Read Stillness of the Sea Online
Authors: Nicol Ljubic
Stillness of the Sea (16 page)
Another half an hour and then, after a bend in the river, the valley widened and they saw houses on the opposite shore for the first time. They were empty. “And, as you can see, gutted by fire,” Alija said. He looked more closely and realised that the roofs were only beams and the windows no more than gaping holes in the stonework.
The many-arched bridge could be seen from far away. He had imagined it would look more vulnerable, like other long bridges. But this bridge was different, its solidity obvious even from a distance. It didn’t so much span the water as just stand there, as if it had been standing there when the waters first arrived, as much a part of the landscape as the mountains. A bridge for all time.
He tried to recall this passage from Ivo Andrić’s book:
How can they describe that surge within a man that passes from dumb animal fear to suicidal ecstasy, from the lowest impulses of bloodlust and pillage to the greatest and noblest of sacrifices, wherein he momentarily touches other spheres, higher worlds with other laws? Never can this be told, for those who have seen and lived through such things have lost the gift of words and those who are dead tell no tales. Those are things that are not told, but forgotten. For were they not forgotten, they surely would never be repeated?
They parked and walked towards the bridge. When they reached it, Alija stopped and leaned on the stone balustrade, looking down into the water. Then he waved to him to come closer. He went over to see what Alija was pointing to. In the shade of the piers, large dark fish had gathered close to the surface of the water. They seemed suspended there, using just one or two flicks of their tailfins to stay effortlessly still, despite the rushing currents forming on either side of the stone columns of the bridge.
“They can grow half a metre long, you know,” Alija told him.
He laughed.
“Hey, that’s no joke,” Alija said.
“When were you last here?”
“It was years ago. There’s nothing here for Muslims anymore.”
There were just a few others on the bridge. An old man stood with his face turned to the sun. A couple took photos of each other in the central area with the stone seat, where men had met for hundreds of years to play cards, talk and argue.
Once the couple had left, Alija leaned against the wall at the end of the stone bench they called the
kapija
. “This is where they were lined up. Their throats were cut before they were thrown into the water. One after the other. Hundreds of them. Executed by their own neighbours. So what do you see here? A memorial? Some kind of plaque? Nothing would seem to have happened here. Look, at the mosque there,” he said and pointed to the minaret which towered over the roofs of the houses. “They’ve even rebuilt that. But Muslims don’t live here anymore.”
Only a year earlier he would have strolled across this bridge and seen just an ancient and majestic bridge. He would have been awed by its structure and historical significance, and enjoyed the view of the river. He might actually have sat down on the stone bench, perhaps relaxing against the stone armrests. He felt ashamed at the thought of his past ignorance. Alija seemed to sense what was going through his mind.
“These are not your memories,” he said. “You lead your own life, deal with your own sorrows.”
As they stood together and leant against the balustrade, they watched the flowing waters below. He could see the dark shapes of the fish. A couple of boys were swimming, supported by huge inflated inner tubes. Then he looked up at the mountains.
“One watches what’s happening on the TV and does nothing. It’s not right,” he said.
“That’s how it has to be,” Alija replied. “We do it all the time.”
On one of the left bank tennis courts, two girls were having a game. They listened to the sound of balls toing-and-froing between their rackets.
“At first, when the war had just started, we expected help from the outside world. We couldn’t believe that what was happening here would be allowed to go on. But then the day arrives when you realise that this is your fate and that there’s no point in waiting for someone else to intervene. It’s up to you and no one else.”
In the newly built café on the other shore, the outdoor tables behind a low stone wall had a view of the river. Some were occupied: at one, two elderly ladies chatted over cups of coffee, at another, a woman cradled her baby while a man was on the phone. A couple sat on a bench with their arms around each other. The woman’s eyes were closed and she leaned her head on the man’s shoulder. The sun shone on their faces.
They lingered on the bridge for a while before walking back to the car. As they drove through the town, Alija pointed to a house near a small stream – or to what was left of it. The ruined walls were blackened by fire.
Today, the verdict has been reached in the case of defendant Zlatko Šimić.
The defendant was charged with personal criminal responsibility for the murder of forty-two Muslims, on the understanding that he, as defined in paragraph 7, clause 1 of the statutes, conspired in a joint criminal enterprise to murder this group of people. For the defendant to be deemed responsible as described, the prosecution must prove that he had entered into an agreement with the group led by Milan Marić to kill these people, and that every single participant in the enterprise, including the defendant, intended to commit this crime. However, the prosecution was unable to convince this court either that the defendant had entered into such an agreement, or that he intended to take the lives of these people.
As has already been established, the charge does not rest on the wider effects of the joint criminal venture, so the defendant cannot be held responsible for the natural and foreseeable consequences of any joint criminal
undertaking in which he may have committed a less serious crime by participating in it. The prosecution was therefore unable to establish proof of the defendant’s participation in a joint criminal enterprise to murder the Muslims locked into the House by the Stream in Pionirska Street.
The prosecution also charged the defendant with personal criminal responsibility for the murder of
forty-two
persons, on the basis that he assisted and collaborated with the leading perpetrator of this mass murder. In order to establish the defendant’s responsibility as accomplice and collaborator of the chief perpetrator, the prosecution is obliged to provide evidence that the defendant was aware of the perpetrator’s intentions and that the defendant’s actions aided and abetted the crime as planned by the chief perpetrator, constituting a fundamental contribution to it. This court would find it credible that the defendant’s efforts contributed to the cohesion within the group and hence to the execution of the crime as intended by the chief perpetrator, but is not however convinced that the defendant was aware of the perpetrator’s intention, that is, the intention to murder the Koritnik group. It cannot therefore be proven that the defendant was criminally responsible for the murder of the Koritnik group, acting in the role of accomplice and collaborator.
The defendant is therefore found not guilty on the count of murder as stated in item ten of the charge, and not guilty on the count of being an accomplice to the murder as stated in item eleven of the charge.
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The Anonymous Novel
About the book
Set in Gorbachev’s Russia, this complex but highly readable novel not only provides the portrait of a society in transition, but also fascinating studies of various themes including the nature of history and the Russian novel itself. Barbero uses his skills as a historian to study the reality of Russian society through its newspapers and journals, and his skills as a novelist to weave a complex plot – a tale of two cities: Moscow and Baku. And throughout, the narrative voice – perhaps the greatest protagonist of them all – represents not the author’s views but those of the Russian public as they emerged from one dismal reality and hurtled unknowingly towards another.
“In the depiction of these changing times, Barbero’s political intelligence is apparent. So, however, is his skill as a novelist, for he contrives to integrate the socio-political analysis in his story of imagined characters. It never obtrudes itself; yet you can’t ignore or forget it… If you have any feeling for Russia or the art of the novel, read this one. You will find it an enriching experience.” –
The Scotsman
“He writes in a bright and breezy, satirical style … which leads the reader to believe that some Russian master has been leaning over his shoulder, guiding his hand… It is a deeply rewarding pleasure to be lost in this novel.” –
The Herald
“Barbero uses the diabolic skills of an erudite and professional narrator to seek out massacres of the distant and recent past.
The Anonymous Novel
concerns the past-that-never-passes (whether Tsarist or Stalinist) and the future that in 1988 was impending and has now arrived.” –
Il Giornale
“Alessandro Barbero’s
The Anonymous Novel. Sensing the Future Torments
, from a new publisher, Vagabond Voices, situated on the Isle of Lewis, is a vivid novel about Russians coping with the transition from communism to capitalism and combines echoes of Bulgakov with elements of a thriller.” –
The Observer
www.vagabondvoices.co.uk
The Nocturnal Library
About the book
Ermanno Cavazzoni admits that his books push the novel to its very limits – “like outpourings of the maniacal,” he says. “That’s how they come to me, you must understand.”
Here in The Nocturnal Library, we have the maniacal we all know from our own dreams: a dreamer’s lack of control and a dreamer’s dogged acceptance of the absurd. Here we have the dream as paranoia and the vain struggle to understand the rules that govern life. Here we have the dream as a bizarre library in which the fragility of human knowledge is emphasised again and again.
Jerome, who perhaps represents the archetypal man of learning, is bound up in his world of books and suffers from crippling insomnia. He has to study for an exam, and his troubles are compounded by a bad toothache, or at least these are the dominating themes of his dream. The reality of wakefulness only appears in the last paragraph of the last chapter.
But this is not primarily a book about dreams. Amongst other things, it is a book about the arrogance and illogicality of power and bureaucracy, and the relationship between the world of intellectual order and the chaos of nature, dominated as it is by mutual disregard and the latter’s inevitable victory in the long term.
And above all, this is a book in which fantasy reigns for its own sake and goes wherever the author’s creative impulse takes it. That is how his novels come to him, and you have to understand that! If you do, you will enjoy this exotic book.
Ermanno Cavazzoni’s first novel was made into Fellini’s last film, The Voice of the Moon.
Translation copyright © Vagabond Voices May 2011
This edition was published by
Vagabond Voices Publishing Ltd., Glasgow
in March 2012
First published in 2010 as
Meeresstille
© Nicol Ljubić by Hoffmann und Campe Verlag GmbH
ISBN 978–1–908251–04–6
The author’s right to be identified as author of this book under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 has been asserted.
This translation was supported by a grant from the Goethe-Institut that is funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Cover design by Freight Design, Glasgow
For further information on Vagabond Voices, see the website, www.vagabondvoices.co.uk