Nothing in the World Read online

  Joško smiled, rooted through his rucksack, and pulled out his three bars of chocolate. They were nearly melted, and he apologized as he handed one to each of the men. Then he got to his feet and ran back uphill.

  - Where are you going? called the third soldier.

  Joško didn’t answer. He crossed the ridge and followed it north for a thousand meters or so, came back across and ran for the valley floor. He headed up the opposite side, crawled not quite to the top, made his way back south a few hundred meters, and stopped to catch his breath and remove his boots.

  He stayed low in the brush until he reached the side of the peak to which the soldier had pointed, then threaded his way up through the tall grass. Near the top, he slowed and became a shadow. Stone to stone, invisible now. A step at a time. Above him, the sky was fading to the blue-gray he’d always loved.

  He crawled over the crest, and found a large boulder split in two. Between its halves the grass was pressed flat. He looked down the slope beyond and up the following hillside, and there was a flicker of movement at the skyline.

  Joško ran down into the draw and pushed up the far side, down the next slope and up again, quietly over the top, and three hundred meters below him was a soldier in a strange gray uniform hunched beneath a twisted oak. Joško waited, and when the man stood Joško shot him twice in the back.

  The man fell. Joško watched for a moment before walking down the hill. Twenty meters away he stopped to watch again. The man did not move. Joško closed in slowly, saw the man’s hand twitch, flipped him over and closed his thumbs across the man’s throat. He held on until the convulsions stopped, then remembered what he had meant to ask.

  - Are you Hadžihafizbegović?

  The corpse did not respond. Joško glanced at where his thumbs had been, and their outlines were clear in the man’s dark flesh. Like two trains passing each other late at night, he thought. Lovely. He looked at the oak, and wondered what would be made from her when she was cut down. Farther down the hill stood another oak, his branches bare and trembling, and Joško started to cry. He was still crying when he noticed the thick gold ring in the sniper’s left ear.

  I could melt it down, Joško thought, and make something for the girl, something beautiful. He pulled at the earring, but it held as though welded on. He wiped his tears away and punched the corpse in the face, then thought of a very funny joke he could play at some point. He laughed, lifted the head of the soldier who might or might not have been Hadžihafizbegović, and pulled out his knife.

  * * *

  - It’s all taken care of, Joško shouted through the dusk.

  His voice limped back to him from all sides, scraped hollow by the distance.

  - What happened? one of the soldiers shouted back.

  - Nothing. Everything’s fine.

  Silhouettes came into view on the ridgeline.

  - Are you sure? yelled another.

  - I told you, I took care of everything. There’s nothing to worry about. Go home.

  - You killed him? You killed Hadžihafizbegović?

  - Are you sure that’s who it was?

  - Of course! Who else could it have been?

  Joško had no answer, and was getting a little tired of all the shouting. He waved, and one short arm waved back. Then he headed down the ridge to find his boots and pick the burrs out of his socks before it got any darker.

  * * *

  The girl’s voice was back, not quite as distant as before but less distinct, and she was no longer singing. Instead she was telling a story that Joško had trouble following—something about scorpions, and something about men with metal hands.

  The story ended and the voice faded again. The moon hung almost full in the sky. If it had been perfectly white Joško could have stopped walking and stared up at it forever, but the scars on its face scared him, and he kept his eyes down as he climbed one ridge after another.

  When he stopped to rest at the top of the steepest ridge yet, he felt a slight wetness on his right thigh. He opened his bandana, and saw that the pears had been crushed. He lobbed them down the hill like grenades, and immediately regretted it: his hunger was a small animal chewing at his stomach. Worse still, his throat was tight with thirst, and his canteen was empty. He trudged five or six kilometers more, picking his way up and down the blue-black hills. He crossed one last ridge, and before him the earth stretched out flat and luminescent.

  Perhaps two kilometers away he saw a pattern in the darkness, square black patches at regular intervals against a grayer background. He hurried toward it, and as he lost altitude it disappeared.

  He walked on steadily, and the black patches returned, took on strength and depth, became the houses of a small town. Joško wondered why there were no lights on anywhere. It wasn’t possible for everyone in the town already to be asleep—sunset hadn’t been so long ago. Then again, time was no longer what it had been. Before, it splintered easily into hours and minutes, but now it was a dense vastness around him, contracting and expanding erratically, the heart of a dying giant.

  The houses were unlike any he had seen before. Their roofs were four-sided pyramids of dull black slate, and the windows were three long narrow panes mounted side by side in heavy frames. He searched one street after another for a cafe or restaurant, and found nothing. He circled in toward the center of town, thinking he might find someone still awake who could at least give him some bread and a mouthful of water, but here most of the houses had been shelled and leaned sadly like old skulls.

  In the middle of the road was a crater lined with broken glass, and he blanched at a memory of his camp. The jets had broken it. Or scrambled it, he thought, turned it into a child’s game, a puzzle to be put back together, and surely someone was already at work burying his friends and gathering the pieces of the 88.

  He skirted the hole, and through the front window of a nearby house he thought he saw a flicker of light. Taking care not to disturb the muddy pair of shoes on the step, he knocked at the sagging door. There was a long silence, and footsteps, but the door did not open. He tried the knob but the door was locked. He kicked the door open, and inside was a young woman. Her long black hair was parted in the middle just like Klara’s, her mouth looked as though it were made for singing, and Joško thought he had found her, the girl who would love him forever.

  She let out a cry and tried to push him back through the door, but Joško caught her wrists. When she calmed slightly he let her go. The girl walked to a wooden table that held a small oil lamp, sat down and folded her arms across her chest.

  - Come in, she said. Take whatever you want. There is nothing here that has not already been taken at least once.

  - Are you—

  But the girl’s voice was wrong, her accent too rough and weighted for singing the songs he had heard.

  - Well, said the girl, what are you waiting for?

  The many colors of her blouse were no longer bright, and she was wearing strange pants that billowed away from her legs. Her teeth were stained, and one side of her jaw was bruised and swollen.

  - Whenever you’re ready, she said.

  Joško’s cheek began to twitch.

  - Don’t worry, he said. I’m not a mongrel. I’m just looking for something to eat.

  The girl said nothing. Joško set down his rucksack and leaned his gun against the doorjamb.

  - Besides, he said, if I hurt you, you would scream, and the others would come.

  From the girl came a sound that was almost a laugh.

  - What others?

  - The others in the village.

  - There are no others in the village. And even if there were, they wouldn’t come.

  - Why not?

  The girl closed her eyes.

  - Why would I want to hurt you? Joško said.

  - For the same reason your brothers did. Because you can.

  - But look at me. I’m no bigger than you are.

  - And poison is kept in small bottles.

  Joško went
to the nearest cupboard. There was nothing in it but an old copy of the Quran, its cover faded and curling at the corners. He closed the cupboard door harder than he meant to, and the girl jumped.

  - All you want is food? she asked.

  - That’s all I want.

  - And if I give you some, you’ll go away?

  - Yes.

  The girl stared at him, got up and walked into the darkness at the back of the house. Joško massaged his cheek. He heard the sound of something heavy being dragged across the floor, and the creak of boards being lifted. When the girl returned she was carrying a small basket of bread and potatoes.

  - If you won’t hurt me, you can have it all.

  Joško nodded, and she went to a shelf and took down a dusty plate webbed with yellow cracks. She wiped it clean, took a paring knife from a drawer and began peeling the potatoes. Joško sat down and watched her. She arranged the slices of potato in a fan around the plate, and put a large piece of bread in the center.

  - There, she said. Your feast is ready.

  - You aren’t going to cook the potatoes?

  The girl’s face went tight.

  - Cook them with what? With electricity from the dam your brothers blew up? Or with the kerosene they used to burn down our mosque?

  Joško said that he was sorry. The girl did not respond. He picked up one of the potato slices, took a bite, and asked for a glass of water.

  The girl rubbed her eyes, took a glass from the shelf, filled it from a cistern in the corner. Joško thanked her, and drank the water in three long gulps. He put the glass down and burped, covering his mouth a moment too late.

  - You really aren’t going to hurt me? the girl asked.

  - Of course not.

  She got him another glass of water, hesitated, leaned over and looked at the side of his head.

  - It’s okay, Joško said. It doesn’t hurt at all.

  - How did it happen?

  He tried to remember, but now nothing was clear.

  - I’m not sure. Something about an arm.

  He drank the glass of water and wiped his mouth. The girl took a rag from the sink and soaked it in the cistern. She began to rub at the edges of the hole, and Joško winced at each stroke.

  - I don’t have any medicine.

  Joško nodded, and the girl put down the rag, ran her hands through her hair.

  - Where are you going to sleep tonight?

  - I don’t know.

  He fetched himself a third glass of water, and his cheek began to calm.

  - You can stay here with me if you like.

  The wind soughed in the trees outside. Joško tried to think of reasons to stay, or not to stay, and came up with none.

  - All right. Thank you.

  - Wait here.

  The girl went to the back room and returned with a shallow metal pan. She filled it halfway, took the rag from the counter and the lamp from the table, and disappeared again. Joško sat in the darkness, heard the whispering of cloth, and walked to the doorway to look. To one side was a small bed, and the girl was standing naked in the center of the room. Light from the oil lamp licked across her face.

  - I told you to wait, she said.

  Joško took the rag from her hand, and traced back and forth across her shadowed back.

  * * *

  All night he’d listened to the sound of the wind clawing at the door. Now the girl woke, kissed him, put her hands to the sides of his face.

  - It’s okay, she said.

  But it wasn’t okay. The other girl, the one who had sung for him, would she even want him anymore? And what would Klara think?

  Klara. He took off his necklace, stared at the shell. Now he could finally protect her like he should have done from the start.

  Joško pushed the girl gently away and began searching for his clothes. The girl got up and left the room. When he came into the kitchen she was filling his canteen. She tightened the cap and wiped the canteen dry, handed it to him and pointed to a plastic bag on the table.

  Inside the bag were two potatoes and a large piece of bread. He thanked her, hooked the canteen to his belt and shouldered his rucksack and rifle.

  The girl glanced down at the floor. There was a small pool of dried blood where the rucksack had been.

  - I’m sorry, Joško said. Do you want me to clean it up?

  The girl backed into a corner.

  - No. Just go away.

  He nodded and opened the door. Daylight slipped past him into the house. He stepped over the soiled shoes and around the shell crater, heard the door slam behind him, and headed off.

  What happened was this: There was once an old woman, many years a widow, who spent her days sitting on her porch in a village called Plavno, watching the war pass around her. One afternoon as she rocked back and forth, bullets from a far hill poured into her house, sizzling and popping around her. She closed her eyes, and when the barrage was over she opened them again to find herself still among the living. This annoyed her greatly, for she had long since tired of the war, of the constant shortages of bread and wine, and was ready to take her place at the bountiful banquet table of the Lord.

  The old woman clucked her tongue, stood, and hobbled into her house. In the kitchen, she found that some of the bullets had hit her dish cabinet; her best china was shattered, and she had no more glue.

  From the kitchen she went to her bedroom, and found that a single bullet had struck the side of her armoire. She opened the armoire doors, and saw that the bullet had pierced her row of clothes. Each of her seven dresses now had one small hole in the chest, and she had no more thread.

  From the bedroom she went to her bathroom, and there she found that her plumbing had also been hit. Water was pouring onto the floor, and she had no way of repairing the pipes.

  The woman clucked her tongue again and set to work. She shut off the water valve and mopped the bathroom floor. She picked up the largest of the china fragments and saved them in a cardboard box on the mantle. The translucent slivers and glittering dust she swept out of her kitchen, through her living room, across her front porch and into the street. As for the dresses, well, they were her only clothes, so she continued to wear them, a different dress for each day of the week as she always had.

  Shortly thereafter, a small dark spot appeared on her chest, directly beneath the bullet holes in her dresses. The spot grew darker with each passing day, and the woman assumed that this was because of the sunlight coming in through the holes. Then the spot began to bleed.

  The old woman told her neighbors about this strange occurrence, the news quickly spread, and soon groups of strangers were showing up every day on her porch. They would ask to see the spot, and to touch it, and as they touched it they would cry thanksgiving to God for allowing them to witness such a miracle. The woman was very happy, because the visitors all brought bread and wine—one even brought tools and supplies with which to fix her bathroom pipes—and also because she had never been so popular before, as she was a churlish and greedy woman whose own children had left her as soon as they were able.

  This continued for almost a month, but one evening a group of visitors knocked at the old woman’s door, and there was no answer. They waited all night on her porch, afraid of waking her, and when they knocked again in the morning, once more there was no response. Fearing that some misfortune had overtaken her, they entered the house. They found her dead on the toilet.

  The villagers came and washed the woman’s body, placed her in bed, folded her arms across her chest, and kept a vigil for two days and two nights—they would have maintained it longer, but on the third day the body began to smell. The old woman was buried with all due ceremony in the town cemetery, and her house was rebuilt as a church: a cross was raised from the crown of the roof, and the punctured armoire was decorated as a shrine, with mirrors and bits of china, icons and candles and a statue of our Lord. The armoire-shrine was placed in the living room, where it stayed until it was stolen four days later by drunk
soldiers who had abandoned their squad and needed money for boat tickets to Italy.

  Part 2

  5.

  By early evening Joško’s bread and potatoes were gone. He waited for nightfall, slipped into a vineyard, and filled his stomach with what fruit he could find. He thought of his own vines, hoped that his father was taking good care of them, wondered if the harvest had started on the coast.

  The moon watched him from the horizon, and he could not return its stare. He refilled his canteen at a sluggish river, waded across, walked until he could see no lights in any direction, and curled beneath a tall cypress growing alone on a hillside.

  He rose early the next morning, and stepped out from under the tree. The sun flooded his eyes, and he had trouble keeping his balance, but gradually his legs steadied. An hour, two hours, three, hill after hill, and the air began to change. It smelled more of stone and less of dust, more of clouds and less of rivers, and now it smelled of seawater.

  He came to a dry crest, and before him was the Adriatic, alive and glowing. He dropped down the slope, crossed a wide road and walked to the water. He washed his hands and face, and the saltwater stung the wound in his head.

  He dried himself with his bandana, straightened and looked around. To the northwest there was only the rock-studded coast. To the southeast, across a wide bay was the sharp white of a city he’d never seen before.

  He kept to the shore, past refineries spitting yellow foam into the sea, past ships that rusted at anchor in the bay, and on the outskirts of the city he found a bakery. As he entered, the woman behind the counter drew back.

  - Excuse me, Joško said. Can you tell me where I am?

  The woman looked at him as though he were rabid.

  - This is Split.

  - It is? I had no idea it was so beautiful.

  The woman folded her arms and asked what he wanted. Joško thought for a moment. Once, when he was very young, his mother had made rolls covered with poppy seeds that a friend in Austria had sent her. Later he’d tried every bakery on the island and found nothing at all like the flavor of those rolls.