The Taste of Translation

by Anne Gambling

  A boy came out and spoke to them, his lines well-rehearsed in this theatre of life:

  Mr Godot told me to tell you that he won’t come this evening, but surely tomorrow.

  The audience released its together-breath.

  Yes, surely tomorrow the Americans would do something. Surely tomorrow Kisha would find the courage to leave. Surely tomorrow, after watching a play in which nothing happens, twice, she would quit the looped tape of life in this swamp, marooned in the quag of pain.

  Two

  The theatre is dark, but Kisha has entered a place of light in search of a self that had not yet lost hope, the one she saw each day in the myriad fragmented shards of a mirror gracing the wall above the mantle.

  After it had shattered in one or another of the bombings, she hadn’t removed the mirror from the wall and remarkably it had never fallen of its own accord, the frame seemingly holding out some slim belief in its ability to become whole again. She admired its tenacity in the face of all evidence to the contrary and imagined how it spoke to its large family of fractured children, encouraging them to stick together as long as possible, to remain embedded in the secure lodgings of home. To not give up hope of restoration.

  Indeed it had held together as a fragmented collective for quite some months before slowly, gradually, one or another of the slim slivered shards lost hope and fell to earth with each successive mortar blast which shook the building to its foundations and sent a wave of shuddering tremors up and down the apartment walls. Occasionally, randomly, the pieces dislodged, fell and stayed where they fell while the patchwork which remained on the wall offered split and splintered witness to disintegrating life.

  Is each shard that falls a life lost or dream crushed? Kisha asked one day.

  Samir shrugged. From all the mirrors in the city, maybe.

  He sat on the floor on the small square of carpet they kept beside the low table and lit a kandilo, a cigarette as well, sipped his coffee.

  But for us? He shook his head. I don’t know. Are all these tiny slivers that glint in sun- or candlelight dreams crushed? Do we have so many? He looked at her. And are they so fragile? So easily damaged?

  He looked at the mirror, studied what remained. Look, he pointed. That piece there.

  A bit like a star, she said of a fragment in the upper right of the frame.

  He scrambled to his feet, took the candle and held it closer to the star-shard, willing it to shimmer into life, a dream uncrushed despite everything.

  It’s a marvel, he said, to find such a thing of beauty amongst the rubble of destruction, the debris of death. Don’t you think?

  He turned and smiled, his dark features illuminated by excitement, a new light plumbing depths in his brown eyes. They had become soft-golden, and his thick lashes feathered fringes which shadow-dusted his cheeks.

  She had wanted to rise and kiss him, encircle him in her arms, dance through this nightmare world, this scrapheap of pain, a splintered piece of starlight to guide their passage. She had wanted to, but hesitated, for she also didn’t want to lose the moment, the memory of the moment. Of his face lit by a glow from another place, haloed by the candle in his hand. So imprinted the image, branded it to her heart, delivered it into the waiting embrace of a library of catalogue drawers.

  This was the night she would remember. Later. A night when she wanted the candle to stay lit, not to be blown out to preserve its precious oil. Just once she wanted to fall asleep as they used to, faces licked by the shadows of night, the flame’s waver silently measuring the rise and fall of their breaths. So they slept, tight-wrapped, one fitted to the other like snuggled children, nested fishes, nestled spoons. Slept long and deep, and woke late and refreshed to the star-shard and its brothers greeting another sun’s rise.

  The water had come back on – oh, glorious day! She filled the bath and buckets, and they took joy in standing naked to sponge each other clean. And forgetful of everything beyond joining as one, lay down again. Together.

  Later over coffee, looking out on a city which could have been any other in Europe that day, quiet in an early Saturday morning sort-of-way, Plato and Susu dropped by with Farid, now toddling. Samir bounced the gurgling boy on his knee, remarked his blissful ignorance, caught in a tiny circle of knowing they each dreamed of rediscovering.

  Here, said Kisha, I’ve been saving this for you. She passed several packets of powdered milk to Susu.

  Her eyes lit up. Where did you get this? There was none in the last aid package, only some out-of-date fish paste.

  Samir laughed and tapped the side of his nose. Oh, you know Kisha, she has her friends in the black market.

  She poked him in the ribs. They received a shipment at the centre. When it was pay day, I took some in lieu of cigarettes. God knows we smoke enough.

  It was time to get moving. Susu was off to market to find anything worth taking up to her mother in Alifakovac for the next few days.

  Wait, said Kisha, I’ll come with you, and she raided the cigarette kitty. Let’s see if we can barter a few smokes for an egg for Farid’s dinner. She grinned. This can be his high protein day.

  Hey. I don’t want you gossiping all day! Susu scolded Plato. Don’t forget the old flat up in Vratnik.

  Yeah-yeah. He turned to Samir. Want to come? There may still be some good books to burn – Lenin, Marx, Trotsky. He paused. Though on second thoughts I’m not ready to give up on Trotsky yet.

  Just make sure you’re home by curfew, Kisha said. I need my bedtime story.

  Always, he said, giving her a squeeze. We’ll only pop by the bar if there’s time for an early nightcap.

  Say I swear by Tito! Susu chimed, halfway out the door.

  Samir grinned. I swear by Tito. His eyes soft-golden. Again.

  Mortars rained down the whole night through, a battle which could not wake her, she who was more than awake, she who sat numb in the dark the whole of this long night through, no candle lit. Ears deaf to the blasts, she was tuned to the sound of the mirror’s last stand, the jittering, shivering, tinkling trill of precious snatches falling slow-motion to their grave all this long night through.

  On and on, sometimes one, sometimes several at a time. Melodic percussion to an overture of hate, like wind chimes in a gentle breeze. Such a pretty thought flanked by the colourful tracers and lightning flashes of a torched city whose sintered fingers rose into a disinterested sky. Strange how the mirror had held for months, till now, on a single night, the correct ones in their correct positions, the ones which held all others in place, dislodged, and the chain reaction to render the poor dear frame naked, abandoned, denuded of hope began.

  Dawn’s dull arrival announced it to be so. All had fallen. Save one. Their single shard stayed hooked in the corner of the frame. Caught by a thread, a single point quivering beneath the edge. Tenuous – oh so slight! – this grip on life. One shudder too many, one final grenade. Close, so close. Enough.

  She shut her eyes. Breathed in, breathed out. Opened them again. No. No mistake. Softly, gently, reaching over and collecting the star-shard from a symphony of glass splinters, she raised it to her lips, kissed it fully, passionately. A farewell kiss, a sleep-tight kiss.

  It cut her lip and she tasted blood. Her blood, like his, ruby red, sticky wet. And yes, right then, still warm.

  Three

  When Plato finally arrived, late that afternoon, he found her busy at work, sitting cross-legged on the floor of her war-torn room, puzzling over a mirror frame in which fragments of silvered glass were being arranged and re-arranged like patchwork squares on a quilt of memory, like a jigsaw missing its picture card. He found her thus, on the floor cross-legged, chattering away, explaining her task as if it were some schoolgirl assignment.

  I found some glue in the cellar, was her first remark as she heard him arrive, after listening to his heavy boots climb slowly, so terribly slowly, up the stairs. Listening as he stopped on each floor, each in-between landing, and then some, be
fore arriving at the apartment door.

  Glue? he said. Glue?

  Yes, she went on. I’m putting everything back the way it was, the way it was before.

  He came and looked over her shoulder. There’s one missing. He pointed to where a star-shaped fragment was conspicuous by its absence.

  Oh, he’s here, she said brightly and opened her hand to reveal the blood-smeared prize.

  He heeded the trail of blood from her lip, hard-caked now, a dry creek bed in a harsh desert land. The scar would be permanent, this he knew. All landscapes retain the gully-scored traces of past watersheds.

  I thought maybe, she said, resuming her chatter, maybe you’d been caught up in it and decided to sit it out – you know? – with a bunch of strangers in a cellar somewhere, and then curfew came and you thought it’d be safer to wait till morning. That made sense. But the pieces of the mirror kept falling, see? They couldn’t hold on. You still didn’t come and then the star fell. You know?

  She looked up, as if he could confirm her theory, and shrugged into his blank expression.

  When the star fell, I knew for sure, she said.

  He sighed, dropped to the carpet beside her and they shared a deep-seated pause, the conduit between them reduced to a shattered mirror and a pot of glue.

  God! he cried suddenly. I asked him to come! And began to sob, great gulping sobs. He had journeyed so far, but now no further.

  It was Baba who reached through her to touch him softly on the hand, this wise woman of the tribe, the spirit of compassion incarnate. From whence had she arrived? From which reservoir of unexperienced memory could this instinct have been conjured? But still, intuitively, Kisha reached out a hand and stroked the bruised and battered flesh, dirt and ash-caked, fingernails torn and split from the frantic dig beneath rubble for the body of his dearest friend.

  Shhhh, she said. If not now, when? When of a million different excursions, his suggestions, yours, together, alone? Don’t add blame to the pain of losing him.

  Plato wiped the back of a hand across his eyes, his dripping nose, smearing grime and blood into war-painterly streaks, stared into the mirror and began his flatline narration, his monologue of matter-of-factness.

  We got into the flat OK, started sorting through stuff, got reading, got chatting – you know.

  Yes, she knew. Hours, days, months could pass unremarked by these two during their more animated discussions.

  Before we knew it, it was dark. We threw as much as we could into a couple of backpacks. I found a torch. We didn’t have a clue about the time. A couple of soldiers pulled us up at the checkpoint near the local refugee centre –the one set up in the school.

  She nodded.

  They reckoned we wouldn’t make it back before curfew, were really serious about it. Said everything was tense because of the battle out at Stup. Everyone trigger-happy. Said we should bunk down in the centre for the night. And, well, you know how it started. Artillery hitting the old town, working its way along the river, coming up the hill.

  Yeah, she said. It was really heavy.

  It never occurred to us the centre would score a direct hit. They were shifting as many of the women and children as they could into the cellars, but who were we? Just a couple of interlopers for the night? We found some blankets, settled down against a wall near the kitchen, switched on the torch, started reading Trotsky to each other.

  He shook his head. We were the best of friends but I still can’t make out why his favourite parts were so different to mine.

  She turned away, back to her companion of the night. A distorted reflection greeted her gaze, broken, crazed, chipped. She had stitched it together, this mosaic of self, but it would never again fit, never again be fully whole. Always, ever, scarred. And minus its evening star.

  Four

  It was a small coterie that assembled at his graveside. Some stayed away through fear of a sniper’s bullet, others because they had preceded their friend, their son, their brother or cousin into the earth. She knelt by the pallet, such a slim board to bear the weight of the dead, laid the star within the folds of green-blue cloth holding his torn body, placed the treasured Tales on his chest. No more nights would her Scheherazade weave his magic.

  Marko and Miki took up their instruments while dirt was shovelled into the trench. The accordion wailed its agony, Marko’s voice was a stream of tears.

  Kisha pada, trava raste …

  Samo ce nas crna zemlja rastavitic moc …

  (Rain falls, grass grows

  Only black earth comes between us)

  Machine gun fire filled the area but the brothers played on, repeating the refrain over and over, a ring song in her heart.

  Hit me, she pleaded. Put me in your sights so I can fall. They need never break the rhythm of their shovelling, the boys need never end their song.

  A gust of wind, a breath of air, the sigh of angels caught on the breeze. All dust, all dust, swirled up, fallen down, crumbled to fine powder in the wake of destiny’s surge.

  The imam came and whispered to her. Nodding, she tried to stand. But on trembling legs – what could support such heavy sorrow? Plato gave her a shovel to lean on, Nada gripped her from behind. Her body shook with great waves of gelatine. Marko dropped his guitar and came to cradle her, hold her, warm her.

  She heard a silly high-pitched laugh in a voice not her own. It’s so weird! she giggled. My body’s shaking fit to burst, but inside I feel as still as stone, as stiff as a corpse.

  I am death, she intoned, staring through the container of earth, into the heart of him, and fainted, still no closer to the light of her star.

  The performance was over. Announced by the low thrum of murmuring patrons rising to leave, it was an orderly exit, despite the occasional stubbed toe or banged knee in the dark. People were moving past them.

  Come on Ki-, said Nada. We need to get going.

  No response. Not there. Still buried beneath the earth with Samir, still in that space of Bergson’s memory-image – the one which arises from the pure, sets out its arc on a continuum of becoming. The place of Proust’s Madeleine. And Godot’s permanent non-presence a full slap to her face.

  Who – who are you waiting for, Kisha?

  Me, she whispered. I’m waiting for me.

  What? said Nada. What did you say?

  Five

  Sometime in February, they started on the good book pile.

  Hmmm, said Samir. I think we should review the cooking order.

  He went through the list, put little marks against each – one, two, three and so on. Always the academic, ever the catalogue-king.

  Ahhh, he said. I’d forgotten about her.

  Kisha looked over his shoulder. You don’t want to burn her first, do you?

  Not likely! I want to read her again. And he started sorting through the remaining towers until he found Scheherazade’s Tales of the Arabian Nights. Surely by the time we’ve finished the book, King Clinton will have had the guts to stay our execution, he said.

  They began that very evening and set a rule. Each night just like her nights, a chapter, no more. The first, Jullanar of the Sea – lots of demons, evil queens, dark magic.

  You’ll love it, Samir grinned and cuddled her close, reading aloud as they sat wrapped in a blanket.

  On the thirty-ninth night, Jullanar and Badr’s story still unfinished, the book lay in her lap till dawn when she began the faulty restoration of a fragmented mirror. And now it lay in a grave with his smashed and broken body.

  Where Samir journeyed he would need a good book, if only to stave off boredom. Forty days, forty nights his spirit would wander. Till arriving where destined. Well-read.

  She could see the whole of their life from the hill where he lay. Home, beyond the few remaining trees in the park, the university further on past the shell of Post Office. There was Bistrik’s brewery with its life-giving waters, the Library now the stuff of dream. Markale was over behind the cathedral and
the cellar bar nestled on the edge of Bascarsija. Her eyes wandered up the alley near the Bey’s mosque where they had bought their rings. And on to the path beside the river their lovers’ promenade upstream. From where he lay, she saw their whole life mapped on the grid of this town, a memory carpet if she turned her sight within. If only she remembered that life is lived within.

  They say most people die in the spring, when winter parts her curtains to gladden wrought hearts. Suddenly surprised by a hint of warmth in the sun, a scent of jonquil on the air – ah spring, they say, welcome home. And with a final flutter, a gentle sigh, so they expire, at peace.

  As it was with Samir. If she remembered correctly – for when was the last time they had seen a calendar? – it was indeed the equinox on which he breathed his last. His day, his night, of equal length – no need to push further, toward more or less of one or the other. Perfectly balanced, his soul had surrendered to an inner equilibrium, a celebration of sorts of the rites of spring.

  Finally Marko came. Stuck out at Stup, he finally came, walked straight into her pain. She looked over to where he crouched on the balcony, making her coffee for a change. His soft-tanned face, sad-weary blue eyes, ponytailed hair, and fatigues a kaleidoscope of mud, blood, sweat – all this had enveloped her in a hug as wide as the world when he finally walked through the door.

  I have to go to the morgue, she said as they sipped the stiff brew.

  He nodded.

  Plato needs to come as well.

  Again he nodded. We’ll all go together.

  Susu’s eyes were heavy-swollen. Farid’s sleeping, she whispered and buried herself in Kisha’s shoulder for the umpteenth time.

  Plato lifted her gently away, kissed her forehead. Get some rest, he said and closed the door on their little expedition.

  I want to see where it happened first, said Kisha.

  They crossed the river and headed up into Vratnik where she studied the debris with an almost scientific curiosity. She picked at crumbled bricks and broken concrete, touched burnt beams, held shattered windows, ran her hands over once-smooth metal now twisted into grotesque shapes. She had to know – not just know, but deep-know, embed it in her very self by sifting dust from dust, ashes from ashes.