Stillness of the Sea (9 page)

Counsel for the defence
seems to speak in a different tone of voice now. He sounds gentler than the previous day, when he was examining Šimić. Mr Nurzet speaks more slowly, more calmly and pauses frequently, as if he wants the woman in the witness stand to take her time, to think before she answers and take care not to say anything rash.

“Mrs Šimić, try to recall April 1992 and tell us where you were at the relevant time.”

When he stepped into the public gallery that morning, he had no idea that Ana’s mother would enter the courtroom just a little later. He saw an elderly woman come in through the door to the right of the judges’ bench. She was visibly ill at ease. For a short while, she stood looking at the judges, until one of them gestured to the table and the court attendant escorted her to it. “Mrs Šimić, please sit down.” It was only when the judge spoke her name that he realised who she was. He went rigid for a moment. It hadn’t occurred to him that Ana’s mother would be summoned to appear in court. But now she’s there, sitting some two metres away from him, with just a sheet of glass between them. She
wears a white blouse and a black ankle-length skirt. Her hair is grey, unlike Šimić’s. He didn’t think of her looking like this; he imagined her to be younger and less plump.

It feels unsettling and improbable to see Ana’s parents in this place, isolated behind a pane of glass. He can observe them, nothing else. In his mind, Ana joins them: father, mother, daughter – and, for the first time, he’s glad that she isn’t here. It would be unbearable to watch the whole family, in this place, all three of them united in the courtroom. The daughter would have come because she believes in the goodness of this man who allowed children to die in a fire. He doesn’t want to imagine her appearing as a witness for the defence in this courtroom, facing her father and protecting him. How obligingly she would answer the defence lawyer’s questions, describe her father as loving and recall her childhood memories. Not here, in front of all these people – the judges, the prosecution, the defence and the public. He would feel so helpless. He could do nothing but sit there and listen. She would be so close and yet behind that glass. And he would be just another onlooker.

Ana’s mother starts to speak twice before her voice picks up enough strength to reply to the defence lawyer’s question.

“In April 1992, we were in Belgrade. We had to flee from Višegrad. They started setting houses on fire and everyone who had children had left the town.”

“Frau Šimić, you’ve said: ‘We had to flee’. What do you mean by ‘we’? Which members of your family came with you?”

“I took my daughter, Ana.”

“You said earlier that everyone left the town because houses were set on fire. What do you mean by ‘everyone’?”

“At that time, women with children left because they were frightened.”

“Are you suggesting that to stay in Višegrad at that time was unsafe? Or do you mean something else? Something more specific?”

“If you had children to look after, it wasn’t safe to stay in town. They threatened us. Some of these people had occupied the dam. They wanted to dynamite it and flood all the villages on the Drina.”

“Who were the people you’re referring to?”

“They were local Muslims. They wanted to flood the town and drown us all.”

“In the beginning, you said that houses were set on fire. Please tell the court whose houses they were.”

“The Savić house was burnt, I think. Branko’s place. That’s it, his name was Branko Savić.”

“The people whose houses burnt, what ethnic group did they belong to?”

“They were Serbs.”

“Did Zlatko, your husband, come with you to Belgrade?”

“No, he stayed behind in our house.”

“Had he agreed that you and your daughter should leave?”

“Yes. It was his idea. He said we had to go, because he feared that something would happen to us if we didn’t.”

It’s clear to everyone how very uncomfortable Ana’s mother feels about being in the courtroom. She doesn’t know where to look, meeting the lawyer’s eyes only rarely and fleetingly. She speaks so softly that the judge often has to urge her to come closer to the microphone. She seems frightened of this black device and doesn’t touch
it, so the lawyer has to walk across and point the microphone towards her mouth.

She has probably never spoken in front of such a large audience. The distress, the sleepless nights, and the journey to a strange place, she has dealt with these things for his sake. In order to see him again? For love? He would have liked to know if they touched each other when they met. Here, in the courtroom, she avoids looking at her husband. Šimić, on the other hand, does not take his eyes off his wife for the entire time.

“What can you tell us about Zlatko’s family? Does he have brothers or sisters? And if he does, who are they? Where do they live? Are they younger than him, or older?”

“Zlatko is the firstborn. He has two younger sisters, a brother and a half-sister. One of his sisters lives in Belgrade and the other in Banja Luka. The brother lives in Vardište.”

“He has one half-sister, you tell us. Was she on his mother’s side or his father’s?”

“His father’s side.”

“So, did Zlatko lose his mother, or did she and his father separate?”

“His mother disappeared when he was eight years old. At least, I think he was eight, but I don’t know exactly.”

“How do you mean, ‘disappeared’?”

“One day she was gone.”

“And later your husband’s father re-married? Is that correct?”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

He knows hardly anything about Ana’s mother because Ana spoke about her only rarely, as if her mother’s role in her upbringing had been negligible or
non-existent. In a photograph he once saw, Ana’s mother could be seen a couple of paces behind her husband, apparently caught in the frame by accident. And he looked unaware of her presence as he stood there in the foreground, a dominant figure with his gaze fixed on the camera lens.

She is much smaller than him and it needs no special insight to realise that she has lived in his shadow. Perhaps she prefers to stay there; perhaps the shadows simply crept up closer and obscured her. He knows that she was the one who cared for the home and the garden. She has previously been abroad just once, when her husband was invited to Yale to lecture on revenge in Shakespearean drama. They have known each other since childhood. She is the daughter of one of his father’s cousins and, from early on, it was obvious to everyone that these two were meant for each other. The one memory of her mother that Ana told him was from the time they fled together. They made their escape quietly. Ana described them on the bus to Belgrade, how she sat by a window with her mother next to her. Nobody spoke while the engine struggled to haul the bus through the mountain passes and made the pane of her window vibrate so much that she pressed her face against it to hold it still.

He’s frightened that the courtroom door will open and Ana will come through it. A profound unease comes over him. He has to grip the armrests of his chair to prevent people from noticing how badly his hands shake.

He hasn’t seen Ana for weeks. At first he wanted to be alone, to think everything over in peace or, at least, that was what he told himself. But that wasn’t all. He felt deceived. She led two lives, one with him and one that excluded him. He found this duplicitous. She did not
reciprocate his trust in her. It hurt him, he felt hard done by and hoped that she would take the first step, come to see him one day and stand outside his door, or write to him, or at least speak to him on the phone to explain everything. He was prepared to be understanding, whatever she told him. When she didn’t come, he took it to mean that she wouldn’t reveal her other life to him because she thought him unworthy of being part of it.

He searched his memory for incidents which supported these doubts of his. He remembered the drive back from the Baltic Sea, when she taught him words in Serbo-Croat: sea –
more
, wind –
vetar
, waves –
talasi
, sand –
pesak
, life –
život
. But not the word for “love”. And that would have been the first word to occur to him.

Or that summer’s day on the lawn in Tiergarten. Ana pulled her T-shirt up just enough to let the sun reach part of her stomach. She held out her hand and he twisted his fingers in between hers. Then she felt about for the bottle of water, found it, gently freed her hand, unscrewed the top and straightened up almost to sitting position in order to drink. She gazed down at him then. The look in her eyes is etched into his mind, so clear and deep, at odds with the absent expression on her face. Her eyes stayed on him, unrelated to the faint smile that began to hover around her lips. For him, that moment is torn out of the flow of time. Next, with her cheeks full of water, she held out the bottle for him, he took it and drank the rest in one gulp. It seemed to him that happiness flowed into his body with the water. He leapt up, stood over her and prodded her navel gently with his big toe. Her body jerked, she sat up, took his hands and burrowed her face into them. The sun had warmed her skin, and his fingertips picked up its sweaty glaze. “Do you have any idea,” he had asked, “just how happy you
make me? Do you realise the joy you’ve brought me by suddenly coming into my life?” He’s still sure that her eyes filled with tears. And he believed that her tears were testimony of their love for each other. Or were they just the tearfulness of saying goodbye?

He asked if she was all right, not if she loved him. Another person’s love for him seemed such an unsettled, fragile thing, like a mobile which the slightest touch can set off in incessant, self-generated motion. He had previously been in love with a woman who blamed him because, she said, he wouldn’t leave the tender plant of love time to grow and flourish. He made love wither away. The phrase stayed in his mind; he couldn’t rid himself of it. The absurd thing was that his love for Ana felt as solid as a rock, indestructible. That was why he didn’t question her directly. He didn’t want to throw his weight around. He would say, “You know, don’t you, that I’ve never loved anyone as I love you?” And she would touch his face, running her index finger along the ridge of his nose, across his lips, then stroking his hair away from his forehead.

Perhaps he reproaches her, above all, for treating his memories of her so carelessly. He cannot let go, not even weeks later. His journey to The Hague has been nothing but a desperate attempt to understand. The prospect of seeing her father frightened him. He feared it, because out of his love for Ana he might feel protective towards a man who had led forty-two human beings to their death. He feared it, because he might betray his own moral convictions. And he also feared that he might doubt the veracity of a woman who had survived the fire and returned as a witness, only because he longed so much for Ana’s love that he would do anything to recapture it.
For the same reason, he dreaded discovering evil in the man who was Ana’s father and come to detest him.

If Ana were to step inside the public gallery, look around and see him there, she would surely realise how seriously he has taken all this. How would she respond to him? And he to her? What would his first words be? Or hers? “I hoped to find you here,” she might say. And he might reply, “Ana, you were right all along, all this has nothing to do with us.”

The defence lawyer pauses, when his female colleague pushes a note across the table. He quickly reads the message and nods. Then he turns to his witness.

“Mrs Šimić, would you please describe how your husband behaved when under the influence of alcohol?”

“It was bad for him, because after a few days, he’d no longer know what he was saying. He mumbled. It didn’t really matter as long as he was with his family. He never harmed us, and he loved his daughter. It was just that drinking did him no good.”

“When you say that drinking did him no good, what exactly do you mean?”

“After two or three days he couldn’t take food any more. He was no longer aware of what he was saying.”

“Can you recall when he started drinking to excess and when the effect on him required treatment for the first time?”

“He started drinking when our son died.”

“How old was your son at the time? What were the circumstances of his death?”

“He was sixteen years old and had gone on a skiing holiday in Slovenia. A trip organised for young people. He was out skiing and had a bad fall. When they found him, he was already dead.”

Nothing worse can befall parents than the loss of a child. He wonders how Ana’s mother came to terms with her son’s death. Was she still grieving, deep inside? And how did Ana feel? He knows someone who was sixteen when his brother died. The hurt never went away and, to this day, that man feels guilty because he cannot explain why he’s alive and his younger brother dead. What about Ana? Why was it that an acquaintance could speak to him about his brother’s death and how it weighed heavily on his mind, while Ana could not bring herself to mention it at all?

He observes Ana’s mother, as if the answer might be read in her face. He tries to imagine her as a young woman, at the age Ana is now. But he fails. Life has sapped her strength, he can see that. He would like to know what her true reaction was when she learnt of her husband’s arrest. Did she have any suspicion that there might not have been a mistake? Did she secretly believe that he might be guilty? Was it even possible that she had understood him, because she realised the extent to which suffering had driven them both insane?

Soldiers from the NATO Stabilisation Force had rented the house belonging to Ana’s grandparents and built by them just before the Bosnian War. It was only about ten metres from the Šimićs’ place. Now Ana’s mother speaks of how well they got on with the French soldiers. They exchanged greetings, then became friends, she says, actually using the word – friends. When the soldiers had something to celebrate, birthdays or Christmas, she would walk across to their quarters and cook for them. She brought them tomatoes from her own garden. Her lawyer asks if the soldiers had known her husband’s name, and she replies, “Of course. They all knew who we were and everyone knew Zlatko.”