Infidelities Page 10

  “Yes, I heard him, but I don’t know if he was saying anything.”

  “So, see my friend, the jury is unanimous,” the commander said. “The trial is over.”

  “It’s no trial, but unfounded opinions,” said Haris.

  “Don’t contradict your superiors!” Sergeant interceded.

  “Not even when my…”

  “When your life is in question, you guessed that right,” the commander said. “I don’t think it’s in question anymore. Mirzo, Hasan, go ahead, shoot him.”

  “How, to execute one of our own?” Hasan objected. “I think it’s enough that we have killed off half of our company. You want to go on?”

  “You got a point,” said the commander, “but that’s precisely why we should shoot him—he caused too much grief.”

  “I think it would be better, according to our laws, to cut his tongue out,” the sergeant suggested. “That’s the offending organ—let’s just cut it out and move on.”

  “I kind of like the idea, but no. If you cut his tongue, he’ll bleed to death. You’d have to have a way of stopping the bleeding for the sentence to make sense. Plus, I do believe he would be resentful afterward if he survived, and I wouldn’t trust him with arms around us. Shoot him.”

  “I can’t, if you’ll excuse me,” Hasan said. “I am no longer sure he did it. And he’s a friend of mine. I admit he’s weird, but who isn’t. It would be weird not to be weird.”

  “Don’t go all soft and wobbly on me, soldier,” said the commander. “But if you don’t want to, all right, there are enough angry men who will. Sergeant, go get three or four.”

  The commander asked, “Do you have any last wishes?”

  “Yes, untie my hand please so I could scratch my balls.”

  “Serious?”

  “Yes, serious. Are you? This is absurd. Just because I prayed by myself, I am accused of treason!”

  “You didn’t pray to our gods, but to foreign gods, which is treason enough. And it’s clear what you were doing with the walkie-talkie. Let’s not go through that again. You’ve wasted enough of our time.”

  “Could you please untie one of my arms? I am dying from the itching.”

  “All right,” said the commander but did nothing.

  The sergeant came with three men. The commander ordered them to shoot, one in the head, one in the neck, one in the chest. The men stood some twenty paces away and lifted their rifles.

  Haris did not grow terrified. The terrors had spent themselves, and the injustice of the accusations, the absurdity of it all, calmed him. He wanted to lift his head, to stare at the men who could do this, but everybody could do everything, and there was nothing marvelous in that. He drew a deep breath, and it hurt his rib cage, and his head pulsed, and his ears buzzed. Why didn’t they shoot? It would be good if they already had, but this waiting broke his tranquility. The pain in his head grew loud as though a waterfall had burst from a mountain next to his ear.

  He heard thunder or gunfire and didn’t know whether it came from afar, or whether he was being shot. He closed his eyes, and saw himself slide out of the rope, with the skin of his hands torn off. He saw his body on the ground, and had the impression that his eyes were hovering separate from it somewhere in the tree, like owls’ eyes, and observing as blood gushed out of his right temple. He heard shouting of men and laughter. So that’s what happens in death, your eyes float and look, and nobody can see them, and they can see everybody and everything, and at the moment, he thought he could see even into the valley, from where a smoke came smelling of coal. Or perhaps that smell whiffed over the chasm of years, from his childhood, when his village in the valley outside of Sarajevo filled up with steam and smoke, deliciously smelling of coal and heavy oils, promising arduous journeys to the shores that bear exotic fruits, such as kiwi, which he’d never tasted but dreamed of, and which, if the war ever ended, perhaps the country would import, and he would melt the seeds on his tongue. Or perhaps the smoke came from the guns and spilled oil on the rusty Serb tank below. He was sure that he was well nigh dead, and that concept comforted him, but amidst it all, he gathered a surprising impression that he was drawing another breath, empty, full of purified being and nothingness, perhaps the emptiness of the universe, peace beyond the sorrow of existences and deaths.

  He enjoyed the grand vision of departing from life, but something very basic interfered. There was a shout in Hasan’s voice, “Stop! Men, stop, stop for God’s sake. Don’t shoot. Look what I found!”

  The men lowered their rifles and turned around.

  “What is it now?” the commander said.

  Hasan held up a black book with red-colored edges. “A New Testament in Cyrillic was on a scout’s body. And look, his ID card says he was no Esad but Jovan. A Serb with a false identity. He betrayed us!”

  “So? Being a Serb means nothing,” said the commander. “Marko is a Serb, and he’s one of our best fighters.”

  “The soldier has a point,” the sergeant said. “Who do you think would be more likely to betray us, this freak or the guy who reassured us that Serbs hadn’t bothered to post any guards?”

  “Somebody has to be punished. The other guy is already dead; he can’t be punished. Men, line up and shoot! What are you….”

  Presently shots resounded from all the sides of the camp. Before it became clear what the shots meant, and before anybody had the time to hide, several sniper shots struck the three would-be executioners in the head, and they fell.

  Several of the remaining men jumped to the ground and tried to hide behind rocks, and others ran in disarray to the former Serb camp and into the heathers, but grenades and machine-gun fire forced back many of them to their initial position.

  Haris observed from his suspended station, with his wrists bleeding. The commotion didn’t scare him; he did not care whether he would be struck. He thought it strange that what meditation hadn’t managed to accomplish, the concussion combined with torture and threat of shooting did: perfect equanimity, ataraxia of the mind. But then, didn’t the Dalai Lama undergo persecution of all sorts? How would the Dalai Lama like to be in his position? Would he attain nirvana like that?

  Serb soldiers had some thirty Muslim men under gunpoint. There were at least three hundred Serbian soldiers in the camp. They picked up the Muslim guns and tossed them into a pile, which looked like twigs lined up in a circle for a bonfire.

  “Where are your mujahideen?” asked the Serb commander, a freshly shaven man whose cheeks were rosy and flushed with triumph. “What? No Afghanis?”

  He looked around, and rested his eyes on Haris.

  “And who do you torture here? We saw you were about to execute him.”

  “Traitor. He was giving information on our positions to you,” Mirzo said.

  “Oh, was he?” The Serb captain walked up to Haris. “Did you do noble deeds for which they give you credit here?”

  “No,” Haris said.

  “You aren’t under their control, brother! Speak freely.”

  He kissed Haris on the forehead. “You look awful. Have a sip!” He held up a jug of Red Label Johnnie Walker and poured, and Haris, who hadn’t had any water in almost a day, gulped.

  “There! You can always tell a good man by a good gulp!” The commander cut the ropes to free Haris’s hand, with his sparkling knife that resembled a dagger. Once released from the suspension, Haris fell. His arms wouldn’t move to protect his face, and it struck the wet ground. He felt like passing out, never to awaken again, and to relax infinitely, but he didn’t pass out. He drew breath through his nose, forgetting that it was lodged in the ground, and he inhaled dirt; some of it stayed in his throat, some went down his windpipe. He rolled over and coughed, and each cough shook his brain.

  “Oh, my brother,” the Serb captain said. “We’ll make them pay for this!”

  He lifted Haris and gave him water from his aluminum flask. Haris washed out his mouth, spat, and then drank. His nose and his vision cleared. He was str
uck by how miserable the remainder of his company looked. He felt a tinge of the old triumph, such as he’d felt when he was riding the butt of the rifle and sliding the bayonet into a man’s rib cage—the triumph of survival at the expense of the enemy’s life. All the enlightenment which he’d experienced tied to the tree seemed to be lifting away as a morning cloud, and what remained were the petty details, gaps among the men’s brown teeth and plastic Coca-Cola bottles on the ground, and with these details, old passions pressed his mind.

  The Serb captain said, “I can see the flicker in your eyes. Wouldn’t you love to shoot them? I won’t take that away from you. I’ll give you a machine gun and you can strafe them all down. We’ll rope them together, and after you finish several rounds, you will have killed every single one of them! How does that sound?”

  Haris didn’t answer. It sounded, of course, terrible. If he said he wouldn’t do it, would he be executed himself? If he declined to do it, wouldn’t someone else do it? Weren’t the men goners, no matter what? And what is the difference between death and life? The more he thought about it, the more tempted he was to accept the offer to shoot, but a Dhamapada verse came to him and distracted him. “As a fish taken from his watery home and thrown on the dry ground, our thought trembles all over in order to escape the dominion of Mara, the tempter.” All right, my thoughts, tremble on. Trembling may be good, it will save men.

  “Oh,” the captain shouted, “they were about to make Swiss cheese out of you, and you hesitate!”

  “To tell you the truth, I don’t want to shoot anybody.”

  “But you will enjoy it, I can tell.”

  “He’s not one of yours!” shouted the sergeant from the Muslim company. “I am the one who gave you the call! Don’t shoot me!”

  “Nenad,” the Serb captain addressed a red-cheeked soldier, “is that your radio connection?”

  “So that’s what you look like!” the red cheeks boomed. “Stevo, I thought you were dead. The connection went out, and then some strange guy talked to me. I was sure they killed you! Great to see you, man!”

  “So you are our hero,” the Serb captain said. “Come out, brother, join the party!”

  Haris wondered what that meant for him; would the Serbs now shoot him? His breath accelerated. After all, he did like being spared, he did like survival, no matter what he thought and how he philosophized. If he hadn’t philosophized, he would have already killed the sergeant, and would be free to live.

  The captain offered the sergeant to drink from the jug, which was nearly empty. Pretty soon, the sergeant mingled with the Serb soldiers, hugging them, and laughing all too loudly while Haris stood, gazing vacantly, next to the captain.

  “Now then, what do they torture you for? What good did you do after all?” the captain asked Haris.

  “Buddhism.”

  “That’s a good one! But you do look gaunt like some kind of monk. Have another sip.”

  Haris took a gulp of the Scottish invasion. His vision turned a shade darker, as though the shot had toned down the lights in his brain, and the pain in his temple gave him a sudden stab, and he winced.

  “Buddhism, ah? You know, I used to be a Buddhist. For a whole week.”

  “Treason, too.”

  “I see, you didn’t communicate with us, you didn’t do anything. Religious fanatics. Damned fundamentalists. You got to wipe them all out, I’m telling you. How else are we going to get along? I mean, I’d understand if they had got the right man to torture, but you? All right, machine-gun them! I’ll help you.”

  I should resist, thought Haris, and tiredly, he lay prostrate on the ground, and the ground felt good and inviting, and he could barely open his eyes.

  “You know,” the captain said. “That is one thing I liked about Buddhism. It seemed calm.”

  Hasan shouted, “Don’t do it, my brother, I tried to save you!”

  A soldier kneeled down next to Haris, and adjusted the train of heavy bullets.

  And many voices came, both beseeching and cursing Haris. He looked over the aim, framing his former companions. The aim and the companions trembled and shook and oscillated darkly into silhouettes. He blinked, and when he opened his eyes again, he saw nothing. He closed his eyes, opened them, but around him was a brown darkness. The voices grew louder and shriller from all sides. Somewhere far away there was a thundering, and for a second he wondered whether the crackling explosions came from his machine gun, and he leaned over and felt the barrel. It was cold, comfortingly cold, and it balmed his bloodied wrists.

  A Purple Story

  Ranko had a desktop publishing job to finish before a friend would visit in the afternoon, but he dozed off in front of the computer. He attributed his listlessness to a minor cold that had been dragging on for two months; even during the visit he yawned.

  “Let’s go to the mountains and look for mushrooms,” said Mladen, a clean-shaven man with shiny cheeks. “I’d love to climb Sljeme and look over the red-roofed villages on the other side of the mountain, like we used to.”

  “I felt like that even when I was forty…like at any moment I’d love to walk up the mountain,” said Ranko to his friend, who was visiting from Austria.

  “What should be different at forty-five? It’s not a city speed limit, is it?”

  “You will see how you feel when you are my age. Your energy level drops.”

  “He’s been talking like this lately,” said Ranko’s wife, Lana, who was sitting on a Turkish carpet and resting her chin on her knees, in such a way, Ranko noticed, that you could see her thighs. “The war changed him,” she said. “He was evading the draft, and he often went into the basement to read books when he thought the MPs might come by. All that hiding and the lack of light made him depressed.”

  “Nonsense. It’s natural.” Ranko petted his stomach and sucked air through his teeth, which were remarkably white against his curly black beard and mustache; his long hair was still thick, but mostly white. The contrast between black and white on his face would have been startling if his large hazel eyes had not reconciled the light and the dark. “Did your father play soccer when he was in his midforties?” he addressed Lana.

  “No, but he had his war. He was always ill.”

  “All right,” said Mladen. “I have to go now to visit my in-laws but I hope to come back for New Year’s—maybe the cold weather will energize you and we’ll ski. How would that be?”

  “Drinking a few beers sounds more realistic,” Ranko replied.

  “He just pretends to drink—he doesn’t do even that!” said Lana.

  After Mladen had left, Lana said, “You practically chased him away with your morose attitude. I thought you loved your friends; you always talk about them, and once they show up, you just want them to leave.” She stood up and changed in front of him; she took off her blue midi, and put on a velvety crimson mini. Her figure, although she was past forty, had not changed since that night twenty-five years before when they went skinny-dipping in a fish pond. Their feet had sunk in the warm mud, which seeped through their toes, and waves of gentle touches brushed and tickled their legs. He did not know whether weeds or catfish touched him. Water glistened on her curves in the crescent moonlight. Even now, as she emerged through her skirt, she moved her hips in a sinuous way, like a mermaid. Usually seeing her like this aroused him, but now he only considered her aesthetically, indulging in the visual recollections.

  After Lana had gone to teach geography at the local high school, he put on his winter coat although it was a warm day. During his walk to the grocery store several hundred yards away, he was short of breath. In the aisles of soup cans and bottles of spaghetti sauce, he leaned on the cart. His ears buzzed, his vision grew hazy, his heart made strange leaps and gave him a sensation of emptiness, as though there was no longer any blood in the chambers—a sensation of something falling and creating a vacuum within his chest. Could this be an anxiety attack? Am I scared of talking with my friends? The hell with all this introspection, I�
�ll get some wheat beer for them, let them drink like pigs.

  He reached for a half-liter brown bottle with his left arm, and his fist tingled as though ants had crawled under his skin.

  As he lifted his foot over the muddy threshold of the store on the way out, it seemed that he’d tripped. In his slow fall, before he hit the glazed leopard-skin patterned stone floor, the color of everything around him burst into a purple splash. Am I dying? Is this it?

  HE WOKE UP in a white room filled with offensive sunlight. His head was wired up to gray electrical machines, and one machine beeped. His left arm still tingled as though he had hit the elbow nerve.

  A face like a pizza, round and freckled, floated up above him, like a moon above the clouds. What is this? he thought. A balloon, a kite, oh, a nurse! He wasn’t sure he was seeing right: could anyone have such a round and orange-red face? And he was frightened, not of her, but of his mind.

  Lana’s face showed up too. Her elongated face was white with a tinge of green, her eyes bulging and glowing, her nose more pointed than before. She put her finger on her thin lips, and said, “Shh.” She kissed him on the forehead as though to check his temperature, or perhaps to express her love, but why not then on his lips? Well, this was a different kind of love now: not of equals, on the same level of lips, but paternal, or maternal love, from above, reaching down to the forehead, the first place the lips could reach.

  As he gazed, she dematerialized into a haze, a cloud in the shape of a stratocumulus, which lifted up, higher and higher. He used to make out resemblances of faces in clouds, and now his vision made clouds out of faces.

  He again woke up to the glaring sunlight reflecting off the windows, waxed floors, and glass-covered paintings of poppy fields. Lana told him that he’d dozed off and that it was great to see him awake. He wanted to ask her what was the matter with him, and she, as though hearing his unspoken sentence, said that he’d apparently suffered a stroke.

  What hospital is this? He moved his lips but wasn’t sure any sound came out. He heard screams from other rooms.