The men would jump up from their meals, spoons clanging against plates. They would run outside without speaking, heading for the mine, and it would take some time before the air calmed, the scramble came to a stop, and the first words were spoken.
Where’s the accident?
Which corridor?
How many injured?
III
Uncle Rudo’s wife, Aunt Anica, was a converted Jew. She was born in Zenica and had the maiden name of Jungwirth.
Her people had come to Bosnia from Austria.
There was no synagogue in Zenica and there were barely any Jews. So as not to be alone, or out of fear of remaining alone, the Jungwirths became Catholics.
Aunt Anica looked just so: like a little girl, a young woman, an old woman from a Marc Chagall painting. Any old German or Croatian Nazi would have recognized her had he chanced to come across her on a Sarajevo or Zagreb street.
But neither of them would have thought there might be any Jews in Kakanj, out there in the Colony. Uncle Rudo didn’t ask her about such things. He was a carpenter and uninterested in questions of parentage or extraction. He trimmed boards and in his free time made very nice home furniture. Every solid, valuable piece of wood in Franjo Rejc’s Sarajevo home was cut and shaped by the hands of Uncle Rudo.
Nor did others ask Aunt Anica about it.
Either they were too embarrassed to ask, or it wasn’t yet the sort of subject one could discuss.
In their son Tješo’s face you could see hers.
Something distant had been printed and sealed into the roughhewn Bosnian features and the worldly path of the Rejcs.
One could look long at it in Tješo.
IV
Franjo Rejc had three brothers: Karlo, Rudo, and Eda. Franjo’s and Rudo’s children referred to Karlo using the Turkish-derived word for uncle, amidža. But Franjo’s, Rudo’s, and Karlo’s children called Eda stric, using the Croatian word. When they found themselves all together, they always knew exactly who was called amidža by whom and who was called stric, and never did any child make a single mistake. It would take the wars of the nineties for the Rejc children and grandchildren to understand the nature of these distinctions.
Our aunt Marica, Uncle Eda’s wife, a good cook and a big-hearted woman with a stormy disposition, was born in Vitez. Nieces and nephews didn’t use the word amidža for uncle there. Except among the Muslims.
Revelation Through Story
I
Ramadan fell on the summer months in those years.
The days were long, and the longer the days the longer the fasts.
Avdaginica was fasting, with her brother-in-law and five small children in the house. Her nerves were naturally weak: she exploded easily and had a hard time calming down.
Every now and then she’d beat her children. She beat the hell out of them, from being on edge.
Olga said to her in a friendly way, “For God’s sake, either stop beating your children, or stop fasting!”
Avdaginica looked at her and said, “You’ve got a point.”
II
Every village had a bey, a district governor of the Ottoman empire. Such had been the custom.
In this village, along the railway, Olga became friends with the late bey’s widow.
Their friendship was such that when she would come to their house, she would remove her veil and headscarf. As if Franjo were her brother. As if she were not a woman. And a widow.
The two of them were great friends.
III
The Muslim women remained covered even before other women if they were Christians.
They were afraid a Christian would reveal to her husband what her woman-friend looked like. And she would describe her friend so accurately that the husband would know everything, as if he had seen her with his own eyes. And thus would the Christian woman, living according to her own customs, shame her Muslim friend, perhaps even without knowing it.
The shame came from a different man knowing what you looked like. Whether he was a believer or not. There is something terribly sensual in the fear that a man might discover you, strip you down, and shame you through a description.
This fear contained the deepest human faith one can have in the art of storytelling.
IV
After a short while, Olga began to travel among the Muslim villages wearing pantaloons and a headscarf. She felt comfortable like that, especially at the beginning of spring. Not to mention that it was easier for a young woman to run in pantaloons. And during those times, at the beginning of the twenties, there was no one who didn’t feel like running from lightness and joy, or maybe at least in the warm months, in the villages around Kakanj.
Later, one by one, they would grow tired and heavy, as the times would too.
Olga was amazed at the faith of some women.
There was one named Besima who had two daughters.
In spring, one of Besima’s daughters died.
In summer, the other daughter died.
Olga went to her, as she was used to doing, for the mourning. There was no such custom among the Muslims. Nor was there a custom of refusing a mourner.
And so they sat there, one before the other, on the floor, looking at one another across the empty table.
Besima was calm, Olga barely kept from breaking down.
“Cry, Besima, it will ease your grief,” she said.
“God gave, God has taken away!” Besima answered peacefully.
That was how the two of them mourned.
Thank God, We’re Catholics
I
Uncle Mato Karivan married twice.
Both his wives were Albanian. After he became a widower, when he brought another wife home, no one believed he’d not gone out specifically looking for another Albanian woman. But he hadn’t. He met her by chance, or perhaps, he thought, it was destiny.
The first had been a good housekeeper, proper and steadfast in everything. She went to church more often than our women did. And people were surprised at that. Some malicious individuals said Arnautka must be terribly sinful to have to go to church every day.
Uncle Mato barely recovered from her death.
“Thank God, we’re Catholics,” he’d often say.
Everyone found that funny, as if she were not a Catholic to them. Or as if they thought she must be terribly sinful.
II
Between seven thirty and eight at night the Hail Mary would ring out.
Everyone rushed home then. It was late, they said. And who knew what might happen outside. After the Hail Mary, when darkness descended upon Kreševo, life stopped flowing according to Holy Writ. Dragons and witches took control, the dead walked through the center of town, superstitions came to life. One after another people would fall into fitful dreams.
This lasted until about five in the morning.
Everyone would wake up then, in summer or winter. In winter it was still pitch dark at five. But this darkness was not as deep as that of Holy Writ.
III
Bakšić was an official at the mine.
His wife was a traditional Muslim, she wore the traditional covering.
She gave birth to two daughters.
Though the eldest died young.
Fifty years later, when the younger daughter met Franjo’s daughter, she would hug her and say, “I’m so happy to see you! It’s like seeing my very own sister!”
IV
When the decree against headscarves and veils was passed, Zehra came to complain:
“Olga, dear, I feel completely naked!”
To Olga, Zehra’s nakedness was like that of a kinswoman. The revolution had no understanding of human shame. The revolution in Kakanj and Kreševo truly was shameless.
Slaughtering Pigs in the Colonies
I
It is 19
56.
Early morning, before dawn, the three of them making their way toward the train station.
The train for Kakanj is full.
Morning coughs, the gurgle and clink of the handheld machine the conductors use to punch the pink and green tickets. Thick cardboard rectangles three centimeters long by one and a half centimeters wide.
The villages of Visoko, Podlugovi, Ćatići. The long train stops at every station, the brakes’ metallic squeak, the nasal voice of the Albanian boza vender.
They don’t have any gifts for their relatives in Kakanj. It isn’t customary. And anyway what could they bring from Sarajevo. It’s a time of scarcity, empty store windows, dreariness, November fog.
People are careful about every word they utter, every person they curse.
II
In the second and third mining colonies, each little house has a courtyard and a small orchard.
In the courtyard there’s a hog, with the hog a sow, and all the little pigs.
Every November, before Republic Day, the miners slaughter the hogs.
On Saturday afternoon, the squeals of the “unclean” animals can be heard all the way to the center of town.
There are more than a few Muslims in the colonies, but no one complains.
These are the times. You don’t complain unless someone else does.
Before evening, the sow circles the hog, grunting softly, amazed, while above the eaves, their bellies slashed open, her children hang upside down.
The flames reflect from all sides on the faces of the Rejc family. Cracklings sizzle on the tin trays atop the flames, and a soft rakija daze covers everything.
In the mountain colonies a worried mother calls for her absent children to come home, it’s late. Though she’s worried, when they return, they’ll get what’s coming to them.
III
Several days back they were cooking some šljivovica.
Neighbors gathered around the kettle.
They talked about mining accidents.
About brothers and sons who hadn’t yet returned, whom they’d been waiting for, beside the radio, since the summer of 1945.
About a man who had blasphemed and ended up in Zenica, serving five years.
About who had died just the year before, the names strung together in a list.
And so they got drunk without even taking a sip. As they inhaled the alcoholic vapors, the spirits of the miners pulled back. Sometimes this drove them crazy, and their wives paid for it the moment they asked a question.
There was always a bottle set aside for the ones they were waiting for.
IV
They return to Sarajevo on the night train.
Ćatići. Podlugovi. Visoko.
There are fewer travelers than in the morning, so there are places to sit. On the wooden grating above their heads a drop of blood slowly accumulates. It doesn’t happen often, but the children watch in anticipation to see if the drop will fall – right on their father’s neck.
They’re bringing sausages and cracklings from Kakanj to Sarajevo, and a whole suckling pig, its eyes compressed as if it were asleep, because it’s late and long past the hour when children should be up.
It’s 1956, a time of scarcity. The women on board are silent, watching over their children, who have only just fallen asleep, one after another. The men are careful not to curse.
There’s a bottle of stewed miners’ prunes in their bag. For Christmas, or just in case a guest shows up.
Mama Ionesco
A Report
December 2, 2012. Pula, near the Roman Forum.
The second floor, stone steps worn smooth by feet, sculpted by a hundred fifty years’ worth of traversing soles. A small servants’ room, remodeled into an apartment for tourists. Vertiginous ceilings, white walls, white furniture and bed linen, luminous woodwork and shining floors. On the side of the small wardrobe I’m looking into: a portrait of Modesty Blaise.
The mobile phone on the nightstand vibrates. Her name appears on the screen, but I know she’s not the one calling. It’s a man’s voice.
“My condolences,” he says, then, after a meaningless pause: “Mama has died.”
It occurs to me that it isn’t appropriate for him to call my mother that.
While I speak the words that are needed in such a moment, demonstrating calm and collectedness, answering the small, technical questions – the funeral has already been arranged for Tuesday at half past eleven – I think about that indiscreet use of the word: Mama.
December 24, 2011, Hotel Majestic, room number 600, Belgrade. The phone vibrates. Her name appears on the screen, and I answer a little angrily because I’ve told her not to call me when I’m in Belgrade – roaming’s expensive. She’s in a bad mood. She’s talking about unimportant things, I’ve forgotten what they were, and then, after several minutes of conversation, she says she found a lump. Where? On the inside of her left leg, just below the groin. It’s nothing, I tell her, but this time I sense that it isn’t. She was often ailing, usually from little things, and would raise the alarm over false signs, something she had found, traces of blood, negligible discoveries…She was always like this, focused on herself and the minor imperfections of her body. She imparted to me this same eternal fear, that in the very next instant something catastrophic might happen. Or maybe I inherited it the same way one inherits eye color.
It’s between Christmas and New Year’s, a time when one doesn’t go to the doctor, certainly not for an exam, and only in an emergency, but this, it seems, is not an emergency.
“Does it hurt?” I ask.
“No. It’s like I’m touching a piece of wood, like it’s not me, this lump.”
I come back to Zagreb for New Year’s.
Now we can talk. January first, second, and third are mostly not working days. People go skiing. Here they go to Austria, in Bosnia they go to Jahorina and Bjelašnica. I try to get her to talk about that. Someone in a certain Sarajevo periodical said I was an “incurable Chetnik.” But this no longer upsets her. It’s no longer the subject. She’d rather talk about the lump, even if there really isn’t much to say about a mere lump.
Then she repeats the same phrase, the same words, for the thousandth time…
“It’s nothing, right?”
“Of course it’s nothing,” I tell her.
A few minutes later, the same question and answer.
So we begin a year’s worth of lengthy telephone conversations.
She has always had this irrepressible need to discuss things about which there is little to say and then repeat the same phrases, the same questions as I respond to them one by one.
She goes to the doctor just before Orthodox Christmas. The doctor is a Serb, such an appointment wouldn’t feel as urgent if it weren’t Christmas for him as well. But, in fact, this isn’t urgent either, even though we talk it all over for a long time. Words flow between us that in someone else’s conversation wouldn’t make an ounce of sense. Much later it will occur to me that this is how characters talk in Ionesco’s plays. Perhaps I should stop reading him, Ionesco, or at least stop seeing his plays. Mama Ionesco.
“He felt it,” she says, “the lump, but said you can’t tell anything from touching. He scheduled tests for after Christmas.”
January 14, 2012, Friday. The phone vibrates.
I answer, knowing she was at the exam in the morning, for a biopsy on a small piece of tissue. She’s upbeat, as if everything’s fine. She’s telling stories, talking about who she had coffee with after the exam. The findings, she says, will come back on Monday. And the lump, has it got bigger? No, it’s still the same. On second thought, maybe a little bigger.
The winter is snowy and wet. During the weekends I pull back from everything, as if shrinking into a steel cell, one without any exits. The thought is obsessive, always identical, from t
he moment I wake up in the morning to the second I fall asleep late at night. It’s like this until December 2, when the phone begins to vibrate in the white Pula room that reminds me of heaven, and her name is on the display, and somehow I know it’s not her. Her illness has been on my mind every waking moment.
On Monday at ten o’clock I answer the phone and hear her cold, distant voice, and it is as if she has been to my school and discovered I’ve been hiding from her the fact that I got an F in math.
“I can’t keep this from you. It’s the worst it could possibly be.”
The word lump is never pronounced again. The strange term lymph node has taken its place. We’ll grow completely used to it, as with all the codes and bywords that will come to be associated with her entire condition.
She had an exam two and a half years earlier. They saw something then, but the doctor – whose name I now recall with the kind of rage that makes my joints feel as if they’re being pulled apart, my bones being ripped asunder – said that it was surely nothing. Then, so that everything was by the book, he sent a bit of that nothing off for analysis, by which it was simply confirmed that the something was in fact nothing. But he didn’t look carefully, or perhaps didn’t know how to look, at what he saw under the microscope, discerning an abstract image in which distinct signs of death could be recognized among the chaotic signs of life, and he didn’t see what had already begun. It wasn’t nothing. It was something. And at that point it would have been completely treatable…
Is this really the truth, or is it just her way of protecting herself from bad news?
No, it is the truth.
And then she repeats the story that makes my joints separate and my bones break apart, about the careless, alcoholic doctor. You should sue the hospital, she says, get reparations from the hospital, because treatment will be expensive. Terribly expensive. You should hold someone at fault, threaten to write about it in the Croatian and European papers.
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