Read Online The Small Boat of Great Sorrows by Dan Fesperman - Free Book Online Page B

little kiss, then they talked for a while, a lot of smiling with his little smirk. And later she said good-bye. I think she must have worked there. Then he walked back, same way he’d come. Same U-Bahn stations. Same stop at the end, and now I’m excited. Because now I know he’s going home.
    â€œHe walks into a house. A building like yours. And I was almost in a panic because I didn’t know what to do about the elevator. If I get on it with him he will recognize me, I am almost sure, or will see something in my eyes and know I’m crazy enough to kill him. I felt like I was about to lose him after all of this. And then, my lucky day. Movers are using one elevator. Loading some big piece of furniture. The other one is broken. Kaput. So he took the stairs, and I stayed one flight back, tiptoeing so I don’t make noise. I heard the door open at the fourth floor, and I ran up behind as it shut. I look down the hall in time to see a door closing behind him, and I get the number and check the name on the door and the mailbox. It was fake, of course, because I knew his real name. I had heard it many times, had even read it in the newspapers.
    â€œSo, then. What to do next? First I tell my friend Huso, because he was from Srebrenica. He’d run through the woods for four days, trying to get away from there. And he had seen this man Popovic with the crowds of Chetniks, putting people onto buses, calling men and boys out of the woods. Both his brothers went, but he kept running. He made it to Tuzla, but they never did. They got on the buses. No one ever saw them again.
    â€œHuso says all we need to do is tell the police. He says we tell them, then they tell the war crimes tribunal, then someone will come and arrest him. So we did that, the very next day. We waited two hours at the police station, and you would have thought we were thieves the way they acted. Like we were dirty and they just wanted to put us in jail or send us home, all the way back to Bosnia. But finally they took our information. They said they’d make a phone call.”
    â€œAnd then?” Vlado asked. By now the policeman in him was hooked. He swallowed some beer, not taking his eyes off Haris.
    â€œAnd then, nothing. Two weeks go by and I check on him every day, just to make sure he is still here. Every day he goes to see the same woman, but in different places. Sometimes he spends the night with her. Sometimes she comes back with him. He wears the same nice clothes and spends his marks like they mean nothing at all. But no one has come to arrest him or take him away. And Huso and I, we’ve started to think that no one ever will.”
    Haris paused, as if reluctant to continue. He asked for another whiskey, then looked straight at Vlado.
    â€œSo now you want me to do something about it,” Vlado said. “Because I used to be a policeman.”
    â€œBecause you know how these things are done. Making arrests. Bringing people to justice. You’ve been a part of that.”
    But it wasn’t the policeman in Vlado who answered. It was the husband, suddenly and irrationally angry that this man who’d taken comfort from his wife wanted comfort from him as well.
    The policeman in him would have said, “Let matters take their course. Report him again if you want to feel better. Make yourself a nuisance if you have to, or telephone The Hague directly, and definitely offer yourself as a witness, but otherwise stay out of the matter. You’ll only be asking for trouble.”
    The husband in him shouldered such practicalities aside.
    â€œIf the police were going to do something, they would have done it by now. Someone like Popovic must not rate too high on their list. The Germans are more worried about Asians selling tax-free cigarettes, or Turks dealing heroin. All they want from Bosnians is an exit visa and a quick wave good-bye. The only way to get them interested in someone like Popovic is to bring