Christian kiefer

MFA Director

THE GIRL FROM KALINOVIK

The first had been the men who had raped her in the abandoned gymnasium at Kalinovik. The girl did not yet understand that in taking their memories they would be her own forever, not only their grim and terrible darkness but also in their loves and desires, their beauty and their childhoods and their years of innocence. Even had she known, she would not have been able to stop herself, unspooling their minds one after another until they simply lay in the dirt, moaning and insensate. Before the war they had been carpenters and road-builders and engineers and janitors and office workers. They had lived in cities and villages, some many kilometers away. They had had wives and children of their own. Now they had nothing, not even their minds.

She had not known she was capable of such a thing and for weeks afterwards she only lay sweating and vomiting, babbling in accents both Serbian and Bosnian. Her mother thought it the result of the physical violence done to her but in fact the minds of her rapists continued to swirl through the girl’s thoughts like a storm, their lives colliding with hers with such intensity that at times she could not decide which life was hers and which belonged to one of the men. She could see their mothers, their wives, their children. She could see them at their jobs. She could see the whole countryside before the war had come: its lush and incredible beauty flooding out in all directions. Now the fires never stopped burning. Now the whole place seemed an abattoir.

Her father was already gone by that time, dead or disappeared, the girl did not know. She also did not know how they would escape the gymnasium in which they were locked, for she had taken their minds only after they had finished with her and had returned her to the gymnasium with her mother. For two long days no one came at all. No food. No water. She and her mother might have starved in that great bare room had a Serbian girl not come to unlock the door and let them free. What did you do to them? the Serbian girl asked, and she replied in the perfect accent she had stolen from one of her rapists: Only what they deserved.

The world around her and her mother smoked incessantly, a wasteland of villages and towns and small cities, broken train tracks and smashed bridges, and people everywhere on the road, moving away from the fighting, the women’s hijabs rendering them into a sea of ghosts, the men tottering on their feet, everyone exhausted and afraid. When they reached checkpoints, the girl took just enough of the guards’ orders and procedures that the girl and her mother were allowed to pass. It was an inexact science and the girl was often left with impressions and half-remembered thoughts that had little to do with the information she had taken: the red petals of a flower, the ticking of a stopwatch in the hands of a grandmother, the face of a beautiful girl in a field of green grasses. 

Something’s different about me, the girl told her mother one night as they tried to sleep in the shelter of a shattered doorway.

Of course there is, sweetheart, her mother said in response.

No, I mean I can do things, the girl said. Those men in Kalinovik. I took their minds away.

Those men in Kalinovik were killed by a mortar shell, her mother said. Let us never speak of them again.

That they made it to America was a miracle. That same year the girl found herself living in an apartment in Illinois with six relatives she hardly knew. She could still hear the thoughts of those Serbian men in her dreams but they had lessened now. Her mother enrolled her in the local school and the girl attended classes there with careful curiosity. She was not afraid so much as apprehensive and so she was careful in what information she took, gleaning what she needed from a dozen or more students so that they would each think they had simply forgotten a word or phrase, all the while her own mastery of the language increasing minute by minute until, just a few days after her arrival, she had the fluency of one native born. Of course, she would sometimes fail this slow and careful harvest, the pull of the knowledge too great to resist, too unbroken to crack into pieces. In such moments, a classmate would abruptly stand, peering about the room in sudden confusion, eyes brimming with tears. She would understand that she had gone too far then. The truth was that it was sometimes difficult to stop herself, like reading a good book and being shuttled away with the thrill of the narrative. There were times when she could hardly control the impulse to take what was there before her. Had she been capable of harvesting from her mother she would have wrung the woman completely empty but for whatever reason the ability did not extend to her own immediate genetic pool, not her mother, not the aunt and cousins who shared the tiny apartment.

She had one friend, Joan Vang. Joan had been the girl’s tormentor for nearly a year before the girl had chosen to put a stop to it. She was in 7th grade then, Joan in 8th, and the torments had been small: stealing the girl’s lunch box, sticking gum to the back of her hijab, drawing roughly shaped penises on her backpack with a marker. The girl tried to be patient but one day Joan Vang lobbed a blob of mashed potatoes across the cafeteria and they had struck the girl directly in the face. There was no indication of the girl losing her temper. This was not Carrie; there was no blood and fire. Instead she reached out for those things Joan knew, the girl’s anger so bright that she might well have rendered Joan Vang into an empty shell, but when she arrived in Joan’s mind she saw a man she knew to be Joan Vang’s uncle. He clambered atop Joan Vang in the night, his thick, hard penis jabbing at her crotch. The girl did not want to take this information but to rifle through those memories was to take them and she could not help herself. The idea of it lodged within her like a vulture staring down at some field of death: Joan’s uncle a naked, pale shape flapping down into the black branches beside the Serbs of Kalinovik.

That they became friends may not be that much of a surprise. Joan could not remember the source of her anger and despair—the girl had made sure of that—but that did not mean she had gained a sense of hope in the forgetting. That Joan was broken continued to be a fact of their lives together.

The girl stopped wearing the hijab soon after befriending Joan Vang, except when she attended the mosque with her mother and relatives. Her mother did not comment upon this decision at all, although Joan did, wondering aloud at her new look, the black hair flowing down the girl’s back. Why did you wear that thing in the first place? Joan asked her and all the girl could offer in response was the truth: I can’t remember.

They were still friends at the end of high school. The girl received a scholarship to the university and then attended graduate school. Joan came to college with the girl. It was not romantic, but then it was, their lives so intertwined that neither could understand how to live without the other.

Sometimes the girl tried to take information from the minds of those around her but it felt much more difficult now, the act of taking something as small as the answer to a test question akin to running over miles and miles of uneven terrain. And there was something else too, a kind of sickness that entered her whenever she tried to press into the wash of minds all around her, a sickness that seemed part of those Serbian soldiers. White Eagles. Their eyes seemed to watch her as she swam out of herself, eyes darkly sad and filled not with rage but with fear. Perhaps this was why she never used her ability to take anything objectively important: ATM passwords or bank vault combinations or nuclear launch codes. The very idea of such a thing made her stomach clench in terror.

They sometimes returned home to the suburbs to visit the girl’s mother. Joan’s parents were still living but Joan refused to see them, although she could not entirely explain why. The girl knew it had something to do with the memory she had taken when they had been in middle school together, but the girl had never discussed this with Joan. The girl’s mother had taken a liking to the strong, dark girl who had become so much a part of her daughter’s life. That her daughter’s best friend was not Muslim and not of European descent might once have been an issue for the girl’s mother but if so that time had long since passed. America was a land of changes and some of those changes were impossible to predict or control. What she saw in her daughter’s face was something close to happiness. What more could a mother ask for?

The girl secured a teaching position at the University of Chicago and it was there that she and Joan built a life together. The girl wrote scholarly books and papers and Joan opened a print and design studio, sometimes designing posters of the girl’s writings so that the girl became a kind of accidental minor celebrity in some academic circles. The girl did not use her ability any more. Apart from occasional nightmares from which she would bolt out of bed speaking Serbian, those days of thieving the minds around her seemed a kind of dream from which she was just starting to wake.

But some things cannot be avoided. The girl and Joan went out to dinner to celebrate the girl’s fortieth birthday. Across the room, in a well-lit corner, dining with a young woman half his age sat Joan’s uncle. The girl recognized him immediately. At first, the girl did not know what to do. Joan had not yet seen the man and the girl’s first impulse was to act like she was sick in order to supply a reason for fleeing the restaurant, but then she knew that do so would be to lie to the most important person in her life, a thought that uncorked a second: that she had never told Joan what she could do, about the harvesting of thoughts, of ideas, of information.

The uncle arrived at the table alone when the girl and Joan were eating dessert. He was a thick-lipped man and the girl thought him very ugly. Hello, Joan, he said.

Joan looked up at him, the expression on her face changing from fear to anger to terror to simple loss. What do you want? she said quietly.

Can’t I say hello to my niece?

Go away, the girl said.

What? the uncle said, turning to the girl.

Go away, the girl said again. Get the hell away from her.

The uncle smiled. Your friend is very rude, he said. He hissed something in a language the girl could not understand and then turned and left the restaurant.

By the time they arrived home, Joan was weeping. She told the girl that there was something wrong with her, that there was a hole in her memory, that something had happened to her that she could not remember. It had been there, she said, all her life, although of course the girl knew that this was not the case, that the girl had put the hole there when they were in middle school, had done it as revenge only to have this friendship, this love, blossom slowly out of the ruination the girl had brought.

That was the night the girl told Joan about the harvestings. She told her carefully and slowly and the story was the story of her life, of the war and the men who raped her and what she had done to them and then about the days that followed, of coming to America and of how she learned English and how she succeeded in school and all the rest.

Joan did not accuse her of lying, instead sat there staring at her for a long while in utter silence. Then she said the words that the girl had dreaded. It was you, Joan Vang said to her. You did this to me.

The girl told her that she did it to protect her. It was not entirely true and yet it was not entirely a lie. Tell me, Joan said. Tell me what you took from me.

I don’t want to do that, the girl said.

You have to, Joan told her. It’s mine.

And so the girl told her, told her of the nights when her uncle would visit and he would come creeping into her room, first when she was nine, the progression perhaps typical of such horrors: gentle touching and then with more urgency and finally the act itself, that act repeated over and over again. That the uncle had stopped by the time Joan and the girl had met was a result of Joan’s increasing size and strength and her ability, finally, at age 13, to fight him off. This memory, too, the girl had taken and it was perhaps the only one she should have left behind for without it, without that final memory of fighting back, Joan was left only with a sense of fear and helplessness.

Joan left their apartment and did not return for nearly a week. When she returned, the girl did not ask her where she had gone or what she done. I want you to do something for me, Joan said to her that day. 

The girl told her she would do anything for her. Anything at all.

I want to you to do to my uncle what you did to those men in Kalinovik.

You don’t know what you’re asking, the girl said. She wanted to tell Joan, again, that the memories stayed with her always, that even after all these years, the lives of those men remained with her, were a part of her, almost indistinguishable from her own memories, and that, indeed, all of the bits and pieces she had taken over the forty years of her life continued to roll through her thoughts as if they were her own. Even the memory of Joan’s uncle. Even that.

Do this for me, Joan said in response. Please.

And so the girl agreed. It did not take her long to find the uncle. She called Joan’s parents, impersonating a bill collector, and was given his phone number. From there she paid twenty dollars for an internet service to find the address. He lived not far from where the girl and Joan had gone to middle school, just a few miles from where the girl had first taken that strip of memories from Joan’s mind.

On the night when the girl planned to go to the uncle’s house, she found Joan ready and waiting by the door. I’m going with you, Joan told her and the girl could only nod in response. 

They drove to the address. The house was a small salt box, its roof partially covered in dead moss. The girl knocked on the door. She needed to see him, to look him in the eyes, although she did not know why she had decided upon this requirement. That the uncle had hurt Joan should have been enough and it was enough in most ways. And yet she waited by the door and when it opened she found an old woman standing there, not Hmong like the uncle, like Joan, but a woman who looked, to the girl, not unlike she herself might look one day. Can I help you? the woman said. She spoke in an accent so familiar to the girl that with it came a faint odor of onions and paprika, cumin and sumac. 

The girl stood there in silence, staring at the woman. She was small, at least six inches shorter than the girl, her face wrinkled like a dried apple. 

I know you, the woman said to her.

No, the girl said.

The girl did not even notice that the woman had changed languages, that she spoke now in Bosnian. You are like me, the woman said, her voice slow and dark. Where are you from?

Chicago, the girl said.

But the woman shook her head now. No, she said slowly. You are from the south. Tell me where. By the Drina?

For a long while, the girl said nothing. And then, very quietly, she whispered the word: Kalinovik.

The woman nodded. Terrible things happened to us in Kalinovik, she said.

The girl shook her head.

I came from Konjic, the woman said. Not so far from Kalinovik. Maybe it was better in Konjic. Maybe not.

The girl was shaking now. She could hear the voices of the men from Kalinovik, their rage at the Muslim Bosniaks, their fear, their hopelessness. She wanted to return to the car, to where Joan Vang sat behind the wheel, watching her, waiting for her to return.

And now you have knocked upon my door, the woman said then. What is it you want?

The girl said the uncle’s name. 

Him you want? the woman said. She turned and called that name through the halls and rooms of the small house. A voice answered, a kind of grunt from somewhere deep within. Maybe you come inside, the woman said.

The girl followed the woman into the house. It was all American. There was no sense that anyone here had come from anywhere but Illinois. Clean countertops. A ticking clock on the wall. A television upon one wall scrolling images of some other American room, some other American lives.

This girl wants to see you, the woman said.

The uncle struggled out of his Barcalounger. The girl knew he was old of course, had seen him just a week before at the restaurant, but in the flat fluorescent light of his own home, he appeared truly ancient, a creature composed entirely of crumpled paper, his skin loose and wrinkled everywhere in tiny fissures and great crags. Somehow he had seemed powerful standing at their table in the restaurant but here, at home, he seemed a doddering old fool.

The woman was at least fifteen years the uncle’s junior, and she came to his side now and helped him from the chair. The girl suddenly wondered if she had come to the right house, if this was indeed the uncle, although also she knew the truth of it, that there could be no man that was the uncle but this man, this skeleton with his loose sheath of skin like some snake ready to shed. An oxygen tank stood near the chair, its tubes bright and clean.

The uncle stood now peering at her like a confused animal. Do I know you? he said. I do, don’t I?

The girl’s mind came for his now, pushing across the small space between them. It had been a good many years since she had performed the act but it was familiar to her, the movement like a great swath of gray light streaming out between them. 

She had never, in all her life, felt any resistance at all but this time when she approached the uncle’s mind it slipped away from her, some oil-covered egg slurping out of her grasp. She tried again. The uncle was speaking now, asking her what she wanted, but to her his voice came at some terrible distance.

And then the woman touched her wrist, her fingers dry and soft. Ne, the woman said in Bosnian.

The girl let the gray light dissipate. 

You can’t have him, the woman said.

The girl looked at her. The woman’s eyes were bright and not unkind, although there was also, hidden behind that brightness, a hard clear shape like a diamond.

You can stop me? the girl asked her, also in Bosnian.

What you want from him he does not even remember anymore, the woman said.

What?

You heard me. I already took it from him.

You know what he did? What he did to Joan?

I’m his wife, the woman said. I know everything he knows.

But he’s…but he’s like them.

She shook her head. He’s just himself now, she said. I took away all his pain and then I took away what he did.

Why? the girl said. Why didn’t you take everything? She paused a moment and then, her voice rising in fury, said: You married this monster! You married him!

His memories became my memories, she said. I could not forget them. His heart became my heart. 

But he should die for what he did, the girl said.

He is dying, the woman said. Can’t you see that?

The girl looked at the uncle again. Do I know you? he said again.

For a long while, the girl continued to look at him. Then she said, simply, in English, No.

The woman walked her to the door, the uncle having settled into the Barcalounger once more. At the door, they spoke in Bosnian. I don’t understand what happened, the girl said.

It’s just memory, the woman said. Is there a river in Kalinovik?

The Tatinac.

Every good village has a river. In Konjic, it is the Neretva.

Why are you telling me this?

Because memory is just the same. I took from him what he needed to be the man I needed him to be. It’s as simple as that.

I came here to empty him.

I know you did, she said. I’m sorry to disappoint you.

The girl stood for a long while upon the doorstep in the night. She did not want to leave, but she knew Joan was watching her, wondering at her, wondering what she was doing there. You’re the first person I’ve ever known who could do that, the girl said then. I thought I was the only one.

The door was already swinging closed, the woman’s sad-eyes framed in the decreasing gap. Terrible things happened to us in Kalinovik, she said. The girl might have said something in response—she knew not what—but the door had already closed a moment later she was not sure that the woman had said anything at all.

That moment upon the doorstep was but a harbinger of what was to come. Her ATM card’s pin number. Her street address. At some point Joan mentioned the night they had come to her uncle’s house and the girl’s response had been a mingled sense of confusion and terror. Little details mostly: the name of the town in which had first met Joan in middle school was gone but she could remember how the air smelled on sharp winter mornings or the sound of the school bell or the humming warmth of the interior of the bus. Later on, Joan would sometimes find her standing in front of the bathroom mirror, staring at the toothbrush in her hand having forgotten what the implement was used for.

The doctor told them both that the girl was suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s, the result of a rare error in her genetic code. There was no cure, no real treatment although the doctor offered various prescriptions to slow down the deterioration of the girl’s brain.

I want to go home, the girl said as Joan piloted their car into the lane for the freeway onramp.

We are going home, Joan said.

I want to go home to Kalinovik.

Joan looked at her then, glanced back at the road, looked at her again. When? she said.

Now, the girl said. I want to go now.

She had no memories of the town at all, not even of the gymnasium where the eleven-year old girl she had been was raped over and over again by the four Serbian soldiers who had imprisoned the girl and her mother. The whole of the place was a blank region in her mind and it remained that way even though they stayed for three months and then four, Joan learning what she could of the language and helping the girl with whatever it was she wanted to do. The girl would get lost in the little town but the people there seemed to understand the sickness that the girl had and the girl would be returned to Joan’s side in the care of a shepherd or a dairy farmer or someone from the wool processing plant. Each time Joan was relieved beyond measure. The whole landscape to her felt like a graveyard, her shoes crunching on the bones of the dead.

Some shady shit went down around here, Joan said to her one night. They don’t talk about it, but I think this was a bad place during the war.

It was all a bad place during the war, the girl told her.

They lay in the dark under their blankets, side by side, their bodies warm against one another. 

Do you remember any of it? Joan said.

Any of what?

The war.

The girl shook her head. I don’t know why I’m here, the girl said. Why did you bring me here? Why aren’t we at home?

Oh sweetheart, Joan said, turning to her and wrapping her arms around her, we can go home any time you want.

What am I looking for? the girl asked.

You’re out looking for ghosts.

Where are they? the girl said, her voice hissing out on the edge of sleep.

I don’t know, Joan said to the silence. Only you know where they are.

The next morning, Joan awoke to find her bed empty. She rose and searched the little house. Then, using the phrases she had memorized, she asked the neighbors around her if they had seen the girl. They were mostly women her own age and they seemed to look upon her Hmong features with a variety of frank curiosity she had not often encountered in the world. She knew that they were Serbs and that this made them of the same people that had terrorized and murdered the girl’s family, and yet they had been kind enough to Joan and the girl during their visit, not warm but friendly enough to speak to them when addressed and to nod in greeting when not.

One of the women pointed in the direction of the school and Joan walked that way, hoping that the girl had not wandered too far but also knowing that it was likely she would be found by someone in time. But Joan did not have to search long. The girl sat in the center of the empty gymnasium. The sounds of children came from the schoolhouse nearby, their balls occasionally resounding against the outer wall of the building. Joan said the girl’s name and the girl looked over at her. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

The girl said something in Bosnian, something that Joan could not understand, said a sentence and then another and another.

Sweetheart, I can’t understand Bosnian, Joan said quietly, coming to her and sitting across from her on the broken floorboards.

But the girl continued to speak and when Joan tried to lift her to her feet, the girl grew angry and threw her off and settled back down again. All the while her words continued. Sometimes her face peered up to stare at Joan’s.

The fear that gripped Joan’s heart was so shattering that she nearly cried out in panic. She ran to the schoolhouse and asked if one of the students could help her, pulling the little notebook from her pocket, her hands shaking, and finding the phrase and repeating it: U pomoć! U pomoć!

The teacher was a young woman of perhaps sixteen or seventeen and Joan led her to the gymnasium. The schoolchildren followed behind, jabbering away at first and then becoming silent when they reached the gymnasium’s door. The teacher said something to them and they stood for a time in the doorway, trying to peer past her to see what was within, but when they found something as uninteresting as a woman sitting alone upon the floor, they began to scatter back to their games.

The teacher knelt by the girl and Joan sat across from her. The teacher asked her a question and the girl looked at her in terror and they spoke, the sentences moving between them, the teacher periodically pausing to translate.

She wants her burqa, the teacher said in English. She’s Bosniak?

Yes, Joan said. This is where she grew up.

I’m sorry, the teacher said.

Of what?

It was terrible what they did here.

It was terrible what they did everywhere, Joan said, a mirror of what the girl had told her each time she brought up Kalinovik.

But you know about the gymnasium, don’t you?

Joan shook her head.

There were nearly two hundred women held here. They were raped over and over again by the White Eagle militia. Was she held here?

Joan told the teacher that she did not know, although the truth was that she did know, even though the girl had never told her, this had to be what had happened. Why else return to such a place?

She wanted to come back here, Joan said. She has Alzheimer’s.

That makes sense now, the teacher said. Her eyes were very blue, like the sea. She seems confused. She thinks you’re her mother but she also seems to know that you’re not. She wants to know if she’s safe now.

Tell her she’s safe.

I already did, the teacher said.

Tell her we’ll go back to America. We can leave tomorrow. Tell her we can go home.

The teacher spoke briefly and the girl answered. Then the teacher said, She says she already is home.

Joan was weeping now. Tell her I love her and I’ll keep her safe no matter what.

The teacher looked at her carefully. 

Tell her, Joan said.

The teacher spoke in Serbian again and the girl looked at Joan for the first time since she had returned with the teacher. The girl said nothing, only staring at her with apparent interest.

Tell her no one will hurt her, Joan said. Tell her I’ll kill anyone who tries.

I can’t tell her that, the teacher said.

It’s the goddamn truth, Joan said.

The teacher looked at her and then a faint smile crept across her features. She nodded. All right, she said. She turned to the girl and told her what Joan had said and the girl nodded and then smiled. 

I love you, mommy, the teacher said, repeating the girl’s words.

I love you too, sweetheart, Joan said.

The girl was just the girl then. Joan cared for her, walking her through the village, up and down the twisting streets, the shopfronts and factories, the open countryside. Nearly every day they visited the grounds of the school. Sometimes the children would be using the gymnasium and Joan and the girl would sit for many hours watching them careen through the room. Sometimes a child would put a ball in the girl’s hands and she would throw it awkwardly and laugh. The teacher told Joan that the children called the girl Beli Anđeo, “White Angel,” since her hair had gone bright white like new snow.

Sometimes the girl would become confused and once, long after Joan had lost all hope, the girl asked her, in English, what Joan thought of her hometown.

My god, sweetheart, Joan said. Is that really you?

Who else would it be?

I love you so much. Do you know who I am? Do you remember me?

What a silly question, Joan, the girl said. Of course I remember you. Why would I ever forget such a thing?

I love you, sweetheart.

I love you too. Why are we being so dramatic?

I have no idea, Joan said.

After that, the end came quickly, her limbs growing increasingly rigid, the girl becoming something less than a girl, becoming an infant, becoming something less even than that. She finally passed with Joan Vang at her side, a woman who had come to her from the mountains of Laos to the suburbs of Chicago to the broad wild karst steppes of what was now the Republic Srpska. Joan could not stand the idea of the girl being buried in the village where she had been ruined by war and so she paid several thousand dollars to have the body transported back to America, a process that took many weeks. There, the girl’s body was buried in a simple grave with a clean stone next to her mother. The various members of her department came to the service as did an old Muslim woman, her head covered in a hijab, whom Joan did not know. She wanted to ask this woman how she might have known the girl but in the onrush of mourners Joan forgot about the woman and never thought of her again. Of the girl, though, Joan thought often, the memory of her like some golden light shining upon all her days on earth. 

CHRISTIAN KIEFER JOINED ASHLAND UNIVERSITY AS THE NEW DIRECTOR OF THE MASTER OF FINE ARTS IN CREATIVE WRITING IN JANUARY 2017. HE IS THE AUTHOR OF THE INFINITE TIDES (BLOOMSBURY), THE ANIMALS (W.W. NORTON), ONE DAY SOON TIME WILL HAVE NO PLACE LEFT TO HIDE (NOUVELLA BOOKS), AND PHANTOMS: A NOVEL (LIVERIGHT/W.W. NORTON), IN ADDITION TO OTHER WORKS IN POETRY, FICTION, AND DRAMA. KIEFER'S SCHOLARLY PUBLICATIONS FOCUS ON AMERICAN LITERATURE. AS A PROFESSIONAL MUSICIAN, HAS RELEASED A NUMBER OF ALBUMS PRIMARILY IN THE FOLK ROCK AND AVANT GARDE TRADITIONS. HE CAME TO ASHLAND FROM AMERICAN RIVER COLLEGE IN SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA, AND HAS TAUGHT FICTION IN THE SIERRA NEVADA COLLEGE LOW-RESIDENCY MFA.