War Baby (34 page)

‘Fashion,’ Pavlovic repeated. ‘Now Croatia is fashion. Now war is fashion. Yes?’ The doctor’s hollow-eyed accusation hung in the air between them.

I’m not here to trade on others’ misfortunes.

Yes, you are.

‘So, you are a fashion photographer also?’

‘I’m a journalist.’

‘Croatia has so many journalist now. Maybe one day United Nation will give journalist their own republic. Why not? They give the Serb, they give the Croat, why not the journalist?’ Her hands were still shaking. ‘I am sorry. Not your fault.’ She rubbed her eyes. ‘How can he ask to take picture of this boy so all the world can watch him suffer? Will the whole world then help him escape this war? Whole world find him new father, new mother?’

‘If the world knows what is happening here, perhaps it will make the governments do something.’

The doctor’s mouth creased into a tight, bitter smile. ‘You are very young. You will learn.’ She stubbed out the cigarette on the ground with her heel. ‘Not good to smoke cigarettes. My husband always tells me this.’

‘Where is your husband?’

Pavlovic ignored the question. ‘But it is not a good time for me to give up the smoking. You are a friend of Mr Ryan?’

Jenny hesitated. ‘We go way back.’

‘This is very good man, I think.’

A very good man? The words echoed inside her head.

Ryan appeared in the doorway. ‘Time to go,’ he said.

Jenny turned to Pavlovic, tried to find the right words, but there were none. ‘Goodbye,’ she said.

‘Stay alive,’ Pavlovic said to her, and went back inside.

‘What happened to her husband?’ Jenny asked Ryan as they drove away.

‘He’s dead.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘He was fighting with the Croat army at Osijek. He went out on night patrol with three others. They found their bodies the next morning.’ Ryan hesitated, imparting the last piece of information with something like embarrassment. ‘There were signs they had been tortured before they were killed.’

There was silence in the car.

‘She must really hate the Serbs,’ Jenny said.

‘Not really. Dr Pavlovic is a Serb herself. Pull over here,’

They were in a small village called Vojnovar, had just passed through a roadblock manned by Croatian militia sporting a variety of weapons.

‘What are we doing?’ Jenny asked.

‘Easy to cross the front line without even knowing it. Sean Ryan’s golden rule: If you’re going to take a risk, know what the risk is. I’m going to sweet-talk the local constabulary. See if this place has a McDonald’s, will you?’

* * *

The police headquarters was a sad and grey building opposite the post office; but unlike the post office it had not received a Serb shell through its roof.

A uniformed policeman sitting behind a grey steel desk looked up suspiciously from his paperwork. Ryan noticed that the old red star on the cap and shoulder flashes had been replaced by the
sahovnica
, an armorial shield with a red and white chessboard pattern, the medieval coat of arms of Croatia, the symbol of the Ustashas during World War II. Its use had been banned for forty-five years and now it was everywhere.

Ryan took out his passport, his UNPROFOR accreditation, his Australian driving licence, his international driving licence, a library ticket for the Mosman Park library in Sydney which had expired in 1963, as well as a laminated membership card from a video library in Kensington in London, and laid them all on the desktop.

‘CNN,’ Ryan said.

The policeman shook his head, bemused.

‘CNN, New York!’

Nothing.

Ryan decided to try another tack. ‘BBC!’

‘BBC Lonn-donn!’

‘Yeah, BBC, Lonn-donn,’ Ryan repeated. He didn’t know why none of the big American networks had the same clout. And his own network might as well be the Venezuela Radio Service for all the weight it carried here.

‘Lonn-don,’ the man repeated. ‘Liver-pool. Manch-est-er.’ ‘Yeah, Manchester,’ Ryan said, leaping at the opportunity to find common ground. ‘Manchester United.’

‘Manch-est-er! Bobby Charl-tonn!’

That ages you, Ryan thought. ‘Bobby Charlton!’ he agreed.

The man beamed, the conversation now going well. ‘Bobby Charl-tonn!’

‘George Best.’

This time Ryan really hit the jackpot. The man hooted with laughter and, forming a ring with the finger and thumb of his left hand, moved the index finger of the other in and out in the universal symbol for fornication. ‘George Best!’

Ryan tried desperately to think of some Yugoslav soccer teams but the only one that came to mind was Partizan Belgrade, and he thought it might not be a good tactical move to mention them. But with a rapport now established, he produced a map of the area from his jacket pocket and laid it on the counter. ‘Chetnik?’ he enquired.

‘George Best - Chetnik?’

‘No, forget about George Best, for Christ’s sake. Just Chetnik.’ The policeman frowned. He took a biro from his uniform jacket and started to write on the map.

* * *

There was an etiquette to be observed at roadblocks.

As Dragan slowed the car, Ryan wound down his window, put his passport on the dashboard with his hands either side of it. ‘Don’t try and get out of the car until they ask you to,’ he said to Jenny. ‘Keep your hands where they can see them and don’t make any sudden moves. We entered the Middle Ages three roadblocks back.’

The militiaman who waved them down was dressed in camouflage fatigues and a black bowler hat, and had an ancient Mauser hunting rifle slung from his shoulder. He kept the barrel of the weapon pointed through the window as he leaned in, his face contorted into a scowl of contempt. There was several days’ growth of beard on his face, and Jenny could smell his breath from the back seat.
Sjlivovica
, plum brandy.

There was a hurried exchange between the man and the driver.

Jenny looked out of the window. The checkpoint was actually just a few sandbags decorated with a looted shopfront mannequin dressed in Croat uniform. Some soldiers lounged against it, flicking the safeties on their weapons on and off.

Ryan took the Marlboro from the dashboard and offered the packet to the militiaman. He accepted one with bad grace while he examined their passports.

‘He’s reading it upside down,’ Jenny whispered.

‘He’s so drunk he can’t even focus on the photographs,’ Ryan said, still smiling and offering him some of their chocolate.

The man barked another question in Serbo-Croat. Dragan translated this and Ryan shrugged and grinned. ‘What did he say?’ Jenny asked.

‘He wants to know if we’ve got any money,’ Ryan answered.

Dragan leaned out of the window and there was another sharp exchange.

‘Now what’s going on?’

Dragan turned around. ‘I told him you were just three stupid Belgians and an idiot Chinese. If I told them you were from an American television company they would think you were rich and we’d be here for hours.’

The militiaman kept the Mauser pointing at the car while he discussed the dilemma with his friends. Ryan swore under his breath. ‘He’s had a big fight with Mrs Bogtrotter-vic, or he’s bored, or he’s looking for an easy way to make some fast dollars. So he’s dug the old man’s Second World War rifle out of the barn and come down the road with his mates to entertain himself for a few hours.’

The militiaman returned and tossed the passports though the open window.

Dragan was white. He seemed relieved that it was over. Only Ryan did not appear concerned. ‘Ask him if the road ahead is safe,’ he asked Dragan.

Dragan seemed amazed by the naïveté of the question but he repeated it. ‘Dali put seguran napred?’

The guard grinned, revealing bad teeth, and his mates laughed uproariously.

‘What does he say?’ Helmut asked Dragan.

‘He says sure it’s safe. And who’s going to miss a few Belgians and a Chink if it isn’t?’

* * *

Ryan checked his map. ‘According to the local cops we’re still five miles from the front lines.’

The road had deteriorated to a mud track. The woods closed in around them; thick mist drifting through pines dusted with snow. The sound of shellfire was ominously close. They had not passed another car since they had left Vojnovar.

‘Where are we, Dragan?’

Dragan pulled the car over to the side of the road. He stared at the map, and shook his head. ‘I do not know this road,’ he said.

‘We should have reached this village by now.’ Ryan pointed to his map. ‘Gravina.’

‘Are we lost?’ Jenny said.

‘No, we’re not lost. We just haven’t got a fucking clue where we are.’

‘Should we go back?’ Jenny said.

‘Shit, no,’ Ryan said. ‘Not until we’ve got some film I can use.’ He seemed relaxed. She clenched her fists in her lap.

They drove on another two kilometres.

‘Here we go,’ Ryan said. He read the sign beside the road. ‘Zenac. Zenac? It’s not even marked on here.’

Some red tiled roofs appeared through the mist. They drove through the main street of a small village; Dragan avoided a dead pig lying in the middle of the road. A house had its whole front wall blasted away, leaving the interior exposed like some giant doll’s house.

The village appeared deserted, but then Ryan spotted a woman pegging out her washing in the garden of a neat detached house at the end of the street. An old man was washing his car in the driveway.

In the distance they heard the sharp crack-crack of sniper fire.

Ryan got out of the car with Dragan and went over to the old man. He had on an old woolen jacket over a threadbare brown jersey, and what teeth he had left were brown and crooked like old tombstones. He looked up when they approached, but the old woman ignored them completely, and continued with her chores.

Dragan introduced them and bid the man good day. The man returned the greeting with the same air of casual politeness.

‘Ask him if there are Croat soldiers up ahead,’ Ryan said.

There was a long exchange in Serbo-Croat. ‘He says he doesn’t know anything about soldiers,’ Dragan said. ‘He says yesterday some bastard shelled the village and everyone left. He lived right through the Second World War and he can’t be bothered with this little gang war. He just wishes everyone would fuck off.’

‘That was what he said?’

‘His words.’

They went back to the car.

‘What are we going to do?’ Jenny asked.

‘I don’t get a good feeling,’ Dragan said. ‘I think we should go back.’

Ryan nodded. ‘This time I think you may be right.’

Helmut grunted. ‘
Scheiss
! No balls!’

Ryan rounded on him, and for the first time that day he looked angry. ‘I was taking pictures of this shit when you were still standing around catwalks with a Kodak Brownie, trying to see up Claudia Schiffer’s skirt. One thing I learned was to listen to my instincts. It’s why I’m still around to take crap from people like you.’

Helmut stopped smiling for the first time that day. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘But first I take the pictures.’

‘Want to do a stand-up?’ Radar asked.

‘Not here.’

‘Go on and get whatever you want. Don’t be long,’ Ryan said to him.

Helmut jumped out of the car. Radar followed him down the street, slipping on his headphones, the radio gear suspended on a strap over his shoulder.

Jenny climbed out of the Lada and looked at Ryan. ‘Are we in danger here?’

‘That fat German bastard’s in danger if he pushes me any more.’

Jenny grabbed her camera from the front seat. ‘While I’m here, I suppose.’

She crossed the street. The sniper fire had stopped and the silence was eerie. She walked slowly down the street, spooked by the sound of her own breathing. She stopped outside a house with a gaping hole in its front wall. The room inside appeared to be hardly damaged; there was a framed picture of Tito on a wall, and a cup of tea, frozen solid, in the middle of the dining table. A pin-up photograph of Tom Cruise lay soggy in the mud at her feet.

She focused the camera and clicked the shutter. She went further along the street, running off frames of the dead pig, a looted shop. Ryan followed her.

‘Helmut’s taken a lot of film,’ she said.

Ryan shrugged.

‘You don’t think this is newsworthy?’

‘People being driven from their homes by war? I think it’s an outrage, but no, I don’t think it’s going to excite the editors back home. To make film really interesting you have to have people in it.’

She put down her camera. ‘If you were me, what would you do?’

‘You’re supposed to be a journalist, not a photographer.’

‘Maybe I’d like to be both.’

‘Well, I would have got that one of Tito through the hole in the bricks, same as you. I would have made sure I had his pompous expression right in the centre of the frame. But you missed the broken wedding photograph lying in the rubble. I would have taken it close enough so you could see their faces through the splintered glass. And I wouldn’t have wasted film on the pig.’

‘Why not?’

‘I didn’t like its expression.’

Jenny searched his face. ‘Was that a joke?’

‘It could have been. But you didn’t laugh.’

She shook her head. ‘I can’t work you out.’

‘I’m a shit with a compassionate streak. If you don’t try and twist me to make me the other way round, I’m easy to figure out.’

‘Why does Uncle hate you so much?’

‘Spider? Has he ever told you he hated me?’

‘Not in those words.’

‘There you are, then. Now where’s my Teutonic mate?’

They both heard the sound at the same time; even Jenny recognized it for what it was, perhaps from the war movies she had seen on television, or from the evening news. She had never seen a tank at close quarters but the sound of the tracks in the mud in that cold and deathly silence was terrifying.

Ryan grabbed her arm. ‘The Croats don’t have tanks yet, if that answers your question.’

He pulled her towards one of the houses and they crouched down behind a wall. The squeal and rumble of the tracks was getting louder, but as yet they could not see the tank. Ryan looked back. Dragan was standing next to the Lada.

‘Come on, sport, get off the street, for Christ’s sake,’ he said under his breath.

Dragan hesitated a moment, then ran down a laneway between two of the bombed-out buildings.

A few moments later the huge metal monster rounded the corner, the double-headed Serbian eagle emblazoned in a crest on the turret. The cannon swiveled, looking for a target. They were close enough to hear the whirr of the machinery.

‘A Russian T-72,’ Ryan whispered.

It stopped, turned and clanked down the street towards them. The abandoned Lada was directly in its path.

‘What should we do?’ she said.

‘Nothing. They may be looking for targets. It’s important we don’t give them one.’

The tank commander may have been looking for targets or perhaps just a little fun. He did not deviate, sent the tank clanking and screaming right over the top of the Lada, leaving it a crumpled and twisted wreck.

Ryan peered over the wall. ‘There goes Dragan’s no-claim bonus.’

He pulled her to her feet. They ran across the rubble of bricks and blackened timbers and out through the back of the house.

* * *

They found Helmut and Radar sheltering behind a broken wall. Helmut’s eyes were like soup plates.

‘The car is fucked!’

Ryan pulled Jenny down beside him.

‘What are we going to do?’ Radar said.