Nothing in the World (8 page)

He took off running again, up a long narrow street and out the city gates. A jeep clipped his rucksack and spun him around. He righted himself and ran
up the hillside until he was gasping and staggering and could not run any more.

Step by step, he climbed through the dusk to the ridgeline. He stumbled across it, slid a few meters down the far side, and came to rest. He set down
his rifle and lay back. The silence grew thick and slow and wide.

He started walking, and the noise of his footsteps chipped holes in the night. His thirst tightened and rose in his throat, and heat flared in his
chest, in his head. The hill steepened and turned to shale and Joško was falling, down the escarpment and into a gully, and there was no water but
his hands landed in cool mud. He rubbed the mud onto his face, onto his neck and arms and chest. It was not enough and there was nothing else.

* * *

By dawn, all he could think of was water. He stopped to dig through his rucksack and of course his canteen was empty but he found a bag of figs, all of
them smashed and dry. He scraped a mouthful of reedy pulp from the bag, and had to spit it out to keep from choking. He tried again, and this time he
was able to swallow.

When the pulp was gone he tried to remember how far it was to the last village he had seen on his way to Dubrovnik—two kilometers at least, maybe
more. He got to his feet and started north along the ridge, afraid of falling, afraid of what might happen if he stopped. He walked, and the horizon
began to swell with light. An hour, another. The sun stretched into the sky. He walked, and the heat settled like wool on his shoulders.

Then his legs seized and faltered, and he fell. He stared at his legs, willing them to lift him. They did not. Wondering if this was the place the
world had chosen for him to die, he looked out over the flatlands below. Against the sun’s glare he saw the far low shadows of buildings.

The shadows lightened and disappeared, took form and reached for him, disappeared again as he stumbled forward. Abruptly he was there, on the outskirts
of a dusty village. Beside an empty corral he found a spring surrounded by agave with spines as long as fingers. He knelt and brought the clear sweet
water to his mouth, but his throat closed in on itself, would not let the water pass. On his third try, a slight trickle found its way down. Another
trickle, another, his throat opened and he was drinking freely, as fast as he could.

He filled his canteen and stood up. It was time to find his way back to Jezera. He would tell his stories at school, would be visible now, would be
known. Klara was waiting, and the two of them would walk the tide pools together again. He would find shells for her, the most beautiful shells she had
ever seen.

He took a step, and the spines of the tallest agave caught at his shirt. He pulled, and the agave held him; he jerked away, and his shirt tore. Holding
the two tattered edges, he felt no longer whole. He searched through his things and found a small plastic bag that held a needle tucked into a spool of
white thread. He pulled the needle out and attempted to thread it, but could not see the needle’s eye. He took a deep breath, tried to focus on
the tiny hole, but his hands were trembling, everything blurred and spun, he dropped the needle and fell to the ground.

For a time there was nothing in his mind but flecks of brown and white that moved like iron filings drawn by a magnet. The flecks were on the verge of
forming a pattern, of showing him something, when the magnetic field collapsed and the flecks scattered and swirled, a tiny sandstorm, and he was
nothing inside of it. He could not remember what he had been doing, could not remember anything he had ever done, was certain only that none of it
mattered, that nothing he could do would make it matter.

Then sifting through the sandstorm was a noise. Joško opened his eyes, and the world spread out away from him, and the noise became a song. He did
not understand the words, but it was the voice of the girl, and it was coming from far to the north.

For a crippled moment he considered ignoring her altogether. He already had a mission. The girl had abandoned him once, and might do so again. But her
voice rose in pitch and volume, rose until the sound was more a scream than a song, and Joško knew there wasn’t much time.

What happened was this: There was once an old woman, many years a widow, who lived—

I know. But this is a different story. Just listen.

There was once an old woman, many years a widow, who lived in a village called Otok, east of Sinj. She was a good-hearted person, and the war made
her feel, more than anything, very, very sad—sad for the dead of her country, and for the dead of those who attacked her country. She was one
of those rare spirits who feel all the pain in the world, and choose to go on living anyway.

She did what she could for everyone around her, baking loaves of bread with flour she could not spare, and leaving them on the porches of the
houses whose doors bore the black ribbons that speak of death. Then one afternoon as she was returning home, artillery shells began to fall, and as
she opened her front door there was an explosion that threw the old woman off her feet.

‘My!’ she thought. ‘That was close!’ She got up, straightened her clothes, went into her house... and found that it had no
roof. The shell had struck her very home.

Late that evening the enemy was driven back and Otok was saved. And strange though it might sound, the old woman learned to be thankful for the
shell that had taken away her roof. In the daytime, sunlight poured through the hole and warmed her face, and at night she could see the stars and
hear them singing, precisely as God intended.

Then the winter came.

Part 4

J
oško spent the night curled up in a bare vineyard outside another dust-sotted village. At sunrise a woman came out of the house, walked to where
he lay, stood over him. He told her that everything was okay, that he had a vineyard too, and had always taken good care of it. The woman said nothing.
He got to his feet, brushed the soil from his clothes and gathered his belongings.

He climbed a low promontory, and below him was a road and a wide, sullen river. Fifty meters away both the river and the road swept to the north. He
stumbled down the incline and across the road to the riverbank, and followed the water upstream.

Whenever he heard a car coming he hid in the reeds that grew tall and full along the bank. Kilometer after kilometer, and through all of it, the
viscous time and heat, his cheek fluttered like the broken wing of a small bird. He listened to the voice of the girl, and her singing grew distant at
times, fading altogether now and then. Each time it faded he entreated it to come back, and sooner or later it always did.

The lowlands rose into hills, and an hour later he was deep in the cleft of a valley. Here the river was brown with rancid mud, but the sun was raging
overhead; he knelt in the shallows and drank until nausea welled up from his stomach and singed the back of his throat.

He stood and looked at the bluffs to either side. They were so blue and beautiful he almost fell, and it had been so long since he’d eaten. He
pushed on, the bank growing thinner and thinner until there was nowhere to walk. He picked his way along, jumping from boulder to boulder. Then a town
of gray stone appeared above him.

He fought his way up from the bank, stretching from handhold to handhold. At last he crossed a path with shallow stairs cut into the side-hill. He
followed the switchbacks until he reached a road that led into town.

The first person to see him was a fat young boy who sat on a bench spitting olive pits into his hand and sucking them back into his mouth. The boy
squealed and gagged and ran toward his mother, who had emerged from a nearby house and stood hunchbacked and furious on the sidewalk.

Joško crossed to the far side of the street. All around him he heard doors slamming and curtains being drawn. He didn’t understand why until
he saw his reflection in a shop window: blood and mud and dried sweat, his torn shirt, his matted hair.

Farther up the street, overlooking the town square was a strange round church, and the spike of its minaret punctured the low sky. In the center of the
square was a well, and he drew a bucket of water. He took out his bandana and washed his face and neck, scrubbed his hands and arms, took off his shirt
and washed his chest and what he could reach of his back.

A small group of women gathered around him, and they were dressed in clothes Joško remembered having seen somewhere before—blouses that
swirled with bright colors, loose pants tied with drawstrings. He put his shirt on and pushed his hair out of his eyes.

- I’m very hungry, he said to the one who stood closest. Do you know where I can get something to eat?

One by one the women walked away. Joško didn’t blame them. He filled his canteen, rinsed out his bandana, picked up his rifle and rucksack
and continued through the town. Most of the buildings were skeletons. Shattered roof tiles covered the ground like shale. In the center of the block
was a large gray hotel, its façade a labyrinth of bullet holes.

Wooden shacks lined the sidewalk, and sitting inside them were old men selling postcards and trinkets. Light came through the holes in the roofs, and
glittered around the heads of the old men. Joško stopped at one of the shacks. The old man had one postcard left. It was a beautiful picture of a
long white bridge arcing over a river of dense blue-greens. Joško took it and asked its price. The man said nothing. Joško thanked him and
put the postcard in his rucksack.

In the middle of the next block he found a bakery. He wiped his boots on the mat and stepped inside. There was no one at the counter but the oven was
lit. He stood and waited, and finally a tall white-haired woman came out from the back.

- Hello, Joško said.

The woman’s eyes went from fear to hatred to disgust.

- What? she asked. You have taken everything, and still you want more?

Joško was too tired and hungry to explain that he had never been to the town before.

- Something to eat, he said. Anything.

He opened his rucksack and took out his envelope of bloodstained bills. The woman reached for the envelope, looked inside, and threw it into the oven
behind her.

- You shell our village and kill our sons, and now you offer me money? What makes you think I would take money from you?

Joško watched his money burn, shook his head and opened his rucksack again. Inside he found the medal he’d been given in Šibenik. He
took it out of its plastic case and squeezed it in his hand, tighter and tighter until he began to tremble. But of course he had no choice.

- Will you accept this?

The woman took it, looked at it carefully, and closed her eyes.

- Of what possible good is this to me?

- I don’t know. Perhaps you could sell it, or give it to your children. Children like bright things.

She stared at him for a time, then handed the medal back.

- I have no more children, the woman said. But you can have three rolls. That is all I can spare.

- Do you have the kind with poppy seeds?

- No. They are all plain, but very fresh.

She picked three rolls out of a bin and placed them on the counter. He thanked her, put them in his rucksack, went to the door and turned back. The
woman was still watching him.

- After the war, he said, perhaps you will have other children.

- I am too old to have any more children.

- Yes, but I once heard about a woman who was ninety years old, and God came to her and gave her a child.

- That is nothing but an old story.

- It might still be true, though. Some stories are true, you know.

He smiled, and the woman slipped away from him into the back of the store.

* * *

Joško followed the road through what remained of the town. A strip of shell-pocked pavement stretched down toward the river, and to one side he
saw a thick white pillar. On the pillar was a plaque, and the symbols on the plaque were from an alphabet he had never seen.

Beyond the pillar was a bridge, or what had once been a bridge. There was a platform of dusty white stone leading into the air, but there it stopped,
reaching into emptiness like the stub of someone’s arm. Joško began to cry, quiet gasps at first, then sobs that wracked his body. The girl
started singing, and this helped him to catch his breath, but her voice was again distant, and when the song ended he heard nothing more.

Thirty meters upstream, the river cut hard to the east: he would have to find some way across. He stepped past the ruined bridge and edged down a path
worn into the bank. A bright span glimmered before him, but as he raised his eyes, his foot caught on a rock. He slid several meters on his chest, and
stopped short against some sort of cold metal mesh.

It was the side of a footbridge. Joško got to his feet and climbed around to the entrance. The bridge rattled beneath him, its metal slats like
ribs cleaned by ants. A sudden wind clawed at him, and he clutched at the mesh, held to it until the wind died.

On the far bank he headed up a deserted road that slipped through a pass in the hills, and here everything was different. The air was still very hot
but he managed to stay mostly in the shade of the oaks that grew on the hillsides. Hours of this, and the sun slid into the horizon, and the
girl’s singing came back to him.

He stopped walking to listen more carefully. Her voice began to rise, grew louder and louder, became pure scream. He covered his ears but it did no
good—the scream was inside him now. He begged it to quiet, and the scream stretched up and out and back deeper into him. He dropped to his knees
and the scream was cut short.

Joško removed his hands from his ears. There was no sound but the thin buzz of wasps. He sat down in the dry grass. The sky faded toward darkness.