should mention God in the barracks and that, in front of the ‘honest world,’ they would all marry her if she so wished, and that he was ordering Nedelko Borojević to marry this brave comrade. Nedelko himself seemed to be wrestling with his own neck muscles, but he finally nodded. Dusha dropped her two small suitcases and jumped into his confused arms.
My mother asked my father to marry her on 9 March 1978, and the big event came two days later, on Saturday, 11 March, despite a brief intervention from best man, Captain Emir Muzirović. He was still nursing the worst headache of his life and, while the bride and groom kissed, he swore to himself that he would never so much as smell grape schnapps again, deciding to drink only plum brandy from that day forth.
In the middle of one of the longest nights of my life, our chauffeur, Shkeliqim Idrizi, noticed that I couldn’t get to sleep, and started explaining to me, in a whisper, that the lights to our left came from Hungary, the lights to the right from Bosnia, and that Serbia and Vojvodina were straight ahead of us, where there were no lights to be seen. He went on to tell me that if you drive on from Belgrade, taking the road past Niš and Užice, you’d reach Kosovo and his village, where Fadil Vokrri’s father had also been born. My blank stare disappointed Shkeliqim – I’d never heard of the greatest of Kosovan football players.
His whisper-tour of our motorway path eventually helped me to sleep and, when I woke, it was dawn and our truck was parked in front of Belgrade’s Bristol Hotel.
5
Now I stood before the apartment building where, according to Dusha, General Borojević had last lived. It was typical socialist architecture; a large cube of the sort found all over the former Yugoslavia which, despite its lack of grace and cheap materials, for some reason inspired a sense of pride in me, for its opaque view of architecture and, through it, life. As I entered, a familiar smell greeted me. I had the impression that I had once been to a similar place, but I couldn’t recall where or when, and at that moment I didn’t have time for nostalgia. I reasoned that a war criminal at large wouldn’t use his real name, and so I had to search for other traces of his presence.
The building was arranged with two apartments on each floor. From the Korač family apartment on the second floor, all the way to the entrance, I could hear children’s voices. On the doormat before the Mitrović’s door, sat a pair of patent-leather shoes far too small to be Nedelko’s. It was calmer on the third floor. One door was labelled Vukmirović & Kebo, while opposite lived Dr Mehmed Dizdar. I was pretty sure I could eliminate these, too. I was pretty sure that Nedelko had lived or, I hoped, continued to live, alone in Brčko, and I was even more certain that he would not know how to play the role of a doctor, even if he had been taught role-playing at a military academy for years. So I continued up the stairs towards the screaming, hustling, bustling Ćubrilo family, while Vasa Đorđić’s door opposite sounded more promising. I approached but couldn’t hear anything aside from the jungle of the Ćubrilo family, with someone calling out for Zorica, and Zorica shouting that she was coming right away. On the top floor, the Babić family had pots of fresh flowers around their threshold, while a bunch of newspapers had piled up on the doormat of the Zdravković family. I checked the dates, and they were recent – dailies from last week.
I wondered if a runaway general might still live in one of these apartments? I narrowed it down to three: the Mitrović and Zdravković apartments, which seemed occupied, and the Đorđić apartment, which appeared possibly vacant. The thought that I might be a few steps away from my dead, but now raised, father made my head spin, and I realized just how nervous and ill prepared I was to meet him. A cold liquid surged through me, and I had the urge to run out of the shabby building and lock myself inside the car. I decided that Nedelko didn’t live here anymore, and intended to lean my head against the soundless door when, suddenly, the flower-decked door across the way swung open and someone peeked into the hallway.
‘Who are you looking for?’
‘Good afternoon. I’m looking for a gentleman who lives here. I don’t know his name.’
Mrs. Babić eyed me suspiciously, as if I was there to take drugs on her doormat, or rip the petals off her begonias.
‘The gentleman forgot his wallet at the bar across the street, and it doesn’t have any documents in it. I just wanted to return it to him.’
‘Tomislav Zdravković hasn’t lived here for almost three years.’
I nodded, but Mrs. Babić intercepted my sceptical sidelong glance at the newspapers lying on the doormat.
‘A boy used to leave newspapers for Mr. Zdravković. I’ve been trying to catch him for the last three years to tell him he’d moved away, but he always comes at the strangest hours. So I read them and throw them away. So they don’t gather dust.’
I almost smiled. There was something sweet about the whole situation, if she was telling the truth. Mrs. Babić’s free newspapers, which were intended for the eyes of a war criminal, might vicariously make Mrs. Babić a war profiteer. This struck me as funny, and I had to stifle a smile. It was even funnier to think of General Borojević hiding under an assumed name borrowed from his favourite singer, Toma Zdravković. It made some poetic sense that he might identify with Toma’s hit song, ‘I Touched the Bottom of Life,’ but I couldn’t wrap my head around why anyone in their right mind, and in present-day Brčko (at least the Brčko I’d read about in my research), would want to be called by the Croatian name, Tomislav. Maybe Nedelko figured this would make him less suspicious, since who would imagine hunting for a guy called Tomislav for having burned down a Croatian village?
‘Do you happen to know where Mr. Zdravković can be found now?’
‘Why do you want to know?’
Mrs. Babić put on her suspicious face again, and I remembered that my cover story had nothing to do with Mr. Zdravković, but was about returning a wallet.
‘No reason, I just... I knew him... by sight... ’
Her look told me that I was back in her book as a druggy begonia burglar. She examined me with a scrutiny and crook-eye that makes the innocent feel guilty, though I’d never burgled a begonia in my life. I decided it was best to get the hell out, and as quickly as possible. I suspect she was curious as to the fate of the phantom lost wallet.
‘You’re not Vladan, by any chance? From Slovenia?’
My heart hammered into my eyes.
‘Yes... I’m Vladan. From Slovenia.’
‘Tomislav told me about you.’
‘He did?’
‘Yes. He said that you had escaped to Slovenia during the war, and that he couldn’t contact you.’
This was true.
‘He also told me your family story. Sad.’
I just nodded, not sure what to do. Mrs. Babić’s face revealed her calculation of my quick conversion from Vladan Borojević into Vladan Zdravković, hero of an invented biography by the even more invented Tomislav Zdravković. I had no way of knowing whether the stories he told her were based on real events, on anything I could anticipate if questioned. I assumed that it was all made up, just enough to cover quick conversations with the neighbour across the hall.
‘Would you like some coffee?’
