Heritage of Smoke Read online

  He sobbed and threw the handgun on the floor. He drank more wine. The snow blew through the cracked windows and I shivered.

  Would you like a sip? Misho asked. We need more wine, this is such damned good Croatian wine. No, thank you, I replied.

  Somehow, at that point I slept. Maybe the secondary lows affected me.

  I woke up at dawn, found Misho asleep in the armchair covered by a large green officer’s overcoat with a couple of shoulder stripes, probably his grandfather’s from World War One. I walked out into the biting wind and caught the bus, and soon I was at the American embassy.

  The administrators all smiled, displaying their enviably white teeth, and gave me a B2 pencil to shade the ovals of the correct answers. They all drank water and I eyed them suspiciously.

  DUTCH TREAT

  “I remember you,” said a man in a flower shop at Grand Central as he was about to hand Martin his purchase, a bouquet of red tulips. Martin was reaching for the tulips but the man withdrew them and Martin’s right hand clasped the air where the tulips had just been.

  “What’s that about? I paid.”

  “You aren’t going to get your flowers unless you remember me.”

  Martin looked at him—bony face, narrowly set small green eyes, slightly crisscrossed. “Sorry, I don’t recognize you. I’ve seen your type of face in the Balkans, though.”

  “In Srebrenica.”

  “True. Still, I don’t remember your face.”

  “Maybe you wouldn’t. I was a teenager then.”

  “Teenager?” To Martin, he looked well over thirty. He had silver lines in his black hair, or rather black lines in his silver hair.

  “I know what’s confusing you. Some of us are aging faster than others.”

  This encounter evoked memories for Martin, as he left the shop. He used to work for the United Nations in the safe haven of Srebrenica as a sergeant. Even as a child he had admired the UN, and when he went to the States with his father, a banker, they visited the United Nations building. All that glass reflecting the gold of the setting sun struck him as splendid, even more so than the World Trade Center Towers’ apparent silverworks. When the Dutch unit was assembled for Bosnia under the auspices of the United Nations, he volunteered. There was not much fighting going on. Most of the massacres had already happened, and most of the houses had already burned down. Well, not completely, since they were built of bricks and cement. So sometimes you’d have a house that looked only slightly charred collapse right in front of you because the wood beams had burned out. The houses were more damaged than they looked, and so were the people. They would go about their business, buying overpriced apples in the marketplace, and then suddenly collapse from a heart attack or stroke.

  The UN had deployed units around the town. They were lightly armed, and Martin knew that they couldn’t withstand a serious attack. The whole thing was a show. As he walked, he felt like an actor, unconvinced but trying to appear convincing as he strutted, aware of his straight posture, his muscular soccer legs, his curly blond hair, and his firm jaw that kept grinding his complete set of teeth.

  The Dutch were given the peculiar task of disarming the local Muslims. They promised protection in exchange for weapons. Muslims brought out hundreds of rifles and pistols, and then the Dutch went house to house, cajoling people to bring out their guns as they searched their basements. The disarmament accomplished, the Dutch UN officers got together with the Serbian officers, and General Mladic drank slivovitz and toasted to “democracy.”

  Early the next morning, the Serbian military shelled the town. Many houses were on fire. And then the Serb soldiers walked into the town. Martin’s unit stayed in the basement of the old gymnasium during the shelling and, afterward, they walked out into the smoky streets. The captain shook hands with a Serbian officer.

  “People, don’t worry,” the announcement came over loudspeakers. “We are looking for a few terrorists, the rest of you are perfectly safe. Just come out, nothing will happen to you. You have a choice, either you can stay here—as you know, this town is very well protected by the Dutch peacekeepers—or move to other towns. Tuzla, Amsterdam, wherever you like.”

  “Terrorists,” Martin asked a Serbian officer. “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t pretend to be naïve. Naser Oric and his gang, they’ve massacred thousands of Serb peasants.”

  Several dozen Serbian soldiers, dressed as UN Peacekeepers, went around persuading men to come with them to a protected zone. Martin overheard General Krstic say that almost all the men looked like Oric and the boys were probably all Oric’s children, and to make sure that they got the terrorist and his accomplices, they had to wipe them all out.

  Martin thought the Muslim men would be interrogated, detained for a while, at worst in the way the men had been in the concentration camps of Omarska and Manjaca, with perhaps a dozen murdered. But Manjaca and Omarska had already been disbanded, and the new camps, which were increasing under international scrutiny (more from journalists than the United Nations), couldn’t stay in operation for more than a few days. However, the Serbian way of getting around the problem of not being allowed to run detention camps, by slaughtering nearly eight thousand men and boys in one day, was beyond Martin’s imagination.

  The Dutch soldiers sat impotently and drank and played cards and pretended not to hear the shrieks and the reports that came out of the stadium. Soccer is equal to tulips and windmills as a symbol of Dutch life, and that the Serbs would choose a soccer stadium for this seemed like an additional insult. But what was an insult in the face of mass murder?

  The following day, the whole world knew about the Srebrenica massacre. The Dutch peacekeepers were disbanded and shipped back to Holland in disgrace. Their shame became a national shame, and eventually the Dutch government had to resign over the scandal of supplying sham peacekeepers as accomplices to genocide.

  Martin quit his nascent military career and began to study religion, and now he was spending a year at the Union Theological seminary as a Fulbright scholar. He often wondered whether he could have done anything differently and whether there was anything he could have done after the war to atone for what had happened, and now all that emotional and historical baggage hit him in the face of the exhausted-looking young man who had sold him the red tulips.

  Martin returned to the shop the next day. “Let’s have a drink when you’re done with work,” he offered the Bosnian behind the counter.

  “A Dutch treat?”

  “No, not in that sense,” said Martin. “I’ll treat.”

  “So, it’s a Dutch treat.” The way the Bosnian pronounced it, it sounded like the Dutch threat.

  “If you like.”

  “I never thought I’d want to talk to another Dutchman, especially you, but okay. By the way, my name is Esad.” They shook hands. Esad’s hand was limp, cool, and sweaty. Instead of becoming firmer as Martin pumped it in a hearty rhythm, it grew even limper. They went across the street to a huge bar, an arcade under the Park Avenue Bridge into Grand Central. Martin ordered Grolsch.

  “You know, we could talk about other things but I’ll still be thinking of that day,” said Esad, “so I might just as well tell you how it was for me. UN soldiers came to our house. At least we thought they were UN soldiers. Many of them were blond so that fit the picture. I was surprised to hear them speak Serbian. They said they would put us on the buses and take us to Split on the Adriatic. That sounded pretty nice to me, and I wanted to believe their story. As a boy, I used to spend one month every summer in Omis near Split, in a recreation camp for railway workers. My father was a rail worker.” Esad paused and his eyes grew shiny as he cleared his throat. “You know what fear smells like?”

  “Like what?”

  “Not like tulips.”

  “Well, I have my ideas, but tell me yours.”

  “Like piss.”

  “Well, that can be.”

  “Sure, when you walk into a public men’s room, you alway
s feel uneasy because of that smell. Piss is the territory marker for wild animals, to tell others, now be afraid if you cross this line. New York smells to me like fear; wherever I turn, there’s that smell of urine. This is how I learned to read the smell: I was taken out into the soccer field with my father and brothers. We were shouted at and beaten. I fell in the mud, and as I tried to get up, somebody fell over me. The shots after that sounded soft and muffled because I heard them through the bodies piled over me. It was all urine and blood then, dying men and boys releasing their bladders. I couldn’t breathe with all the weight on top of me, and so I passed out. Later when I woke up, I was no longer buried and the stars were shining. I imagined the bodies were being taken away to be buried, and there were just a few of us left scattered. I crawled away, afraid that I would be noticed and shot. My clothes were soaked, blood, shit, and urine. I didn’t know whether some of it was mine, it probably was. It’s an experience I’ll never forget. You had to be there. Oh, I forgot, you were there. You were warm, drinking your Ballantine’s, and enjoying the new crop of Bosnian jokes. Tell me what jokes were you retelling that evening to kill the time?”

  “Believe me, there were no jokes. We were all in shock. Who would’ve thought?”

  “We had. But you didn’t listen to us.”

  After three bottles of Grolsch, Martin said, “You know, you’re such a wonderful guy. I’m so glad to have met you.”

  “It would be better if I’d never met you.”

  “I mean now, not then.”

  “It’s okay to talk, but talk is filthy cheap. It doesn’t do much, it doesn’t change anything.”

  “It changes nothing in the past, but we have a whole future. You are a young man, how can you talk like that?”

  “When you have something that big in your past, you don’t think of the future. There’s no future that won’t contain that past.”

  “Come on, cheer up. I too feel terrible about what happened but I wasn’t in command. I was simply obeying orders and I didn’t know.”

  “I don’t know what you didn’t know. I’m not accusing you.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “In Astoria.”

  “How can you afford rent when you sell flowers? That can’t bring in much.”

  “It’s not all I do, but I still can’t pay this month’s rent, or last month’s rent. They’ll evict me soon. Worse things could happen. How should I care?”

  Martin banged the table. His fist hurt. He used to do karate and was supposed to be able to slice bricks with his hand but that was a while back. His hand has grown soft. He shook his hand in front of him as though it had been burnt.

  Esad laughed. “What are you doing?”

  “I’ve just had an idea. Can I give you ten thousand dollars, to help you with rent and dental work?”

  “Dental work? You don’t like my teeth? They are yellow from too much tobacco, but there’s not a single cavity in them. Anyway, don’t tease me with money.”

  “I’m serious. It would make me feel better.”

  “You probably feel pretty good anyway.”

  “It’s the least I could do in the way of apology.”

  “And to your mind that would be that. Ten thousand, and you’d feel better.”

  “That’s all I can afford. That’s half of my fellowship. I’m not rich. What would you like me to do?”

  “I don’t think you can do anything to right the wrong. Can you resurrect people?”

  “I wish I could. I study resurrection.”

  “What’s there to study? Can you kill people?”

  “No.”

  “You’ve proved that you can by helping the killers. The best thing, even better than resurrection, would be if you could go to Bosnia and find Mladic and kill him.”

  “How could I do that? Look at all these people, you included, who need revenge. If you can’t do it, how could I?”

  “You partied with him. You guys are on good terms.”

  “And you’d feel better if he were shot?”

  “Much better.”

  “He’ll probably end up in Den Hague.” Martin pronounced the Hague in his native, gutteral way.

  “Kharrkh,” echoed Esad, clearing his throat. He stuck out his tongue with green spittle on it and then spat. His spittle flew like a bullet and hit the dark varnished floor.

  Martin looked around, afraid that someone might have seen the spitting. The waitress, who looked like a ballerina with her hair bobbed, promptly walked toward them; she slid over the spittle but easily regained her balance. She asked Martin, “Is everything all right, sir? Would you like another beer?”

  “Maybe in five minutes.”

  “May I touch your hair?” she said. “I always wanted to have such curly hair.”

  Martin blushed while she petted him as though he were a sheep. His scalp tingled pleasantly.

  “Khargh won’t do any good.” Esad cleared his throat but didn’t spit. “He’ll be nicely fed, get the best doctors to take care of his heart and kidneys, and maybe he’ll get thirty years of good retirement. That International War Crimes Tribunal, why is it in Holland? Instead of handing over the mass murderers to us in Sarajevo to shoot, you coddle them. And you know what, even your beer is overrated. The Belgians who you treat like peasants and scum make much better beer.”

  Martin watched the waitress at the bar as she tilted her hips, exposing her bumpy knees.

  “Sure, if it makes you feel better to put down the country, go ahead.”

  “The whole world knows that you are all stingy.”

  Martin pulled his checkbook out of his blazer pocket. “I’ll write you a check.”

  “I’m not challenging you. Actually, I don’t have a bank account.”

  “With this, you could open one. How can you live without a bank account?”

  “Better than with one. I wouldn’t know how to get a bank account.”

  “Let’s go to the bank, and we’ll open one.”

  “But that takes all sorts of papers.”

  “Just a few.”

  “I have none on me. I don’t believe in papers. I don’t want to be in this government’s records, I don’t want to be tracked by any government.”

  “How can you avoid that? You have passports, and when you got your refugee status, which you must have after ‘95, you’re registered in many places.”

  “I’m not a refuse.”

  “Refugee.”

  “Same thing. I’m not an exile, I’m not a citizen. I’m nothing.”

  “How did you get here?”

  “That’s a long story.”

  “I’d love to hear it.”

  “I don’t feel like telling it. Plus, it would turn out to be a story. I would make things up.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want anybody to know the truth. Truth can harm you, lies can’t. Well, are you serious about giving me all that money?”

  “That’s the least I can do to assuage this feeling of guilt.” “I’d do you a favour if I took your dirty money, is that it?”

  Esad laughed, and his body shook the table, rattling its knives and forks and causing the fresh pints of Grolsch to foam. “What a way to think! You don’t owe me anything. You are nothing, like me. How could you owe me anything?”

  “I just do.”

  “Are you sure you won’t regret this?”

  “Why would I?”

  “You never know. You probably will. Can you give it to me in cash?”

  “The banks are closed now. It’s after four. I could come back tomorrow and give you the cash.”

  “I’m not going to be here tomorrow. And I don’t want to see you again.”

  “Why?” Martin was hurt. “I thought we were making friends.”

  “Maybe we are. Most of my friends I won’t ever see again, so you’d fit right in.”

  Martin shuddered because he didn’t know what to make of that. “Tell you what. We can go to the bank, and I’ll give you $500 cash
. That’s the max I can draw from Citibank. I’ll write you a check for the rest.”

  Martin scribbled a check for Esad and left a ten-dollar tip on the table. They walked down the block to a Citibank glassed-in cash machine lobby. The cash popped out with a hiss and a click from the mouth of the automaton, in fresh fifty-dollar bills, which still smelled of printing dyes. Esad winked, took the bills, and placed them in a thin pigskin wallet. The skin of the wallet was shiny from being worn in the back pocket.

  “Would you like to see my pictures?”

  “Sure,” said Martin.

  Esad showed several men with thin moustaches and small eyes. “My father. Dead, you know. Uncle, dead, of known causes. Older brother, same thing.”

  “How about your mother, sisters?”

  “They’re alive.”

  “You don’t carry their pictures?”

  “No, I don’t believe in keeping pictures of the living. I carry only the male line, all dead, my private ghosts. They give me strength.”

  “Strength for what?”

  “To dream. To have visions.”

  “Visions of what?”

  Esad’s eyes shone, accumulating tears that wouldn’t spill over but would stay there, growing brilliant in the glare of the sun, which reflected from the glass across the street, from the Grace building, casting light over Bryant Park. The low light radiated off the large sycamore leaves bending their heads contritely toward Esad, as though worshipping his grief, or saying goodbye to him, vermilion in their beautiful shame.

  “Thank you, my friend,” said Esad. He turned and walked away toward the BDF lines subway entrance alongside the NY Public Library, next to the ornate little restroom hut from which wafted smells of male imprecision.

  “Wait!” Martin shouted. “Give me your phone number or email so we can stay in touch.”

  “I don’t do email, and my phone is disconnected. I can’t keep a phone, I talk too much. Couldn’t keep up with the bills.”

  “Maybe now you could?”

  “Oh, I have other expenses and other bad habits. Plus, don’t you think all the phones are bugged?”