Dan Fesperman - Lie in the Dark

A second one joined in: “And you say, yeah, yeah, let’s make a baby, only you’re really hoping there won’t be a baby, but you’re more than willing to keep trying.”

The others laughed.

The first member of the group, the one who’d handed his tape to the boy with the radio, then repeated his request, loudly this time, for his music to be played.

The tall boy with the ponytail answered by ejecting the tape he was playing and popping in another, only it still wasn’t the requested one.

“Hey, that’s still Aerosmith,” the aggrieved party shouted. “Fuck Aerosmith.”

“Fuck Guns ‘N’ Roses,” ponytail shouted back.

“He’s always that way,” the other boy muttered. “Plays his own stuff until we’re too high up the hill, then puts yours in right when we have to cut the noise.”

“So what’s it like up there,” Vlado asked. “What should I expect?”

“Cold,” one answered. “Muddy. Lots of mud and lots of Chetniks.”

“Scary?”

“Sometimes. Usually just quiet and boring. That’s when you just sit and talk and smoke all night.”

“Can you hear them on the other side?”

“All the time. Sometimes you shout back and forth. They scream something over, we scream something back, then it keeps up until either some officer stops it or it gets nasty. ’Cause when it gets too nasty somebody always starts shooting. Then everybody’s mad at whoever was doing the talking to begin with, so you have to watch what you say.”

“Does anyone ever sleep?”

“You’re not supposed to, but you’re welcome to try. We’re never sleepy up there. We don’t get sleepy until we’re halfway back down the hill. And that’s when the asshole with the radio finally starts playing our music.”

They all laughed again.

By then they were out in the open, the road winding along the side of a grassy hill in the dark. When a shell went off now you could see flashes in the sky. They were in farmland now. Each house was a hundred yards or so from the last, places where families used to tend goats and cows and grow long rows of corn, pumpkins, and cabbage. Now the houses were empty, roofs gone, animals too.

They passed a blown-up bus tilted off into a ditch, painted camouflage green. Some sort of army transport that had gone off the tracks. Even in the darkness you could see that the damp fields were pocked with shellholes, as if giant gophers had been spent the last few years digging.

From up ahead the screech and snarl of Guns ‘N’ Roses finally filled the air. A small cheer went up from the four boys nearest Vlado.

Then, following the brief chatter of an automatic weapon from somewhere over the rise, the commander at the head of the column ordered silence.

“Off with the music and off with the talk,” he shouted. “All cigarettes out until we’ve reached the top.”

“Fuck you, sir” the boy with the tape muttered, inhaling fiercely before tossing his cigarette into the ditch.

The tape ejected from the machine with a click that signaled the crossing of some invisible line. A few minutes later they were greeted by a shell, and then a rumble. Then the sky lit up with a riot of red tracer bullets, streaming in a wild search for targets. With the approach of the Orthodox Christian New Year such celebratory firing had been growing more commonplace, and by the next night there would no stopping it until the wee hours.

They reached a small row of shattered houses, a village high on the hill just before the shank of the ridge, and it was here they halted. An officer greeted their unit, signaling them off to the left. Vlado approached him to announce his title and his destination.

“So, it’s Neven you want. You can have him. Down that way, another quarter mile, maybe a little more. I’ll get someone to take you.”

Shortly afterward he was joined by yet another teenage boy, in a plaid wool jacket streaked with mud. He seemed glad for the chance to move about.

Boards were stacked and nailed up between the houses, and fortified by mounds of earth. Men squatted behind them or sat on the ground behind the houses, talking in low voices and smoking cigarettes. One boiled water for coffee over a small stove.

Vlado heard chattering in the near distance, followed by laughter, and wondered if it was coming from the other side. Then there was a shout, more laughter, then someone yelling, this time from nearby.

He and the boy moved farther down the line, on a path behind more of the houses, sidestepping broken branches and sinking ankle-deep in mud. The path then curved around the slope of the hill toward more exposed ground, out where there were no homes and trees.

A few moments later there was the whoosh of a shell, a yellow flash, and a crushing blow deep in the pit of Vlado’s stomach. There was also a slight heave to the ground, or so it seemed to Vlado as he suddenly found himself in a crouch, his face twisted in fear.

He looked for his escort and saw the boy standing upright, relaxed, inhaling from his cigarette, and regarding Vlado with mild curiosity. “Relax,” the boy said. “It wasn’t that close.” Vlado would have to recalibrate his definition of close if he was to last very long up here.

They finally reached their destination by stepping down into a communications trench leading to a small bunker, where they found a sentry reading a paperback by the light of a kerosene lantern. The boy turned to go without a word as the sentry looked up.

“I wish to see Neven Halilovic,” Vlado announced, as if to a hotel doorman, or the secretary of a business executive.

“General Halilovic usually doesn’t see anyone but his own men,” the sentry replied.

General. That was a laugh. Though if you could manage putting together your own army while officially under army arrest then perhaps you’d earned the right to call yourself whatever you wanted.

“Tell him that Inspector Petric of the Interior Ministry would like to speak with him about a case he has some interest in.”

“Doubtful. But I’ll pass it along.”

The reply was only five minutes in coming.

“Neven says to fuck off and go back down the hill where you came from.”

Vlado pondered for a moment what to do. It was clear the sentry didn’t wish to ask again. Vlado fished in his pockets for a five mark piece he’d scrounged out of a drawer before leaving. The sentry looked at it scornfully, but took it.

“Tell him I wish to discuss the level of art appreciation of the late Esmir Vitas.”

This time it took ten minutes, but when the sentry returned he motioned for Vlado to follow him. They headed down a long, neatly dug trench, stepping deeper into the private war of Neven Halilovic.

They walked for a few hundred yards, negotiating a twist and a turn before arriving a few minutes later at a bunker of logs and sod, surrounded by soldiers who lounged amid guns and ammunition boxes. A stovepipe poked from the bunker roof, smoke pouring from it. Then a voice called him inside, where it was warm but smoky, and lit brightly by a kerosene lantern.

And there was Neven, slumped regally in an aluminum lawn chair, its vinyl straps fraying at the edges. He was bearded and looked tired but still carried an edge of ferocity, especially in the bright, round eyes, a deep brown, the pupils almost abnormally large.

He spoke without either rising or offering his hand. “So. The late Esmir Vitas?”

“Yes. Does that help you or hurt you?”

“Probably neither. But it is something I’d like to know more about. You have the only thing valuable to me anymore. Information.”

He looked at Vlado a moment, as if making up his mind about something, then motioned toward a second tattered lawn chair on the opposite side of a small wooden tea table. “Please. Have a seat.”