Free Pretty Birds by Scott Simon

sidewalk, almost like a marketplace.
    Flashes sizzled through the air. Their noses clenched at the stinging smell of fire. A ginger-haired woman in a flowered pink skirt lay on her back, as if sunning herself. She had no face. It must have been eaten by one of the plundered irons or radios whose unplugged cords gave them the look of sated rats. Beside the woman was a small sandy-haired girl in cute blue jeans with kittens on the cuffs. She was either napping or dead; the Zarics chose to leave her in peace. The ground around them sometimes opened up as they walked, spouting rows of flame and sprays of mortar rounds. The Zarics said nothing to one another as they went on. Why would they want to reassure one another that they had seen this?
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    MR. ZARIC’S MOTHER lived on Volunteer Street in a gray cement apartment building with small balconies and—a curious design feature, given Sarajevo’s harsh winters—an outdoor wooden staircase that did not quite disguise the six-story building as some kind of chalet. As the Zarics approached, they could see a man curled up next to a trash bin on the ground floor; perhaps he had been trying to hide. In any case, a bullet had found him—a neat, purpling hole above his right ear. His unblinking eyes were two blue mosaic stones. Mrs. Zaric remembered him.
    â€œMr. Kovac,” she said softly. Then, rather uselessly, “He was a Serb.”
    â€œIt’s hard to tell at the moment,” said Irena. Or maybe what she said was “Not that it did him any good,” or “I guess they didn’t notice.” She meant to say all that, but she wasn’t listening to herself.
    The Zarics skidded on a slick of blood that had gushed from the hole in Mr. Kovac’s head. Irena’s grandmother was on the landing between the second floor and her apartment on the third, as if she had been headed downstairs. The blood on her blue smock was already hardening into burgundy spatters, like chocolate or strawberry cream.
    Mrs. Zaric bent down. Irena and her father could not see her face. “You go on up,” she said gently. “I will take care of Grandma.”
    Mr. Zaric opened his mother’s apartment door into the first silence they had heard for hours. A shade flapped lightly at a window. Moving into the kitchen by instinct, he sat in a straight-backed chair. Irena followed and picked up a kitchen towel, held it under hot water, wrung it out, and placed it carefully against her father’s eyes. He pressed his forehead against her hand. Mrs. Zaric came in quietly.
    â€œI have taken care of Grandma,” she said. “With that pretty Irish throw we gave her. Later, we will take better care of her. But now, I think we need a cup of tea.”
    Irena ran water into her grandmother’s electric kettle and plugged it in while her mother poked in a cabinet for some tea.
    â€œDamn, damn, damn,” Mrs. Zaric said. “I cannot figure out where Grandma keeps her tea things.”
    Mr. Zaric looked up suddenly with a new concern.
    â€œYou took care of Grandma with that fluffy green blanket we brought her back from England?”
    â€œYes,” said Mrs. Zaric.
    â€œTake care how?”
    â€œI wrapped her in it. It’s soft and warm.”
    â€œWe may need that blanket,” said Mr. Zaric. “Let’s be practical.”
    â€œSoft and warm may mean more to us,” Irena agreed.
    When they had finished their tea and rinsed out the cups, they took two tattered old sheets to where Mrs. Zaric had wrapped her mother-in-law. Irena thought the blanket did look a little pointlessly luxurious for a shroud. They whisked the blanket off Grandma, without paying much attention to her face, tucking the sheets under her head and over the plastic flip-flops she was wearing. Mrs. Zaric motioned for Mr. Zaric and Irena to stop, uncovered her mother-in-law’s feet, and took off the