Mama Leone

by Miljenko Jergovic

  Grandpa and Grandpa went to the funeral and came back all red. After the rain a fiery sun had beat down; Grandpa was furious and breathing heavily and cussing Nikola out for not dying some other day, like some sunny day so that when they buried him it would be raining, so the funeral procession wouldn’t have fried climbing up Biokovo and baked all the way down. No one cried, said Grandma. They’ve washed the shame from their hands, said Grandpa, disgusted not by the shame that was no more – by Nikola – but by the living, now all relieved there was no one in Drvenik with tuberculosis anymore.

  Fine, I’ll take you to see where he died, said Grandpa and reached for his umbrella. There had been five days of rain and I couldn’t wait for it to stop. I wanted to see the place of death and was worried the highway wouldn’t be pink anymore like a melted Pink Panther. And my worry was well-placed: The asphalt was black, like any other highway. I looked around and everything looked rainy and normal, no trace of a special place for dying, no sign of anything Nikola must have left for us so we’d know where he died.

  That’s where he sat down, Grandpa pointed to a white rock where the number 480 was written under a red line. It means he died on the four hundred and eightieth kilometer of the highway, but that doesn’t matter. Nikola’s gone, no story, straight to bed. You happy? We can go home now. Actually I wasn’t that happy. I was confused. I thought there would be a mark at the spot where he died; maybe the highway wouldn’t be pink but at least there’d be something giving away that someone had been there and then suddenly wasn’t there. If there isn’t something like that, then there’s also no reason for someone to die and when there’s no reason for someone to die, then the sadness is much bigger than a little cry and bye-bye. Then you would never stop crying when someone you loved died.

  Why do people die? . . . They die because they get old and because if people just kept being born and didn’t die there wouldn’t be enough room on earth . . . It would be better if no more people were born and people didn’t die . . . Why would that be better? . . . Well, because then only people we know would be alive, who were good, and new people who we don’t know wouldn’t come along and make old people die . . . How do you know those new people wouldn’t be better than the old ones? . . . No one is better than you . . . Nonsense, of course there are people better than me. There are lots of people better than me, you just haven’t met them yet. You’ll see when you grow up . . . I’ll see when you die? . . . Yes, you could put it that way. When I die, you’ll see how many better people than me there are. Your friends will be better, the woman you marry will be better, and your children will be better. They’ll all be better than me and one day you won’t be sad about my death anymore . . . You’ll die for those better people? . . . Yes, and you’ll die for those better people too. The important thing is we die in the right order and children don’t die before their parents.

  He’d never spoken for so long and so quietly and calmly. He let the umbrella down and shook it out. The drops splashed all over the kitchen tiles and all over Grandma’s hair. He did it deliberately and smiled. You old fool, said Grandma without even looking at him. She doesn’t have to look at him to know why he shook the umbrella out on the tiles and all over her hair, and he doesn’t have to see her eyes to know she’s not mad. Even when he doesn’t shake the umbrella out, he knows she thinks the same thing – old fool – it’s just there’s no reason to say it aloud. They’re happy because in the rainy season when it’s tough for people with sick lungs so some people have to die, that it was Nikola who died, who no one said old fool to, and who didn’t have anyone to shake the umbrella out on. There are big crowds in places where people die; it’s like at the bus station with everyone pushing and shoving, so when you look from afar, it seems everyone wants to get on, but actually they’re pushing and shoving to not get on, to hang around until the last bus comes along, which you climb aboard because the crowd’s gone, because you’ve got a ticket in your hand and there’s no one left to say excuse me to if you stay alive.

  I beg you, don’t let her jump

  It was summer, wildfires burned red beneath the Biokovo range, fire-brigade sirens wailed, people ran with containers full of water, the sea smelled of Coppertone and glimmered in the colors of a petroleum rainbow, and we packed our things in the Duck, our Citroën, and got ready for the journey to Sarajevo. Grandpa had died eight months ago, I’d finished first grade in Drvenik, and now we could head happily home. Sarajevo would be home now, the time of a little Sarajevo, a little Drvenik was over. It was all over with Grandpa’s asthma too, and from now on we’d only go to the seaside as tourists. Drvenik wasn’t our home, which is what I’d thought; it was the home of Grandpa’s illness, like a hospital where you go to get well but everyone knows you’re going to die there in the end.

  We’re leaving forever. I have the feeling we’re leaving forever because that’s the only explanation for why we’ve packed our winter sweaters and shoes in the trunk and we’re not leaving anything behind except the feeling we’re never coming back. If we do come back it’ll be as folks on vacation, folk just passing through, all nervy because they’re dead set on making the best out of their vacation, so they yell at each other and drag other people’s children along by the ears. I feel sick thinking that next year we’ll be tourists too, and already feel like a little German who’ll run screaming out of the water when he sees a crab among the rocks and gets marched off to the medical center in Makarska if he stands on a sea urchin. There are three tiny black dots on my big toe, three sea urchin spikes from three years ago. I didn’t tell Grandma and Grandpa I’d stepped on a sea urchin because then they would’ve heated a needle in a flame, which is a terrifying sight. It would’ve hurt like hell if they took the spikes out with that, so I tried myself with my fingernails, but they wouldn’t come out, so now I’m taking the three spikes to Sarajevo with me as a memento and proof that I’ll never be just a regular tourist.

  We drive slowly through the village and we pass people with inflatable mattresses and a girl wearing a rubber ring with a duck’s head around her waist, half girl, half duck. People we know line the roadside, Auntie Senka, Uncle Tomislav, Granny Tere, they wave to us because they know we’re not leaving like we do every year but we’re leaving forever. Grandma waves back and I lower my head because I’m ashamed. I’m ashamed because something important in our lives is happening and everyone knows about it. Important things are supposed to happen in secret. We should have slipped away in the night while everyone was still asleep, so that no one saw or heard us or knew we’d gone. They might’ve thought we’d never been there in the first place. In actual fact, we should have made our exit as if we had died too.

  Uncle Naci is driving us, my uncle from Ilidža. He’s got whiskers, glasses with black frames, and size thirty-nine shoes, and he looks to me like a French table-tennis player who’s always going to lose to a Chinaman in the end. He turns around and asks are you sad, I say no, I’m not sad, and stare out at the tiny heads of bathers in the glistening sea, two yachts far from shore and Hvar still farther off, right out there on the horizon where earth and sky meet, where Hvarians live, who, before they took me to the island for the first time, I thought were half human, half Martian.

  I don’t know if I’m sad, I just know that I’m scared, but I’m not admitting to one or the other. One shouldn’t ask such questions, and when I grow up, the first chance I get I’m going to say one shouldn’t ask such questions, because there’s only one answer, there’s only no, no, no, there’s always only no, I’m not sad, I’m not scared, I’m not anything, and now everyone can smile themselves to death and jump for joy and have everything fall out of their pockets and jingle on the asphalt because for the zillionth time someone said they’re not sad and not scared, but everyone well knows that that’s exactly what you say when you’re sad and scared but don’t dare tell.

  Down there in the pines, poor little Fićo’s down there, I tap Uncle Naci on the shoulder. Fićo, who’s that? . . . He�
��s not a person, he’s a car. He flew off the highway last summer and nobody’s come to get him yet . . . Maybe that’s because he’s just a wreck and he’s no use to anyone now . . . No, that’s not the reason. It’s because Fićo doesn’t have any family anymore because they all died, the driver and the two passengers . . . Poor things . . . No, last summer they were poor things, but now Fićo is the only poor thing. They took them to Bjelovar and buried them there because they were from Bjelovar, but Fićo stayed down in the pines, even though he’s from Bjelovar too. I saw his license plates . . . Doesn’t matter where a wreck’s buried. A wreck is just a heap of junk . . . Fićo isn’t a heap of junk, he’s a poor little Fićo and he was their car. Someone loved him once. Uncle Naci shrugged and the Duck shrugged with him – there you go, now let him say the Duck might be a heap of junk one day too – just like grown-ups always shrug when they don’t understand something and you have to explain it to them. Nothing is forever, so what if someone used to love him. Now he’s a heap of junk, end of story, he said. Are dead people a heap of junk too? I asked, and I knew what he was going to say in reply, just like I knew that dead people actually meant my grandpa. Quit your babbling, Grandma cut in, and Uncle Naci just drove and kept his mouth shut all the way to Sarajevo.

  The city was steaming and empty. The river stunk like a million people had forgotten to flush a million toilets. I came to the conclusion that someone had to be responsible for all of this, or that I was being punished for something I hadn’t done but for which I’m being punished anyway, and everyone knows about it and now treats me like I’m a jailbird or a prisoner of war on some Pacific island, in a film where Japanese people scream and shout, women write letters, and Lee Marvin lies tied up in the sand, the sun burning his eyes. Poooo! I said as we passed the National Library. You little brat! Mom tried to hit me, but I moved out of the way in time. She’s been pissed since we arrived. Don’t think she doesn’t love you, Grandma whispered. I made like I didn’t hear her; I moved farther away, dead set I wasn’t going to say anything else. That I was never going to say anything else ever again. I don’t care if the Miljacka stinks, she can yell all she likes, anything can happen, but I’m never saying anything ever again.

  The whole problem is that my mom is scared of me. She’s not scared of me per se, she’s scared because she’s got a kid. She wasn’t scared before because Grandpa was alive, because we were apart a lot and then she could see how I was growing up. When someone’s always there with you, you don’t notice how much they’re changing, they’re always the same to you and you only see their bad sides. Since we came to Sarajevo forever, Mom and I have discovered each other’s bad sides. I don’t know all the bad things she’s discovered about me and I don’t want to think about all the bad things I’ve discovered about her, but it’s like we’re really disappointed in each other, and that most of all, we’re disappointed because we’re scared. In the fall I’ll be going to Silvije Strahimir Kranjčević elementary school; I don’t know anyone there and I don’t want to get to know anyone. I want to be invisible and only show up every now and then, show my face to my dead grandpa for example, who is nice because he keeps quiet and doesn’t get angry, he doesn’t do anything, but he still exists somewhere, in my head, in Mom and Grandma when they avoid opening the wardrobe where his ties are still hanging, still crumpled in the spot where he tied the knot.

  Dad arrives like the guy from the ads on TV. He takes something out of his pocket or briefcase, says something important, and for the rest of the day this sets the tone for all of us. This is possible because Dad only comes over once a week so he has six days to think something important up. Today we’re going to take a good look around our local environs and we’re going to drink miracle water from a special spring, just for us men, he said, packing us into the Renault 4. I felt a little like puking but tightened my tummy to stop it slipping out, and when a bit slipped out I’d swallow it. You need to puke? Mom asked on the approach to Olovo. No! I said. That was a mistake. I shouldn’t have opened my mouth: The second I opened it I puked right down Dad’s neck while he was driving. He just sunk his head down a little bit between his shoulders, his neck getting shorter somehow, and kept driving until we got to the first road-house. He stripped off his shirt and went over to wash it at the hose. He was wearing an undershirt that looked like a fishing net, his gray hair poking out everywhere from underneath. From behind my dad looked like a monkey someone had dressed in a human undershirt for a laugh. Don’t worry about it, said Mom, but for chrissakes, next time don’t lie, if you need to puke say you need to puke, it’s fine. I was real surprised neither Mom nor Dad was mad at me. Normally they get mad about much smaller stuff. When you say you’re fine, act tough and make like there’s no way you’re going to puke, no one holds it against you even if you do. I don’t know why it’s like that, but the next time I need to puke I won’t let out a peep either.

  Let’s hit the road, said Dad. The shirt was on a hanger hanging out the window to dry. Mom kept looking back to see how I was doing, and Dad drove in his undershirt, from behind looking like those truck drivers you see in American films. A stranger who caught a glimpse of us at that particular moment would’ve thought we were a happy family who did everything in life together. In actual fact, maybe back then we were a happy family, and maybe our life consisted of two parts that alternated back and forth, on and off, something like that. In the first part they were divorced and lived their totally separate lives. She was sore because he was how he was and because fate had had her meet him, and he was sore because he hadn’t known how to hold on to her and had done everything wrong, and grown men aren’t allowed to do everything wrong. Only Mom and Dad knew the truth about that first part, nobody else, and if they did tell other people anything about themselves and their dead marriage, then – and this I’m sure of – they only told lies or said things to shift the blame. In the other part of their life, which occurred once a week or twice a year, the two of them were a happy family, bound to me like horses tied to a waterwheel plodding one behind the tail of the other, never touching the whole day through.

  We arrived in Kladanj. The hotel was empty; the receptionist stood at the counter, head resting on the guest book, asleep on his feet. The waiter was whistling one of those songs where there’s a couple who love each other, but one is sick and the other gloomy. He carried a big silver tray, his face contorted in a grimace, and it appeared a distinct possibility that when the song was finished, he was going to slam the tray against the wall, rip his waiter’s jacket off, and throw himself in the river, heartbroken that whatever had happened in the song had happened. I don’t understand why people sing and whistle those kinds of songs if afterward they’re going to feel so bad they want to smash stuff.

  What can I get you? the waiter said, having forgotten to change the expression on his face. Two coffees and a Coca-Cola, said Dad. We’re out of Coke! the waiter shot back. Fine, a cloudy juice then, Dad quickly recovered. Coffee, coffee, and a cloudy, the waiter translated the order into waiters’ language, and showed up a couple of minutes later with his tray balanced like a circus act. The coffee cups and juice glass slid from one end of his tray to the other, but they never collided, and he didn’t spill a drop either. Pleased with himself, he completely forgot the song with the sick and gloomy lovers.

  There’s a pool behind the hotel, shall we take a look? Dad knew this place well. Mom didn’t care either way. C’mon, c’mon, I jumped up. The pool was big and blue, that blue color you only see in swimming pools, but there was no one in the water and no one just hanging out. Full to the brim with water, a totally deserted pool stretched out before us. Up above there was a diving board as high as a skyscraper. Shame we don’t have our swimming gear, I said. It wouldn’t be allowed, Dad hurried, and Mom gave him the look you give people when you’ve caught them lying like a dog. Dad was sorry he ever mentioned the pool, because even though it was impossible, he now thought we were going to strip off and jump in, and that he’d
have to stand there on the edge and simper, and that we’d try and get him to jump in too and then he’d have to dream up an explanation and excuse why he can’t. The thing is, my dad can’t swim, and he thinks I don’t know that. Mom told me ages ago that he never learned to swim and that he’s ashamed about it. She told me that he’s even more ashamed because he suspects that I can, but he’s too embarrassed to say or ask anything. He’s made such a fine art of not swimming I never notice what I already know, so we can be in Drvenik for fifteen days and the whole time it seems perfectly natural he never goes in the water.

  Nice diving board, said Mom, and then went and climbed right up to the top. Fully clothed, one step at a time, she walked slowly out along the board, which was trembling and wobbling under her weight. When she got to the end she looked down and spread her arms wide as if she was going to fly away, but then slowly let them fall. Dad looked up at her, beads of sweat lining his forehead, he opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something, and he did want to say something, but he didn’t know how, or whether to say it to me or to her. Mom spread her arms wide again, the board trembled beneath her, she laughed at the depths below, and then let her arms fall, happy, like someone who has scaled a great height and now really feels they’re on top of everything in their life and that nothing bad can happen anymore, because people are tiny as ants, houses are small like they’re made out of Lego blocks, and there isn’t a single problem or fear that doesn’t shrink from such a height.