Nothing in the World (3 page)

One morning a courier arrived from Zagreb with a crate and a sealed directive. Dražen read the directive, pried the lid off the crate, and called
for everyone to take out their plastic ID cards.

Joško handed over his card, and Dražen gave him a set of dog-tags and a box bearing his name. Back at his cot Joško set the tags on his
pillow and took out his knife. Inside the box he found a bottle of rakija, three bars of chocolate, a carton of cigarettes, a plastic case and a fat
white envelope. In the envelope was a sheaf of money bound with a rubber band, and a letter from the President of Croatia. The letter began,

Valiant and Distinguished Soldier:

Your role in the defense of the Motherland will not be forgotten when the history of this glorious war is written. Your courage and selfless
sacrifice...

Joško scratched at the previous night’s mosquito bites—one on each shoulder, another on his forehead and a cluster below his navel. He
read the letter twice, then took out the sheaf of money and counted it. It came to almost fifty thousand dinar. He liked the sound of the number,
though it wouldn’t buy much. Perhaps he’d get a new set of clothes for the party his parents would give once the war was over and he was
home again.

Inside the plastic case was a medal. It was large and thick, but not very heavy, made of something not quite like gold. On the front were the words
“Medal of Honor” and an imprint of the Croatian flag. The back was almost smooth.

Joško wondered if he really was a hero, if the girls in the cafes would now stop to talk with him, if his teachers would remember his name. He
didn’t feel particularly heroic. Something else was needed, he thought—something bigger. Maybe if he could track down the German, learn
from him, get chosen for a special mission or two...

As he put the medal back in its case, Joško thought he heard a noise, something like the buzzing of a mosquito, but thinner, and very far away.
Papiga and Bakalar had opened their bottles of rakija, were competing to see who would finish first, and Vlade was clapping, urging them on. Joško
tucked the plastic case into the box and got to his feet. Perhaps the noise was coming from the radio.

The sky was not cloudless but bright, and the sea was quiet, almost asleep. He walked down to the beach, and saw a large gray seashell that
hadn’t been there the day before. Could the wind cause such a sound, playing through the shell somehow? But there was no wind. He picked the
shell up, walked back toward his cot, and a white flare filled his mind, a surge of heat lifted him off the ground, a roar like the birth of a world
carried him away.

* * *

Joško opened his eyes, and the sky was a thin whitish blue. There was the warm salty sweetness of blood in his mouth, and behind his eyes he felt
a strange dense presence. He raised one hand to his head. Above his left ear, a shard of metal protruded from his skull. He wrapped his hand around it
and ripped it out. Pain deafened him, and strips of sky floated down to enfold him.

He opened his eyes again, and now light from a lopsided moon sifted around him. He lay perfectly still, trying to understand what had happened, and
then, of course—more jets had come.

Joško looked down at his legs. They didn’t seem to be injured. He drew his knees to his chest and ran his hands from his hips to his ankles.
Not much pain, no broken bones. He touched the side of his head softly, his fingers tracing the edge of the hole, then stopped, afraid of touching his
brain.

He rolled over and got to his knees, squinted through the silty darkness, and on the canvas of a mangled cot beside him there was a single arm. It was
silver, almost white in the moonlight, and there were no rings on the fingers of its hand. He stood carefully, and picked the arm up. It had been torn
off above the elbow, and the severed end was black and shredded. He wondered whose it was. Then he saw a soldier lying face down in the rubble,
stretched out as if diving into the earth.

Joško turned the man over, and it was Bakalar, his moustache limp over broken teeth. Both of his arms were still attached. His eyes were open, and
on his face was the expression of a man holding very good cards.

He left Bakalar staring up at the sky, and one by one he found the other soldiers. Papiga was curled up like a bird that had flown into a window; there
was no blood on his face, but Joško could not wake him. Vlade was splayed and twisted, a piece of metal tubing driven through his stomach, out the
small of his back and into the ground. Mladen was draped over the low stone wall on the east side of camp, his jaw hanging away from his face. And near
the ruptured water barrel, Joško found Dražen lying loose-boned in the sand. He looked comfortable, though his right arm was missing.
Joško remembered what he was carrying, dusted the arm off and set it in place. It seemed to fit. This relieved Joško immeasurably.

He headed back through the camp, hoping to find the things he was responsible for. In the wreckage where his cot had been he found his rifle, but the
barrel was bent, and after trying to twist it back into shape he gave up and let it fall. He scrabbled around for his new metal tags and couldn’t
find them anywhere, but he did find his rucksack and the box he had received from the President.

The bottle of rakija had shattered. Joško started to cry as he pulled the pieces of glass from the box and flung them at the sea. He dried the
letter as best he could, but the President’s signature was smeared, unrecognizable.

Then he heard a faint song. At first he thought it was Klara singing to him from Dubrovnik—the voice was so similar to hers, so rich with love
and so distant—but there were inflections he’d never heard before, and this voice came from somewhere to the east.

He listened carefully as he stuffed his possessions back into his rucksack and took one last look around the camp. Near Mladen’s body was another
rifle, this one undamaged. Joško slung it over his shoulder, and decided that nothing more needed to be done.

J
oško followed the girl’s voice deeper and deeper into the night. She sang ballads and folk songs and at times only his name, and he
wondered if she was beautiful. He skirted the few towns he came to and crossed all roads at a run. The moon slipped below the horizon, and a few hours
later the sky began to glow.

As the sun rose over a range of hills in the distance, Joško entered the mouth of a shallow valley. There was a grove of willows whose thin leaves
twisted like the fingers of the deaf. He rested for a moment in the shade, and the girl’s voice faded away.

There was now no sound except for the wind. He started walking again, and his cheek began to twitch. He slowed his pace so that the twitching was more
or less in time with his steps. Then across a draw he saw the dark green of a pear orchard, and realized that his stomach was burning with hunger.

He crossed the draw and entered the orchard, picked a pear from a low branch, bit into it, and his whole spindly body sang with the flavor. He finished
the pear in two more bites, and was about to pick another when he heard someone shout.

He turned, and on the far side of the orchard he saw a small stone house. There was more shouting, and the door swung open. Out came an old man waving
a long stick.

- Dog! the man shouted. Mongrel! What makes you think you can—

Joško cocked his rifle and brought it to his shoulder, and the old man grew young, his stick was a rifle too and Joško shot him in the head.
The man fell simply. Joško ate three more pears, put half a dozen into his bandana, gathered the corners together and tied the bulging pouch to
his belt.

* * *

Late that afternoon Joško came to a creek, and stopped only long enough to fill his canteen. The girl’s voice had not yet returned, and he
was starting to worry. He waded quickly across and walked into a field of wild poppies. The flowers shifted around him, and it felt as though he were
bathing in their color.

The field ended at the base of a steep shale hill. It was a long climb to the ridgeline, and from there he saw a string of mountains in front of him,
and another beyond that. Waiting for his lungs to calm, he looked downhill, and saw a ditch where three Croatian soldiers were huddled together. All
three were waving their arms, and one shouted, Get down!

Joško hurried off the ridge and crawled in alongside them. The nearest soldier had fouled his pants, and the odor curled around him.

- Is it true? he asked Joško. Is it him?

- What?

- The sniper! said another. Is it Hadžihafizbegović?

- What sniper?

- For fuck’s sake! the third one said. The one who’s shooting at us!

Joško peered over the top of the ditch, and saw a dead soldier stretched out in the dirt not far away.

- From six hundred meters! said the soldier who stank. Six hundred meters, and he shot Marko right in the ear!

- An artist! said the second.

- We aren’t sure it’s Hadžihafizbegović, said the third, but we heard that he’s around here somewhere, and the Muslims have
no one else who shoots so well.

- The Muslims? Joško said. Are we fighting them, too?

- Not officially. But there have been incidents.

- Like what?

- You know, people getting carried away.

- Oh. Well, I’m sorry about your friend.

- That’s okay, said the first. He was an asshole.

After the men had introduced themselves, the second soldier looked at Joško’s uniform and asked, What unit are you with?

- It’s a special mission, Joško said.

Now all three soldiers were staring at him, so he gazed at the horizon and asked how long they’d been hiding in the ditch.

- Half an hour or so, said the third. How can we move?

- And where is the sniper?

The first soldier pointed across the canyon to a sharp peak.

- You can stay here with us if you want, said the second. There’s no point in making a run for it until dark. What happened to your head?

Joško smiled, rooted through his rucksack, and pulled out his three bars of chocolate. They were nearly melted, and he apologized as he handed one
to each of the men. Then he got to his feet and ran back uphill.

- Where are you going? called the third soldier.

Joško didn’t answer. He crossed the ridge and followed it north for a thousand meters or so, came back across and ran for the valley floor.
He headed up the opposite side, crawled not quite to the top, made his way back south a few hundred meters, and stopped to catch his breath and remove
his boots.

He stayed low in the brush until he reached the side of the peak to which the soldier had pointed, then threaded his way up through the tall grass.
Near the top, he slowed and became a shadow. Stone to stone, invisible now. A step at a time. Above him, the sky was fading to the blue-gray he’d
always loved.

He crawled over the crest, and found a large boulder split in two. Between its halves the grass was pressed flat. He looked down the slope beyond and
up the following hillside, and there was a flicker of movement at the skyline.

Joško ran down into the draw and pushed up the far side, down the next slope and up again, quietly over the top, and three hundred meters below
him was a soldier in a strange gray uniform hunched beneath a twisted oak. Joško waited, and when the man stood Joško shot him twice in the
back.

The man fell. Joško watched for a moment before walking down the hill. Twenty meters away he stopped to watch again. The man did not move.
Joško closed in slowly, saw the man’s hand twitch, flipped him over and closed his thumbs across the man’s throat. He held on until
the convulsions stopped, then remembered what he had meant to ask.

- Are you Hadžihafizbegović?

The corpse did not respond. Joško glanced at where his thumbs had been, and their outlines were clear in the man’s dark flesh. Like two
trains passing each other late at night, he thought. Lovely. He looked at the oak, and wondered what would be made from her when she was cut down.
Farther down the hill stood another oak, his branches bare and trembling, and Joško started to cry. He was still crying when he noticed the thick
gold ring in the sniper’s left ear.

I could melt it down, Joško thought, and make something for the girl, something beautiful. He pulled at the earring, but it held as though welded
on. He wiped his tears away and punched the corpse in the face, then thought of a very funny joke he could play at some point. He laughed, lifted the
head of the soldier who might or might not have been Hadžihafizbegović, and pulled out his knife.

* * *

- It’s all taken care of, Joško shouted through the dusk.

His voice limped back to him from all sides, scraped hollow by the distance.

- What happened? one of the soldiers shouted back.

- Nothing. Everything’s fine.

Silhouettes came into view on the ridgeline.

- Are you sure? yelled another.

- I told you, I took care of everything. There’s nothing to worry about. Go home.

- You killed him? You killed Hadžihafizbegović?

- Are you sure that’s who it was?

- Of course! Who else could it have been?

Joško had no answer, and was getting a little tired of all the shouting. He waved, and one short arm waved back. Then he headed down the ridge to
find his boots and pick the burrs out of his socks before it got any darker.

* * *

The girl’s voice was back, not quite as distant as before but less distinct, and she was no longer singing. Instead she was telling a story that
Joško had trouble following—something about scorpions, and something about men with metal hands.

The story ended and the voice faded again. The moon hung almost full in the sky. If it had been perfectly white Joško could have stopped walking
and stared up at it forever, but the scars on its face scared him, and he kept his eyes down as he climbed one ridge after another.

When he stopped to rest at the top of the steepest ridge yet, he felt a slight wetness on his right thigh. He opened his bandana, and saw that the
pears had been crushed. He lobbed them down the hill like grenades, and immediately regretted it: his hunger was a small animal chewing at his stomach.
Worse still, his throat was tight with thirst, and his canteen was empty. He trudged five or six kilometers more, picking his way up and down the
blue-black hills. He crossed one last ridge, and before him the earth stretched out flat and luminescent.