—

Judge Gladys Banda leaned toward the microphone and spoke the first words of the trial: May the registrar call the case.

Mr. Hans Bakker rose from the registry desk. He wore practical leather dress shoes and a grey suit. He called the case number and he announced the reason they were there: The Prosecutor versus Žarko Dragić.

—

The turbulence started the first morning of the trial. Čedo Milinković, the defence lawyer, turned his body slightly away from his client, Žarko Dragić. The accused was tall and dressed in a cheap, ill-fitting suit. His skin was weathered and greyish from continual smoking, with skin bagged under his eyes, a carved vertical scar on his right cheek and a deep wrinkle between his eyebrows. He moved with censored physicality. He was extremely self-conscious and had chosen to affect an expression of false submission. I had often watched our dog at home make this look. Dominated by someone in our small pack, Mam or me, she would lower her head and her ears and turn her eyes away, all the while watching us from the sides. Edina had told me that before the war Dragić was a village man known more for hunting and bumming cigarettes in the cafés than anything else.

The counts were read as part of the routine opening of any trial and Dragić had been instructed to plead guilty. But with unnaturally open eyes he stood and pled not guilty to the count of crimes against humanity.

I watched Karla look to the judges in surprise. Had they been aware? She had not been informed ahead. She should have been. The judges’ faces remained impassive, though I saw heightened alertness in their eyes, always a slight dilation of the pupils that cannot be masked, and a tightening of displeasure in Judge Smith’s jaw. He was already turning the pages of the indictments in front of him. Judge Banda asked Dragić to explain himself.

Dragić said, I hope you understand why I pleaded guilty. I have been listening to you read the charges. Will someone tell me where in these counts you are…in the paragraph nine, is that what you are all talking about?…and then I might be able to plead guilty, of course, taking into account the circumstances, the circumstances being war. I am trying to explain the amount of hesitation in my mind, and why I said I was guilty of one but not another. I tried to explain to my lawyer but I think he does not understand me or maybe believe me. Am I failing to make myself clear in legal terms, which I do not understand? I was misled, not knowing the law. I do not want to tell a lie at all. I came here to be honest, to be decent, to tell you what exactly I did, and it is up to you to say how guilty I am, and to mete out a sentence. I hope I have made myself clear.