Pretty Birds Read online

  MOLLY MADE THEM roll their masks back down over their noses, but he said they could get away with leaving their mouths uncovered; he didn’t like the feel of wool and nylon threads on his tongue. He also insisted that they observe the mandated silence, after pointing out to Irena that she would need to make a standing shot in which she could at least rest her rifle barrel on a crook in the wall, aiming her shot from a kind of half-squat. She bent her knees to test the position.

  “I can do this,” she told Molly. “It’s a free-throw stance.”

  Molly raised only his eyes and forehead into a corner of the gash. “Now, we know the truck is supposed to be coming along Nahorevska Street,” he whispered. “But you don’t stare, remember? Things move. Look all around.”

  He had a pair of field glasses, the stubby kind that Westerners take to the opera. Every now and then he’d raise them, careful not to bring them forward where they might catch a glint of the sun, squint through the eyepieces, then fold the glasses back into his smock. Once he handed them over to Irena and watched her as she focused them on Potok Street, the small dollhouses in pinks and yellows hugging the hills. It had been a Serb neighborhood since she could remember, and she could not remember ever having been on those streets.

  Molly nudged her. “The clinic is in the pale green house, three houses in from that corner,” he said. “Do you see it? They take the mortar up to the roof. You see the third-floor window leading out?” Irena did. “They open it up, leap out, fire a few shells into the Kosevo neighborhood, then scramble back in. Two-man teams, boys and girls. In thirty seconds, they fire a shell that can kill twenty.”

  The two of them stood in position, peering down from the shadows. Out of the corner of her eye, Irena could just see Molly, his half-face of a smile and quarter-face of a beard, and she couldn’t help thinking of new parents gazing into a nursery window.

  “THERE IS OUR truck,” Molly said quietly. He handed the field glasses back to Irena. “Red, military green tarp pulled over the load. Take a quick look, then get it in your sights.”

  The truck was rusting into orange. Irena took up her rifle. Tedic had been right—few cars moved, few people were ever visible—and in less than a breath she had the rust in her rifle’s sights. When it bounced, Irena wondered who was at the wheel, or lashed down under the load.

  “How do you know it’s the truck we want?” she asked Molly.

  “The way it rides,” he told her. “It rides heavy.”

  “Beer is so heavy?”

  “Beer, ammunition, and food all together is.” Molly nodded. “No one but paramilitaries are getting such big deliveries over there right now.”

  “Why don’t they use army trucks?” Irena could take both her eyes from her sight and still see the rusty truck moving with the slow determination of a ladybug down Potok Street.

  “Serb paras stole everybody’s trucks for themselves,” Molly said. His words had picked up pace. He could see the progress of the truck, too. “You know that,” he added. “Don’t expect to see a truck with Karadzic’s picture on the side.”

  “I wasn’t expecting just a normal truck,” said Irena. She put her left eye back on the sight and rested the snout of her rifle in the craggy edge of the mortar hole. The wound, she thought, from which I am preparing another. The truck’s windshield had come into plain view. But, even as she squinted, sun and soil kept her from glimpsing who was inside.

  Now the truck was close enough for them to hear it, bouncing and rattling toward the turn on Nahorevska Street, clouds of grit coming up from its tires, catching the sun like sneezes.

  “It doesn’t matter, Ingrid.” Molly answered her hesitation. “Anyone delivering anything there, bullets or just beer, is loading the gun pointed down our throats.” He swallowed. “If this is a philosophy class, dear,” he said finally, “sorry. I didn’t come prepared.”

  Irena let the breath of a laugh escape her mouth. She ran the breath up the barrel, bent her knees to take the charge, and pulled the trigger with the same tender touch that she would use to scratch a dog’s ears. Easy now. Oh, yes. Therrre we go.

  The first shot hit the engine block. Irena was able to keep the sight to her eye as the rifle bucked back into Pretty Bird’s spot on her shoulder. The second shot struck the windshield. As she fired the third, she saw the glass swell and break into a thousand pieces, like the glitter of a waterfall. It shone blue and pink before going dark and dry, like the inside of a cave. The truck turned on its wheels, sputtered, foundered, and stopped. Irena waited for people to spring out of the cab. When no one did, she fired her third, fourth, and fifth bullets into the expanse of tarpaulin in the back, and decided that she might be the first Bosnian to know what it was like to shoot at a beached whale.

  MOLLY WAS LOOKING through the field glasses with approval.

  “One Serb truck down, Ingrid. No brewski tonight. Maybe no mortar shells, either. Okay now, no fuss, keep the barrel down. You’ve shot your clip, but put on the safety. We pick up our shell casings—we are good guests. Keep the snout pointed at your toes while we walk down the stairs.”

  When they turned the corner into the dimming light of the stairwell, Molly took a small penlight out of his smock.

  “I thought—” Irena began.

  “Tedic wanted the full test.”

  They walked together on the way down, so they could both see into the same spot of light on the stairs. Irena thought that this posture confirmed a partnership.

  “Did I pass?” she asked after the first floor.

  “No test,” said Molly. “That’s a joke.”

  “Still. Did I do well?”

  “A few Serbs surely think so.”

  “I can do even better,” she said.

  “No one could have done better today,” Molly told Irena. “Not even if you had hit with the first shot. The first made them flinch, and hold up for the second. Did you notice? Still, it’s good that you know you were also lucky. Otherwise, doing well can shut down your learning.”

  When they reached the fourth floor, Molly turned and handed the penlight to Irena. She shrank back at first, uncomprehendingly, as if he were giving her the keys to a vehicle she couldn’t drive.

  “A quick bit of business, dear,” was all he explained. “Go down and hang around for two minutes before you leave for the truck. No, three, please. Count to two hundred. I’ll be along.”

  “So I’ll just wait for you.”

  “No. Just wait for a count of two hundred.”

  “What the hell—” Irena shined the penlight into Molly’s wispy beard and saw his mouth curling up.

  “When you’re older, dear.”

  Irena continued a slow, careful tread down the staircase. Within half a minute, she heard a burst of five shots behind her. They were outgoing—Molly’s. They made the cinder blocks shiver. Irena faltered slightly when her right foot came down in midstep over a stair, but she had made it to the ground floor by the time the echo of the fifth shot was leaking out of the stairwell and into the street.

  WHEN TEDIC ZIPPED open the back of the beer truck to receive them, he was stern.

  “That last burst back there,” he said. “Freelance, I assume? Sudden artistic inspiration?”

  Molly did the talking for Irena and himself, and affected deference.

  “I assumed, sir, that their mortar team would try to take their toy to the roof.”

  “And were they there?” asked Tedic. His tone was wintry.

  “I didn’t see them,” said Molly. “Maybe they were getting ready.”

  “Maybe they were hiding under their beds, or in the showers they still have there. Maybe they were watching TV and eating last night’s cold roast chicken. Maybe they didn’t notice that you wasted five precious bullets on the ghost of a chance.”

  “They noticed,” Molly asserted. “I put a wreath of bullets around that window.”

  Tedic put a huge, silly grin of surrender on his face. When he spoke, it was to Irena. “Molly,” he s
aid, “I love you. Molly, I truly do. I pretend to be mad, and Molly pretends to be contrite. We are like an old married couple, the Queen of the Veldt and I, aren’t we?” he asked Irena. “We will do this all over, many times.”

  “Her Highness says the first shot hit the engine,” said Molly. They were on to Irena’s part of the play. “The second went through the windshield and killed the truck.”

  “That’s what Mandy saw,” said Tedic. He turned back to Irena. “Mandy is someone you don’t know. She says the truck was killed. Was there mist?” he asked Molly.

  “Something in the windshield, I think.” Tedic shrugged.

  “Mandy thinks she saw that, too. It could be shards causing lots of cuts, nothing serious.”

  “Bits and pieces, then, not mist,” said Molly.

  “Our Ingrid here was up to the role.”

  “A star is born,” said Molly. “A star rises in the east. Or whatever Muslims say.”

  Tedic turned his compact charm on Irena. “Mist has been explained to you?” he asked.

  “I think I’ve figured it out,” she told him.

  Tedic rolled out a drawer for some phantom consultation, then rolled it back. When he brought his head up, his chin was challenging. “And did Molly here show you any tricks I’m not supposed to know?”

  Irena was ready to block his shot. “What could you possibly not know?” she asked.

  The three of them laughed. As Tedic laughed, cigarette smoke spurted from his nostrils. “Ingrid, my Ingrid, my great sixteen-point scorer,” he said. “You belong in these leagues. The insult that flatters, the compliment that ridicules. Killer charm. Praise be that you are on our side.”

  MOLLY AND IRENA took their leave under the covered section of driveway leading out of the brewery. Mel was driving Irena home. Molly lived God knows where. A few dark, dirt-floored rooms were rumored to exist in the bowels of the brewery, where their dinginess was slightly relieved by bare lightbulbs powered by the springs below. Irena could picture Molly flopping down on a stark cot, eating cold French beans out of a can, and buffing his nails before unscrewing the bulb and sinking into the night.

  “Let me guess,” she said straightaway. “The business on the fourth floor. You were trying to draw fire to the fourth so they wouldn’t know we had been on the eighth. Protecting our spot. But you knew they’d be loaded, so you got me out from under.”

  “I don’t know basketball,” said Molly. “But in football we protect the striker.”

  “So,” said Irena. “Is this graduation? Do we wait for the tenth reunion before we see each other again? We could have coffee sometime and catch up. Or do you just go back home and wait for some rich brute to ring you up and send you a ticket?”

  Molly fingered a spot on his chin with one of his superb nails. “I can’t go back home,” he explained. “Or much of anywhere. Change is afoot. Not that we couldn’t use it, mind you. The new regime wants me to talk about some ancient history in Natal.”

  “Tell them what they want,” Irena suddenly urged him. “Finger the folks who ordered you to do whatever it was. Old apartheid swine are making deals and getting rich. You make a deal, too.”

  “I made an offer,” said Molly. “They had another. I’d have to give up some mates. Bastards like I am. But still mates.”

  “Like me,” said Irena. “So give me another guess. We here in gallant little Bosnia have given you a home.”

  Molly hugged himself in imitation of a shivering African caught in a cold clime. In the gloom of a long October shadow, his imitation was convincing.

  “Bosnia in winter,” Molly shuddered. “Not my dream of paradise. It’s here or Tuzla for me. But don’t think I’m not grateful. No tears and flowers called for, but I don’t have a country.”

  “Use ours,” Irena offered.

  WHEN IRENA TRAMPED upstairs into her apartment, her mother brightened at the turn of the latch. She called out from behind the bathroom door, “How did it go today, dear?”

  “I can’t go into it,” said Irena. “National security.”

  Mr. Zaric was sitting with his legs folded below his mother’s old sofa table, rolling over one of his candles to find a seam for the wick. “I understand why you can’t tell your mother,” he said soberly. “But I dig trenches for the army. I am involved in national security myself. You can tell me about your highly placed exploits and skulduggery.”

  “Don’t force me,” said Irena. “If you make me talk, the repercussions could be dire.”

  Irena and her father shared a peal of laughter. Mrs. Zaric opened the door in time to join them. Aleksandra, who was trying to kindle a fire for hot water in the kitchen, joined in the merriment, too. But Irena saw in a flash—like the sudden chill in summer when rain clouds slide under the sun—that when Aleksandra looked through the doorframe she wasn’t laughing in the least.

  20.

  TEDIC RECEIVED HER in the storeroom the next morning, Dragan’s smock drooping over a hanger like some headless ghoul behind his shoulder. Irena noticed that he seemed to keep no paperwork outside his pockets, and no implements of his actual daily business in front of him.

  “Should the U.N. pay a surprise visit,” he explained, “I swear, they’ll be disappointed. They’ll think they’ve stormed into a brewery.”

  He pointedly stood back from Dragan’s costume, and away from the doorway. He wanted to give Irena the sensation of more air, more light, and the liberty to make a choice. “You must have questions,” he said. “Questions let me know what you’re thinking.” Tedic was pleased by what he heard first.

  “Well, what would I be paid?” asked Irena. She had grasped that her gifts were worth some reward that it was in his power to bestow.

  “Believe it or not, money is not such a problem,” Tedic said quickly. “We have Muslim friends in Riyadh and Tehran who would like to buy a little bit of Mecca here. We have Jewish friends in New York, London, and Jerusalem who remember who their friends were when the Nazis stormed in.”

  Tedic lifted a leg up onto one of the overstuffed sacks, as if to take the weight off his vast responsibilities.

  “But fistfuls of money,” he went on, “only buy all the wrong things here now. Neighbors would suspect that you’re selling drugs, or screwing government ministers. Or playing grab-ass with Frenchies in the Protection Force. We can’t afford to have you scrutinized. So we give you twenty cans of beer a month. Share them. Let it be known that you can get a little more if friends persist. You work in a brewery. For other duties as specified, you will also get three cartons of cigarettes a month, American. You and your family can smoke what you like, trade what you like. Our own currency is worth less than a product that gives you cancer.

  “And every month, like Swiss clockwork, two hundred deutsche marks go into an account in your name in a bank in Bern. A very nice, clean, thrifty, and cheerful city, I’m told, which I hope to see myself after the war.”

  “Why only five bullets in a clip?” Irena moved on to her next item coolly. “They can take twenty.”

  “Bullets are expensive,” he answered.

  “Bullets are expendable,” she snapped. “That’s the idea, right? Expend them.”

  “Only if we can get them,” he told her. “Right now, cocaine comes into this city more easily than bullets. It’s easier to put a condom of cocaine into someone’s asshole or vagina than a box of bullets. Americans stuff bullets into their guns like cans of Coke in a cooler. They can write the price of war into the cost of Marlboros. But here in Sarajevo five bullets in a clip are what we manage. If we don’t get more soon, it could be three.

  “Besides,” Tedic said, softening, “we can’t contact you by radio without signaling where you are. All alone up in the girders, you can feel that nobody cares about you. We don’t want you to go for too long without remembering who loves you.”

  “Can I quit?”

  Tedic couldn’t suppress a smile. His eyes crinkled, his brows arched, his bald skull wrinkled with the pleasure
of having a student who could anticipate his lesson plan.

  “Of course. This isn’t the Red Army,” he said. “We don’t have Cossacks to drag you back. But it’s not as if we would be content to see you loose on your own. You will have seen and heard things by virtue of our trust, and you will have been recompensed for it. We have an investment in you. It makes us want to protect you. It also makes us keen to keep up our investment. So if you feel tired and lousy we give you time off. Not in Monaco, mind you, much as we’d all like to join you there. We can’t even get our cabinet ministers to Antwerp for a conference without having them inspected and certified by the authorities like a fine cheese. But we’ll put you in a place here where you can sleep, have a little to drink, and repair your circuits—no questions asked, no mark against you.”

  Irena persisted. “And if I still want to quit?”

  “We haven’t written that chapter in the handbook,” said Tedic. “I suppose we hope this will all be over before we have to.”

  “YOU SAID WE killed the truck yesterday,” said Irena.

  “It’s a phrase.”

  “To avoid saying that we killed someone?”

  “We can’t tell.”

  “Someone can,” Irena insisted. “What did the Knight say this morning? I took the long way round so I wouldn’t hear him.”

  “Why bother with what he says?” asked Tedic.

  “I don’t believe him,” Irena returned tartly, “any more than I believe everything you say. It just lets me know the lies I have to account for to figure out the truth. What did he say?”

  Tedic began to squirm. It was a bit of stage business to encourage Irena to think she had pierced his flesh. Tedic had figured Irena would feel flashes of guilt or disdain for her work; he knew that she might even get frightened. But he calculated that the remorse Irena felt would drive her not away from the work he had set out for her, but closer to someone who exhorted and rewarded her—who coached her.

  Tedic paused, to appear trapped and hesitant. “The Knight said two people were shot dead by Muslim fanatics,” he said finally. “Two angelic Serbian kids—Boy and Girl Scouts, no doubt—who were delivering medical supplies and food to famished mental patients.”