a picture of Višnjići that felt correct; imagining I’d already visited. I saw homes scattered across a wide treeless plain; smoke billowing out of chimneys; the warmth of active fireplaces; the darkness broken only by lights that streamed through windows into the rooms of peaceful residents who never saw that November night coming. A dog barked, summoning the Greek chorus of other village dogs, and then it would grow quiet once more. In the distance, someone slowly tramped home along a muddy bank between two fields. Someone else stepped out of a house, releasing the avian coo of children’s voices from inside, before it disappeared again, hushed by the closing door and overtaken by the hum of wind and crickets and the creak of a nearby forest. It was a November evening like thousands of November evenings before, in this non-existent history of the village of Višnjići. But somewhere, off on that flat horizon, the Third Corps of the Yugoslav People’s Army, under the command of General Borojević, slowly approached.
‘Green card, please.’
Luckily, Enes had warned me that Bosnian customs officers might check my green card, so I had it with me. Satisfied, customs officer Muharem Hodžić next took a look at my passport, staring for a minute without turning a single page.
‘Where are you going, Vladan?’
‘To Brčko.’
‘To Brčko’, he repeated.
He was still staring at my photo, pretending that memorizing my birth date and permanent address was part of some hi-tech system for catching cottage cheese and smoked meat smugglers.
‘Goooood.’
Muharem handed back my documents. A moment later I stepped out into the territory known as Bosnia and Herzegovina for the first time.
4
The day I first heard the word ‘seconded’ was the day my mother shut herself away for the first time. I’m not sure what my father had told her, as he wouldn’t let me go back home with him when we returned from the market. Instead he told me to play in the courtyard until he called me in for lunch. This was the first, and last, official order I received from Colonel Nedelko Borojević in my life, but it had been uttered in such a way that its militaristic nature was in no doubt. I obeyed without objection. I was left to wander aimlessly, while father broke the terrible news about us having to move to Belgrade. I’ll never forget the silence that clouded the room when I came home: Normally, we kept the TV or radio on, so we wouldn’t hear the buzzing of the fridge. My mother dragged her clothes out of the large wardrobe in the hall and dropped them onto the bed, in the bedroom. The only thing on the dining table was a plate of macaroni with minced meat and some Parmesan, a clear message for me to eat lunch and ask no questions. My father told me, in passing, that we were going to Belgrade for a while because of his job, and that mother would pack my things. The next time he circled by me, he added that I could go back out and play or watch TV, but I wasn’t to hang around the apartment after lunch, because everything had to be put away before we left.
In the evening, the phone rang and father informed us, with a voice like a TV newscaster, that the army truck would be in front of the shop in ten minutes, and we should begin carrying things outside. At that same moment, my mother burst into tears. Father tried to hug her and lean her head on his shoulder, like he had the time they informed her that her cousin, Gregor, had been killed in a car crash. But now she just pushed him away, grabbed the largest suitcase in the hall, and started dragging it toward the door, all by herself. Father tried to rip it out of her hands, and kept saying that it was too heavy, and that she shouldn’t be so stubborn, but mother carried it down the stairs and out to the front of the apartment building, and even to the parking lot in front of the shop, where she finally dropped it, exhausted, so that it struck the ground with a loud thud. Then she sat on it and cried some more, while my slightly confused father carried the remaining things out by himself, telling me to stay with mother in case she needed anything.
It wasn’t too long before our neighbour, Enisa, appeared in front of the shop. Whatever the hour, she kept constant watch for what was happening in front of her house. This time, she ran out to say goodbye to us, wearing only a bathrobe and her husband’s shoes. My father tried to tell her that we’d be back soon, but Enisa just nodded and repeated, ‘May luck travel with you, stay healthy and happy wherever you may be!’ Then she kissed me on both cheeks and my forehead, told me to be good and obey my parents, so I wouldn’t add to their troubles. I still didn’t know what their troubles were, but rather than explain, she just squeezed me tight and said, ‘My dear, my sweet child,’ and began crying even harder than mother.
The truck eventually rolled up and Shkeliqim, the driver, saluted us and began to load our suitcases and boxes into the back. My mother had to step off her suitcase, and she went to hug Enisa, so that they both watched Shkeliqim through teary eyes, as my father calmly passed him one piece of luggage after another. When the last backpack was loaded, and Shkeliqim was tightening the tarpaulin, I felt a sting in my own heart, and nearly joined in the crying. I had this sinister premonition that my summer had come to an end even before it had started. That father would never again take me to the Golden Rocks beach after lunch, so I could jump into the sea from the incremental boulders.
When we turned out of our street, Shkeliqim said that we needn’t stay awake on his account, and that we were welcome to go to sleep, because the drive would be long and tiring. He was suspiciously happy, talking a lot, laughing even more, while we silently stared out at our last journey past the theatre, the Golden Gate, the Arena. Soon my birthplace receded into nothing more than those clusters of distant fireflies on the black horizon that mother always loved, but now she intentionally turned her back on them, so she wouldn’t have to see them dance.
Years before, my mother – then a young pedagogy student from Ljubljana – had arrived in the city of Pula just before ten in the evening. Her head was glued to the window of the little green train, watching with increasing excitement as the thousands of lights that first glittered in the distance, grew larger and closer and then morphed into shapes. She knew that, somewhere in the midst of those lights, on Platform 2 of the Pula train station, Lieutenant Borojević awaited her, dressed in his army uniform and carrying a single red rose, which he tossed nervously from one hand to the other, leaving tiny thorn-tracks in his palms. It was like this every time, and part of her felt that it would be better if he didn’t bring her a rose – after all, it cost enough to earn her love: Lieutenant Borojević had to buy time off-duty with a litre of grape schnapps for Captain Muzirović, so he could remain with her until 4am, when the green train returned to Ljubljana. But Borojević was a gentleman, and thought it only appropriate that an officer of the Yugoslav People’s Army welcome his ‘Slovenian girl’ with a rose, and then take her to the ‘Hungarian café’ for cake and lemonade, hold her hand as they walked along First of May Street and across the forum, kiss her cheeks at half past three and wish her a safe journey home. Who knows how much grape schnapps Captain Muzirović put away, and how many times the ‘Slovenian girl,’ Dusha Podlogar, watched with the same excitement, through the same window of the same green train as the same lights slowly expanded, while thorn-trails formed in the palms of the same nervous lieutenant, before he finally summoned the courage to kiss her on the lips for the first time, as they sat on a park bench. Or did he unclip her bra with his shaky hands, and even touch her erect nipples? Who knows if her lieutenant once welcomed her with a woollen army blanket beneath his arm, instead of a red rose, and took her to a gloomy, lonesome place, instead of to the Hungarian Café? Perhaps comrade Dusha then missed her train back home, unable to pull herself away from his strong, lusty embrace?
My mother didn’t talk about this, of course, but she did talk about how she began buying her co-worker toffees so that she wouldn’t tell their mutual boss that she liked to take naps in the small warehouse of the shoe shop on Tito Street, because she was so exhausted from catching the train almost every day and then
