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

other night, but Amir kept gripping the steering wheel hard, with the fat barrel of the M48 pointing greyly forward between them. The American liked him better than Enko. He never asked for advances.
    They climbed the stairs. Vesna’s apartment was very crowded that night. A tall man was shouting: How can we stop them with fifty rounds? Fifty rounds, just fifty rounds!
    Vesna rushed up to him and touched his hand very gently.— Don’t worry about it now, brother, she said.
    The man stared at her. Vesna led him to a chair.
    Something almost gentle came into Amir’s face as he gazed at Vesna. He leaned his rifle inside the closet.
    As soon as Vesna moved to another guest, the drunk stood up, muttering: Fifty fucking rounds—
    Shut up and give me a cigarette.
    Where’s Enko?
    With Bald Man, and you should be, too. Hey, you, Mr. Fifty Rounds! What’s your name?
    Kambor. Who are you?
    Don’t you know who Bald Man is?
    Of course.
    Then you’d better learn who I am. I’m Muhamed. I’m in Bald Man’s squad. If you need ammunition, go to Bald Man. He’s got so many more rifle grenades—
    Not for me, for everyone! The men on the frontline with fifty rounds—
    Why aren’t you on the frontline, asshole? Amir, brother, what do you have for me?
    Amir gave the man a hundred Deutschemarks. The American went to greet Vesna, who smiled at him with a brilliance in whose meaning he could almost believe. Awkwardly he asked how she was, and she replied that a neighbor had been killed, not a close friend, but as it turned out someone whom she missed more than she would have guessed.
    How did it happen?
    She was queuing for water at the brewery, when a shell . . .
    I’m sorry.
    And the funny thing is that she was Serbian! Well, at least we’re all equals here.
    Vesna, have you met Bald Man?
    Oh, yes! He’s always smiling. He’s good for his neighbors and friends. He’s good with the people that he’s good with.
    Such as Amir and Enko?
    Yes, reliable men like them.
    The American sat drinking and listening, sometimes recognizing that someone had said something very important which out of respect for them all he would not write down in their presence but do his best to remember exactly (the night silently torn open by a faraway shell-flash which could not keep the night’s flesh from cohering again); he assumed that none of them knew why what they said could matter to other people and times; after all, how could it be of more than temporary value to them themselves who already understood the shells? Perhaps after ten or twenty years, should they survive so long, they might grow sufficiently fortunate as to forget the significance of what people said in such a situation, and then, if he had written it down and they discovered and read it, it might mean something new to them, and even lend them something like fulfillment.
    Presently the poet found him, and with relief those two shy men sat down together to enumerate the beauties of the Slavic woman. The American thought that his friend seemed sad, perhaps even by nature. They drank together.
    And how was the frontline? asked the poet.
    Not bad. And how was it at home?
    How can I complain? When the Nazis were here, my grandparents used to eat beech bark.
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    Now, Olga Ilic, the poet began to explain, when they accused her of collaboration with Bulgaria, she was imprisoned and then she experienced a nervous crisis, because she was a very sensitive woman. Sosensitive and so beautiful! Vesna resembles her in both these qualities, I believe.
    Would you say that Olga Ilic was kind?
    You know, I feel as if she could have been my wife, or maybe my sister. During the Hitler war she lived in a suburb of Belgrade, bombed out of her house and terrified that an American or British shell would get her. Don’t you think she was one of us?
    When the next shell exploded, not so far away, a young woman went rigid as if