Last Stories and Other Stories (9780698135482) by William T. Vollmann Read Free Book Online Page A

unaware, he was getting hollowed out within his skin, and there was no calculating how thick his skin was; meanwhile he retained the capacity to witness for awhile longer, and even to act moderately brave while listening for the shells. And Enko was slowing down.
    Far down the almost empty street, almost at the corner, a black-uniformed man named Wolf, member of the special unit, stood deep in the doorway of an apartment building. He was Enko’s comrade, of course. They all went up the dark stairs to the landing by whose wall someone had written FPS, the initials of a softball club.— Sometimes I walk here, said Wolf. I never run.— He’s a fighter for freedom, said Enko. You write that down.— They had weak ersatz tea in his flat, and the American had his interview, paying as agreed and a trifle more. Then Enko squealed the tires round a certain perilous corner, and after passing another red tram parked on the weedy tracks, a quarter of its windows shot out, they arrived at their appointment with the clean-faced, greyhaired, grey-bearded old rabbi, whose moustache was still mostly brown. He said: You see, that’s the place where the massacres were. That’s where it hit.
    You see that hill over there? said Enko. That’s where the Bosnian Dragons got killed.
    Crowds were walking in the shadow of apartment towers, fairly leisurely, the American thought. But the rare cars went screeching and skidding. They drove partway up a hill of red-roofed white houses to the apartment porch where the little girl had been killed yesterday; then for the frontline irregulars the American bought a pack of cigars for twenty Deutschemarks and Enko was pleased. Now Amir was driving. Across from the police station, a blonde sat on a railing while a brunette stood smoking beside a reddish-blond boy; as they drove by, the American took notes on that woman in the shawl who held a pail, on those people carrying water and the people crowding around the bullet-measled car; there must be a main there; they were filling up with water. At the next intersection a man with a shopping bag walked slowly; people were lounging and standing, even if inside a sheltered porch; but when Amir stopped to ask directions, Enko yelled: Shit, keep moving!
    Everywhere they stopped, the American felt something in the center of the back of his skull, a sweaty nakedness and tenderness.
    Between apartment buildings, two ladies, one in black, stood beside a car which wore a dusty shroud; a little child sat in another car; children were playing ball; a girl in a yellow dress crept to cast one look over the edge of the balcony, and there was a smell of greasy garbage. The American wrote about people with bloody faces, brown faces, dark faces; he described children in worn clothes. One child, dirty in his worn jacket, led them across the courtyard to his mother, who was scraping away excrement. The American opened his notebook. She said: Before the war we lived like other people.
    How about that advance? said Enko.
14
    Enko parked outside a leather store and went in to buy a new holster. The establishment was small, without much merchandise, but perhaps it had always been that way.— He works from old stockpiles, Enko explained, paying in dollars—today’s advance, it seemed.
    He stopped at home. Amir sat smoking at the kitchen table. Enko’s mother was in a queue to buy bread.
    Enko’s room was still untouched, a shockingly ordinary room, with two televisions that didn’t count for much now that the electricity was gone, bookshelves adorned with statuettes, trophies, the
Opca Enciklopedia
and other sets of books from his student days, stacks of cassettes which he lacked the batteries to listen to, snapshots of girlfriends, a clock stopped at 9:04 and one of his pistols, a heavy old French Bendaye BP, solid black steel, flat, with a scaly black grip.
    Enko was airing out his bulletproof vest. Men who couldn’t afford to buy