Mama Leone (11 page)

You set a fine example for the boy
, says Grandma to Grandpa as he drops a sardine on the paper. He picks it up between his thumb and forefinger and puts it in his mouth, the fine bones crackling like dry pine needles under the wheels of a truck, a greasy splodge in the shape of a sardine imprinted on the paper. Like a photo! Grandpa has snaffled the sardine, but its outline stays on the newsprint. You can see its length and width, the kind of head it had, and the kind of tail. The piece of newspaper looks like a tombstone with a picture of the deceased, the deceased one in Grandpa's tummy.

It was dead when Grandma was cleaning it. That sardine was dead even when it was in the fish shop. It was dead as soon as they hauled it out of the sea.
What do sardines die from?
I asked.
They die from air, just like we'd die if someone held us under water
, said Grandpa.
That means fishermen throw out their nets to drag fish into the open air so they die? . . . No, they catch fish so we've got something to eat, and we eat only what is dead . . . What about chard, is that dead too? . . . I think it is, but no one really knows because chard doesn't have eyes. At least as far as we know, dead things are things that once upon a time moved their eyes . . . There should be fish that cast out nets for people and drag them into the sea and fry them and eat them . . . Where'd you come up with that nonsense? . . . Then we wouldn't be sorry about eating fish because we'd know fish eat us too. Get it . . . No, I don't. Why would we feel sorry for fish? . . . Because they were alive, and then fishermen caught them in their nets. If the fishermen hadn't caught them, they'd still be alive . . . You can't feel sorry for fish, if you felt sorry for fish, then you'd also have to
feel sorry for chickens, and pigs, and calves, in the end you'd die of hunger . . . I don't care, I'm going to feel sorry for them . . . Suit yourself, feel sorry for them, but you'll soon see you've got nothing to eat
. Grandpa was angry now, so I decided to shut up and eat my sardines. He didn't understand fish, and he wasn't sad when he saw a greasy splodge on the newspaper, a photo of the sardine he'd just eaten. It was because he'd been to war, and in war people learn what it's like to be dead and as long as they themselves don't die, death becomes normal to them. He fought on the So
č
a front as an Austrian soldier, and then the Italians took him prisoner in 1916, and he says he had a great time back then. He was imprisoned for a full three years, he learned Italian and kept a diary about everything that happened, things he wanted to tell someone but didn't have anyone to tell. He wrote the diary in Italian, but using the Cyrillic alphabet because the Italians didn't know Cyrillic and the other prisoners didn't know Italian, so no one could take a peek at his diary and laugh at his secret longings. The diary is kept in Grandpa's drawer and the first of his descendants to know both Cyrillic and Italian will be the first to read it. Grandpa's son, my uncle, and Grandpa's daughter, my mother, don't know Italian, so that means that one day, if I learn Cyrillic and Italian, it could be me. Maybe then I'll find out how soldiers stop caring about fishes' deaths and why they don't care about fish even when they're old and not soldiers anymore, but pensioners who no army in the world would ever send to war.

Tomorrow was Friday. There was only one more day until Saturday.
C'mon, I'll show you something you've never seen before
, said Nikša. We set off for the old camp ground, to the little wooden hut where they used to keep the sun umbrellas, and sat down on old beer crates. Nikša dropped his pants. He didn't have any undies on; he was older than us and everything on him was bigger, the thing he wanted to show us too.
Check this out!
he said and pulled the skin up. I'd never done that, but I was sure it had to hurt. He put the skin back down and pulled it up again; my throat tightened like it did when they used to take me for my vaccinations. He repeated the up-down thing with the skin a few more times,
that's gotta hurt
, I thought. Everyone was silent, waiting to see what might happen next. Nikša said
look, it's getting bigger!
And it really had gotten bigger, but it was big before too.

I was scared and looked over at Zoran and Miro, but they were dead still, staring at the action between Nikša's legs. Nikša breathed faster and faster, and everything on show got redder and redder. I was scared what was going to happen next, actually most of all I was scared because Zoran and Miro were just sitting there watching not worried about a thing. Then I remembered I was an outsider from Sarajevo. I jumped up off the crate and took off outside.

I don't know whether they burst out laughing or yelled that I was a scaredy-cat, I don't know anything, because I just ran and ran and ran and didn't stop until I got home.
What's wrong, speedy, you're covered in sweat
, said Grandma.
I was doing athletics!
I gasped convincingly. She saw me and she saw Dane Korica on his way home from the Munich
Olympics. I was dying of happiness because I'd made it home and had managed to lie like a champion. I lie best when I'm happy.

On Saturday I woke up dead set that I wasn't going to leave the house. I'm not going outside until we go back to Sarajevo. Grandpa had gone to Zaostrog, I'd said I wasn't going with him, Grandma asked
are you sick?
I said
I think I'm sick
, and she said
well, you're not going to Fishermen's Night then
, I said I didn't want to
well, well, you really are sick
, she said, and fetched the thermometer.
You don't have a temperature. Where does it hurt? . . . I don't hurt. I'm just feeling a bit sick and I don't want to go outside . . . Did you get into a fight with someone yesterday? . . . No. Nothing happened yesterday, I just don't want to go outside today, and not tomorrow either . . . Why? Are you going to be sick tomorrow too? . . . If I have to go outside I will be . . . You've decided to never leave the house ever again? . . . I'll go outside as soon as we're back in Sarajevo . . . Did someone say something mean to you? . . . No, but I'm a little bit scared . . . Of what? . . . Of the donkeys that sleep at Profunda . . . Have you been to Profunda?
Grandma shot out.
No, I haven't, and I'm not going to go either, because I'm not leaving the house. Do donkeys really sleep at Profunda? . . . What donkeys? You know there isn't a donkey left in Drvenik . . . Last year there were three, Mijo's, Dušan's, and Stipe Ala
č
a's, that must be them . . . God, where'd you get that from, those donkeys are long gone! . . . Where are they then? . . . They were taken to Makarska. . . What are they doing in Makarska?
Grandma sighed and looked at the ceiling, mumbling something like
ohjesuschristsaveme
and then said
fine then, I'll tell you, but don't you dare start bawling! There's nothing there at
Profunda, it's just a ruin like any other, full of brambles. The donkeys were sent to the slaughterhouse because nobody wanted them anymore
.

I closed my eyes, my heart was really pounding; fine, I'll suck this one up too.
No more questions?
I shook my head.
But I'm not going out until we're in Sarajevo
. Grandma didn't say anything else, but I knew she was thinking that tomorrow I'd change my mind and tear off out of the house. That was what I was most afraid of because I knew there was no way I could tell her that the real reason I can't go out is because something I saw had made me really scared, something others could watch, but I couldn't, and that's why I can't go outside.

Am I a Sarajever?
I followed her into the kitchen.
No, you're a Sarajevan. People from Sarajevo are called Sarajevans . . . Is that good, to be a Sarajevan? . . . It's good to be whatever, it's good to be from wherever . . . Then why do they say I'm a Sarajever? . . . Who says that? . . . Zoran and Nikša . . . They say that because they don't know anything about it and they've never been out of Drvenik . . . And why do they call me a Dalmatian in Sarajevo? . . . For the same reason. Because they've never been out of Sarajevo . . . And why do we always move? . . . Because Grandpa has asthma and has to spend lots of time at the seaside. Besides, it's good to move around because then you're in lots of places at once, the place where you really are and the place where you've come from, and if you don't like it, you could always spend the whole year with your mom in Sarajevo . . . Promise me you won't force me to go outside until we get back to Sarajevo . . . Fine, I promise, but only if you tell me why you don't want to go outside all of a sudden . . . I don't want to because they
keep calling me a Sarajever
, I lied and went to my room. I always leave like that when something is really important, because as soon as I go, Grandma takes everything I've told her more seriously. I threw myself on the bed too, just in case, burying my head in the pillow and waiting to see if she'd come. When she came in, I pretended to be asleep. She pulled the covers over me and crept out.

I slept through Fishermen's Night and the mission to Profunda. Actually I slept right through everything that happened after that, everything I didn't want to see. I spent the whole seven days before we went back to Sarajevo in the house or the yard, playing by myself. One night I ran across the road, to Uncle Postnikov. He got his sketch pad and felt-tip pens out and drew snow, snowy villages and snowy cities. Uncle Postnikov is eighty years old, a Russian who once, a long time ago, fled the revolution.
Why?
I asked him.
Because I was scared
, he said, calmly sketching a reindeer-drawn sleigh with a girl on it wearing a big brown hood, her long blond hair peeking out from underneath.
When you're really scared, you have to run . . . And never go back? . . . I don't know, I couldn't go back . . . Why? . . . Because of those who weren't scared, the ones who stayed . . . I'm never going back either . . . Where are you never going back to?
he asked, surprised.
I'm never going back to the old campground
, I said to Uncle Postnikov.
If it's because you're scared, then we're the same
, he answered, and turned to a new page where the whole of Moscow was to be drawn.

The world is beautiful when it's turned upside down. The sky beneath me means I could walk on it, and the top of our house in Drvenik is pinned to the sky and it's like our house is going to topple over on its side because it's resting on a single tip where the two sides of the roof meet, but the house doesn't topple over, nothing happens, there's just my laughter and wishing it would stay this way forever, that the sky stays forever under the soles of my feet, that I'm tickled by clouds of sheep, that I can walk across the sun like I do across the steamiest August asphalt, that when night falls the stars will prickle me like the sand on the island of Bra
č
, like the shingle where Ismet Brki
ć
is building his weekend house. I want it to stay like this forever. Squealing in delight I scream
no, no, don't let me down
, but Uncle Mom
č
ilo isn't
listening, and the world spins around me a couple more times and then everything is back to normal. The concrete yard is beneath my feet, the sky high above, and our house is sitting like all the other houses, the walls rising up to the roof. There, high in the air, everything gets thinner and smaller, because in this world everything on the ground is wide and everything up high narrow, and that's how it'll stay if I can't get Uncle Mom
č
ilo to grab me by the ankles and hold me upside down, to give me a little joggle so I can see what it's like when sky and earth quake, but nothing collapses, when everything stays anchored and beautiful, and there's no pain that might kill the miracle in your eyes.

Uncle Mom
č
ilo used to be a colonel, but he's been retired from the military twenty years or something. When he retired he was younger than my mom is now. Grandma says it was
because of Ðilas
, and saying it in her hush-hush voice means there's no way I'm to ask what
because of Ðilas
means, because then something might happen to me
because of Ðilas
, or Grandma will get mad because I've put her in a sticky situation.
Because of Ðilas
is my name for a sticky situation, and that's the way it's going to be when I grow up too. When something bad happens, and all I can do is shrug my shoulders in the face of a mountain of trouble and wait to see how things play out, I'll think: Here we go again, it's all
because of Ðilas
. And that'll calm my nerves some, because I'll remember Uncle Mom
č
ilo who was the first to show me how beautiful the sky is when you find yourself upside down.

Uncle Mom
č
ilo built the house next door to ours. His house isn't
an old Dalmatian house, just a regular tourist one.
Zero aesthetics
, says Grandma,
a whiff of the barracks and that's how they build their weekend houses
. I don't understand what she's talking about, and what I don't understand is hard for me to remember. I sit on the floor building a castle for Queen Forgetful and repeat after Grandma
a whiff of the bawacks and that's how they build their weekend houses . . . Oh shut it you, little devil, and don't you go around saying that to people because if I hear you, you'll never set foot in my house again. And it's barracks, not bawacks
. She often does that: says something, and the second I repeat it after her or ask her a question she's already threatening me that I'll never set foot in the house again or that she's going to skin me alive.