Zyklon was used sparingly in the Balkans.
Everything was in short supply.
Too many cuckoos in the nest.
Once hatched, they peck at the shells
of their brothers and sisters.
When the Germans came south
to oversee the Ustaše
they’d never seen anything like it.
This wasn’t their lab killing, their blue crystals.
A Franciscan priest goes to work
in a white uniform. With a pliers
he pulls the teeth of a child, while a layman,
Mile Friganović, urinates in the boy’s mouth.
This is how Friganović remembers an evening with Father Pero:
I’d never felt such bliss before.
Already, I’d slaughtered more than Petar
when I noticed an old man who stood there
watching me calmly, I can’t describe it,
that look of his, it disturbed me.
So I walked up to him and I said:
What’s your name? Vukasin, he answered,
son of a wolf—every last one of his family
was dead but he spoke with such peace,
such calm, that I wanted to punish him.
So I told him to sit on a log and I said:
“Cry out: ‘Long live the Führer!’”
He said nothing, so I cut off his ears.
Still he seemed unmoved,
so I threatened to cut out his heart
if he did not cry out: ‘Long live the Führer!’
Then he looked at me, that is to say,
he looked through me,
into some uncertainty beyond,
and he said: ‘Do your job, child.’
Laurence O’Dwyer | The Locksmith
Contents | Mudlark No. 75 (2023)