The Martyr's Song Read online

  The rifle butt landed twice on the woman’s head, and her body relaxed. Several children began to cry; a chorus of women groaned in shock, still bent under their own heavy loads. The sound grated on Janjic’s ears.

  “Please . . . please,” Father Michael begged.

  “Shut up! Janjic, beat him!”

  Janjic barely heard the words. His eyes were fixed on the priest.

  “Janjic! Beat him.” Karadzic pointed with an extended arm. “Ten blows!”

  Janjic turned to the commander, still not fully grasping the order. This wasn’t his quarrel. It was Karadzic’s game. “Beat him? Me? I—”

  “You question me?” The commander took a threatening step toward Janjic.“You’ll do as I say. Now take your rifle and lay it across this traitor’s back, or I’ll have you shot!”

  Janjic felt his mouth open.

  “Now!”

  Two emotions crashed through Janjic’s chest. The first was simple revulsion at the prospect of swinging a fifteen-pound rifle at this priest’s deformed back. The second was fear at the realization that he felt any revulsion at all. He was a soldier who’d sworn to follow orders. And he had always followed orders. It was his only way to survive the war. But this . . .

  He swallowed and took a step toward the figure, bent now in an attitude of prayer. The children stared at him—thirty sets of round, white-rimmed eyes, swimming in tears, all crying a single question. Why?

  He glanced at Karadzic’s red face. The commander’s neck bulged like a bullfrog’s, and his eyes bored into Janjic. Because he told me to, Janjic answered. Because this man is my superior, and he told me to.

  Janjic raised his rifle and stared at the man’s hunched back. It was trembling now, he saw. A hard blow might break that back. A knot rose to Janjic’s throat. How could he do this? It was lunacy! He lowered the rifle, his mind scrambling for reason.

  “Sir, should I make him stand?”

  “Should you what?”

  “Should I make him stand? I could handle the rifle better if he would stand. It would give me a greater attitude to target—”

  “Make him stand, then!”

  “Yes, sir. I just thought—”

  “Move!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  A slight quiver had taken to Janjic’s hands. His arms ached under the rifle’s weight. He nudged the kneeling priest with his boot.

  “Stand, please.”

  The priest stood slowly and turned to face him. He cast a side glance to the crumpled form near the commander. His tears were for the woman, Janjic realized. There was no fear in his eyes, only remorse over the abuse of one of his own.

  He couldn’t strike this man! It would be the death of his own soul to do so!

  “Beat him!”

  Janjic flinched.

  “Turn, please,” he instructed.

  The father turned sideways.

  Janjic had no choice. At least that was what he told himself as he drew his rifle back. It’s an order. This is a war. I swore to obey all orders. It’s an order. I’m a soldier at war. I have an obligation.

  He swung the rifle by the barrel, aiming for the man’s lower back. The sound of sliced air preceded a fleshy thump and a grunt from the priest. The man staggered forward and barely caught his fall.

  Heat flared up Janjic’s back, tingling at the base of his head. Nausea swept through his gut.

  The father stood straight again. He looked strong enough, but Janjic knew he might very well have lost a kidney to that blow. A tear stung the corner of his eye. Good God, he was going to cry! Janjic panicked.

  I’m a soldier, for the love of country! I’m a Partisan! I’m not a coward!

  He swung again, with fury this time. The blow went wild and struck the priest on his shoulder. Something gave way with a loud snap—the butt of his rifle. Janjic pulled the gun back, surprised that he could break the wood stock so easily.

  But the rifle was not broken.

  He jerked his eyes to the priest’s shoulder. It hung limp. Janjic felt the blood drain from his head. He saw Father Michael’s face then. The priest was expressionless, as if he’d lost consciousness while on his feet.

  Janjic lost his sensibilities then. He landed a blow as much to silence the voices screaming through his brain as to carry out his orders. He struck again, like a man possessed with the devil, frantic to club the black form before him into silence. He was not aware of the loud moan that broke from his throat until he’d landed six of the blows. His seventh missed, not because he had lost his aim, but because the priest had fallen.

  Janjic spun, carried by the swing. The world came back to him then.His comrades standing by the wall,eyes wide with astonishment; the women still bent under concrete crosses; the children whimpering and crying and burying their heads in each other’s bosoms.

  The priest knelt on the concrete, heaving, still expressionless. Blood began to pool on the ground below his face. Some bones had shattered there.

  Janjic felt the rifle slip from his hands. It clattered to the concrete.

  “Finish it!” Karadzic’s voice echoed in the back of Janjic’s head, but he did not consider the matter. His legs were shaking, and he backed unsteadily from the black form huddled at his feet.

  To his right, boots thudded on the concrete and Janjic turned just in time to see his commander rushing at him with a raised rifle.

  He instinctively threw his arms up to cover his face. But the blows did not come. At least not to him.

  They landed with a sickening finality on the priest’s back. Three blows in quick succession accompanied by another snap. The thought that one of the women may have stepped on a twig stuttered through Janjic’s mind. But he knew that the snap had come from the father’s ribs. He staggered back to the wall and crashed against it.

  “You will pay for this, Janjic,” Molosov muttered.

  Janjic’s mind reeled, desperate to correct his spinning world. Get ahold of yourself, Janjic! You’re a soldier! Yes, indeed, a soldier who defied his superior’s orders. What kind of madness has come over you?

  He straightened. His comrades were turned from him, watching Karadzic yank the priest to his feet. Janjic looked at the soldiers and saw that a line of sweat ran down the Jew’s cheek. Puzup blinked repeatedly.

  The priest suddenly gasped. Uhhh! The sound echoed in the silence.

  Karadzic hardly seemed to notice the odd sound. “March!” he thundered. “The next one to drop a cross will receive twenty blows with the priest. We’ll see what kind of faith he has taught you.”

  The women tottered, gaping, sagging.

  The commander gripped his hands into fists. Cords of muscle stood out on his neck.“Maaarch!”

  They marched.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  EVE SLOWLY lowered the book with a quiver in her hands. After so many years, the pain had not lessened. She leaned back and drew a deep breath.

  She leapt from her chair. “March!” she mimicked, and she strutted across the floor, the book flapping in her right hand. “Maaarch! One, two. One, two.” She did it with indignation and fury, and she did it hardly thinking what she was doing.

  She was aware of Marci to her right and then her left as she turned, but emotion caught her up too quickly for her to bother with modesty. She had entered the story herself, precisely as she had asked Marci to. If the girl had any real sense of it yet, she might jump up and join Eve.

  “Maaarch!”

  MARCI WATCHED Eve march across the living room. She felt an odd compunction to jump up and join her. She saw Eve as defiant, mocking Karadzic for being such a pig. Eve was marching because she was actually in the story, right here, right now.

  And so was Marci, wasn’t she? She was present, seeing glimpses of what Father Michael was seeing. What did it mean? And who was she? Maybe all of them, but no, Eve had said one character.

  One thing was certain, there were two worlds in the story. A brutal, ugly world, and a lovely, beautiful world. Somehow Father Mi
chael was in both. And somehow she was in two worlds too.

  “So . . . what happens?” Marci asked.

  Eve stopped marching and looked at her, startled. “What?”

  “I’m sorry. Um . . . are we going to finish?”

  “Yes.” Eve slipped back into her chair. “Yes, I’m sorry. I got a bit carried . . . Where was I?”

  “You were marching.”

  “I was marching. And you were starting to see.” She peeked at Marci, lifted an eyebrow, then lowered her eyes to the page.

  FATHER MICHAEL remembered arguing with the commander; remembered Karadzic’s rifle butt smashing down on Sister Marie’s skull; remembered the other soldier, the skinny one, making him stand and then raising the rifle to strike him. He even remembered closing his eyes against that first blow to his kidneys. But that blow ignited the strobe in his mind.

  Poof!

  The courtyard vanished in a flash of light.

  The white desert crashed into his world. Fingers of light streaked from the horizon. The ground was covered with the white flowers. And the music!

  Oh, the music. The children’s laughter rode the skies, playing off the man’s song. His volume had grown, intensified, compelling Michael to join in the laughter. The same simple tune, but now others seemed to have joined in to form a chorus. Or maybe it just sounded like a chorus but was really just laughter.

  Sing, O son of Zion; Shout, O child of mine;

  Rejoice with all your heart and soul and mind.

  Michael was vaguely aware of a crashing on the edge of his world. It was as if he lived in a Christmas ornament, and a child had taken a stick to it. But it wasn’t a stick; he knew that. It wasn’t a child either. It was the soldier with a rifle beating his bones.

  He heard a loud snap. I’ve got to hurry up before the roof caves in about me! I’ve got to hurry! My bones are breaking.

  Hurry? Hurry where?

  Hurry to meet this man. Hurry to find the children, of course. Problem was, he still couldn’t see them. He could hear them, all right. Their laughter rippled over the field in long, uncontrolled strings that forced a smile to his mouth.

  The figure was still far away, a foot high on the horizon now, walking straight toward Michael, singing his incredible song. He would have expected music to reach him through his ears, but this song didn’t bother with the detour. It seemed to reach right through his chest and squeeze his heart. Love and hope and sorrow and laughter all rolled up in one.

  He opened his mouth without thinking and sang a couple of the words. O child of mine . . . A silly grin spread his cheeks. What did he think he was doing? But he felt a growing desperation to sing with the man, to match the chorus with his own. La da da, da la! Mozart! An angel with the purest melody known to man. To God!

  And he wanted to laugh! He almost did. He almost threw back his head and cackled. His chest felt as though it might explode with the desire. But he could not see the children. And that stick was making an awful racket about his bones.

  Without ceremony, the world with all of its color and light and music was jerked from him. He was back in the village.

  He heard himself gasp. Uhhh! It was like having a bucket of cold water thrown at him while taking a warm shower. He was standing now, facing Marie’s fallen body. The spring gurgled on as if nothing at all had happened. The women were frozen in place. The children were crying.

  And pain was spreading through his flesh like leaking acid.

  Oh God. What is happening? What are you doing to your children?

  His shoulder did not feel right. Neither did his cheek.

  He wanted to be back in the laughing world with the children. Marie stirred on the ground. The commander was screaming, and now the women started to move, like ghosts in a dream.

  No. The colors of Father Michael’s world brightened. No, I do not belong with the laughing children. I belong here with my own children. These whom God has given me charge over. They need me.

  But he didn’t know what he should do. He wasn’t even sure he could talk. So he prayed. He cried out to God to save them from this wicked man.

  THE COURTYARD had become a wasteland, Janjic thought. A wasteland filled with frozen guards and whimpering children and moaning women. The ravens soared in an unbroken circle now, a dozen strong. A lone dove watched the scene from its perch on the house to his right.

  Janjic swallowed, thinking that he might cry. But he would swallow his tongue before he allowed tears. He had humiliated himself enough.

  Molosov and the others stood expressionless, drawing shallow breaths, waiting for Karadzic’s next move in this absurd game. An hour ago, Janjic was bored with the distraction of the village. Ten minutes ago, he found himself horrified at beating the priest. And now . . . now he was slipping into an odd state of anger and apathy drummed home by the plodding footfalls about him.

  The girl with a flat face and freckles—the birthday girl dressed in pink—suddenly stood up.

  She stood on the third step and stared at the commander for a few moments, as if gathering her resolve. She was going to do something. What had come over this girl? She was a child, for heaven’s sake. A war child, not so innocent as most at such a tender age, but a child nonetheless. He’d never seen a young girl as brave as this one looked now, standing with arms at her sides, staring at the commander across the courtyard.

  “Nadia!” a woman called breathlessly. Her mother, Ivena, who had stopped beneath her heavy cross.

  Without removing her eyes from the commander, the girl walked down the steps and limped for Karadzic.

  “Nadia! Go back! Get back on the steps this minute!” Ivena cried.

  The girl ignored her mother’s order and walked right up to the commander. She stopped five feet from him and looked up at his face. Karadzic didn’t return her wide stare but kept his eyes fixed on some unseen point directly ahead. Nadia’s eyes were misty, Janjic saw, but she wasn’t crying.

  It occurred to Janjic that he had stopped breathing. Sound and motion had been sucked from the courtyard as if by a vacuum. The children’s whimpers fell silent. The women froze in their tracks. Not an eye blinked.

  The girl spoke. “Father Michael has taught us that in the end only love matters. Love is giving, not taking. My friends were giving me gifts today because they love me. Now you’ve taken everything. Do you hate us?”

  The commander spit at her. “Shut up, you ugly little wench! You have no respect?”

  “I mean no disrespect, sir. But I can’t stand to see you hurt our village.”

  “Please, Nadia,” Ivena said.

  The priest stood quivering, his face half off, his shoulders grotesquely slumped, staring at Nadia with his one good eye.

  Karadzic blinked. Nadia turned to face her mother and spoke very quietly. “I’m sorry, Mother.”

  She looked Karadzic in the eyes. “If you’re good, sir, why are you hurting us? Father Michael has taught us that religion without God is foolishness. And God is love. But how is this love? Love is—”

  “Shut your hole!” Karadzic lifted a hand to strike her. “Shut your tiny hole, you insolent—”

  “Stop! Please stop!” Ivena staggered forward three steps from the far side, uttering little panicky guttural sounds.

  Karadzic glared at Nadia, but he did not swing his hand.

  Nadia never took her round blue eyes off the commander. Her lower lip quivered for a moment. Tears leaked down her cheeks in long, silent streams. “But, sir, how can I shut up if you make my mother carry that load on her back? She has only so much strength.

  She will drop the cross, and then you’ll beat her. I can’t stand to watch this.”

  Karadzic ignored the girl and looked around at the scattered women, bent, unmoving, staring at him. “March! Did I tell you to stop? March!”

  But they did not. Something had changed, Janjic thought. They looked at Karadzic, their gazes fixed. Except for Ivena. She was bent like a pack mule, shaking, but slowly, ever so slowly,
she began to straighten with the cross on her back.

  Janjic wanted to scream out. Stop, woman! Stop, you fool! Stay down!

  Nadia spoke in a wavering tone now. “I beg you, sir. Please let these mothers put down their crosses. Please leave us. This would not please our Lord Jesus. It’s not his love.”

  “Shut up!” Karadzic thundered. He took a step toward Nadia, grabbed one of her pigtails, and yanked.

  She winced and stumbled after him, nearly falling except for his grip on her hair. Karadzic pulled the girl to the father, who looked on, tears running down his cheek now.

  Ivena’s cross slipped from her back then.

  Janjic alone watched it, and he felt its impact through his boot when it landed.

  Nadia’s mother ran for Karadzic. She’d already taken three long strides when the dull thump jerked the commander’s head toward her. She took two more, half the distance to the commander, head bent and eyes fixed, before uttering a sound. And then her mouth snapped wide, and she shrieked in fury. A full-throated roaring scream that met Janjic’s mind like a dentist’s drill meeting a raw nerve.

  Karadzic whipped the girl behind him like a rag doll. He stepped forward and met the rushing woman’s face with his fist.

  The blow sent her reeling, bleeding profusely from the nose. She slumped to her knees, silenced to a moan.

  And then another cross fell.

  And another, and another, until they were slamming to the concrete in a rain of stone. The women struggled to stand tall, all of them.

  Janjic thought he saw a streak of fear cross Karadzic’s gray eyes.

  But he wasn’t thinking too clearly just now. He was trembling under the weight of the atmosphere. A thick air of insanity laced with the crazy notion that he should stop this. That he should scream out in protest, or maybe put a bullet in Karadzic’s head— anything to end this madness.

  The commander jerked his pistol from his belt and shoved it against the priest’s forehead. He spun the girl toward the priest and released her. “You think your dead Christ will save your priest now?”