Belgrade Noir

“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 her 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

Translated by McKenna Marko

Maršala Birjuzova Street