This is centred on Ivica, Luka's father in my previous stories "Reconcilable Differences", "Strings Attached" and "Critical Path."

I've done my level best to get the details of the Balkan War right but making sense of it is like knitting fog and there may be errors.

It's not my intention to take a stance on the wrongs and rights of the war; this is Ivica's take on it not mine, but I apologise in advance if anyone finds it offensive.

There will be parts of this that won't perhaps make sense unless you saw the Rafter/Ivanisevic Wimbledon Final in 2001 – but this should not, overall, interfere with the sense of the story.

Usual disclaimers apply. I don't own anyone ever mentioned on "ER" but the rest are mine.

By all means archive if you like.

Oh, and reviews always help.

...................................................................................................

By 12.45pm Zagreb time on Monday, 9th July 2001, Ivica Kovac had downed 4 glasses of Loza. His companions, all from the railway, their pockets widened by the drink, decreed there'd be no more rounds; accordingly three bottles of the stuff now sat in the centre of the table, a table covered, like all the others in the bar with a red and white chequered cloth. The Croatian flag hung limply outside in the hot, airless street and was draped across the front of the bar. Only Rade left the Loza alone, preferring his usual brandy interspersed with cold beer. The streets in this backwater were deserted but for the occasional dog or tourist too stupid to stay out of the heat. Cats dozed in the shade of doorways, indifferent to the drama about to play out. Many shops closed for the duration; in every bar and café and office in Zagreb, hell, probably across Croatia, patrons peered at TV's, held radios to their ears, drank, worked their patriotic swagger up to a frenzy to keep doubt at bay.

Only Ivica was in the bar legitimately, it being his day off; Rade, Drazan, and Srjdan had all conveniently developed bad backs, and Ivica smiled a grim little smile wondering at the likelihood of their boss also fetching up here. Difficult to explain on both sides.

"So what are the odds?" asked Drazan, his foot tapping nervously against the leg of the table.

"No odds," Replied Srjdan, "he'll win. Stop your damned tapping, it's driving me crazy. He has to win, it's his destiny, he's said so".

"He's said a lot of things" Ivica pointed out.

"But this time, this time it will happen. Why did the rain come on Saturday? Why is it that he has his countrymen there to cheer him on?"

Ivica was tempted to point out that the rain came because this was England in July and the rain always came. He resisted. "You'll say it was God, I suppose." Drazan glanced uneasily between Ivica and Srjdan, dreading a fight. He hated fights.

"God is with him. Three times he lost, three times. He has to win this time."

"Or what?"

"Or die."

"Oh, bravo, another death. We've not had enough of those around here lately."

From the set on the shelf above the bar came a roar as the gladiators entered the arena. Ivica watched as they reached the net, turned, bowed from the waist, and Ivica's lip curled involuntarily. "Those who are about to die . . . "he murmured.

......................................................................................................

All his life Ivica had been entranced by images of the young men diving from the bridge at Mostar, feeling the rush of fear and exhilaration in his gut as they plummeted the 25 metres into the Neretva River. What splendour, what glory. And in November 1993 he closed his eyes against the images if blown to pieces by men who called themselves Croats; Croats destroying a thing of beauty which had defied the laws of construction and engineering since 1566. Because they could. Bastards. They rebuilt it of course; millions of dollars, much jubilation and a lot of talk about a bridge between two peoples. Bullshit. It wasn't, it never had been; connecting two Muslim neighbourhoods, it had no strategic worth but it was beautiful and so it had to die. You can build a bridge that looks the same but it isn't the same bridge, it will never be the same bridge. Ivica wished they'd left the ruins of the old one for everyone to see, built something modern alongside. Bullshit.

......................................................................................................

The three men sweating under backpacks who walked into the bar stopped, taken aback by the shouts and yells that appeared to greet their entrance.

"G'day." Australians? Australians. Ivica smirked behind a cloud of cigarette smoke. The tall, tanned, handsome young man asked for three beers. Stipe, the bar's owner, made them wait, his eyes glued to the screen, waited for the end of the game before turning and serving them without enthusiasm. He glanced over at Ivica's table and rolled his eyes, shaking his head in disbelief. As he did so the three men realised what the TV was showing. They drank quickly, nervously.

"Can you believe it?" asked Srjdan, incredulously

"They only want a beer" offered Drazan, mildly, his foot starting to wag again.

"Don't they know what's happening?"

"For Christ's sake, it's a tennis match."

"You're no patriot, Ivica Kovac."

"Patriotism, nationalism – fine line."

"That's typical of you, mincing words."

Ivica drained his glass and Rade, silent, watchful Rade, refilled it for him.

"Words matter. You see, if he wins it he won't be talking about it in Croatian."

"So?"

"Words. Power."

"You're full of shit. I don't know what you're talking about, and neither do you."

...................................................................................................

It had been a shit storm; not the first, wouldn't be the last. His father hadn't talked about it much but it had hung in clouds around him. Franjo Kovac had joined the Partisans; others, friends, family members, had weighed the odds and thrown in their lot with the fascists. None of it made any sense to the young Ivica and his father wouldn't talk about it but the boy was haunted by a photograph of grinning Croats, armed to the teeth, on the ground before them the severed heads of their Serb brethren. Croats and Muslims slaughtered Serbs, Serbs turned on Croats and Muslims and the Nazis and Communists alike waited to reap the rewards. Franjo said it would come back to haunt them and he was right. He usually was. And when it did come back to haunt them Ivica hated them all, every man jack of them who thought the lives lost were worth the losing.

......................................................................................................

He'd thought it was a straight ace. It wasn't and now their man cursed and raged and kicked impotently at the net. The occupants of the bar were quiet, almost reverential, holding their collective breath. It was to be expected, their man was after all a genius and could be forgiven his excitable temperament and outbursts.

Yeah, well. They'd said much the same when the stories began to emerge about what their countrymen had done in this last round of the grotesque dance they were all locked in. Ivica had never seen such wilful blindness. He'd stayed at home a lot then, preferring to drink alone than listen to the apologists. There was only so much a sane man could stand.

Still, now their hero pissed away the fourth set and was faced with a fifth. He knew it wasn't going to be over easily, just as, when he'd thought that the madness was waning, Bosnia and Kosovo went up in flames, and on it went, Sarajevo besieged, Zagreb and Dubrovnik shelled, Serbs driven out of Krajina; it seemed never-ending and the umpires and line judges presided over the conflagration like blind men.

........................................................................................................

"That is a second serve ace at 126 miles per hour at 15-30; can you believe it?"

Of course he could believe it. He's seen stupider acts of bravado. Get out of a shitty little war and then push your luck by sending in your own people to get back what you've lost; weep tears of blood over the Croats killed or forced to hand over their land and homes and businesses and then uproot the Serbs you didn't want to see on your soil. Never let it lie.

Match point. A prayer. Their man crossed himself, wiped away tears. And then he screwed it up as Ivica knew he must, not once, not twice but three times. Make 'em suffer They suffered. Drazan couldn't look any more but buried his head in his arms, moaning softly. The three bottles were almost empty now. Tears stood in the eyes of Ivica's companions. Damn, tears stood in his own eyes. God, when it came down to it he wanted this man to win. His vulnerability filled Centre Court, the staid, cabbagy green cockpit transformed today by green and gold, red and white, by cheers and whoops, the shouts of "Rafter!" and "Goran!" competing for supremacy. And Ivanisevic, Goran the good, Goran the bad, Goran the crazy, Goran the vulnerable caught at Ivica's heart. The knowledge that this mattered more than God, more than country, more than anything, he understood that, he knew that feeling.

.......................................................................................................

He didn't call often, Luka; finding a working telephone in Vukovar was like striking oil, and Ivica had exclaimed in pleasure at the sound of his son's voice, an exclamation cut brutally short. By the time the call ended he wanted to be dead or mad or anything that would stop this feeling that his guts were spilling, spattering at his feet. Six days ago, it had happened six days ago. What had he been doing? He'd been working, trying to paint, trying to put Vukovar out of his mind because he saw the pictures, read the reports, wanted to go in there and get them out. And while he was doing that a woman and her children had ceased to exist, a young man had been destroyed. After that call he'd seen the sightless eyes of the beheaded Serbs, the grins of their killers. He painted it then, only now it was the heads that were grinning and the mouths of the Croats were stretched in bellows of agony.

......................................................................................................

Ivica slipped away from his companions, leaving them sobbing into their beer, singing the national anthem, the tablecloths draped around them. Drazan was wreathed in smiles because suddenly Srjdan loved him. Only when Ivica got outside did he realise that Rade, Rade whose mother was a Montenegrin Serb, had followed him.

"Good match" he said. He was a man of few words.

"Yes, a good match. I'm glad he won."

"I'm glad someone won" replied Rade and walked away, whistling "Waltzing Matilda" through his teeth.

It hadn't taken long for the streets to fill up, for firecrackers to fill the air with smoke, for some fuckwit to actually fire a gun into the air. Ivica made his way home, dodging the youths on motor cycles, others on foot, draped in the flag, waving bottles of beer, one with his face painted in red and white checks, smeared now with sweat and tears. Ivica was glad he didn't live in Split.

Still, once home, he raised a glass to the hero, called Damir, heard the sounds of celebration in his office and toyed with the idea of calling Luka too. Damn it, he could never remember what the time difference was. Maybe not. He smiled as he remembered the old man with the bad heart, father now to greatness, embraced by his son, knowing the man would remember that embrace on his deathbed. Some embraces were like that. When Luka had stood on his doorstep, thin, sick, unkempt, he had held him and he had hoped that the feel of his bones wouldn't be what came to him as he lay dying. He'd looked into his son's eyes, hoping to find them empty and it had taken all his strength not to cry out when he saw that they were alive with pain and rage. God hadn't even given him that, the opiate of inertia, deadening all feeling. Ivica hated God then; he still did.

........................................................................................................

January 14th 2004: cold as a witch's arse outside and a chaos of half packed belongings in Ivica's apartment. Ivica himself sat on the floor, legs stretched before him, glass In one hand, cigarette in the other and his back eased against a box filled to overflowing with books. The apartment had looked huge since the piano had been packed up and sent off to Luka only a few weeks earlier. He was glad that it hadn't come to selling it. Not generally a sentimental man or given to attaching significance to objects, he had felt sick at the idea of losing sight of the piano for good. She had been excited at the prospect of coming up here to Zagreb as had the boys. Life down by the coast was good but Damir was 14, Luka 12 and the country life was losing its allure; the city, that's where they wanted to be. Only Ivica had been out of sorts about the move. He didn't want to leave his people, although Elena hadn't minded. But when the rail authorities told you to move you moved. Part of the farm was wiped out during the war; he didn't know whose hands it was in now; probably holiday lets. He didn't suppose it mattered.

Packing up he had come across a stash of newspapers and had frowned, puzzled when he realised they were all dated July 10th 2001 – the day after the wildest of wild cards had raised the trophy in triumph on Centre Court. He'd gathered them all together, foreign papers, Croatian ones – what for? Had he meant to send them to Luka? He didn't remember.

He sat now and glanced through one of them, his lip curling at the hyperbole. With a sigh of frustration and ennui he threw it aside, his eye coming to rest on the frame of the door. The little lines on the frame looked like the marks made by the nails of one trying to claw their way out of ... something. Each line had its date and a name: Jasna, 2½ years, Jasna, 4 years, Jasna 5 years; Marko 18 months. Suddenly galvanised into action Ivica got up and a moment later stooped, kitchen knife in hand and scraped the paint away. Better this than that the next occupant of the apartment should paint over them, not caring, maybe not even curious about where these children were now. His task completed he stepped back, and only then was his eye caught by two marks higher up, one more than a foot higher than the other. Dani and Luka. Mama and Tata.

He wished the 'phone would ring.

......................................................................................................

"It is enshrined in the constitution of 1975!"

"It's madness!"

"It's our right!"

"You don't have the sense of a fucking cow! Talk to the JNA about your rights, talk to the tanks!

"They've lorded it over us for too long, the Serb bastards."

"And what, you think they'll let us walk away do you? Let us take our – "

"We have a right!"

"– let us take our cut of the GDP and wish us luck?"

"We are the GDP! They take our money and where do they spend it? Croatia? Fuck Croatia! It all goes on Serbia!"

"Srjdan, listen to me! Listen to yourself! Who has the army? They'll piss all over us!"

"We'll fight."

"We'll fight. Fine. What with, broom handles and pitchforks? Jesus fucking Christ."

"So come on then, what's the answer? We've done it now, we've made the declaration. What's your solution?"

"I don't have one. There is no solution. We're screwed, all of us, us, them, everyone."

"Just wait, just wait until the Croats are herded into reservations along with the Muslims and anyone else not fit for Greater Serbia. Milosevic and his boys will see to it. You'll see. You'll see."

Srjdan had been right of course. And wrong. There would be no good way out of this. He'd argued with Luka when the tanks rolled into Slovenia and moved against Croatia. Luka was all for fighting, for resistance; it had an heroic ring to it, resistance. A pox on both their houses and damn all governments, damn them all, posturing and name calling, hiding behind flags and history, constitutions and national pride while they blew lives apart. Little enough cause for pride. Ivica had no faith in his countrymen, knew they were as addled as the rest. Serb bastards Srjdan had said; they worked alongside some of those Serb bastards, had done for years, drank with them, played pool with them, cheered on Dynamo Zagreb with them. They were friends those Serb bastards.

But when the guns opened up on Vukovar and the images of the destruction there swam before his horrified, terrified eyes, then he had wished he was 30 years younger and still able to hate cleanly. By December he was past hating anyone but God. And so was Luka.

......................................................................................................

Looking through the newspapers now Ivica smiled a little remembering the euphoria of that and the following days, remembered the scenes in Split when 150,000 people had turned out to greet their man who suddenly looked a lot smaller. In truth it had been good to see the flag waved in joy and love, not fear and loathing. Here was a picture of the two men embracing at the net, affection and respect written all over them; the loser, noble in defeat uttered gracious words, choked on his thanks to his people, stepped aside for the hero of the hour; the man himself, said the report, was barely coherent. And when he read again of how the victory was dedicated to a dead friend, killed in a road accident Ivica shook his head and smiled again. No national pride, no flag waving, not when it came down to it, but a dead friend. Well, they all had some of those; maybe he should raise another glass to him.

He must have fallen asleep, didn't know how long the 'phone had been ringing. If it was Damir asking how the packing was going he'd scream.

"Tata". Not Damir.

"It's started?"

"It's over. We have a little girl." Ivica's throat closed over. There had been another call like this, a lifetime ago. "She's beautiful".

"Of course she's beautiful. Her mother?"

"She's fine. You would have been proud of her."

"And you?"

"Fine too. Tired."

"Don't tell her that. You don't know what tired means."

"No."

"You were – "

"I was there. I mean . . . I was there."

"I'm proud of you too."

"Don't cry, Tata."

"Why the fuck not? I'm an old man, I'll cry if I want to."

"Sure. Go ahead and cry. I might join you."

"I wish I could . . . I wish I could be – "

"I know. In the summer when things are settled, huh?"

"I need photographs."

"Did you get yourself an email account? You said you'd get one at the cafe."

"I know I did."

"But you didn't."

"Your point is?"

"If you had I could email some pictures to you."

"Tomorrow, I'll do it tomorrow. So . . . they're OK, both of them?"

"Sound asleep."

"She has a good cry, this baby, this Rosa?"

"She has a good cry. Like Jasna". There, the name was out. Ivica swallowed tears and fought for composure.

"Fuck, I don't know what to do with myself."

"Go out, have a drink for me – and one for Abby."

"Do you know how cold it is here?"

"You won't feel it." He was right, he wouldn't.

......................................................................................................

Drazan and Srjdan propped Ivica against the wall whilst Rade went through his pockets for his keys, whistling softly to himself.

"For fuck's sake, Rade" said Srjdan.

"What?"

"Why don't you just whistle properly and have done with it?"

"It annoys you?"

"Yes."

"Splendid" Rade said, flourishing Ivica's keys, and he resumed his sibilant tune. Drazan laughed nervously but the laugh got away from him and he threw back his head and roared. Srjdan stared at him. He didn't think he'd ever heard Drazan really laugh before. He frowned for a moment but the laugh was infectious and he struggled to keep Ivica upright as he got lost in a laugh of his own.

"Shut the hell up you stupid drunken shits!" The man at the window across the street was not pleased.

"Shut the hell up you stupid drunken shits" Srjdan mimicked as Rade finally succeeded in opening the street door.

It wouldn't have been easy getting themselves up the stairs let alone with Ivica's dead weight to deal with. Picking their way through the debris of his apartment in the dark was no mean feat either but they got him to his bed and pulled his shoes off. Drazan was all for curling up with him but Rade pulled him up onto his feet and they picked their way back the way they came, pushing Ivica's keys through his letter box. Once outside they stood beneath the window of the guy who had complained.

"Nessun Dorma .. . . . nessun dorma . . . "; truly, none shall sleep.

Ivica heard nothing of it but moaned softly in his sleep and thought maybe God had finally got something right, as he dreamed of roses, thousands and thousands of roses in the January snow.

END