Tihomir Levajac:
Here We Go on Trial Again

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Verdict

The supreme deity on Earth, the Prosecutor of the International Court of Justice, that is, the Prosecutor of the Vague Tribeurinal, was more than specific when the time came for the sixteenth Story to be tried.

Based on information submitted by the French humanitarian organisation Médecins du monde, during the course of the war in Bosnia the Serbs had committed a grave violation of the Geneva Convention of 1949 by refusing to provide medical treatment in their hospitals and clinics for non-Serb nationals who were ill or wounded; the secret police, however, had caught a Story that had been telling a story wherein such medical treatment was provided. This was obviously a case of misrepresentation of reality, a form of false presentation with a view to deceiving the international public!

In view of the fact that the said Story had been telling a story wherein it had presented facts that did not coincide with the Court’s view of the war, it was arrested and brought to the Vague!

Upon hearing those words, the defendant was, quite naturally, astonished. It was deeply perplexed by what had befallen it.

What was it the Prosecutor was saying? Why, the information submitted to the world and the International Court of Justice by the international humanitarian organisation Médecins du monde was – false!

It was all a lie of planetary proportions, gentlemen!

A-ha, the Chairman of the Tribeurinal Board exclaimed. A lie of planetary proportions, no less! Well, it was no business of the defendant’s to establish before this Court whether the information was false or not, or to make general conclusions, for that matter, but to admit whether it had been telling a story wherein the Serbs had provided medical treatment to a non-Serb during the course of the war in Bosnia or not.

Had it done so or had it not?

Yes, it had, answered the defendant with pride because the events in the story it had been telling had really happened! It could tell of a thousand occasions when the Serbs had helped wounded Croats, Muslims who’d been taken prisoner, the old, the sick...

Just how many times the Serbs had done such a thing, the Chairman interrupted the defendant, was up to the Court to determine, not the defendant! Let the defendant not worry about that! It had been charged with telling such and such a story, a story that did not correspond to reality! That was something that he, the Chairman, would very much like to know. What it was like when the Serbs provided medical help to other nationals!

Let the defendant tell the story in question and the Court would determine the facts of the case!

It was not so much the Chairman’s request that the defendant found hard to take but his manner of speaking: he spoke with irony sticking in his throat and a cynical expression on his face.

It had always told its story gladly and with pride, and did not find it difficult to do so now either, but what it did mind was the fact that everybody was settling back in their chairs, as if they were in a theatre, that they would be nibbling at pumpkin seeds, peanuts, sesame, chick-peas and the like in the manner of birds while it told its story.

But the situation was what it was. It had to adapt to the circumstances because it couldn’t change them.

It spoke in a simple, natural tone of voice, not wishing to sound important.

One day, the story began, a large group of wounded soldiers had been brought to the surgical ward from Mt Vlašić by helicopter; at the same time, an old man had been brought from Mrkonjić Town by ambulance, but he was given priority over them. The surgeons were up to their ears in work but they had to deal with the old man urgently because he was suffering from ileus.

Whoever knows a thing or two about medicine, the defendant said, will realise that such a patient must be operated on before a new day dawns. An operation must be performed without delay lest the poisonous gases from the intestines should reach the brain, causing momentary death.

Following a quick examination, the patient was taken to one of the crowded rooms; after a while, the orderlies took him to the operating theatre on a trolley.

The seventy-eight-year-old man was in a sorry state: lying on the trolley, he looked like someone whom death had forgotten to collect.

A pointed nose, wrinkled skin, sunken eyes, as if covered by some sort of film.

The look of a typical patient suffering from ileus, first described by Hippocrates. Every man whose intestines get tied up looks like that. The facial look referred to in medical literature as facias hippocratica, claimed the defendant.

However, when they brought the limp, wizened old man into the operating theatre, the dead man came alive. A touch of colour darted across his face and he started shifting, fidgeting, raising the upper part of his body under the milky white light.

The anaesthesiologist, a naturally reticent sort of fellow, was the first one to notice that there was something wrong with the old man. That he was somewhat confused, at odds with reason or with those around him.

When he heard Allah’s name among the many words that the old man was mumbling, the anaesthesiologist thought that the old man was afraid of being operated on and was praying. But when he heard the man thank Allah for helping him in his final hour by sending him among his own people, when he heard the man bless Allah for not having forgotten him, for not having turned his back on him, he immediately realised that something else was the matter.

He wasn’t among his own people, the anaesthesiologist said, but among Serbs!

What was he talking about, the old man snapped at him while the green colour floated before his eyes. He could still see quite well! Although his eyes had grown weak, and they looked like little aluminium saucers, they still did not deceive him! He could still see quite well, as could Allah! Praise be to Allah for having looked after him today even if he should have to go to meet his Maker straight from this room!

He wouldn’t be sorry to go!

Well, that was what he wanted to say.

At that moment the assistant surgeon unexpectedly joined in the conversation. He wanted to help the old man get rid of his delusions and get a grip on reality.

He spoke to him good-naturedly, warmly, calling him Grandad, and told him that he was in the Serbian Republic. The Serbian Republic was where he was, and it was held by the Serbs!

How come, the old man couldn’t believe him, then asked him if Satan was inside him when he spoke like that. He called the doctor son, then child, assuring him that he could see quite well, that he could see who they were and which side they belonged to. That they belonged to his side! And Allah’s! Allah’s and his!

The nurse in charge of instruments, whose fingers were almost longer than her arms, as it were, was used to seeing and hearing all sorts of things in the operating theatre, but a patient invoking Allah was just too much for her. So she opened her eyes wide above the green mask and hissed at the old man: Serbs, Grandad, Serbs.

Now the old man had to oppose her, too. So he turned his eyes, which used to be green but, having lost their colour, looked like two milky white aluminium saucers, towards her.

He addressed her, too, as child, and asked her to leave him in peace. Meaning to say, that is, could she, at least, leave him be and not fool around with him! What was she on about, what did she mean – Serbs, when he could see perfectly well who and what they were! The way they were dressed, they were undoubtedly Allah’s and his!

The nurse in charge of instruments then stared at her clothes and those of her colleagues.

Even though they were dressed in clothes that were in accordance with all the medical standards of the world, the sort of clothes worn in operating theatres all over the world, even though they had green shoes and socks on, green masks on their faces and green caps on their heads, green shirts on their shoulders and green trousers on their hips, she still wouldn’t let the old man convert her to another faith in her workplace, so she hissed at him again: Not Allah’s, Grandad, they were Serbs!

If he knew them to be Serbs, he said, he wouldn’t let them operate on him for the world! Not for the whole wide world would he let them do it if he knew they were Serbs!

These words of his were enough to move even the surgeon who was supposed to operate on him. He approached the old man with a benign look in his eyes and stared at his face, pointed nose and sunken eyes as if he were looking at something under the man’s skin. He looked through his wrinkled skin and the face of a somnambulist for a long time, then asked him where he was from.

The old man pointed towards one of the walls with a shrunken, shrivelled hand and said that he was from up above.

Up above where?

From the area around Mrkonjić, from a village near Bjelajac, from Vlasinje, maybe the doctor had heard of it.

The surgeon nodded without speaking. He was silent, thinking for a long time, then finally asked the old man whether there were, and it was as if he were putting chunks of silence in between words, whether there were any Ćulums up there, in the village where he lived.

There were indeed, the old man said, his voice shaking a little. There were, there were some again, by God, and it seemed as if his eyes, which had lost all colour and misted over with a white film, sparkled a bit, sparkled with a greenish sort of fire.

With a great effort, he turned to one side on the trolley, raised the upper part of his body a bit and put one hand next to his mouth.

As if he wanted to tell the doctor something in strict confidence.

He would tell him something, he whispered at last, something he shouldn’t be saying, something one should never tell anyone, but it was all right, he was among his own kind!

Why, during the war, he said, the previous war, he added, turning left and right lest others should hear him, his voice rustling somewhat, but in a resolute sort of way, there’d been lots of Ćulums, he said, sighing resolutely, with an air of triumph, or so it seemed, so many Ćulums he’d slaughtered.

By God, there had!

Just to think how many he’d slaughtered, and there were still some around, by God!

There were lots of the scum still around!

The surgeon winced, jumped to the side as if he’d stepped upon a viper in the woods, and ordered the anaesthetist to put the old man to sleep.

They had given the old man priority over other patients and there he was, telling him how he had slaughtered Serbs in the previous war! There were wounded Serbs, maimed by the Muslims, waiting in the corridor to be operated on, and the old man was telling the surgeon how he had slaughtered the man’s own relatives!

Three days after the operation, when the old man had recovered a little and regained his strength somewhat, when he was able to raise a bit resting his elbows upon the pillow, he asked the duty nurse, for some reasons of his own, who had operated on him, which doctor had done it.

Doctor Ćulum, the nurse replied, quickly, so as to get rid of him as soon as possible because she was up to her ears in work. Why did he enquire, she asked.

The old man choked, rolled his aluminium eyes upwards, towards Allah, then started fighting for breath, wheezing, his chest heaving spasmodically. When he managed to get his breath back, when his face was no longer screwed up in mortal agony, he spoke out loud.

Why, what a good people these Serbs were, he said, upon his word! Such a good people they were, that was what he was going to tell everyone, by God he was, even if they should cut him into little pieces! Nobody would have operated on him the way doctor Ćulum had done, no way! No Muslim doctor could have done it like that! Nope! He would praise Serbs to high heaven, by Allah he would!

He would heap praise upon them, so help him Allah!

The wounded Serbian soldiers lying in the adjoining beds sat up in order to see and hear the old man better. Nobody knew why he was speaking like that, why he kept praising Serbs and what kind of message he was trying to impart as the author of his own story, as it were.

Well, that was the story it had been charged with spreading, the defendant said, and it had been charged, quite simply, for telling the truth.

Well, whether it had been telling the truth or not, the Prosecutor retorted quickly, was for the Court to establish. Only, the truth of the matter was not to be established based on the Story’s story and its arbitrary statements but based on the facts of the case.

That is what the Prosecutor demanded of the Court!

To consider the facts of the case!

Which he was in the process of imparting to the Tribeurinal Board.

At the beginning of the trial, he had submitted to the honourable judges a document, a report forwarded by a humanitarian organisation, Médecines du monde. The report of this French humanitarian organisation was quite authentic because it was well known how friendly the French and the Serbian people were, so this organisation’s report was beyond doubt. While the defendant had been telling its story, another fax message had arrived from a German humanitarian organisation that had been helping the fraternal Serbian people in their aggressive campaign in the course of the war. This German organisation, too, had recorded no instances of the Serbs ever helping anyone, of their providing medical assistance to the sick or wounded of other nationalities. They had, therefore, violated the Geneva Convention of 1949. As for the defendant’s story, that was pure nonsense, the Prosecutor said.

The defendant was so incensed by the Prosecutor’s words that it immediately demanded that the Chairman of the Tribeurinal Board grant it permission to address the Court, but he refused to do so. What the defendant wanted to say to him was that the purpose of this trial was precisely to get away from the truth of the matter, only it did not manage to do so because at that moment a clerk entered the courtroom, bringing a new fax message that had just arrived. It had come, the clerk said, for the Red Crescent, a humanitarian organisation of Islamic countries, an organisation known for providing help to everyone, irrespective or his or her religion! This organisation, too, had recorded no instances of the Serbs helping anyone in their aggressive campaign, etc. They had, thereby, violated the Geneva Convention of 1949, etc.

Whereupon the Defence Counsel jumped up from his seat and started to shout, as if at an auction: Sold, sold!

He could not restrain himself but kept jumping all around the courtroom, stamping his feet, shouting the same words: Sold, sold!

He did not even bother to explain his words because it was clear to everybody in the courtroom that three bids had arrived, and that, as everybody knew, was the minimum required in the world of business to conclude a deal.