Nothing in the World Read Online Free

mission or two...
    As he put the medal back in its case, Joško thought he heard a noise, something like the buzzing of a mosquito, but thinner, and very far away.
     Papiga and Bakalar had opened their bottles of rakija, were competing to see who would finish first, and Vlade was clapping, urging them on. Joško
     tucked the plastic case into the box and got to his feet. Perhaps the noise was coming from the radio.
    The sky was not cloudless but bright, and the sea was quiet, almost asleep. He walked down to the beach, and saw a large gray seashell that
     hadn’t been there the day before. Could the wind cause such a sound, playing through the shell somehow? But there was no wind. He picked the
     shell up, walked back toward his cot, and a white flare filled his mind, a surge of heat lifted him off the ground, a roar like the birth of a world
     carried him away.
    * * *
    Joško opened his eyes, and the sky was a thin whitish blue. There was the warm salty sweetness of blood in his mouth, and behind his eyes he felt
     a strange dense presence. He raised one hand to his head. Above his left ear, a shard of metal protruded from his skull. He wrapped his hand around it
     and ripped it out. Pain deafened him, and strips of sky floated down to enfold him.
    He opened his eyes again, and now light from a lopsided moon sifted around him. He lay perfectly still, trying to understand what had happened, and
     then, of course—more jets had come.
    Joško looked down at his legs. They didn’t seem to be injured. He drew his knees to his chest and ran his hands from his hips to his ankles.
     Not much pain, no broken bones. He touched the side of his head softly, his fingers tracing the edge of the hole, then stopped, afraid of touching his
     brain.
    He rolled over and got to his knees, squinted through the silty darkness, and on the canvas of a mangled cot beside him there was a single arm. It was
     silver, almost white in the moonlight, and there were no rings on the fingers of its hand. He stood carefully, and picked the arm up. It had been torn
     off above the elbow, and the severed end was black and shredded. He wondered whose it was. Then he saw a soldier lying face down in the rubble,
     stretched out as if diving into the earth.
    Joško turned the man over, and it was Bakalar, his moustache limp over broken teeth. Both of his arms were still attached. His eyes were open, and
     on his face was the expression of a man holding very good cards.
    He left Bakalar staring up at the sky, and one by one he found the other soldiers. Papiga was curled up like a bird that had flown into a window; there
     was no blood on his face, but Joško could not wake him. Vlade was splayed and twisted, a piece of metal tubing driven through his stomach, out the
     small of his back and into the ground. Mladen was draped over the low stone wall on the east side of camp, his jaw hanging away from his face. And near
     the ruptured water barrel, Joško found Dražen lying loose-boned in the sand. He looked comfortable, though his right arm was missing.
     Joško remembered what he was carrying, dusted the arm off and set it in place. It seemed to fit. This relieved Joško immeasurably.
    He headed back through the camp, hoping to find the things he was responsible for. In the wreckage where his cot had been he found his rifle, but the
     barrel was bent, and after trying to twist it back into shape he gave up and let it fall. He scrabbled around for his new metal tags and couldn’t
     find them anywhere, but he did find his rucksack and the box he had received from the President.
    The bottle of rakija had shattered. Joško started to cry as he pulled the pieces of glass from the box and flung them at the sea. He dried the
     letter as best he could, but the President’s signature was smeared, unrecognizable.
    Then he heard a faint song. At first he thought it was Klara singing to him from Dubrovnik—the voice was so similar to hers, so rich with love
     and so