Of course there’s no God … but how can I know that for sure?
Communism is a failed ideology … but has real communism ever been practiced? Certainly not in the Soviet Union.
The world is round … but I’m basing that on other people’s evidence, not my own.
Where did her beliefs lie? Did she even have any? Her parents did, but once she’d gotten out from under them she’d decided that their beliefs would not be hers, and so she’d started from scratch, entering Harvard looking for an educated way to construct her world. Education, though, had only confused the issue, and she had left as hollow as when she’d entered. If everything could be argued, then nothing could be believed.
That night, in Zora’s uncle’s narrow guest bed, she pinned her husband’s wrists down against the pillow, lowered her head, and bit his nipple. He yelped, but when she looked at his face his eyes were closed, his expression dreamy.
For three days they lived this way. Late breakfasts with Zora, laughing about the previous night, and in the afternoons friends arrived with bags of groceries and drink, with guitars and a battery-powered Casio keyboard. On the third day a loud woman brought a stack of canvases and acrylics, and in the yard they fingerpainted as they passed around a paint-spattered bong. Halcyon afternoons stretched into dinnertime, when the men controlled the grill, the women preparing food in the kitchen.
Over a dinner of pickled red peppers and grilled pork chops Emmett asked about Vukovar, as if only now remembering why he’d wanted to come to Yugoslavia. “What’s going on with the war?”
Zora was gnawing meat off of a long, sharp bone. She paused, the bone hanging from her greasy fingers. “You interested for that?”
“It’s sort of why I wanted to come here.”
She wiped hair off her cheek with her wrist. “You want to know about it?”
Emmett nodded, but Zora hadn’t been looking at him when she asked that; she’d been looking at Sophie. Sophie also nodded.
“It is not war,” Zora began, dropping the bone onto her plate. “Not yet. But will be. Soon. A war, you know, is agreement between two countries for to fight. Right now, only neighbors agree. They make paramilitaries like old partisans and defend homes. The army’s there, but it try just to settle those little battles. Soon, though, Belgrade and Zagreb make agreement, and then real war start. As it must.”
“Must it?” Sophie asked.
“Of course,” Zora told her. “Tito, he force us together for half century. He move everyone around so Croats and Serbs and Macedonians and Bosnians share same land, but he no could make us to like each other. If he lets everyone stay where they are, okay, separation is easy. Borders easy to mark. But now there is Croats deep in Serbian land, and Serbs in Croat land. You think Serb farmers want to live in nation run by Ustaše?”
Sophie considered not asking, but knew she couldn’t wing it without explanation. “Run by who?”
Zora looked at her a moment, blinking, perhaps puzzled by her ignorance. “Croatian fascists,” she said after a moment. “Great murderers from Second War—they put SS to shame. And now …” Suddenly, she raised both hands in an expression of surrender, her palms slick with grease. “I promise no politics. I no get started.” She lowered her hands again, smiling now. “But you interested in coming war,” she said, nodding. “Maybe we can to do something about that.” Seeing the expression on Sophie’s face, she leaned forward and touched her thigh with a clean knuckle. “Don’t worry, draga. I keep you safe.”
Despite her greasy-palmed vow, later that night Zora told them about the Jasenovac concentration camp, which had been the largest “place of extermination” in fascist Croatia during the Second World War. “No one know exact number, but some say a million murdered there. They killing Jews and Gypsies, but most was Serbs. You can imagine?” she said, shaking her head, as if she’d spent decades trying to imagine just this. She sipped at her wine, then went on. “Jasenovac for men, the women shipped to Stara Gradiška. Twelve thousand, at least, murdered there. In Sisak they collect children. Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies. Just children. The guards … they pick up children by feet and swing them against walls until they dead. For fun, you understand? Thousands killed.”
Neither of them had an easy reply to this. Frowns, nods, sips from glasses. Emmett looked as if he were gearing up to say something wise, but nothing came out. Sophie wondered if any of this was true—or, if it was, just how true was it? What details were being twisted in order to condemn an entire population? Finally, she said, “That was a long time ago, Zora.”
“Yes, Sofia,” she said as she thoughtfully lit a fresh cigarette, slowing down. “But it is not easy to forget such things.” She told them that, after the war, once the major criminals had been executed, Tito told everyone to make up and be friends. “But what about that young soldier, who swing a child by ankles? Men like him, they go back to farms. They make more boys, who impregnate Croat women. Those sons and grandsons—those are ones on front line now.”
“Enough,” said Viktor, rising and stretching. “You get her going and there’s no end to it.”
Bitterly, Zora snapped at him in Serbo-Croatian, and another incomprehensible fight ensued, ending only when Zora marched inside. Viktor settled into a chair and finished his beer thoughtfully. “She’s good,” he told Sophie and Emmett. “I’ll fight with her, but I know she’s right about everything. I love that woman.” Then he got up and followed her inside.
“It’s true,” Emmett whispered after a moment. “A lot of what she said. Some of it, at least. I didn’t know the names of the camps, but I learned about the Ustaše in a seminar. They weren’t very nice.”
Sophie looked at him. After what she’d heard from Zora, Emmett’s casual assessment—they weren’t very nice—seemed unbearably diplomatic. They’d listened to the same stories, and while they had provoked a banal statement from Emmett, Sophie felt like finding a long knife and carving her initials into the faces of those Croatian fascists. The desire was refreshing, as if it were the first real conviction she’d felt in her life. She’d certainly never felt so strongly at Harvard, where she’d been indoctrinated in the constitutional separation of head and heart.
When they made their way back to the guest room, they saw Zora and Viktor tangled and naked, dozing in Zora’s bed. They made love, too, but afterward Sophie dreamed of children, gripped by their ankles and swung like baseball bats.
In the morning, Zora spent some time on the phone in her bedroom while Viktor dressed and left for home. Sophie boiled eggs, and when Zora came out looking disheveled she sliced bread and cheese. They settled down to their meal. Zora said, “Sofia, Emmett, I take something to my friend. He live in small town, in west, and I think you like to see something more. Something authentic.”
“Where?” Emmett asked.
“Little village. You never hear of it. Close to Vukovar. You like my friend, I’m sure, but he no speak English. He is musician. You must come,” she said, her mood rising with each new word. Her all-knowing smile was radiant.