How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone (18 page)

Sas'a Stanis'ic;

Why Čika Hasan and Čika Sead are inseparable, and what even those who know most about catfish can't count on

Čika Hasan and Čika Sead don't go fishing for fun, they don't go fishing because they enjoy a struggle against the fish, they don't go fishing because they want peace and quiet, they don't go fishing because you can't have bad thoughts while you're fishing in the Drina. Hasan goes fishing because he wants to catch more fish than Sead, and Sead goes fishing because he wants to catch more fish than Hasan. I'm the one who goes fishing for those other reasons, also because I like fried fish, but all the same I catch more than the two of them put together.

When Hasan first gave blood after his wife's death in an accident, Sead did the same a few days later. And so it went on. Recently Hasan was letting everyone know that he was way ahead of his friend: he'd chalked up one hundred and forty-four pints of blood to Sead's ninety-three.

I stand by the bridge fishing for catfish with leeches. In the early summer heat the path taken by Hasan and Sead on their way from the bridge to me is one long argument. I don't hear exactly what the two of them are arguing about, but judging by their vigorous gestures and the scraps of conversation I catch, the subjects are life, death and cucumber salad. Nice clear water, Aleksandar!

They interrupt their quarreling to set up shop: a three-legged stool and a four-legged stool, a white tackle box and a black tackle box, grasshoppers and worms. As soon as their floats are in the water they start accusing each other of casting them out too close. Even the daftest Danube salmon is not going to believe in grasshoppers and worms who go for a swim together, says Hasan, shaking his head.

Normally sounds other than those made by the river itself bother me when I'm fishing, but I can listen to those two carrying on; they're funny, they need a referee, so I have to keep laughing and I'm always being asked to adjudicate, which I don't mind at all. I never decide it's a draw. That would probably make them shut up and do nothing but fish, and neither they nor I nor the fish fancy that idea.

And just as I'm being asked whether I agree with Sead, who says vegetarians are useless, or with Hasan, who says oh, they're not that bad and anyway, you never get a fish without bones or a human being without faults, my float is tugged so violently under the surface that I pull hard without thinking about it. The float doesn't come up again, the resistance is strong, the line stretches taut, and Hasan cries: oh, it's a great big 'un . . . He realizes I can't stand up to such a strong tug in the opposite direction, I'm being pulled along and slipping into the water, clutching my rod as it arches over. Sead grabs clumsily for the rod; his glasses fly off his nose and land in the river. He immediately lets go and plunges his arms in the water, groping for them. I finally give the frantic monster fish more line, more room. You can swim a little longer, just a little longer, but soon I'll get my breath back, my beauty.

A fish is always bigger in a story than it is in the hands of the angler telling his story, says Grandpa Slavko, interrupting my tale.

My fish is a catfish and it is exactly as big now as it was on the hook, I say, going back to the story just as Grandpa has taught me. We know it's a catfish when it shows itself above the water for the first time fifteen minutes later, a beautiful catfish, at least six and a half feet long! And as strong as a Hasan and an Aleksandar put together, or a Sead and an Aleksandar, but never as strong as a Hasan and a Sead—that won't do because it would lead straight to a quarrel in which the fishing rod and line would be forgotten.

Half an hour later I still haven't got the catfish, but the catfish hasn't got me either, and Sead hasn't got his glasses. The fish has tired us out, instead of the other way around—as soon as we get him closer to the bank he lashes his mighty tail, he tugs at the line to the right and to the left, like a dog, dives down suddenly so that the rod bends dangerously and the line is about to snap. Sead is more and more silent now and suggests giving up. Hasan is more and more talkative, and now that Sead wants to give up he takes off his shirt and trousers, does five knee bends, and jumps into the river. The sun is high in the sky, it's hot, Hasan comes up. Now then, give it all you've got, boy, we'll get him yet!

I reel in the line until I can feel the weight, the catfish feels mine, he pulls left, you won't do it this time, I pull against the fish, how it must hurt him! You won't do it this time, thinks the catfish again, swimming strongly right into the current, I take two steps forward, brace my foot against a stone. Sead leaps to my aid. Don't do that, I say, hauling on the rod until it traces a letter
C
in the air, this is personal now—he deserves it, I groan. Striking out powerfully with his arms, Hasan comes closer to the place where the line emerges from the river. My arms are quivering, the rod is quivering; every time I turn the reel I wait for the ratcheting sound. I feel my heart racing, I don't let the fish gain an inch. As if signaling the last round, the catfish flings himself out of the river. With the light scars on his smooth black back, with the height of his leaps, with his yellow, challenging eyes he declares: I have a scholar's beauty, and this isn't the only fight I'll have won. He is counting on knowing me and all my tricks, but he hasn't reckoned on that crazy couple from Višegrad. With the last of my strength I keep him at the surface, everything's about to break, the rod, the line, my arms. Hasan dives down, and with him the river dives into a great silence.

Nothing to be seen. No Hasan, no catfish. The line loses tension, traces a curve on the surface. It's over, I think, he's gone. But suddenly the catfish swerves, pulls on the line again, braces himself against me, takes me by surprise—I don't let go, I fall, I cut my head open, the handle of the reel slips away from me, there's blood dripping from my chin, and in the river, in the cold Drina not far from the bank, Hasan and the catfish are wrestling on the surface, the pair of them striking out and splashing and swirling and writhing. As I lie there I snatch up my rod, I'm pulled into the river on my belly, Sead grabs my legs, urges me on. Now, get him out of there, boy! I go on reeling in the line underwater, there's only weight on it now, nothing's pulling the hook the other way, Sead gets me up on the bank, and before our eyes, what little hair Hasan has left emerges from the water first, then his face covered with waterweed, and then finally, in his embrace, the catfish. The catfish with whiskers, and with Sead's horn-rimmed glasses on its nose.

I lie there laughing, laughing and bleeding, Hasan laughs and spits out water and mud. Got me right down to the bottom, he says. Sead laughs loudest of all: O learned scholar! Those glasses suit you much better than me. He wipes the catfish's glasses clean. I put my hand on the fish's big, cool head, I stroke the tired scholar's back and long ventral fin, I wonder what I could keep to remember him by—he doesn't have scales and he hasn't brought any memento with him.

Do we let him go? I ask.

And for the first time ever Hasan and Sead agree.

So what did you keep of him? Grandpa asks.

I kept that day, I say, looking at him.

How the game of chess relates to world politics, why Grandpa Slavko knows revolutions may come tomorrow, and how things can sometimes be so difficult to say

Grandpa Slavko and I start by pushing some sleeping cows over, then we play chess on one of the fallen cows until the queen strikes the king sharply and runs away with the black pawn on a white knight to Bulgaria, home of the black knight on the Black Sea. So much black and white!

That is because of the way Propaganda paints everything black and white in international politics. Checkmate! says Grandpa, and he opens a newspaper that will be printed in thirty years' time. Meanwhile I'm helping Great-Granny with an oak tree. She carries the oak tree on her shoulders and makes oak broth. Soil drops off the roots. I plant minced-meat plums among it.

Is Propaganda a painter on the side, then? I call from the river Drina as I wrestle with a catfish. The catfish has whiskers and a pair of glasses, and Grandpa says: Propaganda is the name of a teller of fairy tales.

Aleksandar, why do you keep talking to the Drina? Grandpa puts on Johann Sebastian's wig and looks at the sports section to check where Red Star stands at the top of the league championship.

I whisper it to him and kiss his hair, as if he were the grandson. Grandpa smells of crossword puzzles on fresh newsprint, he hands me a carton of Stela ice cream.

Sheep aren't really clouds that have fallen to earth, I say, and I introduce Grandpa to the voice of the Drina. Its voice is so cold, flowing from my hand, that Grandpa and I swim indoors and make up a bed with Turkisms:
jastuk, jorgan,
[
ar
š
af
—pillows, blanket, sheets. The Turks brought us their language, says Grandpa, waving to Marica Popović as she flies past the window, and when people are together a great deal, the time comes when they begin to talk like each other.

People say I talk like my Grandpa. There couldn't be a greater compliment.

Tonsils are the worst kind of physical propaganda! I lie down in the freshly made bed and cough. I have tonsillitis and spread spit over my face so people will think it's more tears than anyone has ever shed before, then they won't give me penicillin injections.

Vinegar and potato compresses really do lower my temperature. Grandpa brings me mandarins and minced meat with plums in bed, and explains: your fever is hungry, it's walking down to your calves.

Walrus says: the only compresses that really work are schnapps compresses on the feet, but you're too young for that. Nothing's worse than getting drunk through the soles of your feet.

Get dressed, we're off, Father tells me.

Artists have the most uncompromising sort of profession on the side.

On our way to the hospital we stop at the bridge, because Ivo Andric is trying to jump the river Drina on a horse. All Višegrad is there, dancing. Auntie Typhoon and Carl Lewis run a race across the bridge to open the program. Andric the Nobel Prize winner gives the horse some wine as they come running up.

I never tire of watching Grandpa shave. I hold on to the washbasin and get goose bumps on my head, Grandpa and I are standing so still.

There are hoofbeats on the asphalt, and Ivo Andrić takes off.

Do you think he'll make it? Grandpa asks, and he picks Granny flowers for three days running.

Hard to say.

The promise a dam must keep,what the most beautiful language in theworld sounds like, and how often aheart must beat to beat shame

Francesco rented a room from old Mirela and moved in opposite, and old Mirela unpacked her dusty makeup, saw that the powder was crumbly and the lipstick no use anymore, bought herself new makeup that very same day, and fiddled around with the tomatoes in her garden, her cheeks all rosy. You could get a good view into Francesco's room from the garden. On warm summer evenings Francesco would sit on the veranda, armed with a gigantic pair of compasses as he pored over plans of our dam; he wore an undershirt, and from the garden you had a good view of the veranda too. The women in our street and later of the whole town dropped by to help old Mirela with the grass, the carrots, the cucumbers and the cherry tree. The transformation of that little patch of gray-green ground within six months was a botanical miracle. Edin and I called Mirela's garden a jungle, and Edin swore he'd seen a golden horned viper sitting on a pumpkin there. My mother peered out from behind the net curtains before she went to work because Francesco did pull-ups on the cherry tree in Mirela's garden before he went to work. The cherries and my mother's cheeks bloomed as seldom before, so I decided either to make friends with Francesco or chase him away.

One evening I stood by the fence and stared at Francesco's back so hard that my gaze climbed up his backbone all the way into his head, and Francesco had to look around. I didn't understand him, he didn't understand me. I pointed to the ball and then to him, and said: Dino Zoff. It was a simple bet: if Francesco kept out at least three of my five shots he could stay. If he kept out two or only one I'd have to burn his plans and bury his compasses and his undershirt among the strawberries in the garden, and then put frogs, pigeons and cats in his room—I'd have no problem with any of that. But if he let a single shot at goal through on purpose, then I'd tell our butcher Mislav Sakic, also known as Massacre, that his wife had been wearing a scanty summer dress under the cherry tree recently, and playing about with her hair, and laughing a lot before she said good-bye to Francesco's undershirt.

So Francesco and I became friends. The tireless gardening ladies and the sweet cake-baking ladies weren't interested in weaning Francesco off Italian—far from it—so I taught him some words that very first evening, after he'd easily kept all my shots out. He could already say “My name is” and “I am an engineer on the dam” and “no thank you, I really couldn't eat another thing.” I opened his dictionary and pointed to the words for “marriage,” “a bit,” “baroque” and “eyebrow.” Then I pointed to my ears and said: sympatico, which wasn't a lie and sounded Italian. Francesco repeated after me: I. Am. A bit. Married. But. My wife. Doesn't. Have. Anything. Like. Such. Baroque. Eyebrows. Or. Such. Sympatico. Big. Ears. As. You.

You say that, I told Francesco, if you like the look of a woman —I pointed to my eyes and sculpted the figure of a woman with a broad behind in the air, the way men do when they've eaten a lot of smoked meat. And you must tell my mother and any ugly women: I am very much married although you are extremely friendly. After all, I hadn't come to Francesco's veranda to drink lemonade—there was family business to be done. When old Mirela brought us homemade cherry cake on the veranda, Francesco said to her: although extremely friendly. He had understood it all. After she had gone he pointed to the words “ugly,” “woman” and “no” in his dictionary, then to “man,” “boy” and “‘not,” and finally to his eye and the word “learn.” Francesco couldn't just build dams, he was Comrade in Chief of love.

After that evening I often went to see him. The dictionary lay on the table between us, Francesco drew, I did my homework, drank lemonade or read the
Encyclopedia of World Music.
Francesco explained that Italy was a boot. I painted a sandal half-standing in the Adriatic and gave it to him. My first sentences in Italian went like this:
Bella sinjorina! Mi kjamo Alessandro. Posso
offrirti una limonata?
I said that to Edin, putting my hand on my heart. Edin looked at me as if I were an opera singer or a Japanese tourist in Višegrad and went away without a word, slowly, shaking his head a great deal. I'm only rehearsing for Jasna, I called after him.

I tried to explain to Francesco that Italians and Yugoslavians were more than just neighbors, because people who share something beautiful like a sea, and something dreadful like a Second World War, ought to sing together more. I don't know if he understood, at the word “Mussolini” he cried: nonono! I liked the way he ran his pencil along the ruler with great concentration, I liked to see the thin lines he closed up into rectangles, or how he could feed numbers into his pocket calculator for hours, murmuring under his breath “
kvatro
” or “
c
inkve
” or “
c
entomila
.” I liked the “
mila
” part best, and said: there, you see, Francesco, the sea, the war and we have the word “
mila
” too!

The rains came in the middle of August. Short, violent and predictable, even the grasshoppers didn't sound surprised when raindrops drummed down on the veranda roof. We were quiet even though we talked a lot—our voice was the pages of the dictionary, we pointed to the words and formed sentences with gaps in them all the way to Italy.

And there were evenings when we didn't say anything in either our own voices or the voice of the dictionary. On one of these evenings I wrote Grandpa Slavko a long letter applying for the post in the Party of Magician Who Could Make Things Possible. I attached a list of the possibilities that still had to be magicked into existence. Francesco drank wine and drew on his plans. He always sniffed the wine before putting the glass to his lips, and when he had finished work he massaged his temples, which made me feel tired and content.

Another time Francesco took me out to a meadow on the Drina, unpacked some shining silver balls from a black leather bag and began throwing them around.
Bo
c
a,
he said. He taught me the rules and told me you said
bo
c
a
but you wrote it “
boccia
.” I tried to explain that we Yugoslavians saved whenever we could, and two letter
c
's side by side was one
c
too many. Next evening Walrus played too, and a week later there were six of us, then eight. Francesco polished the balls, and Massacre the butcher said things like “
pallino
” and “
volo
.” If Francesco had had more than sixteen balls the whole town would soon have been playing
boccia
. I always played, that was what Francesco had decided, and once I didn't even come in last by so very much.

I put Nivea cream on my hair so that it would be arranged in the same gleaming way as Francesco's, and I learned the names of the Italian national soccer team by heart. He was still keeping out all my penalty shots. Italian music was slow and the singers did a lot of suffering. I discovered that not all Italians have black hair, and I let Francesco know that not all Yugoslavians like
börek
. Francesco never smelled of sweat or detergent but always of the same lemony perfume. When I was as old as Francesco, I decided, I wanted to wear shirts with an alligator on them too, and shoes that were always shiny; I wanted to smell of lemon from a world where every word ends in
i
. And one evening Čika Sefer, a small, elegant man in a suit who was deputy Comrade in Chief of the dam, or something like that, visited us at home and said that Francesco loved men. I switched off the TV. Everything was different now, and the difference had something to do with Francesco. I listened to Čika Sefer and didn't understand. Čika Sefer was keen on something that he called propriety and something else that he called the climate of work. And that, he said, is really not right or proper. Čika was amused by Francesco's tidy hair, and my mother echoed Čika Sefer: it really isn't right or proper, she said; I'd never have thought of such a thing.

What was “such a thing” and what would “never have been thought of ” in the rocking chair where Francesco sat to read old Italian newspapers? What was “such a thing” and what would “never have been thought of” in our street, where my mother stood with the other women who lived nearby the next day, casting surreptitious glances at Francesco's veranda? Just what would she “never have thought of”?

Soon everyone was whispering about Francesco, not only the women. That kind of thing was sick, said people, shaking their heads, and I discovered that there is love and love, and not every kind of love is good. Francesco went on going to work punctually with his hair combed back, he understood all this even less than I did, or else he didn't mind, and it made me furious. He read something from his newspaper aloud to me, in a good humor, and brooded as usual over his silly plans, even after he found the scratch on his car door one morning, a scratch that looked to be both intentional and the work of a wrench. Only Walrus still played
boccia
with us now. The other men sat on the benches on the riverbank, eating pumpkin seeds and looking at the river.

I was furious because I didn't have to protect my mother from Francesco's undershirt anymore; instead my mother told my father that I had to be protected from the Italian—look at the way they talk together. I was furious because our dictionary didn't know the words for “I would never have thought of such a thing.”

A week after Čika Sefer's visit I was sitting on the veranda with Francesco. There was no lemonade and the cake had been baked the day before yesterday. I coughed, I sat down in the rocking chair in the corner, then at the table again, then on the veranda steps. I pulled up grass and rubbed it between the palms of my hands, and I shrugged my shoulders when Francesco pointed to “what” and “happened” in his dictionary.
Ke kose
su
c
esso,
Alessandro?

I leafed through the dictionary to “I'm sorry.”

Old Mirela came out on the veranda kneading a checked tea cloth in her hands and asked me to translate for her: Francesco was to move out next week at the latest, she said. I shrugged and strung a few Italian-sounding syllables together. Confused, Francesco asked again:
ke kose su
ć
esso?

I said:
su
ć
esso kvatromila
much, and to Mirela I said: he would like to stay for two weeks and then he's going anyway.

Mirela thought about it. But not a day longer, she said, taking away her lemonade carafe, her cake tin, and her coffee service. As she went out she whispered to me: it's late, you ought to be home by now.

My fury had turned into something with a muzzle and fangs and claws, and it was stuck in my throat, rocking back and forth.

Francesco had written down the date when he was leaving for me on one of our nicest evenings on the veranda, when nothing had
su
c
esso
yet; he had shown me photos, including one of the badly built tower. I put my finger on it and asked:
tu
. . . engineer? and we laughed.

Pisa, said Francesco, my Višegrad! Several black-and-white pictures showed a particularly large dam. Francesco turned serious and pointed to the lake: Lago di Vajont. The dam rose to an alarming height in the sky. I knew that in my next dream about falling I'd be up there on it. Francesco narrowed his eyes and leafed on—to a village under water. Then he went back to the gigantic dam with gigantic amounts of water foaming over it, water that must have hit the village and its people. Francesco tapped the dam and said:
mio papà.

On the evening when old Mirela gave Francesco notice to leave I slipped away from the veranda without an
arrivederci.
I sat down in front of the bookshelf and read
Das Kapital
. But I wasn't really reading. I thought of Francesco's lemon scent, I thought of lemonade and the summer wind in the garden humming with insects, and the night when Francesco had pointed to that slice of bread hanging in the sky between the branches of the cherry tree and said:
la luna è molto bella!

I lay flat on the floor so as to disappear.

There are no ugly women, only men who never learned to look at women properly when they were boys, Francesco had tried to explain to me that first evening. There was nothing in any encyclopedia about men loving men. In the school yard we called the weakest, palest boys “queer,” but that was all. I'd call people I hated the same in a fight, except that I hated being thumped even more than calling people names, so it never happened. The next morning I waited until Francesco went to work and then climbed the fence into Mirela's garden. Francesco's drawing instruments were lying on the veranda table. I weighed the compasses in my hand; the metal was cool. I dug a hole.

I didn't visit Francesco anymore, and I avoided going out into the street when he was sitting on the veranda. I was ashamed of myself. Shame has a heartbeat of its own. Everything people said about Francesco and everything I thought made the heart of my shame beat louder.

After a week Francesco rang our bell. He'd never done that before. I was in my room. Father came out of his studio and opened the door to him. I listened with my door just a crack open, my ears and my whole head felt colored, and no color weighs you down as heavily as red. Alessandro,
kal
c
io?
Francesco asked, and my father said: no, no.

On the day he was leaving, Francesco leaned on the fence with his foot on the ball. He was waiting for me to get back from school, waiting for a last penalty shoot-out. I had turned into the street, seen him, and hidden. Like a thief, I pressed close to the wall of a building and went the long way home through the plum orchards. I peered out of the kitchen window: schoolkids were running past Francesco, ciao Francesco! they called, he passed them the ball, laughing: ciao
ragazzi
! I went to my room and went on with the list of possibilities to be magicked into existence. There was a ring at the door. Mother called my name. I thought something was being stolen from me. I didn't reply.