Pretty Birds (11 page)

Irena wiped her wet face with her fingers, then looked at the doctor uncertainly. “I almost forgot,” she said. “How do we pay? Would you be insulted by cigarettes? My father makes candles.”

Dr. Pekar smiled as she looped a tawny ringlet around an ear. “It's not necessary,” she said. “But I have an idea. Do you have any free time?”

“Who doesn't?” said Irena. “I pick up food and water. Sometimes someone asks me to deliver a letter.”

“Could you come here tomorrow morning?” asked Dr. Pekar. “I'm trying to stay open now and then. Word has gotten around. There are people trying to keep their pets alive. Dogs, cats, hamsters—there's not always much I can do for them. Do you like animals?”

“Very much,” said Irena.

“Much experience with them?”

“We had a cat when I was a child, Puddy. She died when we were both twelve. Then we got Pretty Bird.”

“Well, I could use some help,” the doctor continued. “To hold the animals while they're examined or treated. Clean up when they're gone. Sometimes just to hold them. I had a nurse—Svjetlana—you may remember. I imagine she's on the other side. I hope so. I could also use some water. A little fuel for the burner in here. And I've been told there are even some hypodermic needles on the black market.”

“Everything but birdseed,” said Irena.

“Eight in the morning? If you aren't here, I will assume you've been delayed by shooting.” Dr. Pekar rested her hands on Irena's shoulders, her ringlets jiggling. “I am sorry for what you have to do,” she said. Then she added automatically, “Be careful of the snipers on your way home.”

         

WHEN IRENA ARRIVED HOME,
she told her mother what the doctor had said. Her mother sat down in the kitchen and cried. Mr. Zaric was in the basement, she said, cleaning it up, setting out chairs, and trying to make the space comfortable during bombings. Aleksandra Julianovic was his interior designer.

“I think that this is something you and I must do together,” said Mrs. Zaric. Mother and daughter listened for gunfire, and heard several shots ringing in the distance. “Shh,” said Mrs. Zaric. “Listen for a minute more.” Soon there was another shot, but nothing more. Wordlessly, Mrs. Zaric took Pretty Bird from where he was crumpled against the side of his cage and cradled him in her hands. “Come on, little one,” she said.

They walked to a small door that opened onto the roof, all the while listening for gunfire, and moving slowly, Irena knew, to postpone their arrival. At the top, they pressed on the rail that unlatched the steel door. They had not really seen—or, at any rate, noticed—the clouds for months. Today, the sky seemed angry, gray, and boiling.

Irena took a plastic bag out of the pocket of her blue jeans and shook a small sprinkle of seeds into her right hand. Pretty Bird looked over from his perch in Mrs. Zaric's hands, ventured an exploratory sniff, and then plunged his beak into the pile of seeds.

“Good boy, Pretty Bird,” Mrs. Zaric said.

Irena added, “But eat slowly, because there is no more.”

Irena and her mother had not cried together since they'd left Grbavica—no, since the night before. They had howled and beaten their hands against walls. But they hadn't shed any tears. It was as if weeping might drain away the wrath that kept them going. Blood and sobs just dried. But now they cried. They shuddered; they gasped as if they had run to the top of a hill. Then, as they doubled over to catch their breath, they began to laugh. Laughing seemed to give them back breath. Irena straightened, struggling to hold the seed for Pretty Bird as he gnawed at her palm. He left small red bites that she would study for days.

Irena said, “You love that damn bird more than you love me.”

“It's close,” Mrs. Zaric agreed.

Pretty Bird looked up as he finished the seeds, and began to hop, foot by foot, between Mrs. Zaric's palms.
“Bo-oing!”
he said, resounding like the basketball hoop in Grbavica.
“Bo-oing!”

“Listen,” Irena said lightly, “we have had a pretty bad time, haven't we? But we can do you a favor and get you out of here. You know what? I guess you have always been able to fly away. We are thankful that you have wanted to stay with us so long. These days would have been much worse without you.” Her voice snagged. “Now here's what we want you to do,” she said, brushing her mouth against the gray and green feathers on Pretty Bird's head. “You take off and fly on over to where we used to live. You look around for the prettiest spot, and then you just settle down. Make your noises. Make that sound
'Bo-oing!'
Someone will see you and say, ‘What an amazing bird!' And they will ask you to come home with them. Just hop a ride on their shoulder and go home with them. Eat and rest and let them love you.”

Mrs. Zaric spoke hoarsely from the other side of Pretty Bird's head. “And when this madness is over we will come find you. Even if it is just to say hello. We will walk up and down the streets and ask, ‘Do you know a bird who can sing like a telephone rings and who flew here from Brazil because he didn't like all that sand? That's Pretty Bird. We have come to say hello.' ”

Irena had worried that she would have to lift Pretty Bird from her mother's hands and throw him into the sky. She had steeled herself to be stern. Dire images singed her mind. She would clasp her arms behind her back, as if handcuffed, so that Pretty Bird couldn't fly back to her. He might wonder what he had done to be treated with such callousness. He might fly off only to dart back to beat his wings against Grandma's kitchen window, as if to say, “Whatever I did, I'm sorry. Let me in. I just want to be with you.” But, instead, Pretty Bird cocked his head slightly to the side and took two last steps between Mrs. Zaric's palms. She lifted her hands up toward the gray sky, and Pretty Bird took a small leap from her outstretched fingers, let the wind fill his wings, and flapped once, twice, three times rapidly, then soared into the wind and circled around the back of the building. Irena and her mother stood motionless, looking up, as the fringe of Pretty Bird's red tail seemed to glow in the grayness. He took another bite of the air with his wings and flew over the tired river toward the jumbled cluster of cinder-block buildings that used to be their home.

11.

IRENA MADE HER
way to Dr. Pekar's early the next morning, and then the next. She liked being outside on the walk over. She liked the doctor, who seemed as if she might have been a little lonely for company even before the war. She liked the disarray of the office, which was still steeped in dog breath and deodorizer. She liked holding dogs and cats against her chest to brace them as Dr. Pekar sewed up cuts and gashes. She liked feeling useful.

One morning an elderly woman brought in a little dog who seemed sluggish to the point of stupor. Dr. Pekar knew her well. Marilyn was a little blond mop of a Pekingese, turning gray, who could no longer evacuate her bowels.

“This is going to be ugly,” she muttered to Irena. Irena and the dog's owner steadied the little dog in place while Dr. Pekar inserted a rubber-tipped tube into her backside. Marilyn reared slightly, then settled down wearily. As Dr. Pekar sluiced water into her small body, Irena thought she could see it brim in Marilyn's eyes. She was a small dog; results were immediate. There was a cartoon splat from Marilyn's backside, and a small pudding dribbled out.

The woman wept with gratitude. She kissed Marilyn's small coconut shell of a head and took the dog onto her shoulder. Then she kissed Dr. Pekar and leaned down to kiss Irena, who had begun to swab down the steel examination table.

“Will they be back?” Irena asked.

“Three or four days, probably,” said Dr. Pekar, “Ordinarily, I'd say, ‘Your dog—your friend—is in pain. You have to do the one thing that would help.' But, under the circumstances . . .” The doctor's voice trailed off. “She can't last long, though.”

“Marilyn or her owner?” asked Irena.

Doctor Pekar let the remark drift away as she went out to their next patient.

         

ANOTHER WOMAN BROUGHT
in an old blue hound who was exhausted and hoarse from barking. The poor dog had been driven crazy by bombs. It was a quiet morning. But Cesar whimpered, bucked, and cringed in a corner, hearing whines from mortars and bombs that were above human register.

Mrs. Tankosic, Cesar's owner, wore a dark brown scarf over her head and kept tugging it forward just above her eyes; her eyebrows had fallen away. “None of us is getting any sleep up on the hill,” she said. “They have this man, the Sniper from Slatina they call him, shooting all the time. He never takes a break, and we never sleep.”

“It's probably more than one man,” suggested Irena. Cesar lay crumpled in the corner like discarded wrapping paper.

Dr. Pekar laid her head against Cesar's chest. She could feel his heart shudder. She could hear his stomach slosh and churn. “I have nothing to give Cesar,” she announced finally. “In places like London and Hollywood, they have tranquilizers for dogs. They have dog psychiatrists. I think what you must understand,” she continued quietly, “is that life has become just hours of hurts for Cesar. He is almost—I have never seen the likes of it—barking his heart out. It may be the only way he knows to try to take himself away from here.”

Mrs. Tankosic touched Cesar's back gently. His spine looked like a thin stick that was about to burst through a worn gray bag.

“You have something for that, though, don't you?”

Dr. Pekar left the room for a moment and returned with her right hand jammed into the pocket of her lab coat. “Let us all put our arms around Cesar,” the doctor suggested. Irena laced one of her arms around the dog's chest. Mrs. Tankosic pressed her chest against Cesar's back, and her face against the side of his head; she cried into one of his drooping ears. “I'll see you soon, my big boy,” she said. Irena heard her own breathing, Dr. Pekar's, and Mrs. Tankosic's. She grasped that Cesar's panting had stopped.

“Nothing can hurt him now,” the doctor whispered. Irena had seen the bodies of friends, family, and strangers over the past few months. But she had not seen a body pass bloodlessly from life to death in a breath. The same blood and bones, the same teeth and hair, added up to life in one instant and death in the next. Irena no longer thought of the living and the dead as occupying separate provinces, merely separate timetables.

         

DR. PEKAR LOOKED
at Cesar's stiff body in the corner of the room. A medical dilemma had become a disposal predicament. “I have an incinerator out back,” she told Irena. Dr. Pekar tried to shake a cigarette out of an old pack of Drina—she had been hiding that in her pocket, too—and tapped two into Irena's hand. “I hope I'm not encouraging bad habits,” she said.

“I'm not a virgin,” Irena volunteered. “About smoking,” she added with a snort.

“I almost am,” Dr. Pekar offered. “Thirty years old and I haven't had three men.”

“That's ridiculous,” said Irena. “You're beautiful. You're fascinating.”

“I'm covered in cat puke,” said the doctor. “I stick my hands into dogs' assholes.” Dr. Pekar swished out a cloud of smoke and watched it scatter. “I'm running out of pentobarbital. It's not something you stock up on for emergencies, like beans or plum jelly.”

“Come with me to a soldier's checkpoint or water line,” said Irena. “We'll get pentobarbital and get you Man Number Three. Dr. Oooh-lah-lah.” They laughed, girl to girl, but as Irena began to help Dr. Pekar trim Cesar with twine to take him out to the incinerator, she mentioned Mrs. Tankosic. “She sounds like she wants to kill herself,” said Irena. “We should tell someone and stop her.”

“Why?” asked Dr. Pekar.

12.

THE VERY NEXT
morning, a Sergeant Oooh-lah-lah, at any rate, came roaring up to the concrete landing just under Dr. Pekar's office in a white U.N. vehicle. Irena and Dr. Pekar could hear the engine cut off, and the sound of booted steps. There was a knock, and a slightly breathless voice.

Sergeant Colin Lemarchand was with the U.N. forces of the French army. His pale blue beret in hand and his neat blond mustache twitching in animation, the sergeant explained that he had been cruising the streets of Kosevo just below the Sarajevo Zoo, looking for a veterinarian's sign. A Dr. Djukic had been the zoo's veterinarian, but he had not been seen since the first days of the war.

“He's a good man, I know him a little,” Dr. Pekar told Sergeant Lemarchand. “You can't find him?”

“He's in Pale,” said the sergeant. “He can't—they won't let him across.”

“I'm a doctor for house cats, hamsters, and lap dogs,” said Dr. Pekar.

“That will do,” said Sergeant Lemarchand. “Until a few months ago, I was an assistant pastry chef.”

         

THE ZOO WAS
spread out on a hill in Poljine, above the Olympic Stadium and just beyond the Kosevo neighborhood. The U.N.'s field maps called it a contested zone. But there really was no contest between Serb paramilitaries and Bosnian zookeepers. Serbs had wheeled large guns into Poljine, at the top of the hill, to churn shells into the zoo. The park became a free-fire zone inhabited by trapped animals.

The lions and bears reared up at the alien roars and crashes, as if to challenge their invaders. But they were ensnared in their steel cages. Then the wolves, foxes, and monkeys began to starve. Zookeepers couldn't sprint through sniper and mortar fire to feed them, though a few tried, and died next to the animals they often had reared from the time they were young.

The pumas and jaguars went wild with hunger. The shooting and shelling made them crazy with fear. Then hungry people coming in from all over did the same. Gangs attacked cages and seized peacocks, ostriches, and alpine goats for food. Serb snipers fired into the cages, slaughtering the animals—they wanted to see their bullets draw blood, like kids smashing bugs with their shoes. People in the streets nearby swore that they saw the zoo's two lions stand on their hind legs and try to bat down bullets with their paws. They said that the lions, unlike the Blue Helmets, didn't just stand aside.

         

SERGEANT LEMARCHAND TOLD
Dr. Pekar and Irena on the short ride over that Kolo was sick. Kolo was one of three brown bears that had sat, swatted flies, and shaken off water in a cage on a raised stone platform overlooking a slender creek. When the food ran out, the bears had turned to each other for mutual protection—and then for nourishment. Kolo was the strongest or, at least, the meanest. When a company of Canadian soldiers got to the zoo, they found a clutter of bones scattered across the cage floor. Kolo had eaten his cage mates. When he realized that he no longer had company, he played with their bones.

The sergeant left his little white truck in the parking lot, where small family cars had been smashed by shells in the first days of the war. The wind, rain, and bullets of the past few months had rusted and riddled the cars, and shattered their windows; they looked like so many flattened soup cans.

“Step carefully,” said Sergeant Lemarchand. “This is what they call a contested area.”

“Unlike the rest of our city,” said Dr. Pekar.

         

SERGEANT LEMARCHAND STOPPED
suddenly.

“The girl,” he said, whirling around toward Irena. “You, mademoiselle”—he deployed a phrase in French to make his point—“I do not wish to bring a young girl into a contested area.”

“Oh, that's
très
ridiculous,” said Irena. “It's not like I'm, you know, a virgin.”

As they stepped carefully up to Kolo's cage, Dr. Pekar turned to her and murmured, “Odd choice of words.”

Kolo did not look like an animal who had recently eaten two bears. His brown coat was dry and gray; it hung over his spine and ribs like a sagging old rug. His penis was a small, lank worm. He had beached himself onto his side, gasping for breath through a slender, battered muzzle. He kicked his legs slowly, like a tired baby falling asleep. A Canadian doctor, a captain with a medical shield over the breastplate of his bulletproof vest, offered Dr. Pekar a reflexive salute. Irena sawed off a salute in return.

“I am not a veterinarian,” said Captain Pierre Enright. “But I do not think there is much more diagnosis to be done here.”

Dr. Pekar stood back from Kolo's cage. She bent down, as if trying to peer through a keyhole, to look into the bear's eyes. Mostly, they were closed. She watched for a long minute, in which Kolo finally batted them to wince away the pain. Sergeant Lemarchand wrenched open the iron gate for Dr. Pekar; it was quite pointlessly locked. The soldier knelt to steady the bear against his shoulder. Dr. Pekar passed her hand over Kolo's eyes; they did not follow her hand. She had no fear of kneeling down to place her nose against his muzzle. She held her left hand against the bear's chest; she could just about feel his heart squeeze lightly into her hand.

“He is dying for sure,” said Dr. Pekar from inside the cage. “Starving to death and mad with hunger and pain.”

“How much food would he need?” asked Captain Enright.

“I usually deal with house cats. But, say, six to eight pounds a day.”

“Meat?” asked the captain. The two doctors circled Kolo's cage slowly.

“A little. Vegetables and fruit, mostly. And grains. But a lot.”

“Is there any way we can get six pounds of food a day for this bear?” asked Captain Enright.

Sergeant Lemarchand was already shaking his head. “Captain, we can't count on six spoonfuls for the whole city.”

“Perhaps an article in
Paris Match
or
The New York Times
would help,” mused Captain Enright. “I'm thinking out loud. Or a television story. People love animals. Brigitte Bardot might see it.”

“There isn't time,” said Dr. Pekar. “This boy is already eating himself up inside. It's in his breath. Look at him.
Look at him!
” she said with sudden urgency. “And all you can do is hope that Brigitte Bardot sees him.” Dr. Pekar snorted.

Derision seemed to spur Captain Enright to marshal his thinking. “I understand,” he said without resentment. “How would you ordinarily end the suffering of a patient with no hope of survival? It is not a question I confront with mine,” he added.

“Pentobarbital,” said Dr. Pekar. “But you would need a lot for a brown bear. Even desiccated as he is. Do you have any?” she continued.

“Not a jot,” said Captain Enright. “I don't know what you've heard, but we try to keep our soldiers alive.”

“The right dose of morphine could work,” said Dr. Pekar from behind Kolo in the cage. Sergeant Lemarchand was still holding Kolo against his shoulder. Indeed, he had put a hand behind the bear's ear, as if to protect him from the conversation. “I could never get that approved,” he said. “We need it for people.”

“You have another course of treatment,” Dr. Pekar observed. “On your hip.”

Sergeant Lemarchand's left hand dropped softly onto the handle of his service revolver, as if he had just been reminded to feel for an old sore.

“The traditional prescription for suffering creatures,” the doctor went on. “One bullet applied directly to the brain. Effective and even humane. They are dead before they can hear the shot, much less feel it.”

Sergeant Lemarchand tipped back onto his buttocks on the cage's cold, chipped floor. His knees had suddenly given way, and he slapped his ankles to bring them feeling. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I cannot fire my weapon. Those are orders.”

“You're a soldier,” said Dr. Pekar. “Is your gun just for decoration? Like a bracelet and earrings?”

“I know how to use it,
madame,
” said Sergeant Lemarchand, stressing his courtesy. “But I cannot. Those orders are the specific policy of the United Nations. They are handed down from New York. You can read them in English, French, and Russian.”

“Those pompous asses are a long way off,” Dr. Pekar retorted with growing vehemence.

“Still, I cannot fire my gun. I must account for every bullet.
Please.
I love animals, too. That is why I brought you and the doctor here—I'd hoped you could do something for Kolo that I could not.”

“This bear snapped at us,” Dr. Pekar suggested. Kolo, meanwhile, seemed to be simmering in pain, his murmurs growing louder.

“He was mad. He was hungry. He was going to eat us. What lie isn't more believable than the truth right now?” she asked.

“I'll attest to whatever you say,” Captain Enright volunteered.

But Sergeant Lemarchand saw instantly that the plot would have to begin with him, and he wanted no part of it. “My orders are clear,” he said. “In fact, nothing is clearer. Sometimes I wonder what we are supposed to do here. Relieve the siege, but help the Serbs keep it. Assist civilians, but don't fire back at their assailants. They've sent me out here to help a sick bear. I can do everything but actually help him. One order holds firm: I
cannot
fire my gun.”

Dr. Pekar sprang forward. “Give
me
your gun, then,” she said.

“That's also against orders,” said Sergeant Lemarchand. “Guns are not corkscrews or can openers that you lend out for chores.”

“What's your problem?” Dr. Pekar shrieked at the sergeant. “I mean, what
is
your problem? Is the U.N. afraid that shooting a sick bear will infringe on the sovereignty of Serb bears? Are you really proud to stay neutral in the middle of a massacre? What kind of sick bastards are you Blue Helmets to leave your snug homes just to stand around and watch us bleed? I would rather have a spot on my conscience than nothing, like yours.” Her voice was hard and cold.

Kolo's eyes seemed suddenly to lock shut. A loud crack split the sky, and reverberated through the cage; the bars buzzed softly. Kolo deflated swiftly. There was a last gasp from the big brown bear's chest as Irena watched him flatten against the floor, falling with astounding softness into a spreading, slippery red pond.

         

SARAJEVO CIVILIANS KNEW
how to get down at the sound of a sniper shot. The soldiers were surprised and baffled, Irena noticed. Sergeant Lemarchand and Captain Enright flinched and ducked, but they turned their faces up toward the trees, looking for the shot.

“Get down!” Dr. Pekar shouted at them. “Stay down!”

A voice screamed at them through the trees from the other side. “That—animal—” he shouted in bursts, “did not—deserve—to suffer.
You
—do.”

Another shot split the air; Irena could hear it clipping branches and leaves. “Run!” the voice shouted. “Get out!
Run!
Or I will give you”—he squeezed off another shot—“my autograph.”

The little group in the cage stood up slowly. Sergeant Lemarchand raised his arms above his head, to show that he had no intention of reaching for his revolver; the sniper might not have heard that he couldn't fire it anyway. Captain Enright, who was a doctor and had no gun, did the same. Dr. Pekar and Irena followed, moving slowly back down the hill. Their arms felt heavy and weary after just a few feet.

“Wait,” Sergeant Lemarchand said to Irena. He turned around to face the trees, keeping his arms flamboyantly upraised. With slow, exaggerated movements, the sergeant unzipped his bulletproof vest and slid his arms out of it until he held the jacket almost daintily in his hands. He motioned Irena to hold still and slipped the vest almost grandly over her shoulders. “This way, mademoiselle,” he said.

As they walked back down the hill, Irena thought that she could feel a hole burning in the back of her head. When they reached flat terrain, she was both relieved and excited. She turned around, jumping on her toes, and called back through the trees, “Are you the Sniper from Slatina?” Sergeant Lemarchand helped her out of the vest, and she jumped up again, higher, shouting the question more loudly yet. “Are you the Sniper from Slatina?”

There was no response, and they headed for the sergeant's vehicle. It was a couple of blocks before they could hear one another breathing naturally, trusting that another breath would follow.

“He would have shot us by now if he was going to,” Captain Enright pointed out.

“Perhaps we should have said thank you,” said Dr. Pekar.

“That would have seemed—odd,” said the captain.

“He might have let us come back,” said the doctor.

“There is nothing left in that zoo to care for,” Sergeant Lemarchand said. “Someone even shot the squirrels from their trees. Madame, am I really a sick bastard?” he asked Dr. Pekar.

         

MUSTAFA ABADZIC, THE
zoo's director, had taken to sleeping in an old equipment shed on the grounds. It was exposed to more sniper fire than was generally desired in a residential property, but Mr. Abadzic had been turned out of his three-bedroom apartment in Grbavica. Black-whiskered men were stuffing the small carved olive-wood elephants and zebras he had brought back from Tanzania under their black sweaters when they beat him away from his own door.

“My children will love these,” they said.

Mr. Abadzic had seen Kolo gorge himself on Slino and Guza, his old cage mates. “It's the law of the jungle,” he told Mr. Suman, the zoo's chief custodian, who was camped in an unshattered corner of the old chimp house. “
Our
jungle, this city we have now.”

The director enlisted Mr. Suman's help in digging a grave for Kolo, in the soft ground outside the bear cage. “We shouldn't just leave him there to draw flies,” he said. “That would be shameful.” That afternoon, the director had used a piece of burned wood to etch a message across a plank he had wrenched off a smashed storage door: