Text B: from The Cellist of Sarajevo by Stephen Galloway, published in 2008
The story is set in Sarajevo during the Balkan civil war in the 1990s. Keenan has to cross the
city to get fresh water, and carry it home in large plastic bottles. In this extract, he is on his way
back, and has to cross a bridge which is exposed to sniper fire.
There’s a man on the other side who’s just begun crossing, and though it might be possible
for two people to cross at once, if one of them stood aside in the middle and let the other pass,
Keenan isn’t sure whether he could balance with the water canisters, and he doesn’t know whether
this man would give him the right of way, so he decides to wait. He can’t carry all the water over
at once. Maybe he could if Mrs Ristovski’s bottles had handles and he could tie them in with his
bottles, but with the way things are it’s impossible. He decides he can take all his own bottles in
one go, though. They’re heavy but balanced, and if he takes three at a time there will be no way to
balance them. He’ll leave Mrs Ristovski’s bottles by some rocks and come back for them. Without
his own bottles he’ll be able to tuck one under his arm and hold the other in his hand, leaving one
hand free to hold on to the side rail of the bridge.
He thinks about this plan. He decides it’s a good one, but is worried that someone will take
Mrs Ristovski’s containers while he’s crossing the bridge. He waits for the man on the bridge
to finish crossing, nods hello to him as he passes, and then moves Mrs Ristovski’s bottles to a
concealed spot, a small hole where the bridge meets the road. Satisfied that the bottles are safely
out of sight, he shoulders his load of water and steps onto the bridge.
After a few steps he has to stop and steady the motion of his water jugs. They sway like
pendulums, their momentum increased every time he steps forward. He slows their swing with
his free hand, waits for them to hang motionless before moving forward again. He has to stop
twice more before reaching the middle of the bridge. While he waits he looks to the east, and
then back in the direction of the brewery. He tries to see if anything looks different from the way it
did that morning, other than the still smoking husk of the Yugo. Then it occurs to him that nothing
should be different, because nothing has changed. Just because he was there this time, closer
than normal to the epicentre of the slaughter, it doesn’t mean it’s more relevant to the city. It’s just
another day.
The air-raid sirens have stopped. He thinks they’ve been stopped for a while, but he hadn’t
noticed. A shell falls somewhere far to the west, towards the airport. He takes a few steps, lets his
load settle, takes a few more. His foot slips a little, which causes the canisters to sway forward,
and on their backswing they hit him square in the knee, knocking him to the side. He hits the
railing hard, is winded by the force of the blow. He holds on with both hands, puts his foot back
on the girder beneath him, but he’s shaken. He feels a rage wash over him, the way it does when
he hits his head on the corner of a cupboard door or some object he didn’t expect to be there,
a rage that is focused and scattered all at once. He scrambles to the end of the bridge without
stopping, adrenalin pushing him to it, and drops his water. He lies down on the ground, stomach
pressed to the earth, not caring that he’s out in the open, an easy target. He cries out, but doesn’t
recognise the sound that comes out of him. It’s a baby and an animal and an air-raid siren and a
man who has been knocked over by his own burden. He listens to it as it dissipates, gone like it
never happened, and then he rolls over onto his back and looks at the sky.
He’s tired. He’s tired from getting water, and he’s tired from the world he lives in, a world he
never wanted and had no part in creating and wishes didn’t exist. He’s tired of carrying water for
a woman who has never had a kind word to say to him, who acts as if she’s doing him a favour,
whose bottles don’t have handles and who refuses to switch. If she likes the bottles so much, she
should carry them to the brewery, she could watch as the street fills with blood and then washes
itself clean, as a man stands with an empty leash and looks for a brown terrier while the dead are
loaded into a van.
Keenan gets up off the ground. He looks back to the bridge, at the spot where he hid
Mrs Ristovski’s water. He turns away, and picks up the rope binding his own bottles. His back
bends into its yoke. The water rises into the air. Keenan takes a step and then another. Soon he
will be home.
S.A. 28C19303a 1
