Pretty Birds Read online

  “There are other things you cannot take for granted. You cannot take up any water, okay? This is hard to say, because we can get water in the brewery. But you can’t drink it on the job. I don’t care if you’re up there for two hours or eight, no water. Nothing glistens like a plastic water bottle. Hold it to your lips, you draw a target on your mouth. Even if we put water in an old goat’s bladder, if you drink, you will piss. If you have to piss anyway, do it in your pants, okay? Don’t hesitate. If you are nervous, and it’s maybe a little cold, that will happen. You were expecting to meet Tom Cruise in one of our bombed-out buildings? He would be charmed, anyway. Piss dries. But if you unzip your gray suit to squat, you’ll have to reveal your lovely pink bum to the world. I don’t care if you’re certain that you’re hidden behind a wall. Someone sitting across the way will be looking through a telescope and see the ass of his dreams winking at him. He will thank God and then fire a bullet into the very spot on your buttocks that he wants to bite. It’s basic psychology, male or female. Shoot what you cannot have.”

  TEDIC CROSSED OVER to the door to check for eavesdroppers. He left the door open a crack to recharge himself with air for the monologue ahead. He cleared his throat like an engine kicking in.

  “Hmmm-oookay now. Hhhoookay. So, no drinking, no unzipping. No snacks. If you get hungry, well, we’re all hungry, aren’t we? Now, this is really important: no smoking while you’re up there. This is very hard to say to a Bosnian. I have been smoking since I was six. It’s especially hard to hear now, when so many people are smoking to curb hunger. But flicking a match shows a flame for miles. The end of a cigarette glows bright orange, and we’re trying to keep you gray. Little white curlicues of smoke catch the light. They know they have only to follow them down a few feet to find you. If you’ve never believed smoking is bad for you, believe it in your working hours. Think of it this way: we want you to live long enough to get lung cancer.

  “Now look, we have at least one other important diktat. Your personal life is your own. How you spend your personal time is none of our business. But don’t drink booze or smoke hash for eight hours before you come to work. Drink as much beer as you can before that, if you want. Drink anything else that comes your way if you find it. But if the booze is still in your system, it throws off your dexterity and timing. Perhaps you’ve played the occasional basketball game while hungover.”

  Irena didn’t fight the flush that was reddening her face.

  “So you know,” Tedic went on. “You need no reminder. Now listen, I know there’s hashish in town. It’s easier for a Ukrainian soldier to hide hash in his crotch than a veal steak. Even as a school principal, I had no problem with hash. Sometimes I’ve even wanted to tell some hyperactive hellion brought to my office, ‘Give us all a break. Smoke a hash pipe every now and then.’ When I was your age, we were proud to know that Sarajevo got the best hash in Yugoslavia. But a few hours later—I’m sure you know this—hashish makes you hungry. We don’t want you fidgety and agitated.

  “Now, we have to be a little more strict about something else. Don’t snort cocaine—ever. This has nothing to do with morals. Morals are not exactly my area of expertise, now, are they? You’re smart enough to know not to accept moral advice from someone who’s showing you how to shoot people.”

  Irena marked this as Tedic’s first admission.

  He went on quickly. “My admonition is strictly practical. Your work requires calm. Cocaine makes your heart race. Then, hours later, your heart stops racing and you collapse. It’s hard enough for us to be energetic now, when we’re eating just a few beans, some rice, some Spam. None of us is eating what you would call a ‘breakfast of champions.’ Besides, in the middle of this siege no one is going to begrudge you a little grass. The police have quite enough to do without worrying about kids smoking tea leaves, but if you get caught with cocaine they’ll wonder where you got the money. When they find out that you work at the brewery, they’ll start asking questions—do you follow? They’ll resent the fact that you have money for drugs when most Sarajevans can’t buy bread or soap. Ecstasy, LSD—the same prohibition holds. They fuck with your perception. You must be clear-eyed. If anything else comes your way, ask us first. You’ll find that we don’t want to deprive you of fun; we’re not your parents. But we need to make you the best instrument possible.

  “Now then, because most of your friends and family don’t have jobs, they’ll be interested in yours. Make up nothing—you won’t be able to remember it. Evade, distract, avoid. Tell them you’ve been warned not to talk because of spies.

  “Boyfriends are likewise none of my business. Girlfriends, either. Just don’t let yourself sacrifice a good sleep for an hour or two of recreation. What’s exhausting about sex isn’t sex; it’s staying up, drinking beer, and trying to get laid. There’s a lot of fucking going around right now. Not true romance. Just a lot of ‘We might be dead tomorrow, let’s fuck while we still can.’ I’ve tried that line myself.

  “Should you want to get close to someone, remember that confiding in him or her about your work is the worst way to do it. They will not be able to understand what you see or do every day, not at all. Confession will confuse or frighten the good ones, and truly fascinate only the bad ones; they’ll want to use you to dispense their vengeance. Sometimes you’ll hear friends—or some boy trying to impress you—talk about the war. They will assert something very positively that you know to be untrue. You must not be tempted to set them right. Let them have the distraction of their ignorance. You may even be amused by it. You will appreciate how much you really do know by how much your friends cannot even fathom. In any case, they cannot appreciate that you are right.”

  Irena spoke for the first time in Tedic’s oration. “Now,” she said. “Now you have me scared.”

  “Of dying? Who isn’t?”

  “Oh, shit no,” Irena said. She added very simply, “Of living like this.”

  Tedic stopped at that. He wasn’t reaching for punctuation or drama, or to reposition his argument. His face took on something mournful. “Remember,” he said, “all we wanted in Sarajevo was to be left alone. Left alone to smoke and drink, stay up late and listen to jazz, ski and screw, and otherwise pursue this brilliantly irrelevant mixed culture we have built over five centuries. Then one weekend that changed. They knocked down our doors. They dragged us out of the cafés in which we used to so wisely declaim about Kafka, Sidney Bechet, and Michael Jordan. They raped us, dear. Now they’re starving and shooting us. The mandarins in Washington and London, the café crowd in Paris and New York, wring their hands over our fate. They wail against war. But they don’t undo their fingers from their prayers or their espresso cups to help. Right now, five seconds only, the window is closing; we have at least the brief hope of a choice. We can stay with our frivolous, peaceful ways and die silently, leaving the world our names for another memorial. Or we can use every wicked trick they have used on us, and a few more we can think up, to strike back. And buy an extra day of life.”

  THE MORTAR FIRE and sniping were especially intense that night. Aleksandra came up from her apartment to sleep with the Zarics in their living room—that was what they now called Grandma’s apartment.

  Irena found it comic and uncomfortable to sleep in the same room as her parents. When she shifted or flinched—or, as she did a couple of times, screamed in her sleep—her mother would roll over and take her flailing arms into her own hands. She thought Irena looked like a kitten twitching in her sleep.

  Irena cried out that night. Mrs. Zaric awoke first, but she couldn’t make out the words. She crawled over and held Irena, who was trembling.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”

  Irena stirred. Then she began to laugh. She thrummed her fists against her chest.

  “You’re laughing,” said Mrs. Zaric. “What’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong?” said Irena. “Say that again, Mother.”

  “What’s wrong?”

&nbs
p; Mr. Zaric had pulled himself up on his elbows and he, too, began to laugh. “Again, Dalila dear,” he said. “Listen to yourself. Think about each word. What’s. Wrong. What’s. Wrong. What’s wrong?”

  Aleksandra, Irena, and her father laughed harder.

  Mrs. Zaric suddenly raised a hand to her forehead. “Oh, I understand now,” she said. “Yes, that’s pretty funny. What’s wrong? Oh, nothing special.” She was finally laughing. She laughed so much that she decided she needed a cigarette to settle her breathing, and fumbled around on the floor for anyone’s pack of Drinas.

  “What’s wrong? What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” Irena repeated the words drowsily, as if they were the refrain of a favorite song. She could see the orange veins of mortar rounds scoring the sky as she laughed herself to sleep like a child.

  IN THE MORNING she found a small blue envelope folded into the right pocket of the jeans she had left beside her on the floor, in case she had to dress quickly. Aleksandra’s handwriting looped across one side. “Shh,” she had written. “For Your Eyes Only. A.”

  When Irena turned the envelope around, she recognized Tomaslav’s handwriting:

  TO IRENA ZARIC PERSONAL PLEASE

  FOR HER ONLY

  Aleksandra must have retrieved it from the synagogue. Irena’s new duties did not always permit her to make that run for the building, and Aleksandra enjoyed arranging her route to run into French soldiers and their chivalrous donations of cigarettes to old ladies. Irena crawled below the living-room window in her panties, her jeans with the note slung over her shoulders, to slip into the bathroom and close the door. Her brother’s note was written on a British Museum greeting card that showed an eighteenth-century Wenceslaus Hollar engraving of a cat receiving a deputation of mice. Tomaslav’s handwriting looked plain and firm.

  Dearest sister:

  On my way to Chicago. Man at Bosnian office here got me student visa. Now, I must find something to study. You will hear from me. Will make your case to Toni Kukoc. Will write another note to Milan and Dalila from there c/o synagogue. Don’t tell them about this—please—I want no one to worry. You are the ones who are bearing the worst. I hope to begin to pay you back soon. Those who love Sarajevo should not stay away. Funny—but Chicago may be a step closer.

  With love always,

  Tomaslav

  And on the back of the card, above “The rights to this image reserved by the British Museum,” Tomaslav had added:

  PS: Pretty Bird would join up, too! Chirrrp! Pretty Bird!

  I’m not going to tell him about Pretty Bird, Irena thought, at least not yet. Then she realized: I don’t know how to reach him. I don’t know where he is. I don’t know where he’s going. And I don’t like the way he suddenly says “With love always,” like the note some people leave on a pillow before they steal away in the dark and you never see them again.

  19.

  TEDIC HAD DRAGAN’S gray smock unrolled like a fairy-tale cloak and waiting for Irena in the storeroom the next morning. “Something for you and Molly this morning,” he told her. “The first time, he will go with you.”

  “I AM HAPPY to announce,” Tedic began, speaking to both Irena and Molly now, over some flour sacks, “that today’s target of opportunity—like so much else in life, I have lately been convinced—begins with beer.”

  A couple of “higher minds,” as Tedic called them, whose job was to stay tuned to the radio chitchat of Serb artillery teams, had heard a supply unit assure one of the firing squads that their promised provisions of piss would be delivered at a guaranteed hour. The higher minds interpreted “piss” as beer.

  “You do not always have to be MI-5,” Tedic explained, “to crack these codes.” The artillery team, he said, had installed themselves in the basement of a mental-health clinic in Jagomir. “Where, no doubt,” he went on, “the ka-thump ka-thumps are so very therapeutic for their patients. Where, no doubt, the patients enlisted because of all the beer the Serb units are drinking.”

  “Excuse me, sir,” said Molly with a show of timidity. “But all we know for sure is that it’s piss.”

  Tedic explained that they would not want to fire shots into a mental-health clinic, even if all the patients had been trucked out to make room for gun crews; the publicity would be ruinous. But a truck delivering all of that piss, plus, the higher minds assumed, cans of ham, beef, cabbage, and coffee, bullets, shells, and rubbers, would need to make a turn on one of two streets that lead into Nahorevska Street. They should be able to see the truck coming. They should be able to get it in their sights. They should be able to get off a shot that might shatter the windshield, or blast out a tire.

  “At least when they pop open their bottles of piss,” said Tedic, “it will spray in their faces. They will know we can catch up with them.”

  “Do we know what kind of piss, sir?” asked Molly, and Tedic smiled.

  “In fact,” he told them, “the higher minds say they have reason to believe it’s Tuborg.”

  “Perhaps, sir, it would be equally effective,” ventured Molly, “just to deliver a case of ours.”

  TEDIC HAD SELECTED an old apartment building in Breka as their perch. It was abandoned, but there were squatters. He told them to take care to fire from the ninth floor, because people had moved in below. He was counting on the Serbs to know this—and think that they would not fire any shots from that site.

  “Ninth floor, kids. In the stairwell off the elevator shaft. There is a hole about nine inches across, no more than two inches tall, from what we can tell. Right near the floor, so you can lie down. Molly will spot the target. He’ll show you how. You, Ingrid, take care of actual delivery. Up, out, back.”

  The building was one of the standard brown-and-gray blocks that had been built in time for the Olympics. Irena couldn’t remember what the city’s landscape had been without them, but she also couldn’t tell the difference between that apartment house and half a dozen others nearby.

  Molly and Irena trudged up the building’s unlit staircase, which had mostly been spared the damage of mortars and bullets that had so effectively razed the rest of the structure. It was too dark to see, too dark even to speak. They had to feel with their toes for the next step up, and use their footfalls to gauge the nearness of walls and corners. Even in daylight, their orders were not to carry electric torches. Lights playing across darkened interiors could attract attention, although the instruction seemed particularly pointless in the stairwell, which was completely hidden from view. It seemed to take five minutes to feel their way past each floor.

  Now and then they could hear sounds of habitation through the cinder-block walls: the whispers of squatters trying to stay quiet, radios turned on low for just a few minutes to save batteries. The squatters may have heard them, too, and feared that they were Bosnian police intent on clearing the building—or stealthy Serb paramilitaries there to steal and slaughter. Quiet, then, was in everybody’s interest.

  A strong smell of turds and urine hovered on each floor. There was no running water in this building, either. But the squatters, afraid of losing their places to other squatters, were even more reluctant than other Sarajevans to venture out to water lines.

  “Better we can’t see so well,” Molly called back to Irena softly. “Some of the things . . . Dogs and cats crawl in for food, and curl up to die. They become meals, bones. I had a great dog back home.” He cut his speech short, as he felt for the next step.

  Molly stayed half a floor ahead of Irena. When they reached the eighth-floor landing, he turned around so that Irena could hear him. “We stop here, Ingrid.”

  “A floor short?”

  “Your last lesson,” he explained.

  There were streaks of light when they exited the stairwell from a small industrial window just above their heads, and perhaps half a dozen small mortar holes. It made the light slice over their shoulders. Molly pointed at two jagged gashes, no more than four inches wide, about four feet from the floor.

  “The space
upstairs would be better for surveillance and operation,” he said. “That’s why Tedic chose it. But these two gashes here will do well enough.”

  “Shouldn’t we follow orders?” asked Irena.

  “We will make the delivery,” Molly assured her.

  “But surely,” she said, “we were told to go to the other place for good reason.”

  “The other place is a better shooting spot.”

  When Irena stood unblinking and disbelieving before Molly for more than a moment he turned gruff. They were both wearing ski masks. Tuck in his strawberry ponytail, Irena thought, cloak his cottony beard, and Molly turned back into a pig-faced Boer.

  “Just get ready here,” he said. “I’ll explain it later.”

  “When I’m older?” Her sarcasm was biting.

  “Yes,” said Molly. “And you’ll be a lot older when this is over.”

  She stood in a small space on the eighth-floor landing. The ski mask prickled with sweat from the long walk up, and now exasperation. “I’m here,” she told Molly. “I’m old enough now.”

  He sighed, rolled his mask up to his forehead, and fluffed out his wispy beard before speaking. “Whenever there is an obvious best spot,” he told her, “don’t take it. Take something less perfect nearby. The best place is always where they will be looking for you. When it comes to our own lives, we can only really trust ourselves.”

  Irena took the opportunity to roll her own ski mask up off her eyes. Wordlessly, she took the M-14 parts out of the pockets and sleeves of Dragan’s smock and began to assemble her rifle.

  In the clacking and clatter between the spikes of light, Molly added, a little more gently, “You can trust me on this, Ingrid. Because I am alive to tell you.”