The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway Read Free Book Online

in new Mercedes, haven’t lost any weight, and possess a ready supply of goods most people only remember from before the war. Kenan isn’t sure how they do it, but he knows a lot of black-market food is being smuggled into Sarajevothrough a tunnel that goes under the airport. To pass through it you need to know someone with pull in the government, and, although the tunnel is open twenty-four hours a day, hardly anyone gets through. Kenan suspects that what does go through is what is making the men in their sports cars rich. He can’t understand how they can do it, how they can make money off trapped and starving people like him.
    But there’s little he can do about it. So he forgets about the marketplace, forgets about his empty stomach and crosses the one-way street that encircles the main part of the old town. Here the terrain flattens out as the mountains give way to the bed of the valley. He has been coming here all his life. Everywhere he looks reminds him of some memory, of something lost that can’t be recovered. He wonders what will happen after, when the fighting stops. Even if each building is rebuilt so it’s exactly as it was before, he doesn’t know how he could sit in a comfortable chair and drink a coffee with a friend and not think about this war and all that went with it. But maybe, he thinks, he would like to try. He knows he doesn’t want to give up the possibility.
    Two different architects built Strossmayer Street, one designing the east side and the other the west. Kenan remembers coming here as a child with his parents, between Christmas and the New Year, to admire the way the street had been decorated. He was wearing a newcoat and was very proud of how he looked in it. His mother called him handsome, and even his older sister, who teased him every chance she got, said it was a good coat. He held his father’s hand as they walked down the street, stopping every once in a while to look at the lights, and his father spoke to him as though he were an adult. It’s hard to see the street of his memory in the one he’s on now.
    If he continues south for another block he will come to the eastbound portion of the one-way street he crossed earlier. The main tram artery, it heads east until it comes to the National Library. It curves northward and then turns west, converging back on itself by the Vrbanja Bridge, across the river from Grbavica. If he were to keep going south, he’d cross the Miljacka River using the Ćumurija Bridge. At some point he’ll have to cross the river to reach the brewery, but the Ćumurija is the least inviting bridge for him, even though it offers the shortest possible distance between his house and the opposite bank of the river. It has been shelled, and all that’s left of it is its steel frame. He could still cross it by balancing on the skeleton of steel, but that is hard to do with the canisters, even when they’re empty, and it would leave him an easy target for the men on the hills.
    Keeping close to the buildings, Kenan turns east, opting instead to cross the river using the Princip Bridge.It’s just as open to the hills to the south, but it’s in much better shape, so he can cross it faster. He passes the remnants of the once grand Hotel Europa. There has been an inn on this site for over five hundred years. The last time it was destroyed, a little over a century ago, it was called the Stone Inn. A nearby merchant’s storeroom caught fire, and the fire quickly reached the Stone Inn, where there was a large army store of barrels of methyl alcohol. Some of the barrels exploded, and the fire spread west, engulfing much of the old town. Firefighters emptied the remaining barrels into the river, not taking into account that alcohol is lighter than water. When they put their pumps into the Miljacka, the water they drew wasn’t water at all but fire itself. By the time they realized their mistake it was too late, and much of the city was destroyed. Even now Kenan