The Cellist of Sarajevo (19 page)

He thinks of Mrs. Ristovski. He doesn’t know what made her the way she is, but something has killed her, he can see now that she is a ghost as well. She has been a ghost for a long time. And to be a ghost while you’re still alive is the worst thing he can imagine. Because, like it or not, sooner or later we all become ghosts, we are washed away from the ground until even the memory of us is gone. But there’s a time when we are not, and you have to know the difference. Once you forget, then you are a ghost.

Kenan will not be a ghost. Enough has been done to this city in the name of ghosts. He tells himself this, as though saying it will make it true. You are not a ghost. You are not a ghost. But as he repeats these words, he knows that saying them will not make them true. All the words in the world cannot keep him from fading away.

He sees Ismet coming out of the market, walking to the spot where he left Kenan. Kenan picks up his water, moves away from the market. Ismet won’t find him waiting, but he’ll probably figure he got tired and took his water home. He’ll see him later on. They’ll share a joke, talk about their families, hope for this to be over.
They will be the ones who rebuild Sarajevo, when the time comes. They will put every brick back, replace every window, patch every hole. They will rebuild the city without knowing whether this is the last time it will be done. They will earn the right to do this, any way they can, and when it is done they’ll rest.

Kenan turns south, away from home. In a few hours it will be dark, but he’ll be home long before then. He begins to work his way towards the Ćumurija Bridge, where two bottles of water without handles wait for him in a small hole.

Arrow

T
HEY TAKE HER TO WHAT’S LEFT OF THE
P
ARLIAMENT
Building, one of the tallest buildings in town. The men on the hills have hit it with hundreds of shells, set it on fire, then fired hundreds more shells at it. The tower is a target not only because it is a symbol of a government they have vowed to destroy, but also because all of Grbavica is visible from its upper floors.

Arrow has always avoided this building, partly because it’s an obvious place for a defender to operate out of, making it the subject of frequent attacks, and partly because it’s full of other members of her own army. She’s considered it ground already claimed.

In the lobby, which is surprisingly undamaged, a
man is waiting for her. He stands by the elevators, smoking. There are two guards stationed at the entrance, but they pay her and her escorts little attention. She walks across the marble floor, past two large green potted plants.

“The higher floors are worse,” the man waiting says to her, as though reading her mind.

The three men who have been attached to her like snails to a leaf since this morning nod at the man, satisfied that they have fulfilled whatever job they were given, and leave.

“Not the sharpest knives, those three,” the man says after they’ve gone. He’s about her age, no more than thirty. He’s tall, has the sort of face that looks amused regardless of the situation, and curly hair. He’s wearing a pair of grey coveralls and holds a semi-automatic rifle in his hand. “I’m Hasan,” he says.

“Arrow,” she says. She tries not to be taken in by this man’s friendliness.

“Of course. I’ve heard of you. I didn’t think you existed.” He’s smiling, and she can’t tell whether he’s being serious or not.

“I don’t know what you’ve heard,” she says, “but it’s probably not true.”

“Probably not,” he agrees. “Still, it’ll be nice for a change to work with someone who knows what they’re doing.”

He puts out his cigarette and opens a door leading to a staircase. “How does fourteen strike you?”

“Fine,” she says.

They walk up fourteen flights in silence. The stairwell is dark, the only light available coming from a small flashlight Hasan holds out in front of him. She can smell smoke. She loses count of their progress, and when they reach their floor she accidentally bumps into him when he stops to open the door.

“Sorry,” she says.

“No problem.” He turns off his flashlight and puts it back into his pocket as they step out of the stairwell.

Hasan wasn’t joking when he said the upper floors were worse. What isn’t burned has been splintered by shells. There’s broken glass, twisted metal and other unrecognizable debris strewn across the rooms, and the wind blows freely through the missing windows and gaping holes in the outer walls.

“Are you ready to go hunting?” he asks, his voice low, no longer as carefree.

“No,” she says, “I’m not.”

Hasan steps back, looks at her. “I don’t understand.”

“What, precisely, are we doing here?” She asks the question a little louder than she intends to.

“This is an easy one. Colonel Karaman probably just wants to make sure you’re as good as they say before giving you anything more difficult. We’re going to
move into position, I’m going to select a target, and you’ll fire. Easy. You’ll do fine.” He looks at her expectantly.

“Who are we shooting?”

Hasan shrugs. “I haven’t decided yet. One of them. We’ll see who’s available.”

Arrow wonders how she’s ended up here, what she has done to box herself into this corner. She can’t think of anything specific, and this irritates her.

“This way,” Hasan says, and he leads her up the corridor towards the southern end of the building. When they are about five metres from the windows he signals for her to get down, and from there they crawl on their stomachs. They reach the outer wall, and he points up at the windows, begins to get to his feet. The windows are a metre off the ground and offer no real cover from view. To get a shot she’d have to stand and fire, making her a target for anyone with a rifle in either Grbavica or the hills above.

“No,” Arrow says. “There.” She points at a hole in the wall, about thirty centimetres wide. For a second she thinks Hasan will refuse, but he agrees, and they crawl to the hole. She positions herself, and Hasan puts down his gun and takes a pair of binoculars out of his coveralls. He raises himself up to the window, takes a quick look around and sinks back down.

“This is a good spot,” he says.

Arrow looks through her scope. Grbavica is a wasteland. She can’t find a single structure that doesn’t bear the mark of weapons. The streets are barely streets anymore. The pavement is torn apart, littered with mangled cars and pieces of buildings. She sees a few people, but no soldiers. They’ve learned the sight lines of this building and know not to wander into them. She wonders how they’re going to find anyone to shoot.

“I used to live there,” Hasan says. “You see that red building, about a hundred metres west of the bridge?”

She sees it. It’s on the front lines, badly damaged. It would have been a nice place to live before the war, though. Right on the river, lots of trees.

“I was at work when the men on the hills came in their tanks and took over. If I hadn’t been, I’d be dead now. They killed my younger brother. He was twelve. My father as well. I don’t know where my mother and sisters are. All I’ve been able to find out is that they’re not in Grbavica anymore.”

Arrow doesn’t know what to say. His story is not uncommon. She’s not sure if he expects her to say anything. She hopes not.

“They’re probably dead too. I almost hope they are. Better that than have them forced to live with those monsters.” He says this without emotion, with a matter-of-fact frankness that startles her.

“My father was killed too,” she says, surprising herself. “In the first battle at the Canton Building.”

Hasan nods. “We will make them pay for what they’ve done, to us, to everyone.”

Arrow doesn’t reply, but an uneasy feeling is setting in. There’s something about the tone of Hasan’s desire for vengeance that unnerves her. She has felt this desire for retribution herself many times, has killed because of it. She can’t work out why it’s bothering her now.

Hasan returns his attention to the window. Arrow looks through her scope, scanning the streets for anything that looks military. It can sometimes be difficult to tell who is a soldier and who isn’t. The men on the hills are mostly an irregular force, and they usually don’t wear uniforms. If they have a gun, they’re obviously combatants, but many of them don’t always have their weapons visible or, in the case of officers or other senior-ranking officials, don’t carry anything other than handguns, which are hard to spot from a distance. She’s found that a lot can be detected from the way a person moves, how the other people around him move. An officer walks with a swagger, and those around defer to him, move out of his way. Soldiers tend to travel in groups, with the lowest-ranking one leading the way. Patience is rewarded, often, by letting one man go by without shooting. Others usually follow. Choosing a target can be a real art. She wonders
how Hasan will go about it, and whether he will choose well.

She knows she’s rationalizing, and that a principle has been compromised, but she has little choice. And all in all, she can’t argue that these men with guns haven’t earned the bullet that will find them. If she is the one to deliver it to them, well, that is how it will be. She made her choice months ago. It’s fortunate, she supposes, that she was able to go for so long without becoming part of the larger machinery of her army.

“There,” Hasan says. “I’ve found one.”

“Where?” she asks. She can’t see anything worth shooting at.

“Two o’clock, fifty metres south of the yellow bus.”

Arrow looks, and just past a burned-out bus a man is walking up the hill. He’s trying to stay close to the buildings, but he’s miscalculated the line of sight and is in easy range. But something’s wrong about him. He’s old, probably in his early sixties, and his clothes are too worn for him to be a soldier. There’s no confidence in his walk, no authority, and he’s clearly unarmed.

“That man’s a civilian,” she says. “He’s no soldier.”

“He’s our target,” Hasan says. “I pick who to shoot at, not you.”

“No,” she says. “He’s no good.” She searches for another target. Up the road from the old man she sees a small glint, a momentary shine of metal, and then a man
takes a step to the right, into her line of fire. He moves like a soldier, is smoking a cigarette. He shifts his weight, and his rifle becomes visible. It’s apparent he’s unaware of his vulnerability, has become lazy and inattentive. He’s talking to someone she can’t see, so he’s not alone.

“There, to the south. There’s a soldier.” Her finger brushes the trigger. She will give Hasan the courtesy of giving the order, but her mind is already made up.

“No,” Hasan says. “Forget him. I’ve made the choice. Fire at my target.”

Arrow takes her finger off the trigger, looks up at Hasan. “I’m not going to kill an unarmed civilian.”

Hasan turns to her. “You’ll kill who I tell you to kill.”

Arrow shakes her head. “No.”

Hasan slides down from the window. “What do you think this is, some sort of game?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” she says.

“Fire your weapon.”

“No. I’ll kill the soldier.”

Hasan looks at her, shakes his head. “We’re not negotiating here. Other people can shoot the soldiers. That’s not our job.”

Arrow takes her hands off her rifle, turns to get a better view of Hasan. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you’re not an ordinary soldier. Colonel Karaman’s unit is not just any unit.”

“You kill civilians?”

He laughs. “Sure. We do a lot of things. This is merely a test, one you are failing. You think that man’s an innocent? Answer me this. How is it he’s able to walk the streets in Grbavica freely? Why isn’t he dead, or in a camp, or whatever else they do?”

Arrow knows the answer to this, knows it is because the men on the hills view him as one of their own. “That doesn’t mean he’s one of the men killing us.”

“It doesn’t matter. He’s one of them. They are his sons, he is their father, or grandfather, or uncle. They have killed our fathers and grandfathers and uncles.”

“We’re better than this.”

“Of course we are. They’re rabid animals. Killing them does the world a favour.”

Arrow thinks about this, wonders how many of the men on the hills she has killed. Their deaths saved lives. She knows this is true. And she knows that she has nothing but contempt for the ones who murder. But they’re not all like that. Their mothers and fathers and sisters are not all like that. “Some of them are good.”

Hasan smirks. “I have yet to meet one.”

“The city is full of them.”

“And we will deal with those people too, in time.”

“What does that mean?” she asks.

“Ask your friend Nermin Filipović that, someday,” he says. “There are two sides to this war, Arrow. Ours and theirs. There is no in-between.”

He returns to the window, focuses his binoculars on the street. “He’s still there. Fifteen metres farther south. Take your shot.”

She folds her hands around her rifle, puts her eye to the scope. She finds the man, where Hasan said he would be, and aims. She now knows what she did to begin this course of events. She can pinpoint the moment at which her options began to vanish. The men on the hills told her that she hated them, and they did everything they could to make it true. She did not fight very hard. It was an easy thing to do. She wonders whether it would have been possible to behave any differently. She hopes it is. She hopes that, somewhere in the city, there are people who are resisting the temptation to turn these men into devils, to say that all men are like them, to oppose their very existence the way they always said the people of Sarajevo did.

But it’s too late for her. There’s no way to go back in time, no way to undo what has been done. Her finger rests on the trigger, and she exhales, trying to slow her racing pulse. She looks through the scope, makes a final adjustment in her aim. She sees the sniper they sent to kill the cellist, his eyes closed, his hand at his side. She hears music, and, this time, she does not fire.

“No,” she says. “I won’t.”

She wonders if Hasan will shoot the man himself, or if he will shoot her, but he makes no move. He
turns from the window, watches her pull her rifle away from the hole in the wall and begin to crawl out of the room.