Yesterday was a day of euphoria, relief, the end of the war, life returning to normal ... those were the phrases one heard among some Yugoslavs sipping vinjak in the Belgrade cafes. The peace solution proposed by the G8 countries and Russia had not been summarily rejected by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and, on the contrary, he was sending signals that he was entertaining the proposals; there were still NATO bombs falling in Novi Sad and Nis ... but there had been three nights of peace in the capital. There was electricity and water. Things would soon be normal, people said.
Some journalists, hungry to cover the important diplomatic developments in other European capitals, were planning to leave Belgrade.
Then came last night. Anti-aircraft fire criss-crossed the sky at 9:30 p.m., and the flashes of impact lit up the horizon. The relief was short-lived.
There is something else here, beneath the surface of people's ordinary relief. It is a climate of anger and bitterness infused with memory that can be overlooked only at one's peril.
On Thursday night Orthodox Serbs gathered in their homes to celebrate St George's Day with a slava, a ritual of food and drink. It was a cold, clear night in the city, stars showing and the moon bright, a "good bombing" sky that contributed to a certain edginess.
Men were looking at their watches, thinking of the prime bombing hours over the last 44 days. A solid cloud cover contributes to better moods under these circumstances. At two different homes that night, and among people whose political views ranged from officially moderate to ultra-nationalist, one could begin to hear the sense of resignation behind any relief. A deal was coming, and Kosovo would in the end be lost. But it was a resignation fuelled with rage at the NATO countries.
"No English!" hissed an older woman when a Serbian woman spoke to me in English. It was explained that I was Irish, which still has the slight advantage in wartime Serbia of being neither British nor American. She was still not pleased, and she was also fluent in English.
"Why is the IRA working with the KLA?" she demanded. I explained that I knew less than nothing of the inner workings of the IRA. The utter truthfulness of the statement avoided further discourse.
"They are taking all of Serbia," cried one young woman. "Krajina, Republika Srpska," she said. Then the names of the Serb villages to fall in 1995 when the Croats launched an offensive spilled forth.
"Soon Serbia will just be Belgrade," she said. "They can take our country, but they can never take the Serb people. They can never take our spirituality, who we are. We are more intelligent, prettier and stronger. That's why they want to kill us."
A few people hummed along to a recording by Svetlana Stevich, a traditional Serbian singer, whose music spoke of the tribulations of the White Fairy trying to save people crossing the Drina river while the Turks were attacking.
The food at the table was eaten with enthusiasm . . . svopska salata, a cucumber and onion salad, zeljanica, a cheese pie. I asked my host what a particular dish was. "Heavenly food," he smiled.
The notion of heaven must not be forgotten in the political equation here. The iconography of "Heavenly Serbia", a nation based in heaven rather than on earth, a nation that chooses death over life if that life does not conform to its ideals, is very much alive.
The Kosovo Myth, the tale of the great battle in 1389 when the Serbs were defeated by the Turks and placed under Ottoman rule, is very much alive. It is a talisman of Serbian identity and, although a military defeat, is celebrated. An epic poem called The Mountain Wreath, written in 1847 by a bishop-poet known as Njegos, glorifies Milos Obilic, a hero of the Kosovo battle. The poem includes verses such as:
"The blasphemers of Christ's name
We will baptise with water or with blood
We will drive the plague out of the pen!
Let the song of horror ring forth, a true altar on a blood-stained rock."
Spasoje Smiljanic, the commander of the Yugoslav Air Force, invoked the memory this week after being given an award.
"We are descendants of Obilic, who fought for the dignity of our nation," he said. He talked also of the Obilic spirit.
Perhaps it was a failure to calculate the power of mythology such as this which led NATO to miscalculate the timetable of its air campaign, which began March 24th and was expected by some in the White House to last less than a week. It would also be an error, say some analysts, to assume that an agreement by MrMilosevic to allow any kind of UN force into Kosovo, spells out anything close to a solution to this crisis.
For one thing, forces far more nationalistic than Mr Milosevic are still prominent here. The deputy prime minister, Mr Vojislav Seselj, told Serbian media: "Bill Clinton is very wrong if he thinks that Slobodan Milosevic is getting closer to NATO's position." Mr Seselj absolutely ruled out the presence of representatives from the US and Britain in any UN force.
This weekend an initial team from the UN will arrive in Belgrade to make arrangements for a larger team to travel to Kosovo. Yugoslavia has agreed to co-operate with the effort.
At a Belgrade advertising agency yesterday, two workers discussed the war. There is little actual work to be done as most business, other than retail, is at a virtual standstill. After the usual talk of anger at NATO, one of the women said she and a colleague had also been searching their souls about atrocities in Kosovo.
"We have talked about whether these things happened. Could it have and we didn't know it? We have looked into our souls," she said.
Another worker said he had remembered always wondering how the German people said they didn't know about the concentration camps. "I pray these things didn't happen. If they did," he said, looking down, "I am afraid we will all go to hell."