Nothing in the World (7 page)

‘Come in, come in,’ said the mayor. ‘There is always room for one more by my fire. Take a seat here with us, and tell us your
story.’

The vintner sat down, and lowered his knapsack to the polished floor. He accepted a glass from his host, drank deeply, and said, ‘I come from
Kopačevo, across the border.’

The room went silent, or nearly so; only the fire spoke, hissing words of warning. The vintner hesitated, then added, ‘You must believe that
you have nothing to fear from me. I am simply an old man with nowhere else to go.’

The merchants began to protest, but the mayor silenced them. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘this is my home, and you are my guest. No harm will
come to you here.’

The old man took another sip of brandy. ‘I have worked as hard as any man alive,’ he said, ‘to ensure that in my latter years I
would live without worry. But the war has taken everything from me. My cupboards are empty. I have slaughtered my chickens, and even my milk cow.
My well is dry. All I have left are the best of the wines I have made. I had hoped to savor them with old friends, and know that in the course of
my life I’d brought something of value into the world. I offer them to you now in the more modest hope that you will pay a fair price, so
that I might survive the coming winter and live to harvest again next year.’

The old man opened his knapsack and took out the eight bottles of wine. One by one he set them on the floor, turning them so that the labels could
be read by all in the room.

The wealthy men of Sonta began talking excitedly among themselves,
trying to guess the prices the old man would ask, and the extent to which they could bargain him down. But at a word from the mayor they fell
quiet. He sent for food to be brought, and as his servant carried in boards of bread and cheese and roasted meat, the mayor drew out a leather
purse that was already half full of bills. He made his way around the room, and from each of the gathered merchants he asked as much as could be
spared.

The men grumbled at first, but in the end each gave generously, and by the time the mayor returned to the vintner, the leather purse was
nearly bursting. ‘Keep your good wines,’ he said. ‘Take this for now, harvest
well in the coming year, and may you repay us as soon as God and good fortune allow.’

So moved was the old man by their generosity that he cried, ‘Then let what I have brought be my gift to all of you!’ A corkscrew was
called for, the bottles were opened one by one, and the merchants marveled at the color and clarity and flavor of each of the eight wines. When the
last bottle was empty, more brandy was brought, and the men talked long into the night of the blessings that God granted even in these hardest of
times.

As the fire died and morning began to glow in the windows, the others took their leave, and the mayor showed the old man to the finest of his guest
rooms. In the deep feather bed the vintner slept as soundly as he ever had. In fact, he slept well into the following day. When he awoke and saw
the afternoon light filtering through the trees outside, he dressed quickly and hurried into the living room. A satchel of bread and cheese and
sausage was waiting beside the door, along with his knapsack, his walking stick, and the leather purse.

The mayor came out of his kitchen with a smile on his face. Much embarrassed, the old man apologized for being such a poor guest.
‘Don’t even speak of such things,’ said the mayor, as the servant brought a tray of coffee and rolls into the room. ‘You
were very tired, and sleep is the only cure for such a sickness.’

The two of them ate and drank in comfortable silence. At last it was time for the old man to go. He embraced his host warmly and thanked him
for all that he’d done, and the mayor wished him the most pleasant of journeys home.

The old man walked steadily as the afternoon faded into evening, stopping only when he reached the border. There, just before crossing over, he ate
of the food the mayor had given him.

Hours later, as he picked his way through the final stretch of woods near his home, he noticed a strange reddish light playing off the clouded sky
above him. Then he smelled smoke, and suddenly branches were breaking all around him. Flashlight beams scurled at his feet and up to his face, and
a pack of Serb soldiers was upon him.

The old man was knocked to the ground, and the contents of his knapsack spilled onto the path. One of the soldiers snatched up the purse, and
another the satchel of food. The others kicked the old man about the head and chest until he lay gasping and bloody on the trail.

The captain of the squad took pity on him, and commanded his men to stop the beating. ‘Wine!’ he shouted. ‘A sip of wine for the
poor bastard!’

All of the soldiers laughed at this, and one of them brought a bottle to the old man’s lips. Though most of the wine spilled down his chest,
the taste was oddly familiar.

‘Please,’ he sputtered, ‘please tell me, where did you get that wine?’

‘From the cellar of a house not far from here,’ said the captain. ‘We took all the bottles we could carry, and shattered the
rest.’

‘But... but it is wine from my own cellar!’ said the old man.

‘If that’s the case, you’d better hurry home! We torched your house, and even now your vineyards are burning.’

Part 3

E
arly light burnished the sides of the valley and glazed the branches of the olive tree under which Joško had spent the night. He fumbled through
his rucksack until he found his canteen. As he drank the last of his water, he felt something snap and slip from around his neck. He lifted his shirt,
and his abalone-shell necklace fell to the ground.

The broken leather thong was stiff and black with dried sweat. He tossed it into the grass, and polished the shell with his bandana. On the pearled
inner surface he saw a reflection of the raw black outline of his eye, but upside down, elongated and strange. He rubbed the shell with his thumb and
studied the reddish topside, its miniscule snags and cornices. He remembered a sea that had once been his, and other seas he’d studied in school.
There were so many.

Dubrovnik was only a dozen kilometers away, due west back through the hills, and Klara would make him a new necklace. Joško tucked the shell into
his rucksack and fixed himself breakfast, building something like sandwiches from his four tangerines and the stale rolls that remained. The tangerines
had turned to mush in his rucksack, but at least the mush was sweet, and what juice remained was sufficient.

Below him he saw a glint off the windshield of the jeep that had carried him so far and so well before the motor finally gave out. He thought of the
singing girl, and wondered if someone else had found her. Why else would she have stopped singing? Were the two of them living happily together even
now? He struck himself on the forehead, and got to his feet.

He stayed on the road until he saw an army truck coming toward him, then waded into the brush and headed for the lowest pass he could see, threading
himself up through sandstone ravines. The creeks that had formed them had long since gone dry; in the deeper depressions there were moist mud banks,
but there was no water to drink. Black wasps circled and landed and rose up to follow him, clinging to the sides of his rucksack until he crushed them
one by one with his open hand.

By midday his cheek was dancing furiously. Everything around him was heat and dust and bleached gray stone. He broke into the open again, his clothes
weighted with sweat, and fought to keep his balance along the hillside trails.

At last he reached the crest, and below him was Dubrovnik: the famous city wall stood high and bright. On a nearby bluff was a radar dish flanked by
anti-aircraft batteries, but the dish lay on its side, pointing nowhere. He made his way to the bottom of the hill and crossed the road. For a moment
he rested in the dense shade of the wall, staring at what was left of an old tractor, its wheels gone and its body pierced and scarred.

He rounded the corner and walked through the gates into a steep alley that led down toward the center of the city. The cobblestones were slick with
dust and age. He didn’t know his sister’s address, but in her letters she had mentioned that her house was on the north wall, that her one
regret was that she couldn’t see all the way to Jezera.

Soon he was standing at the midpoint of a wide avenue, and a sign on a nearby wall called it the Stradun. At one end was a high portal, and mounted
above it was a bronze clock whose arms were figures of ancient gods. According to the clock it was a quarter after one. There was a church held
together by scaffolding, with a clean round hole perhaps five meters wide in its roof, as though some tumor had been removed and the wound had not yet
healed. To his left was a cluster of cafes, each with its radio playing a different song.

The city as a whole was less damaged than he had imagined. Masons and carpenters were at work on the ragged edges of the houses that had been hit.
Shattered tile and splintered wood had been swept into piles in the corners of the courtyards. There were women with wet hands hanging sheets from
clotheslines. From somewhere came the sound of a piano, the music filling and emptying like tide pools.

He passed a massive villa that was missing most of its windows. The balustrade on the upper courtyard had been broken in several places, and the wide
terraced gardens were clotted with weeds. An empty fountain held a tall male nude, headless, and Joško could not tell if the damage was old or
new.

On the far side of the villa he found a stairway leading up the north wall. At the top was a turret holding an ancient cannon. Far off, the sun was
burning into the sea. Closer at hand was an island, barren on its right side and dark with cypress on its left. Below him was a group of people
gathered on the rocky shore. Some of them slept, and others were playing cards. Children dove into the rigid blue.

There was no way out of the turret except back the way he had come, and once down he couldn’t find any other staircases leading to the houses
above. Then from a shuttered window a woman’s voice called to him, demanding to know what he was doing on her patio.

- I’m looking for the house of Klara and Mislav Petan.

There was a long quietness, and one of the shutters opened. The woman appeared, a stained towel wrapped around her head.

- And who are you? she asked, her voice softer than before.

- I’m Klara’s brother, Joško.

A fly buzzed at the hole in his head, and he brushed it away. The woman stared at him with an expression he did not understand.

- Take the alley to your right, she said. It leads straight to the bottom of their stairs.

The woman stepped back from the window and closed the shutter. Joško walked up the alley, and its paving stones were covered with fine white dust.
He climbed the stairs to a terrace. The door leading into the house was ajar, and its trim was hanging loose.

He took three quick steps to the threshold, pushed the door open and saw what was left of the ceiling: a fringe of red slate, jagged as broken teeth,
and beyond the wreckage a gutted moon hung from the sky. His legs gave out as he stepped into the room, and he staggered sideways, fell, landed hard on
his side. He stared at the cracks in the walls. Too late, he thought. Too late.

A moment later he heard a noise behind him. Joško got to his knees. Standing on the terrace was a heavy-set man wearing a black fedora, pressed
wool slacks, a perfectly white long-sleeved shirt.

- You are Klara’s brother?

- Yes.

- I know how all this looks, the house and the roof, but Klara is fine. She and Mislav weren’t getting on so well, I guess. She packed her things
and left for your parents’ house. That was the day before the shell hit.

Joško leaned back and smiled.

- I’m afraid Mislav wasn’t so lucky.

Joško tried to look sad, and could tell that it wasn’t working. The old man fanned himself with his hat, took a blue silk handkerchief out
of his pocket, wiped the sweat from his forehead and looked at Joško carefully.

- Are you going to be all right?

Joško nodded. The man folded his handkerchief and replaced it in his pocket. Joško closed his eyes and listened to the footsteps echoing down
the stairs. He had his next mission, but everything was so far away.

T
he walls seemed to shudder. Joško looked around, but everything was still. Sweat dribbled from his hands and face, and he stood unsteadily, fell,
stood again, and the room rushed around him.

His rucksack had overturned and its contents were scattered among the remains of the house. He grabbed at his canteen and found it empty, stumbled to
the kitchen sink and turned on the tap. Nothing came out. He fell and could not stand, crawled to the bathroom, clutched at the basin, and nothing came
out there either but there was water in the toilet, and he cupped his hands and drank.

The walls rippled and cracked, tiles dropped from the fringe of roof overhead and shattered on the floor around him, plaster rained down and now
Joško understood. He hurried to the living room and started gathering his things. A third shell exploded, and he jumped to the open door, down
into the courtyard and up the street, and others were running with and against him, pushing and screaming toward somewhere safer.

He fought his way down an alley, falling and catching himself and running again, out into a wide avenue. The cafe lights shut off one after another
around him, and the avenue was a lake of sharp white music going gray. Up a cobbled street, a fourth explosion, a fifth so close that it threw him to
the ground, and he landed on a middle-aged woman. She was dead but her eyes were open. Joško got to his feet, knelt back down to close her eyes,
looked up at the massive bronze clock above the portal, and according to the clock it was still a quarter after one.