5.

THEY STAGGERED AND blinked under a preposterously bright sky. Irena had taken charge of Pretty Bird, who had stopped pacing in his cage and crumpled to a posture on his claws. About twenty people came up from the basement, wearing spotted old slacks, scuffed shoes, and rumpled shirts, the casual clothing of an afternoon at home. The man who seemed to be in charge left Mr. Zaric twisting on the ground and waved his rifle like a ringmaster as he motioned for the basement-dwellers to stand together.

“I am Commander Raskovic,” he announced. “We are taking control of this area so that it can be made safe for Serb people. We cannot let you leave until we have recovered what you have stolen. Open your bags, please. Open them now!”

But before the group could unzip their scuffed athletic bags and scratched luggage, the men in black sweaters bent down and helped themselves. They pulled out American blue jeans and rolled them under their arms, holding them like logs. They threw down men’s underwear with a laugh, and stamped on the crotch pouches; they put women’s panties over their heads, licking and breathing through them as if they were pink and red surgical masks.

One man found a burgundy-bound family album. He moved through the statuary ranks of stunned people, asking, “Yours? Yours?” When no one answered, he tried to wrench the book apart with his hands, but it held: superior German bookbinding technology. So he flung it down in loathing, unzipped his pants, waved his penis over the book, and began to piss on it. Another man ran over and kicked the book open with the edge of his boot, lowered his pants to his thighs, and began to piss on the book, too. Irena could see the black pages fizzing and turning maroon. She could see the edges of pictures curling, like bugs dying on their backs.

The men turned around and saw Irena watching. She could hear Pretty Bird flapping against the wires of his cage. One of them charged into her face. “Bitch! You’re smiling.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You are!”

“Why would I smile?” said Irena, with more wrath than she wanted to display. “What the fuck is there to smile about?”

“I will make you smile.”

The man walked over to Irena with his pants sliding down his thighs, his gun and the head of his penis snapping up. She tried to move, but her feet felt like a statue’s. She heard bullets crackling and, just as she looked up to see pigeons winging, the man pinched her buttocks and pushed up her small bleached-denim skirt. He wrenched her panties down to her thighs, put his heel between her legs, and dragged them down to her ankles. Then he forced himself into her—hard—once, twice, several times before slipping out limply. Irena did not fall. Crazily—the man had a gun, after all—she took a step in his direction. She raised her arms, as if to wring his neck. He staggered back in stunted little-boy steps, his pants sagging around his knees. Irena saw an opening. She kicked him hard with the toe of her shoe.

The man crashed back onto his bare ass in a rubble of shattered glass. The sling on his rifle rose around his neck. His accomplices began to laugh—he had been kicked in the nuts by a girl, and choked with his own rifle sling. For an instant, they seemed to cheer Irena. One of them laughed, and pointed at her feet. “American basketball shoes.” The downed man scrambled up with lunatic quickness, aghast at the blood cascading down his legs. He tried to aim his rifle in Irena’s direction, but some of the others stepped in front of him; one actually took his gun out of his arms. Irena’s mother took a quick step toward her daughter, but the men stopped her. They let the wounded man run at Mrs. Zaric and try to ram himself inside her skirt. He bellowed, “Bitch! Bitch!” into her face. But then his own face began to crumple. His jaw plunged, his top teeth cut into his tongue, his eyes rolled about in his head, and he tottered before flopping to the ground. Mrs. Zaric had slipped a hand into her dress to find her house keys and stabbed them into the man’s testicles.

“You are not a man, cocksucker,” she shouted from inside a circle of restraining arms. “You have to grab ass from baby girls like my daughter because you can’t get your cock up for a real woman. My son had bigger balls when I bathed him in the sink as a baby.”

The thugs restrained her, but they didn’t try to keep her quiet. She had become the crazy lady in the story they would tell later.

“I’ve seen bigger balls on French poodles,” she went on. “Get up. Come back here. I’ll still slice your balls off and feed them to a goat. Nobody else would have the stomach to swallow—”

The man who called himself Commander Raskovic loomed over Mrs. Zaric, holding his left arm out toward Irena, as if he were about to ask the mother for permission to dance with her child.

“This is your daughter?”

Mrs. Zaric was silent.

“Okay, yes? Is your husband with you?”

Mrs. Zaric managed to point toward the ground, where Mr. Zaric was still stretched out, his feet twitching.

“Okay, anyone else in your family? A son?” She shook her head. “No young sons?” She shook her head again. “I’ll take your word.”

“Our bird,” said Mrs. Zaric. “Pretty Bird.”

“Okay. You take your daughter and you help your husband up and pick up your bird. The four of you can leave, okay? Leave your luggage and run off to wherever you were going.”

Mrs. Zaric and Irena moved wordlessly over to where Mr. Zaric lay smashed on the ground. They lifted his shoulders lightly. Mr. Zaric pressed his hands against the ground and lifted himself to his knees, blood dripping from his eyes and mouth. He carefully touched the red wounds around his eyes, as if trying them on for size. He stiffened slightly as his wife and daughter took him by his elbows and helped him to his feet. He began to speak—he wanted to. But only blood ran out of his mouth.

They walked toward the riverside. Mrs. Zaric figured that Commander Raskovic’s remarkable act—it couldn’t be called kind, but surely it had saved their lives for a moment—would not give them more than a few minutes of opportunity.

“Don’t worry, my darlings,” she said, speaking softly into her husband’s shoulder. “We will never, ever talk about this.”

But Mr. Zaric had swallowed the blood in his mouth and was determined to say something. “Leave it,” he gurgled in the direction of his wife, “for Shakespeare.”

         

COMMANDER RASKOVIC CAUGHT their eyes—and waved. A big, bearded man in a dark sweater toting a gun waved. Waved! God dammit to hell. Where have you been? Glad you could join us! Be back soon! Mrs. Zaric stopped and steadied her husband’s left leg before turning and walking back toward Commander Raskovic. Worse than waving—he was smiling.

“Do you think this makes everything all right?” she roared.

Commander Raskovic stared at her in disbelief. He thought they had become friends through troublesome times. “Please, go on,” he said. “Get out of here. I am sorry to be friendly. You have this one chance I am giving you.”

“You’re giving us? Like you’re Mother Teresa?”

“I don’t think I’m Mother Teresa. Please, don’t shout at me in front of my men. You may regret it.”

“Regret shouting at you?” she screeched. “You fuck-face! What’s one more regret? Your gangsters have just raped, beaten, and pissed on my family.”

“Don’t use such words. Just get going,” Commander Raskovic said almost plaintively. “Please. Please. My men will obey me for only a moment more.” But Mrs. Zaric only moved closer, so close that she imagined plugging the barrel of his rifle with her finger to turn back the bullets so they would blow up into his bearded face.

“We’re going to meet again, you son of a bitch,” said Mrs. Zaric. “All of you!” she shouted.

“Call the police!” someone cried out. “Call Butter-Ass Butter-Ass Ghali!” someone else shouted in English.

“I don’t need the police,” said Mrs. Zaric in a cold, jagged dagger of a voice. “I don’t need the United Nations. And I certainly don’t need your crumbs of favors. All I need is this anger”—she positioned her fist above her heart and bellowed the word in his face—“to stay alive to track you down.”

         

IRENA FOUND THAT she could not place the face of the man who had forced himself on her. She remembered that he had a beard. But then so did most of them, and she had used all of her strength to shut her eyes. She remembered more clearly the faces of cute boys who had smiled at her on the tram.

She could feel a sore spot on her right cheek where the man must have scorched her with his chin. She could feel wetness in her panties. As she walked on, she felt sore.

But Irena knew that she healed quickly. She didn’t nurse an injury. She played on the old jammed ankle or broken toe as hard as before. God, Allah, or the stars assigned us our talents to be used, not doubted or denied. The game needs every player. Irena, who believed in nothing absolutely, believed in that. She had just seen people killed, and walked away with a limp. She told herself—consoled was not a word that occurred to her—that she could make any memory disappear, along with the sore spot on her cheek.