by Frank Wynne
I took my courage into my own hands and very carefully made an incision from the top to the bottom of his mutilated corpse trying to tear only the skin. I must have burst his gut, because all of a sudden, a horrific stink filled the kitchen and I had to open the window and squirt air-freshener around. Each of us pulled on one side of his torso and succeeded in separating his ribs and wrenching out his heart and lungs. His heart slipped out of Carmeta’s grasp and the moment it sloshed on the ground I started to retch and vomit. As I’d practically been fasting I only brought up yellow bile, but I felt queasy and my stomach was churning.
Carmeta rushed me into the dining room and forced me to stretch out on the floor with my legs in the air. When she saw that I was showing signs of life, she went back to the kitchen.
“Don’t move. I’ll gut the Son of a Bitch,” she said.
There was still some sun on the terrace. The pale rays of spring barely gave out any heat but were a pleasant reminder of other happier evenings when with Andreu, may he rest in peace, Carmeta and Ramon we’d rustle up a bread, tomato and mountain ham snack on the terrace and stay there late into the night chatting about this and that, never imagining that one day this small terrace of mine, with its views of Montjuïc and its flowerpots, would be an improvised cemetery. Necessity is the mother of invention, or so they say.
We buried the head next to the lemon-tree, the one with the biggest pot, and stuffed his hands and feet into the ceramic pot with the pine tree. We stuck his entrails in with the magnolia, his heart with the bougainvillea and his liver with the orange tree, and divided the rest up among the remaining pots, taking care not to damage the flowers. We’d scarcely finished when we realized there were still seven or eight pieces of meat in a bag and we had no receptacles left, but at that time of night after toiling the whole day, we were fit to drop, so I suggested to Carmeta that we should wrap them in foil and put them in the freezer.
“We’ll think of something tomorrow after we’ve had a rest.”
Carmeta looked in a bad way again. Although she wasn’t complaining, her grimaces showed the pain she was in. I helped her shower and wash her hair, and switched on a wash-load of tops, towels and cloths we’d used to clean up the kitchen. The foam in the washing machine turned pink.
Ignoring her protests, I accompanied her home, and on the way, threw the Bastard’s clothes in a rubbish container. Carmeta could hardly stand straight, so I made her a glass of hot milk and forced her to eat biscuits before going to bed. I waited until she fell asleep and, while Carmeta snored, I changed Ramon’s nappies and gave him his supper. Just before I left, as I was giving him a kiss on the forehead, I thought how sooner or later we’d have to do something to help him too. Good people don’t deserve to end like that.
The minute I opened the door to my flat, I realized that, if I continued on an empty stomach, without any food input, my blood pressure would take a dive and I’d faint. In the morning, before the Bastard arrived, I’d taken the precaution of leaving some sandwiches in the dining room so as not to have to go back into the kitchen. As my stomach was slightly queasy, I had a couple of spoons of anti-gut-ache syrup and ate a ham sandwich and apple while watching the news. The sandwich and apple went down well, and I was soon asleep on the sofa in front of the telly that was still on. That night, unlike others, I didn’t have a nightmare.
The next morning I got up early and spent it giving the rest of the flat a thorough clean. Although they say bleach doesn’t remove traces of blood, I’d bet anything you like that if the police decided to investigate they wouldn’t find a scrap of evidence. I took a mid-morning break and first phoned Marta, who was at work, and then Carmeta, who’d got up and was feeling better. I continued cleaning. When I finished, it was past four and my back was aching.
I took the tops, cleaning cloths and towels out of the drier, put everything in plastic sacks and went out. I threw the sacks into four different containers on my way to Ramon and Carmeta’s. Carmeta was in much better spirits and was waiting for me with a bottle of cava in the fridge which we drank while we kept Ramon company.
The building-workers came the following day and gutted the kitchen with their hammers. They also chipped out the wall and floor tiles. They worked a good two weeks in my kitchen, and now I have a new ceiling, designer tiles and a built-in kitchen. The tiles and cupboards are nothing out of the ordinary because they were bought in a sale, but altogether it looks really good.
*
I know I must keep my lips sealed and can’t tell my little girl not to worry, that the Bastard won’t ever lay his hand on her again. Marta knows nothing. Nothing at all. She’s still very young and God knows how she’d react if she knew what Carmeta and I had done. Besides, what with her kid and her work, Marta has enough headaches, and it would be the last straw if she had to cope with moral dilemmas or stupid remorse. So mum’s definitely the word! As Carmeta says, if what we did is wrong, we’ll settle our account in the world beyond, with whoever.
Some girls from our yoga group are coming to supper tomorrow. We’ll take advantage of the good weather and dine on the terrace. Just in case, I’ve bought a good supply of incense sticks, I mean, just in case the Bastard starts to get smelly and sour our supper. As Carmeta has got to start another round of chemo and is leaving the class, it will be a kind of farewell party. I’ve also scrubbed myself from the class, because I’m going to live in her place for a while from tomorrow. When she starts being sick and feeling like a wet rag, Carmeta will need someone to accompany her to hospital and lend her a helping hand with Ramon.
We both know she’s not got much time left. She knows and I know, so no need to mention it. Nonetheless, tomorrow’s farewell will be a whale of party: we’ll eat and drink until our livers give up on us. Our style has never been to turn tragic, and even less so when we’ve both got one foot on the other side. What’s coming our way is coming.
I live very near the Ninot market where I shop every day. I like to look around the stalls and gossip with the saleswomen and locals from the neighbourhood. As I buy there daily and never use the freezer, I’d completely forgotten the packets that were still there. That morning, the visit by the police made me remember I must do something with all that and I rang Carmeta. I told her I was thinking of going to the florists and buying some earth and a couple of big pots.
“Forget about the pots…!” Carmeta retorted. “Go to the Ninot and see if you can buy some spongy mushrooms and fairy rings. And buy garlic and onions as well.” “Tomorrow,” she added in an authoritarian tone, “we shall eat roast pork and spring mushrooms!”
Initially I objected, mostly on behalf of the other girls. But, by the cold light of day, I have to agree it’s not a bad solution.
YOU’RE THE ANGEL
Miljenko Jergović
Translated from the Croatian by David Williams
Miljenko Jergović (1966–) was born in Sarajevo, in former Yugoslavia. Jergović began contributing to literary magazines in his teens. His factual novel Volga, Volga, about a car and its driver, is a chronicle of the Bosnian war and internal conflicts that marked the breakup of Yugoslavia. His stories and novels have been translated into more than twenty languages.
When I was born a dog started barking in the hall of the maternity ward. Dr. Srećko ripped the mask from his face, tore out of the delivery suite, and said to hell with the country where kids are born at the pound! I still didn’t understand at that point, so I filled my lungs with a deep breath and for the first time in my life confronted a paradox: though I didn’t have others to compare it to, the world where I’d appeared was terrifying, but something forced me to breathe, to bind myself to it in a way I never managed to bind myself to any woman. Recounting the event later, first to my mother, and then my father, and as soon as I grew up, to friends, they brushed me off, said I was making stuff up, that I couldn’t have remembered anything, that there was no way I could’ve started drawing ontological conclusions the first time I cried. At first I
was pissed they thought me a liar, and I wasn’t above spilling a few bitter tears, hitting myself in the head, and yelling you’ll be sorry when I’m dead! With the passing of years I calmed down, having figured that this world, of which I already knew a little and could compare with my experience and my dreams, was predicated on mistrust and the peculiar human tendency to think you a total idiot whenever you told the truth and take you seriously the second you started lying. This aside, relatively early on, when I was about five or six, I came to the conclusion that everything connected with death was a downer and so decided to shelve my threats of dying, at least until I solved the problem of God’s existence. God was important as a possible witness; he’d be there to confirm my final mortal experience and he could vouch for me that I hadn’t lied about the one in the delivery suite.
Does God exist? I asked my grandma Olga Rejc, because of anyone I met in those first six years of my life, she seemed most trustworthy. For some people he does, for others he doesn’t, she replied calmly, like it was no big deal, like it was something you only talked about all casual and indifferent. Does he exist for us? It was most diplomatic formulation I could manage. The thing was, I’d already noticed how my family placed exceptional value on my socialization efforts and loved me talking about stuff in the first-person plural: when are we having lunch, when are we going out, when are we coming down with the flu … at least at the outset I thought questions of faith would be best set in this context. For me, God doesn’t exist, she said, I can’t speak for you though. It was then I learned about truths you only spoke for yourself and in your own name. I was pretty okay with all this, though less than thrilled I hadn’t been able to resolve the God question off the bat.
Ten years later I still wasn’t straight with God, but I’d figured the moment Grandma decided he didn’t exist. It was early spring, everyone was out somewhere and I’d stayed back at home alone. As usual I started rummaging through their wardrobes. I never knew what I was looking for but always found something, something linked to the family, Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa, something they’d tried to hide from me for some reason. Their private histories were so dark, or at least they thought them so, and my investigative spirit so very much alive, that after a few months’ work on their biographies I knew way more from my secret sources than they ever told or admitted to me in the rest of my life put together. My starter’s curiosity soon turned into an obsession, and then into a mania. I’d be disappointed if I didn’t turn up something juicy or dirty. I wanted proof my father was a homosexual, my mother an ex-tram driver, Grandpa a spy or at least a gambler who’d lost half of Sarajevo in a game of Preference. I loved them all, you have to believe me, but even more I loved the little testimonies of things they’d wanted to hush up so they’d make it into heaven – if only in the eyes of their son and grandson.
But that was the day I discovered the false bottom in the big bedroom wardrobe. I lifted up the base and found a carved wooden box, a round glass container, and a green folder full of documents. I laid everything out on the rug, heaved a sigh, and opened the box. It was full of dirt. Regular brown dirt with little stones and blades of long-dried grass that disintegrated to the touch. They won’t be planting flowers in this dirt, I thought, and then, not without some trepidation, sunk my fingers into the box to explore. But there was nothing there, just pebbles, grass, and all this dirt. You wouldn’t believe the amount of dirt that can fit in a wooden box. Much more than you’d think. You want to picture what I’m talking about, then tomorrow grab a cardboard box – I mean, I doubt you’ve a wooden one at hand – go to the park, and fill it up with dirt. You won’t believe your eyes!
I moved on to the glass container. It held a pocket watch, a ring (it was too big for my ring finger, I tried it on), this miniature metal figurine of some saint, a tie pin, and a little booklet by Anton Aškerc, printed in Slovenian, the pages the thinnest I’ve ever seen. The only other things were these two green army buttons with spread-winged eagles, which gave me the heebie-jeebies because I had the feeling I’d seen them somewhere before.
Before opening the folder I stopped to think of all the stuff you’re not supposed to know about in life. I wondered about the secrets that have to stay secret so the world makes some kind of sense, but since I couldn’t remember any, I decided to push on. The folder contained three bits of paper. A birth certificate in the name of M.R., a baptism certificate in the name of M.R., and a telegram that read: “We hereby inform you that private M.R. perished in battle against a Partisan band on September 10.”
M.R. was my uncle. I knew he died in the war, and I knew he wasn’t a Partisan, but I’d never dreamed that he was the enemy.
I put everything back in its place and closed the wardrobe. Closing it, I knew nothing in my life would ever be the same as before I discovered the false bottom. I also knew my investigations into the family were over. Now it was time for asking questions, but only of those who questions wouldn’t hurt and who could answer them without leaving a bloody trail in their wake.
I waited for days for my chance, but it never came. Grandma almost never left the house, and when she did Mom wasn’t there, and Mom was the only one I could ask. She didn’t know her brother. She was born four months before he died, and although he never saw her, he gave her her name. Grandpa had wanted to call her Regina, but M. wanted his sister named after a tree native to Bosnia. The tree’s native to other countries too, but we didn’t care about other countries because they were just places Grandpa, Uncle, my father, and everyone else went to war.
I went to see Mom at work. Can we have half an hour alone? She frowned, and I could already tell what she was thinking: he’s going to admit he’s a druggie, he’s got some girl pregnant, he got his fourteenth F in math, he’s a homosexual … I wagged my index finger left-right, though we hadn’t yet said a word. I sat down. Everything’s fine, just give me a second. But Mom just got more wound up. I had to get it out before she jumped out the window and broke her leg. Me: I opened the wardrobe. Mom: It had to happen sometime. Me: I found something. Mom: What? Me: Everything. Mom: Even the dirt? Me: From the grave, right? Mom: Please, just one thing. Don’t ever tell her. Me: I know. I came to you.
The part of the story that follows I learned back then, from my mom, and it goes something like this. When he finished high school, the same one I’d attend fifty years later, my uncle got the draft. Because he spoke perfect German and had a German grandfather, they put him in a unit formally part of the Wehrmacht but made up of our people. They sent them to Slavonia in Croatia. My grandpa combed the city in a blind panic, badgering one acquaintance after another in one office after another, just trying to get his son out of the army. But of all his connections, only a Communist one proved any good. A friend, a manager in the railways and member of the resistance, told him how it could be arranged for M. to desert his unit and be taken in by Bosnian Partisans a couple of kilometers from his base. Grandpa was all for the idea, but when he relayed it to Grandma, she got scared. For a start she thought in his German uniform the Partisans would shoot her son on sight, and even if they didn’t, he’d be sure to lose his head in a Partisan one. More to the point, she was of the view that he was safer being the enemy. Grandpa tried to persuade her, but it did no good. He hollered so loud the whole apartment shook, desperate because he himself wasn’t sure what was best, but also because he was certain how it all might end, who had justice on their side, and who would win the war. Mom of course had no idea what all Grandpa’s hollering was about, but I’m sure he hollered the exact same thing when I was just a boy and he told me the story of the Second World War: Hitler’s an idiot. That’s what I said right back in 1939. Idiots lose wars, but they kill more people than you could ever imagine. And then that trash Pavelić came along. He sent our kids to Stalingrad and turned them into criminals. He created a shitty little state dangling out a big Kraut ass. That was Pavelić for you, and I knew that from the get-go, but that knowledge doesn’t help you any, because
it won’t save your neck. I think that was also about the gist of what he yelled at Grandma in the fall of 1971, when he again made the house shake and went as red in the face as the Party flag, and his lips went blue and Mom went up to him and shook him by the shoulders and said Dad, calm down, calm down … But he wouldn’t calm down, he just went on, hollering about Maks Luburić, who cooked people in boiling water and in March 1945 skinned Grandpa’s railwayman friend alive in the house of horror in Skenderija. Then Mom started crying, imploring Daddy, sweetheart, please stop, for God’s sake, I beg of you … Suddenly he calmed down, not for God’s sake, but because of her tears. He put a funny face on and said let us alone you silly woman, can’t you see we’re talking about men’s stuff. Then he turned to me and whispered politics isn’t for women. They just start bawling. Golda Meir is the exception. Back then I didn’t know Grandpa had tricked me, that he’d actually told me another story, not the one I thought he was telling me. Mom didn’t bawl like other women when politics came up. That I know from when I found the box.
Anyway, when Grandpa was done yelling at Grandma, having failed to convince her to go along with the Partisan plan, which she steadfastly rejected, Grandpa started living months of his own private hell. He’d wake at night, bathed in sweat, with a single recurring thought: that M. wasn’t coming home, and that if he did, the sum of Pavelić’s and Hitler’s crimes would be on his conscience. Grandma was only worried about one thing: that her son stayed alive, the how was no matter. It was in those months she started praying to God.
How they took the news of Uncle’s death, whether they cried, yelled, screamed, or just absorbed it in silence, I’ll never know. A few months after the liberation of Sarajevo four young guys in Partisan uniforms showed up on their doorstep. Grandma cried, Grandpa held his face in his hands to keep it from crumbling like a ceramic mask. One of the young guys put his hand on Grandma’s shoulder and said don’t cry, madam. You’ve got another child. Look at your little girl. M. talked about his baby sister every day. My mom, a blond baroque angel, sat on her potty in the corner.