Novic Sara - Girl at War

We left the car in the middle of the road and continued down the main street by foot. I tried to work out which house might have been Drenka and Damir’s, but it was hard to tell where one lot ended and the other began.

“Careful,” Luka said. “Do you think there are zvončići ?”

I remembered Drenka’s exploded chickens and froze in my tracks. “There were.”

“They say it’ll take another twenty years to demine everything.”

Down the street I could see a large stone building, painted black. If I was in the right place it must be the schoolhouse, but I didn’t remember it being so dark.

“Walk like this,” I said to Luka, high-stepping toward the school. “Gives you more time to look before you put your foot down.”

When we got close enough, I could see that the building hadn’t been painted at all; it was black with soot, the window glass gone and shutters burned off.

“Četnik headquarters,” I said. “They raped so many women here.”

Luka stuck his hands in his pockets, looking squeamish.

“I was too little,” I said. “And I had a gun.”

Our own headquarters should have been across the traffic circle. But what was there looked more like the surface of the moon than the Safe House, all cratered earth and broken chunks of cement. Initially I had allowed myself to think that maybe the Safe Housers had torched the schoolhouse and the soldiers had gotten what they deserved. Maybe the villagers had won, or at least escaped. But now, staring at the sunken ground, I knew it couldn’t be true. I turned back to the charred building. On the far wall a wooden plank, unburned, poked through the overgrowth.

“What is that?” I said. Luka reached out and swiped at the vine to reveal a placard, written in jagged lettering:

In memory of our neighbors, who were burned alive by Serb paramilitary forces during the Croatian War for Independence, March 1992. Count 79

“Jesus,” said Luka.

I pulled away the rest of the weeds and dusted the loose ash from the plaque until my hands were black with soot. The carving was uneven, like it had been done by hand.

“Seventy-nine people.”

“You’re sure this is the town?” he said.

“Yes,” I said. As sure as I could be. The grave undetectable, the village demolished; this was their biggest victory. I looked out toward what must have been the wheat fields. “And if it is, I killed a man in that field.” I was headed there before I knew what I was doing.

“Fuck, Ana, the mines!” Luka said, but I did not stop. If the village was beyond recognition, the field was even worse — no sign of wheat or any crops, just an expanse of wild grass. The lack of corroborating evidence could almost convince a person she was crazy, that she had dreamt everything up, or at least that things had not happened the way she said.

In the center of the field I slowed and Luka caught up. “Careful. You trying to get blown up?”

“I killed someone here,” I said. “I mean, I think I did.” I told him about the man in the field, how we’d stared at each other before I shot him.

“Maybe he didn’t die.”

“Luka, I killed a man. Maybe more than one — who knows what happened when I was just shooting out the window. I could have hit someone else.”

“You were defending yourself.”

“I’m no better than any of them.”

“You were a little kid. You didn’t even know what you were doing.”

“No, that’s the thing. When I was shooting — when I shot that guy — I liked it. I knew it was bad and I liked it. I wasn’t sorry.”

Luka let me stand there until the sun began to set.

“It’s going to be dark soon,” he said.

“I know.”

“The mines and everything.”

“I know.”

“Come on.” Squinting at the ground, we returned to the car. I threw Luka the keys, and the engine sputtered, then turned, and Luka adjusted the choke.

“Who do you think made that plaque?” I said.

“Church from a neighboring town, or some NGO. All the projects now are about counting. They call it the Book of the Dead. They want to list everyone by name.”

“My parents.”

“My dad reported them.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“If that really was the spot where your parents…we should report it, too. They have dogs or X-ray machines or something to find the graves.”

I took out the map and made a mark on the spot.

“You’re not a killer,” Luka said, and I tried to believe him.

—

As we drove farther south, billboards with a familiar face cropped up with increasing frequency; it was a while before I realized it was General Gotovina. But instead of the nationalistic slogans popular when I was young, new text rimmed the posters— Heroj, a ne zločinac . Hero, not criminal.

“What’s that about?” I said when we passed another.

“Part of the EU entrance talks. To be considered for membership we’ve got to do all sorts of stuff to prove we’re ‘committed to peace.’ The cops had to turn in their guns. And we have to give up our war criminals.”

“We have war criminals?”

“So they say.”

“So who says? The Četniks?”

“The UN,” Luka said. “And we’re not supposed to say Četniks now. It’s derogatory.”

“They were calling themselves Četniks. Singing those awful songs.”

“And ‘za dom, spremni’ was a fascist slogan first,” said Luka. “Our soldiers killed Serbs in the Krajina, Bosniaks killed Serbs in Banja Luka — Bosniak and Croat armies were fighting each other, too, before we joined forces…”

“But the UN,” I said. “They should talk. They raped more women than anyone. They videotaped Srebrenica. Eight thousand people in that grave, in their fucking safe zone. Even the American news caught that story.” I had cut the article out of the paper and kept it in my room in Gardenville.

“I know,” Luka said. I had wanted him to be outraged, too, but I knew in the end the guilt of one side did not prove the innocence of the other.

—

I drove into the night, pushing through the briny humidity toward the sea. Luka was asleep, and I hadn’t seen a town in a long time. Across the road we passed a shack with SEXI BAR spray-painted across the front in fluorescent pink.

“Hey, wake up. Where are we going to stop?”

“Soon.” He yawned and sat up. After a while he pointed to an exit that looked like a dead end. “There it is. Wait.” He pushed the gearshift into park.

“Jesus, you’re gonna stall it.”

“Transmission’s about to drop out anyway after the number you did on it.” Luka motioned a switch and climbed across the center console. In a tangle of arms and legs I dove over him into the passenger’s seat. He took a harsh left down an unpaved seaside path. There weren’t many private beaches in Croatia, but a fence topped with barbed wire had appeared along the docks. In the water, boats with spiral staircases and electricity bobbed and hummed.

“We’re not breaking into a yacht,” I said.

“We’re not breaking in. We were invited. Sort of.”

We pulled up to a tollbooth where a man in fake police uniform slid open his foggy Plexiglas window. “Welcome to Marina Yacht Solaris. Name and code word?” he said, readying his clipboard.

“Hello, sir,” said Luka in formal conjugation. “We’re friends of Danijela Babić’s and we’re meant to meet her at her boat.” The guard shone his flashlight into the car, then thumbed again through his roster.

“She’s not here yet. I can’t let you in without the express permission of the owner.”

There was no way this was going to work, I thought, but Luka remained composed. “She said she might be late. I know the password.”