not there’s going to be any food and ammunition. The weed and the rakia make the world twice as good. And the future, that syphilitic whore, promises riotous revelries.

The street lamps are out of order. I can’t think of a reason why they should work anyway, it’s more intimate like this. Only the priority facilities have electricity. And the homes of priority citizens. The darkness swallows us. Chews us up as we dream. It chucks us back up in the morning. Hung-over like wraiths, we set out in pursuit of a refreshing drop of alcohol, fantasising about a dewy pint bottle of Karlovačko beer.

3.

On 20 March 1994, a combined arms artillery/infantry attack commences at 09:50. Dugout 1 has eight wounded. On Hasin Vrh tasty ramsons grows. It tastes like garlic. It lowers the blood pressure. Ramsons is medicinal, it slows down ageing. It makes for excellent salad to accompany a plate of bean stew. On Hasin Vrh, dugouts are made of rocks. They aren’t even proper dugouts, more like sangars with very thin roofs. Makeshift weekend cottages for meditation in conditions of imminent danger to life and health. For nature lovers: clean mountain air, organically grown food. UNHCR’s reinforced plastic sheeting offering protection from the rain. It filters sunshine, removes the dangerous ultra-violet spectrum. Everything is the result of improvisation. The sky is improvised. Weapon systems, trees, rocks, insects and beasts, too. Around seven dead and thirty-five wounded is another product of improvisation. Only one dale has been lost. In it grows magically scrumptious ramsons. Shells, let off from mortars, whistle through the air like fatwas.

Amir carries me down the country road. I’m wounded in the left foot. In front of us a rifle grenade lands near a group towing a fighter wounded in the spine. His legs drag lifelessly behind him as if they weren’t his. We dive onto the forest floor from the road. Fifty metres to the left of us their battle cries ring out. Our line cracked like a china vase. Gone up the devil’s mother’s fanny. In my Kalashnikov I’ve got some five or six rounds. Enough to blow my brains out and end the war forever.

Forcing the River

‘We’re all gonna get killed here, down to the last man,’ says Zica.

Rotting pears squish under our boots. In the fruit, sugar turns into alcohol. I’ve never got drunk on a dry line. The crown of the pear tree, like an old lady, leans over the narrow ginnel we’re traversing at double time. The magazines in my tactical vest bounce like Rambo’s breasts when he jogs. In daytime this street is covered by an eight-four. It’s always safer at night. That’s why we’re fuckin’ running. We are in enfilade along the length of the alley, some fifty metres. The feeling is so intense you can’t think, you just rush headlong like a wildebeest.

We are sitting ducks until we reach the sheltering lee of the next house. Once there, we light up, gasping for breath. The wind brings the echoes of gunfire from the canyon, expanding bullets pop as if in a chain reaction. A torn curtain is hanging through the broken window. The TV shelf is covered in dust. The house has been looted. Home appliances fetch good prices. In the rear, a TV set is worth 100–200 marks, depending on the make. Those with flat screens are the best. Trinitrons. Like some kind of aliens from Star Trek.

Žile is fascinated by Trinitrons. Because the word sounds good. I guess. One time Juso Longcock and I commandeered an electric motor from a construction company. We wrapped it up in a humanitarian aid blanket and dragged it for almost twenty kilometres to the village of Gnjilavac. Juso sold it there and went to the nearby town of Kladuša with the money. There are people who like to steal bars of soap, chainsaws, transformer oil from substations, or designer furniture. Others look for gold or hard currency. Žile has a penchant for coffee. Paški for Levi’s 501 jeans. Bijeli loves glasses and cutlery. He was a waiter before the war.

I’m lying. On one operation against the Autonomists I stole an Ambas­sador blanket, still in the original packaging. On the next opera­tion, after I’d taken a pocket watch off an elderly corpse, with a relief of a capercaillie on the lid, I was wounded in the left foot. A piece of shrapnel the size of a marble crushed the first metatarsus, which is attached to the big toe, and lodged itself somewhere in the fleshy part. The pain was unbearable the following few days. I’d bang my fist on the wall, the nurse would come and hit me with a shot of morphine. For the next six hours I’d be in a state of bliss. Next to my bed lay a fighter with a high amputation. He was wont to sing some knicker-dropping turbo-folk number whilst the nurse dressed his wound. From time to time he would complain of phantom pain and an itch in the toes he no longer had. His leg had been cut off above the knee. I screamed when the nurse stuck her tweezers into my wound. She twisted them clockwise, as if to tighten down a bolt. At times I was too embarrassed to scream in front of the amputee, so I’d refrain from complaining about my own pain. The nurse would douse my wound with hydrogen peroxide which ate away the rot and the dead tissue. It foamed like Schweppes. A scab slowly formed on the surface, and the pain subsided. Ever since, the piece of shrapnel in my left foot has forecasted the weather as accurately as any weatherman.

I spent four months walking on crutches, like a run-of-the-mill wounded soldier. Soon the rubber tip on the right crutch wore down, and the crutch made a distinct sound. My dog would recognise the sound of me from a hundred metres away. I called him Humpy Horsie, because he’d started ambling after he survived distemper and had a hump on his back due to his unnatural gait. We lived in that house as refugees. Horsie would happily jump on me, together with a pack of neighbourhood strays. He obviously liked the smell of alcohol, I always came home drunk. There was no way I would ever fall, although I walked on three legs. After the fight with Ramo Puškar, when I hit him over the head with it a few times, the crutch was all bendy like a downhill ski pole. The morning after, my old man straightened it on the wood splitting block with an axe.

It was a joy being wounded. You get cigarettes in hospital, the meals are good and regular. Your friends come to visit you with cans of Skopsko beer. Some of them probably envy you. Girls, too, eye you differently; you’re a seasoned warrior now. Tales of your heroism go round, you hog the limelight at piss-ups. You tie your hair into a ponytail with a stocking suspender your friend gave you. Politicians hold you in high esteem. They give you two boxes of Macedonian Partner cigarettes. You give a TV interview. And all that because your girlfriend got married in Germany and it became all the same to you whether or not you died on the next line you were sent to.

* * *

A clump of ash, half the length of a cigarette, falls onto the shiny tip of my boot, polished with lard. The sun is coming down from its zenith to our side of the river. In the hillside neighbourhood of Tećija, a single-storey house hit with incendiary bullets is burning. It’s much easier this time round, we move down the main street, lined with houses, no need to run. Like a demarcation line, the Una splits the town in two. We got the shabbier part, with endless factories that dream and croak in the fog, and the railway station that phantom trains speed through. Most of us used to live on the other bank of the Una, now out of reach.

‘What are we supposed to do on Sokolov Kamen?’

‘Nothin’, we’re goin’ to harvest some mushrooms. Caesar mushrooms are the size of an ’andball up there.’

‘Fuck Caesar mushrooms,’ Žile persists ‘how far is that feathery cunt’s crag anyway?’

‘Round an ’our and an ’alf,’ shouts Zgemba.

‘It’s an op, no two ways about it,’ Žile continues ‘across the Una, through the mine fields, then attack.’

‘Well, are we commandos, or wot?’ Zica speaks up.

‘Right you are, Zica, in this episode we all die, like on telly.’

* * *

We’ve passed through our sparse minefield. We’re descending a steep canyon. Down below flows the Una, snake-like, green and blue. A group of commandos and a company of trenchies are already on the other side. We’re going as a supporting unit, to relieve the commando platoon that broke their line. Before the war this place was an enormous hunting ground. Sokolov Kamen, falcon’s bluff, looms high above us. It’s a giant block of rock stuck into the foot of Mala Gomila hill. Gravel slides from under our boots and rolls down, drawn by gravity. After fifteen minutes of descent we reach the railway. We pass underneath it through a small underpass. I duck down to dodge a cobweb. The drops of dew caught in it preserve the light of the morning stars. Hari the Kike and Neđo Head of Mutton are dragging the body of a dead commando. Kike gives me about two fistfuls of rounds. We’re low on ammo. I’ve got only one magazine, the one that’s already in my rifle. Žile, ever an enthusiast, is going without a gun. Bajrama’s Boyo is kitted out like a brave, only his tomahawk has got a rubber head, so he’s slinging a bolt-action M-48 over his back. Before the war, Bajrama’s Boyo chopped up his front door with a chainsaw when the police came to evict him.

Just before we climbed down the canyon we ran into our brigade commander, down by the Mijić family houses. He swaggered about as if he’d just captured three-quarters of the known universe. Caesar and Napoleon were mere pawns compared to him: the quintessential stuffed peacock. His left hand never let go of his Motorola, whilst he gesticulated lavishly with his right, as if the other person could see him. He told us there was an abundance of weapons and ammunition waiting for us on the other bank. An HQ signals officer gave Zica a Motorola along with brief instructions on how to use it. After that we called all radios Motorola, because that was the first brand we were introduced to.

The corpse Kike and Muttonhead carry is dressed in an Ameri­can camouflage uniform. The man had come from Croatia, where groups of our people, mostly guest workers from Western Europe, formed units and trained. He had crossed the entire occupied Croatian territory on foot and met his end here.

We cross the river on an improvised raft slapped together out of two lorry tyre inner tubes connected with rope, floored with beech planks. A steel cable is stretched from bank to bank. At our crossing point the river is only twenty metres wide. We go one by one. The Una is low in September. Rocks of tufa, overgrown with reeds, jut out of the water. The bank is rocky, doesn’t lend itself to landmines. We climb up to the asphalt road. It is thinly coated with moss. For thirty minutes we climb up the canyon. The climb is almost alpine. Bajrama’s Boyo reluctantly discards his rubber-headed tomahawk. Halfway to the plateau we meet the company medic and a fighter who had heart palpitations from fear. Like two jackdaws they’re resting on a tree growing out of a crack in the rock.

‘Look at that cove, as sallow as a lemon,’ Zica says to me.

‘The devil’s stroked his fore’ead.’

‘Done for, poor sod.’

The cardiac patient was completely lost. He stared at us, unable to say anything. His lips were as white as if he’d kissed a vampire.

At the plateau the situation was less than brilliant. A hundred and fifty men were pushed into three dells, like sheep in uniforms. They held a mere three or four hundred square metres of space. Like three coffee cups of territory. Every now and then they were being plastered with cannon. A cannon shell is super fast, immediately after the firing comes the detonation. The officer in command at the plateau was as befuddled as a pigeon that’s just shat itself. He was looking at the map, trying to explain something to Zica. Vowels, consonants and spit came out of his mouth at random. Word fragments. Just as we were about to go on recce, a salvo from a multiple rocket launcher crashed onto our positions. Panic was army general. Men dropped their guns and fled down the cliff. Žile took an M-53 machinegun with a long belt from a fleer. He pined for a machinegun like someone pines for a sports car. Being a machine gunner was a matter of prestige. Seventeen trenchies were WIA, some slightly, some severely. We fancied ourselves proper dogs of war, but that bubble burst like a hymen when the rocket launcher opened up. I was overcome by low fever. We took up positions behind hornbeam trees and waited for the infantry assault. I helped Žile by holding the ammunition belt of his five-three. They fired sporadically and randomly at our tight line. Bullets ricocheted and whizzed high up in the air, knocking bits of bark off the trees which landed on my hair. Driven by fear we returned fire, we fired like mad. It looked as though they were putting out probes. River fog was driving down the canyon. Night found us lying behind the trees. None of us had slept, because of the cold, and the rush of the skirmish. In the dark, our eyes were out of combat. Our ears still had a function. We fired at every noise coming from in front of us. Dormice leapt from branch to branch screeching like children. In the morning, Žile announced that his haemorrhoids had flared up. Further defence of that pathetic bridgehead had lost any military significance. The multiple rocket launcher could turn us into martyrs any moment. A slapdash retreat commenced. The strategy of our command was to keep telling us, “They’ve got no will to fight, we have.” Shells have got no will, they’re merely full of explosives. Shrapnel kills morale.

A TAM lorry waited for us by the Mijić houses. The radio bleated on about yet another successful operation by the Fifth Corps. The audience were thirsty for territory. We quietly hopped on and sat on the wooden floor. The smell of paraffin, cut with water, forced its way up our nostrils. The lorry revved and trailed a wake of dust. Our faces were tribal masks.

At the Psych Ward

‘Year of birth?’

‘1969.’

‘Height?’

‘187.’

‘Weight?’

‘Around 75 kg.’

‘Occupation before the war?’

‘Student.’

‘Married?’

‘No.’

‘History of mental illness in the family?’

‘No.’

‘Army role?’

‘Platoon commander.’

‘Trenchie or commando?’

‘Both.’

‘WIA?’

‘Yes, once, fragment injury to lower extremities.’

‘Which sector?’

‘Grmuša–Srbljani Plateau.’

‘Addicted to narcotics?’

‘No, but I like to drink.’

‘Do you take pills?’

‘If there’s no alcohol, I take what I can get.’

‘Nightmares?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Do you smoke?’

‘I smoke pole, like everyone else here.’

‘Describe depression, in visual terms.’

‘Grey. Shapeless. Swollen river. Murky sky. Bare trees. Going to a wedding without your cock. No booze.’

‘Have you been treated for alcoholism?’

‘No, everyone drinks here.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, here, in war, what else would people be doing?’

‘Do you take marijuana?’

‘When there’s any for the taking, yes.’

‘What is your biggest fear?’

‘Chickens, birds, beaks and talons disgust me. That skin over a bird’s eyes. I’m scared of all feathery creatures. Even chicks disgust me. If a hen were to give me chase I’d die on the spot.’

‘Do you dream of worms?’

‘I don’t. I dream of slaughtering an obese man in a white shirt. I slice through his chin lump. I stick him in the belly. A dark red ring forms round the wound. He’s a civilian. In a fraction of a second, his shirt turns red, like in a film. Then I run away. They chase after me through a gully of some kind. I run down the beck. Hills are all around me, and woods. Branches creak in the wind. Bloodhounds bark. I sweat. I am behind their lines. I have to make my way through their trenches. I worry that I might die from friendly fire as I approach our lines. His children were screaming. The white walls were splashed with blood, like in an abattoir. My conscience troubled me. I felt bad for the man, and he was dead. The walls, freshly whitewashed, were splattered.’

‘How many times have you dreamt this dream?’

‘Three or four times, I don’t remember exactly.’

‘Do you read?’

‘Well, there’s a war on, it’s boring, everyone reads.’

‘What is the last book you’ve read?’

‘The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway.’

‘Was there anything about that book that made an impression on you?’

‘The characters were shitfaced all the time.’

‘Have you killed anyone?’

‘I don’t know. I have fired in anger, though. Everything happens so quickly. In an instant. You don’t see anything. I may have hit someone, I’m not sure…’

‘Do you believe in God?’

‘No, but if he does exist, I’m under no obligation to prostrate myself before him.’

‘Tell me about an event from the war that’s made an impression on you.’

‘There have been many.’

‘The first thing that comes to mind.’

‘Well, one fighter caught a ton-twenty in the thigh. The shell didn’t explode. He was lying to the left of me. Mirso was an ex­tremely muscular man. He had just taken a bath. He was smoking a fag. On his right thigh he had an ashtray made out of a luncheon meat tin. I was reading Sartre’s Nausea. Paperback. The book smelt of mould. We were in a former discount shop, shrapnel had pock-marked lunar sceneries into its façade. We turned the ground floor into a dormitory. It was a three-storey building. Two prefab slabs and one concrete, plus a more-or-less undestroyed roof. A mighty redoubt. We thought we were safe. Along the walls we arranged sofas and mattresses from the nearby houses into L-shapes. To our left was a large shop window, to our right, some thirty metres behind, the river. In front of the window we stacked up Siporex blocks to protect us from shrapnel. They couldn’t hit us with their ZiS cannon because of the terrain configuration. With mortars they could though – the shells landed on the roof. It seemed to us we were safe there. At night we kept sentry duty by the river. By day, lookouts observed the river in case the enemy crossed. Who would force a river in broad daylight? It was dangerous at night. And at daybreak, when fog rises. Just as I immersed myself in the book, I heard an explosion. Not too loud. I raised my eyes. I looked at the ceiling. There was a hole there. Greyish dust hovered in the air. Mirso was screaming. A 120 mm shell landed onto his luncheon meat tin ashtray. I picked it up. Held it in my hands. These shells weigh round fifteen kilos. I put it down onto the white ceramic tiles. Its fins had fallen off. Fins are the bits that look like fletching. The tin assumed the shape of the shell’s nose, like a mould. Its bloody mask. Without thinking I ripped the t-shirt off my back to use as a tourniquet. Huka found a piece of lath and we tightened up my t-shirt over the wound to stop the bleeding. I put on my camo jacket. The shell had dislocated his leg from his hip. The wound was massive. The bone was sticking out of it. The flesh was minced. It looked like a crushed veal steak. Do you mind if I smoke?’

‘Not at all.’

I took three puffs and the cig broke in half.

‘What happened then?’

‘Huka and I took him to the rear on a stretcher. Two fighters helped us, but I don’t remember their faces. At some points we had to run. Shells were falling all along the way. They were target­ing us with an eight-four and an anti-aircraft gun. Loaded with expanding bullets. Mirso was heavy. It felt as though I was carrying a celestial body rather than human, as though I had a hot meteor on the stretcher. As we carried him through a neighbourhood, protected from fire, civilians were watching from their doorsteps. I saw scarf-trimmed faces of women contort and bend out of shape with fear. I’d never seen anything like it before, except in frescos.’

‘Did the casualty survive?’