Luke McCallin - The Man from Berlin

Reinhardt could not help but smile at this little man with an apparently big heart. Small, bespectacled, he seemed so strong, so sure of himself. Was there ever a time when he had been like that? ‘Yes, I will take it.’ He paused. ‘Doctor, there is perhaps one more thing you might consider doing for me.’ Begovic raised his eyebrows but said nothing. ‘There was a second man with Hendel. A man called Krause. I know this because he was Hendel’s partner in…’ He hesitated, not wanting to reveal Hendel as having been GFP, but then wondered what the point of hiding it was anymore. ‘Hendel was secret field police. Krause was his partner. He was the one Tomic said ran past him and into the fields. I need to find him.’

‘Why do you think we might be able to help?’

‘Because the soldier – Lieutenant Krause – is half Slovenian. He speaks the language. He’s been missing now since Saturday night. Deserters usually turn up fast, or they turn up dead. I’m willing to bet he’s gone to ground somewhere in the city. If you should hear of something, or if you could put the word out…’

Begovic tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. ‘You do know most people around here, finding a German soldier on the run, will either bar their door to him or do their best to do away with him.’

‘I know. But now you know he is GFP, and I’m pretty sure you would love to put your hands on him. I’ve just given you a reason to look for him, and one for keeping him alive.’

Begovic shrugged with his mouth – his lips pursed, his chin bunching up as his eyebrows lifted. ‘It’s possible.’ He looked at Simo, but if he was looking for help, or inspiration, he found none. The big man just stared back at him. Begovic sighed, pushed his glasses up on his forehead, and pinched his nose. ‘Very well,’ he said, letting them drop back down, and there was the faintest of smiles on his mouth as he looked at Reinhardt. ‘If we find him we will find some way of letting you know.’

‘The coffee shop on Bascarsija. You can leave a message for me there.’

‘The old man who runs that shop has been there since my father’s day, and his father served coffee to my grandfather. Most of the city has drunk his coffee at one time or another, I would imagine. I would not lightly put that man at any risk and we would be doing that, you and I, if we tried to pass messages through there.’ He paused. ‘I will think of something and let you know.’

There was a silence. ‘What now?’ asked Reinhardt.

‘Now, Simo will show you out. You may return to Bascarsija. Do what you like with the film.’

‘I meant you, Doctor,’ said Reinhardt. ‘What becomes of you? They are looking for you.’

‘Me? I can take care of myself. Didn’t I tell you this is my city? It does not belong to you. Or the Ustase. It never will.’ Begovic smiled. ‘I may have to move quietly for a bit, but I won’t need to stay in the shadows much longer, I think.’

‘You’re that confident, are you? Of defeating us.’ Begovic only nodded. ‘And then what? How will you resolve all the differences between all of you? Between Serb and Croat and Muslim?’ He regretted the words as soon as he spoke them, felt them ring flat like argument for argument’s sake. He remembered his conversation with Lehmann, when he had taken the opposite tack, tried to convince him of the natural complexity that existed here, the history of coexistence that the wars seemed always to overshadow.

‘Ah, Captain. Almost, you disappoint me.’ Reinhardt flushed, embarrassed. ‘The differences? Yes, they exist. Show me a people without differences, and I will show you a land that existed before time. Before man, even. But did we ask for this war? Was it inevitable? Or were there those among us who took advantage of turmoil elsewhere to enact their vision of what this Yugoslavia should, or should not, be? War was brought to us. As it has been so often throughout our so-called bloody history.’

‘Even without war, isn’t there more that divides you as a people than unites you?’ Again, as he spoke them, Reinhardt felt the hollowness of the words. Argument for argument’s sake, just like with his son. As he said them, he wished them back.

‘Take Simo. He is a Serb. Or take Karlo, there,’ he gestured at the other man. ‘He’s a Croat. You might say there is much that would divide us all from each other. The religions of our parents. The cities of our birth. Our education. Our class. Perhaps, once, we would have faced each other across a field of battle. Them under their crosses, me under the crescent. Now, we are united in the search for something greater than all of us. That something is a new Yugoslavia. This time, Communism will unite it, sure as a return to our prewar parochialisms will destroy us again.’

‘That kind of idealism… it rarely survives the crucible of war.’

‘Or the realities of peace, you might add. You think I don’t know that?’

‘I don’t know what you know, Doctor.’

‘Then I will tell you something of what I know. I was born in Sarajevo into an old family of landowners. I was educated here, and in Zagreb, and in Berlin. I am a doctor. I am a Muslim. I am descended from men who converted to Islam following the Ottoman conquest for reasons we can guess at, but never truly know. The Ustase call us Muslims the flower of their nation, and claim us for themselves so they may argue that Croats outnumber all other peoples. The Cetniks call us interlopers, Turks, and would extinguish us from this land, and forget their forefathers settled here from Serbia to escape the Ottomans or to fight for the Austrians. I am a Partisan. What, if any, of those things defines me more than another? I say none of them, and all of them, and if anyone has to choose, it is me. I am what I chose to be, not what others want me to be. I am a Yugoslav. This is my land. I have nowhere else to go. That is a little of what I know.’

‘You talk to me of choices?’ said Reinhardt. ‘I only know that the choices life makes you take strip away the person we wanted to be. Builds us up into something we never wanted. Until you look back on life, and you see that the track of your life is a scar that hides what might have been.’

Begovic looked at him, his eyes focused, intent. ‘If we had more time we could talk, you and I. Of what happened to you, to make you this way…’

‘What made me this way? Life, I suppose. Choices.’ Reinhardt paused, looked down. ‘Maybe I would say everything good in my life happened to me despite me. And nothing bad happened that I should not have been strong enough to prevent.’

‘You are an interesting man, if I may say that.’ Begovic gave the smallest shake of his head. ‘I don’t say what we hope for will be easy. We can but try.’

‘Well, good luck to you, even so.’

‘Thank you, Captain. And good luck to you as well. I think you will need it more than me. But I think,’ Begovic said, smiling, ‘that the tree still shows life.’

They rose to their feet. There was a sudden moment of awkwardness, and then Reinhardt extended his hand. ‘Thank you for your help, Doctor,’ he said, as they shook.

‘Captain Reinhardt will be leaving now, Simo. Please see him on his way.’ Begovic stepped back and looked at Reinhardt again. ‘Until we meet again,’ he said as Reinhardt walked past Karlo’s flat gaze.

At the door onto the street, Simo handed Reinhardt back his pistol, then the magazine. He shut the door behind them, then pointed down the street, the way Reinhardt had come. ‘Here,’ he said, handing Reinhardt a small brass shell casing, carved into the shape of a minaret. ‘You came to buy something. You bought that at the shop opposite the entrance to this alley. You understand?’