Belgrade Noir Read online

  The archivist wasn’t as useless as he’d appeared at first glance. He seemed to know his way around a few things besides vinyl records.

  “But who’s this next to Kerr and Troubridge? This guy in the Serbian uniform?” I asked when my eye fell on a handsome, tall officer with a neatly trimmed beard and, strangely, for the time, long hair tied back in a ponytail.

  “That’s Major Nemanja Lukić, a Black Hand. One of Apis’s close associates. Real fucked-up guy.”

  I stared at the face in disbelief, feeling a mixture of surprise and horror.

  So, that was him. Aćim Dugalić’s killer. Apis’s friend. Real fucked-up guy.

  “He was killed on the Danube quay when Major Dragutin Gavrilović led the famous attack telling the soldiers that their regiment was to be sacrificed for the defense of Belgrade, and that they didn’t need to worry about their lives anymore, because they were about to end . . . Though there’s some data about him that appears later, in World War II.”

  “Like what? After he was dead?”

  “Ah, fuck it. Maybe there was an administrative error. Or maybe he’d just been injured and not killed?”

  I picked up a photo to take a closer look. It was of Lukić again, in a more relaxed setting. He was sitting in the garden of a kafana with company; there was a sign that read, Gostionica Atina, the Athens Inn. On the back was written, Niš. June 1944.

  “See anything interesting there?” asked the archivist.

  “Oh, very much, my friend . . . Look—he hasn’t aged a day.”

  My tubby friend put on his glasses and studied the photograph. “Maybe it isn’t him,” he said. “Maybe it’s his son.”

  “Is there anything about him having kids?”

  “From what I know . . . no.”

  “Then it’s got to be him.”

  “But that’s . . . not possible.”

  * * *

  I paced the streets of gloomy Belgrade. As I walked three ambulances passed me. Their sirens were lost in the distance, dissolving into the cacophony of voices and sounds. The city was weeping and singing at the same time. The jackasses from city hall had already put up the Christmas lights even though it was only the start of November. Belgrade sparkled and trembled with unnatural colors, and there was that neon blues that appeared every fall. My hometown reminded me of an aging musician who pours out the rest of his talent into the bucket or the bottle.

  The same as me. Except for what I’d been up to today.

  I felt a huge emptiness in my chest. I was sorry for the old lady who I’d have to tell the truth about her father to. A new lie on a heap of old ones wouldn’t be worth anything to her, or to me.

  I stopped to light a cigarette. That was when someone whacked me in the head. I stumbled and got another whack. I fell face-first onto the sidewalk. Someone grabbed me from behind like a rabid dog.

  “What’s up, fucker?”

  I raised my head, and saw the same chickenshit from the Gusan, the one with the big-assed wife, standing over me with a baseball bat in hand. The taxi driver, passerby, friend from the army . . . ah, fuck it. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t figure it out. The lights on the street gleamed faintly off his bald head. He’d jumped me good. He even knew where to do it. There wasn’t a living soul around us. Just me and the moron with the rubber brain and the baseball bat.

  “Now I’m gonna fuck you up so hard you’ll remember me your whole life,” he hissed.

  “Can I smoke my cigarette first?” I asked.

  “Sure, you can smoke, man . . .”

  He turned, then stopped, staring off somewhere behind me.

  From the darkness, fate emerged, a man in a long black coat who I only managed to see the back of.

  He approached and grabbed the baseball bat my attacker was holding. It snapped like a dry branch.

  The moron stared at the man, his mouth hanging open. He looked as if all the blood had rushed out of his head.

  “All right,” said the stranger. “March!”

  The bald guy tossed aside what remained of the baseball bat and strategically withdrew without saying another word.

  The stranger stopped, took out a silver case, and lit a cigarette. He looked into the darkness, waving away the smoke. Then he turned. I stared into the face I’d seen in the century-old photographs. My heart skipped several beats.

  Nemanja Lukić just smiled and said, “Good evening, Mr. Malavrazić. I hear you’ve been looking for me?”

  * * *

  We sat in the Zlatna Moruna.

  I wouldn’t have been surprised if Lukić had told me that he’d been there a hundred years before, with the Black Hands, planning the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo that kicked off World War I. Not much would surprise me about this man. He was unusually animated, in great shape, his movements somehow fluid like a cat’s, his eyes piercing like a vulture’s. But his hands . . . well, maybe I’d overdone it the past few nights with the drinks, but they reminded me, strangely, of claws.

  He ordered each of us a cognac. I didn’t care much for that shit, but who’s nuts enough to argue with a guy who could crush a baseball bat in his bare hand?

  He smoked a cigarette, remaining silent.

  “How did . . . How did you find out about me?” I asked cautiously.

  “The maître d’ at the Manjež.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

  “You went to Jefimija?”

  “I did.”

  “What are you going to tell her?”

  “The truth.”

  “And what’s the truth, Mr. Malavrazić?”

  “Well . . . that her father was killed on Apis’s orders.”

  “That isn’t true. Apis didn’t order anything.”

  “So you didn’t kill him?”

  “No.”

  “So . . . he just showed up, headless, on the banks of the Sava?”

  Lukić sipped a little cognac. He looked thoughtfully out the window for a second, then said, “A friend of mine, a British lieutenant named Charles Kerr, came one night with an order for us to create a distraction. He intended to sink an Austro-Hungarian ship. He was looking for volunteers . . . Seven reported.”

  “Including Dugalić?”

  “Yes, including him. It was a very risky operation. We had to sail in the pitch black so the Germans wouldn’t spot us. We managed to plant the explosives. Charlie was very adept at that, a true pyromaniac. And then . . .”

  “What?”

  “A steel wire that had bound two trucks snapped, and one solder was literally sliced in half . . .”

  “And it beheaded Dugalić?”

  “That’s right. We never found the poor guy. But Dugalić’s headless body washed up the next day on the shores of the Sava. Some locals found him. Took him to the hospital. To Ryan.”

  “So that means we can name the Austro-Hungarian king Franz Josef as the killer?”

  “You could also claim that it was an accident. Dr. Ryan did so after we told him what had happened.”

  So, that was the truth. The whole truth, intact, told from the mouth of a man who gave me the creeps. I could imagine how my grandfather reacted when this guy visited him in the Glavnjača and told him to keep quiet.

  * * *

  I sat in a salon in the old lady’s home. The walls were decorated with antique wallpaper and a mass of framed photographs, watercolors, and oils on canvas. On the eastern wall was a painting of St. Nikola, and under it an officer’s saber. I guessed that it had belonged to Aćim Dugalić.

  Ms. Jefimija Dugalić sat across from me. Her fragile hands, covered in liver spots, rested on a prewar edition of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness sitting in her lap. I had learned from her daughter, who was standing in front of the window like a guard dog, that she hadn’t wanted to change her name when she’d married because she was the only offspring of the father she had loved so dearly.

  She held a rosary in her hand. Her daughter, an absolute witch—I was sure of that now—stood beside h
er and glared at me. She stubbed out a cigarette in the massive crystal ashtray that sat on the table in front of me.

  “Is this the truth, Mr. Malavrazić?” Jefimija asked me when I finished speaking.

  “It is, madam.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I am, madam. Your father was not a traitor.” I felt a lump in my throat. I sipped some water. Then added, “Your father was a hero.”

  Jefimija sighed, sipped a little rakija from her glass, a sort of toast to the soul of her unlucky father, and looked at me with eyes that had the same clarity as in the photos behind her, when she had been young and beautiful.

  “My father was a good man. An honorable soldier. He served his homeland in three wars . . .” She lowered her head. “My father . . . my dear dad . . .”

  She got up from her wheelchair with a lot of effort, and managed to stand. She gestured for me to come over to her. She leaned on me, indicating that she wanted me to walk her over to the wall with the St. Nikola painting.

  Once there, she struck a match and lit a candle. She stroked the officer’s saber that had belonged to her father, hero and martyr. A tear rolled down her face. She wiped it away with a shaking hand and said, “Now I can die.”

  * * *

  I stood in front of a fresh mound in the Topčider Cemetery. Her name was written on the cross: Jefimija Dugalić. They told me she’d died in her sleep. She just fell asleep . . . and went.

  Her daughter Ljudmila Hajji Pešić offered me payment, a thousand euros. I refused.

  I didn’t have the strength to go to the funeral, but here I was, ten days later, paying my respects to a wonderful, unlucky woman.

  Nemanja Lukić offered me a cigarette. I took it, and he lit it with his antique Austrian soldier’s lighter. I was freezing from the cold and the wind. He looked as though he felt none of it, his long hair just waving in the wind. His face expressionless, a little pale. The same as in the photographs from 1915.

  “Death is . . . relative. Believe me, I know that better than anyone,” he said.

  He crossed himself and lit a candle.

  He laid a hand on my shoulder. His hand still reminded me of a claw—the claw of a vampire.

  THE CASE OF CLERK HINKO, A NOOSE, AND LUMINAL

  by Miljenko Jergović

  Maršala Birjuzova Street

  Translated by McKenna Marko

  One could enter the hotel garage from Maršala Birjuzova Street. Somewhat tucked away from the city, the street was murky, gray, and a bit damp, as if the sun never reached the ground or first floors of the buildings, most of them erected before World War II. The garage was tight, he could hardly maneuver in his Volkswagen Touareg rental. He was greeted by a short, older man whose modest attire made him look more like a beggar than a bellhop, garage guard, or receptionist. Murmuring pleasantries that he didn’t pay attention to, the man led him into a cramped elevator that took him two floors up. He found himself in a hallway, where along the walls hung framed black-and-white photos of the hotel’s illustrious past: a small, smiling black man in the role of an elevator operator, the architect and owner of the hotel with his family, the 1940 New Year’s celebrations, Miroslav Krleža, one of the hotel’s most famous guests . . . That same Krleža, a Croat, the best-known writer of the Yugoslav era, rushed headlong to Belgrade, to his Serbian friends, and he fought with gusto over national difference; his greatest pleasure was staying right here at the Hotel Majestic, the postwar gathering place of those the writer considered to be the most interesting of the epoch, but whom the outside world found most repugnant.

  At the end of the hall there were stairs which descended to the reception desk. After checking in, the guest would climb back up these same stairs—there were five of them—to the elevator that went up to the rooms. It was a complicated system of ascents and descents, whether by foot or elevator, but the guest easily got the hang of it and quickly made himself at home in the hotel.

  In the room, there were heavy curtains the color of ripe cherries and bed covers the exact same color and apparently cut from the same cloth. He detected an odor that reminded him of his very early childhood: kerosene. Kerosene, from where? He hadn’t smelled it in thirty years.

  He took the elevator, then went down the five stairs to reception, past the receptionists without even glancing at them, and exited through the main hotel entrance onto Obilićev Venac. The glare of the August sun caused a sharp pain, first in his eyes and then in his head. He stood there until it passed, and when he looked up again, he was surrounded on all sides by the colorful tables of the nearby cafés and restaurants. He could hear the humming of hundreds of people, mostly young women and men, who all seemed unbearably happy to him.

  For the first time it occurred to him how strange it was that the street he had entered the hotel garage from was dominated by the gloom of the cloudy preautumnal afternoon, while on the opposite side, in front of the hotel’s main entrance, it was a sunny summer’s day. As if the Hotel Majestic stood on the border of two climate zones.

  Ilija Soldo, chief of homicide investigations for the Zagreb police division, a still-attractive man of fifty-two years, was in Belgrade for the first time in his life. Just two months ago he’d believed—and repeated to himself a hundred times—that he’d never set foot in this city. The main reason for not coming was not that Ilija was a Croatian veteran who’d fought in the war beginning in the spring of 1991—first against the Serbs and the Yugoslav People’s Army in Slavonia, then on the Dubrovnik front, only to fight against the Bosnian Muslims two years later; and then again against the Serbs in the spring and summer of 1995. He didn’t hate those people he had looked at through the crosshairs; how could he hate those who were his only real company during the war and whose fate he shared, in both life and death? And he knew that they didn’t have anything against him. He hadn’t killed prisoners or civilians, nor had he set fire to villages or shot at random, and somehow it appeared to him that those he’d fought against hadn’t done that either. Those sorts of things always happened wherever he wasn’t, though often in his vicinity, only two or three kilometers away. And so, it always evaded him somehow. And why would he now hate his enemies, with whom he shared those years in winter, in snow, in rain, and in scorching heat? And why would he not go to Belgrade?

  Something else tormented Ilija Soldo and warranted that he keep his distance from Serbs if he happened to come across them in the police force, and had kept him from going to Belgrade. Although he’d been born and raised in Zagreb, and despite sharing one of those characteristically Croatian surnames, Ilija was—through both his father and mother—a Serb. His father Marko, an old partisan, veteran of the struggle against Hitler and the German occupation, had spent his whole professional life in the police force and, of course, had not hidden the fact that he was a Serb, born in eastern Herzegovina where Soldos—although rare—also could be found among Serbs. But it didn’t bother him if someone mistook him for a Croat. And so, little by little, as interethnic relations in Yugoslavia deteriorated and Marko grew closer to retiring, he tended to keep quiet about not being from the majority, but from the minority—that is to say, the Serbian Soldos.

  At the end of the eighties, as the Communist system collapsed, and the first political parties were established, Joža Marunić, the former chief of the secret police and Marko Soldo’s friend, invited him to be one of the founders of the HDZ, the radical Croatian nationalist party which was to be supported by the powerful and influential Catholic Church. What else could Marko do other than accept? Marunić knew, of course, that Soldo was a Serb, but most likely he’d thought that in having one of them on board, he’d keep those extremists under control.

  His mother Jelica, a housewife from one of those Serbian villages in the Banija region, did not think too much about it and quickly agreed to the change in their family’s identity. If you have luck with your first and last name, then it’s easier to present yourself as a Croat to Croats, and a Serb to Serbs. But it’ll bur
den you later on when you constantly have to think about who and what you really are, and who and what you certainly are not.

  And this was the reason why Ilija Soldo promptly, even earlier than 1991, before the destruction of Yugoslavia and the establishment of the Croatian army, joined up with the volunteers and spent all those years at war with the Serbs. It would probably be going too far to say that he’d been fighting against himself and the latent Serb within him, but the fact was, he couldn’t prove to himself that he was a Croat. He needed that war, after which no one was ever going to think that he was anything else.

  And everything would have gone well, there wouldn’t even be this story and everything that’d follow, had Ilija’s father not had a sister named Smiljana, and had Smiljana not been married to the doctor Miloš Stanojević, a renowned Yugoslav neurologist, who she had lived with in a villa in Senjak, the richest residential area of Belgrade. Marko Soldo had broken off all relations with his sister back in 1972, after quarreling bitterly with her husband about the political situation in the country. Dr. Stanojević had thrown Soldo out of his house when Soldo called him an American spy and a fascist scoundrel. They didn’t speak again until the beginning of the war in 1991. Soldo didn’t even contact his sister when, two years earlier, Dr. Stanojević had died unexpectedly. She, however, called him the very first autumn of the war when she heard on the radio that Yugoslav army planes were bombing Zagreb. She was afraid that they had killed her brother, and that was all that mattered.

  After that they maintained their relations at a distance, staying in touch but not visiting each other. Aunt Smilja, as they called her endearingly, would have—had they ever invited her—gladly come to Zagreb, but they never did, lest their family’s shame and fraud be uncovered, and their neighbors and all of Zagreb find out that they were not Croats, but Serbs.

  Out of all this, Aunt Smilja had one great sorrow: she would never see Ilija again. He’d been six years old when she had last seen him. That was the day when her Miša—as she called her husband—threw Marko out of the house, and Jelica and the child left with him. Smiljana and Miloš could not have children, so her nephew had meant more to her than any son could have meant to his mother. Ilija represented all of her unborn children.