Mama Leone (35 page)

I don't believe in God, but I'm sure he's been punishing me for some thirty years or more. When Anđa died, I knew that's what he was doing, and I told him, go on then, do your work, and I'll do mine, but I won't believe in you
.
And when one day I didn't have a son anymore either, I told him, okay then, now you've taken everything from me, but I'm not giving you anything, you do your work, but you're not getting an empty shell from me. And that's how things stand to this day, he's punishing me because I don't believe in anything to do with him, and I'm alive and I've still never asked myself why I'm alive
, said Pehar, completely at ease, as if he was giving his report before taps.

Maybe that's how one manages to live, thought Kosta, reconciled with both his own and Pehar's story.

Željko was almost two when Rajna suddenly got it into her head that the dog needed to learn something. She tried for days. But when she'd say
shake hands
, he'd try to jump into her lap, four legs and all. When she'd say
bring the ball
, he'd lick her on the nose, and on the command
on your mat
, he'd wag his tail and think he was going to get a biscuit.

The dog doesn't know anything
, she said to Pehar that Tuesday when he came by to collect Kosta for their meeting.
Of course he doesn't when no one's taught him
, Pehar replied, clicking his heels, creasing his forehead, and transforming himself into a soldier from a Socialist film journal.

Željko, play dead!
he thundered. Željko put his tail between his legs and his head down and began, as if ashamed and not knowing what to do with himself, to turn in a circle in the middle of the room.
Željko, play dead!
he yelled again, pushing the dog to the floor. The dog looked at him confused, and was then even more confused when Pehar gently
patted him, turned to Rajna, and in a somewhat more restrained command, as if addressing a sergeant in front of a regular soldier, said:
Rajna, biscuit!
Rajna handed him a dog biscuit in the shape of a bone and Pehar gave it to Željko, who was already beside himself with surprise.

That night they skipped the homeowners' association meeting, but Željko had learned the first thing in his life: to play dead and get a biscuit for it.

Rajna and Kosta repeated the
Željko, play dead!
game over and over.

The dog quickly understood that the game gave his masters incredible pleasure. Later, whenever he sensed Rajna was sad or that Kosta had come home from work a bit uptight, he'd lie down of his accord and play dead. He knew it would cheer them up.

It was a Sunday, a week before Christmas, when Rajna's condition deteriorated. The nausea started in her stomach, spread through her body, and settled in her thoughts and head.
Everything's messed up
, she said just before her head slumped over.

Kosta ran to the telephone, the dog paced around the room, out of sorts and whining. The ambulance was there in ten minutes.

In the morning, Kosta was there standing in front of a hospital room holding a plastic bag full of oranges. They didn't let him see Rajna.
She's sleeping now
, said the nurse.
How long's she been asleep
, Kosta asked. The nurse didn't answer him.

The doctor was tall and blond. Like a German in a Partisan film. Except he had sad eyes, and neither Germans nor doctors have sad eyes.

An aneurysm
, he said . . .
She's asleep? . . . No. Your wife's not asleep . . . She's awake?
The doctor shook his head and lowered his gaze.
She's alive? . . . Yes, she's still alive
.

On the way home he didn't know what to do with the oranges. He had to dump them somewhere because he thought someone, some angel, might be betrayed if he should simply carry them in over the threshold. The oranges.

He went into the post office, people were busy filling in their payment forms, he put the bag down on the counter and walked out. He didn't have to run, Kosta was already invisible to them.

He sat in the armchair and smoked. Night fell, and the things in the room disappeared one after the other, but Kosta didn't turn the light on. At the other end of the room sat Željko, watching him. One needs to believe in God, thought Kosta. I'll tell Pehar that tomorrow. He has to believe because he knows God exists. I can't because I don't know that. The cigarette had burned down between his fingers. He tried to pull himself together and decide what to do. To turn on the television, turn on the light, go to the kitchen, to the bathroom, wherever, to give Pehar a call, take Željko to the park, to do something, anything . . . Everything he thought of dissolved before his eyes. He looked at the glow of the cigarette, which had already completely burned down. He stubbed the butt out and started to cry. He knew the telephone would ring any minute now. No one had to tell him that.

Željko came over in near silence, as if every strip of parquet felt the pain of his footsteps, and then at Kosta's feet he collapsed like a dead dog. He looked at his friend out of the corner of his eye, expectantly awaiting a smile. At that moment nothing in the world was more important than his smile.

I'm going to tell you about Lotar. You don't have to remember the story, there's no life wisdom to be had, it'll be of no use to you, you'll never meet such a man and then know how to handle him, I'm telling you about Lotar because of the woman who loved him, she's real, maybe you'll meet her, her or a woman like her, maybe you'll fall in love with her, maybe she'll stay with you for a lifetime, or maybe you'll just pass by her, see her in the supermarket and say
good morning, Gita, how are you, Gita
, but she won't answer, because Gita doesn't answer, Gita is deaf to every greeting.

In those years Lotar was the strongest man in the city. That's what people said, though no one ever really thought about testing it. He lived alone with his mother, Miss Edita, who had a shop where she pleated
skirts. No one knew anything about his father. The story went that he had been a German officer, apparently his name was Otto, and that it had been a great love. He would secretly visit Miss Edita at night and stay until the dawn. No one ever saw him, as their love could only be in the time of the curfew. Otto, so the story goes, didn't want to retreat with the rest of his army in April 1945, so he deserted and hid out in the forests above Sarajevo for two years. Every Saturday and Sunday Miss Edita would go and collect mushrooms, strawberries, raspberries, always returning with an empty basket.
Dear God, you know I only go up there for the fresh air and the scenery
, she told the neighborhood women, but they knew she went because of Otto. Lotar was born in the fall of 1946:
it's a child I wanted, not a husband
, said Miss Edita, and no one ever inquired further. In an exception to the usual ugly custom, the neighborhood kept her secret and no one ever called Lotar a bastard. This was probably because he was an exceptionally placid and quiet child, always bigger and stronger than his classmates, but he never got into fights. It was as if every belligerence in his bloodline had been expended and exhausted before he was born.

One Sunday in the early summer of 1947,Miss Edita took the child into the hills.
He needs to learn from a young age
, she said to old Mrs. Džemidži
ć
, who kissed her and the child:
you just go, sweetie, and hold tight to what you've got while you've got it
. They came back in the early evening. That was the last time Miss Edita went up into the hills, and people said that after that Otto had set off for Austria on foot, and then
on to Germany. He'd waited to see his son, and then he'd gone home forever.

Lotar graduated high school and as a star student enrolled to study medicine, and right when you would have thought that everything in his life was going to be like it was in those stories about happy and healthy children, in his third year of college he met Gita Danon, a pharmacist's daughter, two years older than him. Gita studied a little, but spent most of her time hanging out and breaking men's hearts, all over Sarajevo, drunk and wild, as if she were breaking beer bottles until the morning came to clear her head. But the morning never did come for Gita, nor did she ever tire of her strange game. She would draw a man slowly to her, toy with him until the first kiss, and then she'd push him down the street, letting him roll to the end, to his shame and the horror of others who hadn't yet felt Gita's charms but knew their turn would come and that they too wouldn't be able to resist her. The men would get over Gita after a time, wouldn't mention her for a while, but sooner or later lips that had once tasted her kisses would say Gita was a whore. The only one who never got over Gita, who never spoke an ugly word about her, was Lotar, and both she and this reticence would change him and his life.

I'll wait for you, it doesn't matter how long, but I'll wait for you, and you'll come for me when you finally tire
, he told her after their kiss, and she laughed, she laughed long strolling down Tito Street and on into the night, she laughed so hard the shop windows trembled and women
came to the windows to see why someone was laughing so at this hour and in a world where nothing was that funny, where no one had a belly laugh like Gita, who wasn't from this world in any case, and who not a single woman thought of as competition because she lived a life bestowed with a thousand lovers and a lone kiss, and come tomorrow she might be dead.

Lotar believed Gita would come back to him and that until her return he must defend her honor. In company, if anyone ventured to say something about her, Lotar would always cut in
shut up, I'm here
. And miraculously, everyone did shut up, even though no one really thought Lotar might use his terrifying strength. This is how things went until Gita chewed up Dino Krezo, a hothead and ex-jailbird who had marauded his way around Italy for years, returning to Sarajevo only to show off and spend a bit of money. So anyway, this Krezo was beside himself with rage, and to add insult to injury, someone told him about Lotar, probably warning him in jest about mouthing off about Gita in front of Lotar. Krezo immediately demanded
you're going to show me this guy
and tore over to the medical school. They say he waited two or three hours, which only served to enrage him further, so when Lotar finally came out, Dino Krezo no longer registered the size and kind of man he was talking to but just went up to him, grabbed him by his coat collar, pressing himself up under Lotar's face and saying in the quiet voice of a man who had a pistol tucked in his belt,
fuck you and your fucking Kike whore
.

What happened next is almost not for the telling, but they say Lotar grabbed Krezo by both ears and ripped them off, and the poor bastard collapsed, Lotar smacking his head in as he lay there on the ground. When the police arrived, there was nothing left of Krezo's face. Four cops jumped Lotar, but he tossed them off, walked toward the street, sat down on a low wall, lit a cigarette, and from three or four meters away the cops cocked their pistols, not daring come any closer.
It's all over now
, he said,
I killed a man
. It was then they hurled themselves on him, pounding him viciously with their fists, legs, and the butts of their pistols. Somehow they knew Lotar would never defend himself. Perhaps they had experience with this sort of thing, though I doubt they had ever come across a man like Lotar.

He was sentenced to fifteen years for a “particularly brutal murder.” Lotar sat a whole twelve years in the Zenica prison, just long enough for the city to forget him and for a new generation to appear on the streets, one that would never know anything about him or Dino Krezo. But Gita, no one could forget her. Through the years her beauty and laughter had not diminished in the slightest, nor had she quit driving men crazy with her lone kisses. Her lovers were now some fifteen years younger than her, but nothing had changed, and a man was yet to come along who could resist Gita giving him the eye, nor was there anyone in the whole city smart enough to work out that a story repeated for the hundredth time must always end the same way.

That summer when Lotar got out of prison, Miss Edita Buri
ć
, the
owner of a workshop for pleating skirts, and Mr. Moni Danon, the oldest pharmacist in the city, both died on the same day. Two days later they were buried at the same time in the Bare Cemetery. One procession set off from the Catholic chapel, the other from the Jewish one. Lotar followed behind one coffin, Gita behind the other. The processions marched one beside the other, right up to the fork where the paths leading to the Catholic and Jewish plots veered off. Gita didn't even look at Lotar, but instead of following his mother's coffin, Lotar went after Gita. It was a terrible scandal. The crones in black made the sign of the cross, the priest said extra prayers, the Catholic procession appalled, the Jewish one afraid. Nobody knew what Lotar might do to Gita.

But he didn't do anything to her, just said
hello, Gita
, yet she didn't respond to his greeting, he said
Gita, I'm waiting for you
, and she looked at him as if she was going to smile, he said
Gita, this is forever
, and she took him by the hand and said
sweetheart, that in front of me is forever
, and pointed to the coffin.

After his release from prison Lotar started up his drinking. He drank with discipline and according to a set calendar, every seventh of the month, you could see his father was a Kraut, that's what people in the neighborhood said, and not without respect. This is how it went: Lotar would find some dive and order a liter of rakia, the guests would start making tracks for the door, and Lotar's husky
no
would stop them dead. They'd all fall silent and wait to see what would happen next, you could hear the buzzing of a fly and, every three minutes, the neck of the
bottle touch the glass. Lotar needed exactly fifty-five minutes to drink a liter of rakia, not a minute more, not a minute less. Then he'd order another liter, dutifully pay the waiter and then thunder
everyone out!
and they'd leave all right, the owner and the waiters too, without even a word to Lotar. Fifteen minutes later the police would show up, Lotar would rise to his feet, and say
hit me before I fuck you up, you, Tito, and the Party
, and they'd give him a thrashing, he wouldn't defend himself, and afterward they'd take him down to the station, he'd sleep it off in the pen, and wait again for the seventh of the month. For five years Lotar took a beating once a month, and tongues were already talking about how much longer he could survive, how many more sevenths of the month the police might need to kill him.