Dan Fesperman - Lie in the Dark

“Come on,” Vlado said sternly. “Those shots are coming from the north, and there will be more of them. You’ve got no protection here, now. Bring your family next door with me until this is over.”

The man still didn’t speak, but he seemed to stir himself, and he walked unsteadily down the hallway toward where the wail had come from a moment ago. He emerged at the head of a straggling column, with his wife trailing the children. They were all as quiet as the father, the four children staring with wide eyes, the mother seeming only weary, as if she’d finally given up.

“Come. Quickly,” Vlado urged them, more to get their muscles moving than from any fear of imminent danger. Often these “bombardments” consisted of no more than two or three shells at a time, flung like scattershot toward random points of the city. Then, having made their statement for the hour, the gunners grew bored and went back to their naps or their card games.

But the sooner this bunch was up and about, Vlado figured, the sooner they’d purge the shock from their systems.

He saw with relief that everyone seemed intact, although they had yet to speak a word. They followed Vlado into the snow, not exactly dressed for the weather. He glanced around to make sure that the children were at least wearing shoes.

Once inside his apartment he practically had to shove them into chairs, cutting his right hand as he hastily flicked shards of shattered glass onto the floor from the cushions. He then moved to the kitchen like the anxious host of a dinner party, lighting the burner to heat water for coffee.

“You should probably get yourselves checked out by a doctor,” Vlado shouted from the kitchen, still to no answer. “The concussions from these explosions can do more damage than you think. You can come away without a scratch and be dead an hour later from internal bleeding.”

“The hospital,” someone finally said. It was the woman. “Can you tell us how to find it?”

Christ, these really were newcomers if they didn’t know that. “It’s on the top of the hill over there,” Vlado motioned toward his covered window to the east. “Right across the graveyard, and on up the street from there. But I’d wait at least a half hour after the last shell.”

He clattered on with his hospitality, wiping out a pair of dusty and long unused coffee cups, and four small tumblers for the children. He wondered what he might give them for breakfast, figuring bread would have to do. It was probably what they were accustomed to, anyway.

Their silence resumed, and it began to unsettle him. He glanced up quickly, as if to make sure there wasn’t a roomful of zombies in his living room, propped in their chairs and going stiff with rigor mortis, and he saw to his relief that the two youngest children had dropped onto the floor, and were playing with something.

When he saw that their toy was one of his metal soldiers, his first impulse was to ask them to put it away. But what better use could there be for them, he told himself. Play with them all you like. The parents, however, remained as silent as stones.

“So, how long have you been in the city,” Vlado asked.

For a moment it seemed no one would answer. Then the father moistened his lips, as if with great effort, and spoke up. “Four weeks,” he said. He’d stopped shaking and seemed to have collected himself somewhat.

Vlado handed him a hot mug of weak coffee, and another to his wife. “The children, have they eaten?”

“Yes, some bread,” the mother said. “We will get more this morning.”

“What was your town?” Vlado asked. “Where did you come from?”

They named some village Vlado had barely heard of, some dot from one of his maps about forty miles distant, in the middle of a narrow beleaguered supply corridor. They must have had quite a time of it these past few years, and getting here couldn’t have been easy, either.

“How did you make it into the city.”

“With another family,” the father said. “By cart. We came across Igman. Sometimes you can still get through. We were lucky. A family that left only an hour after us lost two sons along the way to snipers.”

“I didn’t even know anyone was still trying to get in,” Vlado said. “I thought it was just people trying to get out.”

“You can’t,” the man said. “At least, not over Igman, not if you’re a man. The soldiers in the pass will only let a family in with an able-bodied male. For more soldiers. I keep wondering when they’re going to pick me up for that. But it was the only way we got in.”

“Oh, they’ll find you soon enough, I’d imagine. But I’d send your wife to the bread-and-water lines by herself from now on, if I were you, even if she can’t haul back as much. That’s how they get most of them.”

Then, something seemed to dawn on the man. And he looked Vlado full in the eye as he asked, “And you. How do you stay out? I noticed you our first week here and wondered that. You’re young and strong.”

“Strong, no. Young, debatable after two years like this. But you’re right, definitely of military age. I serve in the police, though. A detective. Investigating murders.”

The man shook his head, assenting to the reasonableness of Vlado’s occupation with the air of one obliging a lunatic. It was hardly the first time Vlado had seen such a response.

“Now, I guess we will have to find a new place to live,” the man said. “But it shouldn’t be hard. There are so many apartments open now, and there will always be more.”

Vlado considered this vast, continual shuffle that had been taking place beneath his nose, an inner circle of migration.

“I am Alijah Konjic,” the man said, as if suddenly remembering his manners. “My wife is Nela.”

“Vlado Petric.”

“We must leave now, I suppose. Go out to find food and another place to live. And I suppose you are right, that we should see a doctor first.”

They all stood to go without a further word, seeming more composed now, though still reminding him somehow of shellshocked troops being deemed fit for service by doctors under pressure to supply reinforcements.

“Come back if you need anything,” Vlado said, seeing with a pang of disappointment that the small boy had put the toy soldier back where he’d found it. “And if you need to use my place while you’re looking for a new apartment, you are welcome.”

“Thank you, but really, I am sure it won’t be difficult. This place was the third empty one we’d seen after we arrived. There really are many to choose from.”

“Do you need extra clothes?” Vlado asked, feeling the desperation of someone whose party has failed, ending too soon. “Or blankets? I have some spare ones.”

“No. We are fine,” the mother said. But at least she was smiling, and for the moment that seemed like more than enough.

“Children,” she called. “It is time to move. Please thank Mr. Petric.” And they did so, one after the other, beginning with the oldest and ending with the youngest, as if they were practiced in this routine.

“And like I said,” Vlado added. “I will be here again tonight if you need me.” But he knew that he would likely never see them again.

He watched them go from his open doorway, the two empty coffee cups still in his hands, and as they trooped away in a narrow line of footprints in the thin layer of snow it dawned on him that they’d been his first visitors since Damir had tipsily barged in on him all those months ago.

Closing the door, he noticed that the room still held their smell, not an unpleasant one, just another few variations on the local mix of smoke and sweat. And as he tidied up from his small duties as a host he felt a small lift, a fullness that had long been vacant.