which tells of trust, a lie under pressure, proud pregnant women and an old liaison, and the demands of the murder victim’s brother for revenge in this world or the next
Salvatore finished his story. He sat there with his elbow on his knee and fist on his chin, staring into the emptiness before him. He stayed like that in silence for a while, like Rodin’s Thinker who’d just reached the end of all thoughts. I thought I saw tears in his eyes. But Salvatore was a tough guy. He jumped to his feet, downed his – or rather my – whisky, and said in a very businesslike manner: ‘So that’s agreed, then?’
Like everyone who approaches me, Salvatore didn’t trust the police. And quite justifiably so, because even if the police found the killer, his tracks could be covered again for the right price. If the police failed to protect the felon in any way, there was always the court: the criminal could rely on its corruptibility even if the case he’d paid to cover up was taken all the way to the Supreme Court.
Salvatore therefore wanted me to find the killer.
‘You’re a wreck of a man: you don’t need anything any more, you don’t want anything any more, not even money. I can trust you,’ he told me. I took that as a compliment.
‘I’ll think about it,’ I said.
‘You’ll do it, I know.’ He smiled and shook my hand.
Salvatore’s story didn’t surprise me because he’d been dogged by misfortune all his life. His first and greatest misfortune was to be born in this country. As with the majority of things which cause us lifelong suffering, he had his parents to thank. We’re all victims of our parents’ inability to resist the reproductive urge. We’ve all been at the receiving end of the fascism of nature, whose casualty count far surpasses that of any criminal regime or system we’ve seen – and every single one of them has been criminal. Instead of pictures of Hitler and Stalin, textbooks which teach schoolchildren about the greatest enemies of humankind should show a picture of a forest in spring.
His parents went one step further in crime against their son: they decided to raise him in this country. Salvatore’s father, Simone, had been stationed in Ulcinj when fascist Italy fell. Enchanted by the natural beauty of the town, and even more by the beauty of its women – one of whom would later become his wife, this cheerful and ever primped-up stereotype Italian decided to stay on. They say he left an olfactory trail of hair grease and aftershave behind him so that when you went downtown you’d always know where he’d been that morning. He came to Ulcinj as an occupier and ended up as the object of town jokesters and the jealousy of many a husband.
Simone lived in Ulcinj more or less peacefully. What occasional bother he had was mainly of his own making – at least up until the Trieste Crisis. Then anti-Italian demonstrations were organised throughout the country. Party leaders came from Podgorica to ensure that the ‘spontaneous expression of popular rage’ in Ulcinj went off according to plan. One of them heard there was an Italian living in town. The people of Ulcinj said in Simone’s defence that he was good-natured – a harmless clown, whose only flaw was being a Casanova. But the Comrades from Podgorica were unyielding: Simone was Italian, therefore he was suspicious and had to be punished.
And punished he was: he had to march at the head of the demonstrations and carry the biggest Trieste is ours placard – him, of all people!
*
I laughed at that anecdote again as I parked in front of the house. The muezzin’s call came up from town once more. I didn’t have much time – this night was going to be short. I planned to read the peculiar mails again and try to find some clue in them. While reading, I’d help myself to some whisky: there’s nothing wrong with a man enjoying his work.
One day you open a mail and, whoom, you find out you’re a father. All your life you’ve refused every possibility of fatherhood – the very thought is repellent. You’re doing just fine, you think. You don’t have time for anything more and everyone else can just jump in the lake. Your liver is a write-off and every next bottle could kill you, if your heart doesn’t get you first. They’ve prescribed heart tablets but you don’t take them properly. You fervently hope the doctor was right when you asked: How much longer have I got? and he replied: With a lifestyle like that – a few years at best.
You’ll go for sure, but not in peace (not that you deserved it, but you hoped for it all the same). And then the twist: you get a mail and suddenly you’re a father. You of all people, who was overcome by despair and anger because of neighbourhood children toddling around all summer’s day on the terraces of their parents’ houses too close to yours, waddling about and tirelessly repeating their ga-ga-ga, which sufficed to evoke applause and ovations – at least from their parents – who always channelled all their interpretative potential into trying to tell who their unsightly child took after. You of all people, who was struck and horrified by the uniquely proud gait of expectant mothers, who with every step seemed to want to say: Look, I’ve fulfilled my function, I’ve justified my existence, I’m a mother. As if she’d written Anna Karenina rather than getting pregnant! As if she was going to deliver the ultimate explanation of human misfortune rather than just reproduce, as nature has done for thousands of years and will do after her, too. You of all people, who felt nausea around men who, with the help of the whole feeble-minded community, convinced themselves that their lives were meaningful when they became fathers; these were men who got married when they didn’t know what to do with themselves, and when they didn’t know what to do with the marriage – they had children, and later they didn’t know what to do with the children; in the end they died, but only after they’d become religious and turned for help to the world’s oldest breakdown assistance service: the Church. You of all people, who maintained that the most intelligent, sophisticated and sensitive people doubted, re-examined and repented: they bequeathed us art and philosophy, but not progeny. It was the others who multiplied. Creatives died in loneliness, while the others produced herds of offspring. Humankind was thus the product of the careful selection of the worst. Yes, you of all people, who said and believed these things.
When I first saw the woman who I’d eventually conceive Emmanuel with, fatherhood was the last thing on my mind. She strode into my office briskly and proudly, with an air of ceremony. Just like Dragan Vukotic came strolling in some twenty-five years later. Unlike her, he immediately offered me money: he threw an envelope full of large banknotes onto the table and delivered me a speech he’d obviously painstakingly prepared. He told me he had the means – money wasn’t an issue – but he expected me not only to find out who his brother’s killer was but also to catch him before the police did. I was to bring the killer to him, and he’d mete out justice himself. There was no doubt in my mind that he meant what he said. And from what I knew about this unpleasant new client, it wouldn’t be the first time. One of his building sites would be the tomb for his brother’s killer: he’d throw their body into the foundations and cover it with concrete, or he’d brick them into the attic of one of his buildings. He was a tireless developer, as if he hadn’t already raised dozens of buildings and earned tens of millions of euros. Why do people who have fifty million to their name work hard to earn another? I remember thinking as I slipped the bulging envelope into the pocket of my jacket.
She didn’t offer money, but she offered what I desired much more – herself. And she did so in a stylish, discreet way by telling she had a lot to offer. The next morning she woke up in my bed. As soon as she opened her eyes, she woke me too. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten: you have a lot of work today,’ she said, and turfed me out of my own house.
I went into town, had two or three drinks at the Port and then got down to business. The case seemed simple: one of those leading to an explanation which ultimately no one is satisfied with. The explanation of the death of loved ones is usually quite banal, and for some reason people find that hard to accept. I’ve never had any problem with banality. For me it’s always meant convenience.
Her father had disappeared and it was my job to find him. He was in love with this town and had spent his summer holidays here for thirty years already, she told me. In fact, he lived in Ulcinj for more than half the year: he arrived as early as April, when the shad fishing season begins, and went straight from the plane to Bojana River, where his fishing crew was waiting. He didn’t leave until December, after the mullet season. At first she thought he might have drowned because he’d been known to go out in heavy sea with a sirocco blowing: she imagined he’d tried to return to the river but the swell capsized him in the estuary. But his boat was moored by his cabin and all the fishing gear was there. She checked his bank account: he’d withdrawn a certain amount before he disappeared, but nothing significant.
I went out on Bojana River by boat and had a talk with fishermen who’d known him. What they had to tell me was of no help: A peaceable sort of guy, great to have as a neighbour. We were so surprised when he disappeared, who’d have thought – but there you go, these things happen. So I puttered down to his cabin. I’d forgotten to bring the key, so I forced the door.
Inside it was like a pharmacy: spick and span and orderly. Jars stood in file like German fusiliers at inspection. The bed was made and tucked in, barracks-style. His clothes were all on coat-hangers in the wardrobe and he’d tied sprigs of lavender to them to keep away the moths. That was a first warning sign for me – I don’t trust orderly people. You can only expect the worst of someone who worries about things so diligently. I decided to search the cabin.
When I found photographs of a boy in the sleeping bag under the bed, I realised where this was heading. The boy was only ten, with black hair and a face full of birthmarks. The photos showed him naked on a sandy beach – they’d obviously forced him to pose. One of the photos had a phone number on the back: it began with the calling code for Albania.
If the old pervert had gone to Albania, there was only one person who could have taken him there: Johnny. After a few years in Germany, Johnny had come back with a hoary, moneyed Teutoness and a powerboat which was the fastest on the coast at the time. The old woman died soon afterwards and left all her money to him; Johnny soon drank and whored it away, and now all he had left from the whole German episode was the powerboat – still fast enough to smuggle goods and people to Albania.
I found him sleeping at the dock, thoroughly drunk, with his head on the table. After I’d poured a bucket of water over him and slapped him around a bit, he was ready to cooperate.
‘I’ve chucked a case of beer and a bottle of Scotch into your boat so you know I value your labour,’ I told him.
‘Gimme me a cigarette and tell me what you want,’ he said.
‘The German who disappeared two weeks ago: what do you know?’
‘Five hundred deutschmarks and I know everything.’
We met at three hundred. And it was worth every cent of it. You don’t hear a story like that every day, even when you’re in my line of work. As I’d assumed, Johnny had taken the paedophile to Albania. Pimps were waiting there and took them to a house by the beach, where boys were kept confined.
‘You know me, I’ve seen lot – thank God I’ve got a strong stomach, but that made even me feel sick,’ Johnny said. ‘I left him there and went back to the boat. Not five minutes had passed and I’d just opened a warm beer, when there was a commotion in front of the house. Then shots rang out. A lot of shots, several magazines full, I’m pretty sure it was a Yugoslav service pistol. Stuff the old man, I thought, and started up the powerboat to move away from the coast a bit. Through my binoculars I saw a man with an Albanian skullcap coming out of the house, carrying a boy in his arms. Two women ran out of the undergrowth towards them. I turned the steering wheel and stepped on the gas. Fortunately the old man had paid me in advance.
I stayed there with Johnny until evening. We didn’t talk. What was there to say? We just drank beer after beer and watched the river flowing by. I didn’t feel like going home, where she was waiting for me, impatient to hear news of her father who she seemed to truly love.
She was a wonderful girl and didn’t deserve to find out. As soon as I heard Johnny’s story I decided I’d lie to her. And I did. For a month I told her: ‘I’m onto something,’ then ‘I’m making good progress,’ and finally, ‘I think I’m really close now.’ She became more and more vulnerable and would burst into tears ten times a day without visible reason. The whole thing had become an ordeal for her. I had to put an end to it and was just waiting for the right moment.
One morning I woke up and thought how happy I was with her. I kissed her hair and leaned over to whisper a few affectionate words. The time had come – I broke the news to her at breakfast that her father was dead. I told her that he’d been fishing near the far arm of the Bojana River delta. He must have strayed into Albanian waters. Border guards came and hailed out to him in Albanian. He answered in German…They shot him. He was buried there, in Albania – the grave could be anywhere.
‘I knew it,’ she repeated through her tears.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Now you’ll have to find a way to continue your life. I presume you’ll be going soon: you must have a lot of commitments waiting at home.’
She looked at me as if I’d stabbed her in the back. When I returned from work that evening she was gone. She didn’t leave a farewell letter, only an envelope with money and the message: For the extra costs.
As it turned out, she also left me a son, who’d send me mails a quarter of a century later. Now I stood at the computer printing those texts, although I knew his fantasies wouldn’t help me in the investigation. Before I left the house, I checked I had everything: key, mails, revolver and bottle. I’d left my phone in the car and could hear it ringing. It was Dragan Vukotić. He wanted to know if I had any news for him.
‘Not yet, but soon,’ I said.
‘And when might soon be, seeing as we won’t be around tomorrow?’ he snarled.
‘Listen, I’m onto a hot trail and following it like a bloodhound,’ I told him. ‘I think it’s just a matter of hours until I nail him down.’
‘I hope you do, for your sake – I’ll have my revenge, in this world or the next.’
The fellow’s name was Lazar – I learned that from the Vukotićs’ neighbours. It was incomprehensible to me how a police force, even one as ignorant and apathetic as ours, could overlook such an important detail. They probably gave up on their work, which they were never terribly motivated about anyway, and laid down their batons and pistols to sit and wait like so many others. But not me: I, with my Protestant work ethic, have always felt lonely amidst Balkan irresponsibility and laziness.
So his name was Lazar and he worked for the Vukotićs as a caretaker. The neighbours weren’t able to tell me when the Vukotićs first employed him, nor where he originally came from. And they didn’t know, of course, where he’d gone after killing the family which had accepted him. ‘The Vukotićs led a secluded life: we didn’t feel welcome there, and so we never dropped in,’ they told me.
As soon as I found out about Lazar, every piece of the puzzle fell into place. The Vukotićs had opened up for him because they knew him. He robbed them because he knew the house: as caretaker he had access to every corner of every room. He’d probably discovered they had a safe while repairing the floorboards in the living room. It was presumably then that he conceived the crime he ultimately committed. Only one thing had me fazed: the safe which my son speaks about in his mails. Inspector Jovanović didn’t mention a safe when I bribed him to tell me everything he knew about the case. So now I phoned him. He answered, drunk and despairing.
‘Listen, mate, I think you forgot to tell me one important detail about the Vukotić murders,’ I reproached him. ‘Was there a safe at the house and had it been broken into?’
‘Yes,’ he mumbled and replaced the receiver.
Good, I said to myself: I have a suspect who had a motive. Now I just have to find the scumbag. The way things are going, I’ll still manage to get tanked up tonight.
The snow seemed to be falling more thickly now. A right bloody blizzard! Even with the high beam on, I could hardly see two metres in front of me.
Lines of refugees struggled past by the roadside. When the snow first came in June, people still hoped it was a practical joke of nature. But then the sea rose and carried away the joke. When day dawned, the foundations of the hotels and planned skyscrapers on Velika Plaža beach, hyped up to be a copy of the bluish, futuristic towers of Abu Dhabi, were under water. A few days later the sea swamped a village of weekenders up behind the beach. Ugly, illegally built houses sank in the swirling waters as the sea took over the responsibility of the building inspectorate. Whoever fled when the first waves were lapping their houses was able to take a few belongings with them. The optimists copped it bad, as usual: they’d thought the worst-case scenario was far-fetched, so they eventually had to be evacuated by helicopter from the roofs of their houses. People struggled to the town in makeshift rafts and boats and kissed the ground when they landed, as if they’d discovered a new continent. But the water kept surging further inland until it also flooded the suburbs. Camps were organised in hilly parts of town for the people who’d been forced to leave their homes, as all reports in all languages said in the same pathos-ridden tone. These folk now plodded the town like zombies in search of food. The shops had long been closed because supplying a town surrounded by water was impracticable, so the impertinent starvelings forced their way into houses and tried to steal food. Contrary to all international conventions on the rights of refugees, the residents shot them and threw their bodies out onto the road so cars would run over them and hungry dogs tear them up.
They announced on the radio that there’d been another fifty-centimetre rise in the sea level globally – they used precisely that word. In Ulcinj itself, the water reached all the way up to the town council building. They took the opportunity to remind listeners that the Bojana River sometimes used to overflow its banks in winter months before the dam on the Drin River was built, with the floodwater coming all the way up to where the post-earthquake council building was built. The studio guest was an environmentalist, an idiot who claimed this was yet more proof of the theory that all of nature was in equilibrium.
‘The water has returned to where it once was, you see, because water has a memory, just like the planet remembers,’ he said with thrill in his voice.
‘But what’s happening now, in your view?’ the compère wanted to know. ‘Where is this wave of cold coming from? And these floods?’
‘I don’t know,’ the ecologist admitted, ‘but I appeal to listeners not to be taken in by stories about a catastrophe, because one thing is certain: there is a rational explanation.’
Of course, just like there’s an irrational one. As usual, all we lack is an explanation which might explain things.
‘And now to recap on today’s main news,’ the anchorman recited: People all around the planet are awaiting the end of the world tonight.
Then the international news editor took the microphone. Among the mass of trivia he read, a story from Izmir caught my attention. A man with a deranged son had decided to clean up an overgrown and neglected olive grove. It had once belonged to a prominent dervish who taught that the olive tree brings people closer to God.
Although he was getting on in years, the man worked day after day in the olive grove. It was close to the sea but far from the road. The only way up to the dervish’s host of olive trees was along steep, narrow paths, over dry-stone walls and through thick scrub. But the man didn’t mind. The more effort he invested in the task he’d set himself, the sooner God would heed his prayers and heal his son, or so he thought.
When the young man asked if he could go with him and help with cleaning up the olive grove, his father concluded that God had heard his prayers and taken pity on him. Ever since childhood, the young man had lived in the confines of his room, alone with his attacks of madness and the medication which didn’t help. His father naturally interpreted the wish to join him in this good work as a first sign of his son’s recovery.
They set off together for the olive grove one morning. That evening, the son returned home alone.
The police inquest revealed that he had killed his father and thrown his body into the sea.
When they asked him why he did it, he said God had ordered him to.