Yugoslavia, My Fatherland Page 5

  I wondered if a runaway general might still live in one of these apartments? I narrowed it down to three: the Mitrović and Zdravković apartments, which seemed occupied, and the Đorđić apartment, which appeared possibly vacant. The thought that I might be a few steps away from my dead, but now raised, father made my head spin, and I realized just how nervous and ill prepared I was to meet him. A cold liquid surged through me, and I had the urge to run out of the shabby building and lock myself inside the car. I decided that Nedelko didn’t live here anymore, and intended to lean my head against the soundless door when, suddenly, the flower-decked door across the way swung open and someone peeked into the hallway.

  ‘Who are you looking for?’

  ‘Good afternoon. I’m looking for a gentleman who lives here. I don’t know his name.’

  Mrs. Babić eyed me suspiciously, as if I was there to take drugs on her doormat, or rip the petals off her begonias.

  ‘The gentleman forgot his wallet at the bar across the street, and it doesn’t have any documents in it. I just wanted to return it to him.’

  ‘Tomislav Zdravković hasn’t lived here for almost three years.’

  I nodded, but Mrs. Babić intercepted my sceptical sidelong glance at the newspapers lying on the doormat.

  ‘A boy used to leave newspapers for Mr. Zdravković. I’ve been trying to catch him for the last three years to tell him he’d moved away, but he always comes at the strangest hours. So I read them and throw them away. So they don’t gather dust.’

  I almost smiled. There was something sweet about the whole situation, if she was telling the truth. Mrs. Babić’s free newspapers, which were intended for the eyes of a war criminal, might vicariously make Mrs. Babić a war profiteer. This struck me as funny, and I had to stifle a smile. It was even funnier to think of General Borojević hiding under an assumed name borrowed from his favourite singer, Toma Zdravković. It made some poetic sense that he might identify with Toma’s hit song, ‘I Touched the Bottom of Life,’ but I couldn’t wrap my head around why anyone in their right mind, and in present-day Brčko (at least the Brčko I’d read about in my research), would want to be called by the Croatian name, Tomislav. Maybe Nedelko figured this would make him less suspicious, since who would imagine hunting for a guy called Tomislav for having burned down a Croatian village?

  ‘Do you happen to know where Mr. Zdravković can be found now?’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  Mrs. Babić put on her suspicious face again, and I remembered that my cover story had nothing to do with Mr. Zdravković, but was about returning a wallet.

  ‘No reason, I just... I knew him... by sight... ’

  Her look told me that I was back in her book as a druggy begonia burglar. She examined me with a scrutiny and crook-eye that makes the innocent feel guilty, though I’d never burgled a begonia in my life. I decided it was best to get the hell out, and as quickly as possible. I suspect she was curious as to the fate of the phantom lost wallet.

  ‘You’re not Vladan, by any chance? From Slovenia?’

  My heart hammered into my eyes.

  ‘Yes... I’m Vladan. From Slovenia.’

  ‘Tomislav told me about you.’

  ‘He did?’

  ‘Yes. He said that you had escaped to Slovenia during the war, and that he couldn’t contact you.’

  This was true.

  ‘He also told me your family story. Sad.’

  I just nodded, not sure what to do. Mrs. Babić’s face revealed her calculation of my quick conversion from Vladan Borojević into Vladan Zdravković, hero of an invented biography by the even more invented Tomislav Zdravković. I had no way of knowing whether the stories he told her were based on real events, on anything I could anticipate if questioned. I assumed that it was all made up, just enough to cover quick conversations with the neighbour across the hall.

  ‘Would you like some coffee?’

  

  ‘You know, I recognized you straight away. You’re a chip off the old block, even with the Slovene accent. You even stand like him; and those eyebrows. You couldn’t hide, even if you were God.’

  Mediha Babić, who had worked at the local town hall back in the day, put on some coffee, offered me some biscuits and a glass of homemade elderberry cordial. These treats functioned like a time machine for people like me, bringing us back to our childhood. I sat at the table in a huge two-bedroom apartment, filled out by this elderly pensioner. It was worn, but tidy. I could see the town of Brčko through the window. Like most Bosnian towns, it was much more beautiful from a height than it actually looked at ground level.

  ‘Nice view you have here. You can see the whole town.’

  ‘Oh, I can see the town, Vladan, my boy. I just don’t recognize it anymore. So much of this new world. I’d forgive them for being Serbs. My husband was a Serb, too. But at least he qualified as human. These lot are not like our Brčko people. You understand, Vladan, don’t you?’

  I didn’t, but I finally remembered that my father’s name in this town was Tomislav, and that Mediha might well be convinced that I was as disapproving of Serbs as she was.

  ‘These people are different. What can you do? Misfortune dragged them here from somewhere else, I know that, but... sometimes their manner makes a person wonder. God forgive me, but no one would have chased them away from wherever they had been, if they had been a little more considerate. Of everyone.’

  ‘It’s hard, living a fugitive life. People don’t handle it well.’

  ‘I know, believe me, I know. My Raiko and I were on the run a lot in life. Sometimes because of me, sometimes because of him, and sometimes because of, well, whoever you like. We never fitted in, the way we were, never anywhere or with anyone. And so we ended up here. We thought to ourselves that, since I was from here, and he was a Serb so maybe we could just... somehow. But you know, Vladan, you know what they say. Once you move away from your place, it’s never your place anymore.’

  ‘That’s right. I know.’

  ‘In the end, people always ask themselves whether it might have been better if they went somewhere where nobody knew them, just like you did. Who the hell knows? Would it have been any easier for the two of us, if we’d gone to Denmark, to join Fahira and Zlatan? It’s cold there. Not to be endured.’

  ‘It’s hard everywhere.’

  ‘Yeah. You know better than I do. You can’t be a smart-ass when it comes to these things. That’s it... I asked your father a million times which devil had possessed him that he, Tomislav, should end up here, of all the towns of the world.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘What could that poor soul say? He says, Mediha, my dear, you know how I suffer, so you tell me if I’d be any better off elsewhere in this world. Yeah, sure, I said. Wherever you go, your misery shadows you, and this is as good a place to be miserable as any other. But... off he goes. He didn’t even say goodbye.’

  ‘Any idea where he went?’

  ‘I have no idea, my dear Vlado. I would tell you in an instant if I knew. He did say that he’d like to go and find you in Slovenia, but that he didn’t have the right documents, that he was waiting for them to be sent from Sarajevo. Who knows, maybe he finally got them, and that’s why he left? But then I think that he probably would have contacted me, if he’d gone to Slovenia. He knew that I have a cousin there.’

  ‘Did he happen to tell you about my mother?’

  ‘About your mother Agnes, about you, about your brother Zoran and your sister Milena, about your family left behind in Herzegovina and Subotica. He came to my place for a coffee many an afternoon, and stayed for a good long time. He’d just talk and talk. I could feel his relief when he started talking, so I wouldn’t interrupt him. Though sometimes he’d sit there so late into the night that I thought... well, you know people might imagine things. He liked to talk about all of you, b
ut mostly about you. Probably because he knew that you were the only one who survived.’

  Mediha reminded me how I had inherited my own vivid imagination. Tomislav Zdravković told his tales so tall and so precisely because he had no trouble believing them: Knit your own lie within your head so it wraps around and blankets the unbearable truth, which then protects you from the destructive ash of guilt, or whatever else eats away at you. This would explain many things about Tomislav Zdravković and also Nedelko Borojević. Even though I knew nothing of the self-­preservation techniques taught in the Yugoslav Army, I was quite convinced that, in Tomislav’s life, the village of Višnjići never existed.

  ‘I heard all the stories of how he had taken you to Pula, to the seaside, and how he’d buy you toys from a Gypsy. The poor man, he grieved for you so, Vladan, my boy. I don’t know if it was because you were the only one left, but sometimes he wouldn’t even mention the rest of the family. Always – my Vladan this, my Vladan that. I think he was hurt because he’d let you leave Sarajevo without him, and because he hadn’t set off after you. But like he said, back then, who knew what was going to happen? Yeah, right. Even if he’d asked me, I’d have said that Milošević may rule longer than Tito, but he would never turn us against each other.’

  ‘We all thought so, but what can we do?’

  ‘Anyhow... would you like to see his apartment?’

  

  The apartment of Tomislav Zdravković, the retired forest ranger from Sarajevo, who had moved here with his family from Vukovar, just before the war, was a mirror to that of Mediha Babić. The main difference was the feel of the place; a dull prison atmosphere that rolled through the air, like a gas leak. Maybe this was because of the rusty burner that was left on the kitchen floor, a red dish beside it that had sat there for three years? Maybe because of the pile of yellowing newspapers in the corner of the living room: a room without a TV, a radio or a wooden bookcase full of hand-me-down ceramics and china? Or maybe just because there were no curtains, no cloth over the dining table, no vase in the living room, just two empty cigarette packs and a small ashtray. A few worn-out shirts in the open wardrobe in the bedroom, a pair of jeans splayed across the floor beside it. The living room was anchored by a stained green rug; and the bathroom by a foul-yellow shower curtain. It was the sort of space that a normal person would only occupy against their will.

  I wondered if Tomislav Zdravković saw this place as a prison cell, which is why he never bothered to make it any nicer. Maybe he thought that by living in this dump, opposite the retired municipal official, he was repaying his debt to society, and that maintaining its unpleasant décor was a mild form of self-flagellation? Or was he just such a misera­ble son-of-a-bitch that he didn’t even notice all the mess and rustiness of his world? Whatever it was, we couldn’t call spending time in a two-and-a-half bedroom flat the equivalent to solitary confinement.

  I was pulled out of my strange lethargy, moving hypnotized around this so-called apartment, wading into the story of Tomislav Zdravković, by a surprising sight: Sudoku puzzles, cut from newspapers and carefully filled-in with pencil, which lay on the floor by the bedside table. A rubber on the table reminded me that Nedelko Borojević used to solve math problems in the Voice of Istria newspaper, using a pencil and rubber. Sometimes it took him all afternoon, and so focused would be on his task that he wouldn’t hear Dusha yelling from the kitchen if he wanted to eat what was left of lunch.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve been in here since he left. I saw people come several times and take things away, but what could I do? Now I don’t even remember what used to be in here, but it was always so... empty. He had a few books and I gave him a potted plant once. I know he had a painting. I think it used to hang above the armchair. He said he’d bought it at a stand beside the farmer’s market, that he’d liked the young painter and thought he was a good haggler. So he said.’

  While Mediha kindly put forth an effort to reminisce aloud about her former neighbour, I mindlessly flipped through the old Sudoku puzzles. They were solved, all of them, filled in with accurate, even beautiful numbers, which revealed an unusually meticulous man, in striking contrast to the state of his apartment. He seemed to have had more time for Sudoku puzzles than anything else in his life. If I could judge by the astonishing number of solved puzzles, I’d say that Tomislav Zdravković hadn’t been up to much of anything else during his time in Brčko.

  ‘Your dad liked to say that he liked Brčko best from his window. From afar.’

  Mediha stood by the window and, as a diehard busybody, scanned the street below, and therefore missed the astonishing effect her words had on me. I didn’t know which aspect of them I found creepier. That she referred to Tomislav Zdravković as ‘your dad,’ or that this same Tomislav Zdravković had an identical aesthetics theory on Bosnian towns as I did. This was a trivial thought, of course, the sort that would occur to anyone, but all the same, it revealed another secret link between us that I’d have preferred remain obscure.

  To calm myself down, I looked once more to the Sudoku puzzles, which were just the right unfamiliar form of entertainment for me, since maths and I never got along. When it came to numbers, I was Dusha’s son – she had trouble with simple multiplication.

  ‘There, Yelena’s off to the farmer’s market. And I was just about to go see her and ask if she could bring me back some cucumbers and... what did I say I needed? Carrots, parsley, potatoes and... I can’t remember. I should check. My brain’s turned off. Nothing. I think I’ve got everything for the soup... I also have Filo pastry... I’ll ask her tomorrow. That’s right... When I go see Nada tonight, I can stop by her place... ’

  Mediha continued her lonely old woman monologue, while I continued to stare at a sheet of paper I’d accidentally found folded between the Sudoku puzzles. Perhaps intentionally hidden from spying eyes.

  It was a letter addressed to ‘My darling.’ Tomislav Zdravković’s writing looked very much like that of Nedelko Borojević, and it disgusted me to think that this ‘darling’ he referred to was the current Dusha Ćirić, ex-Mrs. Borojević, ex-Miss Podlogar. The idea that Nedelko saw Dusha as his darling so many years after his official death seemed twisted to me, though I couldn’t articulate why.

  But oddly enough, the idea also appealed to me, the ghastly thought of an eternal fire of love burning between a fugitive war criminal and the head of human resources at the Ljubljana Polyclinic. And it was far preferable to the more likely target for this letter, a darling who wasn’t my mother at all. In my own bizarre way, I was relieved when I began to read the letter, as I sat on the mattress of Tomislav Zdravković’s bed, holding in my shaky hands, the letter he had written to Dusha at least three years ago.

  My darling. J. should soon be setting off, so I thought I’d write you a few things. The way things are going, I won’t be here for much longer. Things keep changing and they say I should move on, just in case. Until we see how it goes. Loza said that new kids were coming, and that they didn’t know who they belonged to. I don’t know what the situation will be like elsewhere, and when I’ll be able to get in touch again. But I will get in touch. Believe me. I hope you’re all fine. You and V. I left the house last night after seven days, and went to the farmer’s market and a shop. I had a cold for the last few days and I took some pills for my immune system, and I’m better now. So you needn’t worry. I don’t have a sore throat anymore, and I’m okay. I read in the newspaper that everything is more expensive in your country, since it adopted the euro. It would be the same here, if it is ever adopted. Here things are more expensive even without the euro. But for now I’m just fine. I also read about Bojan Križaj. It said he worked in Japan.

  Either Tomislav Zdravković found whatever point he planned to make about Bojan Križaj and Japan of sufficient importance to end the letter, or more likely he never got around to finishing it. Nedelko Borojević was never a particularly literate man, and the very f
act that Tomislav Zdravković wrote letters was enough to impress me. But at that moment, I couldn’t have cared less. I was preoccupied by something else in the letter. Aside from the name of Križaj, the famous skier, my name and my ‘darling’ mother’s, there was someone else mentioned in the letter, someone my mother must know about. I stood up, eyes still focused on the unfinished letter, as if more words might sprout if I stared hard enough.

  ‘Find anything of interest?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘There’s nothing left, dear Vlado. They’ve removed everything. Vultures. It’s a strange world that moved here. It’s somehow, how can I put it... moronic.’

  ‘Do you happen to have a phone book?’

  Mediha did not have a phone book, and I didn’t think it fruitful to ask if she had an online computer. I thanked her for everything and promised to get in touch if I ever found Tomislav. She wrote her phone number on a scrap of paper and shoved it into my hands. Standing at the door, she then watched me descend the stairs.

  As I passed the apartment of Vasa Đorđić, who for some reason still piqued my curiosity, I looked back towards Mediha, who smiled and waved like kindly aunts tend to do, grateful that their nephews and nieces come for even a brief, rare visit. I smiled back like a nephew who knows very well he’ll never see his aunt again.