“It was the right moment,” I said. “Everything up for grabs in my life. Needed a change.”
All that was true, but listening to my own words, I was instantly chagrined, because I was trying too hard to sound unsentimental.
“How’s this, Goos? I know this much: Justice is good. I accept the value of testimony, of letting the victims be heard. But consequences are essential. People can’t believe in civilization without being certain that a society will organize itself to do what it can to make wrongs right. Allowing the slaughter of four hundred innocents to go unpunished demeans the lives each of us leads. It’s that simple.”
Goos’s blue eyes, watery with drink, lingered on mine and he gave another weighty nod, then lifted his beer glass and clinked it against mine.
VII.
In the Cave
29.
War and Truth—June 26–27
On Friday, the president and registrar informed us that our budget to exhume the Cave had been approved. Goos felt well enough to plan for a return to Bosnia the following Monday, and we agreed that once the initial excavation was underway, I would follow. That figured to be Wednesday of next week. In the meantime, we divided responsibilities to complete preparation.
One item, indispensable from the perspective of Fien, Goos’s wife, was to ask NATO to provide round-the-clock protection. I spoke with General Moen’s aide-de-camp, who promised to make arrangements. I knew the NATO troops were stretched, but I asked that the detachment to guard us come from the organization, not the Bosnian Army, and the aide ultimately agreed.
I also called Attila a few times but did not reach her directly. Instead, the registrar’s office returned a signed copy of Attila’s proposal for the earth-moving equipment, while I e-mailed to ask her to please set aside time for Goos and me next week. Over the months, I’d come to recognize that there was often more calculation to Attila than the blizzard of words made it seem, but I was inclined to believe what she was always implying—that it was higher-ups who were still rigidly adhering to secrecy about the details surrounding the Kajevic arrest, including the full nature of the convoy that the Roma had hijacked. Nevertheless, we had leverage now, because sooner or later we would have to file a public report with the Court, even if it was merely to close our investigation. If the Americans wanted us to avoid mentioning the weapons, they would have to explain the sensitivities, including telling us a lot more of the story than they’d been willing to so far.
At home, Narawanda continued to avoid me. She was gone before I woke and returned just before bed, when I could hear her scurrying up to her room. I left a note on Tuesday to say that our interview with Kajevic had taken place and to thank her for her role in making it happen. Beside the coffee pot, I found a very brief response. “Very welcome. Working feverishly on motions.”
I understood that she had embarrassed herself painfully at our last dinner with her declaration about struggling to behave properly. Yet I’d accepted that it was best for us to keep our distance. When I returned from Bosnia, I would begin searching hard for a new place to live. Whatever fantasies about the two of us she might have been harboring—at least that evening, after three beers—were better ignored for both our sakes. I had done something incredibly stupid with Esma and had escaped with less emotional—and professional—damage than I had any right to expect. Getting involved again so soon, and with a woman who didn’t have even one foot out of her marriage, was dumber yet. None of that was to deny the many appetites Nara privately stimulated. Her innate modesty was a curtain behind which she liked to hide. She had a wonderfully active mind and a sly sense of humor that frequently overcame her pose as the blank-faced foreign girl. And her physical appeal had grown on me steadily over the months. But what I was drawn to most intensely was her earnestness. She had a rare gift among humans of being able to say how she actually felt, even if that was ‘I’m confused.’
Despite that, whenever I tried to consider things carefully, I regarded myself as the party more at risk. For her, I might make a convenient spot for an emergency landing on the way out of her relationship with Lewis, but I was likely to be the first stop on that journey rather than the last. By my guesswork, I was seventeen years older than she was, which would look unappealing once she got around to the long view. Whereas I, especially after feeling the cold circle of the rifle barrel, was more and more ready to nest. I could fall for Nara hard and a few months along end up with a shattered heart—and nowhere to live.
All of this was the kind of thing I could explain over a drink a few years from now, after she was well situated with a new beau—or husband. For now, it rested in the chasm of things unspoken that existed in most inchoate relationships between boys and girls.
These thoughts about Nara, intermittent and gentle, contrasted with the hot anger I felt whenever Esma crossed my mind. For reasons I couldn’t quite comprehend, there seemed to have been a fundamental insult in the way I’d been duped. All of that sat side by side with the reality, made sharper by our imminent return to Bosnia, of how important it was to figure out what the hell had been transpiring with Ferko, and whether any fragment of what he’d said was true.
One striking thing about Esma—Emira—was how deeply invested she was in the lie about her Roma roots, which had required concocting those false Internet entries about herself and her make-believe organization, and the substantial effort involved in learning Romany. By Wednesday morning, it had struck me that might be a way to force her out of hiding.
I texted: Tried to reach you at Bank Street with puzzling results. No Esma Czarni???? Returning to Bosnia and still desperate to speak to Ferko one more time.
Even so, I was surprised late Friday afternoon when my cell lit up with her brief reply. Withdrew Bank Street while this case goes on and on in New York. Efforts to reach Ferko futile. Very sorry. All best E
The art—and deceit—of this bare answer after weeks of silence drove me into another spiral of rage. I went out to run by myself and carried in dinner, drinking more wine than I should have as I struggled to make sense of Esma. I understood that the Roma cause was far more righteous and appealing than the legacy of a Persian expatriate whose family history was inevitably entangled in dirty work of the Shah. But how could you start every morning with an inner recap of the long list of lies you needed to tell again today?
I was still sloshing in anger while I was rinsing my dish, when the dam broke and I thought of my father. I sank to a beaten backless kitchen stool, suddenly too flattened even to bother shutting the tap, which continued splattering in the sink. Of course. It was just like a dream when a figure turns around and now has the face of someone else. My father. The difficult seething fury that had been boiling around my heart now cooled into a glop of sadness. Since the moment atop the water tank, I’d wondered occasionally why I was more angry with him than my mother. But knowing the old-fashioned nature of my parents’ relationship, I was sure who had driven all critical decisions. In fact, my mother had acknowledged to Marla that my father overruled Mom’s desire to return to Rotterdam.
Comparing them to Esma, there were, naturally, differences, distinctions. Lawyers loved distinctions. My parents lied to survive. At first. But in the end, like Esma, they chose what seemed to them a more agreeable life.