Lie in the Dark

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He began the day, as always, by counting the gravediggers out his front window. There were nine this morning, moving through the snow a hundred yards away in the middle of what used to be a children’s soccer field. They stopped to light cigarettes, heads bowed like mourners, the shadows of stubble faintly visible on hollowed cheeks. Then they shed their thin coats and moved apart in a ragged line. Backs bent, they began stabbing at the ground with picks and shovels.

They moved slowly at first, working the cold and sleepiness out of creaky joints. But Vlado Petric was in no hurry. He’d watched often enough to know what came next.

Soon brown gashes of mud would take shape at their feet. Then, as the men warmed to their task, the gashes would expand into neat rectangles, and as the rectangles deepened the gravediggers would disappear into the earth. Within an hour only their heads would be visible. Then Vlado would leave his apartment to walk to work through the streets of Sarajevo.

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