The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

with my virgin rifle and chattering teeth, looking after three tents and a jeep. In the distance I could hear rifles arguing like angry insects. An occasional flame would light the leafless woods. My brother and father were out there doing their national duty in the cold forest mud. I was trying hard to distinguish the noise of our rifles from the Serbian ones, hoping the former would silence the latter. But of course we were all using the same fucking weapons. Somewhere not so far away some fat fucker was sleeping his ass off on a comfy mattress made from the profits of war.
    Finally it started to snow. The flakes were thick and heavy, as if they were full of dirt already. I grabbed one with the tip of my tongue and it tasted like mud.
    Close to daybreak, I heard a voice followed by some rustling of bushes. I reacted instantly, firing my first “manly” shot. I was surprised by my swift and sure reaction. Met with silence, it seemed to be a success. Still, I remained on the trigger for half an hour, for safety’s sake, watching the snowflakes fall on the rifle and my hand, building up a small snowdrift on the barrel, but melting away on my skin. Then I thought I heard that voice again, some low murmuring out in the bushes. I fired another shot. They did not fire back. But the faint murmuring didn’t stop. I remained still for another half an hour, firing a couple of more times, but the voice kept creeping through. So I crawled like an undercover snake to the bushes. Finally, I could make out a body lying buried in the naked branches, talking to himself. He seemed to be wearing our uniform. I cried out a warning before rushing through the shrubs, rifle first.
    I found my father lying there with a leaking heart. The lower part of his body was covered in snow, as if his legs were dead already. His face was pale, and his eyes were as big as eggs that instantly broke upon seeing me. He managed to whisper the first half of my name, and then he was gone.
    I shot my father and let him lie like a wounded deer out in the bushes for an hour, blabbing his life away. When I finally listened to him, he had only half a word left. “Tod…” The thing I became. It was like a fucking curse.
    I accidentally blew off the second half of my name. And the better half of my life.
    I stood there for some minutes, staring at the face so close to my own. Snow kept on falling, and I watched as the flakes slowly stopped turning into water on my father’s brow and cheeks and started building up small drifts around his screaming eyes. I was surprised how quickly his fatherly warmth turned cold. I couldn’t touch him. I just walked away from his body, leaving his big eyes open for interpretation.
    I didn’t cry.
    When they brought me the news of my father, they told me my brother Dario had also died a heroic death. As always, he was on the offensive when he met his destiny. He ran like a Jamaican sprinter towards the Serbian spear speeding towards his heart. It was pure Dario.
    They said my father witnessed his death and that he instantly went nuts. He threw himself over his body and then suddenly started crying out my name, “Tomo! Tomo!” before running back to our post without his shotgun.
    “Oh?” I said to my fellow soldiers, nodding a few times, as if they were telling me the results of some football games. “But, what about the battle?”
    “We took the river bank. We hold the river bank now.”
    I have seen that fucking river bank. It fucking sucks.

CHAPTER 23
MADE IN ICELAND
    06.06.2006
    Hanna’s big hands are incredibly white. Much paler than her arms. It’s almost as if she’s wearing white gloves. Her long and strong fingers move softly about in a very swift but silent way. There is hardly any noise to be heard as she gathers my empty plate and glass. My mom is the absolute opposite. When she was doing the dishes, it always felt like there was a punk band rehearsing out in the kitchen. Maybe Dad didn’t give her enough sex. If that’s the reason, Torture must be biblical in bed.
    “Are you feeling better?” she asks me in her homely voice that is red wine to my ears, but rotten to my nose.
    “Yes.”
    “That is good.”
    For some mystical reason she has 100 percent faith in me. I’ll be “góður,” she says half the time. It both means “good” and “to get well.”
    Once again I read the story of Saul, the self-made holyman from Tarsus, Turkey. It’s the same story as Goodmoondoor spontaneously told