Aminatta Forna - The Hired Man

Three, four minutes pass. I hear the hooves of the panicked deer, catch glimpses of them through the trees. The men’s voices rise with the power of the song, fade and start over. There are two, no, three of them, their singing so tuneless it’s only on the second run I recognise the song as ‘ Hajde Da Ludujemo ’. Last time I sang it was at Javor and Anka’s place after the party at the Zodijak. I think of how we used to all join in. I think about what would happen if I did so now. I smile.

And then the dog comes back.

This time he sees me, he’s bored of deer he can’t catch, he comes over. A nice dog, glossy and fit. I imagine one of them found him, or stole him somewhere along the front line, from one of the villages where some guy, who may be dead now for all I know, bred him and the rest of his litter.

I put out a hand to him, which is what he wants. Just to say hello. So long as I keep him quiet it can still be OK. Ignoring him will only make him more interested; anything as foolish as trying to hide would have started him barking. I stroke his muzzle and ears. In a quiet voice I tell him to sit. He sits and looks at me expectantly. I order him to lie down. He does. He waits, looking for his reward. When he figures it isn’t coming, he looks around for an escape and then rises slowly, hoping I won’t call him back. When he thinks he’s clear he bounds away to look for his master.

The singing grows fainter. There are only two of them at it. Another song. They’re moving away, heading to the camp, needing to get back in time to sober up, with a long day murdering civilians ahead of them.

When I judge it safe enough I move. I don’t head back the way I came, but move diagonally downhill, taking advantage of the cover of the trees for as long as possible. It is later than I would like and there’s too much light in the sky. This is a new danger. I have to get out of the woods and across no man’s land without being seen. I start to jog, slowly enough to keep an eye out, fast enough to cover the ground.

I am still in the woods when I come across him. I stop and take cover behind a tree. Standing with his legs apart and his flies undone, pissing against a tree, unsteady on his feet, he sways forward and then back, holding onto his cock as if for balance and staring at the jet of piss. This guy is one of the drunk hunters who’s been left behind by his friends. Only two voices where there had been three. My mistake. I’d assumed they were all still together, but no — here he is, number three, in my way, taking a leak while the sun climbs higher and higher with every second. Soon it will break the horizon. I feel a small jet of rage.

I am barely in his eye line, I move noiselessly until I am out of it. I am less worried about being seen by him than I was by the dog. The guy is dead drunk. I move behind one of the pines and wait for him to finish. He seems to take for ever. I lean against the tree and watch. He shakes the final drops from the end of his cock. I wait for him to zip his flies and stagger off, but he doesn’t. He leans his back against the tree, standing in his own patch of piss, and begins to stroke his cock.

I wait and the waiting goes on, because the guy is drunk and his cock is stiff, but not stiff enough, so he rubs harder and harder but he still can’t make himself come. He tugs at it a couple of times and stares as though his dick has never let him down this way before. I think he’ll give up and stick it back in his pants but he doesn’t. What is he? Nineteen? Twenty? He can go on playing with his dick for hours. He changes hands. I think: Here is my enemy. I am watching my enemy masturbate.

The sun is rising. Above the horizon the sky is whitening.

My enemy. I could tell you I think about the shell that landed on my father’s row of shanty huts; the explosion left him pumping blood when he should have been eating the meat paste sandwich carried by his daughter who is now lying on her back on the grass, the arms that carried the plate blown off. My father was killed at once. Daniela took five hours to go, her whole body shook in a long death rattle. The expression on her face was as if she had done something wrong, like an animal caught in a trap, crying without making any sound. I could tell you I think about all of that, but I don’t. I think about the sun and the dawn which is almost over. I stare at this guy wanking in the forest. I have a silencer on my rifle. His friends will have reached the camp a kilometre away. I raise the gun and it’s the easiest shot I have ever taken.

As for the soldier, he dies with his cock in his hand. I might have waited for him to have one last blast, but then, to be honest, I’d waited long enough.

The bowl I’d watched Anka take from the kiln days before is now a deep blue, the colour of sea when the water reaches a certain depth and the sun is high, when you sail over rocks. Fish of different sizes swim head to tail around the inside of the bowl, slender and pale. The bowl is like nothing I have ever seen Anka make, completely different from the thick, brightly painted pieces she makes for the shops. With the small tool in her hand, Anka scrapes at the fish and to each she gives gills, scales. An eye. Every so often she pauses to blow the dust out of the inside of the bowl.

I watch in silence. When she is finished I carry the bowl into the blue house for her. Cardboard and cloth cover the windows, the mirrors are taped across. The plates that used to be displayed on the dresser have been put away. On the table the blue bowl, looking suddenly immensely fragile.

Later in the day I ask Javor, ‘How are the folks?’

‘I was up there today. Roof needed some work. They’re OK.’

‘The house was hit?’

‘Shrapnel.’

He worries about his mother who was due to travel to have an operation at the district hospital a while back. The hospital in Gost is too small. The operation had been scheduled and then cancelled when travelling became difficult. Javor’s father is head of the post office. I told you this. A job he’s been in ten or more years. I’d last seen him at my father’s funeral five weeks ago. He’d brought Chivas Regal and said a few words in the church, the first time I’d ever seen him there, because the family usually worship at the Orthodox. My father had always thought he was about as decent as a boss could get. Too many people got their jobs because of who they knew. My father liked the fact his boss had once been on the floor sorting mail, just like the rest of them.

No post now for five weeks.

I’ve brought over a lark and a pigeon. Anka has stewed the birds whole, there is gravy dark with blood. Anka tells Javor not to put the prices at the Zodijak up any more.

‘Tell Fabjan,’ says Javor. ‘He doesn’t care. He says we sell rakija and beer, not baby milk.’

I’d been in the Zodijak just that morning. Krešimir had been there, too. He’d ignored my nod, as he does unless someone’s looking. When he said goodbye to Fabjan he shook his hand, patted him on the shoulder. Fabjan is fast becoming an important person in Gost, it’s as easy as that. Krešimir behaves with Javor as he does with Fabjan, but I’ve sometimes seen Krešimir give Javor the same low stare he gives me. And I never see Krešimir at the blue house. As far as I know Anka goes alone to visit her mother and brother at the house in town. Maybe this is the only way they have to keep the pecking order alive. Fabjan, who’d hardly bothered to look up when Krešimir left, asked me to help him heft some crates up from the cellar. Every bar in Gost is closed or on the point of it, and yet the Zodijak seems to have a limitless supply of beer, vodka and brandy. This fact I’m sure is connected to the soldiers of the National Guard who I see drinking there in the evenings. Fabjan keeps their glasses filled. When they leave he shakes their hands and this time it’s Fabjan who pats the other men on their shoulders and tries to persuade them to stay, have another drink. One for the long road back to the checkpoint.