How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone (19 page)

Oh, there you are, she said when I left my room that evening, feeling hungry. There was a package on the table. From the Italian, said my mother, who had taken to calling Francesco only by his nationality. I ate beans, it was always beans when I was feeling wretched.

If I were a magician who could make things possible, I'd have lemonade that always tasted the way it did on the evening when Francesco explained how right it was for the Italian moon to be a feminine moon. If I were a magician who could make things possible, we'd be able to understand all languages every evening between eight and nine. If I were a magician who could make things possible, every dam in the world would keep its promises. If I were a magician who could make things possible, there'd be
kvatromila
ways out of any miserable mood. If I were a magician who could make things possible, we'd be really brave.

The package was very heavy. It had my name on it, and underneath: FRANCESCO BALLO. The package had a metal sound. Bocce. I undid the string and lifted the lid. On top was a photo of the big dam on the Lago di Vajont. I'll never know if Francesco's papa was the engineer or one of the villagers.

Mama, quanto costa un biglietto per Pisa?
I asked, and Mother put her nose close to my throat: mm, young man, you smell nice.

I know, I said, because I did know, really nice, I said, and I leafed through the little dictionary. I pointed my fingertip at “
grazie,
” I pointed my fingertip at “
di,
” I pointed my fingertip, now wet with tears, at “
tutto
.”

Mio caro amico Alessandro,

Puoi dirti fortunato to be boy in such nice town. Drina make eyes at everyone. Ground grow cherries, plums and clear water per la limonata. I let Walrus win boccia. Your dam never go wrong now. Your papa e mamma et tu e tutto—safe. But no one say arrivederci. So Francesco say: arrivederci allora e a presto!

Presents per te, mio caro mago: bocce, perfume with lemon, dictionari, azzurri jersey! e cartina di Višegrad. I draw! Your house e house di good old Mirela! La vita, mio Alessandro, è solo questione di fortuna. We remember us well, please, and veranda and silence and jungle with horned viper and baroque girls under la luna!

Grazie quattromila!

Francesco

Why houses are sympathetic and unselfish, what music they make, and whyI want them to stay sympatheticand unselfish, and above all to stand firm

Buildings are sympathetic and unselfish and they can't play musical instruments, which is a pity. If buildings were people they would be vegetarians or vegans or vgtrns or just vgs. If you are a vg you don't eat or drink anything that might have a heartbeat, even just theoretically, which means not even water, because Grandpa told me that South American Indians believe there can be a whole god swimming in a river like the Amazon, or at least a whole religious faith.

If there were a god in the Drina too, I once asked Grandpa, would the catfish be fish-priests?

Or fish-
hodjas,
said Grandpa, nodding.

If I were a magician who could make things possible, there'd be houses making music, houses as musically gifted as Johann Sebastian Bach—I know about his merits and his wonderful wig from the
Encyclopedia of Music
that Mr. Popović the music teacher gave me, a grandpa who is friends with Grandpa Slavko. You can look up the meaning of the word “baroque” in the encyclopedia too, I learned it by heart; for quite a while “baroque” was my main term of approval; it's only recently been replaced by “exquisite.”

The house would play songs for a grandmother living alone and watching TV and watering flowers and giving them fertilizer and waiting for someone to come through the door; a grandmother who's always cooked too much to eat because she can't get used to being on her own; it would play songs from a time that was much quieter, because there were more cows chewing the cud, and not so many car exhausts and vacuum cleaners.

My Serbo-Croat teacher Mr. Fazlagic's house would make a sound like the sea, because that lowers your blood pressure.

My family's house would have a repertoire as wide and unpredictable as the many different moods living under our roof and inside us. Our kitchen would play The Doors because Jim Morrison turns my mother's anxious look into a wistful expression. There'd be French chansons when my father disappears into his studio. Johann Sebastian when Uncle Miki and my father are watching politics and Father shouts: no, we are not quarreling, we are just raising our voices in a discussion! When Father, whistling French songs, takes Mother to supper in the Estuary Restaurant there'd be Pink Floyd. Mr. Floyd makes you feel grown up and nice and tingly. I sip Father's cognac and watch the TV with the sound muted.

There'd be the last three minutes of Ravel's
Bolero
at full volume when Auntie Typhoon comes to visit.

The sunflowers in Nena Fatima's garden by the Drina would play the songs Nena sang when she was a girl, she still knows them all by heart. Nena would hum along silently, and when her tears came—because knowing something by heart can sometimes be the saddest thing in the universe—the clever chimney would play a medley. Tears and medleys don't go together. The really special thing about my musical houses would be that even someone as deaf as a post could hear them.

My own house would sing in Great-Grandpa's voice, and once a day it would promise something that would last.

I put the
Encyclopedia of World Music
back on the shelf and ask my mother when she is finally going to make me learn an instrument, the accordion or the organ. She is watching the news: barricades and burning flags. I ask the same question again in the same words.

I paint ten soldiers without any weapons.

I paint Mother's face, smiling, happy, carefree.

If I were a magician who could make things possible, then pictures could talk while we painted them.

If I were a magician who could make things possible, then houses could keep their promises. And they would have to promise not to lose their roofs or go up in flames. If I were a magician who could make things possible, the scars made in them by bullet holes would close up again over the years.

What music does an apartment building make in war?

No one could have guessed that I'd win. Uncle Miki claps me on the back of the head and says: no one could have guessed that you'd win. My mother tucks a strand of my hair back behind my ear, but it falls straight back over my forehead. Really, no one could have guessed it, she says, taking my face between her hands.

The no-one-could-have-guessed-it victory celebrations are just over, the man who came second is at least six times older than me and twice as tall. He shakes hands, our fishing rods cross like swords. Uncle Miki pushes him aside—he doesn't particularly like me, but he likes other people even less, and congratulations that go on too long are always suspect.

My father didn't come with us. He had to finish a picture in his studio. Recently he's been finishing pictures all the time, and as soon as he's through with one he starts two more. There's no room left for them in his studio; they have to go into the bedroom. Mother wakes in the night screaming: faces everywhere!

I look at the river, then at my gold medal; I'm never going to take it off. With that medal I've qualified, and next Saturday everyone who's qualified is to meet in Osijek on the Drau. Among the best anglers in the republic, says a short, fat man when he hands me the certificate, whereupon Miki shouts at him from the back of the crowd: no need to look so doubtful about it, fatso!

Miki, so close to the water and related to a winner, is all enthusiasm. Apart from me, he's the only one in the family with any idea about fishing. He wasn't allowed to compete today because not so long ago he threw Čika Luka into the Drina when Čika Luka wanted to see Uncle Miki's fishing license. Miki says he didn't do it: the stupid snooper slipped, he says, and if I hadn't been nearby to pull him out, someone would soon have had a rather ugly catfish on his hook. Miki shrugged his shoulders, the picture of innocence.

I was on his side, because Čika Luka doesn't like people or fish or even himself—it's through him that I discovered the meaning of the word “frustrated.”

I won today because of the secret in my bait. Breadcrumbs mixed with water, a little vanilla sugar, small pieces of liver sausage, plus the secret. The chub freaked out when I fed them the bait, they jumped out of the water shouting: stop, stop! because my secret mixture tasted so good to them.

I don't have to go to Osijek, I tell Mother, trying to comfort her; you—any of you—really couldn't have guessed that I'd win.

Because Osijek is a problem; no one can drive me there because no one could have guessed that I'd win, so they've all made other plans. So my mother says. She doesn't say: it's because there's shooting in Croatia. She doesn't say: it's because a tank crushed a red car in Osijek. She doesn't say that the final was canceled long ago for that reason, that is, if anyone can even stop to think of canceling things.

I'm scared myself.

Number Three, my starting number, is still sticking there in the bank. Today at noon I landed
sunbleak
after
sunbleak,
several enthusiastic chub, and even a small Danube salmon. That one got away because Uncle Miki shouted behind me: what are you doing, you fool, don't let go, are you crazy?

I make sure that no one is watching. I crouch down and pass the back of my hand over the surface of the water. What does your heartbeat sound like?

I keep my medal on at home too. My mother calls down to the cellar: we're back, Picasso, come on up, there's something you've got to see here.

Uncle Miki flings himself down on the sofa and switches the TV on. The coffee starts to brew, my father comes into the living room whistling, rubbing his hands on a cloth.

You smell of fish, he says, about to pat me on the head.

You smell of acetone, I say, ducking out of the way.

He taps my medal. Not bad!

Yes, I say, it's good, but Father isn't looking at me anymore, he's looking at his brother's feet on the sofa. He pushes them off roughly and sits down beside him.

Coffee and a rainstorm. That's how it is on August afternoons. Osijek comes on-screen; even the Drau is shown. It may be very beautiful, but if there are houses burning all around you, being beautiful is difficult.

The war is switched off when Grandpa Slavko comes in and sits down opposite me. He looks at the certificate and the medal. I guessed it, he says, or no, I knew it.

No one else could have guessed it. Grandpa, what do you mean, you knew it?

Grandpa raises his eyebrows. I was watching you at the bridge last week and the estuary yesterday.

I never noticed you.

I can watch very quietly.

And how could you tell that I was going to win?

I could see that you were happy. I saw your mouth moving although you were alone.

I had to learn a poem by heart.

I think you were talking to someone.

I was alone, Grandpa.

Grandpa Slavko leans over to me and whispers: I don't think you were alone. I think the river was there with you.

Grandpa!

Aleksandar!

We both lean back, resting against the backs of our chairs like two boxers between rounds, except that boxers don't often smile at each other. Grandpa's hair is thick and strong and gray at the sides, like Father's hair, like my hair will be in thirty years' time, he sticks his thumbs in the suspenders over his chest; we both shake our heads. I'd like to be a grandpa who's friends with my grandpa; we'd talk to our grandsons in riddles and go out walking every evening with our shared memories and old arguments clasped behind our backs.

Would you have won in Osijek too? Grandpa asks, knowing that I'll never go to Osijek now.

No.

Why not?

I lean forward now and whisper: it's not my river there.

Do you know, says Grandpa, that there are people who don't have any games where there's a winner at the end?

People in Amazonia?

More or less.

We lean back and look at each other contentedly. Only now do I realize that no one else has said anything all this time. Mother is standing in the doorway, and she has no worry lines today. Miki and Father are both kneading something in their hands. Granny is making plates clink softly. I look at my family as if we've all succeeded at something.

Shall we watch Carl Lewis tomorrow? I ask Grandpa. I'll catch fish for our supper, you can fry it, then we'll watch Carl to see if he can stay under ten seconds, right?

Later, when everyone has gone and I'm in bed, my mother asks what I'd like if I could have a wish. She calls me her Comrade Angler in Chief. She knows I like the term Comrade in Chief. People treat tired winners gently.

I'd wish for everything to be all right forever, I say.

What do you call all right? asks Mother, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

It's all right when you make me sandwiches this evening for tomorrow, and I can go fishing tomorrow and you don't worry about where I am, and Grandpa lives forever, and you all live forever, and the fish don't stop being in the river and Osijek stops burning and Red Star win the European Cup again next year and Granny Katarina never runs out of coffee and women neighbors, and Nena Fatima can really hear everything, even though she's deaf, and the houses play music, and no one has to bother about Croatia anymore, starting now, and there are little boxes containing tastes so that we can swap them with each other, and we don't forget how to hug, and . . .

My mother's lips are trembling. That's fine, she says, and for the first time since there have been first times she doesn't say: but don't go too far.

I choose the fattest worms. They wriggle. I make holes in the jam-jar lid with a screwdriver. Along the Drina on my bike, two hours through the morning mist, through villages without any names. Go fishing, catch fish, swim, talk to the river, tell it everything, eat my sandwiches. Smoked ham on
kaymak
. Plum jam on plum jam. Laugh out loud because I know the Drina likes winners to laugh like that. Let the Danube salmon go. I laugh out loud, and the Drina says: I knew it all along.