Lie in the Dark Read Online Free PDF Page A

Also to avail himself of his mother’s cooking. With fresh meat and produce having virtually disappeared, she was one of those resourceful cooks who still managed some variety—pies made of rice, “French fries” shaped from a corn meal paste, and garden snails, soaked overnight then pan-fired with wild herbs. But the price for a fuller stomach was his mother’s temper, vast and explosive, and Vlado figured there must have been another blow up.
    “Your mother went off again?”
    “Yes. The worst ever. And this time she went for maximum damage, and got it. From my father, at least, and maybe from me, too.”
    “Well, give it a few days and it will blow over.”
    “Not this time,” Damir said, shaking his head with grim assurance. “All she did this time was tell me that everything I’d ever believed about my father was a lie.”
    Vlado wasn’t sure how to respond to that and, based on past experience, Damir wasn’t likely to offer anything more until he was ready and willing. So they walked on a few minutes more without a word, until Damir abruptly resumed.
    “All these years he’s told me what a hero he’d been during the last war. Fighting the Nazis with Tito’s Partisans. Hiding in caves and corn fields with the great man himself. Parachuting onto some mountain in the dark. Stories that I’ve heard a thousand times, and memorized every detail.”
    “Then your mother says that he’s been making some of it up, right? Which only makes him like every other man in this town over the age of 70. My uncle was the same way. Had us believing he was God’s gift to guerilla warfare. And who says your mother’s right anyway. She was just angry and saying whatever she could to make it hurt.”
    “My father says she’s right, that’s who. And it wasn’t just details she was talking about, or exaggerations. It was everything. The whole damn war. He hid out all right, with the neighbors next door, in their cellar. Looking after their two children. Once he came out to help move some cows—steal them is probably more like it—from the next village. The only gun his family had, he buried, hid it from his own father, and he never dug it up again. When my mother told me all this, he didn’t even try to pretend anymore. He confessed just like any other common criminal who knows the evidence is against him. Then he pulled his chair into a corner and did nothing but cry. His face was gray, like he was turning to ashes before our eyes. My father, the great Partisan, nothing but a scared peasant wiping babies’ noses in a root cellar.”
    Vlado worried that almost any response would seem weak, banal, but he tried anyway.
    “Even Tito lied about these things,” he said. “Now everyone says he was sick in a cave during what was supposed to have been his greatest battle.”
    “Yes, but Tito lied about everything. That was his job. This is my father, Vlado, and I’d always been a big enough fool to believe him. One of the reasons I wanted to be a big shot police investigator was so I might have half the adventures he did. When the war started, it’s why I almost quit to join the army, figuring it was my biggest chance yet for heroics. And if it hadn’t been for my mother crying and throwing a fit about it—and thank God she did—then I would have. Now, who knows.” He shrugged, kept walking. “So, here I am. Just taking a walk and doing my job. I’ll get over it, though.”
    But it was clear that for a while, at least, he wouldn’t. Even Damir’s customary medicine for a black mood—women and alcohol, taken liberally for one full evening—might be too weak to bring about a quick recovery. Vlado wondered what to say next, if anything. He tried out a few phrases in his head until his thoughts were interrupted by a gunshot, loud and close, echoing from across the river.
    Whenever a sniper opened fire in daylight, it flipped a switch on every nervous system within range, especially for anyone standing in an