Last Stories and Other Stories (9780698135482) by William T. Vollmann

diagram of some creepy wilderness of fortifications, remarking: That’s what those Serbian checkpoints look like. I prefer to fly myself.— He
could
fly, while they were only journalists. After waiting two days, the three of them made the decisiontogether.— So you admit that you convinced my brother to take that road, said Ivan’s brother, smiling with triumphant hate.
6
    Supposing that his duty must lie in submission to the brother’s cold hatred, ready to answer any questions if it would bring the man peace—in fact it appeared to inflame him—he complied, told and clarified. When the brother first began to interrogate him (he had awaited his coming for many days), he endured it calmly, even after it became apparent that rather than being, as he had foolishly imagined, “helpful,” he was simply
accused;
but when the brother demanded that he tell and retell each detail of Ivan’s death, which on his own account he absolutely could not bear to think about, he shivered for an instant. No doubt this bore out the brother’s already completed judgment.
    As for the sister, whose questioning took place over the telephone, and was therefore indefinitely protracted, she instructed him to call her again tomorrow at one-o’-clock. Every time he called her, it cost him a hundred dollars. He was trying to do right by that family; that was what he would have wished for in their situation, to have his questions answered.
    Explain to me again just why you took that turn, she said.
    So he did. He had explained it to her four times.
    And you were sitting in the back seat? Why weren’t you up front with my brother?
    Ted was the driver.
    You say my brother was your interpreter. So why didn’t you take the rest off his shoulders?
    Ivan asked the Spanish battalion for directions. He asked again at the Croatian checkpoint. In each case, he was satisfied as far as I could tell—
    But you didn’t help him verify these directions?
    As you know, I don’t speak the language. He didn’t ask for help. He just said, okay, we turn right just after the final checkpoint—
    Then how do you account for what happened?
    Ivan directed us to take a wrong turn.
    A wrong turn.
And all this time you were sitting in the back seat, doing nothing.
    That’s right.
    My brother was working for you. He trusted you. I don’t know anything about the man who was driving, but I do find it significant that you had them doing all the work while you sat in the back seat.
    Put it any way you care to.
    And now you’ll cash in. You’ll have your dramatic story.
    Sure. I’m cashing in every time I call you.
    Just what do you mean? Tell me exactly what you mean by that remark.
    I mean that I’m trying to answer your questions as patiently as I can. By the way, Ivan was working
with
me, not
for
me.
    You hired him as your interpreter.
    I got the magazine to agree to pay him a fee, yes.
    You persuaded him to go.
    I invited him to go. He liked it over here.
    You lured him to his death.
    You know what, Jeanette?
    You killed my brother.
You’re just as responsible as the men who shot him. I want you to admit it.
    I don’t see it that way.
    So you’re a coward as well as a—
    Jeanette, go to hell.
    He hung up the phone.
    Sweet trees were growing up through roofless stone ruins. His wife smiled at him wearily.
7
    Now that he had come back to where it happened, he could not stop remembering Ivan’s sister, to whom he must have been a leader of unearthly power, since he could lure a man to his death for unstated reasons, conveying him, and Ted also, right into a sniper’s nest, like a prostitute who inveigles drunks into some lonely ambush of robbers, then flits away unharmed. The sister had definitely been the most plainspoken of all his judges. But the rest unanimously implied what she had asserted: he was more than he supposed himself to be. In the market, the old man