What is Truth? Chapter 7

The war ended seven years later, although people disagreed about the date.

The government signed one surrender.

The army signed another.

The last militia did not surrender at all. Its leaders declared victory, crossed the border, and opened restaurants.

Bambi became a journalist.

At first, he wrote for a newspaper printed in the basement of a damaged hotel. The staff had one working typewriter, two desks, and no reliable electricity.

He reported on missing prisoners, burned villages, stolen relief supplies, military trials, peace negotiations, and the discovery of mass graves.

Editors often asked him to simplify.

Who were the heroes?

Who were the villains?

Which side had started it?

What did the country need to believe?

Bambi gave them names, dates, testimony, contradictions, and blank spaces where certainty did not exist.

Readers complained that his articles did not tell them what to think.

He considered this a success.

He interviewed his father once.

Stefan had survived the war and become a minister in the provisional government. He wore expensive suits now and spoke about reconciliation.

The interview lasted three hours.

Bambi asked about the railway strike, his disappearance, the shelling of Drenovo, and the five minutes he had given the villagers.

“Do you believe that saved lives?” Bambi asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you believe the attack killed civilians?”

“Yes.”

“Do you regret it?”

Stefan looked toward the recorder.

“Are you asking as my son or as a journalist?”

“Both.”

Stefan was silent for a long time.

“I regret that those were the choices available.”

“That isn’t the same as regretting your choice.”

“No,” Stefan said. “It isn’t.”

Bambi printed the answer exactly.

Stefan did not speak to him for two years.

Thumper became a mechanic.

He married Laleh after proposing four times.

The first time, she said they were too young.

The second time, she said the war had just ended and she wanted to attend medical school.

The third time, she said he still believed women liked men who ignored them.

The fourth time, Thumper said, “I don’t know what women like. I only know I like you, and I would like to spend my life learning the rest.”

Laleh married him before he could ruin it with additional wisdom.

They eventually returned to Drenovo.

Laleh reopened the village clinic.

Thumper repaired tractors, radios, bicycles, stoves, watches, and one church bell that had been found beneath the ruins.

He claimed every machine responded better to confidence.

No one allowed him near the medical equipment.

Bambi returned years later.

The rebuilt village had new roofs, paved roads, electric lines, and a monument listing the dead.

His mother’s name was carved near the bottom.

Katarina Valev.

No explanation followed.

It did not say she had died helping a trapped child.

It did not say which army fired the shell.

It did not say she had hidden a needle in her son’s coat or taught him to avoid roads during battle.

Stone preferred simple facts.

Bambi did not.

He left journalism and opened an archive in the old schoolhouse.

He collected letters, photographs, military orders, recipes, diaries, maps, newspaper clippings, recorded testimony, children’s drawings, and household objects recovered from ruins.

He preserved conflicting accounts beside one another.

Some villagers objected.

“They cannot both be true,” the mayor said.

“It is possible for two people to remember the same event differently.”

“Then one of them is wrong.”

“Sometimes.”

“Which one?”

“That is what the evidence is for.”

The mayor sighed.

Bambi had once again become unwelcome at council meetings.

In one room of the archive, he created a collection called Things People Said.

He included every notebook he had kept since childhood.

Women can smell fear.

Crying makes men weak.

Soldiers do not search children.

Innocent people have nothing to fear.

Suffering strengthens the soul.

Mountains will protect us.

The dead can hear you for three days.

Beside each saying, he added its source, its context, and whatever evidence he could find.

Some beliefs were nonsense.

Some were cruelty passed down as wisdom.

Some were warnings created by people who had survived dangers their grandchildren no longer understood.

When dogs stop barking, soldiers may be near.

Avoid the main road during fighting.

Keep a needle in the hem of your coat.

Bambi preserved those too.

One afternoon, a school group visited the archive.

A small boy wandered away from the others and found Bambi cataloging a box of family photographs.

The child watched him work.

“My grandmother says you should never whistle inside a house,” the boy said.

“Why not?”

“She says it calls death inside.”

Bambi looked toward the window.

Outside, Thumper was arguing with a tractor. Laleh stood in the clinic doorway, laughing at him. The repaired church bell rang the hour.

“Do you think it’s true?” the boy asked.

Bambi nearly said no.

Instead, he closed the box.

“I don’t know.”

The child looked disappointed.

Adults were expected to know things.

Bambi smiled.

“Let’s find out where she heard it.”

He took a new notebook from the drawer and placed it between them.

Outside, the village continued rebuilding itself, one uncertain fact at a time.