You even stand like him; and those eyebrows. You couldn’t hide, even if you were God.’
Mediha Babić, who had worked at the local town hall back in the day, put on some coffee, offered me some biscuits and a glass of homemade elderberry cordial. These treats functioned like a time machine for people like me, bringing us back to our childhood. I sat at the table in a huge two-bedroom apartment, filled out by this elderly pensioner. It was worn, but tidy. I could see the town of Brčko through the window. Like most Bosnian towns, it was much more beautiful from a height than it actually looked at ground level.
‘Nice view you have here. You can see the whole town.’
‘Oh, I can see the town, Vladan, my boy. I just don’t recognize it anymore. So much of this new world. I’d forgive them for being Serbs. My husband was a Serb, too. But at least he qualified as human. These lot are not like our Brčko people. You understand, Vladan, don’t you?’
I didn’t, but I finally remembered that my father’s name in this town was Tomislav, and that Mediha might well be convinced that I was as disapproving of Serbs as she was.
‘These people are different. What can you do? Misfortune dragged them here from somewhere else, I know that, but... sometimes their manner makes a person wonder. God forgive me, but no one would have chased them away from wherever they had been, if they had been a little more considerate. Of everyone.’
‘It’s hard, living a fugitive life. People don’t handle it well.’
‘I know, believe me, I know. My Raiko and I were on the run a lot in life. Sometimes because of me, sometimes because of him, and sometimes because of, well, whoever you like. We never fitted in, the way we were, never anywhere or with anyone. And so we ended up here. We thought to ourselves that, since I was from here, and he was a Serb so maybe we could just... somehow. But you know, Vladan, you know what they say. Once you move away from your place, it’s never your place anymore.’
‘That’s right. I know.’
‘In the end, people always ask themselves whether it might have been better if they went somewhere where nobody knew them, just like you did. Who the hell knows? Would it have been any easier for the two of us, if we’d gone to Denmark, to join Fahira and Zlatan? It’s cold there. Not to be endured.’
‘It’s hard everywhere.’
‘Yeah. You know better than I do. You can’t be a smart-ass when it comes to these things. That’s it... I asked your father a million times which devil had possessed him that he, Tomislav, should end up here, of all the towns of the world.’
‘What did he say?’
‘What could that poor soul say? He says, Mediha, my dear, you know how I suffer, so you tell me if I’d be any better off elsewhere in this world. Yeah, sure, I said. Wherever you go, your misery shadows you, and this is as good a place to be miserable as any other. But... off he goes. He didn’t even say goodbye.’
‘Any idea where he went?’
‘I have no idea, my dear Vlado. I would tell you in an instant if I knew. He did say that he’d like to go and find you in Slovenia, but that he didn’t have the right documents, that he was waiting for them to be sent from Sarajevo. Who knows, maybe he finally got them, and that’s why he left? But then I think that he probably would have contacted me, if he’d gone to Slovenia. He knew that I have a cousin there.’
‘Did he happen to tell you about my mother?’
‘About your mother Agnes, about you, about your brother Zoran and your sister Milena, about your family left behind in Herzegovina and Subotica. He came to my place for a coffee many an afternoon, and stayed for a good long time. He’d just talk and talk. I could feel his relief when he started talking, so I wouldn’t interrupt him. Though sometimes he’d sit there so late into the night that I thought... well, you know people might imagine things. He liked to talk about all of you, but mostly about you. Probably because he knew that you were the only one who survived.’
Mediha reminded me how I had inherited my own vivid imagination. Tomislav Zdravković told his tales so tall and so precisely because he had no trouble believing them: Knit your own lie within your head so it wraps around and blankets the unbearable truth, which then protects you from the destructive ash of guilt, or whatever else eats away at you. This would explain many things about Tomislav Zdravković and also Nedelko Borojević. Even though I knew nothing of the self-preservation techniques taught in the Yugoslav Army, I was quite convinced that, in Tomislav’s life, the village of Višnjići never existed.
‘I heard all the stories of how he had taken you to Pula, to the seaside, and how he’d buy you toys from a Gypsy. The poor man, he grieved for you so, Vladan, my boy. I don’t know if it was because you were the only one left, but sometimes he wouldn’t even mention the rest of the family. Always – my Vladan this, my Vladan that. I think he was hurt because he’d let you leave Sarajevo without him, and because he hadn’t set off after you. But like he said, back then, who knew what was going to happen? Yeah, right. Even if he’d asked me, I’d have said that Milošević may rule longer than Tito, but he would never turn us against each other.’
‘We all thought so, but what can we do?’
‘Anyhow... would you like to see his apartment?’
The apartment of Tomislav Zdravković, the retired forest ranger from Sarajevo, who had moved here with his family from Vukovar, just before the war, was a mirror to that of Mediha Babić. The main difference was the feel of the place; a dull prison atmosphere that rolled through the air, like a gas leak. Maybe this was because of the rusty burner that was left on the kitchen floor, a red dish beside it that had sat there for three years? Maybe because of the pile of yellowing newspapers in the corner of the living room: a room without a TV, a radio or a wooden bookcase full of hand-me-down ceramics and china? Or maybe just because there were no curtains, no cloth over the dining table, no vase in the living room, just two empty cigarette packs and a small ashtray. A few worn-out shirts in the open wardrobe in the bedroom, a pair of jeans splayed across the floor beside it. The living room was anchored by a stained green rug; and the bathroom by a foul-yellow shower curtain. It was the sort of space that a normal person would only occupy against their will.
I wondered if Tomislav Zdravković saw this place as a prison cell, which is why he never bothered to make it any nicer. Maybe he thought that by living in this dump, opposite the retired municipal official, he was repaying his debt to society, and that maintaining its unpleasant décor was a mild form of self-flagellation? Or was he just such a miserable son-of-a-bitch that he didn’t even notice all the mess and rustiness of his world? Whatever it was, we couldn’t call spending time in a two-and-a-half bedroom flat the equivalent to solitary confinement.
I was pulled out of my strange lethargy, moving hypnotized around this so-called apartment, wading into the story of Tomislav Zdravković, by a surprising sight: Sudoku puzzles, cut from newspapers and carefully filled-in with pencil, which lay on the floor by the bedside table. A rubber on the table reminded me that Nedelko Borojević used to solve math problems in the Voice of Istria newspaper, using a pencil and rubber. Sometimes it took him all afternoon, and so focused would be on his task that he wouldn’t hear Dusha yelling from the kitchen if he wanted to eat what was left of lunch.
‘I don’t think I’ve been in here since he left. I saw people come several times and take things away, but what could I do? Now I don’t even remember what used to be in here, but it was always so... empty. He had a few books and I gave him a
