the Malyutka missiles if they had been brought to the village. He had been a career soldier in the Yugoslav National Army, expert in warfare against tank and personnel-carrier attack, with the rank of senior sergeant, stariji vodnik. He had married a Serb girl, and when the war had started the years of marriage had meant nothing. He would have been able to use the Malyutka, the armour would have been kept back, the Cornfield Road would have stayed open and…
The wheels of Petar’s trailer were clean but not oiled and they screeched. It was Tomislav who had persuaded the schoolteacher that the Malyutka would give the village and its untrained volunteers an edge in combat. Often, after the dog had arrived at his home, a tiny puppy licking his hand, he had told it why he had wanted the Malyutka and what he could have achieved with it. The dog had been told of the weight of the warhead, the range it could fly, how the line-of-sight command cable unravelled from the spool as it carried the handler’s signals, how far from the handler the ‘dead zone’ stretched, and the killing accuracy of manual command to line-of- sight control.
At the pace the tractor went it would take them twenty minutes to get from the church to the new cemetery that was just short of where farmland fell to the river; the edge of the water-meadow was marked with signs, the red triangle and skull-and-crossbones symbol. He knew what had been done to his boy and Petar’s, to Andrija’s cousin and the teacher. All of those who mourned had been told. It was right that his wife and younger children had not come. The Serbs around the village in those ten weeks – the irregulars of Arkan’s scum – had known that the defence had been organised by a former senior sergeant in the regular army: Tomislav. Maybe his wife had told them – told her own – when she had reached their lines. And he was taunted at night with megaphones. Shouts boomed over the village that Tomislav’s wife opened her legs to a warrant officer, a zastavnik, each night and a queue was waiting to service her. When the warrant officers had tired of her, the sergeants would take their place, then the corporals. They named one, a desetar, and yelled into the night that she would enjoy it when his turn came. Tomislav heard it, as did his eldest son. He could remember the night his son had smeared his face with mud for camouflage, had hugged him and disappeared into the night, dragging the handcart. He remembered the long wait and the reverberations of the explosions along the track through the corn as dawn was coming. He and others had been to the place the next evening, had found the crushed stems where many men had been, the cartridge cases and cigarette ends, the blood that the rain had not obliterated, but not the bodies.
They came towards the cemetery.
The whole village, every man, woman and child, walked with him – except Petar, who drove the tractor. Petar’s wife had come to Tomislav’s home last night, rooted in a drawer and found a shirt. She had brought it back an hour later, ironed and smart. He had been, as a senior sergeant, the best turned out in the regiment, and after he had left the military, to work as a car mechanic, he had always worn clean overalls. He had no best trousers now, no best jacket, no shoes that were not scuffed, and he had not shaved for three days. Little had remained for him to aim towards and hope for – but now he had a target for his hatred.
Tomislav thought the killing of Harvey Gillot could go a small way towards lessening the pain that racked his mind. He had told his dog so. He yearned for news of a death.
The tractor stopped beyond the gate, and men came forward to lift down the coffins. At the far end of the cemetery there were four heaps of fresh-turned earth. Tears ran down Tomislav’s face.
Steyn said, ‘The one at the front is interesting.’
‘Which?’ Anders queried.
‘The man with the dog.’
They stood inside the cemetery wall, backs against the brickwork, in clean shirts with ties, but no jackets. The sun seared them.
‘He’s the most interesting, and his son was cadaver number three – a tall boy.’
The four coffins, now, were carried on shoulders. They looked, to Daniel Steyn, to be light loads. Some of the pallbearers used hospital walking-sticks. He knew of these men, survivors of the siege, mostly from word of mouth. The one he pointed out, Tomislav, carried the third coffin in the line on his left shoulder and steadied it with his right hand; in his left he held the dog’s string leash.
‘What’s interesting?’
‘He’s one of those patients that eminent men would fight over. They’d all want him in a consulting room on a couch… It’s about what war does. It was eighty days of his life and now he’s in his sixties, and everything about him today is shaped by those eleven weeks. He lost his wife and young children. He lost his eldest child too. Now he has nothing. First the cameras leave, and the arc-lights, then the politicians with the silver bands, then the money for restitution. This one, Tomislav, should have been better equipped than most to handle it. Not so.’
‘Men of great heroism – and women – held the lines here, in the other villages and the town. Ordinary people, blessed with courage, determination.’
Steyn thought it appropriate that the Church, political and civic leaders had left, with a senior policeman from Vukovar and an army officer. They would not have been wanted in the cemetery. The local priest was a good source of information – anecdote or intelligence – over a small glass of Eagle Rare from the Buffalo Trace distillery in Kentucky, a hell of a drink and about the only luxury in Daniel Steyn’s life, shipped in by mail order. His friend, Anders, still had his cigar lit but cupped in his hand. The first of the coffins went down and dirt was thrown.
‘But the reward for the heroism and courage is the most acute form of clinical depression. Tomislav lives like a hermit – there’s no aftercare here. No acknowledgement of the symptoms. Suicide is not uncommon. They’re addicted to prescription benzodiazepines and alcohol abuse is so widespread as to be commonplace. Rakija is the home-brewed hooch. Putting it crudely, they need real help but it’s not available because no one gives a flying fuck about them.’
‘You’re not, Daniel, a sack of laughs.’
The second coffin was lowered on ropes into its pit. Sweat ran in rivulets down Steyn’s back. All his clothes hung loose because he was losing weight and hadn’t the money to buy smaller sizes that would fit him better. He didn’t have new clothes because the European charity that supported his work had cut back on its commitment to the town and villages. He had managed to rent a room in his semi-detached house to a confectionary salesman, and scraped by. He ate little and the Eagle Rare was meanly poured for himself and special guests, although dog meal was plentiful for the undisciplined Irish setter he kept and loved. He shrugged. ‘It’s a backwater of Europe. It had a little moment in the spotlamp that didn’t last.’
‘What can a guy in his position – hit that hard – hope for? Heh, has to be some degree of hope. You think you can make a difference. Me, I’m arrogant enough to know I deliver something of value. When I’m working in mud, with the stench of decomposition and barbarity around me, I can take comfort from the importance of what I do. What does he have?’
‘Worse now.’ Steyn saw the third coffin go down and the ropes come back up, flapping. The priest’s voice carried softly. Tomislav, big, strong and quivering with weakness, had crouched beside the pit, then stood up, clutching a handful of soil. He rocked, opened his hand and allowed it to cascade down.
‘How come?’
‘His purpose in life was to see the minefield cleared and have the body recovered.’
‘Some don’t want that. Some want to continue in a sort of vague hope. They don’t want the digging done.’ Anders grimaced.
‘Not here.’ Steyn shook his head hard. ‘They knew the area where the bodies were. Now they have them. The bodies go into the ground, a stone is put up and the grave becomes a challenge: what can they focus on now? I’ll tell you. Who is responsible? Who is to blame? Who can be punished? Christ, you know your husband or your cousin or your son – your son – was alive when he was castrated and was still alive when his mouth was prised open and his organs were shoved in.’
It was the Widow’s moment. Her lips moved but Steyn couldn’t hear what she said. Did she make a promise? He watched Tomislav, half a pace behind her. If he had had that man on the couch for a half-dozen sessions, opening his heart and baring his soul, he believed he would have been able to write a definitive paper on the long- term casualties of combat.
‘I repeat, Daniel, how is it worse?’
‘There cannot be peace until there is punishment of the individual responsible.’
‘Now I hear you.’
‘You played your part, Bill.’
‘I did.’ Anders was reflective.
