30.

IRENA AND AMELA hatched a plan—the way, they told each other, they did every spring, when they would devise some new feat or trick as the play-offs began and they prepared to play Number One High School. Amela was going to come over for a party.

A British comedian, Sasha Marx (no relation to Karl, Groucho, or Chico, though he encouraged all such speculation; Sanford Moore was his birth name), received U.N. authorization to mount a production of Hair in Sarajevo. Much of Hair’s music was already familiar to Bosnians of a certain age. The story—peace, free love, and long-haired outcasts who find community—was considered newly pertinent and appealing to younger Sarajevans. The play was a piece of nostalgia that managed to maintain, in a recovering old socialist society, a more intriguing reputation for being slightly naughty.

“How can we not wish to ‘let the sun shine’ on Sarajevo?” the Home Minister responded even as he was having shrapnel picked out of his leg in the hospital. “How can Sarajevans not wish for the Age of Aquarius to reign?”

But the Home Minister’s functionaries immediately tamped his enthusiasm with practical considerations. They said it would not be possible for Sir Sasha (for Marx had recently received the Order of the British Empire) to present the play in any of the city’s theaters. The danger of drawing a crowd to a prominent location was too great. Serb gunners could pick off playgoers as they arrived—or wait until they were seated to obliterate the audience with a mortar shell. Stage lights were also out of the question. Moore had offered to bring them in on a U.N. relief flight, along with generators to power them. But such prominent generators would set off a hum that would illuminate the stage—and guide snipers to their targets.

The Home Minister’s subordinates informed him that the play was a significant cultural opportunity. But it would have to be presented in secret, they said. No advance notice. Only a small, incidental audience. And in the dark.

“At least costumes aren’t a problem,” the Home Minister advised Tedic. “As I recall, much of Hair is done nude.”

Tedic regarded each caution as an opportunity to outwit the mentality of the old socialist bureaucracy. He suggested that the ministry appropriate one of the ample basement conference centers of one of the bank buildings on Branilaca Sarajeva Street, which was lined with a long and apparently effective sniper barrier. The building was secure enough to keep deutsche marks, dollars, and diamond brooches safe from attack. People should have the same benefit. They could sit on the floor of the conference center, to maximize seating. Tickets could be handed out at water and food lines—arrival times staggered—to deliver a wide and delighted audience for, say, three performances. Sir Sasha and his fellow actors, both Bosnians and West Enders, could meanwhile rehearse in a subterranean room of the brewery, where comings and goings could be efficiently disguised.

Tedic had even heard of a simple trick to compensate for the loss of stage lights. A couple of satirical troupes that performed from time to time in basements around town had devised the idea of using electric torches. Half a dozen would be set up on the floor, and each actor issued one to shine a light on his or her face.

“Or elsewhere, I suppose,” Tedic said drolly.

“As the play dictates,” the Home Minister agreed. He had seen a production of Hair years ago, when he’d attended a transportation conference in Stockholm. He raised his eyebrows in recollection of pink flesh and lank, pale hair. “That is an artistic decision that under this free government is left solely to the discretion of the director.”

Tedic suggested to the Home Minister that a few Western news organizations be cautiously apprised of the production and invited to report on it. The world seemed to turn away from stories about massacres and mortar shells. But a story about Hair playing besieged Sarajevo offered more enthralling elements: music, danger, Western movie stars, and sensitively illuminated nudity.

         

TEDIC ALSO PROPOSED that the Home Minister put on a small party for Sasha Marx and his company the evening before the play. The Home Minister instantly agreed. Everyone could use a party. Bosnians were famously hospitable. A troupe of British actors might not be as useful to Sarajevo’s survival as, say, a company of British paratroopers. But the graciousness and even the nerve of the artists were appreciated.

Irena, Sigourney, Arnold, Jean-Claude, Nicki, Kevin, Ken, Emma, and other attractive young people whom Tedic employed would be included in the party. The visitors would be charmed; they would want to identify with their hosts, and their real-life roles.

And Jackie should be sufficiently healed to attend. Jackie would astound them even more than usual. “Imagine,” said Tedic. “The most alluring woman in the room will be a russet-haired, snake-hipped Sarajevan whom the war has visibly robbed of the means to give each visitor a full embrace.”

“But she cannot tell them how she came to lose her arm,” the Home Minister interjected. “She has to say, ‘I’d rather not elaborate. I am but one of so many who have suffered.’ ”

“Show people will find such modesty incomprehensible,” Tedic assured him. “They will be overwhelmed.”

Obviously beer would be on tap. Other traditional party victuals could be brought in with the visitors—the Home Minister moistened his lips on remembering the tin of smoked oysters that had come with a recent U.N. guest.

But Tedic suggested that it would more neatly serve their interests to have the folks at the brewery prepare a repast of humanitarian relief delicacies. “Beans and rice, replete with the occasional worm,” he said. “Peanut butter and Spam, with toenail curls of neon cheese food sprinkled over all. Our guests have grown up hearing heroic tales from their parents about plucky Londoners eating cold beans in Tube tunnels while the Luftwaffe booms overhead. They feel they have missed out on their own heroic period. They will feel privileged to eat cold beans in a darkened brewery with plucky Sarajevans shaking their fists under the guns of the Serbs.”

The Home Minister sat back for a moment before a smile broke slowly across his face and he shook his head. “And if any press coverage resulting should venture the same plucky comparison?”

“As you say, it’s a free country.”

“Just prompt me when to start humming ‘White Cliffs of Dover,’ ” the Home Minister said.

         

THE GIRLS HAD arranged their rendezvous for five, when the bronze light of early spring that still flowed across the field might make a crossing unexpected. They enlisted Zoran and his taxi, with an up-front payment of two cartons of Marlboros from Irena and two pouches of Balkan Sobranie tobacco on promise from Amela; she would bring them across under her blouse.

For almost an hour, the girls discreetly waved across the field every four or five minutes, Irena flashing a hand from the hedges on her side, Amela replying with a hand peeking out of the trees on hers. Shortly after six, the whine of a transport plane began to whir in their ears. Irena and Amela had guessed correctly; at least one flight would come in just before dusk. They saw soldiers tramp away from the center of the runway. The hedges around Irena began to clatter slightly from the breeze of the plane’s props. Irena could see the red leaf of Canada on the front of the plane’s gray whale of a belly, and the horizontal blue and yellow bars on the soldiers’ right shoulders. Skies of blue, fields of grain, the flag of Ukraine.

Amela darted out. Three, five seconds passed with no soldier taking notice; they tended to watch the Bosnian side of the runway more closely, in any case. She had her hair down, long and full. How shrewd, Irena thought with admiration. How cunning of her to recall that referees overlook the penalties of curly-haired blondes. Irena heard Russian-accented shouts under the blast of the plane. But Amela ducked to run in the shadow of the plane’s wheels. No soldier would chance a shot that might strike a tire on the transport plane—it could disable the aircraft and close the airport for days.

Just as Amela reached the hedges, two soldiers caught her by the shoulders. They turned her around and stood back, their guns pressed tactfully against their chests.

“You go back!” shouted one in English. “Please! Now!”

Irena and Zoran stood back, hoping to leave an impression of deference.

“Run back there?” said Amela, throwing a thumb across to the Serb side of the runway. “That’s dangerous!”

“You not supposed to be here,” said the other, breathing heavily; he had chased her most of the way.

“I’m not supposed to run across,” Amela pointed out. “I could get shot.”

Irena stepped forward. “You’re here to keep people from running across the runway,” she reminded them. “Not order them to run across. What if she got run over? Or, God forbid, shot.”

One of the soldiers put a hand on his comrade’s arm before speaking. The two young Ukrainians were confused and a little afraid. No smuggler would run across the field carrying nothing. No husband, father, or romantic love would expose a girl to so much danger. So the soldiers conferred in Russian and decided that she must be a rich man’s mistress or, anyhow, a trifle that might have a price.

One turned to Amela and said in English, “We take you back. We walk with you. No worry. We protect you.” He flashed his finger back and forth between his chest and her shoulders. “No one will shoot. We go now.”

Zoran inched into view, waving a hand like a small boy at a parade. “Excuse me, sirs,” he said with elaborate deference. Zoran patted the edge of something inside his jacket. Irena heard a small, hollow thump at which the soldiers tightened their fingers around the stocks of their rifles and ground their boots into the gravel.

“I am sure this is the kind of situation,” Zoran said, “that can be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction.”

“We get cigarettes,” one soldier said with a sly smile. “No problem.”

“American?” asked Zoran.

The soldiers waited while Zoran unzipped his jacket.

         

TWO CARTONS OF Marlboros—one for each girl, or one for each Ukrainian soldier—put Irena and Amela in the back of Zoran’s taxicab. With the back windows rolled down, their cries and giggles echoed in the cracked, abandoned streets and the prickled ears of lost, wandering dogs.

“You owe me five cartons for that one,” Zoran called back to them. “And an invitation to that party besides.”

         

THEY TURNED DOWN May 1st Street. Amela squirmed around in the backseat, looking from side to side, and reached over for Irena’s hand. She counted shattered windows as they sped past the smashed housing blocks of Dobrinja. She stopped after reaching twelve. “The people who lived there,” she asked quietly. “Where did they go?”

“Look closely,” Zoran advised her.

Then Amela saw gray shapes shivering, rags moving, and even the flames of cooking fires. Hands flickered in the overcast licks of gray smoke.

In silence, they crossed over the Otoka Bridge and turned right to face Grbavica. Night was falling, and lights in the hills and towers on the Serb side of town blinked out as shades were drawn, doors shut, and switches turned down.

“So close,” was all Amela said.

“Very,” was all Irena could manage in return. Their fingers tightened against each other’s palms.

“Over there,” said Zoran, inclining his head to the right. “Your school.”

The cab clipped over the bare, darkening streets, howling when Zoran ground it into another gear. Amela was surprised that she could see stars in the sky as they pulled onto Marshal Tito Boulevard. Most of the trees had been pruned by shells or felled where they stood. “I have heard about this,” she said.

“People had to chop them down for heat,” Irena explained. “To cook food, make tea, keep out the cold. Soon we’ll have to burn one book to have enough light to read another.”

Amela craned out the window for a better look.

“That’s not smart,” Zoran told her.

“I will be okay,” she said. “It’s too dark to see your car, or my head. I know the missing trees make it easier for snipers. That’s what we’ve been told across the way.”

“Over here, snipers may or may not hit us,” Irena reasoned. They could have been discussing Descartes, the Chaldean Empire, or any number of half-remembered things from their classes. “Cold hits us all. So we play our chance of getting shot against the certainty of getting cold.”

Amela settled back in the seat and rolled the window up halfway. “We’ve been getting a little cold, too,” she said softly. “There’s an embargo. Fuel can be hard to come by.”

Irena squeezed her friend’s hand more tightly. They waved their fused fists back and forth playfully, from their chests to their chins.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” said Irena.

“Hard to come by,” said Amela. “Not impossible. We’re fine.”

Zoran turned the taxi into Sarajevska Pivo Street, along the west side of the brewery. Every few weeks, the brewery set out bins of all the trash that couldn’t be burned. Trash collection in Sarajevo had become as unthinkable as postal delivery. Swarms of rats had taken over entire buildings for the spreading empire they now claimed along with flies, worms, moths, and fleas.

A small boy scuttled over a mound of cans. There were bean cans, cooking-oil cans, powdered-milk cans, Spam cans, and yeast cans, their lids curled back, gasping.

“Even the cans look hungry,” Irena joked.

The boy was five or six years old, discernibly sandy-haired even in the dying light, wearing grubby green pants cinched around the waist with somebody’s old burgundy tie, and a man’s blue nylon shirt wound around him like a sheet. He picked up a can and peered through it as if it were field glasses, looking for bits of beans or Spam crusting along the seams. He was young enough to fit his whole hand into the can and, every few cans, he brought out his hand with great excitement, and licked oil or powder off his wrist, knuckles, and fingers.

“Oh,” was all Amela said.

“He’s hungry, that’s all,” said Irena. “Bless him. We see him from time to time.”

“His mother lets him out?”

“He lives in a basement on the next block with a few other people,” Irena explained. “His mother? Who knows where.”

“That happens a lot,” Zoran volunteered.

Amela watched the boy scamper down one mound and up another.

“I don’t have a thing to give him,” she said. “Not even a candy or a stick of gum.”

“He’s having his fun,” Irena assured her. “He will get more out of the garbage than he could from your pockets. As long as the snipers leave him alone.”

They got out of the car on the back side of the building, which was blocked to snipers. Irena took Amela by her wrists and looked at her. She was beautiful. But Irena had always known that. What made her wince was that Amela still looked lovely. Her face was full, soft, almost blushing. It had the pink flush of hope. Irena felt that her own skin was tight and white, like a corpse’s. Creases now slashed the skin around her eyes and pulled tight across her forehead. Sometimes Irena could feel her skin squeezing against her bones.

“I hadn’t noticed before,” she told Amela.

“What?”

“Wearing the winter coat, I couldn’t see. But you look so much”—Irena hesitated for a moment—“rounder and healthier than we do on this side.”

“I haven’t been hungry,” said Amela.

“I haven’t either,” said Irena. “Only a few nights. But I see now, I am like a bird. And not Pretty Bird,” she added with a smile. “He eats fine, thanks to you.”

Amela slipped her right hand into the pocket of her jeans and brought out a small, glossy bronze tube. She pulled off the top and gave a half turn to the base until a sculpted tip emerged, a glistening candy red. Irena was reminded of the bullets in her clip.

“A dash on each cheek,” Amela suggested. “We smear it in.”

Irena was touched.

“But let me show you the latest advance in women’s beauty,” she told Amela. “You won’t find it in Vogue.” Irena rolled her fingers against her chin. She asked Zoran for a pin.

At first the driver turned up the empty palms of his hands. Then he turned his thumbs down at his belt. “One keeps my pants together,” he said. “That’s kind of necessary.”

“I’ll just borrow it,” said Irena.

Zoran turned, his back to the girls, and fiddled with the flaps on his pants. “I’ve lost so much,” he said simply, reaching back with a safety pin pinched between his thumb and his forefinger.

Irena took the pin and unclasped it. She held up her left thumb and pricked it with the pin. A drop of blood gleamed. She blotted it against her left cheek, gave her thumb three or four shakes, then pressed it lightly against her right cheek and turned to Amela.

Amela’s eyes shone as she smudged the red into the flesh below Irena’s eyes. “Lasts longer than Revlon, I’m sure,” she said, as Irena solemnly pressed her thumb into Amela’s left cheek, then right, as if she were lighting candles in church. Zoran looked away. With both her thumbs, Irena rubbed the blood over her friend’s plump cheekbones until the color seemed to match her pink skin.

“Ready to meet Prince Charles,” Amela said quietly.

“Maybe Scottie Pippen,” said Irena. They took each other’s hands, clasped their arms around Zoran, and walked down the ramp into the brewery.

         

TEDIC HAD TURNED the ground floor of the brewery into a beguiling party space. Stubby white candles had been melted on the bottoms and stuck to odd-sized wooden tables. The flames spit and sparkled off the sides of the copper brewing vats. Brewery personnel had laid out slices of Spam, sectioned so thin that they clapped tight around the rim of the serving plate, which was secured at the center by old soda crackers turning as soft as dampened cardboard.

Tedic was beaming. He had showered, shaved, and was strutting like the lord of the manor welcoming his minions. He had kept his shiny black leather coat spread authoritatively across his shoulders, but put on a white shirt underneath, soft and unblemished as fresh cream. He smelled of someone else’s Givenchy. He was standing with a red-haired woman of a certain age, whom he introduced as Zule.

Irena had a hand on Amela’s arm as she presented her. “My old teammate,” she said. “You said I could bring a friend.”

“Of course!” Tedic’s enthusiasm was genuine and detailed. “The great Divacs. The best passer on the team. The whole league, I might say.”

“Dr. Tedic was the assistant principal at Number Four,” Irena explained. “Also the assistant basketball coach.”

“You would not remember me,” Tedic assured her. Amela smiled shyly.

But Zoran shook Tedic’s hand without introduction. “We are old friends,” he said.

“I am an old customer,” Tedic clarified, with no apparent chagrin. “More than once, Zoran has picked me up in my stocking feet when I was turned out of a girlfriend’s place in the middle of the night.”

The Mexican brewer who Irena had seen around the ground floor and basement now edged into their circle, wearing a square-cut English blazer with gleaming brass buttons imprinted with some borrowed coat of arms. The metal in the buttons alone—Irena had developed something of her father’s eye for such appraisals—could have given her bullets for a month.

“Jacobo,” Tedic said simply. “He has come from a long ways away to help us improve our production.”

Jacobo shook hands all around.

“I have never met a Mexican,” said Irena. “What do I say?”

“Hello does fine.”

“Is that what Mexicans say to each other?” she asked.

“Hola.”

Irena tried out the word.

“Hola. Hola. Ho-la.”

“Like a native,” said Jacobo, and Irena thought that she and Amela had both blushed slightly, even through their rouge.

“Where are you living?” Tedic asked Amela. The question was expected for anyone who had been in Grbavica, and Irena and Amela had prepared an answer.

“A few blocks away.”

Don’t lie, Tedic had once advised Irena. I mean this tactically, not morally. You can go crazy trying to keep lies from getting crossed. Find the kernel of truth you can say. Then you will at least be sincere and believable.

“How are you getting by?”

“Fine. There are moments.”

“Of course,” said Tedic, who had turned back to Zule. Irena hoped Tedic would conclude that it would not be gallant to ask her guest anything further.

Tedic asked Zule, “Ever had these girls as your guests?”

She smiled and shook her head.

“Superb basketballers. Irena works here in the brewery, and we are lucky to have her. Amela?” Tedic inclined his head so that Amela might choose to complete his sentence.

“I help out where I can,” she said. “You know how it is.”

         

IRENA’S EYES HAD already alighted on serried ranks of wine bottles. The reds seemed to gleam like rubies—or as Irena imagined rubies—and the whites had the glow of yellow gold.

“From our guests. You should try it,” Tedic encouraged. With a wave of his hand, he invited Irena and Amela to help themselves. The girls lifted the bottles as if they were dolls, examining them for different features.

“Oh God, they’re French,” gushed Amela. The light inside the bottle dimmed when she lifted it; the wine seemed to darken to the color of blood.

“Beaujjjolllais,” she announced, trying to soften the j and trill the l for authenticity.

“I’ve got a Côtes duuu Rrrhône here,” said Irena.

“Is it like the difference between red and green Smarties?” asked Amela.

“That’s no difference,” Irena pointed out. “This is different grapes, not just colors.”

“More like the difference between Marlboro and Camel?”

Irena had already scooped up a small stack of waxed paper cups. “No reason not to conduct our own investigation,” she declared. She poured a splash of the Côtes du Rhône into two cups, which the girls tapped together.

“It is so amazing that you’re here,” said Irena.

“Amazing.”

They swallowed together.

“Smoother than Slovenian,” Amela said. She took another sip thoughtfully. “I don’t think the Slovenes have Côtes duuu Rrrhône.”

“I could like this,” said Irena.

“White wine is what athletes are supposed to drink after they stop working out,” said Amela. “It doesn’t put on weight the way beer does.”

“I’ll never stop working out,” said Irena. “When this is over, I’m back to my routine.”

“Me too,” said Amela.

The girls drained their cups of Côtes du Rhône at the same time.

“I’d like to invite you over, you know,” said Amela, staring ahead into the flicker of candles against one of the brass cauldrons. “It’s just difficult. Even if you could sneak across.”

“I understand. I’ve figured that out, too.”

“My parents love you. No one we know has a problem with Muslims.”

“A lot of people we both know have a problem with Muslims,” Irena pointed out. “I guess that’s why I’m here.” She could feel the wine redden her face, and she laughed to release the tautness in her voice.

Amela had been running her fingers along the neck of a bottle of white wine when a large man startled both girls by stopping on his heels and turning back to them. “If you’re going to drink piss, dear,” he admonished Amela, “at least make it Sancerre.”

Their host was huge. Sir Sasha Marx wore a black suit over a black turtleneck sweater. The slimming effect of black was overmatched. His belly proceeded past the flaps of his jacket like the prow of a ship pulling against its anchorage. His red jowls engulfed the ribbed collar of his turtleneck like a lava flow. When he took up the bottle of white wine, it looked like something from a child’s tea set in his stout fingers.

“Muscadet is a drink for grandmothers having a Christmas lunch at Fortnum’s,” he declared. “Not young starlets.”

Irena was quite sure that she and Amela were blushing now. “Actually, we’re not actresses,” she said.

“Ah, real people,” remarked Sir Sasha. “I’m Sasha Marx.”

“We know,” said Amela.

“You didn’t expect me to be so portly. I can tell.”

“Yes, we did,” Amela answered, then reddened deeply. “I mean, Giancarlo’s Full House used to be on here.” Sir Sasha had played a widowed opera tenor who marries a Manchester policewoman with seven children and a sheepdog named Dr. Watson. They open a restaurant and much warm hilarity ensues.

“Oh, Christ. Off for years, but that show follows me around the globe. Checks do, too, thank God. Remember, ducks. The camera always adds ten pounds.”

Amela and Irena were taken aback just long enough for Sir Sasha to laugh and splash out big-handed portions of his recommended wine into their cups.

“You may recognize some other faces around here, then,” he explained. “I keep telling the young folks, ‘Your careers are pitiably dependent on your pathetic beauty. Whereas mine can withstand the depredations of time, drink, and lack of talent. As long as there is so much as a single production of Henry IV,’ I tell them, ‘on some backwater provincial stage, this fat fuck of a Falstaff has employment!’ ”

He used the girls’ agreeable laughter as a kind of exit theme.

“Sasha Marx!” said Amela. She squeezed Irena’s hands again.

“Not quite Toni Kukoc,” said Irena. “But my mother loves him.”

There were three small, sweating grayish bricks on plates on the table, embellished with limp green strands of parsley.

“All we can’t get here,” said Irena. “Food, medicine. And someone finds parsley.”

“People are taking bites from the brick,” Amela noticed.

“It’s Olga Finci cheese,” Irena explained.

Amela eyed the brick with amusement.

“Cheese?”

“Condensed milk, garlic powder, salt,” Irena explained. “Onions, when possible. Heat it, cool it, let it sit out for three, four days.”

“Olga what’s-it’s-name is a Dutch recipe?”

“I doubt it,” said Irena. “One hears she was some kind of chemistry teacher.”

The girls stood facing the block of cheese as if it were a dead rat that one of them would have to find the nerve to tap with a stick.

“You get first pick,” Amela suggested.

“You’re the guest,” Irena countered. She shaved a half inch of the springy mass onto one of the soft crackers and held it out to Amela.

Amela took it into her mouth in a single bite, and followed with a quick jolt of Sasha Marx’s Sancerre. “Definitely a chemistry experiment,” she said through painfully parted lips.

         

THERE WAS A rapping of knuckles against tables, and taps against beer bottles. The Home Minister wanted to make a few remarks. He was wearing his one set of graying London pinstripes, further frayed by grime and the tug of the crutches he now needed to walk. But tonight he wore no tie against his cheerless white shirt, and let the collar fall open so that a small portion of his collarbone was nearly visible.

Tedic had been merciless. “Oh, my word,” he had exclaimed, slapping a hand against his head. “Have you become a reggae singer?”

“Our guests are artists and bon vivants,” the Home Minister had said stiffly. “I’m hoping to blend in.”

Irena and Amela could make out only every few words. There was still much scuffling of chairs and shushing of conversation by the time the Home Minister began. He said he was deeply grateful that Sir Sasha and his players were joining with Sarajevo actors to present a play that was so poignant and important all over the world. And then he stood aside so that Sasha Marx’s immense black-suited shoulders and Volkswagen stomach filled the space.

“I want to thank the United Nations,” Sir Sasha began, and silenced a ripple of snickers with a sharp glance from his great rubber ball of a face.

“The United Nations,” he repeated slowly. “For letting us in to this besieged city. The United Nations is only as staunch as the spines of its membership. Which seem to be made of that very same thin shitty gruel of a cheese which has been laid out for our delectation,” he said with a smart flick of his hand.

There were laughs and claps all around.

“The U.N. has assigned French soldiers as the protection force here in Sarajevo.” He paused, and jutted out his chin. “Protection,” he mused, and took another, longer pause. “Odd word. Don’t seem to have protected much, do they?”

The tinkling of laughter was like the thrum of a motor for Sasha Marx. He shifted forward onto his right foot. “They seem first-rate lads. Taut and disciplined. I’m sure much like our British boys and girls assigned elsewhere in Bosnia. They haven’t protected very much, either. We have our own experience with French soldiers, after all. Let me ask our Bosnian friends. Would you know why there are so many trees along the Champs-Élysées?”

There was a pause as small, speculative mutterings made their way around the room.

“Because the French Army is so very fond of retreating in the shade,” Sir Sasha declared.

Hoots and applause broke over the room as Sasha Marx made a show of trying to outshout them. “Oh, I’m so very sorry! There goes my chance for the Légion d’Honneur! Wait—what’s that? I already have one! But I am not a political man,” he said sorrowfully. “It is not the world I know best. There was once a production in the provinces.”

Sir Sasha’s associates rocked back in expectation of a story.

Amela leaned in toward Irena, her eyes glimmering. “I cannot believe,” she said, “that we are lucky enough to be here.”

“Macbeth,” Sir Sasha went on. “Portrayed by a saturated old stage star. When the King was informed, ‘The Queen, milord, is dead,’ our star knew that the time for his turn had struck. He came downstage to deliver—can we call it the best-known monologue in theater? I think so. But he was terrible. Awful.”

Sir Sasha paused for a moment, and went on, “He intoned, ‘Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time.’ And the audience booed. He proceeded. ‘And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death.’ The booing crashed across the stage in bloody waves. Yet our star went ahead.

“ ‘Out, out, brief candle!’ he flashed. ‘Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage. . . .’ But he had to halt. The booing was so bad, he couldn’t be heard. The star crossed to the footlights. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I don’t know why you’re booing me. I didn’t write this shit!’ ”

The new wave of applause made the candle flames flicker. Sir Sasha put a beery arm around Ken and Emma, whom Irena recognized as members of Tedic’s troupe, and explained that they wanted to sing a couple of songs inspired by the production the visitors were about to mount.

Emma was slender, with hair the color of amber honey. Ken had a thin bristle of a mustache that curled around his mouth, musketeer style. Emma patted her hand over her throat, as if stifling a cough.

“I will try to make our song heard,” she said daintily. “Sir Sasha is so hard to follow. We have reworked some lyrics for your consideration.” Ken and Emma softly began:

When the Serbs take over your house
And Boris aligns with Uncle Sam
Then Slobo will guide the planet
And they won’t give a damn!
This is the dawning of the Age of Hilarious
Isn’t it precarious?
Precarious? Hilarious!

Sasha Marx had been standing at a distance from Ken and Emma. But as their song took hold he came closer, so that the look of marvel on his face became visible as they moved into the chorus:

Serbia is expanding
Sniper shots and bombs abounding
No more food, lights, or water
Just hunger, blood, and slaughter
Chaos and dissolution
Fear and destitution
Hilarious!
Hilarious!

The applause that broke in was dense as a drum roll. Sasha Marx stepped forward to press his lips with suction force against both performers. Emma said they had one more song. Sigourney and Jean-Claude were waved up to join them. Emma, who seemed to own the sweetest voice, struck up the first notes:

Good morning snipers
Your shots say hello
Serbs shoot above us
We huddle below
Good morning snipers
You lead us along
My love and me as we sing
Our early morning running song.

All the singers joined in, and motioned for the audience to do the same. Irena looked over at Amela, and saw that she was singing:

Doo-bee-doo-wee-doo-doo
Doo-bee-doo-wee-doo-doo
Doo-bee-doo-doo-waa
Doo-bee-doo-wee-doo-doo
Doo-bee-doo-wee-doo-doo
Doo-bee-doo-doo-waa

Ken and Emma rang out the last stanza:

Run along
Don’t guess wrong
Run and hide the whole day long.

By the time the ovation had died down, Tedic had sent Kevin before the crowd. He was a thin man with a mortician’s neat mustache and slender, expressive wrists. “A man goes to confession,” he said. “He hems and haws—he is embarrassed. Finally, he says through the small screen, ‘Father, forgive me. But I fucked a chicken.’

“ ‘Fuck whatever you want,’ says the priest. ‘Just tell me. Where did you get the chicken?’ ”

Ken returned, sandy-haired and blue-eyed, blinking a smile like the keys of a small spinet. “I, too, have a religious experience,” he declared. “Just yesterday I was walking along Vase Miskina to the water line when I saw”—he allowed his voice to dip here—“Jesus Christ.”

Low hoots and whoops whistled around the room.

“Unmistakably Jesus,” Ken asserted. “Himself. He looks just like his pictures. Long, sandy hair. Thin, scraggly beard. But if that wasn’t enough, he was carrying a cross. Now, I don’t believe in messiahs. Any more than I believe in Blue Helmets. But to be gracious I said, ‘Welcome to Sarajevo, my Lord Jesus. May I ask a question?’

“ ‘Of course,’ Jesus said. ‘The loaves and fishes? Sleight of hand.’

“ ‘No, my Lord.’

“ ‘Water into wine?’ he asked. ‘Basic chemistry.’

“ ‘No, my Lord,’ I said.

“ ‘Rising from the dead?’

“ ‘No, my Lord.’

“Then I tapped the cross he bore on his back and asked, ‘Where did you get all of this wood? I’d like to heat a cup of coffee.’ ”

Laughter scuffed across the sharp cement floor and rubbed against Irena’s ears. Emma returned, eggshell blue eyes shining under her straw-blond hair. Her voice got soft as the flutter of a bird’s wings. The room was rapt. “You have all been here for a day or two,” she said. “Let me ask, have you noticed? What is the difference between Auschwitz and Sarajevo?

There was an uncomfortable stirring. No one in the room wanted to hazard an answer.

Emma ducked her head against her chest. “Auschwitz,” she avowed simply, “had gas.”

Groans and guffaws took over the room.

         

JACKIE WAS MAKING her way to Sir Sasha’s impromptu stage. She wore a clinging sleeveless black dress that made a slinky, sliding sound brushing against her backside, audible in the immaculate silence of people watching a woman with no right arm advance into their gaze. Sir Sasha Marx received her with a delicate bow. He touched his hand to her remaining forearm and brought her head against his shoulder for an intimate whisper. Jackie turned around and whisked a wisp of russet hair from over her arresting chestnut-velvet eyes; it fell back. She smoothed it in place with her one thumb.

“The first thing that I want to say,” said Jackie, “is—sorry if I didn’t get a chance to shake your hand.”

         

SHRIEKS PIERCED THE room. Sasha Marx’s great rump roast of a face opened with a roar. Jackie’s face held, grave, tender, and benignly bemused. People were appalled and enthralled—Jackie held them rapt.

“Our visitors say, ‘You folks are so plucky,’ she went on. “Isn’t that how you put it? ’Plucky.’ Speaking for myself, I don’t know how to be plucky. We have just done what we have had to do. All of this hiding, running, scrounging. All of this bleeding and dying—we don’t come by it naturally. What’s natural for us is a cigarette in one hand, an espresso in the other. A beer on the café table, some leftist rags at our elbow, and the whole afternoon to argue about captivating inconsequentialities. Michael Jordan. The Princess of Wales. Madonna. Sir Sasha Marx. The Pet Shop Boys.

“Well,” Jackie went on quietly in a hush so deep that Irena thought she could hear the sputter of candle flames. “It’s been about a year now. The way we add up our lives has changed. It’s not ‘Do you have a job? Do you have money?’ No one does. Cigarettes are more precious than money, anyway, because we live in three-minute scenes—that’s as much life as we can count on. A night like this—we should look around. Next year, next week, tomorrow—faces will be gone.”

Irena felt Amela’s hand settle softly around her waist. She reached over with her own hand and rested it on Amela’s forearm.

“Something called Sarajevo will survive. It will never be the city we knew. But there is still a chance for it to be open-minded, curious, frivolous, and free. Not a smelly, vanquished little capital for strutting bullies, bigots, and thugs.”

There was flesh-colored gauze freshly wrapped where Jackie’s arm had been. Carefully, she twisted her right hip forward and stamped her foot slightly, so that the stump of her arm was visible throughout the room. “Just let us use our own arms to fight,” she declared, “and we will save our own city.”

Those who were sitting on their haunches in the front of the room began to rise. Those who had been standing behind them, including Irena and Amela, sank to their knees under the weight of emotion. Sir Sasha gathered Jackie into his embrace, lifting her high against his chest. Then, sobbing, he took another step back so that Jackie could stand alone in the ringing adoration.

At last Sir Sasha stepped up and slid his arm around her shoulders. In his free hand was a handkerchief, which he made a show of wringing out. “You know,” he said as the room began to settle, “we like to think that when barbarians storm the gates, and lesser peoples fall back from the fray, a distinctly British voice will ring out above the battle: ‘I say, old chap. You don’t really believe that we will permit this, do you?’

“But we have nothing to teach Sarajevo about holding back barbarians. We have nothing to teach you about blood, toil, tears, and sweat. We poor players, strutting and fretting upon your stage, are ennobled to stand alongside you for a few minutes. When we return to our slumbering, green island, we will grab every passerby we can find. We will peal from every stage on which we appear, that the people of Sarajevo”—he offered a polite, beautifully restrained bow in Jackie’s direction—“have single-handedly held back the fist of tyranny. It is time to lend our hands!”

         

THE HOME MINISTER searched the assembled, shining faces and found Tedic. He was standing darkly next to one of the brewing vats, and had just taken a long draw of his Marlboro. The Home Minister followed the glow up to Tedic’s eyes. When he was sure that Tedic had caught his gaze, the Minister nodded his head ever so slightly.

         

TEDIC HAD A tape player plugged in, and soon Peter Gabriel, Madonna, Joni Mitchell, the Clash, Peter Tosh, and Sting joined the festivities.

Irena took Amela over to meet Jackie. Jackie swirled smoke out of her lips and leaned in to throw her arm around Irena (who was reasonably sure that Amela didn’t hear her greeted as “Ingrid”) and kiss her, and then, because she was Irena’s friend, brush a more than reflexive kiss against Amela’s cheek, too.

Molly seemed to have had a better briefing, and merely put his head against Irena’s and called her “little sister.” “I’m not sure Irena has told me about you,” he shouted down to Amela from his streetlight height.

“I’m not sure she has mentioned you,” Amela returned.

“Bitch,” Molly hissed. “She’s been saving you!”

Molly was childless, womanless, and friendless. Yet somewhere along his surreptitious journey he had learned that teenage girls could be diverted and amused whenever a grown-up stooped to share a profanity. It was as if someone had leaked a code.

Jean-Claude, whom Irena had barely met, made a point of meeting Amela. “Irena did not tell me she had such wonderful friends,” he shouted.

“It should be assumed,” Amela answered with a smile.

Sir Sasha had one of the few voices that could pierce the din. He upbraided one of his players with Falstaffian ferocity when he thought the man had poured himself too large a cup of a Bourgogne Hautes Côtes de Nuits.

“Drink bloody beer, bloody wanker!” he sang out. “Not the bloody fifteen quid Burgundy! As if you had discriminating tastes. Leave the wine for our hosts!”

         

ZORAN FOUND THEM shortly after midnight. The actors had slipped back to Mel’s loading dock to light fat, ashy joints rolled in newspapers as Tedic and Zule helped them onto brewery trucks for the ride back to the Holiday Inn.

Zoran was holding his stomach and joggling his head. “In ordinary times,” he told the girls, “I would say I’m too fucking drunk to drive.”

“What do you say now?” asked Irena.

“I hope we don’t hit a fucking tank.”