Reif Larsen - I Am Radar

Miroslav came back to his brother. “We don’t say anything to anyone about this.”

“Ya,” said Miša. “Okay.”

“Never. I’m serious. It stays here. Nobody can know.”

“Ya. Okay. Nobody.”

“You swear?”

Miša reached down and wiped the blood off his chest. He offered his hand. “I swear.”

They shook.

“Can you stand?” asked Miroslav.

“I think so.” Miša got up, wobbling. His face was pale, his eyes loose in their sockets. They dressed carefully. Miroslav tied his shirt around his brother’s chest and helped maneuver him back to the road, where a truck from Žepa picked them up and drove them to the small medical clinic in Višegrad.

They told the doctors that Miša had been speared by a bull.

“A bull didn’t do this,” said the doctor. “Do you think I’m stupid? Are you trying to say I’m stupid?”

Lying on the examining table, Miša looked terrified.

“Do you want us to show you the bull? We can go show you the bull,” said Miroslav. “I’m telling you, he was a crazy bull. Someone should really watch out for that animal, because this will happen again.”

The doctor looked at him.

“Are you the one who did The Nutcracker ? With the puppets?”

“Yes,” said Miroslav. “And robots. Puppets and robots.”

“Did you see it?” said Miša from the table. “It was— ah! ” He tried to sit up but collapsed back down again.

“You must have a real imagination,” said the doctor.

“Not really. It’s mostly fixing things. Like you do.”

“Okay,” the doctor said and smiled. “Fixing things. Well. So do you remember if this bull’s horns were rusty by chance?”

Miroslav said he didn’t remember. Maybe. They could’ve been rusty. He couldn’t say one way or another. The doctor sighed and ordered that Miša get a tetanus shot anyway, just to be safe.

After stitching up Miša, he gave him a bottle of unmarked pills and told him to take three every four hours for the pain. As they were leaving, the doctor shook hands with Miroslav.

“I hope that bull got some attention, too.”

Miroslav realized his hand was still covered in blood.

“The bull’s fine. Don’t worry about the bull,” said Miroslav.

• • •

WHEN THEY GOT HOME that evening, Stoja, despite herself, began to weep at the sight of her youngest son wounded.

“A bull?” she said. “What foolishness! You could’ve been killed, Miša. And Miro, you let your brother get into this?”

“He saved me,” said Miša. “It was coming back to get me and he scared it away.”

“You’ve got to be more careful, Miša,” she said, slapping her thigh. “I swear to God, if something had happened. .”

“Yes, Mama,” he said, and kissed her cheek. “I’m sorry, Mama.”

Danilo pulled Miroslav aside. “Who was it?”

“What do you mean?”

“You and I both know there was no bull.”

“Tata—”

“I will say this only once, Miroslav. You have only one brother in this world. You have only one family. God gave you only one life. Take care of this. Take care. Someday it’ll all be gone, and if you wait until that day to know what you’ve lost. . by then it’ll already be too late.”

That night, Miroslav sat by his brother’s bedside. Miša had taken six of the doctor’s pills and a shot of šljivovica, and now his head was lolling against his pillow. He reached out and tried to hold his brother’s hand.

“Thank you, Miro,” he slurred. “You really saved me. I owe you so much.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” said Miroslav. “You’d do the same.”

“Will you make a show about this one day?”

“About what?”

Silence.

“Oh, okay. I get it. About nothing.”

Miroslav patted the soft maw of his brother’s palm. “Get some rest.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too, burazeru .”

Fig. 2.4. “Miroslav’s Robotic Swan v2.1”

From Røed-Larsen, P., Spesielle Partikler, p. 962

1. THE TOTAL AMOUNT OF ENERGY IN A CLOSED SYSTEM REMAINS CONSTANT OVER TIME.

Miroslav’s Swan Lake: Von Rothbart’s Revenge, while praised by the professional theater critic who had driven in from Sarajevo, was not well attended, and the preponderance of empty seats during the final performance of the three-night run sent Miroslav into a post — curtain-call rage. Before anyone could talk him out of it, he took a hammer to all of his actor-puppets, including the two giant black-and-white swan robots with their triple-reticulated, reverse-subluxated necks. This would not be the last time he destroyed his work after a show.

Two weeks later, Miroslav graduated top of his class at the secondary school in Višegrad, though this came as no great surprise to anyone. Nor was there much celebration among his peers for this achievement. Despite his relative fame, Miroslav was not admired by his schoolmates. There were more than a few rumors about his sexuality.

At graduation, there was an old tradition called krštenje svinje, in which students would papier-mâché a live pig with pages from their final exams and then heave the poor creature off the Turkish Bridge into the Drina. Though the origins of such a practice were unclear, it was beloved by local students, many of whom had stuck it out through school solely to take part in the ceremony. Miroslav called the whole endeavor “barbaric” and made a great show of boycotting the festivities, constructing a puppet pig in a field by the church that he slathered in writings by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and then set on fire. Despite the allure of fire and the melodramatic posters that he had pasted around town, no one attended this alternate krštenje svinje except Miša, Danilo, Uncle Dragan, and his bewildered twins. Miroslav, again humiliated, vowed never to perform again.

“This town’s the worst place in the history of the universe,” he said.

“That’s a bit extreme,” said Danilo. “I liked the pig.”

Miroslav’s indignation was tempered somewhat by his acceptance shortly thereafter into the University of Belgrade’s philosophy department. It was a great honor, for this was the first time in more than a decade that a boy from their village had been accepted into the university. Miša was so proud of his brother that he punched Ratko Obradovic in the face and knocked out three of his teeth. Miša claimed Ratko had called his brother a faggot; Ratko claimed the attack was unprovoked.

2. A SYSTEM WILL FOLLOW THE PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE.

It was the summer of the great drought. More would have been written about this in the history books had it not also been the last summer before the worst war in Europe since World War II. Soon there was barely any water in the mountain streams that fed the Drina; the once great river dropped to the lowest level anyone could remember. If a pig were thrown into the river again, it would likely be killed by the fall. Dead fish rotted on the muddy river shores, and a stench rose up into the narrow alleyways of the old town and hung there for weeks, until the people became accustomed to it. A man can grow accustomed to anything if he lives with it long enough.

Danilo worked long hours in the fields, trying to save the crops. He drilled several wells around the property, attempting to locate an underground spring that never materialized. While Miša recovered from his wounds, Miroslav surprised his father by offering his services, even going so far as to design a “root stimulation machine” that he had read about in an obscure nineteenth-century journal on electricity and mesmerism. He buried a long copper wire in the ground, encircling the rows of wheat with a low-grade current of 19.55 volts, which was supposed to trigger growth and replace the need for water. You could run your hand against the dying husks and feel a tingle migrating up your wrists.