Gerald Seymour - The Untouchable

'They have no electricity, only heating-oil for the fire and a gas can for the stove. A little paraffin is given them each month for light. If we get more people back, have more homes for them to move into, we can pressure the authorities to spend money and restore the electricity supply. There are three families living here, nineteen people. Work has been done on the ground floor, but not yet upstairs because they are waiting for more building materials to be brought. It is not possible for them to buy the materials themselves because they have no work, no money, but at least they are, again, in their homes. .. How many bedrooms do you have in your house, Mister?'

'Five.'

'How many people?'

'My wife and myself.'

They went inside. He hovered behind her, and she was greeted like a true friend. He saw in the gloom two of the boxes, unpacked, on which were scrawled Bosnia with Love. Leading to the one table were mud smears across the bare concrete floor. An old man sat in a chair near to the table and smoked; his pullover bore the woven insignia of the Edinburgh Woollen Mill and crossed golf clubs under the stitched writing, and he smoked as if that were the luxury left to him.

There was a line of institution beds, with metal frames, dull blankets. The little girl careered away and bounced onto a bed, but the small boy kept hold of Mister's hand. The women were of all ages, but only old men were crowding into the room. The child wanted, Mister thought, to hold the hand of his father

… There were four bedrooms always empty at his home by the North Circular Road. His father visited, occasionally, but would not stay over. His mother had never slept in his house. He and the Princess had no friends they would have invited, nor her father and mother. They never entertained in the dining room with the big mahogany table and the matching set of eight chairs. If it was necessary to entertain, for business, he went to a restaurant, the Mixer arranged a private room at the back, a Card sat in the kitchen and another stood at the private room's door. He had so many bedrooms. He had hotel bedrooms and service accommodation bedrooms and time-share bedrooms.

He had more bedrooms in Cyprus, the South of France, on the Spanish coast and in the Caribbean and

… He had the money to rebuild the village and bring every man, woman and child back to it and to dress all of them in Armani or Yves St Laurent, to give them electricity, plumb in the sewage, put boards and carpets under their feet and curtains at their windows, to build a factory for them, and to bring them pedi-gree cattle. If he had done that he would not have noticed the loss.

He was served coffee. To Mister it was bitter and the sludge at the bottom of the tiny cup caught between his teeth. It was the coffee of Green Lanes that he drank in the spieler cafes with the Turks, and he was practised in hiding his disgust as he drank. A dog-eared set of cards was cut. The stakes for the game were used matches, plucked from a filled ashtray and Mown on to remove the tobacco dust. It wasn't easy lor him to play, and twice he grimaced at Monika, The small boy held his hand, would not let go of it. He played, and the time slipped away. He made certain he was never the winner. At home, in London, he would never be a loser, and not a loser in the old city of Sarajevo when he played the high-stakes game with Serif, whom she called criminal scum. He lost the matches he had been given. She was at the far end of the room, with the women, and she glanced al him, lapped the face of her watch.

They went out into the dusk. It was only when they left that Mister realized a crowd had gathered in the room and outside the door to watch him fail at cards, and lo he close to her. She kissed many cheeks, he shook the many hands pressed on him.

On the slippery path he took her fingers so that she would not fall. It was an excuse. She wore good walking boots, he had smooth leather-soled shoes.

They went across the bridge, clung to a handrail that was a slack strand of rope, and walked on the track down through the village. The shells of the burned-out houses remained in darkness. Brighter lights shone out from the undamaged homes where the generator engines thudded and where uncovered windows showed the flicker of television pictures

… He heard the patter of the feet that followed him.

'Why don't they go back and get them, the TVs?'

'Because they are beaten people, Mister, they have no more any spirit to fight.'

'Then they've no future.'

'The other future is to start the war again, Mister. Of course you are angry – I am angry – but violence, criminal violence, solves nothing. It is the way of the barbarian. The place for the criminals is not at the head of armies of thugs and thieves, it is in gaol where there are bars and where there is no key.'

They reached her jeep. The engine was on and her driver slept in the sealed warmth. He heard a low, guttered, hacking cough behind him. He turned. For a moment the small boy cringed away, was a retreating shadow figure on the empty track. He reached out his arms and the child came to him. He lifted the little boy and hugged the thin frame to his chest. Monika was with him. Together they held the child. He kissed the child's face, and Monika kissed his. He put the small boy down and watched him go into the darkness.

'If the visitors had done what you have they would have learned ten times, a hundred times, more. I thank you.'

'For nothing.'

They climbed into the jeep, were driven away from the village. On the seat between them her hand rested on his.

June 1998

Three times Husein Bekir had conceded defeat in the past five hours. Three times the patronizing victor's satisfaction had been on Dragan Kovac's face.

Each time he lost, while the retired police sergeant poured more brandy, burped on his lunch, and called him an old fool and a man without intelligence, Husein immediately set the carved wooden pieces back on the board, and they played again. He had played the last game, and the next would be the same, with a desperate intensity that furrowed his forehead, that made his hand tremble as he lifted a piece and slapped it down in its new position. His concentration was on his own moves, and what he anticipated would be Dragen Kovac's moves, but above all he searched for a sign of his opponent's cheating. As yet he could not find such a sign and that confused him hugely. If his opponent did not cheat, the implication was clear to Husein he, himself, was inferior… Of course Dragan kovac cheated. He heard a distant voice calling, his name, but ignored it. The grandchild and the dog were also ignored, and had slipped out of the door to search for entertainment.

When the bottle's mouth hovered over his glass, Husein put his hand clumsily over it and succeeded only in tipping over the glass. His head was bent over the board and he saw nothing of the fields below the porch, and he did not look up to find the voice calling his name, and he did not glance at the mulberry tree beyond the sagging fence of barbed wire, and he did not see the dog chasing alter the ball his grandson had thrown for it. He tried, his concentration fading, to plot the defence of his bishop, and he thought it was with unnecessary ostentation that Dragan Kovac wiped the spilled brandy off the table.

Until she reached him he had not been aware of Lila's approach up the track.

As he peered down at the board and looked for answers, he saw at the edge of his vision her river-washed rubber boots, which came to the top of her muscled shins. When was he coming home? she asked: he was coming home when the game was finished. Who was going to milk the goats? she asked he would milk the goats when he had finished the game. What was more important, milking the goats or drinking and playing games? Where was his grandchild? He did not know. She snorted at him in derision, and he heard Dragan Kovac's chuckle. There was the cackling of her voice, and he lost the threads of his defence. He looked up. He was palpitating with anger. He looked around. The child was high in the mulberry tree beyond the fence. The dog sat under the spread of the tree with the ball in its mouth and the saliva dripped from its jaws. Did he consider it responsible to allow the child to climb a tree – from which he might fall – and not even know where he was? Did he consider it responsible to be drunk when in charge of the child, his grandson? Under his breath, holding his head in his hands, he swore.