Tihomir Levajac:
Here We Go on Trial Again

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Verdict

When the Prosecutor read out the bill of indictment for the twelfth Story, it was not difficult to conclude that it was indicted for having told stories that were very unsophisticated indeed.

Were the claims made in the bill of indictment correct, asked the Chairman of the Tribeurinal Board from under his funny-looking cap.

They were, the Story replied, for that was what the war was like.

Dirty.

And what had made the defendant tell such stories?

The so-called abstract story, replied the defendant without a moment’s hesitation, catching the Chairman of the Tribeurinal Board by surprise. It was evident from the expression on his face that he had never heard of such a story.

And just precisely what kind of story was that, he finally asked.

It was the sort of story that was about nothing.

The Chairman had no idea such a type of story existed and was very puzzled. His mouth was open, the lower lip hanging down, which gave him an intellectual sort of look.

How come the honourable judge had never heard of the abstract story, the defendant wondered aloud! Everybody claimed that all great books spoke of nothing! All the allegedly great books spoke of a great big nothing! They narrated, sermonised, spun yarns, nagged, fussed, babbled, waffled and mumbled the most when they had nothing to say!

Most of all when they were trying to bedazzle the reader.

It, the defendant, had grown tired of them.

Why so, the Chairman was curious again.

Because such stories, the defendant explained in simple terms, as if addressing primary school pupils, tended to look ridiculous when people were getting killed! And when looked upon from the perspective of a hospital in wartime, amidst pools of blood, they looked even more ridiculous! They looked very ridiculous indeed when viewed through wounds, bullet wounds, wounds due to explosives, open fractures, muscle tissue torn by shell fragments, broken, crushed or pulverised parts of human bodies, limbs torn off or blown apart. 

And just to think how hollowly the abstract story resounded when one entered the abdomen of a wounded soldier! When one entered the victim’s abdominal cavity! The surgeon performing the operation would be under the impression that he had entered a thick forest! The organs would be tightly packed against one another, the field of operations narrowed down and the possibility of manipulating the surgical instruments greatly reduced!

Could the defendant substantiate its claims, asked the dark-complexioned and dark-eyed Pakistani judge, by referring to a story it had not told in the course of the inquest?

Of course, the defendant replied immediately. It would tell a story about a surgeon working in a hospital in wartime, when Jajce was about to fall, treating wounded soldiers for sixteen hours a day on average. Doctor Mirić dealt with wounded soldiers driven to the hospital straight from the battlefield, stopping haemorrhages, performing operations, sixteen hours a day, and each casualty arrived with specific wounds of his own.

Were the honourable judges aware how difficult his job was, there being no two casualties whose wounds were alike?

Each one of them was blighted in a different sort of way!

When more that one organ of a single system happened to be injured, the doctor could get some respite. Unfortunately, the injuries were often manifold, involving organs from various systems, as was the case with the casualty at hand. He had to keep track of the patient’s blood pressure and pulse on the monitor, and watch out for any changes on his face.

The face had regular features: it was pale, deathly pale, which gave it a look of tenderness; its tender look was framed by black side-whiskers and shaded by long eyelashes.

How was it that every casualty tended to look older before treatment, the doctor wondered. How was it that every casualty tended to look at least ten years older before his wounds were treated?

But the doctor, when he had taken care of his abdomen, would rejuvenate him, although he spent sixteen hours on his feet every day.

While he was working, the tiredness was somewhere far away and the awareness of what he was doing was very sharp indeed. When he finished an operation, his legs felt like lead, so he had to rest them by putting them up on the back of a chair. While he rested thus, a colleague would give him a vitamin shot in the muscles of his upper arm so that his brain could keep on functioning.

While the doctor rested, new casualties arrived.

They were driven to the hospital by the medical corps, civilian ambulance cars, fire brigade cars, public utility cars, private cars, which could hardly manage to take care of all those whose bodies and psyches were horribly mutilated.

It was as if they were arriving straight from a slaughterhouse.

Whoever in this town was able to lend a helping hand did so.

It was like a children’s game wherein adults played at being casualties.

The day before, the doctor hadn’t managed to have his lunch; the night before, he hadn’t managed to get to his father’s house, which was a little above the town, by the side of the road, under Lake Balkana, and see his son, who was staying with his grandfather. He’d had no time to see his Borko,[1] to see what he was doing, who he was playing with, whether he obeyed his grandfather. He hadn’t managed to go and see Bobiša, although he had promised to do so when they last met.

He hadn’t expected to have that many casualties.

He hadn’t had time for breakfast that morning.

If he managed a quick bite between two operations, if he ate a piece of roast pork sent by a friend of his who owned a restaurant near the hospital, that was that for the day!

And for sixteen hours each day he had to listen to the sound of wailing coming from below, from the netherworld, where people were driven lying down, their feet pointing forward.

As the young men getting killed in battle were from the surrounding villages, from the nearby towns, their families would get to hear of their deaths on the same day and rush to the mortuary.

Their mothers and sisters beat their chests with clenched fists, beat their heads as if they were beside themselves with grief, then fell onto the dead bodies of their sons and brothers, wailing, crying, screaming, as if they were mad. Such wailing, screaming, moaning and howling for the dead is only heard among the Serbs.

This wailing penetrated the floor, the ceiling and the walls, passing through one’s bones and soul, then rose above the town, among the surrounding mountains, Lisina, Manjača and Okrugla, ascending towards the sky and reaching the dead.

The doctor worked sixteen hours a day, on his feet, and the wailing never stopped. Sixteen hours on his feet, and the fellow he was operating on was losing his pulse because his peritoneum was bleeding. He had to get a transfusion and no blood was forthcoming! If he didn’t get a transfusion, he would die, and there was no blood!

No blood, and the nurse next to him was covered with blood. The operating room was small, the equipment modest, things like bandages they had aplenty but there was no blood! No blood when all the wounds being treated involved haemorrhage! There wasn’t enough of this precious liquid to give a bleeding casualty a transfusion, and yet there was blood wherever you looked, wherever you set foot.

Blood, blood, blood, nothing else but blood in a blood-bathed hospital in wartime!

Lest the blood should crystallise, lest someone should slip and break his or her neck, Stoja, the cleaning woman, did nothing else but sweep blood from the thresholds, the stairs, the corridors, the floors, with a mop.

No blood, and the wounded soldier was losing his pulse.

The doctor finally asked the nurse helping out in the operating room to do a quick test in vitro, determine the blood type and the RH factor of the wounded man and those who were bringing in the wounded or giving first aid.

Five minutes later, the nurse took a driver into the operating room; directly from his vein, blood flowed into the patient’s vein, fresh, warm and life-giving.

While he watched the man’s pulse beat faster and his blood pressure normalise, the doctor breathed a sigh of relief. Only then was he certain that, having received a transfusion, the man would survive the operation while he took care of all the abdominal injuries.

Being so engrossed in his work, he didn’t see the doctor in charge of the triage procedure enter the operating room. He only heard him say that his son, Borko, had arrived at the hospital badly injured.

Who’s arrived, the doctor said, startled, Borko, what Borko, whose Borko, what about Borko, what would Borko be doing there? What would he do with him now? That was just what he needed now, to have Borko fooling around, interfering with his work!

When the triage doctor reiterated that Borko was badly injured, the doctor’s hands went numb, so that the instruments fell out of them.

He rushed to the adjoining room first, then hurried back to look at the monitor and see whether the life of the man he was operating on was endangered. Having ascertained that it wasn’t, he hurried back to his son, who was in a deep coma.

He had been playing on the road with his friends, the man who had brought him to the hospital said. A friend of his had run across the road; Borko, however, hadn’t managed to do so, a car hit him, he fell down and hit his head against the kerbstone.

The doctor heard the man’s account of the event but his power of taking things in was somewhat diminished. He just couldn’t bring himself to accept what he was being told and shown.

He couldn’t believe what he was seeing or what was happening to him, nothing whatsoever. He felt as if he were dreaming.

He should be thinking and acting like a doctor, not like a father, but he just couldn’t do it.

He circled his son, who was lying unconscious, called him by his name, caressed him, touched him, straightened his clothes, arranged his arms into a more comfortable position; finally, he found the spot on his head, hidden by the boy’s hair, where he’d hit the kerbstone. Only when he came across the cut and the clotted blood did he realise how badly injured the boy was.

It would be best, he thought, to get an ambulance immediately and take the boy to the intensive care unit of the Clinical Centre in Banja Luka. He would take care of him on the way, he would maintain the venous line! They would certainly save his life there, they had all the necessary equipment!

But how could he leave without finishing the operation he’d started?

His assistant couldn’t take over from him! If he left the patient, the man would die! He’d stopped the bleeding of the peritoneum, but he still had to deal with the peripheral injuries of the intestines! He mustn’t leave the man unsupervised at any cost! That would be against the professional code of ethics that he’d been patiently developing for years!

But Borko, too, was in a critical condition!

His very own son!

Patient and son!

Had he ever thought, taking the Hippocratic oath, that he would find himself in such a situation one day?

No, but the father’s instinct was stronger than any ethics.

He had to help his son!

But he had to take care of the other patient, too! No-one could help the man tonight but him! The man virtually depended on him and him only! On his hands and what he could do. There existed only the patient and him. The one was helpless and the other had the power to give him life. The man depended on him only! Right now, he had no-one but him to help him. No God, father or mother, just him. If he didn’t help him, no-one else would! He was the man’s God! He had taken over His role when he started the operation! He either gave him life or took it away from him!

Until he was finished with the patient on the operating table, he finally spoke in a resolute tone of voice, his colleague would take care of his son. He was to maintain the venous line, make sure that the boy’s brain got as much oxygen as possible and administer the antioedema therapy, and Dr Mirić would take care of his patient in the meantime.

The doctor returned to the operating theatre and worked as if he were in a dream. He made the right moves but in a mechanical sort of fashion, as if going through a series of preordained motions.

While doing so, he kept seeing things. He saw Borko’s features in the patient’s abdomen, he saw him lying unconscious, with outstretched legs and bloodless lips.

As if he was sleepy.

Then he saw clotted blood on the kerbstone of the asphalt road.

He saw all that and kept on working, torn between what he was seeing and what he was doing.

He worked as if possessed, unaware of himself, while those assisting him, the anaesthesiologist, the instrument technician and the nurse ministering to his needs looked like shadows, shadows moving at the doctor’s nod or movement of his hand as if performing in a pantomime.

When he had finally taken care of the patient, he hurried over to his son.

A single look, a single touch was enough for him to realise that his son was no longer alive.

Sadness welled up inside him, sadness that looked like a flood, starting from his legs, which felt like lead, going up from the feet, through the shins, up the thighs, climbing through the stomach and the rib cage to flash like a flame over his face, maroon-coloured eyes, pale forehead and receding hairline, and eventually settle on the top of his head like the burden of a hundred years.

He couldn’t moan, sigh or cry, but circled his only son, adjusting Borče’s position on his death bed, stretching his clothes, straightening his arms and legs, caressing him and telling him that he was just as he used to be, such a fine-looking boy, only pale and silent.

And how tall he had grown. Having been so busy, he just hadn’t noticed how much Borko had grown. Being on duty day and night because of this bloody war, he hadn’t seen how big he’d grown. He’d thought that Borko was small, and look how tall he’d grown! Just look at those feet, how big they were, and those hands, not to mention the muscles, how strong they’d become, such a tough fellow he’d grown to be! Being on duty so often, he didn’t know that his son had almost become a man!

He had thought that Boriša was still a child, but lo and behold, he’d grown to be Daddy’s big boy! He would be chasing girls soon enough!

Well, he promised not to neglect him so much from now on because of work, the war, the casualties and the hospital. From now on, they would be together every day!

They would go to the park every day to play tennis at the Mladost club! He would be his sparring partner!

But he should know that his father couldn’t return every ball he would throw at him!

Had he forgotten how old he was?

He must bear that in mind because he couldn’t jump like Bocko, swing his racquet or run like him!

Also, he’d buy the sports shoes he’d promised him!

Why was he frowning, hadn’t he bought him the racquet?

Yes, yes, he’d kept his word, the sports shoes came next!

His dad would scrape up enough money for them, never fear, let him just say which pair he wanted and he would provide the money although there was a war going on.

They’d go to Lake Balkana together, too! In summer, they’d go swimming, in winter, they’d go skiing! Daddy knew that Bobi liked both swimming and skiing! He knew that Bobika was well built for sports and very ambitious.

Yes, Bokče had set his heart on becoming a champion!

He knew that, and would do everything to help him realise his ambition!

They’d be mates, inseparable, as of today, he would never leave him alone!

From today, they would be together forever!

While the doctor spoke thus, the defendant maintained, the entire staff of the Army hospital stood in the corridor and cried; from below, cries, moans and screams were heard: so loud were they that they were clearly heard in the courtroom when the defendant stopped speaking. It seemed that the hapless mothers and sisters moaned and wailed right there, before the Prosecutor, the Tribeurinal Board and the reporters, cried for the injustice being done to the Serbian people, for their sons and brothers who had got killed, and fainted, falling over their dead bodies.

As there was no way their moaning could be stopped, the trial had to be adjourned.