Pretty Birds by Scott Simon

placing her right hand at her throat and gently singing: “
Here comes the sun, doo-doo-doo-doo. Here comes the sun, and I say
— Oh wait, I’m not sure how the rest of the lyrics go. Let’s just do the chorus.”
    Mr. and Mrs. Zaric, Irena, and Aleksandra Julianovic all sang, softly and slowly. Irena was close enough to see her father’s face straining. She worried that if he cried the cuts around his eyes would open and blood would wash into his tears. Then he sank to his knees so abruptly that she thought he had been shot. Mrs. Zaric rushed to him. She held the palm of her hand over his ear and cradled his head against her hip.
    â€œShh, darling, shh, baby,” she said. “Be strong, baby, I’m here.”
    Mr. Zaric fell forward onto the heels of his hands and began to rock back and forth on his head—not so much crying as bleeding with tears. Mrs. Zaric sank to her knees in the coarse ground around her husband, and as he rocked she held her face against the small of his back.
    â€œGive it to me, baby,” she said gently. “Give it all to me, baby. I can take it, baby. Give me everything, everything, baby.”
    A mortar wrinkled across the sky, leaving a crease of light. Something crashed seconds later, clapping against concrete several blocks away. Pretty Bird was silent. Gunfire kept up a low boil.
    Irena knew that there was no place for her in this embrace of her parents. Certainly they would have opened their arms for her. But she sensed that what she had seen ran deeper than any experience she had ever had, even after today. She permitted herself a brief flash of jealousy—not because her mother loved her father more, or had loved him longer or differently than she loved her. Irena just couldn’t imagine that she would ever love anyone so much.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
    AGAINST THEIR EXPECTATION, the Zarics managed to eat and sleep. The electricity had been cut off, and there was no water. Aleksandra Julianovic joined them for food, bringing six slices of soft white bread on which to spread the liver sausage they had found in the refrigerator. But it had already hardened too much to eat—or so it seemed on that first night of the war.
    So they sat in Grandma’s lightless living room, below the windows, and tried to make a meal of small pickles rolled into bread. The Zarics told Aleksandra Julianovic only that they had been expelled from Grbavica. They shared no particulars. Details about that day, and the fine points of their concerns for the future, were unnecessary in any case.
    Mrs. Julianovic (she accepted the honorific but had made no mention of a husband, present, former, or deceased) had already analyzed the calamity. “I am sorry for your troubles,” she said, tamping her Coca-Cola lighter against a knee. “But, believe me, this is the worst day. You’ll be back home in Grbavica soon. I can’t promise that your car will still be there. A four-year-old Honda? Pray they go for Volvos first. You took your jewelry? When I traveled through France—I am a retired art teacher—they warned me about thieves in railway stations. So I turned round the stones in my rings and stored my pearl necklace inside my brassiere. I recommend the sensation, incidentally, especially if you’re traveling alone. And perspiration and skin oils are supposed to be good for pearls, although they gradually deteriorate lingerie fabric. As no doubt you have observed, Mr. Zaric.”
    â€œAh, yes,” he said.
    â€œThe West won’t permit a war to last more than a few weeks these days,” she continued without an audible change of direction. “They put a stop to wars these days before bankers and brokers start hurling themselves through windows. The United Nations already has soldiers here. For Croatia, of course. But they will have to get their hands dirty in Sarajevo, too. Vietnam, Afghanistan. Capitalism,