Tihomir Levajac:
Here We Go on Trial Again

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Verdict

At the beginning of the trial of the eighteenth Story, the Prosecutor said the things he had said so many times before. Parrot-fashion, he repeated what he had said so often, that the trial was in no way a political one, that the Court was entirely independent in its work, only it had to serve the politics of those who had founded it and appointed the judges. He went on to say that this was not a case of a whole people being put on trial, although it was clear to the whole world, after what had happened in the former Yugoslavia, that every Serb was presumed guilty until proved innocent! Then he said that every side in the Bosnian conflict had committed crimes, but only the Serbs had done it in an organised and systematic manner, with a view to establishing Greater Serbia, etc.

Therefore, in order to cleanse the territory ethnically, the Serbs had committed mass rape of Muslim women!

By describing rape, the defendant could not have committed a greater crime because rape, exclaimed the Prosecutor confidently, in the manner of a legal deity, was a greater humiliation, both from a moral and a legal point of view, than conquering territories and towns where Muslims used to be the majority population!

As soon as the Prosecutor had read out the bill of indictment, he went through the usual routine with the defendant.

The defendant was asked to identify itself and to swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Then the Chairman of the Tribeurinal Board asked it whether it was true that it had been going round spreading a story about how the Serbs had committed rape.

Yes, it was true, the defendant answered in an unusually calm tone of voice, it had been going round spreading a story about how the Serbs had not committed rape.

When the defendant said this, the Chairman answered sharply, but retained a civil manner.

Whether the Serbs had committed rape was up to the Court to determine, he retorted. Let the defendant not worry about that, let it just tell the incriminated story, and they would take care of the presentation of evidence.

The Vague Tribeurinal was in possession of incontrovertible evidence!

The defendant, naturally, could hardly wait to be given such an opportunity, believing that no-one, not even the International Court of Justice, stood a chance fighting against the truth in the long run!

The Story started burning like some incorporeal fire and, having found a strongpoint, spoke up in an unusual manner.

The residents of a block of flats in Borik had had a lot of trouble starting a fire in their hastily obtained furnaces, placed in narrow niches inside their flats.

The chimney had never been checked upon the completion of the building because the building had floor-by-floor heating facilities, so nobody knew why the chimney could not draw.

Some maintained that fire was a primeval sort of phenomenon, that it was supposed to be lit in the morning, when the day began, on or near the ground; in the afternoon or evening, up among the clouds, where there was no fireplace or ground, on the tenth floor, a fire stood no chance of being lit.

Although such stories belonged to the realm of folklore, Slavko, an engineer living in this building, had the opportunity of seeing for himself every evening that reality by far outstripped the stories: every time he tried to light a fire, he had a lot of trouble to get it burning.

Evening would already be falling and the engineer’s furnace gave off only smoke in that first wartime winter. It was very cold inside the flat, and the fire just wouldn’t get going. Daylight was already vanishing in the window-panes, dusk came early in Bosnia in December, in Bosnia and in wartime, and the furnace just wouldn’t get going.

He tried kneeling and blowing hard into the criss-crossed pieces if wood, to no avail. Adding dry pods didn’t help either, nor did opening and closing the lid or pulling some lever or other.

Nothing helped.

The fire wouldn’t get started properly, only smoke came out of the many openings on the furnace.

Amid the smoke, the telephone sounded in the hall.

When he picked up the receiver, it was his wife.

Jelena.

Calling him from the Olympic city of Munich.

Calling him from the city where his daughter had been living for two years already. His wife had gone there two months before to see how her daughter was getting on in a foreign country far away from home, to see the grandchildren and to find a shelter from the oncoming Krajina winter and the cruel war, at least for a while.

From Munich, she occasionally called her husband, who had remained all alone in their flat, by telephone.

After they had exchanged a few words of greetings, Jelenka[1] asked her husband, sounding curious, but in a restrained sort of way, what they, the Bosnian Serbs, were doing in Bosnia.

What were they, she enquired, doing there?

The engineer thought of replying that what the Bosnian Serbs were doing in Bosnia was waging a war, only he remembered that others were doing that as well and gave it up.

It was not as if they were doing something that others were not.

As far as he was informed, everybody did the same sort of things in this dirty war, the only difference being, in view of the fact that each of the three peoples living there believed the other two to be the villains, the intensity of hatred and the extent of the actual evil done.

What was it they were supposed to be doing, he finally asked.

They were keeping Muslim women in prison camps and raping them, his wife, Jeka, informed him all the way from Germany!

You, she said, meaning the plural form, in an angry tone of voice to boot, were keeping Muslim women in prison camps and brothels! You had raped tens of thousands of Muslim women!

The engineer had not heard of that, even though he was more or less familiar with all the dirty doings that this war entailed, so he asked, genuinely curious, where.

Where what?

Where were they keeping them and where were they raping them?

The engineer posed this question in such an enterprising tone of voice that it sounded as if he would go looking for prison camps and brothels the moment he finished the telephone conversation with his wife.

Then Lela, his true love, really got mad over there in Germany.

What was all the pretence for, she said. Everybody knew it and he acted as if he didn’t! Over the last three days, whichever TV programme she watched, whichever paper she read, they talked about nothing else!

And what were their poisonous papers saying, he asked. What were their TV liars saying?

All sorts of things! The night before, she had heard a Muslim woman called Aziza describe how Serbs had raped her in the middle of the stadium on Mt Manjača, in front of 1,500 people, and what hideously perverted things they’d done to her!

For Christ’s sake, her husband shouted, didn’t she know that there was no stadium on Mt Manjača!? What was she saying, what had got into her? There was no stadium on Mt Manjača! He’d been there, it was pure fabrication!

But they were offering thousands of statements testifying to mass rape, performed systematically, with a view to getting the hapless women pregnant, Jelkača shouted, and there he was, pretending not to know a thing about it all!

Of course they were, the engineer retorted from the cold flat in Borik filled with darkness, of course they were, the spoiled, prurient West needed to be fed fresh sensations on a daily basis! Of course they were, he shouted, irritated, those millions of TV addicts constantly had to be fed fresh lies and kept under control in that way!

Infamy reigned throughout the Western world!

What was he on about, Jeka was getting angry with her husband, who was over there in Bosnia, where they kept Muslim women in prison camps and raped them. Why wasn’t he talking about the things she was saying, what the whole world was buzzing about? They kept fifty thousand, she said, gasping for breath as she uttered the number, Muslim women in prison camps and pleasure houses, and raped them!

Just when the engineer intended to counter his wife’s claims with facts, to tell her that mass rapes were not possible in reality, the line went dead.

The things they were fabricating about the Serbs, the engineer thought contemptuously in the darkness. The nauseating things being circulated!

Now they’d come up with the mass rape story!

And were spreading it all over the world through the media because lies were all-powerful.

Lies and power.

Ancient Chinese emperors had known that, so their coats-of-arms had a mouth and a sword in the centre.

The con men who ruled the world today knew that, too, and ruled it by means of the media.

The media were the most powerful tool for shaping public opinion and ruining people! In the contemporary world, especially in developed countries, they had a greater power that the executive, legislative and judicial authorities put together.

What they’d been blabbering about the Serbs until now wasn’t enough, so now they’d thought up this rape business! The things they’d been spreading about them! That the Serbs were a people two centuries behind in development, that they had the character of wolves, maintaining a cult of wolf-like blood-thirstiness and spreading the spirit of the woods in the twentieth century!

Then they spread stories about them being primitive, smelly, swine wallowing in the mire, vultures, blood-thirsty dinosaurs and merciless tyrannosaurs!

They almost made them out to be snakes with forked tongues!

They would have us believe, the engineer mused in the dark, that there was nothing worse in this world than a Serb!

That the Serbs were a disgrace to mankind as a whole!

Shame on them!

The wooden fences around some of our churches, he said and spat into the darkness beneath the window, are older that the peoples shaping our destiny!

The world refused to recognise the fact that Serbian soldiers were getting killed! They only cried over dead Muslims and dead Croats! Naturally, dead Muslims and dead Croats were less evil to them than dead Serbs!

The engineer was uncommonly angry. Angry about the furnace that wouldn’t burn, with his wife for sending such bad news from abroad, with the world treating the Serbs so unfairly, although he knew that that was premeditated. That it was the doing of those who traded in armaments and souls, who started wars in this world.

And war could be sold very profitably today, the engineer said to himself, squatting and blowing into the criss-crossed pieces of wood.

Today, almost half the developed world lived off the war in Bosnia and off the hatred towards the Serbs, he shouted, immediately taking fright at his own voice and the truth he had just told. Today, almost half the world lived off the war fought primarily at the expense of the poor Serbian soldiers, he shouted again, then straightened up, filled with rage.

Remembering that half of Europe lived off the hatred towards the Serbs, he took a vase from a table in the niche and threw it at the radiator under the window.

The vase gave off a brief squeal, like a light bulb going off.

How could the Serbs be the aggressors, he shouted, throwing the plates that he had been washing and stacking up next to the kitchen sink against the wall, when they owned sixty-four percent of Bosnian land? How could they be the aggressors on their own land, he asked while the plates kept flying towards the wall.

Where was the Serbian Bosnia, he asked while the plates broke into pieces, where, he shouted.

When he had broken all the plates, he felt an overwhelming weakness, he felt ashamed of himself; irritated, he went to the couch and threw the entire length of his body upon it.

The things they were doing to the Serbs, the same painful thought resounded inside him. The way they threw mud upon them! Day in day out, they babbled one and the same thing, that the Croats and Muslims were good, so that even the least intelligent individual should be able to understand that the Serbs were evil.

God, he moaned, clutching his stomach with cold hands.

The world accused the Serbs of something or other every day, they spat upon them, presented a deformed image of them, lest the truth about the war in Bosnia should come out!

Unfortunately, the Serbs were not up to such a well-organised campaign! They had no national programme worth mentioning, and they weren’t particularly skilful at defending themselves!

As if they were a nation of stutterers!

In this biased world, impeccably run only in terms of mercilessness, violence and injustice, they were powerless!

As if they were a dumb nation!

There was no end to the lies being spread about the Serbs, and yet they behaved as if the world wasn’t trying to do them in! Whatever the world did to the Serbs, they still behaved as if the world was favourably disposed towards them!

The engineer was angry with the world, with his own people, and particularly with God, who saw it all and did nothing about it! God had to be hiding from the Serbs, hiding as best He could, in view of the fact that He did nothing at all!

As he lay on the couch in the darkness, all sorts of thoughts whirling beneath his frontal bone, it seemed to him that he would simply explode, like a bomb.

All of a sudden, an apparition presented itself to him in the darkness under the ceiling, a monster, a spectre.

It had the shape of the country where he had attended a specialisation course.

Even though relations in Bosnia were very complex, due to the horrendous consequences of centuries-long madness, the apparition had unequivocally determined who was the victim and who the guilty party. Irrespective of the real situation, it defended sweet little Bosniaks and destroyed evil Serbs!

In the end, there would be a happy ending, the way their thrillers or horror movies ended!

The monster behaved in that way because it was the only super-power left in the world!

But not for long, he, Slavko, an engineer, vouched for that from his cold empty flat in Borik!

The way that monster behaved today, it didn’t merely lose its past, it hadn’t had any, after all, but its future as well!

It was without a future!

It wouldn’t sober up even when the war in Bosnia turned out to be something quite different from what they made it out to be!

The engineer had got carried away with prophecies and the world’s destiny when the telephone in the hall started ringing again.

No sooner had he picked up the receiver than his wife started talking about the raping of Muslim women. There she was, in Munich, rambling on about brothels, systematic rape, getting about fifty thousand Muslim women pregnant deliberately.

The engineer tried to stop her. For God’s sake, woman, he said to her first, then, my dear, and went on to ask if she had any idea of what it would take to rape fifty thousand women. Did she know that the Serbs were waging a war against an enemy that had twice as many soldiers as them? If they were busy raping Muslim women, who would be left to defend the sacred Serbian land!?

When the engineer said that, the love of his life retorted by saying that that meant nothing. While some waged war, others were busy raping.

Had she taken leave of her senses, her husband shouted. If so few Serbs raped so many Muslim women, he shouted, coughing while he did so because the room and the hall had filled up with smoke, then the Serbs would deserve the reputation of the most macho nation in the world!

And he knew full well what the Serbs were like.

In that respect.

Just like other nations.

Why was he, asked Jeluša, who was eight years younger than her husband, judging others by his own standards?

Why was he measuring others in this way?

Why was he comparing himself to others?

Hearing that, the engineer was overcome by a coughing fit, so that he almost choked. He was angry about the furnace that wasn’t working properly, about the smoke burning his eyes, but most of all, although, to be quite truthful about it, his sex drive was not exactly what it used to be, most of all, he was angry with his wife, who, apparently, wasn’t really happy with what she was getting, who, as they said, just couldn’t get enough of it, so he decided to return in kind.

He felt like asking her if she was sorry to be over there when so many Muslim women were being raped here, but he couldn’t utter a word because of the smoke choking him.

He couldn’t break the connection either, while Lela, his Lenče, rambled on from the capital of Bavaria.

She just couldn’t stop.

O God, Leca shouted, O God, Jeca wondered from the Olympic city, was it possible that the Serbs, her Serbs had changed so much in the two and a half months that she had been away? Had they changed so much that she had to be ashamed of being a Serb there, that she had to lower her eyes in the company of foreigners and feel so miserable and humiliated?

All that in the middle of Europe, the civilised world!

That was just too much, so the engineer slammed down the receiver.

Serves her right, he muttered, waving his arms, trying to drive away the smoke that pinched and burned his eyes, hurrying towards the door.

Whatever he could open, he opened. The windows, the door leading to the balcony, the main entrance, the bathroom door and the pantry door, although it was cold.

Very cold.

It was December, winter in Bosnia in wartime was certainly no joke.

No sooner had the smoke cleared somewhat and the engineer gone up to the furnace to try to light a fire again, than the telephone started ringing again.

That was his irate wife, he knew. She wanted to get even with him for hanging up on her, but he didn't want to let her have the pleasure of doing so.

If the Serbs had anything at all under control in what was formerly the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, it was the region of Krajina, which he made regular tours of in the line of duty. At regular intervals of seven days he visited one town in Krajina after another; never did he hear any mention of brothels or prison camps for women, and there was his wife, thousands of kilometres away, claiming that such places did exist.

Well, if she persisted in claiming that what did not exist actually existed, he wouldn’t pick up the receiver!

If she, having been born and bred there, had begun to forget the smells of her native town and the colour of the Vrbas River, which soothed the soul and invigorated the body, after a mere two and a half months abroad, if she had begun to doubt her own people, misled by foreign lies, if she, a genuine Serb by birth and national allegiance, had come to accuse her own people, then she didn’t deserve to get an answer when she called him on the phone.

Let the phone ring all evening, all night, for all he cared, he wasn’t going to pick up the receiver!

And when she returned home, she would have to account for all the accusations and insults at the expense of the Serbs she had uttered, and especially for those at his own expense, since she was still his lawfully wedded wife, for those insults she had poured into the receiver and his ear so thoughtlessly.

He wouldn’t pick up the receiver no matter how long the phone might ring! That was how he was going to punish her, he shouted, although he was all alone in the darkness. The moment he said those words, the fire started burning all of a sudden, his voice had got it started, so that the hitherto dark shapes in the room, with lots of darkness piled up in the corners, turned bright. The fire burned in a lively manner, crackling like an old friend, and lit up his face through the open door of the furnace, exposing the wrinkles on it. The elderly face shone in the reflected heat, so that a strangely cosy atmosphere was created between the engineer and the dancing flames.

It was then that the engineer felt something that one could only feel in front of and next to a fire, when one was in cahoots with it, as it were, something bright, big, magnificent and eternal.

Something that meant everything and reflected nothing in the cold and desolation of earthly life, amid the heartlessness of men.

As the phone in the hall kept ringing through the evening, the night and the dark, the engineer sat in front of the furnace, gazing at the reflection of the fire, enjoying the warmth that appeared primeval to him.

Well, that was the story for which it had been charged, the defendant said at last, unjustly charged because the story contained no evidence whatsoever that Serbs had committed any acts of rape.

The Prosecutor immediately asked for permission to address the Court, lest the trial should proceed along lines divergent from those laid down in advance.

He had said what he had to say in the bill of indictment, which he was not prepared to give up. It is true that he had said that all sides in the conflict had committed acts of rape as a form of ethnic cleansing, but only the Serbs had done it in an organised and systematic manner, naturally, with a view to realising the doctrine of Greater Serbia. Which, as the honourable judges had just heard, the defendant denied in the form of a story, maintaining that it was a case of fabrication on the part of the media.

Well, the defendant was entitled to that, but there existed evidence against it. The truth just couldn’t be suppressed! The Court was in possession of evidence that the Serbs had raped Muslim women according to a plan, in an organised manner! He proposed to the Court that the Muslim women who had been victims of rape in this war and had agreed to give public testimony before the Court should be brought into the courtroom. Let them bring in the victims who would tell before the International Court of Justice where, when and by whom they’d been raped!

That was what he, the Prosecutor, proposed; once the Court had received confirmation of mass rape, it remained to be seen what the defendant would have to say to that! When it found itself driven into a corner, crushed under a mountain of evidence, they would see how it would defend itself! And with what, honourable judges!

The Chairman, naturally, agreed to the proposal and adjourned the trial until the bevy of Muslim women who had been waiting in the corridor got ready to enter the courtroom.

It proved to be a long wait, however, so long that nobody in the courtroom knew why the pre-arranged scenario was not unfolding according to plan.

At last, one of the attendants entered the courtroom, alone, and said that the Muslim women, much as they would like to, would not give testimony before the Court because the trial was being recorded, so that their words and faces would remain forever on video tape! They were honourable women, and feared that such a thing would harm their reputation sooner or later! If the cameras were switched off, they would be willing to testify.

What ensued was the hushed whispered consultation characteristic of situations when things are not proceeding according to plan. The Prosecutor was particularly nervous, more than nervous, looking like someone who had completely lost his nerves.

The Chairman finally said that their condition would be fulfilled! The cameras would be switched off! One and all!

The attendant then left the courtroom. He didn’t return for quite a long time. There was no trace of either him or the Muslim women.

Then he reappeared, alone. Although he had tried to persuade and cajole them into it, the Muslim women still refused to testify. Even though the cameras would be switched off, there were many men in the courtroom; they could not reveal such intimate details in front of unknown men! They could not testify because they were ashamed to speak of the humiliation they had been exposed to in front of so many men!

They were, they said, honourable women!

They had to think about their reputation!

Then, quite unexpectedly, the Defence Counsel jumped up from his seat and started dancing on the blood-coloured carpets leading to the Prosecutor, big, dark and clumsy as he was, dancing and clapping his paws, mumbling and shouting, It’s finished, it’s finished, as if he was in a circus, which was not the case.

To save the Court from disgracing itself any further, the trial had to be adjourned.