Aleksandar Hemon - Love and Obstacles

For the longest time, he could not figure out who or what was after him; people like that take their own suffering to be a condition of their existence. Once he innocently bought a naked-lady magazine from Djordje, who went to the gate and called him over; we were supposed to attack him at that moment, but decided instead that his money would be more useful to us. He did not recognize that he was at war: we enjoyed watching his confusion, his vague, passive awareness that he was surrounded by the usual malice; we reveled in the fact that he didn’t know who we were, what we were.

But as stupid as he was, the Guard eventually caught on. In fact, he nearly captured Vampir, who was writing messages featuring fucking, mothers, sisters, and children on the barrack. He sneaked up on him from behind, and started punching him, but Vampir managed to wriggle out of his hands and take off over the fence in a blink. We orchestrated a revenge attack immediately thereafter. We pelted the Guard with paper bags full of pebbles—Cluster Bombs— and had a few handsome direct hits. He cursed at us with venom and hatred, and after that, it was clear the war was to be fought until one side suffered a consummate defeat.

And around that time we suddenly recognized we had long abandoned the hope of regaining the garden. We would not have been more satisfied if somehow, miraculously, the sovereignty of the garden was restored. Indeed, we would have lost our purpose. All we ever thought or talked about was how we could hurt the Workers as personified by the Security Guard; that was what the goal of the war had become, and we could imagine nothing before, after, or beyond it. It was like being in love, except we wanted to kill him. Beside the obliteration of the skyscraper, our dominant fantasy became torching the barrack while the Security Guard was in it.

For that, we needed fuel. One day, we lucked out: a picture frame shop by the train station burned down. We saw the smoke rising, we heard the howling of the sirens. Ever interested in ruination, we rushed over and watched the firemen douse the shop through the shattered front windows, while the owners, a husband and wife, wept and embraced, trying not to look at it. We went back to the smoldering shop the following day, walked over the warm ashes, here and there mushed up into cinereous mud, and inhaled the smell of charred wood and scorched mortar. We sifted through the rubble of the owners’ lives: a woman’s shoe with its heel completely melted; half a chair, leaning on the absent leg; frame corners still on the wall, still symmetrical. In the back of the shop was an unburnt corner: a stained blue overcoat still hanging; a framed picture of a wedded couple, facing the ceiling; and right by the back door, three beautiful cans of paint thinner. Sengson clotion wicklup, I said. We got what we needed.

Let me confess: I was perfectly aware that there was something inappropriate in my telling this story to Alma with so much pleasure. She must have found the boys entirely and typically aggressive, violent, and silly; she could have been hurt by the ease of their blood thirst. She was certainly not someone who could see the beauty in war, but she expressed no dismay—in fact, she showed no emotion at all. Occasionally, she looked into the little screen and adjusted the camera because I had wriggled over to the edge of the frame. And I am submitting that I was—how shall I put it—perversely amplifying certain details so as to elicit some reaction from her, to see her feel. But she was as stoic as her digital video camera.

“Do you want to take a break?” she said. “You’ve been talking for an hour.”

“No, not at all,” I said. “I like talking. I can talk forever. ”

One evening, we sneaked the cans through the tunnel, the mud from the day’s rain soiling, possibly clogging up, my rifle. We scurried over to the hidden space between the barrack and the fence. We planned to soak with paint thinner the walls of the barrack in which the Guard was sleeping, make an inflammable puddle before the front door, so as to cut off his escape route, and then set it all ablaze. It should have been an easy mission; it should have lasted only a couple of minutes, but numbed by adrenaline, dazed by the danger, we did not think clearly—nobody had matches. Mahir was sent to fetch some while we waited in our hiding space, our courage draining by the moment.

Within a few minutes, Djordje became antsy and decided to go look for Mahir. I knew then that he would not come back, but I said nothing. Vampir and I slouched in silence, waiting for the time to pass so we could propose retreat. But then we heard the barrack floor creaking; the Guard stepped out, and stretched his arms toward the setting sun, roaring with a yawn. In an instant, he was going to turn around and see us and the cans. Before I could even think of making a move, Vampir darted past him toward the tunnel, and the Guard turned around to face me, as I stood paralyzed with the muddy rifle in my hands. What are you doing here? he asked me. Geffle creel debbing, I said. Vau shetter bei doff. Camman.

It is hard to explain why I was speaking the chewing-gum American to him. Perhaps because I thought, in panic, that if I still pretended to be an American I might convince him that I was a foreigner, that I was there by mistake and therefore innocent, and he would let me go. Or because I was, in fact, an American commando at that moment, thinking—if that is the word—that if I stayed inside my identity he would not be able to reach across the reality gap and punch me in the face, as he did, several times in a row. I put up my rifle against his fist, but he went around it, as I yelped: Fetch a kalling star and pet it de packet, maike it for it meny dey. And I kept repeating it, until it turned back into a song, as the Guard was raining blows on my head.

But the singing-under-torture did not help me at all in that moment. I fell to the ground and the Guard now tried to kick me in the head, while I tried to protect it with my arms. I have no doubt he would have killed me if he hadn’t been distracted by a beer bottle flying at him. As he looked up, another one smashed into his forehead and exploded, and a shower of blood poured over me and the Guard fell down on his knees. I thought we had finally killed him. I was overcome with the joy of salvation and survival.

“Your parents did not tell me any of this,” Alma said. I wished she had stopped looking at the little screen.

“They did not know,” I said. “Nobody knew. We were a cabal, as they say, loyal only to each other. I’ve never told this to anybody.”

“I see,” she said. She didn’t seem to have entirely suspended her disbelief.

So I escaped; Vampir saved me. The Guard was not, in fact, killed. While we ran home, he went inside the barrack and found a rag to press against the wound. Some minutes later, from my window, I watched him stagger through the gate, stand in front of it, look up (I ducked), and then heard him howl with pain and fury such as I had never heard before and never would hear again. He was not producing any words; he was inarticulate with rage and helplessness, bellowing like a wounded beast. I was thoroughly terrified, for I knew he would have without any doubt killed me if he could have laid his hands on me at that moment.

It was then, Alma, that the world became a dangerous place for me. Perhaps that is why my parents remember that period fondly—I spent a lot of time with them, seeking, unbeknownst to them, their protection. At the end of that summer, we went to the seaside for vacation and I obeyed the infamous whistle. When school started, for months I was afraid to leave our home alone, and they had to walk me to school and back. I returned to their fold; I returned home after the war.