Tihomir Levajac:
Here We Go on Trial Again

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Verdict

A fly that had entered the courtroom and kept flying in circles as the trial got under way got on the defendant’s nerves more than the Prosecutor, who was reading out the bill of indictment in that repulsive official language of his. That fly was no ordinary fly but one with three pairs of legs. Black, big and fat it was. There were such flies in Bosnia, only they weren’t fat, nothing special, just ordinary blowflies.

This fly, a product of the New World Order, kept flying in circles throughout the courtroom, leaving behind an unpleasant sort of sound, a sound very much resembling a stench, while the Prosecutor droned in a similar tone of voice how the Serbs were the aggressors because they had intended to conquer the other peoples living in Bosnia. The fly kept flying in circles, as if it had been trained to do so, while the Prosecutor kept trying to persuade the Tribeurinal Board that the Serbs were the aggressors because they had acted in the interests of the doctrine of Greater Serbia.

The Prosecutor had been so obsessed with Greater Serbia during the course of this trial that he found it impossible to think without Greater Serbia floating before his eyes. He could not even yawn or stretch his arms without seeing it. In a word, he could not open his mouth without Greater Serbia rolling off his tongue.

The defendant was unable to shake his firm belief in this even when it asked how it was possible for the Serbs to be aggressors in their own land. No earthly argument could shake his belief. Persistent and stubborn, he repeated: aggressors, aggressors, Greater Serbia, Greater Serbia! While saying that, he looked like a man with a well-developed digestive tract and blood vessels healthy enough to take care of his metabolism.

And while the fly kept flying in concentric circles under the central cupola, making the defendant feel as if its mind was splitting, the Prosecutor kept repeating one and the same thing, as if selling second-hand clothes in the flea market: aggressors, aggressors!

Which the Tribeurinal Board members would see for themselves anyway when they heard the incriminated story that the defendant had been spreading after the war in Bosnia had started. The Prosecutor particularly wished to draw the attention of the Tribeurinal Board members to the towns and places that the Serbs occupied at the beginning of the war, whose names the defendant expressly stated in the story, which would serve as incontrovertible proof that the Serbs were the aggressors.

When the Prosecutor had finished reading the bill of indictment, the Chairman of the Tribeurinal Board was finally able to start questioning the defendant. From beneath his funny cap, which looked like a scarecrow, he asked the defendant whether it had understood the bill of indictment.

The Story answered that it had.

As soon as it had spoken, the obnoxious fly stopped flying about.

Was it true what the Prosecutor had said, asked the funny-looking judge from Costa Rica again.

The defendant answered that it did not wish to enter into a polemic with the Court, it merely wished to tell its story. If the Court could not answer the question of whether a people could be the aggressor on their own land, then there was nothing for it to argue about! It would tell its story and let it be its defence against this injustice of international proportions! If that should not suffice, it did not want to defend itself using anything outside the story. And they were free to do with the story whatever they wanted. Let them twist and turn it, let them use and abuse it, let them rape it, it didn’t mind because no-one could ruin a story if it didn’t ruin itself.

Everything was transient, only stories remained!

The funny-looking judge warned the defendant not to lecture the Court but to stick to the procedure and answer the questions.

It was not to judge the Court, the Court was to judge it and its story!

Let it tell its story and the Court would judge whether the bill of indictment was valid or not.

When the Chairman finally allowed the defendant to address the Court, the fly landed on the Prosecutor’s desk, folded its transparent wings and listened to the defendant telling a story about a doctor, a lady coming from an old family, a family whose members still held the family reputation and the way they looked dear. Although the family in question was an old Muslim family, its members readily embraced everything that was new.

The conscientious fly listened carefully to the defendant’s description of the doctor’s house.

Their old-style house, a two-storey building with a roof slanting four ways and lots of windows, looking over the Vrbas River, was rather more modern inside than on the outside. All the latest household appliances were in it. From a bidet to a dishwasher, from crystal ceiling pendants to a toaster.

The father, who had worked as a surgeon between the two World Wars, had enrolled his children in grammar school, the sort of school that, in addition to general education, provided a young person with a certain charm that no other school could give; following secondary school, he sent his children to Zagreb University. The elder son followed in his father’s footsteps, the younger son graduated from the Faculty of Technology, entered postgraduate studies, got himself a M. Sc. degree first, then a Ph. D., and finally became a lecturer at Zagreb University.

As for the daughter, Sunita, she studied stomatology.

All three got themselves university degrees.

Being very well off, they could afford to dress the way they liked. Apparently, their taste in clothes was impeccable, so that they resembled a group of high fashion models rather more than an old Muslim family whose ancestors were beys.

Being a woman, Sunita, as was only natural, was the fashion leader among them. In their town on the banks of the Vrbas, the so-called Beauty of the Krajina, few women were her equals when it came to dressing.

She was always dressed up and made up, the way only a woman of faultless taste could be dressed up and made up. There was not a soul who hadn’t marvelled at her expensive dresses and jewellery, the casual-looking sweaters or jeans that she wore so nonchalantly. Who hadn’t marvelled at her jackets of many colours, skiing outfit or Italian shoes and boots which appeared to have been made for her beautifully shaped legs only?

There was not a man, or a woman for that matter, who hadn’t sighed at the sight of her.

When the war began, however, getting more and more destructive as the summer went on, she started coming to work at the Polyclinic dressed as never before. Even though it was already rather warm, she started coming to work wearing rubber boots, woollen socks, old-fashioned giant-sized velvet trousers and a peasant-style cardigan made of coarse wool.

On top of that, she wore no make-up or jewellery, no nail polish, golden ear-rings, pearl necklaces, golden bangles or rings made solely of 24-carat gold.

It was as if a goddess of beauty and taste had masqueraded as a beggar.

And when she came to work dressed like that, she sat down with her colleagues to have a morning cup of coffee although there was a war going on. Before starting any work, she had coffee with her colleagues; she did not drink it the way they did, however, but in her own peculiar way. When she reached out her white hand, showing varicose veins here and there if the truth must be known, took a sugar cube with her pale fingers, dipped it half-way into the refreshing beverage, then pouted her lips so as to pop the black-and-white mass into her mouth and start sucking the black liquid out of the cube, it was a veritable performance.

The sort of performance that left the spectators out of breath.

While her colleagues just sat and listened to her, she talked, in that rather refined manner of hers, about one and the same thing morning after morning – her husband, who was a well-known and well-respected man in their town, a distinguished member of his profession and a faculty Dean. Every morning she told her colleagues how her husband, while they prepared to go to work, kept criticising her for going to work looking the way she did, sloppily dressed, looking awful, her hair in a mess.

As if she wanted to amuse her colleagues, the doctor repeated her story every morning, sucking on the black-and-white sugar cube, telling them with an expression of abstract innocence how her husband criticised her because she went through the town looking like that.

Who should she dress up for, she would ask her husband in an irritable tone of voice, when there were no more town-dwellers in the town of Banja Luka! Ever since the Serbian Democratic Party had won the local elections, she would say pouting her lips, there were no more town-dwellers in town!

Both the town-dwellers and the town were gone!

All the bookshops in town had been turned into grocery shops selling potatoes and bacon, she would exclaim indignantly.

Oh, really, her husband would retort! Why, she was a dentist! She was in close contact with her patients! Her profession made it imperative that she should look nice!

But she wouldn’t listen to her husband because she did not dress that way for him but for the sake of others, she would say haughtily, holding her forehead high, so that her colleagues could not look straight into her eyes.

They used to have one market day per week in Banja Luka, she would say mockingly! It used to be known that peasants came to town on Tuesdays!

But now, she said indignantly, it was Tuesday in town every day!

Thus she would hold forth, holding her neck up proudly, although her neck and the back of her head were somewhat overripe; there were purple spots there, mole-shaped but something other than moles. The doctor held her neck up proudly among five or six Serbian women, who kept silent as she talked. They looked at one another from time to time, then went on being silent.

As if their silence was premeditated.

Naturally, the same scene was repeated the next morning.

The scene and the story.

That morning, again, Sunita had been criticised by her husband, who had lectured her on the norms of living in a town.

But who should she dress up for, her finely carved mouth asked proudly, let her colleagues advise her on that point, she added with an ironic expression on her face!

Ever since the Serbian Democratic Party had won the elections, the town had been virtually swamped by peasants.

And just to see the faces of those people, her soft lips enunciated in a charmingly contemptuous way. Broad, dusty, pockmarked, hairy, barbaric, overgrown with stubble and goat-like hair! Bearded and moustachioed, with no teeth in sight! All the people she met in a day in Gospodska Street couldn’t put together one complete set of teeth.

Pig-like faces, mouldy foreheads, hairy and bearded, but no teeth!

The whole of Gospodska Street filled with hairy heads but teeth nowhere to be found!

They didn’t even know how to walk along the street properly, they rolled along like a herd of cattle!

They had no idea of what the pavement was for, where the left-hand and where the right-hand side of the street was, they knew not of zebra crossings or traffic lights but pushed onwards like sheep, leeks protruding from their behinds!

They smelled of wool and had leeks sticking out of their arses!

If she were a Serb she would be ashamed, very much so.

Even though her colleagues remained silent, they still thought that the doctor’s anger, directed against those who had been driven out of their homes by the Croats and Muslims, who had fled their knives and daggers, was quite justified, bearing in mind that she could walk along the street as no other woman in the town on the Vrbas could.

In the days before the war, when the doctor left her home and walked across the Town Bridge swaying her hips like a whirlwind, in the direction of the Kastel, it was like a concert of bodily motions! It was a symphony of motions, inbred, sensuous, mysterious, full of sounds and colours! When she came rolling along from the direction of the old part of town, when she went down the street, infinitely dignified, her voluptuous body filling the street, the dazed passers-by collided with one another!

Why, one could write a poem about the way the doctor used to walk through the town!

If one were so inclined, that is.

Even now, disguised as she was, walking through the town in rubber boots, she walked proudly, her forehead held high.

That was why her colleagues thought that she had the right to feel angry at the sight of refugees who couldn’t walk through the town the way she knew how, although they wouldn’t say it openly. None of them would ease her troubles or provide any relief to her, which was not exactly the proper thing to do.

The next morning the doctor told the same or, at any rate, a very similar story. Reaching out her hand, transparent like a piece of crystal, though sprinkled with dark spots that spelled out a message whose meaning was all too clear, picking up a sugar cube, dipping it into her coffee and sucking on it afterwards, she complained of her husband again.

But who was she supposed to dress up for, she asked her colleagues, rolling her lovely round eyes. For whose eyes was she supposed to do that when the streets of Banja Luka were crowded with riff-raff whose origin and destination remained unclear?

She was supposed to follow the latest fashion trends while the whole town smelled of garlic! She was supposed to look like a lady while the whole town smelled of bacon!

What utter nonsense!

Whereupon her colleague Borjana decided to say what was on her mind. Namely, that she shouldn’t act and speak like that! She shouldn’t be telling her Serbian colleagues here at the Polyclinic, in the middle of Banja Luka, while the Serbs, having survived the slaughterhouse of the previous war, desperately fought lest they should be exterminated in Krajina, about garlic and bacon!

Although she wanted to say it, she just couldn’t bring herself to do so. For reasons quite unfathomable to her, her lips remained silent.

However, Serbian weapons spoke instead of her.

When it was announced on the radio that Modriča had fallen into Serbian hands, the very next day the doctor came to work wearing flat-heeled shoes. She had taken off her rubber boots, but she still had on whatever else she had been wearing lately.

The woollen socks, stained giant-sized trousers upon her swaying hips, peasant-style woollen cardigan on her white shoulders. She wore no lipstick, her eyes weren’t made up, her face wasn’t powdered.

Although everybody at the Polyclinic noticed the change, nobody was willing to comment on it. Only doctor Borjana, owing to a feeling of triumph she just couldn’t suppress while making their morning coffee on an improvised alcohol heater in the adjacent utility room, shouted with all her might: Here we go!

When the coffee was made and everybody gathered for their morning cup, Sunita talked about the town and those living in it again, only this time her voice was more cordial and there was less bitterness inside her soul.

While she talked, a wrinkle kept appearing between her eyebrows, marring the beauty of her face. The moment she stopped talking, however, her face assumed its usual honest and dignified look.

Two weeks later, when Odžak fell into Serbian hands, the doctor came to work wearing shoes and silk stockings, whereas everything else on her remained as before.

When the First Krajina Corps, together with Martić’s Knin Ninjas, managed to take hold of Derventa, the greatest Ustashi stronghold, after heavy and bloody fighting, the doctor immediately took off the giant-sized trousers she had been wearing at work for the past two months and put on a skirt, leaving the peasant-style woollen cardigan on.

From the feet to the waist, her slender curvaceous body was dressed in the finest silk and velvet, while from the waist to the neck it was wrapped up in a cardigan made of coarse wool.

It was as if a split personality was fighting inside her, and it remained unclear which half would win and obliterate the other half.

As for the town and those who lived in it like cattle, those who went along the streets like sheep, those who had snouts instead of faces, those who ruled the town as the representatives of national parties, she didn’t mention them at all.

It looked as if things weren’t as black for the Serbian people as they had been before the fall of Derventa.

She refrained from talking, her colleagues remained silent, although their silence wasn’t mere silence but a dignified sort of silence.

And solemn.

Accompanied by a triumphant expression on their faces.

However, the doctor’s state of split personality could not last long because Bosanski Brod fell into Serbian hands soon afterwards. When colonel Lisica and his intrepid soldiers marched victoriously into the town upon the Sava and drove out across the river those who had carried their flags to the rally for a united, indivisible Bosnia and Herzegovina the year before, the doctor took off her peasant-style woollen cardigan and put on a silk blouse instead.

Her colleagues, naturally, concluded that the doctor’s gradual change of clothes coincided with the advance of the Serbian army on the battlefield. If that army had been better prepared, organised and equipped, if it had liberated the areas where the Serbs had been living for centuries a little faster, the doctor would have changed her clothes faster as well, changing her image more dynamically.

However, the defendant said, one had to be honest and say that the doctor had changed inside as well, if she had changed at all, that is. She no longer mentioned the hairy heads and bearded faces, nor did she mention teeth, toothless mouths, market days, traffic lights; if the truth must be told, she didn’t mention the smell of garlic enveloping the town, nor did she say anything about the people in Gospodska Street smelling of sweat and bacon, lest she should, God forbid, offend anyone.

When she did speak, and she spoke less and less, her talk was vague and incoherent; on the other hand, she also spoke silently, saying more when she remained silent than when she spoke.

Some mornings she drank her coffee without saying a single word, remaining silent like a watered flowerpot beneath the window.

When she did speak on occasion, an upright wrinkle appeared on her forehead. The wrinkle remained there long after she had finished speaking.

But when Jajce fell into Serbian hands towards the end of October, the very next day the doctor came to work dressed according to the latest fashion, made up, her hair tied up in a bun, in all her former glory.

Only after the fall of Jajce did certain things dawn on her, or so it seemed. She put on red lipstick, powdered her face, painted her nails the colour of candied apples, put a golden necklace around her neck, sprayed her wrists and armpits with perfume, so that everyone who had a sense of beauty at all, or who could recognise beauty and enjoy it, had to marvel at the way she looked.

As she possessed incredible personal charm, everyone just had to marvel at her.

The moment the defendant finished its last sentence and the Prosecutor spoke up, the obnoxious fly started flying around the courtroom again. He spoke the way the centres of power spoke, and the obnoxious fly left behind that sound in the form of a foul smell.

The smell spread through the courtroom like a ghost. It stuck to the nostrils to such an extent that it caused people to feel sick.

It constantly and mercilessly increased in intensity, so that those present were in danger of suffocating from their own stench.

The guards intervened by opening the windows, the doors and the cupola, but to no avail.