Tihomir Levajac:
Here We Go on Trial Again

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Verdict

That day, everybody in the courtroom went out of his way to be kind to the Story whose turn it was to appear before the Tribeurinal. Everybody was polite, cordial and smiling, from the Prosecutor, the Chairman and the judges to the reporters, the cameramen, the audience watching with interest and the security guards. It seemed to the Story that everybody in the courtroom, including even those sitting in the gallery, belonged to a single family, a slightly larger than average family, wherein work, order, truth and justice prevailed.

Fortunately, the defendant did not know what lay hidden behind this apparent intimacy and cordiality that could be seen through easily. It did not know that the whole trial had been prearranged and that it was supposed to play its part in accordance with the script devised by an unknown director.

Time being money in the West, the Court had brought up charges against the eleventh Story in advance so as not to waste any time, pronounced it a war criminal in advance, produced witnesses in advance and even decided on a verdict in advance.

However, the Court allowed the defendant to tell the story that it had been indicted for before the Tribeurinal Board so that mankind should not have a guilty conscience on account of the Serbian people, and to convince the world that the Vague Tribeurinal was not in any way biased but worked in accordance with international law and the Statemute of the Tribeurinal.

It was granted permission to tell the story it had been arrested and already sentenced for.

They weren’t going to listen to it anyway!

The Story had no idea of this and took things very seriously indeed when it was granted permission to speak.

But how was it to begin its story without offending the brother-nation?

As it had been scientifically proved that Serbs and Croats spoke one and the same language, the defendant had always wanted to find out who was in the right – science or Croats, who had never wanted to have anything in common with Serbs, particularly since this dirty war had started, least of all language!

When the connecting tissue of the former Yugoslav state began to be torn apart, honourable judges, whatever there was in Croatia had to bear a Croatian designation, as if it had to do with the Creator.

Cows had to be Croatian, as well as sheep, pigs, geese, cockroaches, fog, air, not to mention turds, trolley poles, television or toilet seats!

Everything had to bear a Croatian designation.

As if coming from the Creator.

The defendant wanted to know who was right, science or Croats, so it went about looking for a story having to do with that; it looked and looked, and finally ran it down somewhere in the Posavina region, under Orašje, at a very bad time indeed.

Out of curiosity, it entered a war zone where regular Croatian and Serbian Republic army units sat in trenches, some seventy metres apart, mud and water up to their knees as rain had been falling those autumn days, not engaging in any active military operations.

The Story had heard that the brave warriors shouted to one another across the dividing line, shouted all sorts of things to the other side. What it wanted to know was which language they used in doing so, and whether they required the services of an interpreter when doing so.

Trying to find that out, it found itself in a trench, as an incorporeal being, next to a Reserve Corps member called Zoran, a man weighing one hundred and thirty-seven kilograms. It found itself next to a man who had gone to war almost straight from his office and got to the front line without getting anything in the way of military training. That man was too big for war because it was difficult to find a uniform of the right size for a man that bulky. And when they did manage to find one, it was so ill-fitting that he was almost unable to get up properly, or to jump and run, but as luck would have it, there he was in that trench filled with mud and water, supposed to be fighting someone he had never seen.

Sometime at dusk, Mladen, a fellow-soldier stationed in the rear, dropped by bringing a bottle of brandy with him.

The bottle had been full when he started for the trenches, he said, but he couldn’t save its contents from the men in the rear along the way. There was enough left for the two of them, however! And it wasn’t bad, either, no rotgut made from maize but real plum brandy. As he could find out for himself soon enough.

When Zoran turned down his offer, Mladen thought that he was joking. But when he did it for the second time, he was really surprised. He had expected that Zoran would be only too glad to take a couple of swigs, but the man wouldn’t even touch the stuff!

Why wouldn’t he have some? Why not relax a little?

Because he didn’t drink!

What did he mean he didn’t drink? Since when did soldiers not drink? He, Mladen, didn’t drink either, just took an occasional swig from time to time! One couldn’t do without brandy in wartime!

No, no, he didn’t drink, nor had he ever drunk!

O God! Who knew what might happen to him, who could say what might befall him, not the next day but that very night, whether he’d get out of that foul-smelling mudbath alive, and yet he wouldn’t relax just a little bit.

Nonsense! Didn’t he see that they had become one with the mud and water, burrowed into the ground like moles, never seeing daylight or the sun!

When Mladen had spoken those words to him, Zoran sank deep into thought. He began to look at himself with contempt.

Gaping mud under his feet, rubber boots on his feet, boots heavy with mud, mud sticking to his trouser legs, loads of mud on his clothes and under his clothes, behind his ears, between his fingers, in his hair, on his belly, under the shirt that he couldn’t do up, on the woollen sweater that mice had bitten through in places the night before, as he had slept in the trench standing upright – he started feeling sorry for himself.

And when he remembered that he hadn’t washed for ten days, that he could already feel his body stink, he took the bottle.

Night having already fallen, the space around Zoran lit up of its own accord after the first swig. The shadows took on a sheen they hadn’t had before, so that things did not look as black as they actually were nor was the war as ominous as it could be.

Zoran did not drink: he didn’t know how to drink. He poured the brandy straight into his throat and drank quickly, in short gulps, so that the alcohol went straight into his blood.

His senses came alive after the second swig.

He could see and hear better, felt things more intensely, you know.

He was surprised at how little he knew himself.

As the night went on, he started reaching for the bottle more and more often. He would take it, raise it and then place his mouth underneath. While he poured a few gulps into his throat, the sky came down somewhat and the stars emerged out of nowhere, getting closer and brighter, so that he could see everything by the starlight even though it was a moonless night.

Standing there in the trench, looking at the stars and then at the sky, it seemed to him that he was growing out of the navel of the earth, receiving some primordial strength that only the earth he grew out of possessed.

Maybe man could be like that only against the backdrop of the sky, he thought.

And the stars.

He thought that the sky was not infinite, something immeasurable or far away, but something nearby, within arm’s reach.

It seemed to him that he could reach the stars with his hands, hang from the sky holding onto them.

It was that sort of night.

And that sort of brandy.

When he took the bottle and placed his mouth underneath, the stars made a halo around his head; when he put it down, a kind of fire burst out of him, so that it appeared to him that this heat poured this way from above, from the sky, that it was fire coming down from the shining stars.

Shining from the sky as if from a diamond mirror.

Was the brandy to blame, after all?

But how was he to believe that when he felt no drunkenness, just a very pleasant sensation, when he felt much better than he used to feel, much stronger than he used to feel, possessed of a greater will to live than before.

It was then that he decided to talk to his brothers from the other side of the dividing line. Although soldiers from both sides were used to shouting things across the dividing line, all sorts of things, mostly insults and swearwords, he had never taken part in it. It seemed to Zoran that those who did take part in it did so out of hatred and a feeling of helplessness, and he was not like that. He didn’t hate anyone. He even felt that Croats were close to him because one of his sisters was married to a Croat from Slavonski Brod.

He had never shouted things to them before, but tonight he felt like behaving contrary to his principles. He felt like talking to them tonight although he wasn’t a particularly talkative person. He ate a lot and talked little. He was like a man who wished to preserve words from wear and tear, lest they should thin out.

That night he felt like calling out to them although no soldiers from either side had done so until that moment. There’d been no mention of Četnik or Ustashi mothers, nor even shots fired in the air, for no particular reason whatsoever. There’d been nothing to disturb, let alone break the silence that prevailed. No frogs’ croaks were heard, no night birds screeched or flew past making their nocturnal rounds, no owls hooted ominously. There were no mice scurrying about, cats sneaking, walnut fruits dropping from trees, mosquitoes buzzing around one’s head, stray dogs prowling about.

No leaves rustled, no blades of grass swayed.

Not a trace of any movement or sound anywhere, let alone an anonymous whistle.

Everything was peaceful, including the trenches on both sides of the dividing line between love and hate.

Perfect peace, overwhelming peace prevailed, peace outgrowing the earth, leaving the night to bore itself stiff. One would never have thought that silence could be so loud.

How come all this false peace and quiet prevailed when he felt like having some company!

No, things could not remain that way!

He just had to call out to the other side!

He felt an overpowering impulse to do so. But how should he address his brothers on the other side? Everybody addressed them as Uncle,[1] as if it were a term of endearment. Not he, though. You didn’t address a warrior using terms of endearment, you needed a term of address befitting a warrior!

He was to address them and let them know that he knew they’d come from Croatia and belonged to regular units of the Croatian Army!

He racked his brains for quite a while looking for a suitable-sounding sentence; having found it, he shouted it out into the star-spangled night.

Would the war effort elements from the other side like to come on over to his trench for a swigslide?[2] He, then he mentioned his own name, a Serbo-Četnik, cordially invited them and guaranteed their safety!

Although Zoran called out in a very loud voice into the stillness and freshness of the night, nobody answered him. Even though he invited them, leaning against the edge of his trench, to come on over for a swigslide, they didn’t answer him.

So silent were they that the silence that ensued after his words appeared to be crowned with something or other.

He called out again, and they remained silent again.

It went on for a while, this starry game in the sky.

It felt as if time stood still in the Posavina region that night.

Or as if the earth had gone deaf.

Why did the elements not call back, Zoran shouted into the moonless night again, why did they not issue a communiqué? Why, their beloved President was not on the front line, was he? No, he was performing his duties in the Presidential Palace, in the historic city of Zagreb! It was not due to the fact that their commanding officer was with them in the trench, was it? And even if he was right there with them, whatever had happened to their millennial tradition of democracy?

While shouting thus, it seemed to Zoran that a star, his very own personal star, took off from his forehead under the low sky.

He kept shouting and they kept mum, so silence crept between them, a large square plot of silence. As if he wasn’t inviting his brothers over for a drink, as if he kept barking at the stars through the night!

It could not be that, feeling the way he felt tonight, he’d end up talking to himself!

While he was silent, it seemed to him that the silence hanging over the Posavina region was boundless.

How come he hadn’t noticed it before?

But why should they be silent now when they normally answered every word night after night?

Why did they not speak up, he shouted while a flock of stars circled overhead. What was it, cat got their tongues? Why were they dumbstruck? It couldn’t be, could it, that they’d sworn to their beloved President, and he went on to swear at their President in the well-known Serbian manner of swearing, that they’d sworn to keep mum instead of swearing to fight like true Croatian soldiers? Even if they had, the President was far away, in the Presidential Palace, and the war was being fought in Bosnia! It couldn’t be that the officer in charge of moral conduct was with them in the trench, could it, causing them to be so stiff, imposing such strict rules of conduct that they didn’t dare make a sound! They were no opposition to their President but soldiers of the 101st Brigade, he shouted while the stars above his head shone like polar foxes.

Despite all his efforts, the warriors remained silent in their trenches, some seventy metres away from Zoran. So silent were they that he got quite incensed.

He started calling out to them even more loudly, saying all sorts of things to them, but to no avail.

Only once, when the night had swelled like dough, did a warrior call out from his trench: Come on, boys, could we get some sleep tonight? Hearing that, Zoran felt that he had to keep the fellow wide awake.

Oh, really, and what about their fatherland, who would defend their fatherland? He’d like to get some sleep, right, and who would defend the fatherland from the Serbo-Četnik aggressors!?

Much to Zoran’s chagrin, the sleepy fellow from the brotherly Croatian army was never heard again. He called out to him again but it was no use. He spoke of the fatherland again, but the fellow wouldn’t answer. He spoke yet again of the fatherland occupied by the aggressor, but no-one deigned to answer him.

As if he were hurling words into the air at random while the night dragged on like a boring feature film.

The stars twinkled at him mockingly, looking at him coldly while he strained to catch the sound of silence that kept eluding his ears somehow.

As if he’d gone deaf.

The silence was simply devastating, making his hand reach for the bottle of its own accord, as it were. He felt like shouting, screaming, neighing, exploding with anger, just to win over those unfortunates, just as unfortunate as himself in this pointless war.

He missed them so tonight.

Zoran thought that, if he used Croatian words, native Croatian words, words like air-basher[3], self-shooter,[4] lightning-receptacle[5], grain-eater,[6] or circle-wave station[7], it shouldn’t be much of a problem for him to start a conversation with his language-brothers. He believed so because language-brothers always endeavoured to speak logically, didn’t they? He thought that, if he used words like earth-sight[8], gentle-thruster[9] or roof-bordering water-pisser[10] rather that the unsophisticated words that the simple-minded Serbian folk used, it would be easier for him to find a collocutor among them. But then he remembered, having often visited Croatia before the war and having got to know the everyday reality of it, and after all, wasn’t one of his sisters married to a Croat, he remembered that ordinary Croatian people did not use this sort of language in everyday conversation, but that the powers-that-be tried to impose it upon the population through the media!

He had seen with his own eyes the list of words obligatory for everyday communication that the political leadership had sent to all the institutions in Croatia at the beginning of the nineties. The list of compulsory new words and expressions was supposed to subvert reality little by little, day after day, until it became one and the same as the mad dream of establishing the Ustashi state!

If they had to abuse their language, he shouted, why didn’t they come up with words that the Croatian people wouldn’t be ashamed of?

The Newspeak being imposed upon them was not something they got by birth! An ordinary Croat did not think using this sort of language, nor did he dream in it, it was being imposed upon him from above, through brainwashing!

Forcibly.

Even accusations of this sort could not make the war effort elements answer him. They kept mum while the sky bowed down to hear what the Serbian soldier was calling out to his brothers!

So heavy was their silence that it seemed to him that they were throwing stones of silence from across the dividing line.

What could he possibly say to them in order to get them to react?

How could he think like them and get them to respond?

A friend of his had once told him, she was a Croat, too, that if he wanted to get to know Croats, he had to be like them.

Crafty.

He had to be hypocritical!

Eventually, Zoran addressed a star in the sky, shouting to it that the stable boys remained silent because they didn’t know Newspeak.

He, a Četnik, knew their Newspeak while they did not!

Shame!

Now their beloved President, and he swore at him again, would make them learn Newspeak!

The Presidential language police, he shouted to a particular star beneath a cluster of stars, would prosecute those who didn’t know Newspeak!

Fit for school they were! A bunch of no-good old devils were they! Grey-haired, seedy, worn-out, shabby-looking, lame!

The President would have to teach these fools, bumpkins and nincompoops Newspeak in their dotage!

But even those words were not enough to stir the war effort elements into action, they merely remained silent.

What could he say to provoke them into action?

Finally, he started thinking aloud, as if he were offended.

Why, mere words did not make a language, the system did. And it was a system they had taken over from the Serbs! The štokavian system it was, and the štokavian dialect was a Serbian one! The war effort elements on the other side did not have a language of their own, they were using another people’s language!

The moment he uttered those words, a rifle grenade fell into the mud next to Zoran as the stars were forming an immortal circle above his head.

After it hit the mud without exploding, he shouted: That wasn’t bad, just a little bit to the left, boys!

Although the Serbian soldier praised the Croatian marksman, the latter did not try again that night.

Neither did he try to reply verbally nor to fire a rifle grenade again.

In the morning, when Zoran’s little bit of nocturnal provocation had become an event that stories would be told about later on, the soldiers that were to the left of the spot where the grenade had hit were really angry with him.

He had spoken well, they kept saying to him, except for that bit about aiming a little to the left!

Had the Ustashi done as he’d said, they could have killed them!

Each and every one of them!

The Story suddenly went silent; nobody in the courtroom except the Prosecutor and the judges expected the story to end just like that, without a proper ending or a moral.

According to the perfectly-thought-out scenario, the Prosecutor immediately suggested that the trial should not be conducted live but in the Court records, which the Tribeurinal Board, naturally enough, agreed to.

Commotion ensued among the reporters, who did not understand at first what that meant. Everything became clear when the relevant materials were handed out to them.

According to the Court records, the trial was conducted in a manner that had nothing to do with the way it had unfolded in reality.

After all, why waste time when the outcome of the trial was a foregone conclusion?