Nothing in the World (5 page)

- Anything else?

- Plain rolls will be fine, I guess.

The woman walked to a bin at the far end of the counter.

- How many?

The bin was less than half full, and Joško asked for all of them. The woman filled two bags and part of a third, and tied the bags with twine.

- Will that be all?

- Yes, thank you.

Then he saw a small krempita. The sweet cream of its center spilled out through its flaky sides, and he asked for it as well. The woman wrapped it in
waxed paper and put it on the counter beside the bread.

- Six thousand dinar.

Joško opened his rucksack, removed the envelope, and counted the money onto the counter. The bills were stiff with dried blood and rakija. The
woman paled slightly.

- That’s okay, she said. Consider it a gift for a brave soldier.

Joško smiled and thanked her. He made his way along the waterfront, eating the krempita as he went. All he needed now was some coffee, and then
he’d find a bus headed south.

The sidewalks were full, men brandishing rolled newspapers like clubs, women clustered in front of window displays. He came to a wide street, and on
one side was a bright cafe. He chose a table on the terrace, set his rucksack in one chair and sat down in another.

A jeep full of soldiers flew by, and he wondered how the war was going. Better than before, he hoped—would that be too much to ask? He decided he
would corner the next soldier he saw, buy him a drink, get the latest news.

The cafe’s only waitress ignored him for some time, and as she did, he remembered the joke he had thought of, and realized that now was the
perfect time to play it. When she came to take his order he was ready, but his cheek was twitching so badly that he could barely talk. He scraped his
cheek with a plastic ashtray until it quieted, and smiled at the waitress.

- I’d like two glasses of your best Dalmatian wine, he said. One for me and one for my friend here.

The waitress looked at him, at the empty chair across from him and the rucksack on the chair beside him.

- The war has been hard on you, hasn’t it?

- Not really.

He tried to keep a straight face but didn’t quite succeed, and the waitress mumbled something he didn’t catch. She was back in a few
minutes with the two glasses of wine, and set one down in front of him and the other in front of the empty chair.

- Not there. Didn’t I say one for me and one for my friend?

Joško pointed to the placemat in front of the rucksack. The waitress shook her head, picked the glass up, put it where he had pointed. He opened
his rucksack and rummaged through it until he found what he was looking for. He took it by the hair, pulled it out, and set it on the table in front of
the glass.

- There you go, Hadžihafizbegović, he said. I’ve heard that you Muslims only drink coffee, but it’s time you learned how to drink
wine.

The waitress screamed and vomited and collapsed onto a nearby table. Joško looked at the head again. The eyes had glazed to an iridescent
bluish-green. Blood had dried black around the mouth and nose, in streams from the hairy ears, in patches on what was left of the neck. The mouth was
set in a tight grin.

A crowd was gathering, more and more people pushing forward to see, and their staring made Joško uncomfortable. Perhaps invisibility was better
after all. He took his glass, tapped it on the table, lifted it to toast Hadžihafizbegović’s health, and drank it down. He grabbed the
head, then realized how silly it was to be carrying all that extra weight, and took out his knife. The murmuring grew louder around him. The joke had
not worked at all, and he wondered what would have made it better.

T
here was the smell of dust, and then of sweat, and then of hot metal. Joško opened his eyes and found himself lying in a bare vineyard.

It was late morning, and a line of ants was crawling along his outstretched arm. He brushed them off and opened his rucksack, felt a tickle on his
neck, and noticed another line of ants leading from his shoulder to his shirt pocket. He flicked them away, and now he remembered: the cafe, the wine,
the joke. A few young boys had followed him as he’d hurried out of the city. He had started to run, and by sunset he had been alone, and very,
very tired.

He drew his knife, pulled out Hadžihafizbegović’s ear and carved carefully around the earring, tucked it deep into his pocket, and hid
the ear under a rock. He took a roll out of his rucksack and thought of the girl who had sung for him. She was beautiful, he was sure of it. As
beautiful as Klara, maybe. He chewed the roll, and the girl was Klara and then she was not, and Klara was sitting alone in her bedroom. Light streamed
through the window and across her face. She was thinking of him and hoping he was safe, but now the Serb ships started firing, there was the scream of
a shell as it burrowed down through the air and Joško grabbed his things and ran.

He was barely out of the vineyard when his cheek started to twitch. He slowed to a walk, and a strange dizziness crept up from his stomach. His walking
became a stumbling. Trees appeared from nowhere to block his path, and sweat ran from the tips of his fingers.

Images started flowing through his head, and the flow grew thick as sewage. There were unfamiliar faces that twisted together, cursing and then
becoming each other, and now the images were only colors, browns and grays and shades whose names he didn’t know. Joško fell, made it back
to his feet, fell again and heard the rush of running water. He crawled blindly toward the sound, felt the soil go soft and damp, pulled himself
forward and dropped face down.

* * *

- Magarac! a voice shouted. Get over here!

Joško shuddered, turned, saw a burled brown arm. A moment later a bearded face appeared.

- Jesus, the mouth said. What a mess.

The face moved through and beyond Joško’s sight, and he was lifted and carried, dropped in the back seat of a jeep, and he wept without
understanding why.

- Handcuff him? Magarac asked as he settled in the passenger’s seat.

- You can if you want, but I wouldn’t bother.

The driver started the jeep and pulled onto the road. Magarac took a headset from the dashboard and lifted a microphone from between the seats. At
first he said nothing but numbers, and his ears flared lightly as he spoke.

After a short silence he said, Not yet. Probably threw his tags into the sea the first chance he got.

Joško sat up, waited for his head to clear, and said, Where are we going?

The driver flinched and the jeep swerved and straightened. Joško looked back and forth between the two soldiers. They looked at him, then at each
other.

- So you wouldn’t bother, Magarac said.

The driver shrugged, and the jeep slowed down.

- My sister needs me, Joško said. I have to—

Magarac took a pair of handcuffs from his belt, turned in his seat, and now Joško knew. He lunged forward, shoved Magarac in the chest, watched as
he pitched out of the jeep.

The driver swore, and the jeep skidded to a stop. Joško reached for the man’s neck but he twisted easily free, turned and drove his fist
into Joško’s stomach. Joško curled up, trying to disappear into himself. The man punched him in the kidneys and spine, and Joško
twitched and rolled as the pain swept his mind away.

* * *

He woke again as the jeep pulled through a gate in a tall barbwire fence. A white line of barracks slid past. Joško’s hands were cuffed
behind his back, and his abdomen rippled with cramps.

The driver stopped in front of a squat gray building, got out and pulled Joško from the jeep, but his legs failed and he fell into the dust. The
driver kicked him hard in the side and pulled him back to his feet. Magarac stood silently, holding his right arm to his chest, his nose scraped raw,
blood running from a cut on his forehead.

Two guards came walking out of the building. One took Joško’s rifle and rucksack, and the other led him toward the door. In the lobby was a
clerk sitting behind a metal desk. As Joško came forward he took a clipboard out of the top drawer.

- Name and rank?

Joško didn’t answer, and the clerk looked at Magarac.

- No idea. We found him passed out near a stream maybe twenty kilometers from here, and on the way back he attacked us and tried to escape.

- Okay. You want me to have the medic take a look at him?

- Nope. I like him just the way he is.

- Good enough, said the clerk. Take him to 12.

Joško was pulled down a hallway and around a corner. One of the guards took a ring of keys from his belt, opened the door to a storeroom and set
Joško’s belongings against the far wall. He closed the door, locked it, and walked on ahead as the other guard pulled Joško farther
down the hall to a line of cells.

Here the air was slightly cooler. Each cell held three men, most of them in filthy army uniforms. Some slept, and others paced or prayed or cackled.
One of the cacklers, a short fat man with a thick moustache and tiny eyes, reached out at Joško as he walked past. The guard kicked at the
prisoner’s hand, the fat man shrieked, and laughter echoed through the cellblock.

Cell 12 held only one prisoner, a gaunt pale man sitting in a pool of urine in the middle of the floor. Dried spittle crusted his beard, and when he
saw Joško he rolled onto his stomach and scuttled into the farthest corner.

- Welcome to the Split Sheraton, said the guard who was holding Joško as the other opened the cell door.

Magarac stepped forward.

- Hold on a second.

The guard smiled, removed Joško’s handcuffs, and Magarac kicked high into Joško’s chest. Joško flailed and fell, landing in
the pool of urine. The door slammed shut and the men walked away.

He dragged himself to the nearest of the three beds, rested for a moment before heaving himself up, but couldn’t get his leg to catch on the
mattress, and fell back to the floor. Under the bed was a small plastic pail, and Joško wondered who had left it there. He folded one arm under
his head, and darkness lowered and held him.

* * *

Joško felt someone pulling him onto his side, felt hands groping at his belt clasp. It was his cellmate, naked on the floor beside him. Joško
shoved him away, cinched his belt and stood.

The man crawled to his bunk, got in and closed his eyes. Joško sat down and kneaded his stomach. Everything hurt, but his breath came easier, and
the bed was at least as comfortable as his cot in Šibenik had been. There was a barred window set high in one wall, and he stared at the rectangle
of sunlight that lay flat against the opposite wall. It stretched diagonally at one end, almost like the prow of a ship, and Joško remembered
Klara, the Serb ships, the shelling.

He shouted for the guards, and the cellblock became a hoarse fanatic choir. A guard came running down the line of cells, swinging his baton to both
sides, and walked slowly back up to Joško’s cell.

- Did you start all this?

- I’m sorry, Joško said, but I have to go. My sister—

- You’ll leave when the guys in 105 say you can leave. Until then, shut the fuck up or I’ll break your elbows.

The guard walked up the hall and turned the corner, and Joško sat down on his bed. He listened to his cellmate crying in his sleep, and to the
ranting of those in other cells. The rectangle of sunlight slid up to the center of the wall, widened into a perfect square and faded to nothing.

Then he heard footsteps. The two guards were escorting a battered soldier down the hall. One guard opened the door to Joško’s cell, and the
other thrust the soldier inside. The man’s left hand was wrapped in blood-soaked bandages. He sat down on the one empty bed, swung his legs up
and lay back.

- What happened to you? Joško asked.

The soldier looked across at Joško, and rolled over to face the wall.

* * *

The guards brought breakfast early the next morning: paper plates of bread and canned meat, paper cups of water. Joško took his plate and cup from
the floor, went to his bed and emptied the cup in one long draught. His cellmates hadn’t gone to get their food. The man who’d been there
when he arrived was still asleep; the other soldier was sitting upright on his bed, and his eyes were open and empty.

- You really should eat something, Joško said.

- Why?

Joško had no answer. The man looked down at his bloody hand.

- What happened was, I didn’t want to die.

- What?

The man scratched lightly around the bandages.

- I ran. We all ran, at least at the beginning. Some of us stopped, and some of us didn’t. Me, for example. And Tomislav. And Dubravko.

- Where are they?

- I don’t know. They were here a few days ago, but I don’t think they’ll be coming back.

- I don’t understand.

The man stared at Joško.

- Deserters get taken to Room 105. Sooner or later you sign your confession and then you disappear.

- But if you’re a deserter too—

- I told them that the others had forced me to go along because I was the only one who knew the trail. It wasn’t a very good lie, but it was all
I could think of.

- So they aren’t going to take you away?

- Yes, they are.

- But if you didn’t—

- I admitted everything yesterday.

- Why?

The soldier closed his eyes and folded his arms across his chest.

- You’ll find out when they take you to 105.

T
he man with the injured hand was named Kunić, and the other man was named Gusterica. Gusterica lay on his bed and refused to eat, so Joško
and Kunić split his food and water. Again Joško watched the skewed rectangle slide up the wall, become a square, and fade.

There were more shouts, a shriek, more footsteps, and standing at the door were Magarac and the two guards. Kunić backed into the corner of the
cell. Gusterica didn’t even open his eyes.

A guard opened the door, and Magarac stepped inside. His right arm was in a cast, and there were fresh white bandages on his nose and forehead. He told
Joško to stand in the center of the cell, and not to move. Joško did as he was told, and Magarac nodded.