Mama Leone

by Miljenko Jergovic

  Profunda used to be Mate Terin’s house, but then the war started and the Italians came and they set Mate’s house on fire. No one knew why they did it, why his house, and why they spared everyone else’s. Maybe they just wanted to make an example of someone, show how tough they were, and they picked Mate’s house by chance. Mate hung himself when he saw the remains of his house, and because he didn’t have a wife or children, or any relatives except a brother who lived in New Zealand who never wrote to him, there was no one to grieve for Mate or to repair his house when the war finished. All that remained were big rough walls, white as snow, all traces of fire washed clean by the rain. The burned stone had gone white, much whiter than it was when it was a house.

  You get to Profunda from the hillside above because the house is dug into the earth and cut into the rock. You can jump onto the ruins from the rock above and walk the walls on which the roof once stood. Actually, you could only do that until little Vjeko fell and broke his neck.

  We’re gonna do it on Saturday, said Nikša, but we gotta wait ’til it’s dark. There were five of us, four locals and me, who wanted to be a local, but to them I was an outsider, the Sarajever. This meant I always had to prove myself more, just like I had to prove myself more when I was in Sarajevo because I was an outsider there too, a Dalmatian outsider. For half the year I spoke Dalmatian and the other half Sarajevan, but no one trusted me because they all knew that I’d always be going back to where I wasn’t a Sarajevan or a Dalmatian, where I’d speak like I wasn’t one or the other.

  On Saturday it’s Fishermen’s Night, that’s a village festival, and they don’t make anyone go home, mothers, babies, or grandpas, and so we’re going to make the most of it and go to Profunda, to see where the donkeys sleep and walk on the walls and check the whole place out, but only the brave among us of course. Scaredy-cats don’t have to walk the walls, but I’ve got to use my chance, because if I miss it I’ll always be the outsider from Sarajevo and no one will ever believe me when I speak like a Dalmatian.

  Grandpa was reading the paper, Grandma cleaning the fish. Dearie, listen to this, said Grandpa looking at Grandma through his glasses. In research undertaken in 1923, the noted scientist von Hentig concluded that earthquakes had an effect on the internal secretion of fish and their behavior, and that artificial convulsions could in no way explain the phenomenon. Animals obviously react to a unique geophysical phenomenon preceding the earthquake, one that culminates in the quake itself. He read really slowly, word by word, to make it sound more serious, but I knew Grandpa was just playing serious, only reading it out loud to get Grandma going, but not too much, just a little bit, just enough for her to start bickering. He’d always needle Grandma into a little bicker when he was in a good mood.

  She raised her eyebrows and curled her lips, as if surprised to hear about the fish and the earthquakes, but she continued preparing the fish for lunch all the same. I knew she knew what he was up to, that he just wanted her to say fine Franjo, I’m preparing the fish, and you’re reading about earthquakes. Then he told her about the importance of knowing when there’s going to be an earthquake because you have to be prepared and that it would be good if she could check the internal secretion of those sardines she was fixing. That’s how it was supposed to go, but it doesn’t because Grandma just raises her eyebrows and acts all surprised.

  He keeps looking at her for a while, like a rascal; sometimes she says to him what are you giving me that rascal look for, and that always makes me laugh because my grandpa is seventy-five years old, and there’s no way he can look at her like a rascal, but ever since Grandma started calling it the rascal look I call it that too. Grandpa goes back to his paper, heaves a deep sigh, and forgets about the rascal look because his needling didn’t work out.

  It’s Fishermen’s Night on Saturday, I say. Grandpa doesn’t bat an eyelid, and Grandma keeps cleaning the fish. Are we going to celebrate? . . . We don’t have anything to celebrate, we’re not fishermen, but if it’s fish you’re after, you’ll be eating fish in about half an hour . . . But there’s free fish from the grill on Saturday . . . You were going to pay for these ones, right? . . . It’s not the same, those ones are from the skillet, on Saturday they’ll be from the grill . . . All right, you go celebrate . . . Can I stay until after dark? . . . We’ll see. If the other kids do, you will too.

  Grandpa read the paper through lunch; he’d grab a sardine with his fingers and eat it all in one go, from head to tail, the fish bones making a crunching sound between his teeth, they’re good for you, think of the calcium! He’d leave the tails to the side so he knew how many he’d eaten. Grandma looked at him unimpressed, and I thought about what would happen if I ate a whole sardine, just like that, without picking the bones out and said I was thinking of all the calcium. I swear that when I’m big I’m going to read the paper and eat sardines whole, and no one will be able to say or do a thing about it. I don’t care what I’m going to be when I grow up, I couldn’t care less if I’m going to be a pilot, a butcher, or a forestry expert like Uncle Postnikov, all I care about is that time goes by really fast so I can be like Grandpa and eat sardines head, bones and all, put my glasses on the end of my nose, and read the paper. That’s the important thing, to learn to read the paper, see what’s going on in the world, particularly on a day like today when it’s been really boring here and we ate sardines from the skillet, not from the grill. The world is so big that there are always people who weren’t bored, so the papers write about those people, and the people who are bored read the papers, like us for example, like Grandpa who’d love to bicker with Grandma, and Grandma who can’t be bothered bickering, and especially me, because I have to wait until Saturday to go to Profunda, to see the donkeys while they’re sleeping, to walk a circle on the edge of the abyss around the burned out house of Mate Terin and be done with being an outsider from Sarajevo.

  You set a fine example for the boy, says Grandma to Grandpa as he drops a sardine on the paper. He picks it up between his thumb and forefinger and puts it in his mouth, the fine bones crackling like dry pine needles under the wheels of a truck, a greasy splodge in the shape of a sardine imprinted on the paper. Like a photo! Grandpa has snaffled the sardine, but its outline stays on the newsprint. You can see its length and width, the kind of head it had, and the kind of tail. The piece of newspaper looks like a tombstone with a picture of the deceased, the deceased one in Grandpa’s tummy.

  It was dead when Grandma was cleaning it. That sardine was dead even when it was in the fish shop. It was dead as soon as they hauled it out of the sea. What do sardines die from? I asked. They die from air, just like we’d die if someone held us under water, said Grandpa. That means fishermen throw out their nets to drag fish into the open air so they die? . . . No, they catch fish so we’ve got something to eat, and we eat only what is dead . . . What about chard, is that dead too? . . . I think it is, but no one really knows because chard doesn’t have eyes. At least as far as we know, dead things are things that once upon a time moved their eyes . . . There should be fish that cast out nets for people and drag them into the sea and fry them and eat them . . . Where’d you come up with that nonsense? . . . Then we wouldn’t be sorry about eating fish because we’d know fish eat us too. Get it . . . No, I don’t. Why would we feel sorry for fish? . . . Because they were alive, and then fishermen caught them in their nets. If the fishermen hadn’t caught them, they’d still be alive . . . You can’t feel sorry for fish, if you felt sorry for fish, then you’d also have to feel sorry for chickens, and pigs, and calves, in the end you’d die of hunger . . . I don’t care, I’m going to feel sorry for them . . . Suit yourself, feel sorry for them, but you’ll soon see you’ve got nothing to eat. Grandpa was angry now, so I decided to shut up and eat my sardines. He didn’t understand fish, and he wasn’t sad when he saw a greasy splodge on the newspaper, a photo of the sardine he’d just eaten. It was because he’d been to war, and in war people learn what it’s like to be dead and as long as they th
emselves don’t die, death becomes normal to them. He fought on the Soča front as an Austrian soldier, and then the Italians took him prisoner in 1916, and he says he had a great time back then. He was imprisoned for a full three years, he learned Italian and kept a diary about everything that happened, things he wanted to tell someone but didn’t have anyone to tell. He wrote the diary in Italian, but using the Cyrillic alphabet because the Italians didn’t know Cyrillic and the other prisoners didn’t know Italian, so no one could take a peek at his diary and laugh at his secret longings. The diary is kept in Grandpa’s drawer and the first of his descendants to know both Cyrillic and Italian will be the first to read it. Grandpa’s son, my uncle, and Grandpa’s daughter, my mother, don’t know Italian, so that means that one day, if I learn Cyrillic and Italian, it could be me. Maybe then I’ll find out how soldiers stop caring about fishes’ deaths and why they don’t care about fish even when they’re old and not soldiers anymore, but pensioners who no army in the world would ever send to war.

  Tomorrow was Friday. There was only one more day until Saturday. C’mon, I’ll show you something you’ve never seen before, said Nikša. We set off for the old camp ground, to the little wooden hut where they used to keep the sun umbrellas, and sat down on old beer crates. Nikša dropped his pants. He didn’t have any undies on; he was older than us and everything on him was bigger, the thing he wanted to show us too. Check this out! he said and pulled the skin up. I’d never done that, but I was sure it had to hurt. He put the skin back down and pulled it up again; my throat tightened like it did when they used to take me for my vaccinations. He repeated the up-down thing with the skin a few more times, that’s gotta hurt, I thought. Everyone was silent, waiting to see what might happen next. Nikša said look, it’s getting bigger! And it really had gotten bigger, but it was big before too.

  I was scared and looked over at Zoran and Miro, but they were dead still, staring at the action between Nikša’s legs. Nikša breathed faster and faster, and everything on show got redder and redder. I was scared what was going to happen next, actually most of all I was scared because Zoran and Miro were just sitting there watching not worried about a thing. Then I remembered I was an outsider from Sarajevo. I jumped up off the crate and took off outside.

  I don’t know whether they burst out laughing or yelled that I was a scaredy-cat, I don’t know anything, because I just ran and ran and ran and didn’t stop until I got home. What’s wrong, speedy, you’re covered in sweat, said Grandma. I was doing athletics! I gasped convincingly. She saw me and she saw Dane Korica on his way home from the Munich Olympics. I was dying of happiness because I’d made it home and had managed to lie like a champion. I lie best when I’m happy.

  On Saturday I woke up dead set that I wasn’t going to leave the house. I’m not going outside until we go back to Sarajevo. Grandpa had gone to Zaostrog, I’d said I wasn’t going with him, Grandma asked are you sick? I said I think I’m sick, and she said well, you’re not going to Fishermen’s Night then, I said I didn’t want to well, well, you really are sick, she said, and fetched the thermometer. You don’t have a temperature. Where does it hurt? . . . I don’t hurt. I’m just feeling a bit sick and I don’t want to go outside . . . Did you get into a fight with someone yesterday? . . . No. Nothing happened yesterday, I just don’t want to go outside today, and not tomorrow either . . . Why? Are you going to be sick tomorrow too? . . . If I have to go outside I will be . . . You’ve decided to never leave the house ever again? . . . I’ll go outside as soon as we’re back in Sarajevo . . . Did someone say something mean to you? . . . No, but I’m a little bit scared . . . Of what? . . . Of the donkeys that sleep at Profunda . . . Have you been to Profunda? Grandma shot out. No, I haven’t, and I’m not going to go either, because I’m not leaving the house. Do donkeys really sleep at Profunda? . . . What donkeys? You know there isn’t a donkey left in Drvenik . . . Last year there were three, Mijo’s, Dušan’s, and Stipe Alača’s, that must be them . . . God, where’d you get that from, those donkeys are long gone! . . . Where are they then? . . . They were taken to Makarska. . . What are they doing in Makarska? Grandma sighed and looked at the ceiling, mumbling something like ohjesuschristsaveme and then said fine then, I’ll tell you, but don’t you dare start bawling! There’s nothing there at Profunda, it’s just a ruin like any other, full of brambles. The donkeys were sent to the slaughterhouse because nobody wanted them anymore.

  I closed my eyes, my heart was really pounding; fine, I’ll suck this one up too. No more questions? I shook my head. But I’m not going out until we’re in Sarajevo. Grandma didn’t say anything else, but I knew she was thinking that tomorrow I’d change my mind and tear off out of the house. That was what I was most afraid of because I knew there was no way I could tell her that the real reason I can’t go out is because something I saw had made me really scared, something others could watch, but I couldn’t, and that’s why I can’t go outside.

  Am I a Sarajever? I followed her into the kitchen. No, you’re a Sarajevan. People from Sarajevo are called Sarajevans . . . Is that good, to be a Sarajevan? . . . It’s good to be whatever, it’s good to be from wherever . . . Then why do they say I’m a Sarajever? . . . Who says that? . . . Zoran and Nikša . . . They say that because they don’t know anything about it and they’ve never been out of Drvenik . . . And why do they call me a Dalmatian in Sarajevo? . . . For the same reason. Because they’ve never been out of Sarajevo . . . And why do we always move? . . . Because Grandpa has asthma and has to spend lots of time at the seaside. Besides, it’s good to move around because then you’re in lots of places at once, the place where you really are and the place where you’ve come from, and if you don’t like it, you could always spend the whole year with your mom in Sarajevo . . . Promise me you won’t force me to go outside until we get back to Sarajevo . . . Fine, I promise, but only if you tell me why you don’t want to go outside all of a sudden . . . I don’t want to because they keep calling me a Sarajever, I lied and went to my room. I always leave like that when something is really important, because as soon as I go, Grandma takes everything I’ve told her more seriously. I threw myself on the bed too, just in case, burying my head in the pillow and waiting to see if she’d come. When she came in, I pretended to be asleep. She pulled the covers over me and crept out.

  I slept through Fishermen’s Night and the mission to Profunda. Actually I slept right through everything that happened after that, everything I didn’t want to see. I spent the whole seven days before we went back to Sarajevo in the house or the yard, playing by myself. One night I ran across the road, to Uncle Postnikov. He got his sketch pad and felt-tip pens out and drew snow, snowy villages and snowy cities. Uncle Postnikov is eighty years old, a Russian who once, a long time ago, fled the revolution. Why? I asked him. Because I was scared, he said, calmly sketching a reindeer-drawn sleigh with a girl on it wearing a big brown hood, her long blond hair peeking out from underneath. When you’re really scared, you have to run . . . And never go back? . . . I don’t know, I couldn’t go back . . . Why? . . . Because of those who weren’t scared, the ones who stayed . . . I’m never going back either . . . Where are you never going back to? he asked, surprised. I’m never going back to the old campground, I said to Uncle Postnikov. If it’s because you’re scared, then we’re the same, he answered, and turned to a new page where the whole of Moscow was to be drawn.

  The sky is beautiful when you’re upside down

  The world is beautiful when it’s turned upside down. The sky beneath me means I could walk on it, and the top of our house in Drvenik is pinned to the sky and it’s like our house is going to topple over on its side because it’s resting on a single tip where the two sides of the roof meet, but the house doesn’t topple over, nothing happens, there’s just my laughter and wishing it would stay this way forever, that the sky stays forever under the soles of my feet, that I’m tickled by clouds of sheep, that I can walk across the sun like I do across the steamiest August asphalt, that when
night falls the stars will prickle me like the sand on the island of Brač, like the shingle where Ismet Brkić is building his weekend house. I want it to stay like this forever. Squealing in delight I scream no, no, don’t let me down, but Uncle Momčilo isn’t listening, and the world spins around me a couple more times and then everything is back to normal. The concrete yard is beneath my feet, the sky high above, and our house is sitting like all the other houses, the walls rising up to the roof. There, high in the air, everything gets thinner and smaller, because in this world everything on the ground is wide and everything up high narrow, and that’s how it’ll stay if I can’t get Uncle Momčilo to grab me by the ankles and hold me upside down, to give me a little joggle so I can see what it’s like when sky and earth quake, but nothing collapses, when everything stays anchored and beautiful, and there’s no pain that might kill the miracle in your eyes.

  Uncle Momčilo used to be a colonel, but he’s been retired from the military twenty years or something. When he retired he was younger than my mom is now. Grandma says it was because of Ðilas, and saying it in her hush-hush voice means there’s no way I’m to ask what because of Ðilas means, because then something might happen to me because of Ðilas, or Grandma will get mad because I’ve put her in a sticky situation. Because of Ðilas is my name for a sticky situation, and that’s the way it’s going to be when I grow up too. When something bad happens, and all I can do is shrug my shoulders in the face of a mountain of trouble and wait to see how things play out, I’ll think: Here we go again, it’s all because of Ðilas. And that’ll calm my nerves some, because I’ll remember Uncle Momčilo who was the first to show me how beautiful the sky is when you find yourself upside down.

  Uncle Momčilo built the house next door to ours. His house isn’t an old Dalmatian house, just a regular tourist one. Zero aesthetics, says Grandma, a whiff of the barracks and that’s how they build their weekend houses. I don’t understand what she’s talking about, and what I don’t understand is hard for me to remember. I sit on the floor building a castle for Queen Forgetful and repeat after Grandma a whiff of the bawacks and that’s how they build their weekend houses . . . Oh shut it you, little devil, and don’t you go around saying that to people because if I hear you, you’ll never set foot in my house again. And it’s barracks, not bawacks. She often does that: says something, and the second I repeat it after her or ask her a question she’s already threatening me that I’ll never set foot in the house again or that she’s going to skin me alive.