Read Online Last Stories and Other Stories (9780698135482) by William T. Vollmann - Free Book Online Page A

shotglass for the measure, then poured into a water glass. Careful journalist that he was, the American wrote down this detail; and then he looked into all the faces, wondering how they differed from the faces of his interviewees who boiled tea on the landing where the snipers could not see, feeding the fire with cross-slats from a broken chair, their faces hard and dark.
    Some men in camouflage stood outside exchanging Hitler salutes. They were drinking slivovitz or
loža
from the look of it, so they must have brought it with them; that lovely pure plum-fire taste nearly seemed to rise up in his nostrils as he watched. This made him crave another drink, so he had one.
    At the next table, couples sat around a green bottle and a purple thermos, laughing, and at any instant a shell could come in and make them into what he had seen and smelled at the morgue that morning. He tried to smell
loža
again, but the smell of unrefrigerated corpses now lived in his nose. He wondered whether or not to write this down.
    Enko, who had sensibly refused to enter the morgue, presently returned alone, militiaman to the heart of him, in his bandanna and sunglasses; he was more cold and harsh the longer the American knew him—the veriest personification of a gun—but now he stood on the stairs smiling.
    Yes indeed, Bald Man had arrived, big and muscular, in camouflage pants, with the new Sig Sauer pistol in his web belt, and a walkie-talkie; his white T-shirt said: Armija Rep. BiH Policija . There was a blackhaired girl on either side of him, and out in the courtyard stood his fighters, as straight as the packs of American cigarettes on the glass shelf. He bought everybody in the bar a drink and then left.— He could tear your head off with his hands, said Enko admiringly.
    I’d like to know more about him, said the American, opening his notebook.
    I might be able to get you an interview, said Enko, as coyly as a high school girl at a dance.
    What’s the bravest thing he ever did? asked the American, seeking to give pleasure with this question.
    Getting out two wounded men by himself, under fire from two anti-machine guns at twenty to thirty yards, from No Man’s Land.
    That’s very impressive.
    He was one of the guys in the neighborhood sportsmen’s association before the war. People loved him. The only question people wondered was, when will he get elected as leader? He got us guns, machine guns. People came and said: I want to fight with you. Six hundred men would die for him.
    You know him pretty well, I guess. What else do you want me to learn?
    He loves the occasion when he has to catch snipers, but right now we’re not allowed to punish them, only exchange them. One time he was chasing a Serbian sniper for four hours. This Serb had killed ten of our guys. The SDS * paid him five hundred Deutschemarks per kill. Bald Man was alone; he had to climb a skyscraper, they wounded him, but the sniper surrendered.
    Very heroic.
    I told Bald Man how you said that all the Chetniks are murderers. That might help your case.
    Thanks for thinking about me, Enko.
    Some HOS * irregulars drove by and Enko gave them the Nazi salute.— Great fighters, he said.
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    Vesna had been drinking, as had he, so he said: Sweetheart, will you be my human shield?
    If you don’t cut my throat afterward, darling! Oh, Enko, there you are—
    The American turned. The poor poet was glaring at him, and he thought: Who am I, who have not suffered as he has, to threaten his one one-sided love?— And then hefurther thought, as if for the first time: I could be killed tomorrow as easily as he. More easily, in fact, since I’m at the frontline—
    Accordingly, he wished to flirt with Vesna some more. Instead, he flirted with Dragica, who had no use for him (the night sky flushing with bursts of fire), after which he questioned the poet about Olga Ilic until the poet was mollified. A smiling fighter carefully wrote in the