Mama Leone

by Miljenko Jergovic

  I turned on the radio a little while ago, God only knows the station, but it was playing “Mama Leone” so it definitely wasn’t one of ours. The scent of the sea, the scent of the pines, and the scent of olive oil rushed to me once more, all at the same time, as did everything those scents gave off. I don’t know what the song’s got to do with all this, but there’s definitely some connection, it’s from something I’ve forgotten, from one of those little deaths. I need to find a place for “Mama Leone” somewhere here, but I don’t know where or how because there’s no room left in the story I’m telling. There never was. In the meantime my mom has become a real grown-up mom, and I’ve become her son. Not some forbear. She doesn’t say snout anymore, but sometimes things sound like that.

  That Day a Childhood Story Ended

  Here where squirrels die

  That day a childhood story ended. His cough woke him up, his nose blocked, his cheeks and forehead on fire. He should have stayed in bed, just lain there and slept it off, but the devil wouldn’t let him be. He got dressed and went outside. It was raining, cold drops on hot skin, the bus taking forever to come. He thought about pneumonia and meningitis. He remembered every sickness he knew by name, and a few others he didn’t know anything about or his imagination had maybe dreamed up for the occasion. He was astonished to discover that he no longer feared a single disease in the world.

  The bus was half empty. Where did all those people go, he thought, his head resting on the glass, banging against it the whole journey. He was reconciled to his fate for the day. Nobody was waiting for him, he wasn’t expecting anyone, and everything was like the first day, repeated for the thousandth time, just now he was more indifferent, sanguine even, the way a man should be who has never made any attempt to hold on to the things around him, never tried for any great happiness. To this very day he has been waiting on fortune’s call, which like the magnificent end of a war, with confetti, fireworks, and the dumbfounded embraces of lost loves, would return his life to its old rhythm, return to him these past six years spent in despair. This was how long Deda had lived in Ljubljana, a city he hadn’t actually chosen but had simply been the farthest he dared go, when at the beginning of April 1992, sensing the onset of war, he had left home. He’d packed a single suitcase, a handful of shirts, a few pairs of underwear, and a Walkman. He said his goodbyes to his mother, telling her that he’d be back in about two weeks, by which time he thought mobilization in the city would be over. At the station he bought a return ticket, sat down in the bus, opened a book, and started reading, never looking back. Two weeks later he was watching pictures of the city in flames on television. Mojca wiped her tears, he hugged her and told her Mocja, it’s nothing, it’ll all pass, and she collapsed in his arms, the inconsolable viewer of a cinematic melodrama. That summer Deda found a job in a planning office, and a few months after that he got Slovenian citizenship, but the whole time he lived in the belief that he’d be going home and that this transitional period would come and go like an annual vacation. Setting off to America, Canada, and Australia, friends passed through Ljubljana, he’d spend an evening with them and they’d all ask you planning on getting out of here? and Deda always answered no, I’ll go back. On parting he’d leave them his address and telephone number, and a letter or phone call would follow, but friends would inevitably disappear, some because Deda didn’t reply, others because they had gone forever and didn’t need anyone reminding them of what they had lost or left behind. Six years later Ljubljana wasn’t on the way to anywhere for anyone: those who had wanted to leave had left, those who had wanted to stay had stayed, and Deda was as distant to them as if he himself had gone to the ends of the earth. But he hadn’t gone anywhere or stayed anywhere; he wasn’t at home or abroad.

  He exited the bus and headed for the duty pharmacy. He was fourth in line; his head spun a little, the fever holding him in a daze, shielding him from thoughts too serious; he smiled at the pharmacist, handing her colorful banknotes and taking the bag with his prescription, five drops three times daily, he repeated after her, the girl nodding confirmation, the corners of her mouth rising as if she were having a little laugh on Deda’s account, or as if once, in a former life, there had been something between them.

  He was standing there on the sidewalk, his eyes peeled for a taxi, when a white Golf pulled up. Deda, what’s going on, what’re you doing here? . . . I had to go to the pharmacy, now I’m off home . . . You’re the right age for the pharmacy, bro . . . Bite me, dude, it’s just a little cold . . . Get in, bit of fresh air will do you good. Deda didn’t say yes or no, in fact he didn’t say anything, he just got in the car, not knowing where they were heading. He’d only wanted to sit down, even if it was crammed on the backseat next to Alma and Nuša, this fat Slovenian chick who was trying to tell Esad where to go, where he should turn and stuff, but you could see she suffered from that disease where no matter if you go left or right you’ve gone wrong, and so they kept ending up on one-way streets, Nuša waving her hand left, left, I said, that’s right, no, that’s left, right. Esad’s girlfriend Mirna, who was from Tuzla, clenched the handgrip in furious silence. She couldn’t stand Nuša and didn’t know why Alma always invited her when they headed out on Sundays, and this time the situation was even worse: They were going to Nuša’s cabin, so she’d have to be especially deferential.

  I’ll catch pneumonia, Deda sneezed after half an hour of driving. It’s about time, bro, said Esad, tapping happily on the steering wheel. What an asshole, Mirna finally spoke up, only an asshole would get off on saying something like that, added Nuša in Slovenian. Mirna would get pissed when Nuša spoke in Slovenian, even when it was in jest, because she thought Nuša was rubbing it in that they were in Slovenia. Well, we are actually in Slovenia, Esad had just shrugged his shoulders when she’d once tried to explain this, only one of the hundred ways Nuša got on her nerves. Mirna didn’t reply, just let her mind wander; since they’d arrived in Ljubljana it really hadn’t occurred to her that they were in Slovenia and that in this Slovenia place they were supposed to live among Slovenes, not just any random people, people from Tuzla, for example, who Mirna felt were her own. If we’d gone to America we’d have already met a hundred Americans, and in two years we’ve only met Deda, and he’s a Bosnian too, she told Esad. He clammed shut and made like he was lost in thought. Like Deda, he hadn’t dared venture farther than Ljubljana.

  I’ll make you some tea, said Nuša as soon as they arrived. Deda sat down in a dusty green armchair. The log cabin was something out of a second-rate American horror film. They just needed to get cozy, a couple start kissing, the hostess light the fire, and the next minute some jittery pubescent would be there with a chain saw cutting them all to pieces. Deda, you not feeling well? Alma blathered, putting her hand to his forehead. She was sweet on Deda, in fact you could say that she was secretly in love with him, but she blew hot and cold. Mirna had tried to explain to her that you can’t be like that with men, that you have to know what you want, and Alma would look at her all demure and say but Mirna, I’m not sure, and keep flitting about Deda, tugging at his beard, pinching his stomach, but the second he made a move, she vanished in the air. In the end it became clear to all that there would never be anything between the two, but in ten or fifteen years, when someday they met again, Alma was sure to confess, Deda, I was sweet on you.

  They sat at a hard oak table and drank tea. Mirna was whispering a fight with Esad, Nuša and Alma took turns asking Deda how he was feeling, checking his temperature with their palms, smacking their lips worryingly, and then bursting out laughing. Deda mostly just sighed, fixed them with a stare, setting a stony expression on his face, which amused Nuša and Alma no end. You two’d die of boredom without a patient, Deda tried to sound sore but was actually reveling in being the center of attention and the girls laughing at him. He didn’t have to think about what he thought about every day, what was on his mind today when he woke up and hadn’t given him any peace until the white Golf pulled up
. At long last he didn’t feel like he was in the wrong place or hanging out in some kind of waiting room before a long trip home. There was nothing much in his hands, his heart, or his head; not even in the log cabin. He didn’t feel any real closeness to these people, they certainly weren’t on the list of friends in whose hands he’d put his life, but maybe that was the very reason he felt such release from everything he had done over the past six years, every wrong step he’d made from the moment he said goodbye to his mother.

  Esad pinched a wad of hashish out with a pair of tweezers, softening it above the flame of his lighter. The three of them almost religiously followed his every move; he took out a bag of tobacco, laid a paper on the table, plumping the tobacco between his thumb and index finger, every now and then licking invisible intoxicating granules from them. Their lungs were soon full of laughter, I died of a lung infection, whooped Deda, while Nuša snorted like a steam engine, fat scrubby Nuša. Mirna hugged her, how easy it is when you’re laughing, nothing’s a turn-off when you’re laughing. Deda, I think I’ve got something to say to you now, warbled Alma, no, no, then I’ll have to hunt you down in the forest, howled Esad. Nuša got up to put on some more water to boil for tea.

  And so it went for hours: hashish, tea, hashish, tea, Deda slowly forgetting he was supposed to be sick. At some point Alma got up from the table and went to the toilet. Exhausted from laughing they just watched her go, Esad was about to say something but changed his mind and sighed, which was reason enough for another huzzah. Alma burst back in: there’s something in the toilet! . . . What the fuck? . . . I don’t know, there’s something in the bowl . . . Someone forget to flush, huh?. . . No, it’s not that, it’s something else, it’s alive, actually I don’t know if it’s alive, but it definitely was alive. Esad got up, stop, Deda raised his hand, you just sit down, bro.

  There, lift the seat up, Alma peered from behind the door. In the bowl, down in the little pool of water, there really was something, something dead and furry; a rat, no, not a rat, something else, rats don’t look like that, this one’s got a pretty head and pointy ears; Deda looked down at the tiny head, prodding it with a pencil, not having the foggiest what was in the toilet bowl and where it had come from. The hashish happy buzz lingered on, fuzzying his thoughts and movements; he just stared at the head, repeating I don’t get it, I don’t get it, the three of them jostling above Deda’s head and waiting – maybe the creature would wake up, or Deda was about to reach his verdict. He’s the most serious here, he had a beard, and although he’d just turned thirty-two it was almost completely gray, he’s going to have to come up with something soon. Esad, get me something . . . What? . . . I don’t know, something to get this thing out with.

  Nuša went into the kitchen and came back with a big spoon, this okay? There was a clang of metal and ceramic and then Deda finally got hold of the creature, it’s a squirrel folks. Alma covered her mouth with her hand, it’s not a squirrel, it can’t be a squirrel, where would a squirrel’ve come from . . . I’m really sorry, but it’s a squirrel, I know a squirrel when I see one, Deda stood there holding the dead animal out on the spoon as if offering it to Alma, Mirna, Nuša, and Esad, but they didn’t want it, they just kept moving away, no, it’s not a squirrel . . . listen to me, it is, as if their lives depended on something else being there on Deda’s spoon, something vile and worthless, a big black rat, anything, just not a squirrel.

  Deda headed outside with the spoon, it was dark and there was a chill in the air, a wind blowing down from the snowy peaks, they didn’t follow him, just stayed there in the doorway, watching his back disappear between the trunks of the pines. He headed on not knowing what he was looking for or how to get rid of the dead animal, if only there were a river nearby, or a ravine, anyplace where you could make a squirrel disappear.

  He’d already gone too far, he turned around and couldn’t see the light of the cabin, he couldn’t see anything, just the full moon shrouding the world in gray. Deda knelt down, placed the spoon on the dead pine needles, and started digging. He dug with his fingers, thousands of needles from this year and all the years gone by, thousands of thousands of dry, damp, and rotten needles, until he touched earth, a soft black earth that got up under his fingernails. He dug down, piling the dirt left and right until the hole was deep enough to fit the spoon and the squirrel. The end of its tail was still poking out a little, so he folded it over with his hand, touching the little creature for the first time, the dead fur comforting, as if it had never been alive. He then gathered a pile of dirt with his hands, first extending them as if before a hug, and then closing them as if in prayer, this ten times over, until all the dirt and needles were again in place.

  He headed back to the cabin. The squirrel had drowned in the toilet bowl, but how it got there, how it made it under the seat and what it was after, Deda had no idea. He thought about lying to them, saying it wasn’t a squirrel at all, yeah, that’s the one, everything would then be okay again. But what was the point in lying; the squirrel wasn’t going to disappear if he just said it hadn’t been a squirrel, everything wasn’t going to be okay if he simply told them it’d been a rat after all. No, he wasn’t going to lie about anything. Deda’s not a kid, it was a squirrel, and now let’s try to forget it.

  Away, I’d rather sail away

  It was like it was the last day of summer; the sea calm and dark, the seafront almost deserted, barely ten people waiting for the ferry: a grandma with her grandchild, the kiosk lady waiting for today’s newspapers from the mainland, three fishermen with their bottles of beer, a handful of nondescript men and women – and Boris. He was leaning on the ticket booth, smoking, gazing out toward the edge of the bay around which the ferry would soon circle. It was fifteen minutes late, enough time to smoke two cigarettes, but no one was worried about the delay. The passengers didn’t appear in any hurry, the woman from the kiosk less than desperate to get back to work; the fishermen hadn’t even finished their beers. Boris was in a funk about the ferry’s arrival, and every delay gave him that much more time to pull himself together, to melt the ice cube in his stomach that had been there since he’d woken up and realized that today he was going to attend to what he had left undone for the past six years, something that might have changed his life had he, like a submissive Polish inmate in a concentration camp, said his farewells in an orderly and timely fashion.

  He was thirty-three, and as his editor liked to say, already a few months older than Christ. He’d only come to the island to meet the ferry. He hadn’t been to the seaside in years, but something in that telephone conversation had drawn him into a lie: the desire to portray his life as being as normal as possible, which meant telling her that he’d be on Korčula on the thirty-first of August, to which she had replied hey, that’s great, what a coincidence, as fate would have it I’ll be showing my husband around the Adriatic then, and naturally it was an opportunity not to be missed, and why would they; after so many years they were to see each other again, to put to rest what had remained unsaid, what in the staging of a life no one can escape, not even those masterfully adept at hiding, those who always – even when it’s completely uncalled for – lie.

  Boris had arrived from Sarajevo the night before and had rented a room for a couple of nights, planning to return the following day. He wore sandals on his feet and a straw hat on his head, disguising himself as a man on summer vacation – and oh boy, wasn’t he just resting up. He hadn’t tanned like people on summer vacation do, but that didn’t bother him. She knows, she remembers that he always stays in the shade or under the canopy of a café. His hair isn’t salty, he hasn’t gone in the water and has no intention of doing so, but this didn’t matter either, she wouldn’t be probing the saltiness of his skin.

  He stubbed out his cigarette and licked his forearm. It seemed like the thing to do. In the midst of a real panic attack it’s best to have a completely imaginary one, something to heal you like those trusty childhood lies that return from time to time; they never ha
rbored any ill intent, you never even told them to anyone. When you lie to yourself, it’s not actually a lie but a way to repair the irreparable, to create space for a new life, for a joy only otherwise possible by exhausting encounters with reality and a Tarzan-like flight from one dunghill of whatever gets you down to another. So it’s easier to lie, and in the end the result is the same, just so long as others never find out about it.

  The ferry revealed its dull bow from behind the bay and began slowly gaining in size. Boris lit a new cigarette, hoping to ward off his fears, he ran his hand through his hair, and almost mechanically sucked in his stomach. The ferry needed ten minutes to reach the shore; it would be another two minutes for them to lower the gangplank, meaning he had another twelve minutes. It was like he had that long to live. He thought about the scandal with the American president, about his busted fridge, about the chair in his newsroom office that was too low for him and the computer he’d spilled Coke over so now it didn’t work; the only thing he didn’t think about was what was about to come.

  A few people stood on deck. They started waving. The fishermen with their beers waved back. Not every boat’s the Titanic, he thought. He would protect himself by playing out of character, by smiling a smile that wasn’t his. He’d even bought a cigar, the first he would smoke in his life; he wouldn’t say anything that might allow her a way in. He’d sense it if she was on his trail, and that would make him vulnerable.