Maybe it was down to the music he was listening to on his headphones: Goran felt like he was in a film, and the scene was brightly lit. He was on his way to the ‘Serbs’ Houses’, as the Albanians in the village had called them derisively before spitting at his feet. Goran had said ‘thank you’, and left it at that. Those people were like animals, they could smell who was one of them and who wasn’t, and he held them all collectively responsible for his parents’ death.
The Serbs’ Houses, all five of them, were dilapidated and seemed to huddle together timidly. There was no one in sight. When a curtain twitched, he knocked on the door until someone opened. The man pointed a gun at him and yelled, ‘What do you want?’
He had almost forgotten: he wasn’t in a film, he was in a country of mad people.
‘I’m Goran Valetić,’ he said, ‘the son of Miloš and Ljubinka Valetić, and that’s God’s honest truth.’
The guy lowered the gun. His wife wiped her hands clean on her apron and asked him in. The man was eyeing him with suspicion, the gun always to hand, while his wife apologised over and over again until Goran said, ‘Enough!’ In case that had sounded too sharp and curt, he quickly added, ‘Thank you.’
He watched as she spread a tablecloth over the plastic one, got out the good china from the cupboard and fetched fruit in sugar syrup to go with coffee. Vuk, the man with the gun, poured his homemade schnapps into little glasses, glad to be given the opportunity, and explained that his past experiences had made certain precautions and codes of behaviour necessary. He launched into a rambling tale, while his wife, Vesna, stared blankly out of the window and muttered an injunction not to start banging on with his old stories again. This whispering and fear – it was like mildew descending on everything, and Goran knew it all too well. He stirred his coffee. It was hard for him to listen. He hated all this claptrap, that the Serbs here had to stick together, that his parents had been determined to start their new life here, never mind the fact that they – two such cultivated, noble people – were surrounded by scumbags.
Goran smiled and nodded sadly, the way one did when speaking about the deceased, especially about one’s parents who had just died. But the more they talked, the more he felt the silent reproach that he, their son, hadn’t taken care of his parents, that he hadn’t been there when the threats increased and the fear grew and grew. Yes, he was a coward, and he didn’t dare ask this couple whether his parents had told them that their return had been his idea, that it was he who had sold them the notion of these foreign parts as a homeland and had talked them into their new life, and had not let them rest until they finally signed the forms and packed their suitcases. Maybe his parents had cottoned on to the fact that he’d received a commission from the agent for persuading them, a huge sum in his eyes. He suspected that his parents had tacitly accepted that he was selling them, that they had been willing to make the sacrifice for his sake and that they had known that if something were to happen to them when they got to their new home it would be on his conscience. And that was exactly what had happened. He would be punished until the end of his days for what he had done to them.
Even so, he refused to believe that his father, that old curmudgeon and surly bastard, had resigned himself to his fate here, in foreign parts, like these two had done, Vuk and Vesna, sitting there across the table from him with their wrinkled, resigned faces, in silent submissiveness, the very epitome of Serbian suffering. He wanted to throw up.
Silence had descended around the table. Goran blinked. In front of him lay the little suitcase, that pigskin thing that had belonged to his father. Vesna nodded in his direction.
He felt embarrassed opening the suitcase in front of Vuk and Vesna. But he got the impression he was expected to do so. He was in a film and had a role to play; he was the son, and he did what was expected of him. He pushed the little brass knobs and opened the lid.
There were documents inside, papers in those bloody clear plastic folders his father had loved so much. And beneath them, something else. Goran pulled the tissue paper aside. The painting which became visible, that countenance, was deeply familiar to him. Once upon a time, the White Angel of Mileševa had hung on the wall of their living room, right above the sideboard. He had no idea that his mother had taken the icon with her when they fled and kept it safe through all the hard times.
He looked at the angel, seemingly unscathed by the ravages of the past twenty years, but the face meant nothing to him. Instead, it brought other images to mind, totally absurd ones: the soup terrine with the crack, which always appeared on the table on Sundays. The shoehorn made from ivory, which no one was allowed to use because it had belonged to their great-great-grandfather. The pipe stand on his father’s table, the wooden clogs belonging to his sister, for which he had envied her as a little boy. Where were all those things now? Destroyed, burned or being used by other people, Albanians, who had no clue where they had come from and whom nobody had told that the terrine was only to be used on Sundays and the shoehorn not at all?
Under their breath, Vuk and Vesna told the story of how they had rescued the suitcase from the Albanians and removed it from the house, how they had risked life and limb to do so and how brave they had been. But they had done it all the same, for him and his sister – in memory of their parents, God bless them. Vesna made the sign of the cross and Vuk copied her every move.
Goran turned the little oil painting in his hands. He dismissed the uncharitable thought that these two might have rummaged through his father’s suitcase and removed his coin collection, plus any cash or jewellery. He closed the suitcase. So what if they had? If the boot had been on the other foot he would have done the same.
He took the route they had suggested to him, along the path and up the hill. When he reached the wood, he was supposed to bear left and then he’d see it. In the land of crazy people, he himself was now crazy too: a deranged man with an old suitcase containing the icon of the Angel of Mileševa, like a pilgrim trudging towards a shrine. He had to go to the house where his parents had been murdered, see the place and then decide what to do. And no matter what the decision, if he needed money to execute the plan he could sell the icon. That kind of stuff was easy to flog. Otherwise, he would have just chucked the Angel away or discarded it at the base of the next suitable tree.
It was curious how isolated the house was. One thing was certain: his father would not have appreciated such a location, he’d have lodged an official complaint, submitted a detailed drawing and a map. He’d have gathered evidence to back up his claim to the authorities and support his appeal. Goran’s mother would probably have tried appeasing his father, tried to see the positives in the situation: the beautiful view, the fertile land, the pretty garden. She always found something. Goran sighed.
Who was he to consider himself superior to his parents, even after their death, even after all he had done? His father was a smart-arse, a know-it-all, but he – Goran – what was he? He was a conformist, he’d sucked up to authority, failed as an athlete, worked as a bouncer, and become an eternal refugee who didn’t even speak proper English, lived beyond his means, was indebted to his sister and had stolen from his girlfriend – his ex-girlfriend, mind you, who had sent him packing when she’d twigged that he had been dreaming of a middle-class life with a house, a car and a garage, just like the famous Mr Minister-of-State, who retired most evenings in his woolly cardigan to his shed behind the garage to watch porn there.
Exhausted, Goran halted and wiped his brow with his sleeve. He looked up at the sky and along the path to the forest – at least another three kilometres to go. And although he hadn’t smoked anything strange, he suddenly had a vision: his mother, turning around and looking at him, both scoldingly and lovingly, as if he were a child, and asking him, ‘What are you doing? Moaning, sinking ever deeper into self-pity, I can’t stand it! And what are you doing with our Angel? Take the icon to where it belongs and then that’ll be that. And then go and get on with your life.’
He saw her petite figure, her girlish gait, a little uncertain, even wavering. He walked faster, hurried up the hill and ran through the forest.
The house shimmered through the trees in the bright sunlight; its location was idyllic, a dream, with the little clearing and the old trees, with bits of striped plastic fluttering in their branches – the remnants of the police cordon, ghostly reminders of a incident involving the authorities, of something dreadful that had happened there. Carefully, he climbed the steps and gently pushed the door. It had been left ajar.
It took a little while for his eyes to get used to the dim light. The first thing he noticed was the candle on the windowsill and the matchbox on the floor. He picked up the box and put it back, walked on, looked at the huge opening where the wall had been knocked through to turn the room into a veranda and then turned on his heels. If this was the veranda, where was the room? Behind the wall there must have been all the wires and pipes, probably for water, but the wall had been knocked through and all the pipes removed.
He put the suitcase down and noticed that the floor was darker here than everywhere else. He knelt down and touched the concrete.
Two stains, one slightly bigger than the other. This must have been the spot where they had found the spent 7.62-millimetre-calibre cartridge cases. Two shots to the back of the head, one for his mother, one for his father, either simultaneously or one after the other.
Mechanically, Goran opened the suitcase and got out the icon, the White Angel of Mileševa, and propped the picture against the wall. The kind, tolerant expression on its face was insufferable to him.