The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway Page B

considering saying something to her, and she suspects it’s about her role in defending the city, but he doesn’t. He stands, walks past her and opens the door, motioning with his hand for her to follow him.
    “I have something to show you,” he says, turning to her. “Don’t worry. This is as clean as you’re going to get.”
     
    “Wait,” Nermin says, looking at his watch. “It’s almost time.”
    Arrow knows this street well. It’s in the heart of the city, just past the point where Turkish buildings give way to Austro-Hungarian ones. Farther down is the Second World War memorial, the eternal flame, which has gone out. Behind her is a street where she used to meet friends for a coffee when she was in university, and the river isn’t far to the south. And past that are the southern hills of the city, where a cable car once carried people to the top of Mount Trebević.
    They’re standing in the doorway of a shop that’s no longer open, across from the indoor public market. Arrow knows that not long ago a mortar shell landed in this street and killed a large number of people. She heard all about it on the radio, but although it was unusual for so many to be killed in one spot at one time, she didn’t think much about the incident then. It was simply how things were, she supposed. The opportunity to die was everywhere, and it just wasn’t that surprising when that opportunity became an event. Now, however, standing in the street where it happened, it seems to her that something significant occurred here.
    An explosion groans to the west of them, and Arrow involuntarily looks in the direction of the sound.
    Nermin, who hasn’t looked, smiles. “I think they’re trying to send us a message.”
    “What is the message?” she asks as another shell lands in the same area.
    Nermin shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m making a special effort not to listen. Okay, here he comes.”
    At first, Arrow isn’t sure whether to trust what she sees. She even wonders if it’s possible she’s hallucinating, or if perhaps she has died and this is how the transition to whatever follows death takes place, through a series of unbelievable circumstances. But gradually she accepts she’s still alive, and she’s lucid, and this is happening.
    A tall man with turbulent black hair, an almostcomic moustache and the saddest face she has ever seen emerges from a doorway. He wears a slightly dusty tuxedo and carries a cello under one arm, a stool under the other. He walks out of the building with a calm and determined stride, appearing oblivious to the danger he’s putting himself in, sets his stool in the middle of the street, sits down and positions his instrument between his legs.
    “What is he doing?” she asks, but Nermin doesn’t answer.
    The cellist closes his eyes and remains still, his arms hanging limp. It appears as though the cello stays upright by its own will, independent of the man surrounding it. The wood glows rich and warm against the drab grey of shattered paving stones, and she feels an urge to touch it, to run her fingers over the lacquered surface. Her hand reaches out, a futile attempt to bridge a distance far greater than the thirty or so metres that separate her from the cello.
    The cellist opens his eyes. The sadness she saw in his face is gone. She doesn’t know where it went. His arms rise, and his left hand grips the neck of the cello, his right guides the bow to its throat. It is the most beautiful thing she has ever seen. When the first notes sound they are, to her, inaudible. Sound has vanished from the world.
    She leans back into the wall. She’s no longer there. Her mother is lifting her up, spinning her around andlaughing. The warm tongue of a dog licks her arm. There’s a rush of air as a snowball flies past her face. She slips on someone else’s blood and lands on her side, a severed arm almost touching her nose. In a movie theatre, a boy she likes kisses her and puts his hand on her stomach.