The girl was where he had told her to be, in front of a pastry window, but as he approached her, a small man in a worn suit and crumpled hat suddenly appeared at her side. An older brother? An uncle? Certainly not her father. Raising his worried-looking, pointed nose, the man asked in a thin voice, “And why, sir, did you take this girl’s identity card?” Sredoje went cold, produced the card from his pocket, and gave it to the man, intending to walk away in silent disdain. But a thickset young policeman appeared out of the nearest doorway. “What’s going on here?” Untroubled, the small man answered at once, confirming Sredoje’s suspicion that there was complicity between them: “This man took the girl’s identity card from her.” And he held it up. “Indeed?” drawled the policeman mockingly, turning to Sredoje. “And who are you, sir, to be taking people’s identity cards from them? Can I see your papers?” Sredoje thought quickly. If he took out his own identity card, he would be subjected to further questioning. He decided on the police card. The policeman unfolded it slowly and read it, his eyebrows raised in surprise. He looked hesitantly at Sredoje, at the photograph, examined it again, then folded it and returned it with a salute. Sredoje walked away.
He stopped going to that part of town, but it did not help. He knew he would be called to account. Several days after the incident, Streuber stood in front of his desk and nervously informed him, “I’ve been ordered to tell you not to leave the office during working hours again without my express permission.” And two days later, no less abruptly, “I’ve been ordered to send you to Captain Waldenheim for a talk. At once, please.”
At the German Military Police headquarters, whose grim, steel-helmeted guards he had often watched from a distance, with a shudder of curiosity, he was expected, and the duty officer took him up to the second floor. Waldenheim was alone in a large office, with a pile of papers and books on his desk. There were several bottles and small glasses on a circular table, and around the table, leather armchairs with seats sunken from use and covered with cigarette ash.
“Sit down,” said Waldenheim and sat himself, sinking deep into the chair. They sipped brandy, lit cigarettes. “It’s my job to reprimand you,” said the captain, clicking his tongue as he put down his glass. “Of course I have no intention of doing anything of the sort. But if you are asked what we talked about, say that you were roasted over a slow fire. And now let’s turn to something more sensible.” He asked Sredoje how he was, what his father was doing, and if there were any interesting new items for sale; he listened carefully to Sredoje’s answers and promised to drop in on them soon. “I think you’ve spent enough time in my office for a thorough tongue-lashing. I’d keep you longer, but I have a lot of work to do.” He held out his hand and kept Sredoje’s in his own for a moment. “Even so, don’t let yourself be caught again in any more of your little pranks. If you’re bored, I’ll try to find something else to amuse you when the weather improves.”
And indeed, he soon began to invite him — through Streuber, Sredoje’s immediate superior — to accompany him on his official trips, as an interpreter. They went to small towns in the interior of Serbia, to Topola, Smederevo, Milanovac, Niš, where Waldenheim had things to do in each local Military Police section. They usually set off in midmorning — Waldenheim liked to sleep late— in a small gray Opel, which first picked up Sredoje on Dobrnjac Street; it returned the same day, in the evening, early or late, depending on the distance and the amount of work Waldenheim had to do. They were always driven by Hans, a young, blond soldier with a long face and thin arched eyebrows, taciturn and extremely attached to Waldenheim. The captain had Sredoje sit in the front next to Hans, while he sat on the back seat, as though on a couch, smoking, chatting, or dozing.
These outings, which continued through the spring and summer of 1943, were extremely pleasant for Sredoje. They took him away from the oppressive heat of Belgrade, from the dusty office, which, since he had been forbidden to leave it, he felt was a place of punishment. A few deft movements of Hans’s hands on the steering wheel, and they would be out on the main road, where Sredoje was overwhelmed by new images — vegetation, villages, people. The wind blew the freshness in through the open windows; Hans drove, stepping on the accelerator with silent precision; Waldenheim chattered away, often teasing Hans about his fast driving and his reticence, sometimes tickling his bare, sunburned neck or jokingly tugging at his ear, and the trip would pass quickly, in exhilarating motion. They would stop in the middle of a town, and Waldenheim would put on his jacket and get out of the car, usually specifying the time he was to be picked up. For a few hours Sredoje and Hans would sit in front of a small tavern in the shade of vines and drink beer, Hans, silent, knitting his brows, Sredoje watching the peasants, the children, who cast mistrustful looks at the two of them. If they had more time, as soon as they dropped Waldenheim off, they would drive to the nearest river and, taking off their clothes, go for a swim, then sunbathe on the stones. At the appointed hour, refreshed and replete with silence, they would drive back to the police post and wait for Waldenheim. Then they would race back to Belgrade.
Waldenheim was interested in how they had spent their time, laughed at Sredoje’s descriptions of peasants at the taverns, and late in the evening delivered him in front of the building on Dobrnjac Street, calling, “Good night! Regards to your father!” before driving off. In his bed Sredoje breathed in contentment, as if dreaming, and he did not regret that he no longer stalked the area around the station for fallen women. Yet he had not entirely relinquished that passion, he simply curbed it until a more favorable moment, just as he had never completely lost his distrust of Waldenheim. He continued to find something alien to his notion of a German officer in Waldenheim’s relaxed behavior, in the warmth of his friendship.
Toward the end of August they went to Požega. It was a hot day, one in a succession of hot days in late summer. There was no movement in the air; dust hovered above the trees that bordered the road, turning their tired, overabundant foliage gray. At a crawl they drove into the town, which was thronged with people, vehicles, German soldiers with bayonets on their rifles. After they delivered Waldenheim at the Military Police post, on a street off the main square, and were told the time to pick him up, Hans turned the car around and, skillfully avoiding the people walking in the middle of the road, made a circle and came out at the river Skrapež.
They looked for an isolated spot, parked the car in some bushes along the bank, undressed, and jumped into the river, which was shallow and rapid. They splashed about for some time; feeling cool, they stretched out on the stones in the sun. As usual, they were silent, except for an occasional grunt of pleasure in the sun’s heat. Sredoje propped himself up on his elbows, looked at Hans, and noticed that the soldier had a green, heart-shaped stone pendant on the gold chain he always wore around his long, muscular neck. Sredoje’s father, not long ago, had had the very same pendant displayed on the table for Waldenheim. “Hans,” he said, looking at the pendant again, to make sure he was not mistaken, “where did you get that green heart on your chain?” Hans opened one eye, gray as the sand, and looked down at the thing Sredoje had mentioned. “From a girl” was all he muttered.