Gerald Seymour - The Untouchable

There was the howl of a klaxon horn. The lorry missed him by a foot, could have been less. Mister felt the sweat coming on his body. He saw the finger on the arm jutting from the window and the gesture of contempt from the lorry driver. He shouted back emptily, uselessly, at the lorry's tail. He had seen them leave the hotel – Cann trailing the woman, carrying the bag and the case – seen them going in time to catch the morning flight out. He looked both ways, up the road and down it, and there were no other vehicles parked, only the blue van.

He turned his back on it and walked off down the road.

Was Mister frightened? He was never frightened.

Who'd ever seen him frightened? No one had. He went at a good pace. He had no destination. He strode on the road, and knew he was followed.

He gained a target, had to have one. He was walking faster. Ahead of him, sheep and goats grazed by the road, watched by a shepherd and children.

Above the animals, up the slope, was the graveyard.

He stopped near the shepherd, who leaned on a long stick, a scarecrow figure in his loose clothing. The children had ceased their game, stood in a little knot and stared at him. He turned, looked back up the road.

He began to run towards the van, but it reversed.

When he ran faster, it backed faster away from him. When he slowed, it slowed. He stopped, the van stopped. The distance was a hundred yards. He knew he showed his anger… Christ, and it was beneath his dignity to show his anger. He ret raced his steps, over which he'd run and then walked, and the blue van followed him.

He nodded curtly to the shepherd, then tried to smile at the children through his anger. He sat down on the grass. The shepherd and the children watched him, and the animals grazed around him. As long as he could, he tried not to turn, but the compulsion beat him… Cann sat on a rock near to the blue van, cross-legged, like a pygmy bloody pixie. If he'd started to run towards him, he wouldn't have covered ten of the paces before Cann was back in the van, not twenty before the van was backing away… and he would have lost his self-respect. From what he knew of the Church and the Crime Squad, the greatest crime of surveillance was to show o u t – b u t Cann sat where he could be seen. Mister did not understand. Why wasn't the little bastard frightened of him?

She was standing at the top of the slope, at the edge of the graveyard, and waved to him. Round her were the few kids from the two families.

Cann was on the rock, a statue.

He walked to her, scrambled up the slope. Twice he slipped and mud smeared his trouser legs. She was laughing and said he was crazy. She held his hand.

'We have to leave, Mister,' she said. 'We need to be past Tvorno before night. We should not be on the ice in the darkness.'

'There's nothing to keep us here.'

Mister had his arm round her hip as they walked to her vehicle. She waved to the kids and to the older people at the graveyard, to the shepherd and the children with him. She was behind the wheel. She kissed his cheek. They drove away towards Gorazde.

The light had begun to fail as they cleared the finger town and began to climb, and her hand rested on his except when she changed gears. His face was turned away from her so that she would not see the fury that winnowed through him… No man stood against Mister, then walked away.

August 2000

It was their fourth morning, and that morning it rained.

It was incredible to Husein Bekir. He'd had to scratch in his memory to recall when it had last rained in that summer month. The clouds had gathered the previous evening and at dusk the storm had started.

The thunder had echoed into the valley from the west, the lightning had lit the valley as if it was the middle of the day, and the wind had gathered.

Through all of the night the gales had howled. By the morning, the fourth, the storm had passed and left only a steady drizzle in its wake.

When the mine-clearers had come on the first morning, Husein had immediately left his home, abandoned his breakfast, grunted at his wife as she'd hobbled after him down the track that he would not be long, and gone over the ford. He had bearded them where they had made their day camp, a battered caravan, a stinking portable lavatory and a parking space for their three pick-up trucks and the two ambulances, up the track from Dragan Kovac's house.

He'd asked the same question of the foreman on every morning since.

He asked it again. 'When are you going to start to clear my fields?'

And he had the same answer on the four con-secutive mornings: 'First we do the pylons. Your fields come after the pylons and the restoration of the electricity.'

'My fields are more important than electricity.'

'Your fields are next year, if there's the money.'

On the first three mornings, Husein had then shuffled down the track to Dragan Kovac's home, had beaten on the door and demanded fresh coffee and a substitute breakfast. Then he'd launched into a criticism of the foreman, and the six de-miners, and he'd denounced the priority of the electricity pylons, but he had won no sympathy. His friend, the idle fool, Dragan, had as little interest in the fields as they showed.

That fourth morning he was not going to visit Dragan Kovac. The morning before, when he had launched into the complaint that his fields were not given enough priority, his friend – the old fool – had remarked that Husein was now too aged, too feeble, to work the fields; Dragan had said it was a dream, no more than a fantasy, that Husein, with his withered muscles, would ever be able to plant the new apple orchard that would eventually be harvested by his grandson; Dragan had said that the fields were his history, that his present should be a game of chess, a seat in the sunshine and a glass of home-brewed brandy, or two glasses. The morning before, blinking tears and shouting curses, he had left Dragan's house and waded back over the ford.

The foreman stood in the caravan's door. Behind him the men read newspapers, smoked and drank coffee. In the ambulances the medics had their feet up on the dashboards and their radios played loud music. All his life, Husein Bekir had worked his fields in storms, hail showers, and in the heat that blistered his skin. To Husein Bekir, the foreman, his men and the medics seemed lazy and complacent, showed no understanding of his need to go back to his fields.

On the other side of the track from the junction where the caravan and the trucks were parked was the bunker that had protected the right flank of Ljut village. Leaning against its stone wall, beside its cave entrance, was a new sign. On a red-painted background was a white skull with crossed bones behind it, and one word: Mina. All the way down the track, on both sides, little posts had been put into the ground and yellow tape slung between them. There was no tape on his fields, only a slim corridor to the nearest of the pylons from which power cables dangled. He would not speak to Dragan Kovac until he had received abject apologies for the insult that he was too old, too feeble and the frustration fed his anger.

'Do you not work if it rains?'

'It will clear soon. We will work when the rain stops.'

'Do you have no sense of urgency?'

'What I have is five toes on each foot, four fingers and a thumb on each hand, eyes in my head, and two balls. I have them, old man, because I don't hurry.'

'If you used those machines, I have seen them on television, you could clear my fields. Why don't you bring the machines?'

The foreman said patiently, as if talking to an idiot,

'We have flails, fastened to the fron of a vehicle that is reinforced with armour plate. They don't clear ground to the standard necessary for a certificate of clearance.