How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone (13 page)

Trite symbolism, says Fizo.

I can't really take anything seriously under Tito's one-eyed corpse, in a school that isn't a school anymore, or if so it's only Fizo's school, the school of his resistance, his energy, his power. I'll look up “symbolism” later, but only because the word annoys me. I want to know whether one-eyed people would rather be blind in the left eye or the right eye, I want to know how much blood we really have in us, and I want to know if every shot to the throat is fatal. I want to know how many deaths Tito still has to die.

Nothing in the lab is in its proper place. I stand there.

Krsmanović, calls Fizo, aren't you going to help us?

I don't know how, Comrade Jelenić.

I clean the board with the dry sponge. If I were a magician who could make things possible, then glass could decide for itself whether it broke, and Fizo, who is the strictest teacher in the school, would say: good.

Good, says the soldier with the gold tooth when Edin and I turn into our street with the fishing rods, the fish, and the exercise books from the department store. Perhaps our mothers won't have noticed we were gone, and anyway, we've been to school, that's not a lie. So we just have to get rid of the fish. The first thing we do is hide the rods in the yard.

Good, but what are those fish doing on the roof? asks the soldier as I put the bag with our catch on the roof of the tobacconist's just as he's coming out of the shop, doing up his zipper, bread dough on his hands.

They're for the cat, says Edin. A dead loss for humans.

Right, says the soldier, a dead loss, everything's a dead loss, all battles are a dead loss, all my poor corns are a dead loss if I don't find my Emina. Do you two know Emina? Amela isn't my Emina.

I remember Great-Grandpa's song at the harvest festival, I remember vain Emina and her hyacinthine hair. The soldier sits down on the pavement beside a sparse-haired man who wears a flowing white garment. The man's hands are inside a black top hat up to the wrists, and he's fidgeting nervously with it. It's only by his top hat that I recognize the man, his face is so swollen, and he's sitting there so bent over. It's Musa Hasanagic, but where's his mare, Cauliflower?

Please, Musa begs the soldier, please tell me what will happen to her!

I feel sorry for horses, says the soldier, licking his cigarette paper, now which war has been the worst for horses? Which war is this one? Nineteen-fourteen, nineteen forty-two, nineteen ninety-two . . . once it was horses that died like flies. Now humans are dying like that, but the horses have forgotten how to be free.

Edin digs his elbow into my ribs: let's go! But I can't move, I can't leave while the soldier is talking in that tone, telling stories in that tone. He puts Musa's hat on Musa's head and pushes the cigarette between Musa's lips. He takes a loaf from his rucksack and breaks off large chunks, feeds the old man. Amela's bread. Musa chews toothlessly; handcuffs rattle on his hands.

I've tumbled many girls, says the soldier, and I left only one of them unkissed: my Emina. How she'd eat cherries from my hand! How she'd tickle my wrist with her chin! The soldier bows his head awkwardly and scrapes dough out from under his nails.

Emina escaped you! She escaped you! cries Musa, and his eyes are shining.

There you are, there you are! My mother runs to meet me as Edin and I come into the yard. Listen, Aleksandar, we're leaving. Pack your things. Hurry. A couple of days and we'll be out.

The stairwell's almost empty. Čika Milomir is sweeping the corridor, smoking, dropping ash and sweeping it away again.

The doors of most of the apartments are open; our neighbors are clearing up in silence. There's glass everywhere.

Granny Katarina is standing at the open window. Granny?

Edin and I go and stand beside her. Granny?

Four bearded soldiers are trying to throw a horse off the bridge and into the river. They are leading it by the reins. The horse and the soldiers look down into the river over the railings of the bridge. The soldiers are pushing hard. The horse stands there. It's not going to clamber over the railings by itself. I'm sick and tired of this obstinate nag, shouts one of the bearded men like someone who's hard of hearing, and he holds his pistol to the white blaze on the horse's forehead. The soldiers smoke. The soldiers pat the horse's nostrils. The soldiers lead the horse off the bridge and back to the bank.

Oh, just shoot it for Christ's sake!, a soldier with sunglasses calls to them. He's playing with a Gameboy on his tank, which is wet after the rain.

You shoot horses when they can't work anymore, cries the man with the reins in his hand, leading the horse into deeper water, we want to see it drown.

Cauliflower likes to eat cauliflower, says Granny. Wherever else would you hear of a horse with a name like that?

Musa Hasanagić used to wear the top hat when he trained his mare Cauliflower. Edin and I often watched. The gramophone played
Boléro
and the mare would walk around in time to the music, trotting with her head held high. Half-pass! cried Musa, tapping his top hat. Passage, he cried. He clicked his fingers, and Cauliflower would turn around on the spot.

A shot rings out, the horse shies, Granny jumps. Oh, if my Slavko had seen this, she whispers behind her hand, his heart wouldn't have stopped, it would have broken into ten thousand pieces.

The soldier with dough on his hands is walking slowly across the street, Musa's top hat on his head, carrying the bag with our fish in it. I press my face into Granny's side. She ought to send Edin and me away from the window, she ought to close the window. She whispers: Cauliflower, what an ugly name for such a beautiful creature.

The beautiful creature shies, the beautiful creature bucks, the beautiful creature kicks out at the soldiers with her forelegs, the beautiful creature tears free, the beautiful creature races through the water toward the bank. Three bearded soldiers are standing on the bank smoking, look-no-hands, their guns raised to fire.

Trembling, I step back from the window and put my hands over my ears. I stumble backward out of the room, I pack my rucksack. Edin helps, silent and serious. I quickly get three last pictures of unfinished things down on paper and hide them behind Granny Katarina's wardrobe with the rest—ninety-nine in all. Pictures of Emina far away from the soldier with the gold tooth. Of Cauliflower galloping off, no fences in sight. Of pistols that were never loaded.

I meet my father in the stairwell, he's racing upstairs, nods to me as if he were a mere acquaintance. There are damp patches under his arms. I call Asija's name on every floor, but get no answer. I stuff my things into the heap on the backseat of our heavily laden Yugo, which now looks like the other cars that have given up on Višegrad these last few days. Nena, do you have enough air back there? Nena Fatima smiles at me, and the bag with my painting things falls into her lap. I want to take my soccer ball. Mother shakes her head, so I pass it to Edin. Father and Granny come out of the building. Granny, in tears, kisses her women neighbors, they're in tears too, then stops in front of one of the soldiers on guard. She looks him up and down, she stands on tiptoe to hiss something into his ear. The soldier gives a nasty grin and shrugs. Granny squeezes herself into the backseat beside Nena Fatima.

Edin has stopped the ball with the sole of his foot. He takes a piece of chalk out of his trouser pocket and twirls it in his fingers. He jiggles up and down on the bent garage door that a tank smashed yesterday when it was trying to park. A soldier climbed out, examined the damage, cursing, wiped his sleeve over the metalwork and drove away. The door fell off its hinges and the little panes in it broke. Edin imitates the sound of the door breaking and stirs the fragments with the toe of his shoe. One way or another, he says, the whole town is breaking up into splinters. Are you going now too?

Only for a little while, I say, and I have to swallow.

So we never will cross the bridge again together. I bet you, he calls, already waving, there won't be another flood this year. It can't come, he shouts, there can't be one, not another flood, he weeps, how could there be? A town without its people or its bridges, bridges with us standing on them to feed fish with our spit, how could there be? he says—or perhaps he says it, because I can't hear him anymore. I look in the rearview mirror and I can see him drawing the goalposts with his chalk, the crossbar so high that he has to give his hand a good shaking three times. He sends the ball flying, top left, stops the ball in midturn, a bouncing ball, going halfway up to the right—every shot a goal, until rain washes the chalk away.

Emina carried through her village in my arms

I carried Emina through her village in my arms, says the soldier with gold in his mouth and dough on his hands, I carried Emina's weight from house to house, gravely and saying little. Her arms around my neck so that she wouldn't fall. Kicking wardrobe doors open with my boots, looking at thousands of dresses, touching hundreds of fabrics, until at last I found the right one for my Emina in a chest made of the darkest cherrywood. Softer than silk, white as snow for Emina's white skin and her black hair. I carried that wonderfully beautiful material and my wonderfully beautiful gypsy girl to the village square. My comrades gave the thirsty villagers water and herded them into the trucks.

What are you doing? I shouted to my companions. You can't take them yet! I need a dressmaker, I need someone to play music for me and my bride! I sang the song, and the company, all in chorus, agreed that I was right. I told dressmakers to feel the material, holding the end of it well above the ground; no dirt was to get on it except the dirt of these hands of mine. I told musicians to rescue their instruments from the flames: who's lighting fires now? We're going to have a wedding here at first light! Are you the accordionist, old man, is it your fast fingers they all talk about? Dressmaker, can you make this material into a dress for Emina, a finer dress that anyone ever wore? Old man, good dressmaker, do you want to save your lives?

Just let my daughter and my grandson live, begged the old man. Just let my sister and her little ones live, whispered the dressmaker, and she kissed the white fabric. The trucks drove away, and as soon as they had left the village the guns began chattering.

Why all that shooting? I cried when my comrades came back five minutes later, hitting the driver's ear with the flat of my hand, don't do that again! Don't you ever do that again! Drive them farther into the forest!

You crazy idiot, said the driver flatteringly, hitting me back, get your gun, you idiot! We're under attack! And then there's shooting and standing firm and securing the bridge and ten on our flank and get away from the flames and there's the radio operator and where are the heavy machine guns and Vladimir cries no and runs and Mayday Mayday Eagle please come in we're under fire there's explosions and Vladimir and Dule on the ground with Vladimir twitching and get back and stay close together men get back and there are hits and rubble and blood trickling through fingers just leave him there—don't leave me here—we retreat and when night falls and the battle's over I call Emina's name into the dark and there's no answer. Has she taken the dress material with her? Is she wandering through the burning countryside with the dressmaker and the old musician? We abandoned the village and I've been looking for my Emina ever since. I can never rest.

The soldier picked dry bread dough off his fingers. He sat there with his wet, bare torso beside old Musa, playing with Musa's handcuffs. Emina, Emina, he whispered, Emina.

26 April 1992

Dear Asija,

If my Grandpa Slavko were still alive, I'd ask him what we ought to be most ashamed of now.

I'm writing to you because I couldn't find you, I was ashamed of the earth itself for carrying the tanks that came to meet us on the road to Belgrade. My father hooted at every tank, every jeep and every truck. If you don't hoot, they stop you.

They did stop us at the Serbian border. A soldier with a crooked nose asked if we had any weapons in the car. Father said: yes, gasoline and matches. The two of them laughed and we were allowed to drive on. I didn't see what was so funny about that, and my mother said: I'm the weapon they're looking for. I asked: why are we driving into the enemy's arms? and then I had to promise not to ask any more questions for the next ten years.

We got away, Asija, and our acquaintances in Belgrade embraced us, first as if we were oak trees, then as if we were the most fragile glass, and I hope all of you in Višegrad can get away and be hugged too.

Višegrad was on the TV first but the people who are defenders on our TV at home are the aggressors here, and the town didn't fall, it was liberated, because a madman and not a hero was trying to blow up the dam.

Nena Fatima cast the beans for Granny Katarina, and read Granny Katarina's future from them without words.

I asked my deaf-mute granny what she really wants. Nena took no notice of me. I said: not telling me now could mean traumas for me with far-reaching consequences later. When Mother asked me where I got that from I told her: no idea.

Asija, can you read the beans?

Granny Katarina wants to go back to her home and her friends in Višegrad. Father didn't try to persuade her not to, Mother shouted when she heard that Father was keeping quiet about it.

Father wants to keep quiet about it.

Mother wants to shout.

I wonder what Uncle Miki wants. No one knows where he is.

I want to listen to a story from another world or another time, but everyone just keeps talking about now and asking: now what? If I were to tell a story of this time and this world, after I'd told it, I'd have to promise never to do such a thing again for the next ten years. It would begin like this: The mothers have only just called us, in a whisper, to come for supper when soldiers storm the building, asking what's on the menu; they sit down beside us at the plywood tables in the cellars.

I don't have to invent anything to tell a story of another world and another time.

Tonight I heard Mother sighing in her sleep, she woke up with congealed blood under her nose. There are problems with the neighbors because we're living so close to them and they don't like us living close. If they'd been given the gift of a war too, they'd have shot us at once. Religion is not the opium of the people but their downfall. So Father says, anyway. A boy in the street called me a bastard. My Serbian blood was contaminated by my Bosniak mother, he said. I didn't know whether to hit him for that or be defiant and proud. I was neither defiant nor proud, and I was the one who got hit.

I'm sending you a picture with this, Asija. It's you in the picture. I'm afraid I can't get any paint as beautiful as the color of your hair, so you may not recognize yourself. It's my last picture of something unfinished. It's unfinished because you're alone in it. I used to like unfinished things.

With love, from

Aleksandar