How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone (25 page)

Our hug is a brief one. Granny comes up to my throat, she kisses me on the throat, I'm horrified by her and horrified by myself because I'm slightly repelled by her moist mouth and the tickling little hairs on her top lip. Come on, she says, you're tired, let's have a look at you. Oh yes, your Grandpa.

Granny's hair is dyed black, white roots show, she has a sourish smell like damp maize and is trying to pick up my bag. Do you drink coffee these days? she asks.

Leave that to me, I say, taking my bag into the bedroom. I can see the mark on the door frame telling me how tall I was on 6 April 1992: five feet. As the first shells were exploding, my father sharpened his pencil and called to me. Still time for this, stand here. Today I measure myself and cheat by standing on tiptoe, just as I cheated Father back then by one or two inches. I mark the wood of the door frame with a pencil line just above my hair. I smell milk in the kitchen. I wait, five feet, eleven inches tall, twelve minutes, and I drink the milk still warm.

I've made lists. The green house with the peculiar roof is still a green house with a peculiar roof. A bonsai in the single large window. A satellite dish on the peculiar roof. The roof slopes steeply almost all the way down to the ground. I peer through the window. A young woman is sitting cross-legged on a bamboo mat in the middle of the small room. She has closed her eyes. Her hands are resting on her knees, palms upward. Her thumbs and middle fingers are touching.

The old locomotive stands in the little park near the building. It's been restored and repainted. I pass my hand over the front of it: smooth, cool iron. Grandpa Rafik, gray, railway engine. An elderly couple of tourists ask me to take a picture of them in front of the engine. They wear panama hats. They're buying souvenirs made of wood, the bridge and the mosque as pendants, a mini Ivo Andric; there are no limits to my imagination.

I unpack. Diabetic cherry jam. Granny Katarina laughs heartily, I don't eat any jam I haven't made myself! She wraps the jam up again and asks me to put it away in the
pajz
.

List of smells: the cellar smells of peas and coal. The graveyard in Veletovo: freshly mown grass. Zoran's Aunt Desa: honey. Soldiers: iron and schnapps. The Drina: the Drina. The
pajz
, the larder: sour bread and rotten wood—and in it the bread box, cans, sugar, flour, bags inside more bags, moths, bottomless boxes and rusty mousetraps. My fishing rod has been lying behind a shelf ever since we left. I'll have to oil the spool; the hook is rusty. Granny, I call from the little room, since when have mice eaten corks?

We go everywhere now to drink coffee, says Granny, leaving the apartment. I respect a clever mouse, I call from the stairs.

To Granny coffee isn't just a drink: coffee is praising her neighbor's white net curtains to the skies because they're so well washed. I drink the first coffee of my life with my grandmother at Teta Magda's on the fourth floor. I've made lists. People living in the apartment building. Legend has it that I took my first steps in Magda's arms. Neither sweets nor plums nor minced meat were necessary on that occasion. With her long neck and long nose Magda looks like a stork. Magda from the fourth floor is now a weary and mythical figure; she has to prop her head up because it can't hold itself straight anymore. She puts her hand under it, which makes her look dreamy and exhausted at the same time. Her cheeks are hollow, her thin hair is strands of silvery lead. Oh, Katarina dear, says Magda, I could sleep and sleep until the cows come home. You've grown, Aleksandar. She examines me with her green eyes.

You're looking well, I say, not sure what I mean by that.

Yes, yes, says Magda, pulling a leaden strand back from her forehead. Back then, but you won't remember it anymore, she says, and Granny and I lean back, because now the legend is about to be sung in her worn old voice, back then you walked into my arms, tottered over to me without holding on to anything, a smile on your face, your conquests were just beginning, hello big world, I'm ready for you now, you were enchanted by your own strength, you'd found your sense of balance there in my arms.

Milomir from the first floor makes strong coffee. During the war, he says, my main worry was whether a grenade or a sniper would get me; now I have so many worries I don't know which is the main one. Pockmarked, arthritic, holding a lit cigarette behind his back, he bows and kisses my grandmother's hand as we leave. Katarina, he says to the hand, come and see me again soon.

After two sips you came to the coffee grounds.

I've made lists. Bars, restaurants, hotels. The Estuary Restaurant where the Rzav and the Drina meet, with a view of both rivers. I remember the domed building with its large terrace, I remember the rare evenings with mosquito bites and the sleepy croaking of the frogs when Father, Mother and I, just the three of us, sat in the Estuary and musicians came to our table. Father would fold a banknote and put it in the accordion, and the accordionist would grin and bow in my mother's direction.

Rubble, stones, iron bars, rusty beams and broken boards are woven into the round foundations of the Estuary to make a wreath. I'm standing in the middle of it now, looking at the Drina on my left and the Rzav on my right. The shards of a saltshaker crunch under my feet. The frogs are croaking.

Granny Katarina and I sit in the living room watching
Isabella
. I've drunk so much coffee today that I'm shaking and I can't imagine ever being able to sleep again. That's not really the name of the soap opera, Isabella is the beautiful heroine, always suffering a little but good at heart. Granny watches three soaps a day: one at four in the afternoon, another at seven in the evening, and
Isabella
at nine. She injects insulin during the ads. I can't watch. She pushes up her blouse and tells me about a bomb that exploded under a newly married couple's table just as the bridegroom was cutting the cake. The bride and a dog that was asleep under the table at the bridegroom's feet died. They made the dog a little golden coffin and threw it into the Drina. The bride was buried in her wedding dress, but without her shoes, because they were only borrowed.

Granny injects insulin and breathes loudly through her mouth. I can't watch. I can't listen. The more stories I know, I say, turning up the volume on the TV, the less I know about myself.

Granny looks straight at the TV set. Isabella, she says, pressing her forefinger and middle finger to the place where the needle went in, ought not to trust her stepmother so blindly.

Someone, I write later in the when-everything-was-all-right book, which I'm going to give back to Granny before I leave, someone ought to invent a tool, a kind of plane to shave the lies away from stories and deception away from memories. I'm a collector of shavings.

I've made lists. Mr. Popović the music teacher. I ring at the door on the fourth floor, his wife Lena opens it, an elaborately dressed lady with her hair pinned up, gold earrings, and a musky perfume, she's ready to go out though she doesn't go anywhere. I don't have to explain anything to her. Katarina told me you were here, she says, smiling, come on in!

Mr. Popović turns the TV off and gets to his feet when I come into the living room. He looks at me curiously and gives me his hand. He doesn't remember me until his wife introduces me. Aleksandar! What a surprise! Sit down, my boy, sit down. To be honest, I'd hardly have recognized you. Mrs. Popović disappears into the kitchen and comes back a minute later to offer us a plate piled high with cheese, a beer for me, and for her husband water and two red pills on a silver salver.

Oh yes, says Mr. Popović, I remember. I was friends with your grandfather when we were studying, and politically later too. Slavko was a good speaker, very few in the Party understood his ideas and almost no one thought they were any good. Which means they were excellent ideas.

I nod, enjoying the old man's deep, thoughtful voice, the calm I see in his bright eyes, which widen as he talks. His wife sits opposite us, folds her hands in her lap and watches him as attentively as if he were the guest.

But for Slavko, Mr. Popović goes on with his little speech, the library, for instance, would never have been extended, and to this day the schools and indeed the whole town can feel the benefit of it. How long ago that was . . .

I spear a cube of cheese on a toothpick, the cheese is very cold and tastes of paprika. There are cupboards and chests of drawers adorned with flowers in the apartment, a large art nouveau lamp, a desk made of dark wood, Tito's portrait over it. Sheet music and records on shelves, on the floor, everywhere. The piano in a corner, a gramophone beside it. I look at Mr. Popović again. He has narrowed his eyes and is offering me his hand. I'm Professor Petar Popović, and you are . . . ?

What did you say?

Mrs. Popović clears her throat. Petar, she says, this is Aleksandar, Slavko's grandson.

Mr. Popović frowns. Lena, he asks his wife, who is this gentleman?

Aleksandar Krsmanovic, I say myself this time. I stand up and once again shake hands with the old man wearing a tank top, his hair accurately parted. I'm visiting my grandmother. You once gave me an encyclopedia of music for my birthday.

Mr. Popović laughs, stands up too, and clasps my hand warmly between both of his. Of course, he cries, the
Encyclopedia
of World Music
. So you're Slavko's grandson. Sit down, sit down, and bring us a beer, please, Lena. I expect you drink beer?

Yes, indeed, I say, and Mr. Popović looks at me with a friendly expression, a smiling old gentleman among his records and books of musical scores. Grandpa Slavko always spoke highly of his piano playing and described him as the only real intellectual in our town. After his wife has disappeared into the kitchen Mr. Popović presses my hand more firmly and whispers in confidential tones: all my life I've treated my wife's beauty and kindness carelessly, otherwise it's only history and death I treat that way.

Mr. Popović drinks a sip of water and looks closely at his glass; it is cloudy with condensation. Mr. Popović undoes the cuffs of his shirt. They're not real, he says, pointing to the gold cuff links with the silver treble clef on them.

His kind and beautiful wife comes back into the living room with the beers just in time to see her husband offering me his hand again and saying: I'm Petar Popović, and whom do I have the honor of . . . ?

After I've introduced myself he stands up. A little music, Mr. Krsmanovic? You look to me as if you'd know the value of Johann Sebastian, who is underestimated in this country. “I will not let thee go except thou bless me,” he suggests. I am glad, he sings, to cast off the misery of these times today. Pam-ta-tam, he sings, and he stops by the gramophone and stays there.

Maybe it's for the best, says Mrs. Popović, taking a sip of beer from the bottle, he can hide from memory and not suffer the horrors of the present day by day.

Mr. Popović turns away from the gramophone and goes over to his bookshelf. After a moment's thought he takes out one of the scores and leafs through it as if looking for a certain passage, pam-ta-tam, he sings.

The way from our home to Granny Katarina's: 2,349 steps. I've made lists: distances in footsteps. Home is on the other side of the Drina. Granny is still asleep, snoring peacefully, I could wake her to ask who lives there now, but I don't know how she likes to be woken, and I don't like not knowing the answer to the question myself.

It's 2,250 steps today, and the name by the door says: Miki. I stand on concrete, the garden has had concrete put down over it, how are the worms doing? I don't ring the bell. It says just Miki.

I've made lists. Our street. I go from building to building, I know this balcony, I know that swing in the yard made from an old tire, I know the taste of mirabelles pinched from that garden, I don't know a single name on the mailboxes except the name of Danilo Gorki.

Danilo and I sit on his veranda, the table and rocking chair just as I remember them from Francesco's time. The garden is neglected, the cherry tree has been cut down; old Mirela, Danilo's mother, is dead. Danilo lives alone in the big house, gets up at five every day, goes fishing, and if he can't sell his catch he eats it himself. His freezer is stuffed full of fish. Better fish all day and get nothing on your hook, he says, than toil all day and get nothing in your pocket. A lot of people these days think you can't be happy unless you have a job, it doesn't even have to be a paid job. To hell with that kind of happiness, I say.

I ask Danilo if he knows where his colleague from the Estuary Restaurant went, the man we children called Čika Doctor. List: myths and legends. I tell the tale of the lemonade for the leather-clad biker.

Danilo says yes, he knows. I wait for him to go on, and when he doesn't, I ask: where?

I was in the same unit as your uncle, he says, setting the table. That's why you're here, right?

What with all the fish, says Danilo, you don't even smell fish anymore.

The muted cries of children playing make their way in to us from outside. Danilo asks if I'm married, pours oil into the pan and puts two fish in.

Just as well, he says, women are devils with pretty skin. Oh yes, says Danilo Gorki, opening the window that looks out on the street, I ought to know.

From home to school: 1,803 steps, counted on the day of a math test for which I'd studied heroically, and even so I handed it in without a single correct answer. Today it's 1,731. The students are standing about in small groups, all talking together in loud voices. I pace out the penalty area of the little soccer field, which has lost its goals. This is where Kiko won the bet with me and Edin. I go across the yard to see Kostina the caretaker. The thin man in his blue dungarees with a pencil behind his ear is leaning against the wall.