Penn, rueful, sat in the bar and nursed the fourth beer, might have been the fifth.
The circus had hit the hotel.
Penn listened, and he watched.
It was reunion time for those from Sarajevo and those from Vitez and those from Mostar. There was embracing and kissing and bellboys bent under the weight of equipment boxes. He sat apart from them, listened, and his hand twitched to his tie; no ties on show in the circus, no blazers, no pressed slacks, no shined shoes. Penn listened because the talk was of staying alive.
Staying alive was paying the welding company in Sarajevo to fit the shrapnel-proof sides onto the reinforced Land-Rover chassis: 'I'd have bought it, too bloody right, 81-mm chunks coming in.' Staying alive was not going to Srebrenica across country on foot: 'Crazy place, place to get killed, not worth the hassle.' Staying alive was laughing for the wild man in Sarajevo who had brought a cow across the airport runway, under the snipers' guns: 'Best bloody milk in the city.' Staying alive was getting down to the mortuary in Mostar after the shelling: 'He was about twelve, he'd got new trainers on, sticking out under the blanket, the trainers made it front page, and it syndicated.'
To Penn, listening, they made staying alive just about possible. They were in town for a wedding. They were going back to Sarajevo and Vitez and Mostar in thirty-six hours. It was his decision, whether he had finished, or not begun. It was as if her freedom laughed at him, as if the laugh was recklessly loud in a cavern of silence. As if she danced in front of him, feral, a creature of his childhood woodland, challenging him to follow where she led. He had never been free, had he? Bloody structured, bloody trapped. Duty, stability, discipline, commitment, Penn's gods. It was as if she had never been defeated, not even in death… as if he had never succeeded, not even in life. He had not known freedom, would never know it unless he followed… It was like a pain in him. He finished his beer. Penn went out of the hotel, to walk, think. He sat in his kitchen and he fastened the belt that held the holster at his waist. The carpenter, Milo, bent beside the table and eased off his shoes, then dragged on his old boots, and he heard the intake of breath from his wife because the boots shed dried mud onto the floor that she had washed. He went to the refrigerator and took an apple and put it into the pocket of his heavy coat. It was a good refrigerator, the best that could have been bought in Zagreb, but the door was always open because he had learned that to close the door meant the gathering of mildew on the inner walls. There was no power in Salika. It was near to a year and a half since the carpenter had made the two journeys, with the wheelbarrow, across the river and come back with the refrigerator from Franjo and Ivana's kitchen and the television from the house behind Rosenovici's store. They both looked well in the carpenter's home and he spat back at his wife each time that she declared them useless because there was no power. With the holster at his belt, with the apple in his pocket, he took the hurricane lamp down from the shelf above the sink. He could no longer use the big flashlight because the batteries were exhausted. He lit the lamp and clumped in his old boots across the kitchen floor, and left more mud. He went out into the night. He went to his store shed and he took from the nail the sharp bow saw and his big jemmy and the lump hammer. He went past the house of the Headmaster, where a small light burned, and he groped down and found a stone in the road and threw it hard so that it rattled the upper planking of his house. He went past the house of the Priest, the old fool, and past the house of the gravedigger, Stevo, and called out to him, and past the house of the postman, Branko. Short of the bridge, he shouted forward. There would be young men on the bridge, guarding, and it was best to call forward. He yelled his name into the night. The light swirled around him and beyond the light was blackness. No moon that night and he could not see the ruin of the village nor the trees beyond it, nor the outline against the skies of the higher ground. It was to please Milan Stankovic that he went with his pistol and his apple and his bow saw and tools out into the night. They were good boys on the bridge, good laughter when he came to them, and they pulled aside the frame that was laced with barbed wire so that he could go onto the bridge… He considered Milan Stankovic the finest man in the village of Salika. He hated to see it, what he saw every day now, the sullen and hostile and bleak face of the best man he knew. Milan had said, that morning, that Evica had complained of the table in the kitchen. It was too old, and the glue was dried out, and the surface was too scratched to scrub clean. There were fine timbers to be had in the ruins… The wind was around him as he walked up the lane towards the village of Rosenovici, and there was light rain, and once he stumbled and nearly fell because he had been looking ahead to the edge of light thrown by the hurricane lamp and he had not seen the deeper hole left by the jeeps that had come for the digging… He did not understand the recent mood of Milan Stankovic. The carpenter thought that he could bring the life smile back to the face of Milan when he presented him with a new kitchen table. At the edge of his light, he saw a cat sprinting away, stomach down, and he kicked a stone fiercely towards its starved ribcage… There were none in the village who would come with the carpenter to Rosenovici at night, the scared farts, but he would gather up sufficient seasoned wood from the timbers and haul it back that evening and work through the small hours, catch some sleep, then work again through the day, and have the table ready for the next evening.
The carpenter would have said that he was afraid of nothing.
He reached the village.
There was an owl in a tree up the hill.
He had been back to the village many times, never with Milan. The timbers would not be at the square, not at the store nor the cafe, because the headquarters of the Ustase had been there, and the greatest concentration of tank fire had been there. He had been back for the refrigerator and for the television, and to help others round up the cattle left there, and back for the shooting of the dogs that had been abandoned there, and back to look and to search among the homes for hidden jewellery, and he had been back to stand in the group that had watched the digging. Milan had never been back. There was fine wood in the roof of the church but what had been burned had fallen, and the rest of the roof spars were too high for him to retrieve. The farmhouse with the cellar had not been burned, but it had been dynamited, destroyed, the timbers would lie under plaster and stone rubble. Milan always found an excuse for not returning to Rosenovici.
He stood in the square. The wind played at his face, coming from the east and cold. The light caught at the houses that had been destroyed. The carpenter could see up the road along which they had marched as escort to the wounded. He was not frightened of darkness. He thought he knew in which house he would find seasoned timber. Out of the square and along the lane. He had brought up the rear, pushed them, driven them. It was the lane up which the bulldozer had been directed, following them. He was not frightened of darkness but the silence around him was broken by the wheeze of his breathing and the stamp of his boots, and the carpenter shivered, felt the cold of the wind. Ahead of him, at the edge of the light, was the collapsed gate, then the black expanse of the field. It was through the gate that they had taken them, and then the bulldozer had followed, and the bulldozer had clipped the gate post, collapsed the gate. Short of the field, where the lane bent, was the small house which had not been destroyed. It might have been the postman, Branko, or it might have been the gravedigger, Stevo, but both had claimed to have shot the old bastard Ustase. He could remember it, seeing the flash of her face at the window, the old bitch Ustase, as he cursed them to go faster, and he could remember the face of the girl. It was only a hovel. The carpenter reckoned he would not have put pigs in the house of the old bastard and the old bitch, but the hovel had been there since the time he was born and the timber would be good, seasoned. In his mind, they were both together, the face of the old bitch at her window, and the face of the girl… The door groaned as he pushed it. The hurricane lamp threw its light inside the one room. He smelled the damp of the room. It was close and small and he saw the sacking in the corner, as if it was used for a couch bed. Not a place for a pig, not for cattle. He had to work quickly because the oil was poor quality in the hurricane lamp and burned faster than good oil, but good oil was no longer available. He began to rip the wide panel strips from the wall, the best wood and seasoned. He used the jemmy, and then the lump hammer to hack away at the last holding nails. The noise was around him and the dust of the plaster lathe. He often thought of the girl. It need not have happened to the girl. She could have gone, with the other women. The postman, Branko, had tried to pull her away from the two wounded men, tried to save her, and she had fought the postman, had hurt him. The dust clogged at his nose. And when the wide panel strips were free, he reached up and belted with the lump hammer at the ceiling plaster that cascaded on him. The beams were good. He wanted two lengths of beam, each his own height, for the legs of the table he would present to Milan. Making room with the jemmy and the lump hammer for his bow saw… The blow caught him. He was turning in the grey white of the dust storm. The shrivelled figure, black, and the hurricane lamp guttering, and the stick raised as a club. His eyes watering from the blow, his vision hazed. He clung to the stick, the club, wrestled it away. Claws in his face. Feeling the drag of the nails, razor lines of pain, on his face. Clutching at thin wrists, seeing the bony fingers reaching for his eyes. The shrivelled figure, black, gone in the mist of grey white, gone into the darkness of the door. He staggered to the door. He had his pistol out from the holster. There
