Mama Leone

by Miljenko Jergovic

  Grandma came back from Russia with a dead fox around her neck. The fox had glass eyes and a plastic snout. Poor little fox. The next time Grandma told me I wasn’t allowed to kill ants because they’re someone’s children I asked her is the fox someone’s child too, but she never replied. She was cooking lunch and couldn’t answer absolutely every question, but the questions she didn’t answer because she was cooking lunch were always the most interesting ones. Russia is gigantic, she said, gigantic and cold, and from her bag took a wooden doll inside which there was a smaller wooden doll, inside which there was a smaller doll, inside which there was a smaller doll, until a sixth wooden doll you couldn’t open came out. But I was sure there must have been a wooden doll inside her too because I couldn’t see any reason why there wouldn’t be. Then one by one I had to put the dolls back inside each other, and when I was done Grandma put them on a bedside cabinet as an ornament so we could forget about them and one day put them in a cardboard box and store them in the attic. When people die, they’re put in graves; when things die, they’re put in the attic. One day things go from the attic to the city garbage dump, but that usually only happens after the people who put them in the attic are put in their graves. At four I only know about the start of this long journey. I know about people in graves and things in attics.

  Grandma put me to bed again. She said c’mon, time for schlafen, let’s go, and I yelled no schlafen, and she said you haven’t changed at all, I thought you’d be big boy when I came back from Russia. She wanted to sound mad, my grandma, but she was actually just sad. I’ll never be as big as she wants me to be and I’ll never tell her what was going on back then, and I won’t tell her everything I remember either, that I haven’t forgotten a thing and that she should have taken me to Russia with her, I’ll never get to any of that because Grandma will die and go in the grave, and when she goes we’ll clean up the apartment, and the attic too.

  I had terrifying dreams again that night, and I wanted to yell but couldn’t, because as always the little creature of darkness popped up from somewhere and took my dreams away before I woke up, but this time he left something behind. It was a dream of a scary black man who in the distance, from the top of our street, was coming toward me with a big black dog. In my dream I thought look, it’s the boogeyman, he’s going to hurt me or make me disappear, but look, a big black dog’s coming and he’s going to gobble up the big black man, but then an even bigger black man’s going to show up with another big black dog and the dog’s going to gobble up the bigger black man after he has hurt me or made me disappear. I woke up smiling.

  That day we went to Drvenik, where Grandpa was waiting for us. He gave Grandma a kiss. He didn’t usually do that. He kissed her because she’d just got back from Russia. I learned that people kiss each other when they come back from a big trip or if they haven’t seen each other in ages. While I was in Sarajevo and Grandma in Russia, Grandpa had made a new friend. He told us about him on the way home. The story went that Grandpa was walking to Zaostrog and wanted to sit down on a bench because he was tired, but his friend-to-be was already sitting on the bench. Grandpa asked politely if he could sit down, but his friend-to-be didn’t understand. So Grandpa asked him the same thing in German, and his friend-to-be answered and that’s how they met. His name is Ralph, an American who has a big German shepherd. Grandpa thinks Ralph is a spy, but Grandpa doesn’t care. We all have to work, all that matters is that we do our work well. Ralph’s in Makarska at the moment, but he’s coming to visit this afternoon.

  Around four o’clock a big black man arrives, leading a big black dog. He offers me his hand, shaking my hand seriously as if I were an adult and as if he knew I like it when people shake my hand like I’m an adult. Then I make for the dog, but Grandpa says wait! so I stop. Ralph goes up to the dog, whispers something in the dog’s ear, and waves me over. The dog’s name is Donna. I sit down in front of Donna, put my hand on her forehead, and say Donna, you’re an American boy . . . Donna’s a girl. Grandpa corrects me . . . Donna, you’re the first American girl I’ve ever met and I love you. Everybody laughs. Grandma translates what I said into German for Ralph. Ralph laughs like a giant out of a fairy tale ahahahaha . . . ahahahaha . . . ahahahaha. Donna looks at me, her snout resting on the kitchen tiles, her eyes blinking, and I know she knows and understands why I love her. She remembers my dream because I remember it too. She was in my dream, but she hadn’t been sleeping, so the little creature of darkness couldn’t steal me from her memory. Donna gobbles up scary black men, that I know. But why would she gobble up Ralph, he’s Grandpa’s friend. He’s black, but he’s not scary. Then I was sure that Grandpa was right. Ralph isn’t a scary black man. Ralph is a spy.

  The next day we went with Ralph and Donna to Dubrovnik. We drove in his Cadillac, which if you saw it from a distance looked like it was made out of silver, but it wasn’t, it was metal like all the other cars. The Cadillac glides like a ship, Grandma told Auntie Lola when we got to Dubrovnik. I was sitting under the dining table and Donna was lying in front of me. We kept quiet. She because dogs don’t talk, and me because at that moment I was the prince from the beginning of the story, the master of an endless kingdom and there wasn’t anything that wasn’t mine. I sat and waited for Donna to do something, to creep into my dreams and make me their master. For a long time I thought Donna had cheated me that day, because she didn’t do anything.

  Ralph and Donna came the next year too, and then Ralph started sending postcards from all over the world, from distant cities and islands none of us had ever heard of. He sent his greetings to Grandpa and Grandma and never forgot to mention that Miljenko’s American girlfriend says hi too.

  When we hadn’t received a postcard for more than six months Grandma asked what’s Ralph up to? He hasn’t been in touch for ages. Grandpa just shrugged and sighed. Another six months went by and again Grandma asked the same question. After four stretches of six months went by Grandpa said who knows, maybe Ralph died. He was all alone in the world, he probably died in some hotel somewhere. Then I wondered what had happened to Donna and for a long time I hoped she’d show up again somewhere, my American girlfriend, at least in my dreams. I think I’ll always think that. When one day I see people losing their heads in the middle of the street, then I’ll know that only Donna had saved me from these kinds of dreams.

  The kid never panics

  It’s June already, my birthday was seven days ago, and yesterday I discovered the world of split shadows. It was like this. We arrived in Drvenik, Grandma and me, and as soon as we got there she said go on, go and play, and I knew why she so was quick to get rid of me. She wanted to pick up the phone, ring Dad in Sarajevo or my uncle, Mom’s brother, or someone else she could have a serious talk with, someone as worried as we were, because the day after my birthday Mom had gone to Ljubljana for an operation. Dad said it’s nothing serious, but two sharp lines creased Mom’s face, two crevices between her eyes. She said you never know, it could get bigger. Dad said and that’s why you’re going to Ljubljana, to be on the safe side and so that it doesn’t get bigger. Grandma asked well, what is it exactly, and Dad said nothing, just a tiny bump on the cervix. I sat under the table pretending I was building a Lego castle for Queen Forgetful, but I actually wasn’t building anything, I was eavesdropping and trying to understand what was going on. But I didn’t understand anything. Instead, a vast freezing emptiness swelled in my chest, right there under the bones where we breathe, where the heart beats. I didn’t know what it was. It wasn’t a space holding old fears or guilt at something I’d done, but something strange and new, something I couldn’t figure out because there just wasn’t anything there. But I felt it swell, pressing against my bones, this vast freezing emptiness, dissolving into dead air, into a shadow hovering over my heart and the grown-up hearts of Grandma, Mom, and Dad, my heart that now shares terrifying and serious things with others. Bump is a nice little word, like tummy and mommy, but it means something terrible. Words like this didn’
t exist before. Before this bump everything little was harmless and sweet, tiny to the eye and pretty to look at, but this had all changed. It changed the day after my birthday when I was eavesdropping on Grandma, Mom, and Dad. The time of little things and their goodness had come to an end. From now on the world would no longer hide in diminutives, no longer reside in their little lost paradises, in Lego cottages or on tiny ottomans upon which the dreams of secret princesses lay scattered.

  Grandma’s on the phone now. I thought it over as I traipsed past the stone Dalmatian houses. I wasn’t just walking, I was stamping, really getting into it. I wanted to stamp right over the top of whatever was lodged in my head. Mom had gone far away, all the way to Ljubljana, and she was in the hospital, having an operation. You go to the hospital to get well, not to get sick, Dad said when they were going to take my tonsils out. But why do they take your tonsils out in Sarajevo and you have to go to Ljubljana because of a bump? Because a bump is so terrible that you have to go far away, like in a fairy tale where they cross seven mountains and seven seas to get well. But not all long journeys have fairy-tale endings. A fairy tale is a fairy tale because it’s a story with a happy ending, it’s just that happy endings don’t happen very often and people don’t usually live in them. There isn’t enough room for everyone. In fairy tales there’s only enough room for a couple of old kings, for their good, bad, and clever daughters, and for the queen and a few witches, but not for people, the millions of millions of people. There isn’t enough room for my mom either, who isn’t a queen or a princess but just a regular mom who works in accounts, suffers from migraines, and sings on Saturdays, enveloped in steam and water until her hands have finished doing the washing that isn’t allowed to go in the machine. If Mom has gone far away, all the way to Ljubljana, she must be totally lost. She’ll never come back because her life isn’t a fairy tale, she gets two creases between her eyes and thinks bumps can get bigger. My mom isn’t Snow White, Cinderella, or Queen Forgetful. She isn’t coming back from Ljubljana, she’s going to stay there forever and come back to us dead, just like the people who don’t get well at the hospital come back dead, because you can easily lose good health in white corridors and green boiler rooms, in the smells of chloroform, ether, and medicinal alcohol, in places where the air reeks of worry.

  That’s what I was thinking as I started following my shadow. It was moving along the asphalt a little behind me. I could see it out of the corner of my eye but didn’t want to turn my head toward it. I wanted to watch it sort of in passing, to not change anything, just to keep seeing it. When I moved along the white stone wall a little, half the shadow disappeared from the asphalt and climbed up the side of the house. Up to my stomach I floated along the asphalt, my chest, neck, and head making their way along the house. My shadow split in two, but I stayed as one. You see, a shadow isn’t actually an image of a person that always follows him, tracing his every move and being just like him. A shadow splits in half. But I wouldn’t have felt or noticed a thing if I hadn’t been looking. It keeps following me; it’s just that its life isn’t mine anymore.

  I turned around and marched back the other way. The shadow moved a little out in front of me. Heading home, I stayed close to the wall, my shadow still split in half, Grandma was probably done on the phone. Mom’s woken up from the anesthetic, she said. The bump’s gone? . . . Yes, it’s gone, but what do you know about that? Were you eavesdropping again? . . . No, I just overheard . . . You’re not allowed to listen to your elders’ conversations . . . Why? Because they’re sneaky? . . . No, because you don’t understand them . . . When will I understand them? . . . One day, when you grow up . . . Are they really that scary? . . . Who’s that scary? . . . Are all grown-up conversations as scary as yours? . . . No, our conversations aren’t scary, you don’t understand them . . . A conversation about a bump isn’t scary?. . . No, it’s just a conversation about an illness . . . Why am I allowed to listen to conversations about my bronchitis but not about a bump? . . . Oh boy, no more conversations about bronchitis for you, you little devil, look at the mess you’re in. Go wash your face and hands, and don’t ever let me see you in such a state again. Grandma grabbed the frames of her glasses, just like she always did when she wanted to show me she was angry.

  I lay tucked in up to my neck, staring at the ceiling, listening to her voice. She was reading me White Fang. Ten pages every night. We were already halfway through. White Fang is a wolf who thinks and feels, and scary things happen to him just because he thinks and feels. It’s not a fairy tale and that’s why I’m scared there won’t be a happy ending, but today I don’t listen to Grandma’s voice. I don’t remember sentences and I don’t feel like I’m White Fang, because to listen to the story of White Fang I need to feel like White Fang, because when you don’t do that the story doesn’t work. In fairy tales you don’t feel like a prince, princess, old king, brave knight, or Queen Forgetful, just like in fables you don’t feel like a fox or a raven, but in true stories you need to feel like White Fang to understand what happens to him. Fairy tales and fables are made up, but true stories actually happen. If they haven’t happened, then they happen when we listen to them, or when we learn to read one day and we read them. They happen to us when we’re reading the story, and this means we have to have lots of courage because stories don’t always have happy endings, and because you have to kill your fear so you can live in the story. Life in a story is more beautiful than life in real life because in a story only important things happen and because in stories there aren’t any of those days when nothing happens and the world is as empty as the white dates in the wall calendar.

  Will Mom be back from Ljubljana before we finish White Fang? I interrupted Grandma as she was reading. I don’t think so, we’ve got eighty pages left, and that’s eight days. Mom will be back in about fifteen days . . . Are you allowed to know how a book ends before you’ve read it? . . . It’s allowed, but then the book isn’t very interesting . . . Have you read White Fang before? . . . Yes, at least five times . . . And you always forget the end? . . . Well, I don’t actually forget it, but it’s as if I don’t know how it’s going to end and the ending might change . . . I don’t want anything bad to happen to White Fang before Mom comes back from Ljubljana . . . Why do you think something bad’s going to happen to him? . . . Because good things only have to happen in fairy tales. Otherwise they don’t . . . Who told you that? . . . No one told me. I just know . . . Well, I didn’t know that . . . You’re just pretending you didn’t know . . . No, I really didn’t know that. I’ve never thought about it . . . Well, have you ever thought about why shadows split in half so half of you is on the asphalt and half of you on the wall? Grandma looked at me, closed the book, and said she was sleepy. That was weird. She had never been sleepy before I fell asleep. I didn’t know about after because I’d already be asleep by the time she went to bed. That night it was different. Grandma was scared Mom was going to die, I knew it. I knew exactly what she was thinking. If Mom dies, we’ll be left alone, her, Grandpa, and me, and they’re old, and old people are scared of being alone with children because they think one day they’ll close their eyes for an afternoon nap and never open them again, and then the children will be left alone, helplessly trying to phone someone, hollering to the neighbors, but always end up waiting there all alone next to their grandpas and grandmas. Children shouldn’t be alone because loneliness is something grown-up; we grow up so that one day we can be completely alone and no one has to worry about it. That’s what Grandma was thinking when she pretended to fall asleep before me.

  In the end she really did fall asleep. In her sleep she wheezed like a big mouse. She breathed in through her nose, and then puffed out through her mouth. You could really hear a puff. Only she slept like this. I know because I’d already slept in the same room as all of them, lying awake as they slept. Mom was a quiet sleeper, but once she said a word in her sleep. I asked her what did you say last night? and she looked at me like she’d brought an F home fr
om some school of hers. But even she didn’t remember her dreams because the little creature of the darkness came to visit her too. Dad slept smacking his lips and grinding his teeth. His sleeping was funny. It was like he was trying to make someone laugh with his sleeping, or like someone wouldn’t let him go to sleep unless he first made them laugh. Uncle snored horribly, and for a whole night I was seething.

  But none of them slept puffing, not even Grandpa and he’d lived with Grandma for more than fifty years and he even said that in fifty years two people become very alike. But he coughed in his sleep because of his asthma.

  I heard a last puff. A lot of time went by and I was waiting for a new puff, but it never came. I wasn’t really scared, but I was starting to get a little bit worried. I mean, Grandma was still breathing and she was still alive, but I didn’t think this was enough. I was worried something wasn’t right. I sat on my bed and wanted to wake her up, but for some reason didn’t dare. You need to be tough because only when you’re tough does everything work out. You’re not allowed to panic – oh boy, she’s not breathing, or maybe you just can’t see it ’cause it’s dark – I don’t know what’s going on, but somehow she’s not moving anymore. That’s it, here we go, I’m going to scream, but I’m not allowed to scream. If I scream, Mom won’t come back from Ljubljana, and I’ll be left on my own before I grow up, but that’s not allowed because children aren’t allowed to be left alone, just like they’re not allowed to kill ants, and they’re not allowed to cross the street without looking left and right. They’re not allowed to scream, that’s panicking, and I don’t get panicky, the kid never panics, my mom tells her work colleagues, and when she says it, she’s all aglow, my mom who’s in Ljubljana at the moment. The kid never panics is the nicest thing she ever says about me and if I scream now she’ll never say it again, and I’ll just be a regular kid, a kid you can’t say anything about, and I’ll spoil that story from Dubrovnik from when I was two and a half when Nano lost me at the Pile Gate and I calmly made my way to Auntie Lola’s place, the length of the Corso and around behind St. Blaise’s. I’d knocked on the door and Grandpa had opened it and asked where’s Nano? And I said Nano got lost and quickly got it in that it wasn’t my fault he got lost. They were all proud of me then, and Mom said the kid never panics for the first time, and when we got back from Sarajevo she told Dad how Nano got lost, and then Dad said my big boy and that’s how the legend began, the one they still tell to this very night when I’d rather howl, but I’m not allowed, or this whole world made up of Mom in Ljubljana and Grandma who’s not breathing in the dark will be destroyed, just like I destroy Queen Forgetful’s castle when I’m bored.