The Question of Bruno

by Aleksandar Hemon

  In the weeks after the family council meeting, the invitation was forged in the Olympic minds of Uncle Teodor and my father. Uncle Teodor made suggestions, and my father rejected them as he typed. Let me submit an image: Uncle Teodor running different formulations by my father: “… the branch that was unjustly severed … the branch that fell off and broke the tree’s heart… the branch that shriveled, detached from its roots …” My father’s index fingers leaping up and down the typing keyboard, like virgins dancing for gods—Father occasionally using a virgin to pick his nose, and saying: “No … no … no … no …” As with all the great documents of history, the Hemoniad invitation went through many drafts and finally attained the form of exceptional grace and power. It clearly stated the purpose (“… to reattach the most formidable branch to its just place …”); the place (“… the Hemon family estate, where thousands of years of history are told by bees and birds and chickens …”); the logistics (“… we shall feast on spit-roast piglets and mixed salad, and if you need cakes and pastry, you are advised to make them yourselves …”); the structure (“… spare time will be spent in the house, in the courtyard, in the backyard, in the field, in the orchard, in the apiary, in the garden, in the cowshed, by the creek, in the forest, in conversation and exchange of pleasant words …”). The invitation was gladly received by many, and responses from all corners of the family began pouring in. The participation of many Hemuns was heralded by a phone call from the oldest Hemun, Andrija, and a tide of elation advanced through the family. Oh, those days when planning a piglet slaughter over the phone had mythological proportions; when old stories were excavated from the basements of memory, and then polished and embellished; when sleepless, warm nights were wasted in trying to make sleeping arrangements, until Uncle Teodor suggested the hay under the cowshed roof, where “the youth” could sleep; when my mother kept rolling her eyes, suspicious of any mass meeting of people of the same ethnicity; when aunts independently met to organize the cake-and-pastry production, lest we have a surfeit of balabushki.

  I’m afraid this sentence was inescapable: the day of the Hemoniad arrived. A huge tent had been put up, above a long table. The stage for “the orchestra” had been built under the walnut tree in the center of the courtyard. Uncle Teodor, they say, was up at dawn, sitting on the porch and rehearsing the stories for the last time. I woke up (here we have a personal memory) to the incessant warbling of birds nesting under the roof. When I descended the stairs, I saw a pair of dancing headless chickens, trying to run away from something (but couldn’t because it was everywhere) their wings arrhythmically flapping, blood spurting out of their necks in decreasing streams. We had breakfast, sitting around the big table, passing panfuls of fried chicken livers and hearts, and platefuls of sliced tomatoes and pickles. “This,” said Uncle Teodor, “is the greatest day of my life.”

  The Hemuns arrived all at once, with a fleet of shining new cars, like a colonizing army. They were uniformly overweight and spoke with a northern-Serbian drawl, which implied a life of affluent leisure. Nonetheless, everyone hugged each other, cheeks were smacked with kisses, hands were shaken ardently, and backs were slapped to the point of bruising. Uncle Teodor hollered: “Welcome, Hemuns!” and then proceeded from Hemun to Hemun, offering them his stump. He would turn his ear to each of them, asking: “And who are you?” and then memorized their voices.

  The day went on in an atmosphere of general merriment and pleasant conversing. We have images, recorded on video, of the crowd in the tent, milling in a perpetual attempt to get closer to each other, like atoms forced to form a molecule, as everyone merged into one big body, with moist armpits and indestructible vocal chords. The band played all day, on and off, led by my cousin Ivan, who kept winking, over his heavily breathing accordion, at every woman under forty not directly related to him. When the band played old Ukrainian songs, the Hemuns sat grinning, confounded and embarrassed, for they could not understand a word. But everyone danced in whatever way they could, waltzing clumsily, their hands adhering to their partner’s bobbing sides and sweaty palms; or, their stage-fright temporarily cured by an infusion of a helpful beverage (beer was my choice of the courage-helper), they would dance kolomiyka, spinning at different speeds, from neck-breaking to mere circular trotting.

  Around one o’clock, as the sun got stuck right above the walnut-tree top, my six aunts ascended the stage, having been introduced by Uncle Teodor, who recited their hypocoristic names like a poem: “Halyka, Malyka, Natalyka, Marenyka, Julyka, Filyka.” They sang a song about a young Ukrainian soldier who was being sent off to die in yet another battle for the freedom of Ukraine, who was doing what most of the soldiers in most of the Ukrainian songs did all the time: he was saying good-bye to his inconsolable mother and his faithful bride-to-be. They sang (my aunts) with their arms propped akimbo, serenely swaying and rubbing each other’s elbows. They looked like six variations of the same woman. Grandfather suddenly pricked up his ears, as if recognizing the song, but then he was retaken by the demons of slumber and succumbed with a grunt. Meanwhile, the soldier died (as we all had expected) and his faithful bride-to-be was about to be ravished by the same force that was to enslave Ukraine. “This song,” explained Uncle Teodor, after my aunts bowed, blushed, and scuttled off the stage, “is about the value of freedom and independence.”

  Then the lunch was served and everyone sat around the long table, with Grandfather floating on the Lethe at the head of the table. The table was creaking under heaps of pork and chicken limbs. There were big-ear soup bowls, which were reverently passed around the table, as steam was enthusiastically gushing up, like smoke from a snoozy volcano. There were plates of green onions, stacked like timber, and tomato slices sunk in their own slobber. After the lunch, everyone became drowsy, descending from the mountains of meat to the lowlands of sleep. Snippets of conversation died off within instants, for no one’s blood was capable of reaching the brain. Grandfather was fast asleep and snoring, leaning on his sagely stick. He burped in his sleep and moved his tongue over his upper lip, touching the bottom of the mustache, and then in the opposite direction along the lower lip, for a whiff of pleasant taste had escaped the inferno of slow digestion and reached his palate. Finally, everything yielded to the stupor, and excited flies could land, after a long journey, on the continent abundant with meat and salad. They would comfortably sit on a slice of bread, greasing themselves to dazzling summer-fly glitter. Abruptly they would ascend, as if to check whether they could still fly. They would go down again, buzzing messages of festive pleasure to each other. Watching them, it occurred to me that they were our flies—Hemon flies—and therefore better than other flies, oblivious to their historical role.

  On the videotape of the Hemoniad, the only document of the glorious festivity that reached the United States, this transcendental, cadaverous torpor is contained within three or four intense minutes of silence, the hum of the breeze in the microphone notwithstanding. It is important to note, however, that the flies disappeared in the process of converting the tape from PAL-SECAM to NTSC.

  Then Uncle Teodor was snatched out of his wheezing tranquillity and led to the stage, where he was placed into a chair. The level of consciousness abruptly rose around the table. Uncle Teodor said: “I will tell you stories now, because it is important to know one’s own history. If you know the stories, just sit quiet and listen—we have people who don’t know them.” The Hemuns—people who didn’t know the stories—fidgeted and glanced timorously at each other, for they suspected that the stories would present them as treacherous and weak people. But Uncle Teodor had different intentions. He began with the Hemons of The Iliad, their doughty feats and their contribution to the burning of Troy. Then he talked about the Hemon who almost married Antigone, the most beautiful woman of the ancient world. He barely touched on the Hemon who was Aeneas’ sidekick and who founded the Roman empire with him. He talked about Hemons defending the European civilization from a deluge of barbarian Slavic marauders.
Then he skipped a number of centuries and nearly brought tears to everyone’s eyes talking about the murderous retreat and Alexandre’s travails and the horrors of Russian winter. He told us of Alexandre’s hallucinations: armies of headless men, marching in circles, and he trying to escape a gigantic ax that strived to decapitate him, until he fell down—“he didn’t feel the snap, but he felt blood spurting and the cold slowly gnawing his limbs.” And then he was saved by our Ur-Mother Marija. As Uncle Teodor was narrating their budding love and Alexandre’s recovery, Grandfather burst to the surface of the day, looked around in genuine astonishment and asked me, since I was sitting next to him:

  “Who are these people?”

  I said: “They’re your tribe, Grandpa.”

  “I’ve never seen them in my life.”

  “Yes, you have, Grandpa.”

  “And who are you?”

  “I’m one of your grandchildren.”

  “I’ve never seen you in my life.”

  “Well, now you can see me.”

  “Where are we?”

  “We’re home, Grandpa.”

  That seemed to satisfy him, so he dropped his head to his chest, and was back in the boat crossing the Lethe. In the meantime, Uncle Teodor got to Alexandre and Marija’s progeny. The Hemons of the mid-nineteenth century were invariably bright and dexterous and hard-working, even though they perennially suffered from Polish and Russian injustice, plus tuberculosis and scurvy. Moreover, women kept miscarrying, while men kept falling off trees and being gored by disobedient cattle. “And yet we survived!” exclaimed Uncle Teodor. He went on to tell a story I had never heard before, a story about the ancestor who had gone to America to become a rich man, and when he became a rich man he returned to his village. He built a beautiful house and did nothing but court rural virgins, receive and drink with guests. One of his drinking acquaintances, probably the devil incarnate, dared him to spend a night on the local graveyard, which was known to be haunted by the village Jews massacred in a pogrom. He bet his whole estate that he would spend the night and he did, but he met the rose-fingered dawn with his hair completely white and his hands unstoppably shaking. He never told anyone what he had heard or seen, but the next day he gave all he had to the rabbi of the few remaining Jews so he could build a home for the wandering spirits. He was deemed insane after that by his relatives, who had just gotten used to being members of a wealthy family, and who claimed that it was Jewish magic that cast a spell on their dear cousin. One day he disappeared, and no one ever saw him again. Uncle Teodor claimed that he had gone back to America, and that we probably have some American cousins. As we imagined our half-mad white-haired cousin sailing toward the Statue of Liberty, coffee was served. We sipped strong tarrish liquid from a demitasse, without really noticing that Uncle Teodor had omitted the second half of the nineteenth century (probably because some of our forefathers were prone to pogrom fever) and began telling the narrative about the exodus to Bosnia.

  Imagine the crushing poverty, the year-long drought and cattle plague, the bone-cracking cold of the 1914 winter, the widespread banditry of hungry, destitute ex-peasants—we all writhed in our seats, fretting the unforeseeable future with our ancestors. Great-grandparents Teodor and Marija, the story went, packed all they had: a few bundles of poorly patched clothing; a beehive, sealed to make the trip; some clay pots and a coal iron; a roll of money they had saved up, which spent the trip in my great-grandmother’s bosom absorbing sweat and entertaining lice. Grandfather, presently dozing off next to me, and Ilyko fought throughout the journey. They had been given a piece of uncultivated land—“this very land”—which was now “the best piece of land in Bosnia,” although, to tell the truth, it produced nothing but retarded corn and shriveled apples. Great-grandfather went to Sarajevo to get the papers for the land on the day the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was killed. He bought an accordion there, “this very accordion,” which was not true, for Uncle Teodor himself crushed the accordion some years ago. Oh, the years of struggling and working from the sun up to the sun down. And then Ilyko went to fight the Bolsheviks—“We all know what happened then, and that is why we are all here now.”

  It was the Hemuns who got impatient first, and their impatience quickly became contagious. As Uncle Teodor, entirely carried away, continued talking about Uncle Julius and his twenty-five years in Stalin’s camps, both the Hemuns and the Hemons kept rising, hastening towards the outhouse, pouring slivovitz down their throats, chitchatting, anything but listen to the blind narrator. By the time Uncle Julius got to the Arkhangelsk camp, where he was to be sentenced to death, no one—except me—was listening. My father stood up and said: “Enough, Teodor. You’ll continue later.” But he never did, for the band started playing again and everybody was imbibing elating beverages. Again shoulders were slapped, crushing hugs and smacking kisses generously exchanged, while dancing, even if in slow motion, seemed to be approaching trance. Some of it could be seen on the videotape, but not without effort, because I had one drink too many, and the camera was held by my tremulous hands. Thus the image is shaking and leaping, which, incidentally, works well in showing the ubiquitous giddiness. As the camera was taken away from me, so was my clear-mindedness, and everything became dizzy and dim. Allow me to submit several discontinuous memories—memories of images and sensations that flashed before the helpless mind’s eye, as the mind capsized and sank to the sandy bottom of complete oblivion: the noxious, sour manure stench coming from the pigsty; the howling of the only piglet left alive; the fluttering of fleeting chickens; pungent smoke, coming from moribund pig-roast fires; relentless shuffling and rustle of the gravel on which many feet danced; my aunts and other auntly women trodding the kolomiyka on the gravel; their ankles universally swollen, and their skin-hued stockings descending slowly down their varicose calves; the scent of a pine plank and the prickly coarseness of its surface, as I laid my cheek on it and everything spun, as if I were in a washing machine; my cousin Ivan’s sandaled left foot tap-tap-tapping on the stage, headed by its rotund big toe; the vast fields of cakes and pastries arrayed on the bed (on which my grandmother had expired), meticulously sorted in chocolate and non-chocolate phalanxes; the intense, chewy taste of green onions and pork that washed off my palate, immediately followed by a billow of gastric acid; greasy itchiness around my mouth, adumbrating numerous, putrid pimples; the chained dog, hysterical and aroused, jumping at me, nearly choking himself and coating my hands and face with his drool; the seething warmth of the concrete steps, in the proximity of the dog, where I attempted to regain my seasick consciousness; the needly hay under the revolving roof of the cowshed; my hand holding a long, crooked stick (a Napoleonic sword), beating a nettle throng (Russian soldiers), and my forearms burning and rubicund; truckloads of helmeted soldiers, passing by the house, shooting in the air, and showing us the three-fingered sign, shouting and throwing bottles at chickens; trucks dragging erected cannons, and dark jeeps following them; an unfamiliar cat, caught as it was stealthily jumping on the table strewn with gnawed bones and splinters of meat, staring at me, the pupils stretched to the edges in utter feline disbelief, as if I were not supposed to be there, as if my vomitous existence had not been approved by the being whose approval the cat clearly had.

  Then I was sitting down on the grass, leaning against the walnut tree, then closing my eyes and carefully searching for the position in which my head would stop gyrating. I put the tips of my index fingers against my temples, and thus fixed my head, not daring to blink, let alone to move. I heard the din of voices, the garrulous babel, the uproar of guttural excitement, which all eventually ebbed. Then I could hear (although I’m not sure I did) my father’s voice, “wishing to conclude this epic festival of Hemonhood, with words that could not possibly match the greatness of the occasion.” He talked about our ancient roots and “thousands of years of Hemonian diligence,” which helped us survive the biggest catastrophes in human memory. “Do you think it is an accident that our ancestor Alexandre was
one of the few to survive the unfathomable defeat of Napoleon’s army? Do you think it is just luck that he progressed through several heart-chilling blizzards to meet the woman of his life, the Eve of the Hemon universe?” No one dared to answer these questions, so he went on and on, and talked about the courage it took to move to Bosnia, “the wild frontier of the Austro-Hungarian empire.” He dwelt for some time, as I was successfully resisting retching, on “the progress that we brought to these parts” with “civilized beekeeping, iron plough and carpentry skills.” We built “our empire out of nothing,” and it was “no accident that our grandfather met with the Archduke before he was assassinated—our stock is heroic and royal.” He told us (although I was barely there) that we should “read the Greeks, the founders of the Western civilization” if we didn’t believe him—“We’re all over the history of literature.” So he proliferated thoughts about the family history, mentioning names that I could not attach to faces anymore—they all merged into my grandfather who was presently and perpetually passing in and out of nothingness. I do not know where our greatness ended—if it indeed ever ended—for I passed out. Then I heard an energetic applause, a choir of hands clapping and clapping, and someone was slapping my face. As I opened my eyes, everything rushed away from me, except the face of my mother, who said: “It seems that the history wore you out. Do you want to vomit?”

  My mother led me away, while I mismanaged my steps, from the tumultuous tribal space, holding my right arm above the elbow, and I felt her swollen, arthritic knuckles squeezing my muscle. “The trouble with the Hemons,” she said, “is that they always get much too excited about things they imagine to be real.” I was wobbling, looking at the prows of my feet, imagining the straight line that I had to follow so as not to appear drunk. But then I simply closed my eyes and let my mother steer me around chairs and chickens and buckets and tree stumps and flower beds.