Mama Leone (10 page)

On Sunday Dad went to Makarska but came back before lunch.
They were really good at the medical center. Not a problem, what are colleagues for, how about a cup of coffee, how are things in Sarajevo, just a minute, the nurse will bring it out to you. And they didn't charge me a thing
, he said. I slunk under the table thinking: if he calls me to come out in that wouldn't-hurt-a-fly voice I'm gonna yell and get ready for a fight because that wouldn't-hurt-a-fly voice always means one thing – an injection's coming my way. If he calls me to say I've got to take a pill, then I'll come out because it's beneath his dignity as a doctor to lie to a patient and
be there waiting with an injection instead of a pill. That's what he once said and I took him on his word.

I waited anxiously, not letting out a peep. And they knew I was waiting and were all silent too. Dad got up from the table, took a glass, and filled it with water. He crouched down next to the table, but I was already pressed up against the wall.
Here you go, this is a pill for constipation, you gotta take it, you gotta drink up
, he said as if he were scared of me. Actually, I think he was a little scared that I was going to start howling, and I was sure he'd spent ages dreaming up that word constipation, which didn't even exist, he just dreamed it up so I'd believe he was talking to me like I was a grown-up.

Anyway, I took the pill and drank up. Grandma asked when it should start working and Dad said
if nothing's happened after twenty-four hours and six pills, then
. . . I froze, because he didn't say what would happen then, and I already knew it was going to be something terrible and that's why he interrupted himself, so I wouldn't hear. They're going to take me to the hospital to see the surgeon and he's going to cut my tummy open and take all the poop out.

Grandma asked
you want to go potty?
But I didn't. A bit later she brought the potty over,
c'mon, sit down, maybe you'll go poopoo
, so I sat down, but nothing happened.
C'mon, squeeze a little
, she said. Mom rolled her eyes, and Dad said
it'll all be fine
, and Grandpa sat there the whole time chuckling to himself, trying to keep it down so no one would hear him and Grandma wouldn't call him an old hillbilly. The
thing is, for Grandpa everything to do with farting, the toilet, and going to the shittery, which is what he used to say when someone – usually me – needed to go poop, was the funniest thing ever, and he'd laugh like he was retarded because he thought nature invented these things to give people something to smirk about and make women get embarrassed.

I spent all day yesterday sitting on the potty, and the whole day again today, right there in the middle of the room, trying to make the impossible possible. I didn't feel like going poop because I just didn't feel like pooping, and it didn't help any that I was so scared of what would happen if the pills didn't work and I wouldn't be able to poop even if I wanted to.

Things went downhill after the TV news when Dad got his doctor's bag out. As soon as I saw it I was on my way under the table but ran straight into Mom's lap. Her skirt didn't smell like lavender anymore but fear. Mom was as strong as a villain and I fought her, kicking and screaming, but someone lifted me up in the air. I didn't see who because my eyes were shut and I was screaming. First I howled
let me go, let me go
, then I tried
I need to poo, I need to poo, where's the potty
, but they didn't believe me or say anything. I kept howling, but they went quietly about a business they'd agreed on in advance and there was no change of plan, not even if my bones started breaking and all the color ran from my face and everything broke into the tiniest little pieces, into Lego blocks you could build a whole new person out of, someone who could go poop every day and who you didn't have to catch in the air like a butterfly
and get that colored stuff all over your fingers. They got me down on the bed, Dad said
what's the matter, there's nothing to worry about, it's not going to hurt
and I was sure that something terrible was going to happen. As soon as they say it's not going to hurt, it only means one thing: it's going to hurt like hell, because whenever he or some other doctor says that something's not going to hurt, it always does.

They took my undies off and flipped me on my tummy. Mom was holding me so tight I couldn't move. I turned my head to look at the injection, but then I saw that Dad didn't have an injection in his hand, there wasn't a needle in sight; he was holding something red, which looked like a pear, a rubber pear, and instead of a stalk it had a little thin see-through tube. It looked way scarier than an injection, so I screamed my lungs out. Mom turned my head back the other way, and I felt someone holding my bum, pulling it apart and sticking something up there inside me. Though there were no bombs, cities silently crumbled in my pounding heart,
they're sticking something up there, but why? Stuff's only supposed to come out of there, don't they want me to poop? Why are they putting more stuff up there?
And then the stuff they were squirting up my bum expanded, hot, wet, and strange. It burned and stung and kept expanding, and I was full of this strange stuff, and there was more and more of it, and I thought it was never going to stop and that I'd just keep getting fuller and fuller with that stuff until I burst or admitted something they hadn't even asked me yet.

Grandma came over and said
now be a good boy and sit on the potty. If
you get up on the potty we won't ever have to do this again
. But this wasn't my grandma, it was a German telling a member of the resistance that he'll quit the torture if he betrays his comrades. I spat at her, but she didn't hit me. I sat on the potty and looked at the floor. Something gushed from me onto the tin pan below, gushing out of me against my will, the same way it went in.
Are you done?
someone asked. I bit my lip and looked at the floor.
He's done
, someone said. I kept staring at the floor. Someone lifted me off the potty and wiped my bum. I didn't say anything, just looked at the floor, and when the floor wasn't there to look at anymore I shut my eyes. They sat me down on a chair. I looked at the floor.
Go play
, someone said.
Put him to bed. Everything will be fine tomorrow
, said someone else. I just sat there looking at the floor.

Now I'm lying in bed and waiting for the morning so I can finally get going. You can't leave at night because it's dark, which means you can't see where you're going, and my car doesn't have any headlights. I'm going to have another good look at that photo and see if I can see me sitting in a real car and not a cardboard box that used to have packets of cookies in it. If you can see it's a car, tell me. If you can't, I'm going to have to take my spade, my teddy bunny, and my winter sweater and set out on foot. If I stay, I'll have to look at the floor for the rest of my life, never say anything, not telling apart the voices talking to me.

Donkeys sleep at Profunda, that's what we whisper so the old folk don't hear, because if they heard, then we'd be in for it. Profunda is out of bounds, because that's where little Vjeko went and fell and broke his neck and there was a big funeral, the procession went from one end of Drvenik to the other, from Punta to Puntin, and then it went up on Biokovo, where the cemetery is, and everyone cried because the body was a little one, and when the body is a little one, really everyone cries. When it's a big one, the only people who cry are those who loved the dead person or those who love those who loved the dead person. No one had been to Profunda since then, no one even knows what's there anymore, but by the time three years had passed since Vjeko's funeral, the wonders of Profunda had gotten bigger and bigger. Then the big
gest rumor of all started going around, the one about the donkeys sleeping there at night.

Profunda used to be Mate Terin's house, but then the war started and the Italians came and they set Mate's house on fire. No one knew why they did it, why his house, and why they spared everyone else's. Maybe they just wanted to make an example of someone, show how tough they were, and they picked Mate's house by chance. Mate hung himself when he saw the remains of his house, and because he didn't have a wife or children, or any relatives except a brother who lived in New Zealand who never wrote to him, there was no one to grieve for Mate or to repair his house when the war finished. All that remained were big rough walls, white as snow, all traces of fire washed clean by the rain. The burned stone had gone white, much whiter than it was when it was a house.

You get to Profunda from the hillside above because the house is dug into the earth and cut into the rock. You can jump onto the ruins from the rock above and walk the walls on which the roof once stood. Actually, you could only do that until little Vjeko fell and broke his neck.

We're gonna do it on Saturday
, said Nikša,
but we gotta wait 'til it's dark
. There were five of us, four locals and me, who wanted to be a local, but to them I was an outsider, the Sarajever. This meant I always had to prove myself more, just like I had to prove myself more when I was in Sarajevo because I was an outsider there too, a Dalmatian outsider. For half the year I spoke Dalmatian and the other half Sarajevan, but
no one trusted me because they all knew that I'd always be going back to where I wasn't a Sarajevan or a Dalmatian, where I'd speak like I wasn't one or the other.

On Saturday it's Fishermen's Night, that's a village festival, and they don't make anyone go home, mothers, babies, or grandpas, and so we're going to make the most of it and go to Profunda, to see where the donkeys sleep and walk on the walls and check the whole place out, but only the brave among us of course. Scaredy-cats don't have to walk the walls, but I've got to use my chance, because if I miss it I'll always be the outsider from Sarajevo and no one will ever believe me when I speak like a Dalmatian.

Grandpa was reading the paper, Grandma cleaning the fish.
Dearie, listen to this
, said Grandpa looking at Grandma through his glasses.
In research undertaken in 1923, the noted scientist von Hentig concluded that earthquakes had an effect on the internal secretion of fish and their behavior, and that artificial convulsions could in no way explain the phenomenon. Animals obviously react to a unique geophysical phenomenon preceding the earthquake, one that culminates in the quake itself
. He read really slowly, word by word, to make it sound more serious, but I knew Grandpa was just playing serious, only reading it out loud to get Grandma going, but not too much, just a little bit, just enough for her to start bickering. He'd always needle Grandma into a little bicker when he was in a good mood.

She raised her eyebrows and curled her lips, as if surprised to hear
about the fish and the earthquakes, but she continued preparing the fish for lunch all the same. I knew she knew what he was up to, that he just wanted her to say
fine Franjo, I'm preparing the fish, and you're reading about earthquakes
. Then he told her about the importance of knowing when there's going to be an earthquake because you have to be prepared and that it would be good if she could check the internal secretion of those sardines she was fixing. That's how it was supposed to go, but it doesn't because Grandma just raises her eyebrows and acts all surprised.

He keeps looking at her for a while, like a rascal; sometimes she says to him
what are you giving me that rascal look for
, and that always makes me laugh because my grandpa is seventy-five years old, and there's no way he can look at her like a rascal, but ever since Grandma started calling it the rascal look I call it that too. Grandpa goes back to his paper, heaves a deep sigh, and forgets about the rascal look because his needling didn't work out.

It's Fishermen's Night on Saturday
, I say. Grandpa doesn't bat an eyelid, and Grandma keeps cleaning the fish.
Are we going to celebrate? . . . We don't have anything to celebrate, we're not fishermen, but if it's fish you're after, you'll be eating fish in about half an hour . . . But there's free fish from the grill on Saturday . . . You were going to pay for these ones, right? . . . It's not the same, those ones are from the skillet, on Saturday they'll be from the grill . . . All right, you go celebrate . . . Can I stay until after dark? . . . We'll see. If the other kids do, you will too
.

Grandpa read the paper through lunch; he'd grab a sardine with his fingers and eat it all in one go, from head to tail, the fish bones making a crunching sound between his teeth,
they're good for you, think of the calcium!
He'd leave the tails to the side so he knew how many he'd eaten. Grandma looked at him unimpressed, and I thought about what would happen if I ate a whole sardine, just like that, without picking the bones out and said I was thinking of all the calcium. I swear that when I'm big I'm going to read the paper and eat sardines whole, and no one will be able to say or do a thing about it. I don't care what I'm going to be when I grow up, I couldn't care less if I'm going to be a pilot, a butcher, or a forestry expert like Uncle Postnikov, all I care about is that time goes by really fast so I can be like Grandpa and eat sardines head, bones and all, put my glasses on the end of my nose, and read the paper. That's the important thing, to learn to read the paper, see what's going on in the world, particularly on a day like today when it's been really boring here and we ate sardines from the skillet, not from the grill. The world is so big that there are always people who weren't bored, so the papers write about those people, and the people who are bored read the papers, like us for example, like Grandpa who'd love to bicker with Grandma, and Grandma who can't be bothered bickering, and especially me, because I have to wait until Saturday to go to Profunda, to see the donkeys while they're sleeping, to walk a circle on the edge of the abyss around the burned out house of Mate Terin and be done with being an outsider from Sarajevo.