My Neighbor Davorin
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a short story
I was eleven when I met Davorin Kovačević or as he was known to me through those fateful years, Jan Janson. In the rowhouse apartment across from my mother’s on Leliegracht, he lived for two years, and I must admit when I first met him, I feared his presence. He stood at an extreme height, his green eyes shining with the intensity of a hungry tiger. Despite his rotund frame, it was evident he possessed the strength of an ox. In that first year, I had fantasized him living an unassuming life, though had I not been making up for an abysmal school year over the summer, I’d have seen he had a rigorous schedule for his age.
It was fortuitous in that second year; I met him on the first day of my summer break. An early morning, somewhere around 7:30, I was accompanying my mother to the grocer in order to beat the traffic, and as we left the apartment there was a short stocky man in a blue suit knocking at 45E. The door was answered almost as if on cue, and there Davorin appeared, tightly held by a black suit which punctuated the hang of his jowls. He growled some strange words of a foreign language rather uncommon to Amsterdam, completely incomprehensible to me at the time, and the blue suited man responded in English, “Not today.”
Mother and me went our way, she giving no mind to the odd men. While I couldn’t help but fear them, sensing their footsteps follow behind. As soon as it crescendoed, that boyish wonder what fuels paranoia came to pass as they swept by us at a quick pace out the front entrance. They then got into a black BMW sedan and trailed off turning onto Westermarkt, disappearing in the day.
Upon our return, I waited for him at the door, standing on a milk crate watching through the kijkgat. For those first few hours, I checked incessantly, every other minute. When my curiosity waned, it wouldn’t be until the evening that I picked back up.
Mother was preparing dinner, and although I hid my curiosity from her midday, my voyeurism could no longer be private. She didn’t seem to mind except for imparting her common phrase, “Ik hou je in de gaten!” I didn’t know what I could’ve possibly done, but I was to find out later. It was shortly before dinner was served, at 16:56, that I saw them. Davorin walked ahead of the blue man and unlocked his apartment, he went in and shut the door behind him. The blue man stood there for about ten seconds then left. And that was it.
For the next week I took to watching at 7–8 and 16–17, until I got the times of exit and return within a few minutes. The median average being 7:45 to 16:50. Then Saturday I was thrown off. He didn’t leave in the morning. My curiosity was such that I checked every hour, and Davorin never left. Sunday, he didn’t leave either, though in the morning a different man came to the door holding a massive cardboard box. The man let himself in and just moments later he left without the box. The following week was the same, and the week after that, and by month’s end, there was no break in the routine.
Rather naively, I took it upon myself to break that routine. Having told my mother that Davorin must’ve been helplessly lonesome, she suggested ways to lift the heart, and sensing my intentions were pure, assisted me in my efforts. Which took the form of baked goods. With a plate of chocolate chip cookies, I kindly knocked at his door on the first Saturday of July. My mother later told me she watched through the kijkgat, and that her first impression of him was of a gentle giant with fear in his eyes.
I felt the opposite when he opened the door. Hard-pressed for anything to say, I opted to instead silently raise the plate up to him. His face lifted with a jolly smile, and he said, “Da li su ovo za mene.”
Not understanding, I recalled he responded to English in those early days of my watching, so I said to the best of my ability, “I made these for you.”
“You speak the English?” he asked.
“A little. I’m learning it in school.”
“That’s where I learned it, many years ago… in London.”
I didn’t respond, and he soon asked, “Are you allowed to come in? I see the light has gone from the spyhole. Your parents must know you’re doing this?”
“My mother helped me.”
“And she would be okay with you visiting for just a minute?”
I affirmed by shaking my head.
“Please, be my guest,” he said, gesturing to enter, “You can place the cookies on the counter, and please, have a few. They are, of course, of your own making.”
His apartment was gloriously bare, the white walls holding shadows even in the brightest of lights. A couch flanked by two chairs constituted his living space at an immense distance from a television hung on the wall. From what I could see, he had no items of personal significance; no photographs or paintings, crafts or heirlooms. I never saw his bedroom, but I imagine it must’ve simply housed a bed and a nightstand.
As I grabbed a cookie, I noticed he left the door open. He came over, took two cookies, and added a thought onto the last thing he said.
“I used to tell my boys, what you make is your own. Take responsibility for your creation. Be proud of it. You must be proud of these cookies.” He pulled a chair in view of the door, insisting I sit there, then sat on the couch, placed one cookie on his round belly, and asked, “Are you proud of these cookies?”
It was an odd question. I never put much thought into being proud of cookies. Nevertheless, I affirmed and asked some inane question, and we talked small things until he politely dismissed me some thirty minutes later. He told me to come back next week, same time, and I’d only be allowed to visit if I brought another plate of cookies. So, that following Saturday came, and there I stood with a plate of cookies, and I was allowed in. Same environment. Same meaningless conversation. Except I was dismissed some thirty-five minutes later, and as the weeks passed, what seemed to be his guilt over having a visitor, waned by five minutes each time. Until mid-July when my visit was to extend to an hour.
I had told him all about my schooling, my father who died in the Dutchbat, mother in the workforce, my mischievous friends, and the girls who caught my eye. It was time I learned about what intrigued me in the first place. Considering my grandfather retired at the age of 66, I must’ve been aware of the average retirement age to ask of Davorin, why he at the age he was was out the door earlier than me and back after, five days a week.
He let out a hearty laugh and said, “A man like me, his work is never finished. For belief is for life.”
I asked about the massive box on Sundays, and he gave the simplest of answers.
“Oh, groceries on delivery. What more can a man ask for?”
But when I asked him about the blue man, Davorin became reserved. That guilt returned, shallowing his eyes, and he was quick to accuse me of spying. Which wasn’t far from the truth, though he didn’t account for my youthful innocence. I stared astonished as he spouted paranoia, the strength in his voice mightier than the booms of cannon fire, and I had resolved it was time for me to leave. Twenty minutes was all the more we had, and the last I heard from him was, “The songs of war have been swelled by far less than a wandering eye.”
When I returned home, I couldn’t help but tell my mother about what happened, and she had every intention of going over there, and having it out with him. It took the best of my persuading to keep her in the apartment, and when she calmed down, she insisted I was not to ever see him again. I agreed, at least socially, as my curiosity was not to be tamed. The next day, I watched at the door for his delivery, which didn’t arrive at the time expected. It wouldn’t be for another hour that the man came to his door, except he carried more than just a massive box. There was a stuffed manila envelope atop the box. An irregular addition to his Sunday groceries. The man opened the door and through the narrowest gap, I caught a glimpse of Davorin, solemn and distraught. That would be the last time I saw him in person.
The following morning, I had slept in, and Davorin was off to wherever he needed to be. Mother had hagelslag prepared for me, and asked if I’d like to go with her to the grocer. I agreed and finished my breakfast, and when my mother opened the door for us to leave, there on the floor of the hall was our plate. I had totally forgotten I left it with Davorin on Saturday. Not saying a word, mother picked it up, set it on the kitchen counter, and we went about our day.
That evening my mother sat to watch the news like she had every other night. I was sat in the kitchen drawing in a notebook and overheard a report on the withdrawal of contaminated eggs from markets, and a report on the rise of antisemitism and fascist demonstrations in the United States. Then I heard my mother call for me. What sounded like a cry for help had me scrambling to the living area, and when I saw her face, she was in shock. I asked her what was wrong and she pointed at the television and said, “look,” and there was Davorin.
He was stood next to the blue man behind a small desk in the International Criminal Court, that same manila envelope laying on a stack of papers. He made a loud proclamation, stating, “I think, therefore I am in the hands of God,” and from the manila envelope he procured a handgun. Aiming it a few centimeters from his philtrum, the footage paused on the frame of the hammer striking a spark. They said he was 68 years old.
It wouldn’t be until my mid-twenties that I learned the full extent of why Davorin was on trial. Thirty years ago, he was a soldier in the Yugoslav wars, and within two years, he was promoted to command his own unit. Upon successfully sieging a town, he heard word of a village, a mile out, without a standing army. After reinforcements arrived to occupy the town, he ordered his men to march on the village and build a bonfire to block off the exit. Then he commanded free reign. To loot, rape, and ultimately exterminate the population. His first personal hand in the horrors came when a woman carrying her baby, pleaded with him for their lives. Davorin refused and tore the baby from her arms and tossed the baby into the bonfire. The woman howled and shrieked and fell to her knees, and when her voice was broken, she begged for death. So, Davorin complied and shot her in the face.
