How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone (28 page)

Since Bora, Typhoon and their little Ema moved into Granny's cellar, Uncle Bora has been smoking again, describing what it sounded like, and how everything shook when the shell took the tiles off his roof. He balances a small square clump of matches on his knees, pointing to it every time he says, “The Berlin Wall.”

Auntie Typhoon sits opposite him, breast-feeding little Ema. I can hear my mother say to Granny Katarina: Gordana looks so pale.

That upsets me. Not because Auntie Typhoon is pale, or so unusually quiet, but because my mother calls her by her proper name. I paint a chamomile flower without a stalk and give it to my aunt because I know that chamomile tea is soothing. Ema reaches for the paper. Her whole hand fits in my fist.

After the fiftieth hit I stop counting—I'd rather count the kittens. A gray mother cat is washing her four gray kittens in the far corner of the cellar. Uncle Bora has told everyone present the tale of the coffee cups, the roof, and the glue twice over; that means he's uttered the word “handles” about sixty times, he has said, “The GDR was just a joke” about twenty times, and he's asked, “My God, what's going on here?” exactly three times.

The cellar is large enough, three hundred footsteps from corner to corner and corner to corner. No one sends us out to play, although everything is said in whispers as if we ought not to hear it. We're beginning to get bored. Marija is blindfolded and can't find anyone, she wanders down the corridors, groping her way. Neo is here, Edin is here. When I talk to Marija I always look at her hair. Marija has curlier hair than anyone else I know. I have to look at her dimples too because they make little whirlpools in her cheeks when she laughs. And at her eyes, because they're yellow and green. In the cellar Marija spends most of her time playing alone under the begonias in the ventilation shaft, she makes little pans and spoons and a table out of plasticine, and drinks invisible coffee with invisible guests out of plasticine cups.

More and more people who don't live in the building stream into the cellar. I'm particularly glad to see Walrus and Zoran. And Milica the ladybird trips her way down to us too. Walrus has brought a bag full of fruit. There's a lot of firing in the mountains, he says, it nearly got the green house with the peculiar roof, the one where the Japanese disappeared, and the vegetable shop on the corner. But I left money on the counter, honest I did. We need vitamins. He breaks an apple in two and gives Zoran half of it.

Do mosquitoes actually suck the vitamins from our blood?

Milica sits down beside Auntie Typhoon in her red and black outfit. Lovely, she says to Ema's downy hair and to the rest of us all around, I hope it's all right for us to stay until this is over.

I started liking Milica long ago.

I don't ask the following questions:

Who's firing?

Who are they firing at?

Why?

When will it be over?

Will roofs burn in Višegrad like the roofs burning in Osijek?

Will the soccer season go ahead?

Will school go ahead?

Who's defending us?

When will it be over?

Suppose a shell hits Grandpa Slavko's grave?

Why doesn't Auntie Typhoon stand up, run off and disarm them all before they can reload?

Will the building fall on us if one of those cramped, polished things hits it?

Is it all the same as usual for the fish now?

What do we need?

What is the pocketknife for?

What are the fifty marks for, and what exactly does it mean when someone says: in case we get separated?

My God, what's going on here?

When will it be over?

Where is Nena Fatima?

My mother! screams my mother, rushing out of the cellar. Father catches up with her halfway up the stairs, are you out of your mind, he cries.

I forgot my mother, oh, let me go! She can't hear what's going on outside, that's why, just let me go!

But Father doesn't let her go, he has one arm around her.

I have to go find her, says Mother, a little more calmly, trying to twist out of his grasp. Father takes her by the shoulders, tries to force her down the stairs again, there's a silent tussle, Mother moans.

I feel embarrassed by my parents. I don't like to think they forgot Nena, and now everyone is staring at them. I sit there, wondering to myself in Uncle Bora's voice: my God, what's going on here? It's shell-firing time, and my parents look as if they're about to fight each other. Mother isn't fighting back so hard now. I forgot her, she says, my own mother, she wails, pressing the balls of her hands to her eyes. Milica comforts her, it will be all right, he'll be with her in a moment. By “he” she means my father. No one stops him halfway up the stairs.

My God, what's going on here?

My God, what's going on here?

My God, what's going on here?

Čika Aziz, known to us as Potato Aziz because of his large toes, first tied a white scarf around his forehead as a headband, then he plugged in his C64 down in the cellar, and now he is making a speech. Gun in the crook of his arm, barrel pointing at the ceiling, sunglasses in his shirt pocket, toothpick in the corner of his mouth: everyone come over here!

Everyone goes over there. When I'm as old as Aziz I'll have side whiskers too and I'll be Comrade in Chief of the Cowboys' Defense. I'll use any number of toothpicks and call loud and clear: everyone come over here!

Aziz, by your mother's life, tell us what's going on? says Čika Milomir from the first floor. Milomir must go on smoking even in his sleep, he smells so strongly of cigarettes. Aziz looks past him, looks past us all, tightens his belt by one notch. With his khaki trousers and his open shirt over a white undershirt Aziz is a provisional soldier but also the only person in sight with a real weapon, even Walrus doesn't have his shotgun with him. Aziz lives on the third floor and has the most amazing games on his C64. He says to the air above our heads: now, everyone step back. However, those prepared to face the aggressor in defense of this building and the persons around it come with me.

Nobody moves.

Who's the aggressor?

Why is he aggressing?

How many cramped, polished things will a dam stand up to?

Can Aziz save us?

Which is worse: if a bullet hits you and comes out again through your ribs, or if a bullet hits you and stays there, for instance in the neck, or if thirty cramped, polished items hit the dam and there's a flood?

Will Višegrad look like the village below Francesco's Lago di Vajont?

What's the technique for shifting a toothpick from one corner of your mouth to the other so fast?

Nena Fatima sows sunflowers in her garden. Nena Fatima is as deaf as a post, so she doesn't hear the cannons sowing shells over our town. I don't believe my Nena is deaf at all. She always looks at me as if she understands every word, and knows clever answers to every question, and once, after they said what the fourth number in the lottery was, she ran out of the kitchen into the living room and she had all four numbers, and was waiting for the fifth. You can't see the TV set from the kitchen.

But then a shell hits the hill above Nena's little house and all she does is—she goes on just as usual, loosening the earth with a hoe and sowing sunflower seeds. Gunfire, flames, sirens, and Nena Fatima connects the hose to the tap outside the house and waters the ground.

My Nena went deaf the day Grandpa Rafik married the river Drina, facedown. The marriage was legal because Nena and Grandpa Rafik had been divorced for years, something unusual in our town. After Grandpa Rafik was buried, they say she said at his graveside: I haven't cooked anything, I haven't brought anything, I haven't put on black clothes, but I have a whole book full of things to forgive you. They say she took out a stack of notes and began reading aloud from them. They say she stood there for a day and a night, and word by word, sentence by sentence, page by page she forgave him. After that she said no more, and she never reacted to any kind of question again.

Nena Fatima has eyes as keen as a hawk's,
kyu, ket-ket;
she always recognizes me before I turn into her street, and she wears head scarves. Nena's hair is a secret—long and red and beautiful, she gives the secret away to me as we sit outside her little house eating
börek
in summer and feeding the Drina with minced meat. Cold yogurt, salted onions, the warmth of Nena rocking silently as she sits cross-legged. The dough is shiny with good fat. Nena rocks back and forth and lights a cigarette when I've had enough. I am the quietest grandson in the world, so as not to disturb her stillness and our sunset. Sultry heat gathers over the river and looks attentively at Nena Fatima, who is humming as she plaits her secret into a long braid. I don't laugh with anyone as softly as with my Nena, I laugh with her until I'm exhausted, I don't comb anyone else's hair.

Nena Fatima comes down into the cellar with my father. She stops on the bottom step of the stairs, like Aziz making his speech. She straightens her head scarf, leaving an earth mark on her forehead.

She was in the garden, says Father.

Mother hugs Nena Fatima, furious and glad, as if Nena were her daughter and had run away. Nena points to her mouth with her thumb: I'm thirsty. I write “Fatima” on a mug. All the mugs have our names. I've called one “Slavko,” another “Johann Sebastian,” a third “Herpes,” and a fourth “Jürgen the biker.” Milica thought that was incredibly funny, and wrote “Ladybird” on hers. Nena drinks the mug of water. She washes her hands with water from the second mugful. Everyone is looking at her. She opens her mouth, taking a deep breath as if to explain herself. But then she just yawns, smacks her lips with relish, and kisses Ema on the forehead.

Ema is a depository for kisses.

Nena, I whisper, good, good!

If you hear that racket all day long, and then it stops, you wonder: where has the noise gone? Is it coming closer so as to score hits more accurately? Has the ammunition run out? Don't soldiers work in shifts? Or is it all over? In spite of this nocturnal calm I have to sleep on the floor; rule number one is to keep away from the windows, says my mother. I sleep under the coffee table, Mother has stuck a pillow to the bottom of the table above my head, so that I don't hurt myself if I wake and sit up suddenly. She covers me up.

An apartment building, and everyone's sleeping on the floor because you'd be closer to the window on a bed. Everyone watches TV from the floor. There's nothing but news and press conferences and pictures of people in long lines. I learn what “organized resistance” means, who the Territorial Defense are, and what barricades are for.

I close my eyes and hear Grandpa Slavko's voice. In the living room and in the cushion above my head and outside the window. I concentrate on it so hard, trying to make out where the voice is coming from, that I don't understand a word of it. Grandpa has come back to life for the first time since he died, and I've missed out. I haven't a hope of going to sleep now, I get a toothpick from the kitchen and break rule number one: someone is crossing the road junction outside the building with a fridge on his back. It's Radovan Bunda from the fifth floor; he never once puts the fridge down, and goes on along the road into the dark. I lie down under the table again, waiting for Grandpa's voice to come back. By midnight I can shift the toothpick from one corner of my mouth to the other very fast. The next morning my father wakes me.

Here, Aleksandar. Your uncle left you the Wall.

Where's he gone?

Hm.

Uncle Bora, Auntie Typhoon and Ema left the town overnight. No one thought it was a good idea, no one thought it wasn't a good idea, no one stopped them.

If I were a magician who could make things possible, we'd all be as fast on our feet as Auntie Typhoon so that we could avoid every bullet. And the clouds would cling together like cobwebs so that the shells would stick to them. The gunfire would have its own opinion; it could decide whether to fire or not.

I paint a campfire without any smoke. I paint a baked bean casserole without any beans. I paint a sniper's gun without any sniper. I paint a sheet of paper without a crease in it.

My mother is very keen not to forget any more family members today; after the second detonation she hauls me away from the door where I'm listening to Father and Mr. Popović the music teacher. He may be up there now, says Father to Mr. Popović, and what will he do if they order him: shoot, Miki! What will he do then?

He'll refuse, replies the distinguished old gentleman. Miki is a good boy. He'll have made his way to safety long before then. He's a clever lad.

The light in the stairwell flickers when a third explosion comes, one of those cramped, polished items quite close. People run down the corridors to the cellar in their pajamas. Teta Magda serves the coffee on a large tray. She curses roundly and kicks the door of Teta Amela's apartment several times with the toe of her shoe: Amela-a, bring some sugar with you if God gives you luck Amela-a!

Aziz waves us through like a traffic cop, I stop and ask: Čika Aziz, isn't it a bit dangerous, sleeping with a toothpick in your mouth? And as I ask my question I shift my own toothpick from left to right.

After shaving, Aziz doesn't look so much like a soldier.

Strangers at the plywood tables in the cellar. They don't ask if they can stay, which is a good thing, because it seems to me that of course they can. Milica looks after them, talks to everyone, takes off her red high-heeled shoes, is barefoot as she helps them to sort out their baggage.

Zoran says: come on, no, Marija, you can't join in.

With everyone's united strength, the ventilator grating is raised and pushed to one side. Are you scared? Zoran asks. Who'd admit it now? We're already outside, crossing the yard. We stop outside the kiosk in Tito Street. No one in sight. Explosions in the distance.

Hey, not bad, says Zoran, showing us the blonde wearing green camouflage trousers and nothing else on page four. He puts the stone he's used to break the tobacconist's window in his trouser pocket. Tobacconists, watch out when there's a Walrus about!