I Saw Her That Night

It all stank of slivovitz and death. It was nonsense, that oath, nonsense, as Veronika would have said, she who laughed at our first meeting when I told her why we ride into battle, nonsense to fight against everyone who’s ganged up against us, as well as those who betrayed us. But then fight we did, we killed, and it stank of fear and death.

Everywhere life is resurgent, but I’ve been colonized by death, I’ve seen too many dying people to be able to enjoy this summer as everything starts over against, human death has occupied my thoughts like a gnawing rat

As a woman I know that memories of past love are sometimes more powerful than the chains we bind ourselves with, even if just symbolically and for fun.

In the waning months of World War 2, chaos reigns in Slovenia. Nationalist and communist insurgents hold the forests, the reeling Germans still hold the towns, and normal life is practically impossible. In the confusion, Veronika Zelnik and her wealthy husband disappear, taken from their home one night, never to return. I Saw Her That Night unfolds like a mystery trying to uncover what happened from five distinct viewpoints, linked only by their relationship to her. Each chapter is told by the narrator blending the discomfort of the present with the nostalgia and trauma of the past. The result is a brilliantly realized novel.

The first chapter opens with Stevan Radovanović, a Slovenian soldier turned guerilla whose horseback lessons for Veronika turned into an illicit liaison that saw her run away with him. But their romance was doomed from the start, and the second viewpoint is that of Veronika’s mother, who convinced her to return to her husband. The mother gives way to the German doctor who she writes because he was friendly with Veronika and therefore might know if she survived the war. The doctor gives way to Jaži, the housekeeper, and finally to Jeranek, the Slovenian man who sometimes worked on the estate.

Each person is haunted by memories of Veronika and filled with questions. What happened to her? What could I have done? Did I do the right thing? Was I complicit in her death?

Despite not being a point of view character, I Saw Her That Night is built around the character of Veronika Zelnik. Her narrative arc begins innocently enough, with her husband commissioning a cavalry officer to give her riding lessons while the country was at peace. Around the time she returns to her husband Slovenia is occupied by German forces, and her husband frequently hosts their officers which gives her a chance to show off the fluency in the language and fascination with German culture she acquired while studying in Berlin. Leon Zelnik also gives supplies to the insurgents, but his coziness with the Germans nevertheless breeds resentment among those who have less than he does.

I was occasionally disappointed in the presentation of Veronika, though. In particular, she comes across as a manic pixie dream girl who everyone cannot help but love. She is a strident pacifist who the soldier hates at first encounter, a charming and persuasive hostess, and a caring woman who rescues Jeranek and drives his girlfriend to a doctor, but whose flirty interactions with other men nevertheless stoke the flames of his jealousy. This presentation is made more acute because we are never given Veronika’s side of the story and I was reconciled to it because each narrator gives a slightly different picture of the same woman. It is clear that each character is operating with partial information and they are all frequently mistaken about Veronika’s actions and intentions, with tragic consequences.

I Saw Her That Night, which is primarily set a couple of years before its author Drago Jančar was born, is a deeply moving novel about the memory of national trauma, with Veronika’s disappearance standing in for the larger conflict. I didn’t know what to expect when I picked this one from a list of “best” Eastern European novels, but was richly rewarded with one of the best books I’ve read this year.


I am now reading William Gibson’s Nebula- and Hugo-winning, classic cyberpunk novel Neuromancer. So far I’m finding it to be a disorienting read.