Last Stories and Other Stories (9780698135482) Read Online Free PDF

crook my right arm around his neck, and then if Enko helps me . . .
    Hey, Enko, said the American.
    Shut up, said Enko.
    Enko, I hope your finger’s on the trigger guard.
    Fuck you.
    Just don’t shoot me in the back when we drive over a bump. Unless you do it on purpose.
    Enko laughed.
    Amir rounded a corner on three wheels, and they sped into a tunnel lined with sandbags, already braking now, and parked in the garage of some partially ruined building.
    Listen, said Enko. We’re going through that hole in the wall. The Chetniks can see us there, so we’re going to run up the hill about two hundred meters.
    Okay.
    So that was what they did, the American journalist stumbling once, topheavy under the weight of his vest, and nobody shot at them. After that it was still only mid-morning there behind the wall of sandbags where half a dozen men, some in the uniform of the old National Army, stood smoking cigarettes while another half dozen loaded munitions into the military police truck not far from last night’s shards of broken glass which were something like new-fallen snow. Enko clashed his fist against several of theirs in turn, while Amir stood expressionless, perhaps smiling behind his sunglasses. A grey and ghastly look was in their faces as they listened for the shells.
    They were friendly to the American, because in those days his government considered Bosnian Muslims immaculate victims, hence allies to rescue; in later years it would consider all Muslims to be potential terrorists. So they gave him colorful interviews while he wrote diligently in his notebook.
    A militiaman showed him a paddle studded with nails and said: You know what we call this? We call this
Chetnik teacher.
    The American knew enough to laugh heartily, and after that they liked him even better.
8
    You know, you missed a big story, said an eyes-alight French reporter to the very young British journalist whose handler was Enko’s enemy. Four French was wounded last night, and one Egyptian!
    Buy you two a drink? the American offered.
    Very funny. Find your own story.
    I will, said the American, excited because he and Amir were about to go to Vesna’s. Enko would come later; he was with Jasmina.
    Amir accepted one whiskey and no more. He liked to drive carefully. He said: I think you like Vesna.
    Sure. Do you?
    A real Bosnian woman.
    Bosnian women are very pretty.
    Good.
    Last night Marko was telling me his theories about Slavic beauty. He’s fond of an actress named Olga Ilic—
    Who?
    Olga Ilic. He said she died in 1945.
    Forget what Marko told you. That’s just some dead Serbian bitch. Are you ready?
    Sure. By the way, do you think Vesna minds when I stay over there?
    She understands. You are a guest, and a friend.
    Thank you. You’re all my friends—
    He paid the waiter, and they went to the car. It was another point of difference between him and them that so many of them lacked bulletproof vests, and his was more invulnerable than most of theirs, although that made it proportionately heavier. The best model he had ever seen was manufactured for members of the Warsaw Pact. It had a collar to protect the carotid and subclavian arteries. His own went only as far as it went. Amir sat in the driver’s seat, very slowly smoking a cigarette, staring straight ahead. An automatic rifle chortled far away. The American understood that Amir was listening to the night and forming the best plan that he could. He waited quietly. Presently Amir started the car.
    They rounded the corner rapidly and then Amir stamped on the gas as they traversed the sniper’s field of fire, and the American looked up intothe four window-rows of the building across the street but they were black and grey without any revelations, and the car whipped safely round the next corner, and Amir, slowing, said: Someday we’ll get that sonofabitch.— They came into the Stari Grad more sedately than when Enko had driven the