Kin

by Miljenko Jergovic

  “Does anything hurt?”

  “Everything!”

  “It’ll stop.”

  “No, it won’t!”

  “Well, it seems that way now. I’ve told you again and again you have to be patient. It’s from the treatment.”

  She looked at me gratefully, and I knew she was feeling okay. When she was feeling well, she was grateful if I spelled out all her pains and torments, the skin that was turning into that of a dead person before her eyes, the bones that ached at every touch, all of it was the result of the miracle drugs. She believed me then as she never had before, living off this as if she were living off prayers asking God to have mercy on her.

  “This morning, at sunrise, I was in Bistrik, in front of the Opera,” I tell her, checking to see if she remembered.

  “Where?” she asked, scowling.

  “You know, in front of the Sarajevo Opera, in Bistrik, where I used to go with Nona.”

  She looked at me, not knowing what to say. What Opera? There wasn’t any Sarajevo Opera! She was sad, wanted to cry, for she knew I was testing to see if she remembered, testing how present she was. She knew I was testing to see how near her death was too, which meant that I didn’t believe she would survive. And that I was, according to my filial duty, merely seeing her off to the next world, just as she had seen off Nona and Nono according to hers. Lying if need be, if the state of the sick person demanded it.

  She lay on her right side, closer to the wall end of the marriage bed that Nona and Nono had received as a wedding gift when they married in Doboj in 1922. Besides the bed, the room consisted of two dressers, two nightstands, and a three-piece portable mirror. The mirror in the middle had been struck by a shell fragment in the last war. It had a crack that radiated outward, as in a child’s drawing of the sun. Ninety years before, in the autumn, the marriage gift had traveled in a freight car from Zagreb. At first the furniture had been placed in the bedroom of an apartment set aside for the train dispatcher. Nono would be promoted to become the station chief. The room would travel across Bosnia, accompanying him in his transfers. But as a railway official, he had the right to a gratis ticket, and could use a whole freight car for free. While it might not seem so, one could place an entire family history in a single freight car, together with its furniture and books. Nona’s and Nono’s bedroom set withstood five moves before they arrived in Sarajevo, where Nono landed in the highest position of the railroad hierarchy: he became a chief railway inspector. The room would move once more: when in 1969, from the building of Madam Emilija Heim, on Yugoslav National Army Street, just beside the theater, we moved to Sepetarevac Street. This was when my mother decided to rid herself of the whole lot. Old fashioned and out of date, it was unworthy of modern life. But she had already taken out two loans and didn’t have the money for a new bedroom set. She didn’t like that marital bed, for it reminded her of the distraught marriage of her parents and of their two instances of marital guilt. And perhaps it also reminded her of the fact that she had two broken marriages behind her by then, though she’d only just turned twenty-seven. The bedroom set was arranged in the northern room, in which she would sleep for the first several years. It was in the southern room, with the new socialist furniture, which has long since disappeared – chopped up, burned as kindling, recycled – that Nono lingered and died in the fall of 1972. Thirty-eight years later, in summer 2010, when she was renovating the apartment, she moved her parents’ bedroom set from the northern to the southern room. She even called upon a furniture restorer – as carpenters were called in those days – to examine the bed and dressers, protect them against wormholes, and refinish them. The restorer told her the furniture had been made from high-quality ash. She felt proud and refused to remember that she had for forty years wanted to jettison the bed and dressers from the house.

  Now she was ailing in the room in which her father had died, on his side of the marriage bed.

  “I didn’t sleep all night!” I was trying to distract her.

  “Why not?” she asked and I felt she wasn’t interested.

  “The room was hot.”

  “You needed to open the window.”

  “It wouldn’t open,” I said, lying.

  “What sort of a window can’t be opened?” she said.

  Her left leg, the one in which the sickness had begun, was enormous, distended. Lesions had started opening up on it over the last couple of days. There was some plastered-on gauze on the lower part. A little below her knee, on her pajamas, spots of bright blood had appeared, growing as we spoke.

  She could not move her left arm. This had been the case since she got sick. When I touched it, she would cry out:

  “Ay, ay, ay…”

  Even when I touched her other arm, as if by some newly established habit, she would cry out, “Ay, ay, ay,” somewhat more quietly.

  It was as if there weren’t a single part of her body that did not hurt. There was one fortunate thing about this. She had always been sensitive to pain, though she claimed the opposite, speaking of her superhuman birth pangs or migraines when her eyes were popping out of her skull as if she were someone condemned to the electric chair. But even when there wasn’t anything that hurt, she would find a reason to complain. And so I consoled myself, convincing myself that it didn’t hurt now and my mother was only pretending. I don’t know how I would have endured it otherwise. For at least a half hour at a time, every day, in the morning or the afternoon, I heard how it hurt. The pain was quite authentic, and I grew accustomed to it. It fell next to me, crashing down like books during an earthquake, and somehow became my fault. This was how I felt my mother’s pain. The moment I believed she was just pretending, I would no longer be to blame.

  “Are you going to Zagreb today?” she asked, though she knew.

  “Yes, I have to go to work. It’s piled up.”

  She didn’t ask me what had piled up. She probably knew I was lying, just as I knew she was. This was how our two modes of selfishness were supported. When she’d been asked several weeks before, compassionately, in the Sarajevo manner, why her Miljenko was not there, why he hadn’t come from Zagreb, she had answered quite calmly: “He has to make some money – this illness is expensive!”

  I don’t know whether she was defending me or defending her own illusion that she had a son, something to hold onto while in this pitiful life’s finale, with the smell of cooked cabbage and the metal taste of drugs. Whichever it was, she had known how to defend herself. And she still did, even transformed as she was into pain and patience, for everything she was able to defend herself against verbally was bigger and more important than what she needed in order to accomplish something. This was how it had always been. Although she had only written one poem in her life, my mother had always grasped onto words more than reality and actual life. She had been able to let all of it wash away: her family heirlooms, failed loves, money and the means of acquiring it, and friendships too, but words she could never allow to be unspoken or silenced. If someone said something ugly to her, insulted her, he would not have to wait long before it cost him dearly. Nothing was too dear if it was about words. If it was about words it was worth it to spoil one’s nerves and health, for everything that was important in her life would come down to two or three words anyway. To having told somebody off, preserving herself and her reputation. What was my mother’s reputation made of? Only words, what could be spoken. Other things were not important. Not money, or apartments, or cars, or any sort of material security; nothing was as important as words. And nothing in her life had offended her as what had been said to her.

  When she talked she didn’t think of her illness. Or rather: when she talked she wasn’t sick at all. If she could have just talked, if I were there, or if we could speak on the phone twenty-four hours a day, my mother would be outside her illness twenty-four hours a day. She’d be healthy. She’d defeat her disease by telling stories, or lea
ve her body behind, something she wouldn’t have any need for anymore anyway, as she would have turned completely into story.

  I know she’s sorry I’m leaving. I think she knows she won’t see me again. But that isn’t what’s hard for her, it’s that she won’t be talking to me. Even this morning she has things to say. She tells me this and I say again, as if I haven’t heard her – I have to go to Zagreb, to work, it’s piled up on me! Every instant I’m aware that I won’t see her again – the next time I come she’ll be lying dead in the city mortuary – and she won’t ever tell me what she has to say this morning.

  “Will you give me a kiss?” she asks.

  And I kiss her on that remote right cheek.

  There’s no pathos or sentimentality in this. She has always insisted I give her a kiss as I go away. Sometimes I avoid it. This is her attempt, even if only in that brief ritual, to transform our relationship into a normal relationship of a mother and son. That kiss isn’t for us but for some hidden camera that would record and preserve everything.

  Once more, with a glance from the door to the room, I wave to her. An automatic gesture. Her face remains expressionless. My face too seems to remain blank. As her caretakers escort me out, I again excuse myself, saying that I’m pressed for time, that I have a lot of work to do. I have to fill up all those empty newsprint pages. It’s a large, important job. One day, when completely empty newspapers, bound-up white pages, arrive at the news kiosks, it will be clear the world is dead and no one is left on earth.

  I went into the hotel. When she saw me, the young woman behind the counter closed her book. Instead of a bookmark, a yellow pencil marked the spot where she had reached. I said I was leaving, paid the bill, packed my things. At the top of my bag was the fat book by Péter Nádas, Parallel Stories.

  Making my way toward the parking area, I wondered whether someone might have again broken my window and stolen something from inside. I passed the taxi stand and overheard the unhappy conversation of two cabbies:

  “They slit his throat for the Rolex!” said the older of the two. “Fuck God and this fucking life!”

  * * *

  —

  On the ledge of a closed-up news kiosk there was a black-and-white photo with someone in mourning crape. Beside it stood a vase with some wilted funeral flowers. A green obituary notice was Scotch-taped above the little window through which the tobacconist had once looked out. The person’s face looked familiar.

  As I got into my car, I heard someone call my name. I sat down, turned the key, shifted into gear. The car moved along the uneven, unpaved driveway. The gravel grinding beneath the tires. A soothing sound. I could listen to it for a long time.

  History, Photographs

  Their first picture together, taken in a studio on the day of their marriage. Franjo in a dark suit, a kerchief in his jacket lapel, and a bow tie. Her blouse has short sleeves and an open neck, although it is still winter. The picture was produced by a local photographer who, contrary to custom, did not sign his work or put a company stamp on it, and one would have to do some research to discover the name of the photographer working in Doboj at the time. Or, as it often happened in Bosnian backwater towns, the two studios had two master photographers who could not stand one another. This photograph was a gift to Olga’s parents. They both signed it, but the message was composed by Franjo. Why did he write it in Italian rather than German? Perhaps he wanted to address them in the language of the sea? A little earlier, Franjo had returned to Bosnia after his imprisonment in an Italian war camp.

  It is the summer of 1929, and Olga is twenty-four years old.

  Olga, Franjo, Dragan, Mladen. This picture was taken in 1933, the last summer before the move to Sarajevo, in a meadow near Kakanj. “Photo: Kohn, Zenica” is stamped on the back.

  Sarajevo, 1938. At the time it was unusual to have the parents in the middle with the sons on the edges. The father and mother appear not to notice them. Olga is wearing an expensive blue lace blouse, purchased in Vienna in a French boutique owned by a Russian émigré designer who was famous for having dressed the Romanov princesses. The designer barely spoke German, but his Italian was impeccable. She said that he spoke to her as if she were a dying child, which was why she was swayed to buy the blouse, the most expensive piece of clothing she ever purchased. Fifty years later, in the summer of 1986, the lace blouse was among the things that were carted off to the Red Cross, after they died.

  The picture was taken by Ivica Lisac, the famous Sarajevo photographer and Franjo’s friend. His stamp is imprinted on the back.

  This is the only photo of Karlo Stubler without his beard. The year is 1938 or 1939. The photo is for an official document, perhaps for the purpose of travel. He was planning at least one more trip to Bosowicz, but the war broke out soon after. After 1945 he did not talk anymore about his birthplace or about his brother, sister, and relatives. Nor did he make any inquiries about them. He got some sort of serious infection on his facial skin, which required that every morning he pull each individual hair from his beard with a pair of tweezers. As soon as he woke up, while everyone else was asleep, Opapa would sit on the veranda. He’d pluck his beard in front of a little mirror on a stand, and tears would run down his cheeks. Around the mirror were pots with cactuses of various sizes. He had started breeding them after settling in Bosnia. Twenty years after his death there were still cactuses on the veranda table. At five years old, it seemed to me that my great-grandfather’s ghost lived among those cactuses. I was afraid of ghosts so I never went out onto the veranda.

  This picture was taken in Timişoara or Budapest. It was sent as a gift to Karlo Stubler in Bosnia. In those days, photographs were given as intimate heirlooms. We saw each other rarely, so stills served as memorabilia. Regina was a doctor, married to a Bulgarian, and until the war Karlo’s children corresponded with her. She disappeared. No one knew what became of her after the liberation. Rudi made inquiries, wrote to Sofia, searched for her with the help of the Red Cross. Her name was spoken over the radio in various languages, Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, German, Romanian. Have you seen Regina Dragnev? They had not. The snapshot remained, and along with it a certain awe for the art of photography that had already reached an age where a face could exist without a single living eye ever seeing it.

  Johanna Stubler did not like having her picture taken. The heart defect that the doctors discovered after the birth of her fourth child made her always anticipate death. Every spring was the last for Omama, and then every summer and every fall. Ultimately she outlived her husband and lived to a ripe old age. She never liked having her picture taken because she dreaded the idea that it would be used in her obituary. She avoided every family photo, ducking out quietly at the last moment, only to reappear after the photographer had left. Perhaps this is what extended her life. Death regularly leafed through the family albums and couldn’t find her photo anywhere. Johanna’s daughter Olga insisted: “When I die, please do not put my picture in the obituary.” A wish she had inherited from her mother.

  Johanna and Karlo’s children: Olga, Regina (Rika), Karla (Lola), Rudolf (Nano). The photo was probably taken in Dubrovnik, a little before Karlo’s exile. The sisters had not yet reached maidenhood or started going to the hair salon, and the time of crazy extravagant hairdos had been ended by the Great War and the Spanish flu that had ravaged Europe. A new era had begun. The Stubler sisters were the children of art deco. Their youth would not last long. Rudi began to go bald at the age of twenty-one, but instead of letting a little coronet form around his pate, he shaved his head until the end of his life. He covered it with a hat: gray in winter, rabbit hair, white in summer, Panama.

  Marijaa Brana and Vasilj Nikolaevich in their Sarajevo home. The wall coverings or “wallrugs” they brought with them from Russia are visible behind them. Vasilj Nikolaevich was a high-ranking imperial officer. Karlo Stubler got along well with Vasilj Nikolaevich. Mostly they sat together witho
ut speaking. For years after Karlo’s death, Vasilj Nikolaevich would visit them on Kasindol Street and sit without saying a word.

  Photographers used to circulate around Dubrovnik’s fish market, harbor, and beach at Porporela until the early eighties. They would photograph people as they walked by, fathers with children, foreigners and tourists. They would then approach the prospective customer, offering to develop it for a very attractive price. Were there people who refused to see what had been captured in the dark ventricles of the photographic chamber? Sunday, April 6, 1941, was a rainy day in Dubrovnik. The southerly was turning into a northerly. Lola was heading toward the fish market with Mina Jelavić. At that moment Mina became aware of Mr. Luja Berner and his camera. He took the shot. Croatian state radio had just announced that Belgrade had been bombed.

  The wartime devastation is visible on the face of Home Army First Lieutenant Rudolf Stubler. Polytechnics student in Graz and Vienna, gifted violinist, lover of music, poetry, and mathematics, skilled beekeeper. Women loved him. A delicate soul, sweet and smart, when this picture was taken at the Winterfield Photography Studio, he was twenty-four years old and had not worked a day in his life. He sent the photo to his family in Kasindol. He had grown thin from fear, as he lay down every evening with Taps, turning his back to the sleeping Home Guardsmen.

  The faces of those who would later come to grief in the war are smiling, cheerful, filled with optimism. Proud sons wearing wartime uniforms at a time when it was not known which would be the uniform of the liberators. The horrors of Europe’s war can be seen on his face. He is not smiling or looking toward victory.