Mama Leone

by Miljenko Jergovic

  The ambulance came for Auntie Doležal on a Monday. That morning the neighbors had found her on the ground floor, a bag of groceries in her hand – bread, milk, biscuits, and lettuce – just standing there. They said hi, and every time she’d startle but not say hi back. Then she climbed the stairwell, going from door to door and then back down to the ground floor. It was afternoon by the time she rang the Kneževićs’ bell and said to Snježana, the girl who was my father’s intern at the hospital, I’ve lost my way! Snježana was confused and asked where did you lose your way, Auntie? Auntie just smiled and said I don’t know, and then Snježana called the ambulance.

  First the doctors thought Auntie Doležal had had a stroke and that’s why she had forgotten everything, and then they figured out she was perfectly healthy and that there was nothing wrong with her. So they thought Auntie Doležal had suddenly gone senile, but you can’t go senile overnight; yesterday you remember everything and today you can’t even remember where you live. Then they made some inquiries about whether Auntie had any relatives and discovered that Jucika was dead and that Auntie’s daughter, Vera, was also dead and that Auntie’s brothers and sisters were also dead, and in the end it turned out that we were all Auntie Doležal had left.

  Mom went to the hospital and Dr. Muratbegović said to her madam, I’m afraid we don’t have any reason to keep her in, and given she doesn’t have any family the only thing we can do is put her in Jagomir. Mom bawled Dr. Muratbegović out because Jagomir was a nuthouse, and Auntie Doležal wasn’t nuts, she’d just forgotten everything. Forget it, I’ll take care of her, she said and took Auntie Doležal back to her apartment.

  Auntie, do you remember me? Mom asked when they were in the tram. I won’t lie to you. I don’t remember . . . And do you remember Olga, Auntie? Olga’s your best friend. Auntie just shrugged her shoulders and turned away. She looked out the window, rain was falling, and her eyes became moist and she was ashamed about being so impolite that she couldn’t remember her best friend.

  From that Monday on Mom visited Auntie Doležal morning and night. Auntie sat in her armchair the whole day through, reading the newspaper and doing the crossword. No one could ever figure out how she’d forgotten absolutely everything about her life but hadn’t forgotten anything she needed to know to solve the crossword. She’d forgotten her Jucika but in crossword clues she knew that a bay was a horse.

  Do you want to come to Auntie’s with me? she asked Grandma just the one time, and Grandma said she didn’t because all that mattered was that Auntie Doležal wasn’t hungry and that she’s clean, and that everything else was last year’s snow and would never come back. She wasn’t sad about it, but she would have been sad if she’d gone to Auntie’s and Auntie didn’t recognize her. That’s my grandma for you, she lets things take their course, but she remembers everything Auntie Doležal has forgotten. Every time Mom comes back from Auntie’s, Grandma talks about her Micika; she talks about lots of stuff Mom and me never knew. For example, right after the Second World War, when Grandma and Grandpa lived in Yugoslav People’s Army Street next door to Auntie Doležal, there was an earthquake in Sarajevo, not a big one, only the black chandeliers swayed a bit, and Grandpa was taking a shower. When he felt everything shaking around him, he ran out of the bathroom, and with everything still shaking he ran out of our apartment soaped up and birth naked, hopping down the landing yelling what’s going on, what’s going on. Auntie Doležal stood in the doorway of her apartment and clasped her hands together, because to her Franjo was stranger than the earthquake. It was days before he could look her in the eye, and days before she could look my grandma in the eye. When the shame had passed and the earthquake was just a funny memory, Auntie Doležal said to Grandma goodness gracious your Franjo’s hung like a horse!

  Or when our cat Marko disappeared, also a few years after the war, and Grandpa paced the yard in front of our building for days calling him home, Auntie Doležal said she felt like crying when she saw him from her window so distraught because he knew the cat was never coming back, but that he needed to call him because you can’t let one of your own vanish just like that and admit to yourself that they’re gone and never coming back. Marko was the smartest cat in the world. He’d sit on the linoleum at the top of the hallway and wait for Grandpa to come home from work, and Grandpa would give him a shunt with his leg and Marko would slide all the way to the bathroom. For years after Marko’s disappearance, Grandpa, on his way in from work, would wave his leg in the air and mutter Ej Marko, Marko, but this didn’t get anybody down as much as Auntie Doležal. Micika was terribly sensitive to Franjo, says Grandma, and Mom puts her finger to her lips, psssst!, so Grandpa doesn’t hear.

  Every day when Mom came back from Auntie Doležal’s Grandma would tell a new story about her friend, and in two months we’d heard her whole life story, and then one day the stories stopped. Mom stayed longer and longer over at Auntie Doležal’s because she’d started forgetting that she needed to pee, she’d forgotten how to wash her face and hands, and she’d even stopped speaking. She just sat there with the same crossword on her knees, pencil in hand, staring at the empty wall. Mom had to bathe and dress her, and Auntie Doležal completely surrendered as if she were a little kid and didn’t know what was being done to her.

  In the end she didn’t even remember how to sit up, so one morning she just lay there in bed and never got up again. Mom tried to get help from the hospital, but the nurse could only come twice a week, so she had to take care of Auntie Doležal all by herself. Auntie Doležal’s life was over, and she was just waiting to die. Grandma didn’t smile anymore, and she didn’t talk about Auntie Doležal either, and Mom took sick leave because she had to be with her the whole day through. Auntie Doležal was like a little baby who had to have her diapers changed every so often, but unlike a baby she was never going to be a grown-up again. How is she related to you, the doctor who gave Mom the sick leave asked, and Mom told him Auntie Doležal wasn’t a relative, but that everyone needs someone beside them so that they die like a human being.

  She died just before the New Year, Mom, Grandma, and the neighbors went to the funeral. We bought Auntie Doležal a little wreath, the cheapest one. It was the only wreath on her grave, and all the other graves were covered in them. Luckily Auntie Doležal couldn’t see this because if she had it would’ve definitely made her sad. The lone wreath would have reminded her that she had been left all alone in the world and didn’t have anyone except us. In actual fact, there was nothing for her to forget, because all she’d now forgotten was already long gone: her father with the iron cap on his head, Jucika, the Sarajevo Partisan, and Vera, who twenty years ago had fallen asleep on the beach at Opatija and never woke up.

  I think that on that Monday, on the way home from the store, Auntie Doležal forgot all of us on purpose, the living and the dead. She even forgot where her apartment was on purpose and who all the people in the pictures were and whose fountain pen had been lying on the writing desk for the last thirty years, even the guests she’d bought the petit beurre biscuits for. She turned into Forgetful, and everything she once remembered she left to us to look after.

  That day I started building a Lego castle for Queen Forgetful. The castle is the same from all sides and there won’t be anything in it that you can forget. There’s one hundred rooms all the same, just for her to live in, Forgetful, who in the meantime has become a queen because she forgot the most in the whole world and her kingdom has grown so much that there isn’t one that can match it. The kingdom is so big it is the envy of all the kings in the world, and you just wait and see how they’re going to envy it when my castle is finished.

  That we all have one more picture together

  If they were cherries shining red beneath the window when I shut my eyes, or if they were something else – maybe I’d caught a fever – I don’t know anymore. But if they were cherries, then it was June, the second half of June, when the tree in our yard bore fruit, always a month later than the tre
es in the heat of Herzegovina. Our cherry tree had survived a cold winter and that made the month delay seem almost heroic. Even if they weren’t cherries and it wasn’t June, the gist of the story remains the same, clear as day in the photos themselves. There we were standing and crouching on the terrace in our short-sleeved shirts and T-shirts: my auntie and uncle, my cousin Vesna and her husband, Perti, my mom, Grandma, and me. In some pictures there’s only Uncle and Grandma, in others Vesna and Grandma, or Mom and Grandma, Grandma and me . . . If I showed you the pictures now and hadn’t told you anything about them in advance, you’d think we were some hippie-dippie family who’d picked Grandma as our household chief or guru who had to be in every photo, and that the only thing the rest of us cared about was having our presence with her recorded for eternity. Maybe there’s some truth in that, but I don’t want to talk about it because I love my grandma too much and if I admitted you were right I’d spoil the rest of the story.

  It was a Sunday, that I’m sure of, because in our house guests always came over on Sundays. This was probably how things were before I was born, so my family just kept it that way even after everything changed. I’m not actually sure, but it doesn’t matter in any case. The fact is that the guests had come from all over: Uncle and Auntie had come from Moscow where Uncle was a rep for the Zenica steelworks, and Vesna had come from Helsinki where she lived with Perti, but he hadn’t come from Helsinki, he’d come from Vladivostok. I don’t know what he did in Vladivostok, but I remember Grandma saying poor fellow, he’s been at the end of the world. For some reason she thought the end of the world was terrible.

  We ate lunch, talked over the top of each other, and Auntie called me Miki, dead set that every child had to have a nickname, and I remember feeling somehow privileged that in addition to my real name I’d gotten another one besides. Grandma looked at me reproachfully every time Auntie said Miki. She didn’t like the nickname, but I’m not sure how that made it my fault. Uncle poured himself a whiskey he’d brought from Moscow, it’s from Beryoshka, only foreigners buy stuff from Beryoshka, and then he slapped himself on the forehead: uh shit, I forgot the camera. We weren’t too bothered though, fine, he’d forgotten the camera, we kept talking over the top of each other and he did too, but every fifth sentence he’d throw something in about the camera, like what a bloody donkey leaving it behind like that or my brain obviously checked out when we left. Soon everyone was upset about the camera, so I made like I was upset too and tried to tell the story of how I once forgot my sneakers for PE, but no one wanted to listen.

  We’ll call Dobro, he’s got a camera, said Mom. She picked up the phone and fifteen minutes later my dad arrived with a camera already loaded with film. Uncle quit his anxiety act, which let everyone else relax too, he poured Dad a whiskey, told the Beryoshka story again, and then he said now, everyone on the terrace, light’s best there. We took our marching orders, probably scared his anxiety might come back if we jerked around. Dad was photographer for the day. He took pictures of us in all combinations, but no one took a picture of him. He’s the only one who doesn’t have a picture with Grandma. I wanted to ask why someone didn’t take his picture too, but shut up in time. When your parents are divorced you’ve always got to shut up in time because what you’d like to ask might make your elders stutter and blush or make them want to say or do something to please you, and then you feel like a whipped-cream pie that’s been standing in the sun all day and they all say oh, what a lovely cake. Actually, I know what would’ve happened if I’d asked. Dad would’ve had his photo taken with Grandma but either the laboratory wouldn’t have developed it or no one would have wanted to have it.

  The next week the guests went back to Moscow and Helsinki, leaving us with three complete sets of pictures, one each for Mom, Grandma, and me. In other circumstances one complete set would have been fine because we all lived together and didn’t fight over photos. Mom got some albums, put the photos in, and by the next day we’d forgotten we’d even had our pictures taken.

  On the thirteenth of December of the same year, the phone rang at half past two in the morning. I woke with the first ring and waited with closed eyes for what was going to happen next; there was a second ring, then a third, fourth, and fifth, then Mom’s sleepy voice said hello and then a suddenly awake yes. She’d never gone from being asleep to completely awake so fast. Yes . . . I can hear you . . . Yes . . . Yes . . . When . . . How is he . . . Is she there . . . Oh my God . . . Fine . . . All right. She put the receiver down without saying goodbye. She flicked the light on in my room, I opened my eyes, the light straining them, her face was gray and somehow taut, she spoke like she’d been wandering the desert for days without water: pull yourself together, Vesna’s dead. I was hurt by what she said, that pull yourself together. It was the first death in the family directly communicated to me. I was eleven years old.

  I don’t know how she told Grandma that her granddaughter was dead, but later Mom said she’d feared for Grandma’s heart. We all thought Grandma had a weak heart. That’s actually what the doctors had told us, but it turned out they had it wrong. Her heart could withstand what the strongest in the world couldn’t. It swallowed the sadness like a big snake swallows a rabbit, and kept beating, and we never saw anything on her face, just sometimes a tear would fall when she was watching television. But she didn’t cry.

  The next day the three of us went to Zenica. The wake was at Uncle’s apartment and all the mirrors were covered in black shawls. I didn’t know any of the guests. Mom sunk into her brother’s embrace. Grandma held my hand tight. I was big enough for this sort of stuff, but still too small to offer Uncle my hand and say a few of those weird sentences people say in these situations. I felt really awkward, the angst in Uncle’s apartment smacking me around and eating me up. I sat in an armchair with my head down, just wanting it to all be over as soon as possible. People took turns crying. Uncle was beside himself, but there was always someone ringing the doorbell, offering Uncle their hand, and he’d just cry again and again and again. The terrifying flood of grown-up tears made me fear life for the first time, not life, just the growing up. I didn’t cry for years because of his tears. Actually, I didn’t cry until the war, but ever since then I can almost cry on demand. I mean, if you were to say to me now cry for five seconds, I’d cry for five seconds. I can do that sort of thing like a party trick. You need tears, I’m your man. I’m not telling you how I make them come, it’s my secret, a little trick of the trade. Just like fakirs and their secrets when they lie on a bed of nails, I’ve got mine when it comes to crying. But that’s all a different business, at the time of this story I sat dead still in a giant armchair trying not to look at Uncle’s crying because I couldn’t imagine him without tears anymore.

  I didn’t get around to thinking of Vesna, although I should have, and I should have because I loved her. She was fifteen years older than me, but because I didn’t have any brothers or sisters, she was my sister; we said my sister on my uncle’s side. Anyhow, that’s who she was to me and how I felt when she was alive. When she died, I was an only child again.

  It was already night when people stopped coming and when everyone who didn’t belong to the inner circle of grief left. I was still sitting there in the armchair. Uncle was flushed red, veins cursing in his forehead, next to him sat Auntie, but she wasn’t crying, across the way sat my mom and she wasn’t crying either. She said to Grandma Mom, go lie down. With neither words nor tears Grandma left the room in complete silence. It was the only time in my life Grandma left a room and didn’t look at me.

  Uncle was crying again. He started to say my darling child’s gone, and this summer I forgot the camera, I thought we could all have one more picture together, that she could have one more picture with her grandma before Grandma dies, my child, my darling, darling child . . . He hid his face in his trembling hands. Auntie hugged him like you hug a little kid or how every man would want the woman who loved him to hug him. It should have been a distressing sight, but
in that instant I couldn’t grieve and I couldn’t love him; he, my uncle, had just explained something that in the world of grown-ups was probably normal but in mine wasn’t. He wanted to take a picture of Grandma with us all because he thought she was going to die. As soon as he could think that, it was like he killed her, and like he wanted to take our picture with someone dear who was already dead, who appears like a hologram, beamed into our hearts, forever captured on tape, and then she goes and disappears like dreams disappear in the morning when you wake up or later when you don’t remember them anymore.

  The night we grieved for Vesna the world of grown-ups was but another world of horror. Of course I forgave Uncle his betrayal, but I never liked those photos. When I look at them today, I only notice Grandma, her dancing face blind to the deception, as we were all smiling next to her, unknowingly participating in her funeral, burying her alive, just so we could have our picture taken with her. No one spared a thought that Grandma was scared of dying and that for her it would be forever.

  I see Vesna’s hand on Grandma’s shoulder. It’s a young hand, as young as I’ll never be again. Today I am five years older than that hand. And this is a kind of deception and betrayal too. How can I be older than my cousin if she was born fifteen years before me? I’m scared, I’m so scared that one day I’ll also do what my uncle did that summer, when something turned red, cherries or not cherries. Or maybe my betrayal was under way the moment I became older than Vesna.

  Where dead Peruvians live

  Auntie Lola used to live in Peru. It was before I was born and Uncle Andrija was still alive. They got their passports in Belgrade, they bought ship passage and plane tickets in Split, and that’s where Uncle Andrija bought a newspaper – as a memento, because they thought they were never coming back and needed to remember the day they left. On the front page there was a bold headline: COMRADE NIKITA SERGEYEVICH KHRUSHCHEV’s SECRET PAPER. They came back two years later.