Yugoslavia, My Fatherland. Goran Vojnović

a smile. It was even funnier to think of General Borojević hiding under an assumed name borrowed from his favourite singer, Toma Zdravković. It made some poetic sense that he might identify with Toma’s hit song, ‘I Touched the Bottom of Life,’ but I couldn’t wrap my head around why anyone in their right mind, and in present-day Brčko (at least the Brčko I’d read about in my research), would want to be called by the Croatian name, Tomislav. Maybe Nedelko figured this would make him less suspicious, since who would imagine hunting for a guy called Tomislav for having burned down a Croatian village?

      ‘Do you happen to know where Mr. Zdravković can be found now?’

      ‘Why do you want to know?’

      Mrs. Babić put on her suspicious face again, and I remembered that my cover story had nothing to do with Mr. Zdravković, but was about returning a wallet.

      ‘No reason, I just... I knew him... by sight... ’

      Her look told me that I was back in her book as a druggy begonia burglar. She examined me with a scrutiny and crook-eye that makes the innocent feel guilty, though I’d never burgled a begonia in my life. I decided it was best to get the hell out, and as quickly as possible. I suspect she was curious as to the fate of the phantom lost wallet.

      ‘You’re not Vladan, by any chance? From Slovenia?’

      My heart hammered into my eyes.

      ‘Yes... I’m Vladan. From Slovenia.’

      ‘Tomislav told me about you.’

      ‘He did?’

      ‘Yes. He said that you had escaped to Slovenia during the war, and that he couldn’t contact you.’

      This was true.

      ‘He also told me your family story. Sad.’

      I just nodded, not sure what to do. Mrs. Babić’s face revealed her calculation of my quick conversion from Vladan Borojević into Vladan Zdravković, hero of an invented biography by the even more invented Tomislav Zdravković. I had no way of knowing whether the stories he told her were based on real events, on anything I could anticipate if questioned. I assumed that it was all made up, just enough to cover quick conversations with the neighbour across the hall.

      ‘Would you like some coffee?’

      

      ‘You know, I recognized you straight away. You’re a chip off the old block, even with the Slovene accent. You even stand like him; and those eyebrows. You couldn’t hide, even if you were God.’

      Mediha Babić, who had worked at the local town hall back in the day, put on some coffee, offered me some biscuits and a glass of homemade elderberry cordial. These treats functioned like a time machine for people like me, bringing us back to our childhood. I sat at the table in a huge two-bedroom apartment, filled out by this elderly pensioner. It was worn, but tidy. I could see the town of Brčko through the window. Like most Bosnian towns, it was much more beautiful from a height than it actually looked at ground level.

      ‘Nice view you have here. You can see the whole town.’

      ‘Oh, I can see the town, Vladan, my boy. I just don’t recognize it anymore. So much of this new world. I’d forgive them for being Serbs. My husband was a Serb, too. But at least he qualified as human. These lot are not like our Brčko people. You understand, Vladan, don’t you?’

      I didn’t, but I finally remembered that my father’s name in this town was Tomislav, and that Mediha might well be convinced that I was as disapproving of Serbs as she was.

      ‘These people are different. What can you do? Misfortune dragged them here from somewhere else, I know that, but... sometimes their manner makes a person wonder. God forgive me, but no one would have chased them away from wherever they had been, if they had been a little more considerate. Of everyone.’

      ‘It’s hard, living a fugitive life. People don’t handle it well.’

      ‘I know, believe me, I know. My Raiko and I were on the run a lot in life. Sometimes because of me, sometimes because of him, and sometimes because of, well, whoever you like. We never fitted in, the way we were, never anywhere or with anyone. And so we ended up here. We thought to ourselves that, since I was from here, and he was a Serb so maybe we could just... somehow. But you know, Vladan, you know what they say. Once you move away from your place, it’s never your place anymore.’

      ‘That’s right. I know.’

      ‘In the end, people always ask themselves whether it might have been better if they went somewhere where nobody knew them, just like you did. Who the hell knows? Would it have been any easier for the two of us, if we’d gone to Denmark, to join Fahira and Zlatan? It’s cold there. Not to be endured.’

      ‘It’s hard everywhere.’

      ‘Yeah. You know better than I do. You can’t be a smart-ass when it comes to these things. That’s it... I asked your father a million times which devil had possessed him that he, Tomislav, should end up here, of all the towns of the world.’

      ‘What did he say?’

      ‘What could that poor soul say? He says, Mediha, my dear, you know how I suffer, so you tell me if I’d be any better off elsewhere in this world. Yeah, sure, I said. Wherever you go, your misery shadows you, and this is as good a place to be miserable as any other. But... off he goes. He didn’t even say goodbye.’

      ‘Any idea where he went?’

      ‘I have no idea, my dear Vlado. I would tell you in an instant if I knew. He did say that he’d like to go and find you in Slovenia, but that he didn’t have the right documents, that he was waiting for them to be sent from Sarajevo. Who knows, maybe he finally got them, and that’s why he left? But then I think that he probably would have contacted me, if he’d gone to Slovenia. He knew that I have a cousin there.’

      ‘Did he happen to tell you about my mother?’

      ‘About your mother Agnes, about you, about your brother Zoran and your sister Milena, about your family left behind in Herzegovina and Subotica. He came to my place for a coffee many an afternoon, and stayed for a good long time. He’d just talk and talk. I could feel his relief when he started talking, so I wouldn’t interrupt him. Though sometimes he’d sit there so late into the night that I thought... well, you know people might imagine things. He liked to talk about all of you, but mostly about you. Probably because he knew that you were the only one who survived.’

      Mediha reminded me how I had inherited my own vivid imagination. Tomislav Zdravković told his tales so tall and so precisely because he had no trouble believing them: Knit your own lie within your head so it wraps around and blankets the unbearable truth, which then protects you from the destructive ash of guilt, or whatever else eats away at you. This would explain many things about Tomislav Zdravković and also Nedelko Borojević. Even though I knew nothing of the self-­preservation techniques taught in the Yugoslav Army, I was quite convinced that, in Tomislav’s life, the village of Višnjići never existed.

      ‘I heard all the stories of how he had taken you to Pula, to the seaside, and how he’d buy you toys from a Gypsy. The poor man, he grieved for you so, Vladan, my boy. I don’t know if it was because you were the only one left, but sometimes he wouldn’t even mention the rest of the family. Always – my Vladan this, my Vladan that. I think he was hurt because he’d let you leave Sarajevo without him, and because he hadn’t set off after you. But like he said, back then, who knew what was going to happen? Yeah, right. Even if he’d asked me, I’d have said that Milošević may rule longer than Tito, but he would never turn us against each other.’

      ‘We all thought so, but what can we do?’

      ‘Anyhow... would you like to see his apartment?’

      

      The apartment of Tomislav Zdravković, the retired forest ranger from Sarajevo, who had moved here with his family from Vukovar, just before the