William Vollmann - Last Stories and Other Stories

In the middle of the following afternoon they were speeding back from the frontline (they had been running all morning, and, worse yet, through sunny places) when Enko said: Look. What are you going to give Bald Man?

How much does he want?

You don’t fucking get it. I told you: Bald Man doesn’t need shit from you. He has everything already.

All right.

Looking into the rearview mirror, he saw Amir’s sad eyes seeking him.

The only thing you can do is show him you’ve got heart. Don’t you fucking get it?

Sure.

There came a sound as if some monster were wading through an ocean, loudly, yet not without a certain mincing daintiness; he had never heard that before. A window shattered. He was going to pay Enko in dollars again.

Enko said: We caught us a sniper. A real bastard. A Serb. Now what I want you to do, and this’ll prove you to Bald Man, is go in there and do the job.

You mean kill him?

I’ll give you a gun. He’s in a room; he can’t hurt you. Go in there and take care of that Serb. You do that, you can ask Bald Man anything you want.

After that, of course, he couldn’t exactly go to Vesna’s anymore.

Many years later, when the journalist was fat and old, he returned to Sarajevo, in the company of his wife. Some of his younger colleagues had, as American businesspeople like to say, “adapted.” The grand old editors who had taught him were long since enjoying the sweetness of forced retirement. Most journalists of his own generation had simply been “terminated.” The war photographers kept lowering their prices in hopes of keeping “competitive” with the stock agencies whose images might be inferior but could be leased to production supervisors for sixty percent less. The rising cost of paper, and the increasing inclination of advertisers to buy wriggling, pulsing “windows” within digital publications, in order to better monitor the readers (I mean “content users”), left the quaint “hard copy” magazines feeble indeed. Perhaps our hero should have exerted himself for his dog food, pulling harder on a shorter, ever more capricious leash — but he was more washed up than he admitted. His eyesight had worsened, and that new forgetfulness might be getting dangerous, for instead of straightforward admissions of confusion it confidently asserted the erroneous. Well, hadn’t he always been lost? After a week in the Stari Grad, he kept mistaking the way back to the hotel in those narrow streets between Ferhadija and Zelenih Beretki. — Last time, I couldn’t really go out much, he explained to his wife. They were shooting from those hills up there, so I mostly had to stay indoors, or else get into a car and be driven somewhere at high speed. Whenever we left the Holiday Inn we had to—

No, we turn here, said his wife, holding his hand.

But isn’t the river that way? No, you’re right as usual! You know, I never got down to the Stari Grad. Or maybe I did once—

I know, his wife replied. Do you think a cesma is a fountain?

I used to know. Didn’t we just look that up?

You don’t remember either? I feel ashamed of myself; I just can’t make headway with this language.

Never mind, sweetheart, and he took her little paperback dictionary, in order to look up cesma yet again.

So that was our journalist, and why he had come his fellow Americans could scarcely imagine, for where lay the lucre for him? To be sure, he sometimes wondered what had become of the people he once met at Vesna’s; and perhaps he was interested in Vesna even now.

For him it was nearly an adventure. He convinced himself that a new country remained to be explored: the past.

In that season many of the young Muslim women wore matching lavender dresses and hijabs, and that was very nice, but most beautiful of all was a girl dressed all in black, with a black headscarf, brown eyes and red-painted lips; she held a red rose.

Strolling into a travel agency, he requested an interpreter. The woman put him in touch with a friend of hers, a policeman’s son less friendly than polite — but hadn’t they all been that way? The journalist could not recall. The policeman (now retired) had never heard of Enko, and the son knew nothing of Vesna (who, after all, must be too old for the boy), but the journalist remembered that she had lived in Novo Sarajevo; when Enko and Amir drove him to her place they had turned onto Kolodvorska and then, he thought, away from the river. The policeman’s son inquired her last name. She still lived in the same apartment.

She barely remembered him. After all, there had been so many journalists! When he mentioned Mirjana, Anesa, Ivica and Jasmina, she took three beers out of the refrigerator, and they sat down in the living room, yes, here where they had all listened to the shells; and there by the window, the most dangerous place, was where the poet liked to sit, his eyes enslaved by Vesna; the American could not quite remember his face anymore, so he seemed to see instead (since he and his wife had just visited the museum) a sad mosaic-face from Stolac gazing up out of a floral-framed white diamond, where it had been imprisoned ever since the third century.

He and Vesna sat smiling awkwardly at each other while the policeman’s son yawned.

Enko had been killed in one of the last battles for the strategic heights of Mojmilo. Vesna knew his son, who was sixteen. — Do you want me to call him? she asked. I don’t know if he’s working. Probably he wants to meet a foreigner who knew his father.

Well, if it’s no trouble…

The boy’s name was Denis. He was taller than his father. — Who are you? he said.

I knew your father briefly, in ’92.

We don’t like to talk about those times, said Denis. What can I do for you?

How’s Amir? He was your father’s friend—

Uncle Amir? He works for the customs department.

His cell phone rang. The policeman’s son’s cell phone was already ringing.

Wearily, Vesna opened more beers. — You still look beautiful, the journalist told her.

Not anymore. But I don’t care. I’m studying Buddhism.

You never married?

Twice. Where’s your wife?

At the hotel. Cigarette smoke makes her sick.

But everyone here smokes! cried Vesna in amazement. This was the only interesting thing he had said, but it must have been quite interesting indeed; she could not imagine this wife who declined to smoke.

I know, he said. Have you kept in touch with Marko?

Which Marko?

The poet who was in love with you.

He was my second husband. Do you want his cell phone number?

Uncle Amir’s on his way, said Denis. He knows lots of stories. Isn’t that why you’re here? That’s what you journalists do, is make money from our stories.

I don’t know if I’m a journalist anymore.

Then this is a fucking waste of time, said Denis.

At least your uncle will get a beer out of it, said the journalist. Vesna, does the shop across the street sell beer?

I’ll come with you, she said. I need cigarettes.

Denis and the policeman’s son sat gazing out the window. They were sending text messages on their cell phones.

How’s Mirjana? he asked her as they entered the elevator.

She married, and they tried and tried, but never could have children. Now her health’s not good. Also, her husband is a real bastard, so maybe it’s better we don’t phone them.

I remember that she used to tell about a Serb in her building who would cheer whenever a shell came in—

Oh, that crazy Boris? He’s still there. Very elderly now.

He said: I’ve never forgotten sitting with you and your friends at this place, listening for the shells.