Before he locked the door of the freight container behind him, he looked a last time, longingly and almost lovingly, at the camp bed with the sleeping bag and the blanket primly folded, at the brightness of the handcuffs, at the length of the chain and the strength of the ring set in the floor.
The last of the sun, rich gold, came from the trees on the far side of the river and made sweet lines on the moving water, and bathed the worn face of Zoran Pelnak and hurled his shadow back against the old timbers and the weathered brick of his home.
Too much of his time, he liked to joke with the soldiers who came from their tent camp for his well water, was spent gazing at the great Mother, the force, that was the Kupa river. He could spend more hours than the day gave him just watching the movement and the flow of the river. Each day, each hour, he could find something that was new in the movement and power of the river… And the river was something to respect, as worthy of respect as had been his own mother, because the river was strength. They did not comprehend, the soldiers who came with the scrubbed old milk churns for their water from his well, the force of the great Mother. Zoran Pelnak did… His respect, his awe, of the river had been with him since he was a child, since the evening that the sunken log had come without warning to beat against the bow of his small boat and trip it. He had lost his footing, fallen, scrabbled, slid into the dark cold of the water. What he could remember was the helplessness that he had felt, long ago as a child, thrashing against that force, and his father had pulled him clear. The force would never be forgotten by Zoran Pelnak, never trifled with. He had not swum in the river that bordered his fields since that day when he had struggled in panic against the cold darkness of the current. He knew the force of the great Mother… And there was always something new to see.
He paused at the door of his home, and he scratched the debris from the animals' fodder off the sleeves of his greatcoat.
There was a place in the first line of the trees opposite, where the herons made their nest. He could not look into the low sun at the nest, but he could see the male bird erect in the shallow water by the reeds poised and waiting, perhaps for a frog.
He considered the male heron to be the most beautiful of the river's birds.
And when he was inside, warm from the fire, his meal taken, then he would sit by the window and light his lamp and wait for the moon to climb, and the gold would have gone from the great Mother, replaced by silver.
The pistol was aimed at her.
The man was crouched down beside the tree and he held the pistol, aimed at her, with his arms extended. The woman stood beside the man and held the knife against Milan's beard, against his throat. She stopped, and she took the weight of the dog and the farm twine tied to the dog's collar cut at the palm of her hand. She stopped, and she clutched the rusted bayonet.
The pistol was aimed at her across the width of the track that divided them.
She said it in the man's language, deliberate. 'Let him go…'
Evica had come fast, closed the last gap, run noisily through the final metres, and she had blundered from the cover of a corner of evergreen holly. They would have heard her come the final metres, but they would only have seen her when she broke the cover of the holly. The dog strained to cross the track.
The aim of the pistol wavered.
'Let him come to me…' Penn blinked at her across the track and she saw the raw tiredness of his eyes that tried to lock along the barrel length of the pistol. It was as if the birds had gone, fled the place, because the silence crawled around her. There were scars on his face. He was the man who had come into her life, the man who would destroy them. The weight of the dog cut the farm twine across the palm of her hand. If she let go of the twine, if she released the dog, then the dog, going forward, forty kilos weight, would overwhelm the man, Penn, with exhaustion in his eyes… if she let go of the twine. 'Let him be free…' She looked away from the man, Penn, away from the muzzle of the pistol. The woman's hand did not move. The man, Penn, whispered to the woman, as if he placed and identified her. The knife was steady against the hair of Milan's beard, against his throat. She saw the chilled certainty in the woman's face, as if tiredness had not washed it clear. The knife was sharp and clean. Evica had seen before such chilled certainty, seen it on the faces of the men as they had gone away across the bridge early on the last day of the battle for Rosenovici, and she had heard later that day, and not looked from her window, the rumble of the bulldozer in the field across the stream, and heard the final shots. And she had seen the chilling certainty on the faces of the men who had gone to the headquarters to take the Headmaster from his cell… She knew, in her exhaustion, that the dog could take the man, Penn, even if he fired, even if he hit. She knew, in the anguish of her mind, that if she loosed the dog then the woman, determined, cold, would gouge the blade of the sharp clean knife deep into the throat of Milan, would not hesitate because it was in the certainty of the woman's face. 'Please, you should let him come to me…' There was a wetness on the face of Milan, and she could see where the tears had run from his eyes and across the dirtied skin of his cheeks, and gone to the matt of his beard. And Evica saw the fear in Milan's eyes, as if he too knew the certainty of the woman, 'I beg of you, let me take him home…' The man gazed at her, dulled. She remembered, a long time ago, many years, when she had gone with the beaters and the dogs to flush a boar, a long hard run and chase and they had found the boar against a rock outcrop that it could not climb, and it had turned to face the leashed dogs and the guns, and she had seen the dulled eyes of the boar. The man with the pistol did not have the cold certainty of the woman who held the knife so steady against Milan's beard and throat. But it was not the man who spoke. She had a clipped voice, controlled. 'What was done at Rosenovici was a crime. What has been done through former Yugoslavia is a crime. At stake is the rule of law… What we do is small, because we are only small people, but it is necessary to find a point for a beginning. You are the wife of Milan Stankovic, you know what he did. After the flag of surrender, he took the wounded from Rosenovici, and he had a grave dug, and he butchered those wounded… You are his wife, you know what he did, you know the scale of his evil… And with the wounded was a young woman…' The young woman, the girl, coming to the school at Evica's invitation, speaking English that Evica might improve her language, coming in torn jeans and sweaters that were holed at the elbow, sitting with the fun laughter bubbling in her… dead and buried. 'The crime of the young woman was that she stayed when others ran. She stayed with those who were wounded. She gave them help and love. Your husband made the chain. The chain is from the young woman to her mother, to Penn, to your village, to your husband. He made the chain when he killed that young woman… We do what small people, Mrs. Stankovic, have always done through history, we make a beginning. And the law, Mrs. Stankovic, belongs to small people, and I am small and Penn is small, and the law belongs to us. We cannot give him back to you and to your child because the rule of law, without which we all fall, demands that your husband be brought to account…' Evica thought the woman was without mercy. The fingers that clasped the knife against Milan's beard had no gold wedding ring. She could see the tight waist of the woman behind her opened coat and there was not the slackness at her stomach of childbirth. Evica thought the woman was without love. 'That night, when he came back from Rosenovici, did he tell you what he had done? Did you hold him, and tell him that it did not matter? Did you cuddle him, and tell him he was without guilt…? Or did you feel shame, Mrs. Stankovic, did you feel that when he lay beside you he dirtied you. You should go home, you should go home to your son and tell the child that his father is a murderer, and you should tell the child that the rule of law demands his father's punishment…' She looked into her husband's face. She remembered the night. She remembered how she had lain awake, how she had pushed him away from her, how he had slept and she had not, how he had cried out twice but not woken, how he had once thrashed with his arms as if to beat away a nightmare, and how in the first light of the morning she had stood at the window of their bedroom and looked across the fields, across the stream, and seen the smoke rising from the buildings and seen the grey-black scar in the corner of the field. Penn said, 'He has nothing to fear from me. It will not be as it was for Dorrie Mowat…' She let the bayonet fall from her hand. '… I protect my prisoner with my life.' She turned away. Evica pulled the dog, reluctant, after her. She twisted her back on her husband. The dusk was falling on the woodland. She could not answer the argument of the woman. She could not fault the promise of the man. She heard them moving, first loud and then fainter. Evica never looked back, never turned to see her husband taken as a prisoner towards the Kupa river. He turned the pages. Perhaps it had been stupid of him to ask for the books. He leafed through photographs in expensive colour that showed children in national costume, and wedding dances, and the archaeology of the national heritage, and Roman amphitheatres, and the beauty of polyptych work from churches. Henry Carter thought it an obscenity that a nation of such age-old talent should have stooped to such far-down barbarity… God, and since when had he been qualified to criticize? He leafed the pages, searched patiently. There was an aerial view, across two pages, of the old quarter of Karlovac, and he could make out clearly the former barracks built by Napoleon's marshal where the German woman had administered the Transit Centre.
