Sándor Majoros

Kosovo, Gunshot Wound

(Short Stroy)

 

A family that does not have at least one secret to hide does not exist. Ours is connected with Father's death. He was gunned down in Kosovo, somewhere around Uros©evac, in seventy - nine, when he was transporting cement to a nickel mine that was being opened up in Macedonia. We never did find out why.
Two years later, Mother married one of Father's colleagues. I was three at the time, my brother was two. I can't say anything bad about the man: he did not beat us or swear at us, but we still hated him, loathed him with all our heart. He reigned over our lives, proudly and self - assuredly, and we were never able to forgive him for that.
My younger brother acquired a shooter in ninety - five. He could not get any cartridges for it, but even so he proudly flashed it around. Through an unfortunate coincidence of circumstances, this was at the time our step - father struck Mother over a meal of potato noodles that had gone cold. As if that was all he had been waiting for, our kid announced he was going to shoot the swine. And off he went to look for cartridges for his gun.
That was no simple matter: the Yugoslav People's Republican Army by then was through the Bosnian war, and the arsenals that had been wide open for irregulars had been locked up again. It was a period when anyone sniffing around for bullets might well be asked what he wanted them for. In the end, though, the Balkans being the Balkans, the ammunition was arranged for fifteen Deutschmarks. At the time, that amounted to an average monthly wage. Our parents had patched up their quarrel in the meantime, so we were left with a useless bullet that had cost us an arm and a leg.
In the past, they used to send ethnic Hungarian conscripts from the Vojvodina off to Slovenia, Dalmatia, Bosnia or even Macedonia to do their military service, whilst they brought the Slovenian, Croat, Bosnian and Macedonian lads here, amongst the endless fields of wheat and maize. But where are Slovenia, Macedonia and Bosnia now! I was called up to serve in Sabac, in northern Serbia, right in the lull between two storms that lasted from the Dayton Peace Accords to the NATO bombings. My brother came to visit every week, bringing money, food and warm clothing, depending on what my needs were. On one occasion, finding me particularly down, he pressed the fifteen - mark bullet into my hand. Anyone giving you a really hard time, pump that into his skull, he instructed. I was in no mood to explain to him that I didn't actually have a weapon. Along with two Muslim lads from the Sanjak, I was only ever put on latrine - cleaning detail. Still, the cartridge was left with me.
Twelve months I sweated it out at S©abac, a period during which I learned that the biggest market in all of Serbia was held right there. In February '99 I was discharged with chronic arthritis. By then the KLA was waging a regular guerrilla war in Kosovo. On top of that, the Albanian propaganda machine was functioning a great deal more effectively than the Serbian - hardly surprising, given that the latter had lost all credibility with the massacres in Croatia and Bosnia.
I got back home to be greeted by the rotten news that my younger brother had been called up a week before my own discharge. He was packed off to Malisevo, which is roughly midway between Kosovska Mitrovica and Uros©evac. He was right up to his neck in the powder - keg. I twiddled the bullet that he had given me, studying it as I listened to Mother's lamentations. She begged my step - father and me by turns to hit on some way of getting him back home. The old man just hemmed and hawed and shrugged his shoulders, but I was spurred to say that I would sign up as a volunteer and track him down. Mother turned off the waterworks straight away. Off with you, son, bring your brother back! she whispered, and practically bustled me out the door.
Down at the recruiting office they looked a bit askance at my seeking, despite being of Hungarian origin, to go down to Kosovo, but they took my name anyway. The same day, I was transported with a unit of internal security police off to Nis©, where we joined up with a volunteer corps that was being assembled from all over Serbia. Most of them had already undergone their baptism of fire back at the time of the fighting in Slavonia, several of them had been wounded too. It was rumoured that NATO would soon be attacking us, so we slept in sheds and pigsties, well away from the armoured vehicles. We feared for our chickenshit lives.
In Kosovo, the bowl of one valley runs into the next, the flatlands are interminably eerie, the scrub on the lazy arcs of the mountains is sparse. Usually just a single paved road with a line of acacia - wood electricity posts alongside - in some cases not even carrying a cable - runs between them. At other times we proceeded between stone walls high as your head, a veritable labyrinth that you could only get out of with the aid of a tank. The sky is perpetually grey, it drizzles constantly, and a rumble of uncertain provenance can be heard from beyond the horizon.
The company was holed up for two weeks in an evacuated school at Lipljan, awaiting the order to go into action. Meanwhile, I made friends with Dalibor Pesic, a radio mechanic, gun - freak, and one of the Seven Sleepers. He claimed to own a light automatic rifle, a double - barrelled hunting gun, and a Beretta nine - millimetre. I showed him the bullet my brother had given me. It took no more than a cursory glance for him to say it was a round for a Zastava ZCZ - 99, and I'd do well to be careful with it, because its percussion - cap was sensitive.
I was flabbergasted. That evening we learned that NATO planes had been deployed against Yugoslavia.
After prolonged deliberation, our officers came up with the idea that the engines of our vehicles should be kept running constantly because we might get the order to move off at any moment. So the T - 75 tanks and armoured personnel carriers roared throughout the night in the school yard. The Americans must have got some great overhead photos of us with their infra - red heat - detector cameras from a few thousand feet up.
I was woken at four o'clock for my spell of guard duty. I shivered my way out into the yard and decided to station myself over by one of the lorries, thinking the engine would surely help keep me warm. At almost the same moment I heard a strange sort of murmur. Whipping round, I spotted a yellow and two red dots of light above the school building. They seemed to be hanging motionless in the sky, somewhere over the hills to the west, yet I sensed that they were in fact rapidly heading our way.
Rushing into the school, I began yelling that the bombers were here, everybody should clear out. I kicked, punched and slapped the company to their feet, and look lively they did too. We had dug trenches at the far end of the yard days before; we flung ourselves into them and peeked out at the growing points of light. Someone then yelled out, "Dalibor is still inside!" I did not know who shouted, but it was immaterial anyway. I had one minute to haul my pal out.
I raced across the yard. That took some ten seconds. Up the steps: another five. Down the corridor: again five. I burst in on Dalibor's billet, grab his shoulders: that's five plus another five. Outside the drone is swelling into a rumble.
I drag Dalibor to his feet, push him ahead, and that takes fifteen seconds. He senses something is up and does nothing to resist, but he is still caught on the borderline between sleep and wakefulness. He has no clue which way the exit lies. I jostle him towards the door but am suddenly overwhelmed by a wave of sentiment like when you cry. I am not going to find my brother, because I am about to die, flashes across my mind, and by now I am no longer counting the seconds but hurl Dalibor out into the yard. He crawls down the steps and comes to a halt. I yell at him to run! run!, but he cannot hear because the roar is now deafening.
The sun was going down by the time I came to. My head and arm were bandaged, and there was a burning pain in my thigh. I was lying on a hospital bed - in Pristina, as it later turned out. Apparently they had spent an hour and a half digging out splinters that lodged in me from the panelling ripped out of the school's corridor. It was my luck that the pressure wave had hurled me into the building, but even so the legs of my fatigues had caught fire, and the Zastava ZCZ - 99 cartridge in my pocket, the one I had been given by my brother, had been set off by the heat. Dalibor had been quite right: the damned thing had a sensitive percussion - cap. What was left of him, I never managed to find out. He sank into the same mysterious non - existence into which my father had disappeared in seventy - nine.
I was treated for weeks after that in various clinics, and when I was allowed home, they wrote under the "injury" heading of my army service book: "Kosovo, gunshot wound."
Exactly what had been in Dad's death certificate.

Translated by Tim Wilkinson

Sándor Majoros
is Director of the Bartók Archives in Budapest and Professor of Musicology at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music. His books include The Keyboard Sonatas of Joseph Haydn (1995) and Béla Bartók: Composition, Concept, and Autograph Sources (1996).