Jovic said, 'She told you, she saw them taken as far as the old lady's house. She does not know what happened after they had passed the house. She told you that Milan Stankovic gave the order for them to be taken along the lane, past the old lady's house, towards the fields. She told you what she knew…'
'But it is correct that she did not see them killed?'
A bitter flare in Jovic's face. 'She buried her son four days ago. Can you not comprehend what these people have suffered, what you make them endure again for your report? She did not see them killed, correct.'
A quiet in the room. The husband had not spoken, lay on his back, defeated. The children held their mother. The woman, Sylvia, looked with bruised eyes, into Penn's face.
Jovic said, 'She does not understand why it is important, who shot them, who beat them, who knifed them. She says that Katica was in her house when the village fell. She knows that on the previous day Katica's husband went out to the yard to get wood and was shot by a sniper. She knows that Katica was in her house, with the body of her husband. She knows that Katica was not brought out of the village with the others who survived. She has not seen Katica since… Does anybody care what happened to them or who did it, she says, does anybody?'
He said, grimly, 'Would you thank her for her time…'
'She says that she has only time left to her. She says, and she says it is what they all said, she says that the young woman was an angel…'
He blundered out of the room and away down the corridor. He shoved his way through the queue of men and women lined up for the wash house. There was a cockroach crawling amongst the feet, going slow because it was already damaged by kicks, and then it was stamped upon by a bare foot. He saw the slime of the destroyed creature. The cockroach was forgotten, the feet tripped past it. He saw himself as the creature, insignificant, gone from memory… but Dorrie was remembered… He could write his report, embellish it for effect, take the money, be a creature squashed and slimed. Perhaps, in life, there was just one chance… Penn felt humbled… He walked fast out of the camp, and Jovic had to scurry to keep at his shoulder, towards the waiting tram at the end of the track.
She came in from her shopping.
She played back the answer phone and there was a message advising the date of the next meeting of the south-eastern branch of the Save the Children Fund, and a query on the availability of the marquees for the garden party at Whitsun in support of leukaemia research, and the secretary who did two days a week would not be coming in the morning because of influenza. She let the tape run. She did not hear the voice. The voice, crisp, competent, was absent from the tape. The dogs were scratching at the kitchen door. She let them out and they jumped at her, happy. Maybe it was just a folly. Maybe she had no right to know. Maybe the dead should sleep. Four times now she had telephoned the number of the hotel in Zagreb, four times in growing annoyance she had left her message and four times in increasing loneliness the message had not been answered. She left her shopping on the kitchen table. She took the leashes from behind the door. Mary walked her dogs through the village. She walked on the drying grass. Next week they would take the flowers away from the grave. She laid her coat on the grass and sat on it. Next week she would bring more flowers. The dogs hunted out fallen wood and lay beside her and chewed and spat the morsels clear. She heard herself, her own words, saying, calmly, that she enjoyed winning, and she wondered what he thought of such stupidity. She heard herself, her own voice, saying that her daughter was a horrid young woman, and she wondered how he had taken such betrayal. Shared her secrets with him, given her secrets to Penn, wretched little private detective, opened herself to him, stupidity and betrayal. For nothing, Dorrie, should have allowed your rest…' He walked with Jovic. Jovic showed him the big German cars speeding on the cobbles and said they belonged to the new elite of racketeers. Jovic said that the country was rotten and that the profiteers fed from the carcass… And every few minutes Jovic would stop, hold out his hand for telephone money and be gone into a bar, and then be back, and not offer any explanation… Each time he was left on the pavement he gazed around him. The city was at ease. The war was forgotten, tucked and hidden behind the cease-fire line that was thirty minutes' drive away. He had never seen a tram before Zagreb, clanking and swaying monsters with raucous hooters to announce their coming, with the passengers clinging inside to the straps, and the lines running polished amongst the worn and smoothed cobbles.
He watched a flower seller.. Jovic showed him the great circular plaza. It had been the Square of the Victims of Fascism, now it was the Square of Croatian Celebrities… Jovic showed him the Historical Museum, closed for reconstruction, indefinitely… Jovic took him into a yard behind a building and in the yard weeds grew amongst the mighty toppled statues of the former regime in Stalinist bronze, and Jovic said the statues would be cut up and melted down, destroyed as historically incorrect… Jovic said that it was necessary for history to be rewritten in new nationhood, said it and grinned sardonically. Jovic took him to the Tourist Bureau and there were no new guidebooks of the city; the old ones were all recalled for pulping, and the new ones would carry no reference to the Ustase fascists…
A new bar, more money for the telephone, Penn waited outside.
The rain had started again.
The artist said, 'There is no record of her coming out. There is a database for refugees who have left the occupied territory, and she is not listed. She is classified a missing person. The detail is small. She is Katica Dubelj, she is eighty-four years old. She was in her eighty-third year when Rosenovici fell. If she had died between then and now, it is the sort of matter that is discussed at the liaison meetings, if her body were returned for burial here then it would have come through the Turanj crossing point, escorted by UNHCR. I cannot help it, but she does not appear on the database… There are a few old people who still live across there, perhaps in the woods, perhaps they are tolerated. She is beyond your reach, alive or dead. It is the end of the road, Mr. Penn. I think you should be satisfied. You know the last weeks and the last days and the last hours of the life of Miss Mowat. Only a few minutes have escaped you… Satisfactory, yes? Do you want me to book the flight for you?'
Penn said he wanted to be alone.
'Shall I come tonight for my money, or in the morning before you fly?'
Penn took out his wallet. He counted out the notes, American dollars. He took the scribbled receipt written on the ripped paper from Jovic's notebook. 'I think we did well, I think you will write a good report.' Penn shook his hand. 'I think that by next week you will have forgotten us, Mr. Penn. We are easy, with our problems, to forget
…' Penn had no pleasantries for Jovic, and he saw the surprise of the man. For the moment he believed he had, at last, unsettled the artist. No banter, no chat, no laughing, and no thanks, as if he had no time for them. There was a confusion on Jovic's face, but he was proud. Jovic, Penn thought, would not have known how to grovel, and was gone, skipping away across the road through the cars, lost in the pedestrians on the far side, never looking back. He had finished, or he had not begun. Finished, not begun, it was Penn's decision… A light rain fell and it brought a dust with it that lay on the cars, and it settled on the shoulders of his blazer. He made room on the pavement for two young men who swung theirjweight on crutches, war amputees. He was the intruder. He prised himself into their lives, into the life of the city, into the lives of the camps. It was Penn's decision on whether he had finished, or whether he had not begun. She had had everything and he had had nothing. She had had privilege and advantage and abused them. She could have walked into college but she declined to. He would have called her, to her face, if he had met her, 'selfish little bitch'. Had had everything while he had had nothing, had been free, and he had never been. It was as if he should have been warned away, kept safe distance. And he had prised, beaten, kicked his way into the life of Dorrie Mowat. 'I told you, and you cared not to hear me…' Charles barking and the gin spilling from the glass rim. '… I told you that you were wasting money, but you cared not to listen.' 'I just wanted to bloody know…' Mary walking the lounge, spinning, like a caged creature, and smoking which was new for her. '… Don't I have the right to know?'
'It's obsession, and obsession will break you.'
'I tell you, he wasn't flash. He was well-mannered and he was considerate…'
'Mr. bloody Penn, he's taken my money and he's taken you for a damn great ride. When he's ready he'll be back. When he's back there will be his bill, and there will be a report that is bullshit. They're grubby people and you chose to involve them.'
'Sorry what sort of day was it?'
'A bloody awful day.'
'He could have rung me back, could have talked to me. Sorry
She went to her kitchen, started the supper. What hurt was that she had thought Mr. Penn cared.
The media had hit the hotel.
