The Cellist of Sarajevo (22 page)

The possibilities now, however, are at an end. If she picks up the gun and kills the men on the other side of the door, she will become a fugitive. And sooner or later, she will either have to kill again or she will be caught. In the meantime, necessity will force her to hate her pursuers. And Arrow will not let that happen. Whether they are on the hills or in the city, no one will tell her who to hate.

After the cellist disappeared, Arrow went down to the street, not caring whether anyone saw her. She looked at the cobblestones, the shattered windows, the pile of flowers. She didn’t think of anything, couldn’t think of anything she hadn’t already gone over a thousand times. So she just stood there. The cellist wouldn’t be back tomorrow. There would be no more concerts
in the street. She was disappointed it was over. Arrow leaned down and placed her rifle beside the cellist’s bow.

In a few seconds the door will open. At least four men, maybe more, will burst through and, as quickly as they can, they will fire as many bullets into her as possible. It won’t take long, only a few seconds, and afterwards they will feel sheepish at how nervous they were about the whole thing.

She hears one of them take a step back, knows he’s about to kick in the door. She closes her eyes, recalls the notes she heard only yesterday, a melody that is no longer there but feels very close. Her lips move, and a moment before the door splinters off its hinges she says, her voice strong and quiet, “My name is Alisa.”

Afterword

I
T IS IMPORTANT TO NOTE THAT THIS NOVEL IS NOT A
historically accurate timeline of the Siege of Sarajevo. It is impossible for the events that take place in this book to have occurred in the order they do. For necessity’s sake I have compressed three years into under a month. I hope, however, that the spirit of the book is true.

At four o’clock in the afternoon on 27 May 1992, during the siege of Sarajevo, several mortar shells struck a group of people waiting to buy bread behind the market on Vase Miskina. Twenty-two people were killed and at least seventy were wounded. For the next twenty-two days Vedran Smailović, a renowned local cellist, played Albinoni’s Adagio in G Minor at the site in honour of the dead. His actions inspired this novel, but I have not based the character of the cellist on the real Smailović, who was able to leave Sarajevo in December of 1993 and now lives in Northern Ireland.

The name Arrow comes from a Radio Denmark documentary entitled
Sniper.
A female sniper named Arrow (
Strijela
) was interviewed for the program, though very little information was given about her. I tried to locate her but failed. She may be dead. In any case the character of Arrow in this novel is my own invention.

The Siege of Sarajevo, the longest city siege in the history of modern warfare, stretched from 5 April 1992 to 29 February 1996. The United Nations estimates that approximately ten thousand people were killed and fifty-six thousand wounded. An average of 329 shells hit the city each day, with a one-day high of 3,777 on 22 July 1993. In a city of roughly half a million people, ten thousand apartments were destroyed and a hundred thousand were damaged. Twenty-three percent of all buildings were seriously damaged, and a further 64 percent had some damage. As of October 2007, the leaders of the Bosnian Serb Army, Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić, are still at large, despite having been charged in 1996 with war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague.

I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Dinko Mesković, Sana Mesković, Miroslav Nenadić and Olga Nesić-Nenadić in Vancouver and Alija Ramović in Sarajevo for the countless hours they spent telling me stories, showing me places and trying to teach me to think
like a Sarajevan. There is much of them in this book, but any errors in fact or fiction are mine alone. Many thanks to Sanja Ramović for loaning me her father.

I would like to thank Henry Dunow for his zealous representation and overall excellentness. I believe Michael Heyward to be the greatest Australian ever to live. Thanks to Mandy Brett, Sarah McGrath, Ravi Mirchandani and Rosemary Shipton for their editorial advice and enthusiasm. To Diane Martin, my friend and editor, I owe a debt I will never be able to repay, but I will continue to try.

Anne Beilby, Nina Ber-Donkor, Sarah Castleton, Marita Dachsel, Louise Dennys, Lara Galloway, Angelika Glover, Anthony Goff, Nancy Lee, Jeff Moores, Emiko Morita, Adrienne Phillips, Sarah Stein, Timothy Taylor, John Vigna, Hal Wake, Terence Young and Patricia Young have each helped me make this book better. Friends and family have met my absence, irritation and distractedness with kindness and encouragement. The University of British Columbia Creative Writing Program and my colleagues there are irreplaceable. The Simon Fraser University Writer’s Studio, University of Victoria Department of Writing and the Sage Hill Writing Experience have employed and enriched me. Thank you. I gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts.

ALSO BY STEVEN GALLOWAY

Finnie Walsh

Ascension

Copyright © 2008 Steven Galloway

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2008 by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited. Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Knopf Canada and colophon are trademarks.

www.randomhouse.ca

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Galloway, Steven, 1975–
The cellist of Sarajevo / Steven Galloway.

eISBN: 978-0-307-37165-2

I. Title.
PS
8563.
A
454
C
44 2008    
C
813’.6    
C
2007-905092-1

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