Mama Leone (9 page)

Grandma had fed the kitten with an eyedropper, had given her a life already lost and taught her things only grandmothers can teach people and cats, had helped her give birth, and then she killed her children. I couldn't understand that; I'll never understand it, even though one day, along with a world and a city that had lost the seasons of the year, I'd get used to living with death and with exile from a life without death.

Ten years later Dad brought a puppy to the house, black and less than a month old.
We'll call him Nero
, said Grandma. For the first few weeks Nero stayed in the house with us, until Schulz, the super, built him a wooden kennel in the yard. By the time he'd grown up Nero
had a split personality: one minute he was a guard dog on a chain in the yard, the next he was a household pet sprawled out on our living-room floor. He was a good dog and a stupid one. Though he liked everyone he'd still bark his head off; he even liked cats, but they didn't like him. The only thing Nero hated was the hedgehog that lived in our garden. He'd go wild when the hedgehog trundled the yard at night, pricking his snout on its quills, his muzzle frothing. Grandma used to say
myohmy, my dummy dear
, and he'd yelp and whine at a world where there were hedgehogs and a dog couldn't live without constant stress. That's what my mother so wisely observed.

The three of us felt pretty guilty the days and nights we left Nero in his kennel, down in the yard. We were actually fine with it when he slept up with us, but for some reason it was unacceptable he switch from being a guard dog to a household pet. I don't know why we didn't want him as a pet, but I fear we gave him a kennel and chain because we thought he was dumb, that it was beneath us to live with an idiot. Or maybe we thought we'd be less tied to Nero if he was farther away. I don't know what it was all about, why we banished him from our daily lives.

Grandma passed away in early June, out in front of his kennel Nero howled the whole night long. At dawn I went down to the yard, it was a full moon, everything lit up. I sat down to give him a hug; faithful, four-legged Nero. My grandma was dead, but I couldn't howl like him; it was as if the dog was sadder than me. Though he lived on a chain,
he'd lost something I could never be conscious of, something I obviously didn't even have, so my loss could never be like his. I took him in my arms, trying to make the sadness mutual, to take on a little of his grief, a little of his goodness, so that I too might be ennobled by this late-night grief and for a moment enter a better heaven, a dog's heaven, where there's no place for people, because such a heaven doesn't have anything to do with God but with friends who die in dogs' eyes.

Six months later, on the coldest day of the year, worried about Nero I hurried home from university. He was still in his kennel because I hadn't let him in to warm himself by the coal stove. No one had looked after the animals or plants since Grandma died.

Nero wasn't out in front of his kennel. He wasn't inside either, nor was his chain. I found him dead, hanging over the neighbor's fence. He was stiff, eyes half open. I lifted him up, a cold, furry object. I tried to close his eyes, but it didn't work. They stayed open. I saw the empty and vacant eyes of death, nothing there, nothing of the world or hope; everything that had once lived there gone, never to return. This is what the eyes of all the dead look like. I didn't ever need to see them again, because every man or woman who had ever lived and now lived no more had Nero's eyes.

It took me three hours to dig a grave in the frozen earth and bury my dog along with his chain.
Why with his chain, like he was a galley slave!
said Mom. She wasn't wrong actually. Nero really was our slave; he appeared at the wrong time, to people who didn't deserve him and
who he couldn't save. Sometimes there really is no hope for us until we've strangled the very last thing we have left, that which will haunt us more than any horror or suffering to come.

That there in the picture, that's a toy box, but when I want it to, it stops being a toy box and turns into a car. I wake up early when all the others are still asleep, wrap a sandwich in a checkered napkin, and write a letter, even though they haven't taught me to write yet. The letter's for them, but they don't have to read it. I'm leaving one because it's the thing to do, because everyone who suddenly goes off somewhere leaves a letter behind. I write how I've had enough of them, that I'm never coming back and that I'm going to a place where there aren't any other people, and I'm going to stay there forever, and be rich, with a real car and a real train, a real pistol and real cowboys and Indians, and Partisans and Germans, who I'll play war against and beat whenever I want, and when something needs rescuing, like when Sava Kova
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saved the high command or when Chief Big Bear sent smoke signals to the world so that stars might fall to the earth, but the Gold River would never fall to the white man. I'm going because they tricked me again, I don't know how, but they tricked me, just like they do every time they know I don't want to go somewhere, and I'm going to cling to the table leg with all my might and scream my head off, and no one's going be able to tear me loose, because I know that wherever they're taking me something's going to hurt like hell, or something else is going happen to make me sorry I ever let go of that table leg. I leave the letter behind for them and on top of it the big key to the cellar. That's my key and they can give it to whoever comes to take my place.

I sit down in the box, there's not much room with all the toys, but I'll manage because I'm big and by myself. I turn the car on and drive off.
Brrmmm, brmmm, mmmmmmm
, I drive far away, and my lips vibrate and go dry. I can't even lick my lips because then the
brrmmm, brmmm, mmmmmmmmm
will stop and the car too, and then they might catch up with me and take me home or turn the car back into a box. Once I'm off and driving I don't stop until lunchtime when Grandma comes to get me and says
c'mon you little moppet, you'll wreck your throat screeching away in that box
. Then my car vanishes, and all the kilometers I've driven too, France, Germany, and America vanish, all the countries I've traveled, the cowboys and Indians vanish, and so does Sava Kova
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and the high command and the Sutjeska canyon, which smells of darkness, menthol candies, and explosives. I'm back in the yard from which I set
off into the world, in the toy box I turned into a car, a car that vanishes the moment someone who can't see it comes along, like Grandma or Mom, because for them a box is always just a box, and nothing ever turns into something else.

What've you been doing?
Mom gives me that look moms give their little boys when they're a bit peculiar but aren't allowed to know they're a bit peculiar. Maybe the look's got a different name, I don't know what it is, but I know when I answer I've got to really be smart to make it go away.
I was playing driving . . . That's nice, and how does playing driving work? . . . You just sit in the car and drive . . . And what's this? . . . It's a letter, I left it for you so you wouldn't get worried . . . And what does it say?
She was looking at the wavy inked lines that looked like the ocean or a doctor's scribble.
How can you ask me that, you're the one who knows how to read, not me. You should know what it says . . . It looks to me like it doesn't say anything, there aren't any words . . . There aren't any words because I was playing. When I'm playing nothing's for real, because I don't have a real car and I don't know how to write . . . Why don't you play with other children? . . . Because they don't know how to play driving
.

Mom gives Grandma a dirty look and I know that tonight, when they think I'm asleep, they're going to spend hours whispering and stinking up the cellar with cigarettes, arguing about whose fault it is and why I spend every morning in a cardboard box, snorting and spluttering like –
ohmygodsorry
– a dimwit. I'm not exactly sure what the word means, but I figure it's really bad to be a dimwit because I've noticed
they only say it when they have that look reserved for little boys who are a bit peculiar.

The photo where I'm in a cardboard box, I mean, in my car, driving to America, was taken by a German guy last summer. Back then I was afraid of having my picture taken. Actually, that wasn't what I was afraid of; I was afraid of injections, and every week they'd trick me into having an injection, so I started pretending I was scared of having my picture taken too. As soon as I spotted someone with a camera I'd burst into tears and run for my life. Put a camera in front of me and I was even prepared to jump into the sea, and I was only three and a half and didn't know how to swim, that's how much I pretended about being scared of having my picture taken. I kept it up for months, and they all tried, Mom, Dad, even Grandpa, until one day this German showed up, because Grandpa used to translate tourist stuff for them, and the German crept into the bushes and hid there until I got into the car, and just as I was about to turn the ignition he jumped out and snapped. I let out a howl but it was already too late.

The German sent the photo from Germany, and Grandma put it in an album to show guests. Some aunties from Sarajevo who I didn't know, but were important and had gray hair as blue as the sea – I didn't get it how something could be gray and blue at the same time – said
uuuu, what a sweet little boy, he could be in a fashion magazine
, and I was so embarrassed that I'd lower my head, shrug my shoulders, and hide my eyes. So they'd see I was a dimwit and leave me in peace. When
they gave me a hug I'd go all floppy like a chicken just come from the butcher's, and let them pinch my cheeks with their thumbs and fore-fingers, all the while their gray heads blue like the sea smelling of pickled paprika, roses, and high fever.

It was hard for me to hit the road after the photo, because it got tougher and tougher to turn the box into a car, because that photo, where it was clear as day that I wasn't in a car but an ordinary cardboard box that used to have little packets of cookies in it, was always in front of me. Photos are like grown-ups because they show everything in a way that can only make you get all worried; in photos everything looks like it'll never change, like it'll never turn into anything else. Nothing is as you imagined and it never will be, the only thing you can be sure of is that in the picture you'll look confused, confused smiley or confused angry, because your eyes see everything differently to how the camera sees it, and now they're there in the photo without all the stuff you've imagined, and the whole world appears exactly as it would if there were no one who played and no one who made anything up, there's just the eyes that once saw other stuff and now are confused because that stuff's not in the photo.

I lie in the dark and can't stop my breathing, I can't sleep, and I can't be here when morning comes. Tomorrow I'm going a long way away and I won't be back. I'm never coming back, and I'll never again look them in the eyes, nobody who knows, not Grandma or Grandpa, not Mom or Dad. It's all finished with them. I said to myself
if only they
were dead
, but I know they won't die and that they'll grab my head and force me to look them in the eyes, and in my eyes they'll look for me, their child, the one they can do anything to if they think it best for him. I don't like them doing what's best for me because everything that's best for me makes me cry and turn into something I don't know the name of, but it looks like a box that turns into a car and then back into a box; I'm that box when they do what's best for me.

In the morning I'll hop into the car and go far away. I'm going to screw my eyes shut tight and then open them and take a good hard look. If it's still a box and not a car I'll set off on foot, taking only the essentials, just the stuff I won't be able to do without when I get where I'm going: my little yellow spade, my teddy bunny, and my winter sweater. Everything else I'm leaving behind for them, for the child they get to take my place and who won't be called Miljenko, because from tomorrow on they're going to cry whenever anybody says Miljenko. I know they're going to cry; they're going to cry like they do when someone dies, but I'm not going to die, I'm simply going to leave. But I'm going forever, and when you go forever it's like you're dead for those who remain.

It all started on a Saturday. Mom and Dad arrived from Sarajevo, and Grandma said
the kid hasn't been on the potty for three days
. Dad raised an eyebrow –
three days?
– and I was already scared, but I pretended I couldn't hear anything and continued building a castle for Queen Forgetful, my heart pounding hard. I thought they were going to grab
me by my hands and legs and cart me off to the hospital or some other place, some big toilet where nurses, paddles in hand, scare little boys into pooping. But nothing happened. Dad gave me a hug and said
my little man
, and Mom said
you're not having any more chocolate 'cause chocolate blocks you up
, giving Grandma another dirty look like she was about to scream at her for stuffing me with chocolate, but Grandma hadn't, and we all well knew that. Grandma says that bananas and chocolate are luxuries and that we should eat spinach and carrots because spinach is good for the blood and carrots for the eyes, but best of all, they're not luxuries. A luxury is something you should be ashamed of because Mom and Dad work from morning until night and we can't indulge in luxuries and eat bananas and chocolate, because Mom and Dad could lose their jobs because of bananas and chocolate, and then we'd die of hunger like those black people because we'd all have to live off Grandpa's pension.