Shards: A Novel by Ismet Prcic

Author:Ismet Prcic
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2011-10-03T22:00:00+00:00

5.

It was a 120 mm mortar shell, discharged at random in the direction of the town in order to keep the populace up-to-date and in fear. It hit by the side of the road just as the van was passing. The denser the surface a shell hits the bigger the devastation, since the shell gets to explode aboveground, giving its shrapnel wider range. It so happened that the rain had been falling for days, turning soil to muck. It missed the cement kilometer marker by a foot, submerged itself in the mud, and did its thing. Most pieces of it were channeled upward, giving the nearby treetop a frontal lobotomy, but a few found their way to the van. One ripped apart the front right tire, one smashed the passenger side window, wedging itself in the lining of the cabin roof above the driver’s head, one took out the muffler for good, and one made a pencil-size slit in the side of the van, went through Mustafa’s jacket, ripped up the front of his shirt without touching him, went through the jacket again, and exited through a hole the size of a coin.

When he saw the holes for what they were, Mustafa couldn’t think anymore. Heady elation was in the air, as if he were frozen in the middle of a sneeze. He touched the hot skin of his abdomen and began to laugh.

6.

“And this is your first day?”

“Yes, sir,” Mustafa said with a smile that was strained, a little too wide. His hands did a drumroll in the air, culminating in the noiseless crescendo of an imaginary cymbal. He put his hands on his knees for a split second, and then flung them up again, somewhere above him, like he was trying to catch something.

“I don’t know if you’re lucky or doomed,” said the captain, mixing up a deck of playing cards with naked women on them, trying to hypnotize him, calm him down with his voice and the slow, repetitive shuffling. They were sitting at a wooden table under a ribbed, plastic roof in someone’s front yard, waiting for the driver and the corporal to change the tire. Mustafa’s knees jumped up and down with adrenaline. His face got pulled this way and that, unconsciously. Every once in a while he chuckled like a lunatic.

“Do I look like a doomed man?” asked Mustafa in a voice that pushed the limits of a private-officer relationship. The captain let it slide, though obviously miffed.

“You’re in shock,” the captain said. “We’ll play poker and get your mind focused.”

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” Mustafa said. He laughed, uncontrollably opening and closing his fists.

“Put a gun in those hands and you’re a liability.”

Mustafa tried to stop fidgeting and found it impossible. He chuckled, looking at his hands, sprightly entities with minds of their own.

“I’ll deal first,” the captain said in a deliberate monotone.

“What are we playing for? You can’t play poker just for shits and giggles.” It was apparent that Mustafa couldn’t help talking that way.

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