How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone (24 page)

The Serbian goalie had driven tears to Meho's eyes with his first shot and two bullets into his back with two more shots. The first shot was meant for Dino Zoff, but it had missed him by a few inches and hit one of the spruce-tree goalposts. The goalie had fired too soon, the noise took General Mikado's mind off his run-up, his penalty shot crashed into the right-hand spruce tree, and the ball rebounded straight into the arms of the motionless Dino Zoff. He looked incredulously from one dismayed marksman to the other, then from one goalpost to the other, and last of all to the abandoned goal at the far end of the pitch. Then he kicked the ball with all his might.

Well, hurricanes fuck me! Meho would have greeted the lurching trajectory of the ball that scored this goal with those or similar words. It may even be that the same gust of wind that first dried his tears also gave Dino Zoff 's shot the impetus it needed to end up in the Serbian goal. General Mikado froze rigid amid the cheering of the Territorials, clearly not sure what to do next.

Our ball! Goal kick! he said. No one heard him, so loud were the jubilations over the three-four score. Goal kick, that wasn't a goal! He whistled through his fingers, but only when the Serbian goalkeeper's second two bullets hit Meho did everyone fall silent around him. The general pointed at the Serbian end. No goal! No goal!

Gavro joined in with Mikado's shrill whistling, extended it, raised it to the key of F major, linked it to a series of light, catchy, childish tunes, unexpectedly turned it into a waltz, then suddenly launched into a wild
csárdás
—and while his composition gained in color and speed Dejan Gavrilovic, known as Gavro, sat down on the grass.

The
csárdás
stung Mickey Mouse into action. Don't just sit there, he growled at his teammate who had fetched the ball out of the goal. Mickey Mouse took it from him and marched across the pitch. Don't just sit there, he called rather louder. Two more Serbian players joined Gavro and, like him, gave no sign of wanting to play on.

General Mikado's throat flushed red with fury, and when the general, who was in fact a lieutenant, had spent most of his life laying tiles, and was married with four daughters whose first names all began “Ma,” took aim to hit Gavro on the back of the head for the third time that day, the whistling man's hand seized the tiler's wrist. The
csárdás
swung into Spanish dance music, don't you ever do that again, said Gavro's eyes, and the flamenco sang the refrain. Gavro whistled, Mickey Mouse marched on, and Marko knocked his own goalie over and took the pistol away from him.

Well, fuck me if it isn't Muhammad Ali! would have been Meho's praise for Marko's simple left hook. As it was, General Mikado was the only one to curse—fuck it all, what the hell's going on?—when his goalie hit the ground and his striker shook the pain out of his hand. What's the big idea? shouted the general, biting Gavro's fingers as they held tight to his wrist, what do you lot want? Goal kick! he ordered Mickey Mouse, who was carrying the ball to the middle of the field. One by one his players sat down.

So it's mutiny, is it? laughed the general. Deserters! He lashed out. I'll have you court-martialed! The men on the touchlines also sat down, although some of the soldiers got their guns ready, not sure whether they ought to aim at their own side too.

Most of the Serbian soldiers just looked at the ground, not as if they were afraid of their commander, but as if they were embarrassed by this angry man with his hairy back. As if they were ashamed of something, as if they had just been asked a very simple question and didn't know the answer. General Mikado's entire neck was now one large red patch. Shoot them all down! he shouted. Give me my fucking gun! He stepped back and spun round. No one stopped him, no one answered the very simple question. The Territorials stood there too, as if they were merely props on this stage where a short, powerful director with a bare torso was ranting and raging at his actors.

No one could find an answer to the very simple question—except for Mickey Mouse. Most questions had been too hard for him at school, at home his father had beaten exclamation marks into his back with his leather belt, and here behind God's feet there were no questions, only orders. Milan Jevric, nicknamed Mickey Mouse, put the ball roughly on the kickoff position, placed his foot on it, and thundered the answer above the soldiers' heads, above General Mikado, who had got hold of a gun but hesitated to use it, above the field, above the trenches, above Meho's dead body, above the beech trees, above the wind and above the valley; he answered it in as loud and clear a voice as if, with this one great shout, he was going to give all the answers to all the questions he had never been able to answer before.

It's four-three for them, replied Mickey Mouse, answering the simple question. They're leading, he pointed out, but maybe we can turn it around in extra time, he said thrusting out his lower lip, maybe we can still score.

His words got the Serbian defenders to their feet, the Serbian midfield players rose too, and the Serbian striker poured plum brandy down his throat in such quantities that Dino Zoff looked longingly at him.

Mickey Mouse did the defending by himself; all the rest attacked. Gavro, as the new referee, gave eight minutes' injury time. The Territorials defended with ten men and whacked every ball back into the Serbian half. Not too hard —the mines. The balls promptly came back again. Mickey Mouse persistently kicked them long and high back to the attackers. In the last minute the Territorials counterattacked, Kiko failed to get past Mickey Mouse, who was everywhere now, even in goal. Mickey Mouse's answer instantly followed, for Mickey Mouse had now learned the trick of giving answers. He snapped up the ball and dribbled through the Territorial ranks as if he'd grown up with Maradona instead of a muck-fork. The veins on his throat were bulging; he ran down two Bosnian defenders and kicked the ball toward Dino Zoff's goal from a good hundred feet away. The gigantic man put all of his power into this one shot, and the cry he uttered after it sent dozens of birds flying up from the forest. And the ball, that dirty, poorly mended ball, flew across the clearing toward Dino Zoff's goal.

Gavro whistled for the end of play at 5:55 P.M. Mickey Mouse's shot was the last in the game. The players dropped to the grass. The echo of the whistle died away. No one cheered. Heavy silence welled up from the valley to the plateau. Weapons were quietly picked up. Marko tilted the schnapps bottle over Dino Zoff's mouth until a few drops moistened his lips, mingling with the blood on them.

Ah,
slivovitzum bonum deorum donum
! Did I keep it out? lisped Dino Zoff, handing Marko a tooth. The sun cast the long shadows of trees on the clearing behind God's feet, behind God's feet in military boots, behind God's feet with the blisters coming up on them, behind God's dribbling feet.

I've made lists

A cat with its tail in the air purrs around my legs in a yard among high-rise buildings on the outskirts of Sarajevo. A young man is getting ready, with his back to me. He removes his jacket. He stretches. There's a ball lying beside him. The cat looks at me. The cat licks its paw. The man throws the ball up in the air. The ball lands on his head. And lands on his head. And lands on his head, four, five, his arms are bent, and every time, seven, eight, the ball lands, nine, ten, he ducks his head, eleven, twelve. A large, shaven, Bosnian head, thirteen, sends the ball up in the air, fourteen, lets it take a quick rest on the flat back of his head, fifteen, sixteen, there's a scar at the nape of his neck. Nineteen, twenty repeated movements of his upper body, twenty-three, twenty-four bouncing balls, the cat mews, the man's crutches slip on the concrete, the muezzin begins chanting at thirty, thirty-one. The man moves his upper body only slightly before making contact with the ball, thirty-five, thirty-six, I don't need to see his face to know I've found him, thirty-eight, thirty-nine, the crutches scrape on the asphalt, forty-four, forty-five. If I'd been a magician who could make things possible on the summer day when Edin and I sweated in the school yard waiting for him, our sweat falling on the asphalt, the asphalt melting in the sun, then I'd have made it impossible for that day ever to end, forty-seven, forty-eight, and I'd have given the little girl on her bicycle the balance of a circus acrobat. Kiko on crutches, Kiko in a white shirt and jeans, the left leg tied together under his stump, Kiko Number Nine, Kiko the iron head of the gentle Drina, fifty, fifty-one . . .

Up in Kiko's small apartment on the fourteenth floor we drink coffee, served by his wife Hanifa in flower-patterned cups and saucers. No crocheted tablecloth, no brightly colored sofa in front of the TV, no TV, no clock ticking loudly to be heard when we fall silent. A bright, plainly designed apartment with parquet floors and cherrywood furniture.

Yes, says Kiko, it was my last game as a pro. I'd said I'll kick three goals all with my weak left foot. The guy let in a fourth so he'd win the bet, but because of that one, they went down to relegation position. But no one was relegated that year. Only the country was relegated. Soccer made no difference.

Then the war broke out and Hanifa went to Austria and studied design.

Then the war broke out and the goalkeeper that Kiko had betted against was on the bench in the Turkish second division.

Then the war broke out and a very popular folk singer gave a concert for the soldiers, the wounded and the politicians. You had to pay to go, and the wounded said later it had been a bloody awful concert: after they'd paid to go in there was no money left for beer and they certainly weren't letting the politicians buy them drinks.

Kiko's son, Milan, sits down beside me and shows me a very large booger. Got any chocolate? he asks.

Do you go to nursery school? I ask him.

Hanifa was the first girl I spoke to in Sarajevo and the first girl I ever kissed at all, says Kiko, and he goes into the next room to find photos of the kiss.

And I'm going to be the last too, okay? she calls after him.

Not if our next is a daughter! says Kiko, coming back with photo albums. I volunteered to join up. Thought I could fix it so that I'd stay in the city. That worked for two years. Then I was sent to Mount Igman. We were told: the fate of Sarajevo depends on Mount Igman. I always had a ball with me. Always.

Got any sweets?

Kiko puts the album down on the table in front of me and gets down into a kind of crouching position beside Hanifa, which looks grotesque with one leg—I actually think that, grotesque, although at the same time I'm thinking that such a thought ought not to have crossed my mind.

Then the war broke out and no one called it war. People said:
that
. Or: the shit. Or: soon-be-over, like someone trying to make an injection easier for a child. Kiko had told Hanifa, you go away, and she said: I'll be back when it's over. Let's hope the shit will soon be over, thought Kiko, and he was sent to Mount Igman.

So there I was in the worst
vukojebina
anyone can imagine. Kiko shows me his beautiful Hanifa on the backseat of a moped in the photo album. He's sitting on the front seat without a helmet on. That was in the autumn of '91, he says. My moped! My pride and joy!

He leafs on through the album. Milan whines, rubbing his eyes.

Hanifa says: I learned a little German during those three years in Graz. But I couldn't translate
vukojebina
. Do you know
vukojebina
?

Where wolves . . . with each other . . . I say cautiously, with an eye on Milan.

Behind God's feet, Kiko says, I saw a horse throw itself into a ravine because it didn't have the strength to go on hauling our artillery up and down the mountain, along paths that weren't paths. It killed itself . . . Lost in thought, Kiko goes on leafing through the album. Here he is standing beside a giant of a man. The giant wears dungarees and a cap that looks lost on his massive head. They are both armed. Kiko has the lily of the Bosnian army on his breast pocket, the big man has the Serbian double eagle cockade on his cap. They have their arms around each other's shoulders and are looking grimly straight ahead. The bleak rocks tower grimly up behind them too.

Who's that? Kiko asks his son, pointing to the man in dungarees. The little boy stuffs half his fist into his mouth. Milan, who's that? Kiko repeats.

Čika Mickey Mouse! cries Milan happily, as if naming someone who always brings chocolate and sweets when he visits, and Hanifa says: yes, there's really no translating
vukojebina.

There's no need to. Kiko puts Milan on his lap. No language but ours has a word to describe such a place, he says.

The soldier beside Kiko has his mouth open as if gasping for air. How did you come to have this photo taken? I ask.

A cease-fire. The man beside me is Milan Jevric, says Kiko, and his son shouts: Mickey Mouse! Kiko kisses the back of his head. It's because of him my Milan has a Serbian name. Kiko leafs on. A photo of him in a trench, ankle-deep in murky water. Mount Igman, behind God's feet, he says, and goes on turning the pages. The one in the green beret is Meho. A lunatic. A lunatic because he had too big a heart. And here am I giving cigarettes to the prisoners. Here's Hanifa and me in Mostar. My Milan after he was born, he weighed seven pounds, twelve ounces. We must sort these photos out some time, says Kiko, leafing through them, and the last one shows a ball, a worn old soccer ball lying in long grass.

The Drina wakes me. I open my eyes when the bus turns into a little village with a name I can't remember, driving down the road to Višegrad parallel with the river. A great many tunnels keep cutting off the daylight; only a few of them are lit at all. I move over to the window on the right-hand side; large rocks are piled up on the left, covered with thin moss and sparse plants struggling to survive. My river flows on the right. I confirm that thought to myself: my river, the deep green Drina, calm and immaculately clean. The anglers, the rocks, the many shades of green.

We approach the town along the winding road, past the dam. Driftwood and plastic have collected close to it. The valley widens out; we'll soon be able to see the bridge. Can you stop here, please, calls a young man who must have got in during the journey, and the bus groans.

When the view of the bridge comes in sight after a sharp bend I am surprised, although I was fully expecting to find everything the way it always was. I resist the reflex action of counting the arches; the bridge is complete. The driver puts a cassette in, and I think of Walrus and my promise never to shoot a music cassette. It's Madonna singing.

Hey, Boris, with all due respect, do you have to play that every time? asks the man with the newspaper. The driver turns up the volume,
like a virgin,
he sings, tapping the steering wheel in time.

To me, the bus station looks smaller than it used to but just as shabby. Boris makes for one of the five parking spaces, four dilapidated old buses parked over to one side, including —I recognize it at once—the Centrotrans bus in which Walrus drove through half of Yugoslavia. The carriage-work is in a bad way, rust is baring its teeth, gray weeds grow through the windows from inside, cover the wheel rims.

Where are you going, young man? Boris calls, but I act as if he doesn't mean me and go into the small waiting room in the station. There's no door anymore, the smell of urine rises to my nostrils, the ticket window is deserted, the paint on the walls, some kind of color between beige and yellow, is flaking.

Hello? I call. There's an echo, which doesn't reveal what happened to Armin, the stationmaster with the uncontrollable leg, he's on one of my lists.

Who are you looking for? Boris is standing behind me smoking, one hand playing with the key in his trouser pocket.

Armin the stationmaster, I say, turning to go, but Boris bars my way, draws on his cigarette, and says: there was never any Armin here.

Ah, I say, looking past Boris. The other passengers have disappeared. Boris, five buses, four of them wrecks with rusty wheel rims, and I, have to sort it out between us.

Where do you want to go? he asks, pointing his cigarette at my bag.

A man who listens to Madonna can't be dangerous, it occurs to me, and I say as casually as possible: oh, I'm visiting my grandmother.

Boris frowns, holds his cigarette between thumb and forefinger when he draws on it. What's her name?

Katarina, I say, louder than I intended, Katarina Krsmanovic, it's her blood sugar and diabetes, I say, stammering, she can't do much these days, I try to explain, but then I see a change come over the bus driver's face. His expression changes from pestering to curious. He lets me finish and after one last short pull on his cigarette, he puts it out with the sole of his shoe.

Do you know Miki Krsmanovic? he asks.

Yes, he's my uncle.

Your uncle, is he? Boris looks around, hitches up his trousers and puts on a huge pair of sunglasses. He reaches for my bag. I withdraw my hand and take a step into the waiting room. We're going the same way, he says.

Don't you have to drive any farther?

Yes, he says, but I don't like driving on an empty stomach. Come on, I'll help you with your bag.

That's all right, it's not heavy, I say, taking it from him. Do you know my uncle?

No, he says, spitting through his teeth, no, I don't know him, thank God.

I've made lists. Nicknames. The man with the uncontrollable leg. Top Hat. My sad man. The three-dot-ellipsis man. Typhoon. The man who climbed the mountains singing and never came back. Walrus and Ladybird. Potato Aziz. Massacre. The soldier with gold in his mouth.

Boris and I pass the soccer stadium. Young men are training, doing headers, I think of Kiko's head. A man with a long braid throws them balls to be headed into the net. The man wears a suit and a silk scarf. There's no one in goal. Boris and I walk side by side in silence, the slap of the ball against the woodwork behind us. Boris shrugs. We cross the bridge over the Rzav where Edin and I fed the fish with spit on the day when the soldiers sang and danced. The river is shallow, white islands of foam drift with the current. I spit. The bridge has stood up to all high tides.

I've made lists. Barbel, chub, roach, gudgeon, dace, Danube salmon, carp,
sunbleak,
catfish with spectacles and a mustache.

We say no more about Uncle Miki. When I ask a question, Boris waves it away and brings up other subjects. He distracts me from the smells and colors of the town, asks how old I was back then, where exactly I've been living in Germany, whether I can get him a visa, what I think of the rumors about Madonna and Guy Ritchie. As we part outside the apartment building where Granny Katarina is living, he says: don't take offense, but it's like this. If you don't know anything you're an idiot. If you know a lot and admit it you're a dangerous idiot. Višegrad always knows just how much it may know, and how much it should tell.

In the yard outside the apartment building six black-haired boys are playing soccer, using their school satchels as goal-posts, the ball rolls to my feet; I put my bag down. After a moment's shyness they join in, who's on my side? I call, who's on my side? One of them runs clear on the left, Ci" ko! he calls, I pass it to him running; he has only the goalie ahead of him and feints.

There's no light in the stairwell; the light switches have been torn out, wires stick out of the holes, thin red and blue necks without any heads. The corridors are narrower and the flights of steps shorter than they used to be; the air smells as overpoweringly of bread as if everyone in the building were baking at the same time. No name by the bell where Teta Amela, the best baker in the world, used to live. My granny coughs behind the closed door with the name “Slavko Krsmanovic” beside the bell. The bell doesn't ring, no power, I knock.

I've made lists. The mosques. One of them is supposed to be being rebuilt. There are concrete plans for it, and concrete protests against it. Death notices still hang on the chestnut trees not far from the square where the minaret of the larger mosque once pointed to the sky. The ones with green rims are in Arabic letters, the ones with black rims have the cross on them. It's fourteen to one for the dead Christians. Very few Muslims have come home.

Aleksandar, says Granny Katarina, I've been baking bread. I'll put the milk on in a minute.