When it was time to go I got out the money and gave it to her. I had to kneel down in front of the single candle in the middle of the room to read the denominations, so everyone was watching me and I could hear their laughter hiss down eerily into nothingness. The shadow of my hand and of the bills trembled monstrous on the sniper curtain. It smeared their faces with darkness.
She wouldn't take it. — You understand nothing, she kept saying. Please, please.
So I understand nothing, I said. Take it. I can live without it.
No, no. Please.
Finally I gave up. But as I went out, preparing to descend with the other guests those cold and utterly dark flights of stairs, remembering the rotten bannister at the bottom and then the terrible danger when we had to open the front door and run out into the open street; as the militiaman shouted in rage and pain because he'd gotten drunk and done something to break open the wound in his arm where the bullet still lay grinding against the bone and which was now bleeding through his sleeve; as the host called to me, laughing: She wants to
* In 1992, 200 DM would have been about U.S. $120.
Whenever I could find a phone that was working, I tried to call the woman who had said that things were too difficult to explain, but I never got through. Finally I reached her on the night before I was going to leave Sarajevo.
Are you all right? she said. That was how everyone seemed to greet each other.
A little shrapnel in my hand, but I wasn't hurt. And you?
A grenade came into our neighbor's house, she said quietly. It was dreadful.
But you, you're all right?
Yes.
We didn't say anything to each other for a moment, and then I said: I'm probably leaving tomorrow. The BBC said I could ride along in their armored car. I guess it depends on whether the road to Kisjeliak is safe.
I don't think there was a silence after I had said that, but my guilt about being free to leave has built a silence over time that drowned whatever she actually said. Every day I'd have liked to call her and ask: Are you still alive? Are you all right? But of course no one could call Sarajevo.
Bleeding brackish droplets which his skin had borrowed from the artificial lagoon, he parted from his wife, she bound for sun, he for shade. They had not seen the giant turtles. He was almost dry now. His towel was stretched out beside the farthest boat. Before lying down he made certain that his watch had not been stolen. He had never had anything stolen at the beach but he continually expected something bad to happen. Coddling his little unhatched egg of anxiety, he could not see or think of anything else until he had done this. His wife had once bought him a very expensive watch which had been stolen in a hotel. The watch he had now was not expensive, so his vigilance must be some irrelevant suffix of guilt. Anyhow it had not been stolen. He lay comfortably alone. Then he noticed that a Japanese girl had pitched her chair next to him. She too was a subject of the shade kingdom, it seemed. Her husband lay on his belly in the sunny sand, twenty feet away. The girl wore a black bathing suit. She had long slender pale arms, thighs as slender as bones.
He looked into the distance, where his wife basked almost at the water's edge, reading the self-help book that promised to save their marriage.
The Japanese girl sat watching her husband with the utmost attention. Whenever he turned or stretched, she padded down to his claim of sand and knelt beside him, gazing into his face. Then she'd return to her chair in the grass by the rental boats and sit again, watching him patiendy.
The long black locks of her hair twisted down her back and shoulders like beautiful roots. Later he would remember the sharp pelvic bone straining to break through her thigh-flesh, but for the moment he saw only her hair.
Her face was blurred as if in a dream. The way she sat, he could see only her profile, and the dark hair spun itself about her cheek like steam.
He waited for her to turn her head. He said to himself: If she turns her head, that means that she and I were born for each other. But if my wife turns her head, that means that my wife and I belong together.
He waited. Any moment now the girl would turn, and he'd see her face.
But without ever looking at him, she got up and went to her husband once more. Then she returned, slipped on her sundress and went away. Her husband lay still.
He looked at his wife, who at precisely that instant turned her head and smiled at him. He ached with dismay.
