“Don’t, Mama,” said Nora flatly.
“What have they done to you?” she asked, expecting no answer. After turning herself in to the police, Nora was remanded to detention, where she was held for a month on the suspicion that she’d organized and ordered the murder of Josip Ilinčić, city councillor and respected local politician. Since she’d confessed to her guilt, the investigation wrapped up quickly, and Nora was sentenced to live out her life at the women’s prison in Požega. She reached her mother after she’d admitted everything. She hadn’t wanted to see her until then. She didn’t want to see her now. There was no longer a heart there to be broken, but she knew her mother’s desire. In those last few months, Nora’s mother had lost twenty pounds and aged twenty years. They knew everything yet didn’t know what to say to each other. Time was passing too slowly for Nora, too quickly for her mother. The prison policewoman retreated to the farthest corner of the room, immersed in her cell phone.
“I am sorry I wasn’t strong enough,” said her mother, staring at the floor.
“Mama, this is not your fault; you did the very best you could.” A note of tenderness in Nora’s voice now.
“If only I could shut my eyes, Nora,” she said as she crossed her hands and looked upward towards the ceiling.
“It will pass, Mama, everything will pass . . .” Nora stood up and signaled to the policewoman. She nodded and started over towards them. Her mother leaped up and threw herself on Nora, and they stood there like that for a few seconds. And then Nora scraped her mother off of her in pieces that scattered all over the gray linoleum, and nobody would ever be able to collect them again. She went out into the corridor that led to the cells. She no longer felt anything; she was completely free. On her way down the corridor she suddenly spotted familiar light eyes. Kristina was walking toward her and, when she saw Nora, an expression of surprise flashed across her impassive face.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, astonished.
“What does it look like?” said Nora. They stopped, and the policewoman let them.
“Huh,” smirked Kristina, not expecting any further explanation. “Well, well.” She nodded, almost with sympathy. “It’s not much worse than outside, once you get the hang of it. The same maniacs, the same rules . . . just less space . . . And your right buttock gets stronger than your left when you go out for your walk, because they always have you walk the circle in the same direction . . . And you use a lot of water when you’re on the toilet, too much. There’s no privacy, so everyone runs the tap so others can’t hear it when you’re taking a shit. But . . . people do that outside, too, don’t they?” Kristina patted Nora on the shoulder. Nora just nodded. There was something perfectly precise in Kristina’s universal truths about the outside and inside worlds. There were many more years for her to ponder these things, to fashion her stoicism, learn not to wish for more than what was given. The policewoman hurried her along to her cell, and Nora obeyed her without a word. She stepped in and the door closed behind her. She’d be able to manage. After all, there was nothing more for her to do, nor did she need anything. She was prepared to make her peace with everything. Nothing was so terrible anymore, except maybe for one thing: realizing you can’t open the door from the inside.
Translator’s Note
Images of “holes” and “pits” pervade this political thriller. Indeed the title of the novel in its Croatian edition, Rupa, means “Hole.” The city of Vukovar, referred to only as “the city” throughout, is one such hole; the pits into which the victims of the massacres were thrown during the eighty-seven-day siege are another, as are the wounds of the people of Vukovar.
Vukovar is situated at Croatia’s easternmost periphery, across the Danube River from Serbia. During the 1990s, ex-Yugoslavia was rocked by a series of savage wars. Early on, in the fall of 1991, Vukovar was besieged by the joint forces of the Yugoslav People’s Army and Serbian paramilitaries; the siege reduced the Baroque city to rubble, and when the paramilitaries and army forces broke the siege and swarmed the city, they massacred hundreds of people, most of them Croats. These massacres served as the basis for three of the trials held at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, two of which never reached completion due to the deaths of the defendants.
After they broke the siege, a Serbian territorial authority asserted control and occupied the city; only after lengthy negotiations in 1998 was the city reincorporated into Croatia during the period known as the “peaceful reintegration.” At that time, many local Croats moved back to their Vukovar homes and were reinstated as the majority community, while the community of Serbs who stayed on to share Vukovar with the returning Croats were accorded minority status. To this day, the elementary and secondary schools are segregated: the Serbian schoolchildren are taught according to the curriculum used in Serbia, while Croatian schoolchildren follow the curriculum used throughout the schools of Croatia.
In Croatia, Vukovar and the siege have become a tragic, almost sacred, symbol of the war, but because the city is far from Zagreb, Croatia’s capital city, the country’s focus is elsewhere most of the time. We Trade Our Night for Someone Else’s Day provoked a raging controversy after it came out in 2016 because it exposes the venality, the cynicism, and the tragedy of Vukovar—and, by extension, of the people of the former Yugoslavia generally,
