Mama Leone

by Miljenko Jergovic

  As soon as the passengers began disembarking he felt incredibly exposed. He should have waited somewhere out of the way. He recognized Maja as soon as she stepped on the footbridge, but from that distance she didn’t see him. Twice she accidentally glanced in his direction, her gaze then sliding on. This was good because it gave him more time. A tall, strong-looking man carried the bags; at that moment his height and strength were the only things Boris noticed, nothing else. Maja held a kid by the hand, a little kid probably no taller than the bollard to which the ferry was tied. Funny she didn’t mention the kid, he thought, coughed, put a smile on and fixed it there, walking the assured walk of a man who in that moment feared shame more than anything else.

  Boriiiiiiiiiis! she called to him, nonchalantly passing the kid’s hand to Mr. Big.

  They kissed in greeting; he felt the right corner of Maja’s lips, a bit too close, he thought, holding her in his embrace and waiting for hers to recede. He didn’t want the hug lasting too long – it wasn’t actually a real one – there, in full view of her man. Mr. Big smiled a smile of happiness and sympathy, that’s probably the best way to put it. He must have been happy to see his wife happy, while the sympathy might be accounted for by the fact she was visiting her homeland for the first time in six years, or actually her former homeland – because we are what is written in our passports – a country that had seen war come and go, and now she was meeting up with a dear friend.

  Boris, let me introduce you! Mr. Big had a firm handshake, the kind of firmness you learn at a good preparatory school, where hands never tremble, show neither weakness nor excess familiarity – let alone your feelings, which just evaporate, as much a waste of time as this same lack of feeling. The kid was named after some pirate or avant-garde artist, a name definitely not pronounced the way it was written. We’ll skip the cynicism today, he thought, although in other circumstances and with other people he’d have asked them to spell it for him.

  So, how are you? her whole face beaming a smile, I’m well, he had relaxed a little, and out of the corner of his eye caught Mr. Big nodding politely, though he didn’t understand a thing. Anyone watching the scene from the shadows would have thought Mr. Big was holding the kid like he was the nanny and not the father. The kid himself was silent and embarrassed.

  Boris wasn’t sure about where to go. He didn’t even know how long the visit was going to last. The next ferry for Ploče was at five, when they were heading off for Dubrovnik; God, Dubrovnik – everyone who comes from abroad goes to Dubrovnik – but what to do until five, where to take them, what on earth she expected, he had no idea.

  Are you hungry? he asked, though it wasn’t yet noon. She turned to Mr. Big, talking fast, Boris trying not to hear or understand anything, particularly whatever it was Mr. Big had to say, but he couldn’t avoid hearing a single word repeated three times over: dear, dear, my dear. Like in those films where it’s repeated over and over by couples that start fighting the second they’re left on their own. Nothing’s like it is in a film, he thought and now nodded his head. They’d grab something to eat after all. Mr. Big has to try Adriatic fish. You don’t get that stuff in the north. They only eat those gigantic Japanese monsters, tuna and herring, their whole lives they never see anything fish-shaped on their plates.

  The restaurant was called The Long Line. There were three chairs on each side of the table. Boris sat down, Maja, the kid, and Mr. Big across from him. It was just like at the theater, only you didn’t know which side the audience was on. Boris gave his all in making conversation, and she, not noticing anything or noticing everything – that’s not for the telling here – babbled on and on, one minute about what they did yesterday, the next remembering her time with Boris, everything always shot through with laughter and happiness. There was no sadness for her, and you could see she was happy about their reunion. Mr. Big spoke softly to the kid, raising his head and silently smiling every now and then, not a trace of unease. He was one of those people you could spend twenty years with, head off to war with, travel and live with, without ever catching him off-balance, or wanting to tell you where it hurt. When this sort of guy asks you how you are, you’ve got to tell him you’re great because if you say anything else, you start bullshitting or admitting you’re not well or something, he’ll think you a lower being or just plain rude, horrified at the thought he might have to help you out.

  Maja hadn’t aged. You’d never guess you’ve had a kid! he said and already knew he should have said something else. For a flicker of a second she seemed sad and afraid. She knew him well enough to know he never said things like that, and that if he did, there was a kind of darkness there, a darkness from which she’d escaped in the nick of time, so maybe the fear and sorrow never actually reached her, maybe her nerves didn’t transmit the message to her brain, it had all just hung there on her face. No, really, you look great, he healed the damage, and she kicked off about childbirth there in the north, about their exercises and routines (like we don’t have that stuff), the psychologists to relieve every fear, their pain-free delivery methods (God, like she lived here in the last century) that sent a woman home brand new. It was a completely new and miraculous experience for me . . . We’re not thinking about repeating it for the time being . . . But who knows what time might bring . . . Boris took a cigar out and lit up. He wanted to delete everything he’d heard. The content didn’t matter, that was all extraneous and easily forgettable. It was the syntax that got him, it wasn’t her own; it wasn’t even the syntax of their mother tongue. Hers were translated English sentences, where everything that should have been in the middle had unerringly been pushed to the end. He didn’t actually know whom he was talking to: Maja, with whom he had spent three years, whose murmurs, intonation, faulty accents, and syntax he knew and loved, or a person resembling her, actually, a replica who had stolen Maja’s life experience and appearance, translating her words from a foreign tongue, a language in which everything important came at the end, after every sentence and every story was over.

  The waiter brought the fish, a giant oval silver platter laden with whole fried fish. Whooaaaaaa!!! Mr. Big rumbled like a hurricane. The kid looked on in fear at food he had never seen in his life, probably thinking that someone had hurt the fish terribly and that it was wrong they now eat them. Maja clasped her hands together and mouthed the kind of pathetic sentence typical of people on their first brief visit home in years, seeing in dead fried fish their homeland incarnate. This sort of shit made Boris sick and for the first time he felt like a man who hadn’t gotten over a woman. He didn’t care about Mr. Big or the kid, but that messed-up syntax was like watching his girl making love to another man and her going to town on it.

  He just wanted Maja to shut up, to speak in their language, to eat the fish, take the bones out, feed the kid, smile at Mr. Big, smile at him, smile at whoever she wanted, anything but those insufferable sentences. His love, somehow, had finished up as language instruction.

  What kind of fish is it? she asked. It was orada, but how do you say orada in English, because she wants to translate it for Mr. Big. But does she really think orada exists in English? Maybe Latin would help, but who knows how you say orada in Latin, we’re not ichthyologists, no one here’s an ichthyologist, just let it be orada, a nameless fish hidden in a lost language. It’s not that important, you don’t have to know everything, some things can be forgotten, and language, well, today it’s a faithful reflection of experience, what doesn’t exist in life doesn’t exist in experience, you don’t get orada in the north, so it doesn’t have to exist in words.

  Boris ordered a bottle of wine, they don’t want any, but he does. He’s dying for a drink. He empties a glass, stretching his bottom lip over his top one, smiling at Mr. Big who was frowning for the first time, pricked by a fish bone, ha, what do you expect from a savage country and language. Maja was feeding the kid, murmuring strange words, all of them finishing with an o. She didn’t pay the men any mind. She was a mother now, fully concentr
ated on a role that had absolutely no connection with Boris’s life. The scene was one free of pain, so foreign that had it occurred at some other time, he could have even tried to enjoy it.

  He made no attempt at conversation with Mr. Big, and he, who knows why, didn’t ask any questions. God knows who she told him I was, thought Boris, if I’m just a good friend it’s weird he’s not asking me anything, and if I’m what I am or once was, what’s with the dumb grinning innocent act? Actually, Boris couldn’t care less. Nothing life-changing was going to happen, and any awkwardness had been avoided. He watched Mr. Big, the pinkish hairy fingers struggling with the fish skeleton, the hair on his fingers blond at the base and brown at the tips, God, how did she get used to that, to skin devoid of pigment, which no matter the weather could only go red, a red-white color combo its only possibility, like the Red Star Belgrade flag, like scampi, like beetroot. Had she gotten used to this stuff before she started messing up her syntax, or was it the other way around, so she didn’t need to get used to it, love had just blossomed overnight, one love for each life, one after every war, one in every peace, because then you could say you had been completely faithful, like you had lived in some old catechism, like in a fairy tale, until death, language, or fate did you part. The hairy fingers were fish-clumsy, mashing its skeleton, pulverizing it until all that remained were tiny piles of dead bones you would never guess had once been a fish. It could have been something else, tiny icicles, the twigs of an arctic tree, something Boris didn’t recognize was born beneath those fingers. The imagined tendernesses with the body he once knew now belonged to those fingers, and even they seemed like Chinese symbols, outside any experience. If he’d seen those fingers on video, touching Maja’s body, he wouldn’t have recognized the scene, wouldn’t have known what he was watching, what those fingers did with the fish so impossibly foreign.

  Boris and Maja lost touch when the war started. He had stayed in Sarajevo, and she’d gone north. The last time they saw each other, they’d been a couple, their love beyond question. However pathetic it might sound, they parted because the war was men’s business and women were better off out of it. Boris had Maja’s phone number but never dialed it. Maja sent Boris a letter through the Red Cross asking him why he hadn’t been in touch. Boris never sent a reply. There was no real explaining his silence, maybe it was because he feared for his life, maybe he didn’t think he’d survive the war, and maybe he was jealous of her life or it was because Mr. Big had begun appearing to him even before he appeared for real in her life. A few more months passed and Maja moved farther north, Boris no longer knew her address or telephone number. Three years later he bumped into a friend of hers who wrote Maja’s number on the back of a business card, without him having asked or her having said anything. One night he lay in bed, and when sleep wouldn’t come he dialed the number. The voice at the other end burst with joy, breathlessly telling him she was married and expecting. Boris called again a month after the birth. And then again three months after that, until the seventh time they spoke she told him she would soon be visiting the Adriatic.

  He got up from the table, gave Maja and Mr. Big the need-to-pee grin, and headed for the bathroom. The urinal was filthy, the tiles chipped, his stream of urine washing away the blue traces of a long-crusted detergent, the whole thing reeking like an abandoned barrack latrine where a whole company had pissed before heading off to the front. He tried to remember whether Mr. Big had gone to the bathroom and seen this, our local disgrace, but maybe it didn’t bother him. The north is too far away for our tourist specialities to offend anyone way up there. In any case, for a second it comforted him to think he was the host and Mr. Big the tourist.

  He stopped by the bar, the bill thanks, the waiter smiled, I’ll be over in a second, expecting Boris to return to the table, no, I’d like to settle up here, the waiter made like he understood and smiled consolingly in total accord with the cardinal rule of his profession: accept the weirdest things as normal lest they disturb the general ambience.

  He sat back down, rubbing his hands and looking at his watch. It was already past four. This has been a long lunch! Maja said. The kid was sleeping in his father’s lap. There was no more disturbing the fish bones’ peace. I’ve loved it, I’ve loved it, she repeated, me too, me too, he worried that he might sound cynical so said it twice, making it sound funny. Mr. Big already had that ready-to-go look on his face, the one he had arrived with.

  Now they only needed to perform the farewell act, which was certainly less an emotional problem than one of convention. Saying your goodbyes to a person you haven’t seen for six years and maybe won’t ever see again isn’t easy. Maja didn’t have any experience with this sort of thing, such farewells obviously at odds with the philosophy of her new life. There were no dramatic farewells in the north nor could there be, there people’s goodbyes are temporary, or death or hate parts them. Of course we’ll catch up again in the next few days, she said, it’s not far for you to pop over to Dubrovnik, and we can always come back. Boris opened his arms like this so completely went without saying that nothing more needed to be said. So they didn’t say anything. Mr. Big held the kid to his chest.

  They stood on the ferry gateway. We’re in Hotel Argentina, she said, not quite yet free of the unease of their parting. Great, I’ve got the number! The lie was a transparent one, but Boris wasn’t aware of it and Maja didn’t notice. Why would he have the number for Hotel Argentina, doesn’t matter, the ferry drew nearer. An elderly ensemble was playing on deck, dressed for a ball from the end of the last century, the singer on the podium not much younger than this century, his black tails looking from a distance like moths had celebrated the sinking of the Titanic on them. The singer had the gestures of old photographs, as if posing for someone or something at his death, the merry apocalypse that might just emerge as the bridge lowered toward the shore. In a soft voice, as gentle as if wiping a dust cloth over a piano, he sang away, I’d rather sail away, like a swan that’s here and gone, a man gets tied up to the ground, he gives the world its saddest sound, its saddest sound.

  Mr. Big jumped in excitedly: whoa, El condor passa. Maja and Boris laughed simultaneously, their pupils catching a chance square glance. Their pupils stilled, they shared a moment of intimacy free of any other thoughts or feelings, one they would never share again. They kissed and hugged, no mention of seeing each other again, in a few days, in Dubrovnik, or on Hvar. Maja and entourage crossed the footbridge, the bridge was drawn up, the ferry set off, Maja waved from the deck, the kid waved, Mr. Big waved, his waves like signals sent to illegal aviators high in the sky. Boris held his arm in the air, moving it to the rhythm of the farewell song, left and right, away, I’d rather sail away, like a swan that’s here and gone. The ferry became smaller, Maja and her waving hand too, until she was as tiny as the brown tips of pine needles. Just before the boat disappeared behind the bay, Boris saw she had lowered her arm and turned around, or maybe that’s just what he thought he saw. He punched his hand in the air, extending his arm as far as he could. He liked that. It looked ridiculous and cooled his sweating skin.

  Ho freddo, ho molto freddo

  The commotion in the train on the Trieste–Mestre line lasted half an hour. First the conductor came down the corridor, then immediately scuttled back, then a pair of carabinieri turned up, and then the conductor flew past again, returning from the dining car with a girl holding a glass of water. In Monfalcone a plump bald man with a doctor’s bag got on and was followed down the corridor by the taller of the two carabinieri, and then all was quiet. When the train pulled into Mestre an ambulance was waiting on the platform. Two paramedics entered the nonsmoking car in second class and remained there until the train was empty. Then they went back to fetch a stretcher. On the stretcher lay a black plastic bag. They exited the train ten minutes later. The bag on the stretcher was no longer empty.

  At that moment a full three hours had passed since Barbara Veronesse, a retired piano teacher from the music school
in Sarajevo; her seven-year-old granddaughter, Azra; and Gianni, Aldo, and Marco, senior-high students from Trieste heading to Venice for a Black Uhuru concert, had all entered the compartment. Nana Barbara sat next to the window, across from her sat Azra, look here, Nana said, this is where my grandma and grandpa were born, and Azra looked and saw nothing but grass and stone houses, look here, Nana pointed, your grandpa fought here, and Azra looked and saw nothing but grass and the odd pine tree. She watched Gianni, Aldo, and Marco out of the corner of her eye, shouting, laughing, and clapping in a completely incomprehensible language. Azra knew the whole world didn’t speak the same language, didn’t even speak English, but she had never imagined that laughter and clapping in a foreign language might sound so strange.

  Nana sighed and closed her eyes. Azra watched a lock of hair fall on her forehead, the wheels of the train banging away, taram-taramtaram, the lock falling lower and lower, now just above the eyebrow, with the next taram-taramtaram it’ll be almost in her eye, no it won’t, it’ll take one more taram-taramtaram, there we go, it’s fallen. Nana’s asleep and doesn’t notice, the foreign boys holler away, what’s wrong with them, can’t they see Nana’s asleep? Azra closed her eyes, if they see she’s sleeping too maybe they’ll quiet down.

  Barbara Veronesse had lived with her granddaughter in Poreč for two years. They had made it out of Sarajevo in the fall of 1992, a month after Azra’s father was killed. Her mother, Eva Veronesse-Teskeredžić, had been dead for exactly how long Azra had been alive. She died two days after giving birth, eaten up by a tumor that had grown inside her for nine months, maybe a little longer; the doctors had told her she must abort to save her own life, a childless one for sure but a life all the same; she didn’t want to, the doctor, Srećko, asked her whether she believed in God, and not waiting for her answer said even Christ would forgive you, don’t kill yourself, please, to which Eva looked at him sadly and said but doctor, I don’t believe in him and I know there is no God. Azra’s mother only saw her once in her life. She was given her first dose of morphine shortly after, and the next day she was already dead.