Yugoslavia, My Fatherland. Goran Vojnović

myself. I missed her attentive listening. I missed her rational summary of my incoherent words, her sharp conclusions, which I was too blunt to draw myself. Nadia was a whole lot smarter than me: Younger, more naïve, but cleverer. I even thought, for a second, about turning around and driving back to her. But I was too stubborn. I wasn’t the kind of person to give up before the end of a story.

      

      The information on what exactly had happened at Višnjići was sparse, even online. There was probably a lot more detail in Croatian newspapers back in the ‘90s, and certainly there were people around who knew a lot about it, but I had no idea who to ask, and how much they might want to tell. From what I had managed to piece together I knew that on 13 November 1991, the Third Corps of the Yugoslav People’s Army, under the command of General Borojević, looted and burnt down the village of Višnjići, near Vukovar. In the process, they had murdered thirty-four unarmed villagers, including children, women and old men. They had buried the bodies in a mass grave that had been found in the forest a few kilometres away. I also learned that the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia had issued an indictment from The Hague against Nedelko Borojević years ago, but that he was still at large. The court charged him with a commander’s responsibility for the war crimes perpetrated in Višnjići. In the course of my search, I also came across a number of theories about where the runaway General Borojević might be hiding within the vast territory of the Serbian Entity, and how he, like many Hague defendants, was being protected by members of Serbia’s secret intelligence service. In the comments section below one article, someone claimed that Borojević had been living in a fortified house in the vicinity of Užice, southern Serbia, for years. Other anonymous commentators upheld this theory, and added that his protection was by direct order of the political elite of Serbia, and was well-known among foreign intelligence services, being the responsibility of the Serbian army.

      I had last seen General Nedelko Borojević in the restaurant of the Bristol Hotel in Belgrade, in the summer of ’91, when he was still a colonel. Looking back now, I guess I’d never really known this person who had played the role of my father so well, during my childhood in Pula. I had no doubt that I had loved him as any child loves a father, and when my mother told me that he was gone, I grieved. I sometimes indulged myself with the idea that I had never really got over losing my father, and there was some raw form of comfort in thinking that I never would. My childhood memories of him had faded away, and washed like water over watercolour paint, blurring the colours over the years. The most telling thing for me was that I could no longer remember his face. It only came back to me through photographs, but its direct image had been scraped out of my memory. I recalled him now through several black and white photographs from various birthday parties, or his driver’s license picture, which featured a boyish, tender face, at a time when he barely resembled himself. Back then he didn’t have the bushy brows that met in the middle when something confused him. I couldn’t recall his dark eyes that strained to see the TV without glasses. I didn’t see his full, mobile lips, which pushed and prodded pieces of food while my mother incoherently regurgitated details of her day’s work, every lunchtime. I couldn’t picture how he would pinch himself with impatience at the Arena cinema, waiting for the Partisan film of the week to start, yet I knew he did it every time.

      In my memory, I only saw him from afar, a distant humanoid figure appearing on the horizon, like a brazen statue. I saw his elegant officer’s uniform hanging in front of the mirror at home, just before Yugoslav People’s Army Day; saw his body in a bathing suit, lying on a towel that was too short, telling me to come out of the water because my lips were turning blue. I saw his white parade shirt, bought in Trieste...

      I knew that, on the road I was taking, I could reach Vukovar, and also Višnjići, in a few hours, but I didn’t really know if I wanted to see either. Given that I had never been to Slavonia, I wove a picture of Višnjići that felt correct; imagining I’d already visited. I saw homes scattered across a wide treeless plain; smoke billowing out of chimneys; the warmth of active fireplaces; the darkness broken only by lights that streamed through windows into the rooms of peaceful residents who never saw that November night coming. A dog barked, summoning the Greek chorus of other village dogs, and then it would grow quiet once more. In the distance, someone slowly tramped home along a muddy bank between two fields. Someone else stepped out of a house, releasing the avian coo of children’s voices from inside, before it disappeared again, hushed by the closing door and overtaken by the hum of wind and crickets and the creak of a nearby forest. It was a November evening like thousands of November evenings before, in this non-existent history of the village of Višnjići. But somewhere, off on that flat horizon, the Third Corps of the Yugoslav People’s Army, under the command of General Borojević, slowly approached.

      ‘Green card, please.’

      Luckily, Enes had warned me that Bosnian customs officers might check my green card, so I had it with me. Satisfied, customs officer Muharem Hodžić next took a look at my passport, staring for a minute without turning a single page.

      ‘Where are you going, Vladan?’

      ‘To Brčko.’

      ‘To Brčko’, he repeated.

      He was still staring at my photo, pretending that memorizing my birth date and permanent address was part of some hi-tech system for catching cottage cheese and smoked meat smugglers.

      ‘Goooood.’

      Muharem handed back my documents. A moment later I stepped out into the territory known as Bosnia and Herzegovina for the first time.

      4

      The day I first heard the word ‘seconded’ was the day my mother shut herself away for the first time. I’m not sure what my father had told her, as he wouldn’t let me go back home with him when we returned from the market. Instead he told me to play in the courtyard until he called me in for lunch. This was the first, and last, official order I received from Colonel Nedelko Borojević in my life, but it had been uttered in such a way that its militaristic nature was in no doubt. I obeyed without objection. I was left to wander aimlessly, while father broke the terrible news about us having to move to Belgrade. I’ll never forget the silence that clouded the room when I came home: Normally, we kept the TV or radio on, so we wouldn’t hear the buzzing of the fridge. My mother dragged her clothes out of the large wardrobe in the hall and dropped them onto the bed, in the bedroom. The only thing on the dining table was a plate of macaroni with minced meat and some Parmesan, a clear message for me to eat lunch and ask no questions. My father told me, in passing, that we were going to Belgrade for a while because of his job, and that mother would pack my things. The next time he circled by me, he added that I could go back out and play or watch TV, but I wasn’t to hang around the apartment after lunch, because everything had to be put away before we left.

      In the evening, the phone rang and father informed us, with a voice like a TV newscaster, that the army truck would be in front of the shop in ten minutes, and we should begin carrying things outside. At that same moment, my mother burst into tears. Father tried to hug her and lean her head on his shoulder, like he had the time they informed her that her cousin, Gregor, had been killed in a car crash. But now she just pushed him away, grabbed the largest suitcase in the hall, and started dragging it toward the door, all by herself. Father tried to rip it out of her hands, and kept saying that it was too heavy, and that she shouldn’t be so stubborn, but mother carried it down the stairs and out to the front of the apartment building, and even to the parking lot in front of the shop, where she finally dropped it, exhausted, so that it struck the ground with a loud thud. Then she sat on it and cried some more, while my slightly confused father carried the remaining things out by himself, telling me to stay with mother in case she needed anything.

      It wasn’t too long before our neighbour, Enisa, appeared in front of the shop. Whatever the hour, she kept constant watch for what was happening in front of her house. This time, she ran out to say goodbye to us, wearing only a bathrobe and her husband’s shoes. My father tried to tell her that we’d be back soon, but Enisa just nodded and repeated, ‘May luck travel with you, stay healthy and happy wherever you may be!’ Then she kissed me on both cheeks and my forehead, told me to be good and obey my parents, so I wouldn’t add to their