The Shadow

This is a short story I wrote in the fall of 2007.

There was so much noise in the hot, smoky room, people singing and cheering and laughing and cursing. I was dizzy and my head felt heavy from so many shots of slivovic. Dragan stumbled over to me, his face red and glistening with sweat.

“Hey, Miro!” he slurred, pouring me more rakija. “You’re a good man, you know that? You came to our unit three months ago and you were a simple farmer boy from some backward little village . . . and all you knew how to do was plough fields . . . and feed cows . . . and milk chickens.” He slung an arm around me and leaned his face in closer. “And now, now you are a man! You’re a soldier like the rest of us!” He raised his glass and shouted, “Here’s to you, you crazy peasant son of a bitch!”

“Živjeli! Cheers!” I clinked my glass with Dragan’s and downed the fiery brandy. The room span around me, I put a hand against the wall to steady myself. I felt myself slide against the wall, and I realized I was sitting on the dirty floor. I closed my eyes and started to think of home, and of the girl. Soon, I was lost in the world of my own thoughts.

There was an old widow who lived in my town and told the villagers’ fortunes in exchange for knick-knacks and food. Everyone knew her only as Mother Sofija, and all the village kids were afraid of her, because they heard stories that she liked to steal bad children and eat them for breakfast. Mothers would cluck their tongues as she passed and shake their heads in disapproval. My own mother would cross herself and tell me “Miro, look away before she gives you the evil eye! That woman practices the Devil’s art!”

But I had always been the bravest of the boys my age, and I was not afraid of anything. I was famous for taking any dare offered to me, from leaping off the roof of the barn to slipping a live frog in the church collection plate and risking Father Pero’s wrath. So when Branko dared me to go to Mother Sofija and have her tell my fortune, I couldn’t refuse. It happened eight years ago in 1985 when I was only fourteen, but I can still see it perfectly in my mind.

It was summer, and I found Mother Sofija sitting on the bench at the edge of the town square where she liked to rest in the warm months. I opened my mouth to speak, and she put a wrinkled finger to her lips.

“Shh, child, don’t talk. What did you bring me?”

Looking around to make sure no one was watching me, I handed her a basket of fresh eggs from our farm. She accepted it wordlessly, and grabbed my hand. She started humming to herself and tracing the lines in my palm, analyzing every dirt-caked finger.

“Oh child, this is very special, very special, yes. I see your destiny is not yours alone. The thread of your life is tangled with another’s, all wrapped up and tangled, yes. She will change your life, this woman you are destined to meet. I do not see where your destiny goes, no, it is not easy, but when you meet her, she will possess your thoughts and your days for the rest of your life. She will decide who you are and how your life plays out, yes, she will.”

I was shaken out of my daydream and back to the present when I heard a crash and a shout next to me. I cracked an eye open and saw broken glass and spilled liquid on the ground. It didn’t matter, there was more where that came from. The commander had given us a special treat tonight. I felt my head slump over, and I drifted off to sleep.

I am dreaming. I am in my hometown again, in the big hilly field behind old man Ivanović’s farm. The air is clean and crisp and fresh; everything is quiet, and the world is at peace. The sun glares into my eyes, and I squint into the brilliant light. I see a person standing at the top of a hill. The figure is shadowed, but I knew it has to be the girl. I start running towards her.

“Hello!” I call. “You, there, wait!”

The woman stops. I catch up to her, and she turns to face me. She has light brown hair that falls to her waist, and she looks at me with piercing blue eyes. There is a dark brown beauty mark on her cheek. She is dressed in a simple blouse and skirt, and she is beautiful. I have seen her in recurring dreams ever since my encounter with the old widow, and whenever I dream of her I know she is the destiny Mother Sofija saw for me. Something about her haunts me, captivates me, makes me dream about her even during my waking hours, though in my dreams I am never able to speak to her or learn anything about her.

I was jolted awake by a smack on the back of my head. I woke with a start, panicked and disoriented with an ache in my head and tightness in my throat. The electric lights in the room felt like they were burning me. Someone shook me.

“Miro, you slug, get up! Party time is over, we have orders to go outside!”

I used the wall to steady myself and stand up. Everyone in the room was adjusting their uniforms and making their weapons ready. It was still dark outside.

“What are we doing?”

“Shut up and get ready, farmer,” Dragan replied. “We have some refugee scum we need to move.”

I followed the rest of my unit outside into the chilly night air, unusually cold for summer. I guessed from the sky that it was probably about four in the morning. My feet felt unsteady and my mind was hazy, and I knew I was still drunk from the night before. We lined up in very sloppy attention outside the abandoned school building we were using as our temporary barracks, and our commander paced up and down in front of us.

“Alright, boys!” he shouted. “I hate to break up your party, but we’ve got some trash we need to get rid of. A bus full of refugees from the local village is having engine trouble, and we need to make sure the filthy Muslim bastards all get onto the other bus so they can be relocated and be out of our town.”

An overly zealous member of our unit saluted and shouted “Sir, yes sir!”

The commander started laughing, a rich, hearty laugh. “That’s right my boy, you show the others how excited they should be.”

The commander kept talking, but I was tired and distracted, and I couldn’t focus on what he was saying even if I tried. I started thinking about what it would be like when I was done with my service in the army, how proud my mother would be, and how I would be a war hero in my town. That Miro always was the bravest, they would say, and even the grandmothers would be proud of my honor and courage and service to our people.

I realized that two buses had pulled up in front of the barracks. The door of the first bus opened, and a line of people filed out of it. I saw only shadows; it was too dark to see any of their faces or features. A few of my fellow soldiers lined the refugees up in a row in front of the other bus, prodding them with the butts of their guns. I saw the people start to board the bus, watched them through some kind of fog as if they were a dream or I was seeing them in slow motion. I was hungry, and I started thinking about the stew my Aunt Mirjana makes at holidays, how it tastes so spicy and delicious, and the warm crusty bread that goes with it, and the sweet pastries we have for dessert . . . .

“Petrović!” The commander shouted. “Miro! Are you listening to me? Look at me, boy!”

I was startled out of my daydream. “Yes, sir!” I yelled, worried because I hadn’t been paying attention. “I’m listening, sir! Ready to follow orders, sir!”

The commander laughed again. “Alright, you drunken smart-ass, let’s see how tough you can be.”

I noticed that all of the refugees were on the bus already, except one. The commander grabbed hold of the figure, dragged it away from the bus towards the middle of the field.

“Okay, Petrović,” the commander said. “This here God-damn Turk spreads lies about us, tries to write to the newspapers and stand up on the street corners and say that Serbia has no right to what we know is ours . . . my superiors have warned me about this Muslim son of a bitch, and said it’s in our best interest not to have people spreading lies about us. You know what you should do.”

“Sir?”

“Kill the Turk.”

It was like I had floated outside of my body and was seeing myself as another person. I was the bravest. I had never turned down a dare, never in my life, and this was more than a dare, it was an order. I had to. I was tough, I could do this, I was a soldier, I had to follow orders, and it didn’t matter anyway, I was just shooting at a shadow, there was no face, there was no person, this was just another refugee like so many others, but more than that, even, this person was dangerous, was a liar, was a traitor, had to be gotten rid of, in our best interest, and even so, it was just a shadow, nothing else, it didn’t matter, I had no choice, I was a real man now, a soldier, a city boy, an adult, I was tough, and fierce, and it’s just a shadow . . . .

I aimed my gun and curled my finger around the trigger. I don’t remember what happened in the next few seconds, but I heard a high-pitched scream and a thud. I realized my eyes were shut and I was breathing heavily.

When I opened my eyes, the Commander was laughing again, that same hearty laugh. “God, you can take the boy out of the farm but you can’t take the farmer out of the boy, look at your face! He’s a good shot, though, a damn good shot, you got the sucker right in the chest. It’s cold, boys, we’ll deal with the body later. Nice work, gentlemen, nice work!”

The Commander and the other soldiers were starting to go inside. Slowly, I walked over to the body that was lying on the ground. I started to panic, couldn’t catch my breath. The body on the ground wasn’t a shadow, wasn’t a figure, it was a person, a human being, an actual person with family and friends, a person who used to breathe and think and feel. I walked over and stood above the body in the darkness, suddenly feeling sober and acutely aware of my surroundings. I knelt on the ground and leaned in to look at the face of the person I had shot.

She had light brown hair and piercing blue eyes and a beauty mark on her cheek.