Dan Fesperman: Lie in the Dark

“Your mother went off again?”

“Yes. The worst ever. And this time she went for maximum damage, and got it. From my father, at least, and maybe from me, too.”

“Well, give it a few days and it will blow over.”

“Not this time,” Damir said, shaking his head with grim assurance. “All she did this time was tell me that everything I’d ever believed about my father was a lie.”

Vlado wasn’t sure how to respond to that and, based on past experience, Damir wasn’t likely to offer anything more until he was ready and willing. So they walked on a few minutes more without a word, until Damir abruptly resumed.

“All these years he’s told me what a hero he’d been during the last war. Fighting the Nazis with Tito’s Partisans. Hiding in caves and corn fields with the great man himself. Parachuting onto some mountain in the dark. Stories that I’ve heard a thousand times, and memorized every detail.”

“Then your mother says that he’s been making some of it up, right? Which only makes him like every other man in this town over the age of 70. My uncle was the same way. Had us believing he was God’s gift to guerilla warfare. And who says your mother’s right anyway. She was just angry and saying whatever she could to make it hurt.”

“My father says she’s right, that’s who. And it wasn’t just details she was talking about, or exaggerations. It was everything. The whole damn war. He hid out all right, with the neighbors next door, in their cellar. Looking after their two children. Once he came out to help move some cows-steal them is probably more like it-from the next village. The only gun his family had, he buried, hid it from his own father, and he never dug it up again. When my mother told me all this, he didn’t even try to pretend anymore. He confessed just like any other common criminal who knows the evidence is against him. Then he pulled his chair into a corner and did nothing but cry. His face was gray, like he was turning to ashes before our eyes. My father, the great Partisan, nothing but a scared peasant wiping babies’ noses in a root cellar.”

Vlado worried that almost any response would seem weak, banal, but he tried anyway.

“Even Tito lied about these things,” he said. “Now everyone says he was sick in a cave during what was supposed to have been his greatest battle.”

“Yes, but Tito lied about everything. That was his job. This is my father, Vlado, and I’d always been a big enough fool to believe him. One of the reasons I wanted to be a big shot police investigator was so I might have half the adventures he did. When the war started, it’s why I almost quit to join the army, figuring it was my biggest chance yet for heroics. And if it hadn’t been for my mother crying and throwing a fit about it-and thank God she did-then I would have. Now, who knows.” He shrugged, kept walking. “So, here I am. Just taking a walk and doing my job. I’ll get over it, though.”

But it was clear that for a while, at least, he wouldn’t. Even Damir’s customary medicine for a black mood-women and alcohol, taken liberally for one full evening-might be too weak to bring about a quick recovery. Vlado wondered what to say next, if anything. He tried out a few phrases in his head until his thoughts were interrupted by a gunshot, loud and close, echoing from across the river.

Whenever a sniper opened fire in daylight, it flipped a switch on every nervous system within range, especially for anyone standing in an exposed line of fire. Slack jaws tightened, eyes widened, bodies bent and curled, as if trying to melt into the pavement.

One never grew accustomed to it no matter how long the war dragged on, because inevitably someone got caught in the wrong place, fell, blood pooling, and became the twitching center of an empty circle as everyone else scattered. The circle remained empty until the danger passed and an ambulance came. Then the crowds leeched back toward the middle, and the body vanished. The blood remained, for the rain to wash away.

The body in question this time was a man in military uniform, about 30 feet ahead, in an intersection sheltered neither by buildings nor the walls of old cars stacked in protective barriers.

A woman who had just trotted through the area gasped upon reaching the safety of the corner where Vlado and Damir stood.

“I was practically next to him when it happened,” she said, eyes wide, a hand across her mouth, eyes wide. Her makeup was beginning to give way to a burst of perspiration. The right shoulder of her coat was spattered with the man’s blood.

“He was just walking,” she said, verging on hysteria. “Just walking. Like he thought he was any old place, while everyone else was running. He should have known better. How couldn’t he have known?”

For a moment it appeared that no one would step in to see if the man was still alive. He wasn’t moving, and a semi-circle of blood oozed from beneath him like a scarlet cape thrown gracefully upon the ground. Then a large, well dressed man, smelling strongly of aftershave, shouldered through the crowd and trotted toward the body. He knelt quickly, a gold chain dangling from his neck.

“Stay back! I’ll take care of this,” he shouted. People on both sides edged closer to the open area, as if shamed into helping. He gripped the man beneath both arms, grunted, and dragged the body through a smearing path of blood to the sheltered area where Vlado and Damir stood.

“Maybe we need to do something,” Vlado said.

“Better leave this one alone,” Damir muttered. “The big guy runs one of the gasoline rackets. Must be one of his foot soldiers that got it.”

Reading Vlado’s thoughts, Damir said, “I guess he thought that being a man for all sides meant he was no longer at risk.”

Instead, the gangster’s bold stroll through the intersection had violated the siege’s unwritten code of conduct. If you showed a sniper respect, running like everyone else, chances are he would give you nothing but a bored glance through his sighting scope. But this fellow had made himself a walking insult, and a shooter, who may have intended to take the afternoon off, had been stirred to action.

For a moment the crowd’s attention was diverted by the nearby shouts of a small man who had begun angrily lecturing a U.N. soldier at a sentry post a half-block away.

“You will stand here doing nothing the entire war until they kill us all!” the little man shouted, over and over, his face livid with rage. The plastic sacks in his hands, one filled with rice and the other with bread, swung back and forth like pendulums, as the man spluttered and roared. The soldier, a Jordanian, didn’t seem to comprehend the local language, although he couldn’t have missed the message. He stared blankly ahead while the man moved closer, dropping one his bags to point and jab at the soldier’s blue helmet.

The sight was arresting enough that at first Vlado paid little attention when Damir began to speak.

“The gypsy case is all yours, Vlado. In fact, the whole rest of the war is yours.”

Damir strolled away. As Vlado turned, he saw to his alarm that Damir was heading straight into the open intersection where the man had just been shot, walking no faster than a shuffling old man, shoulders slumped and head bent, hands in his pockets.

“What are you doing?” Vlado shouted.

Damir stopped only for a moment, looking back with a cold blank anger in his eyes.

“Don’t worry Vlado, I will still do my job. I will have the gypsy ready for you, as requested.”

“Screw the work. Take the day off, the whole week. Just get yourself out of the open. Run!”

But Damir resumed his plodding gait, this time answering Vlado over his shoulder. “In my own good time, Vlado. Not yours or anyone else’s.”