You said, Soon.

Our home was littered with things we could not speak of. We did not speak of people who had disappeared, your parents, my father, our school friends, the woman who ran the post office, the tobacconist. I told you about old Zedro, the doorman at my law school. The day before Merima and I took the bus to Foča the radio broadcasts were blaring hatred and there were demonstrations. Everyone said it meant nothing, it was only politicians and protests. I was running up the steps into the law building where Zedro sat in the office behind the glass window. He turned off his radio and he said to me, I am not capable of hurting someone’s child or setting fire to a friend’s house. I would rather die than do the things they are broadcasting. I laughed at him. I said, It’s just propaganda. Enjoy your coffee. The next day, when I was waiting for the bus, I heard he had hanged himself. Men were moving trucks of munitions, moving their families away, but our own president was still saying there would not be war.

Ivo, I wanted not to think.

Ivo, what happened to you, gentle, sweet Ivo? We were supposed to travel to Vienna but you went drinking with some men and stayed out late, and I fell asleep and our neighbour pounded on the door in the middle of the night and she was distraught. She said, Come, see.

Why were you down there, all alone, your drunken friends gone and where did you get that goat, that poor little goat? You had tied it on a fence, legs splayed, a rope around the neck, the poor thing screaming for its life and you were stabbing it with a kitchen knife, and you were groaning, and you cursed it, and you cut out its tongue and shouted, Escort of the dead, take me. I ran down and screamed from across the lot, Ivan! But I stayed far away I was so frightened. Then the bleating stopped and, no need to describe, the goat was gone. You sat on the cement, exhausted, and I said, Ivan, come in, but you would not, you got up and disappeared into the streets and I locked our door against you. At noon you appeared again. Now you were dressed up in borrowed clean clothes, even your hair was cut and you looked so much like how you once were—only your eyes were bloodshot. You said, Come walk up the mountain with me, I am sorry for last night. I am sorry.

Always we had loved to walk up the mountain together. It was a pretty day and we sat for a while on the bombed-out foundation of the Osmice hotel and we looked at our city below and you said, Do you not still love our home? Let’s walk along the bobsled track.

The track was much destroyed in the war. We found the wall where I had spray-painted beneath your heart Forever. I put my arm around your waist.