Dan Fesperman - Lie in the Dark

The place was still empty, and when he flicked the light switch he was relieved to find that the generators were still going. He locked the office door from the inside, then steered her gingerly by the elbow toward a couch along the wall in the office’s small waiting area. Neither of them had yet spoken or touched since they’d agreed on the price.

It occurred to him this was probably one of the better locales she’d worked lately. Both the French and the Egyptian soldiers on this side of town preferred to arrange their cut-rate trysts in the back of an armored personnel carrier, their buddies looming out the hatches and doors, chatting and smoking, maybe making a joke or two, and for a moment Vlado thought of her stooped beneath the low armored ceiling, the space musty with old sweat and the smell of metal; sucking off some strange man from a faraway place, then spitting discreetly while he zipped his fatigues and she silently calculated what she might be able to buy with her new packs of cigarettes.

She began to undress, and Vlado followed her lead, both of them fumbling with buttons and zippers, the chill of the room creeping onto them, raising goose bumps. He looked at the pale skin of her face in the blueness of the fluorescent light, and flashed for a moment on what sort of life she must have lived before the war, for it was obvious from her discomfort this hadn’t been her profession for long. He pictured her, neat and efficient in nylons and a sensible dress, arriving at an office much like this one, removing the same wool overcoat, then sitting before a typewriter, or opening a file drawer, or perhaps lifting the phone receiver to speak crisply to a subordinate on another floor, illuminated all the while by the same pale, fluorescent glow.

She turned toward him, her face blank, lips shut primly, still unbuttoning and unsnapping.

“Please,” he said in a quiet voice. “Stop.”

She looked at him, her expression a mixture of relief and worry. Af ter all, she needed those cigarettes.

“Here,” he said hastily. “Take them.” He handed over not only the six packs agreed upon but the entire carton. “Take them and go before I change my mind.”

She quickly pulled up her skirt and buttoned her blouse, not fumbling at all now, then strolled briskly away, heels clicking toward the stairs as she rebuttoned her overcoat, leaving Vlado to sink back onto the couch, the vision of Jasmina appearing for a moment, then fading, once again indistinct.

His connection to his daughter Sonja had become even more remote. She had been eleven months old when she left, a loyal girl who clung to her father whenever possible, pulling herself to her feet by holding his hand, and crawling rapidly after him each morning as he walked to the bathroom to shave. Now she was two years and eight months. She’d nearly tripled in age since he’d last seen her. She’d learned to walk, talk and count to five.

She chattered now in a blend of German and Serbo-Croatian, and even her voice seemed different the few times he could hear it in the background of his telephone calls to Berlin. Although more often lately he didn’t hear her at all.

Early on she had come to the phone whenever he called, too shy to make any sound but a giggle, but eager to listen and reluctant to give up the receiver without a piteous wail of indignation. But he’d quickly faded for her, and now she couldn’t be dragged close to the phone.

“I don’t want to,” he’d heard her say, or simply a stern “Nein!” her obstinance crackling through the static from hundreds of miles away. Usually now he didn’t bother to ask, although today he felt a special urgency to hear her voice again, to hear the soft, steady breathing across the miles.

A set of photographs had arrived in a recent pack of convoy mail, postmarked October, 1993-three months late of course, after the long delay of checkpoints and permissions. They’d depicted a robust young stranger, smiling and confident, dressed in a bright warm snowsuit and standing on the raked sand of a Berlin playground. In the background were sturdy wooden swingsets, a fleet of strollers, and other children and their mothers, relaxing on a sunny day without worry.

It was Vlado’s turn to call now, and the radioman glanced at him and repeated the Berlin telephone number into his headset without even having to ask.

After a brief pause he motioned for Vlado to pick up the receiver. Vlado listened to the series of hums and clicks, then heard a phone being picked up. He then waited through that slight, halting delay in transmission that always reminded him of boyhood broadcasts of the Soviet cosmonauts, calling in from space.

“Hello,” Jasmina answered. “How are you?”

“Safe. Quite safe. How about you?”

“I always wonder what I will do if you miss a call, or if you’re late. If I’ll panic, or what I’ll think.”

“No, it’s been quiet this week. The war is slowing down. Maybe it’s good news.”

He felt himself beginning to deaden, to go numb and cold and dreary as he left the truth behind. Not for the first time he wondered what it must be like for the people who work in the radio room, sitting in on these conversations every day, hearing the index of hope slide off toward the bottom of the register as the months passed without change.

He told Jasmina that he almost wished for more fighting to make the days pass faster, then realized as soon as the words left his mouth what a stupid thing it was to say.

“So how are you, then,” he asked, “and how is the job. And Sonja, how is she.” Against his better judgment he then added, “I don’t suppose that she’d …”

“Oh! well, no. I’m sorry. I tried to keep her here as long as I could but she’s off at a playground now with a friend. They were in a rush to go swimming. There’s a new indoor public pool. There are new lessons for toddlers, and she’s very excited.”

In the background Vlado could hear the television. It sounded like the sharp exaggerated noises of a cartoon, the sort that Sonja apparently watched all the time. He felt heat rising behind his face, and glanced around at the others in the room, but they were all facing away from him.

“You’d be so proud of her, Vlado. She is speaking full sentences now. Long thoughts, very complex. She’s so smart. And her German is better than mine. You should hear her talking with her friends. Their parents say she even speaks it better than their own children.”

“Wonderful. I’ll need a phrasebook to talk with my own daughter.”

Then a pause, followed by either a deep intake of breath or a burst of static.

“Please don’t say things to make me feel guilty. It’s what we have to do here. You know we would have stayed if it had been up to me. It’s hard enough to get along here even knowing the language. We have to assume we could end up here forever.”

“I know. I know. It’s all right. And I’m not trying to make you feel guilty. And you shouldn’t. I was just stating a fact. Sometimes I feel she’s gone from me forever, even if I could be there tomorrow. And it’s depressing, like everything else here.”

“I know. I understand. We shouldn’t waste our three minutes arguing.”

She mentioned that some Bosnian friends had spotted a few notorious Serbs in the streets of Berlin, one of them a particularly nasty guard from a detention camp. They’d reported the sightings, given lengthy statements to the police, but no one had seemed very interested. In fact, it was becoming difficult to get any news at all of Sarajevo beyond the daily summary of shelling, perhaps a body count, or a few words about another stalled U.N. convoy.

The radioman motioned Vlado that his time was nearly up.

“Keep yourself safe,” he said. “Don’t trust just everyone. Even the ones from home.”