How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone (27 page)

snow will lie on Mount St. Helens they say

i want to be proud of something no one would believe of me

Nena, please put Mama on the line, is she there?

you really can't be happy in silence forever my boy i have a good reason now

i've oh yes dear boy i've flown and i had to strap myself in but i didn't

Nena . . .

aleksandar i was never happier i'm going to throw a stone into a volcano

Will you call Mama, please, will you call her now?

don't worry she'll understand

the black people don't understand me i want to sleep in the hut i'm going in

there now

oh dear boy dear boy such tall trees and such space to breathe and an

unmasked moon

Nena . . . Will you do me a favor?

you have rafik's voice my boy

Will you throw a stone in for me too?

i will dear boy i'll throw a whole mountain in

i'm there now.

Nena Fatima giggles. Nena Fatima's laughter is the laughter of a boy.

I try to be as quiet as possible, the garden gate squeals, I sit down at a small table that wasn't here before. The gate doesn't belong to us, nor does the garden or the table. Only what was here before still belongs to us, Nena and me; the sunflowers in my Nena's garden used to turn her way when she braided her hair.

Nothing moves inside the house. The view of the Drina doesn't belong to us either: when the poplars and chestnuts were blossoming it used to snow in summer on the riverbanks outside the house. Nena stood under the trees letting down her hair. A rope hung from one of the chestnuts, a tire dangled from the rope, a boy dangled from the tire, trembling with cold and pleasure as the leaping wind sowed flower flakes.

The view of the bridge doesn't belong to us. I held tight to the soapy stone of the fifth arch of the bridge, feeling furious with Grandpa Slavko for the first and only time. He had made me swim through the arches, but it was too cold for me, the current was too strong. I was scared and I didn't want to dis- appoint him. I swam again and again, upstream through the arches, downstream through the arches, until the Drina received me with casual persistence, as if my body belonged to the river. The light breaking through the surface of the water, seen from below, was uncanny when it began to burn in my head behind my nose. Grandpa reached for me, slipping away, disappearing, dragged me coughing and protesting to the bank, said: you'll soon be seven, you must be able to swim through all the arches by then.

The poplars and chestnuts have gone for firewood. A dog is rummaging in the rubbish on the bare slope. An angler stands near the drainpipe feeding bread to the fish. I never did swim through all the arches, Grandpa, but Nena will throw a stone into the magma for me.

Aleksandar, I know what skin looks like when the person it belongs to is tied behind a cart and dragged through the town for hours. Back and forth, Zoran shouts through the music. Do you remember Čika Sead? People say they impaled him and roasted him like a lamb somewhere near the Sarajevo road. If you remember Čika Sead you'll remember Čika Hasan. He gave eighty-two pints of blood before the war, he was always boasting about it. They took Čika Hasan to the bridge every day to throw the bodies of the people they'd executed into the river. Hasan spread the arms of the dead wide, he supported their bodies with his own, he let them rest against him before he let them go. He buried eighty-two of the dead in the river Drina. And when they ordered him to throw in the eighty-third he climbed on the railings and spread his own arms out. That's all, they say he said, I don't want any more.

I've made lists. Čika Hasan and Čika Sead.

Pokor isn't on any of the lists. On the way back from Nena Fatima's house—986 steps—I meet a policeman trying to stuff an enormous net bag of onions through the door of his police car. When he takes his cap off in his struggle with the onions I recognize him by his untidy red hair. Pokor was a policeman before the war too. I often met his son out fishing—we were good at keeping quiet with each other. Later, the rumor that Pokor had been promoted—from easygoing policeman to leader of a violent band of irregulars—reached us even in Germany. Pokor was nicknamed Mr. Pokolj, and it was said that Mr. Bloodbath often ordered his men to live up to his name.

Mr. Pokolj is in Liberation Square, which isn't called that anymore now; it bears the name of some Serbian king or hero. Pokor is only Pokor again and wears his blue police uniform. He struggles with the net of onions, but it won't go through the door. The whole car is full of onions; their skins peel off and drift out into the street. Other cars drive slowly around the blue Golf, and I stop. Pokor throws the net bag on the ground and kicks it several times, snorting with rage. Breathing heavily, he looks around and hitches up his trousers, which are slipping down over the crack between his buttocks. There are onions in his trouser pockets too. He jerks his head challengingly at me: what's the matter? What are you gaping at?

Can I help you? I ask.

So whose are you? replies Pokor.

I don't understand the question at once, no one's asked me that for so many years; only gradually does it dawn on me that by “whose” he means who are my parents—it's a question you ask children who have lost their way. I tell him my father's first name and last name.

You're Aleksandar, right? He repeats my father's first name, and speaks my mother's too, he says it twice; the second time it's a question. I ought to repeat her name immediately, in a firm voice, I ought to confirm my mother's beautiful Arabic name proudly and tell Pokor that it means “ship,” or “spring,” or “pleasure.” And I ought to tell Pokor to his face that it is monstrous for murderers to be able to go around freely in this country, and not just that, but wearing a police uniform too. However, I hesitate; I look past the man in his grubby blue uniform to the onions filling the whole car. I hesitate, and swallow, and pretend not to have heard the question. I can't swallow the shame rising inside me.

Pokor gives himself a little shake as if he were cold. Miki's in town, is he? he asks, and when I don't reply he squeezes himself, without a word of good-bye, into the car, which is much too small for such a man and such a quantity of onions.

Here I am, afraid of a Serbian policeman described as a “presumed war criminal,” and people say “there are plenty of witnesses to that.” Perhaps it's a groundless fear, but it's enough to make me disown my mother to the little policeman Pokor who has put on sixty-five pounds in the last ten years and is now surrounded by a strong smell of onions. He leaves that last net bag lying on the asphalt. And fails to give way to another driver as he turns into the street that—like the square where I stand rooted to the spot by shame—now has a new name. The name of a king or a hero.

I've made lists but that's not the point.

I've made lists. Girls. Elvira. Danijela. Jasna. Nataša. Asija. No, Marija, you can't join in. Marija was too young and too girlie for just about everything we wanted to do.

Her mother opens the door, a dark-haired woman with rosy cheeks, Marija's curls, and floury handprints on her apron. She points apologetically to the apron and goes into the kitchen. Come on in, Aleks! she cries—in German. Pots and pans clatter, oil hisses, you're looking well, she cries, your granny said you were coming to visit. Want to see Marija? She's downstairs.

Yes, I'd like to say hello, I reply, also in German, relieved by this uncomplicated encounter.

She's in the cellar, says Marija's mother, peering out of the kitchen. There'll be schnitzels in a moment.

Down on the ground floor a cat startles me, hissing and jumping up. I stop; the cat stops and circles around me. Music drifts up from the cellar, light casts the shadow of the banisters on the wall. I follow the gray cat down, what's Marija doing here? The music gets louder. I'm not going back down the steps of my memory, I'm going down into a cellar, it's only a cellar.

This is where my parents quarreled.

This is where I was the fastest.

This is where frightened Asija sat.

This is where a soldier passed the butt of his rifle over the posts of the banisters, clack-clack-clack-clack-clack.

It's only a cellar. I've gone around in enough circles these last few days. I'd like to be a pigeon; pigeons never do anything but what they always do. There's a small CD player on the floor. I know the playful beat. “Swayzak.”

Swayzak, a young woman says on the other side of the room reading my thoughts. I met James Taylor in Munich, he told me that whatever he dreams, there are always dogs in it, barking at him. It felt so strange that he got himself a Doberman and slept in the same bed with it, and the dream dogs shut up. Hello! says Marija in her wraparound skirt made of scarf fabric with another scarf in her hair to keep her curls off her forehead. She hands me a spatula as thin as the edge of a screwdriver, points to a small wound on her thumb, says: the bloody cat scared me. Marija's eyes are yellowy green in the dim light, she bows her head, dust over her eyebrows, lips pressed to the wound.

Hello, I say, I'm Aleksandar.

Are we going to introduce ourselves to each other, shaking hands and all that? says Marija, smiling.

I look for a handkerchief for her thumb although I know I don't have one, I'm thinking: what a green those eyes are! I'm thinking: after all, I've made lists. Marija switches the music off. I'll show you around, she says, but let's eat first, you will eat with us, won't you? Good.

The schnitzels are coated with egg and breadcrumbs, Marija and her mother describe Munich to me. Marija says: the Starnberger See, says: you just automatically support FC Bayern, says: of course I'm going back there, as soon as I'm finished with my work here, says: I can't manage without good music. The two of them have been living near Munich for eight years, they came back because Marija's grandfather died and her grandmother fell sick—she's sitting at the table with us, rocking back and forth and smiling whenever her name is spoken. I tell them what I like about Essen, I defend the Ruhr when Marija says it's a dreary dump; we talk about dialects and mentalities, we talk about Germany, no I say, really, Sylt is better than its reputation. Marija asks if I've ever pushed a sleeping cow over, laughs, and puts her hand in front of her mouth as if to catch her laughter.

Marija, you can't play, she says later in the evening, of course I still remember that, boys!

The second glass of wine tastes of caramel, we lie on yellow loungers in the cellar. Marija is studying art in Belgrade, sculpture, it's her second year. She calls what she's doing here her first serious work, she doesn't think too much about things that are larger or more abstract than the seasons, so she makes plaster models of ordinary people and puts tennis socks on them, or ear muffs with rabbit ears, or a T-shirt with an ad for an arthritis remedy. She's hung wall coverings in the two largest rooms in the cellar, aluminum spirals hang from the ceiling, plastic bows, colored glass mosaics, papier-mâché dolls, and there's a landscape painting in the middle of the room: conceptualist, says Marija, and Provence! A generator gives a little light, the rough, gray walls of the past seem to me as improbable as

the plywood tables by the longer wall,

our mothers' anxious voices,

the stove in the corner,

Čika Aziz's C64 around which we gathered while the town

took a beating outside,

the yellow begonias under the ventilation grating where

Marija now stores her scrapers, knives and files. She's made casting boxes out of the plywood tabletops, square frames covered with veneer.

My last boyfriend was the Serbian Tae Kwon Do Number Two, she says. We were together for twelve hours, then he told me he was the Serbian Tae Kwon Do Number Two. Marija pauses. Are you really all right, Aleksandar?

Not always, I say, raising my glass, but I am now.

To the people we knew, she says, drinking. Have you ever heard from Edin?

He's in Spain.

And?

I examine the color of the wine closely. Black currant color. To be honest, I don't know any more. All I know is that he is or was in Spain. I called him once but he was out. I left my number on the answering machine, he never called back.

And that's all? I don't believe it, Aleks! You two were inseparable! A single phone call . . .

I've called Sarajevo three hundred times, I say.

Marija waits for me to go on. Are you doing all right? I ask instead. It's colder now, we've nearly finished the wine, and this evening I don't want to remember anything that's more than three hours old.

I put boxer shorts on little plaster men, says Marija, finishing her wine. Shall we have breakfast together tomorrow? Will you fetch me? she asks, writes down my phone number, pulls off her headscarf and takes the cellar stairs two at a time.

I switch off the music. The generator hums. I breathe in deeply. Plaster. I sit down on the stairs.

There are the loungers.

There are the wall hangings.

There are the empty wine bottles.

There's a priest with a Tarzan apron frying a fish.

There's a boy in a tanga buttering bread.

There's the gray cat asleep.

Here am I. The rules of the game say it's an armistice at the bottom of the stairs. Here on the steps, Asija sat beside me, crying. Here am I, who didn't mean to remember anything else this evening.

Here was Uncle Bora chain-smoking at one of the plywood tables, telling us he'd vowed to give up smoking the day before, Pioneer's word of honor! The plywood tables were put together so that we could eat and play dominoes more easily. I learned the word “provisional” and two men carried a stove into the cellar. The stove isn't here anymore, but a man in flip-flops is mowing the lawn over there, and my uncle swore he meant his vow seriously, Sundays are the best days to give something up, and Mondays are the best days to start something. Just before midnight, he said, he'd smoked his last pack, and then he began constructing famous buildings with matches: the Eiffel Tower, the Egyptian pyramids, the Berlin Wall. When the first grenades fell on Višegrad in the morning, one of them hit the roof of Uncle Bora's house. Auntie Typhoon dropped the breakfast tray in fright, the two coffee cups lost their handles, and my uncle praised his glue in glowing terms: the Berlin Wall stood firm whereas the tiles of his roof and the dishes hadn't.