“I learned a few things in the program,” she said over dinner, “but mainly I wanted the diploma. You remember Mom and Dad telling us ad nauseam—telling me, anyway—to ignore school stupidities, a B.A. was a ticket. Like so many things, I didn’t believe them until I saw it myself.” She was planning to fly to Zagreb. “That’s where UNPROFOR HQ is. United Nations Protection Force. Protection for citizens. Because of all that ethnic cleansing shit. How much of a sad joke the UN efforts are, I don’t know yet, but at least they’re trying.” She had some contacts in UNPROFOR, through her work with UNHCR in the Netherlands. “Nothing official yet, I’m too lowly. But if you have some skills, like language, and you’re willing to do dangerous work for a meal and a floor to sleep on, it’s amazing how many doors open.” From Zagreb, she hoped to make it to Herzegovina. “The Spanish Battalion is headquartered there—they’re called SPANBAT, you gotta love it—and since I speak Spanish and some Bosnian, that’s a pretty obvious place for me. First the Serb militias did their thing and pounded the shit out of everyone else, then the Croats and Bosnian Muslims worked together to push them out. Now everyone’s wondering when the Croats will make their move against their Muslim friends. Anyway, lots of displaced people, destroyed housing, food shortages, orphaned children. It’s a fucking mess.” She looked happy. That wasn’t the right word. It was corny, but Mark would have said she looked alive.
After dinner, they made their goodbyes on the sidewalk. Since the March evening was warm, lots of people were out. “I’ll call Mom and Dad before I leave the country,” she said. “How are they?”
“His Parkinson’s is worse. You can really see it now in his face. He talks a lot about how stupid he’s getting. Mom’s angry at him all the time.”
“No place like home.”
Mark didn’t say anything.
After a moment, she said, “Thank you for being the one to support them all these years.”
“Say what?”
“I just ran away.”
“Oh, no . . . I mean . . . You had every right—”
“Speaking of which, I gotta go.”
She had friends in Brooklyn she was spending the night with. All these friends she had, around the globe. Mark had never met any of them.
She hugged him. “I love you, baby brother.”
“Me too. I mean—”
She laughed, shouldering her knapsack. “I know what you mean.” She turned and walked away. Her goodbyes were always quick.
That’s how he remembered it, anyway, sitting at his table in the Zagreb hotel restaurant. He’d eaten everything, finished his glass of wine. Wine made him sleepy, which was why he rarely drank it. The restaurant was mostly empty. Tourism probably hadn’t rebounded much since the war in this region had ended. And anyway, Mark had read somewhere that this might be only a lull. Rumor was, the Croatian government wanted to take back some areas that Serbs were holding. Christ, it was depressing.
He went up to his room and caught up on more reading. Then he wished there was a piano he could play. It might make him feel better. Instead, he went to bed early. Though still groggy from the wine, he lay awake for a long time. Eventually he was in a large white room. It had a high ceiling and decorative moldings and one of those European wooden parquet floors that rattle like a field of bones when you walk across them. The room was crowded with pianos, both grands and uprights, some in good shape, some wrecks. His job was to change all their positions, which was difficult logistically, because they were in one another’s way. The work went on and on, monotonously. He heaved, the pianos resisted (their casters were rusty), and the parquet floor sounded like the xylophone in Danse Macabre.
• • •
At the airport the next day, there was a sign warning people not to deviate from the paved paths outside, lest someone step on a mine. A man had been badly injured two weeks ago. “Even here?” Mark asked the liaison from the UN press office who’d arranged the flight. “Aren’t we nowhere near a front line?”
“The Yugoslav army mined their facilities when they withdrew in 1991, after Croatia declared independence. That included this airport.” Her name was Samantha, from Maryland. She had reddish hair in a ponytail and a bright bar of teeth. She looked to be in her mid-twenties. Another idealistic young person.
“They haven’t been cleared yet?”
“There are millions of mines sown across ex-Yugoslavia. De-mining is a slow business.”
Mark met the others while they waited for the plane to be fueled. The flight hadn’t been arranged for him, he was just tagging along on a UN junket for reporters. “They don’t think there’s been enough positive coverage of the job they’re doing,” said Jeff, a reporter for some US news outlet Mark had heard of, but never read. Also on the trip was John, a freelancer who’d written a book about the early phase of the war; and Roberta, a political columnist who was apparently well known, although Mark had never heard of her. He didn’t often read about politics. The three of them, along with the UN liaison Samantha, had been on a flight into Sarajevo three days ago, but their pilot had had to turn around when the cargo plane in front of them was hit by .50 caliber machine gun fire.
“Serbs in the hills around the city, having some fun,” Jeff said. “The bullets go right through the plane—”
“Yes,” Mark said, “planes are built very light—”
“—and with all the engine noise they’re usually not even noticed during flight unless someone gets hit. This time, a UN security guy caught one in the thigh. Poor bastard, those are big bullets. I heard it shattered his ball joint.”
All this was said with what seemed flagrant insouciance. Mark hadn’t met war reporters before, but it made sense they’d be a thrill-seeking bunch. There was
