The Ministry of Pain

by Dubravka Ugrešic

  I soon set aside the worries that had beset me: our “archeology” our “spiritualism,” the reanimation of our “better past” made us so close that we found it harder and harder to disband. So we adopted another habit from the past: after class we would adjourn to a café and jabber on, dispersing only to run for the last tram, bus, or train. To an outsider we must have looked like a tribe uttering the magic words that call forth its gods; we must have seemed in a trance. Well, we were in a way.

  The student I had the hardest time getting a handle on was Igor. His memory amazed me: he would have the most vivid “recollection” of things he couldn’t possible have experienced.

  “You weren’t even born then!”

  “But I’ve got Yugogenes, Comrade, and they remember.”

  He got a kick out of pronouncing the ostensibly nonsensical nonce word, Yugogenes, in the Dutch way, substituting harsh, guttural h’s for the g’s. We laughed. My students clearly liked the idea that our past was remembered not so much by us as by phantom “Yuhohenes” for which we bore no responsibility.

  I frequently bumped into one or another of them in town. We were as happy to see each other as if we hadn’t met for ages. We would cover each other with sweet verbal saliva and pat each other on the back, then retire to a café for an endless kopje koffie and aural fondling.

  The student I most often ran across in my peregrinations was Igor. Suddenly the tall frame, the backpack, the inevitable earphones draped around the neck would pop out of nowhere.

  “What brings you here?” I would ask.

  “And you?” he would counter.

  “What do you propose?”

  “How ’bout a lope?”

  That was how they spoke. It was their slang. For them a “lope” was a “walk,” from the Dutch lopen. He might also have suggested a “wandel,” from the Dutch wandelen (“go for a walk”). They’d also say things like “Let’s go for a kopje koffie.” Selim’s Dutch-Bosnian combinations were hysterical.

  Even though my students made it clear that they enjoyed our common project, I could never quite rid myself of the minefield image. One day when Igor and I were wandering through the streets, I tried to bring him out on the subject.

  “Tell me, Igor, how do you feel about the class?”

  “You know what Tito said to his future wife the first time they met?”

  “No, tell me.”

  Hear my thoughts, O Jovanka.

  Your hands are less guilty than mine.

  My forehead burns tonight.

  My eyelids quiver.

  I’ll dream a beauteous dream tonight:

  Thy beauty shall me unto death deliver!

  Thus did a line from a Croatian poetess and a stanza from a Croatian poet merge in Igor’s imagination.

  “Is nothing sacred?” I said, laughing.

  Instead of answering, he asked, “Tell me, Comrade, have you noticed that angels never laugh?”

  “I can’t say I’ve given it much thought.”

  “You’ve never looked an angel in the eyes?”

  “No, I don’t think so…. Not that I remember…”

  “Well, then, we have an urgent call to make.”

  We spent the rest of the afternoon in the Rijksmuseum looking at angel faces of the old masters.

  “See? I was right,” he said. “Angels don’t smile, do they?”

  “Like hangmen.”

  We both burst out laughing, though it wasn’t at all funny. The laughter was a way of dealing with an invisible angst.

  Convalescents, I suddenly thought—people recovering from an illness or a trauma of some kind, an accident, a flood, a shipwreck—they don’t laugh, either. We were convalescents. I didn’t say anything, though.

  CHAPTER 9

  Surrounded by the indifferent walls of our imaginary laboratory, we breathed life into a life that no longer was. We took turns massaging the heart and giving artificial respiration. Clumsy and amateurish as we were, we eventually succeeded in bringing back the beat of that bygone era.

  Most of them returned to their childhoods: it was the safest, least threatening territory. Whether the details were their own or what they had gathered from their parents or whether they had made them up, as Igor often did, was not important. Every detail contained its morsel of truth.

  As for the whole, it was untranslatable: we were speaking an extinct language comprehensible only to ourselves. How could we have explained them to anyone, those words, concepts, and images and—what was more to the point—the feelings the words, concepts, and images called forth in us? It was alchemy: I had assured them there would be gold at the end of the line, knowing full well that a detail which shone brilliantly one moment could fade and vanish the next. As could the heart we had jointly resuscitated.

  At times I wondered whether what I was doing wasn’t diametrically opposed to what I thought I was doing. After all, the stigma the ideologues of the successor states had placed on memories of the collective past had backfired: it had made that collective past more attractive. Perhaps by stimulating memories of the past I would destroy its halo. Or perhaps my attempt to reconstruct the past would end in no more than a pale imitation, thus exposing the poverty of the “baggage” we deemed so powerful. Yet whenever I turned over these and related issues in my mind, the pleasure we derived from our memory game would push them aside, as I had pushed aside a discovery that hit me like a ton of bricks one day, namely, that I had forgotten a lot more than they had and was therefore not the best qualified memory tutor. But it was too late: I had set the gears in motion and could no longer stop them.

  NEVENA: THE FIRST OF EVERY MONTH

  My papa worked in a factory; my mama was a housewife. Our most important family holiday was “first of the month.” Papa would bring home his pay in the “pay pocket” (that’s what it was called) and present it to Mama. Mama took care of the money: such and such an amount for gas, such and such for electricity, such and such for rent, and such and such to pay off the things we had bought on credit. Then we would dress up, as if going out for dinner, and go out shopping.

  Papa used the Turkish word for shopping—bakaluk—Mama the Croatianized German fasung. Mama led the fasung expedition, because only she knew what we needed (how much sugar, how much flour, how much oil, how much salt, how much coffee, and how much macaroni and noodles to last till the first of the following month), and we all pranced along behind her. Mama always bought unroasted coffee, which we then roasted ourselves in a cylindrical tin pot with little doors and a handle on one side. We’d pour the gray beans in through the doors, shut the doors, and put the pot on the gas burner. Then we’d rotate the handle and the pot would rotate and the coffee would rotate in the pot ever so slowly and roast on the fire. The whole apartment would smell of freshly roasted coffee. How I loved that smell. We needed a lot of coffee, because neighbors came to see Mama and drink coffee every day. We didn’t buy many other things. Mama made jam and preserves, she pickled cucumbers, she turned red peppers into paprika and ajvar—that kind of thing. She was also good at making liqueur out of cherries, nuts, and chocolate, so we didn’t buy that either. We kept everything in the pantry. Mama would paste labels on the jars with the name of the produce and the date. The most exciting time for us kids was dessert. Mama would buy a few boxes of biscuits and “cooking chocolate” (that’s what it was called), because that was the cheapest kind. There was a kind of biscuit in the shape of a slipper with strips of chocolate on top and a kind called “housewife biscuits,” which were the best for dipping in milk. And Mama always bought each of us a round, crisp chocolate wafer called a napolitanka. Us kids always thought “store bought” tasted much better than “homemade.”

  Mama would also buy ten packets of bread sticks and ten packets of pretzel sticks, but that was for company. Whenever we had company, Mama put the bread sticks in one cup and the pretzel sticks in another. The guests would sit on the couch. “Have some pretzel sticks,” she would say as she put the cups on
the long, low coffee table, and the guests would take a pretzel stick or a bread stick and start munching on it. They looked like rabbits. Then Mama would take out her “ikebanas,” as Papa called them, two or three flat plates she had filled with rings of sliced pickles and sausage and peppers and cheese. Each slice had a toothpick coming out of it and in the middle she put a mound of ajvar. Guests always complimented Mama on her ikebanas, but they got on Papa’s nerves.

  “Someday somebody’s going to choke on one of your toothpicks,” he would say angrily.

  “You have no sense for what’s in,” she would answer.

  I think that “in” was the most popular word of the day. Mama always knew what the “in” furniture was, the in lamp, the in hairdo, the in curtains, the in shoes, in eyeglass frames. It was the time when everything just had to be plastic. Plastic was the innest of in.

  After dessert Papa would turn the television on. Our television had a plastic filter like a rainbow across the screen to make it look like color when it was really only black and white. We would die of laughter whenever Citizen Mollycoddle was on.

  Now that I write all this down, I’m not so sure it’s the way it was. It’s all so hazy and dreamlike; it’s like I was telling somebody else’s story rather than mine.

  BOBAN: MY FAVORITE COMIC STRIP

  There weren’t many books in our house, but there was one that caught my fancy even when I was little. It was more portfolio than book. It had black leather covers and gilt-edged pages. In the middle of the front cover there was a round metal insignia that looked like a large metal coin. It had the profile of a bearded man engraved on it. When I was a kid, I would scratch at it and try to get it off, but I never did. Inside there were some sheets of typewriter-size paper, yellow with age: documents, paintings, maps, and photographs. There were many more illustrations than text. It looked like a badly organized comic strip.

  “It’s a book about revolution,” Granddad would tell me.

  “Levolution,” I repeated after him.

  “It’s the book of the Great October Revolution.”

  After learning to read, I would mouth the title over and over: The Life and Work of V. I. Lenin, 1870–1924. What I liked best about the book were the portraits of the revolutionaries. The portraits always showed them with dark, brooding looks, and they were often sitting round a table arguing. Even though the book was about Lenin, Stalin was always in the foreground. Lenin usually stood behind Stalin, who was seated at the table. I liked the fact that everything in the pictures was in semidarkness. The light always came from a lamp or a window. But most of all I liked the books. There were always bookcases filled with books in the background. One painting showed Stalin visiting Lenin in his room. Lenin is standing to greet him, and there is an open book in the armchair. Another painting showed Lenin and Stalin having a chat with “delegates from the Central Asian Republics.” I remember it as if it was yesterday: “delegates from the Central Asian Republics.” The delegates were all wearing those Asian skullcaps, and in the background there was a big bookcase. You could see how impressed the delegates were by the number of books in the bookcase. I also remember a picture entitled V. I. Lenin and His Wife N. K. Krupskaya in Siberian Exile. It showed Lenin standing next to a chest of drawers engrossed in a book while N. K. Krupskaya stands next to a bookshelf.

  Later I read the inscription. It was written in a fine, round hand. It said: “My very best wishes to my very best friend, Nebojša Krsti. Major Veljko Vukašinovi.”

  My grandfather’s name was Nebojša Krsti.

  My grandfather was a partisan. He was what they called a prvoborac, which means someone who joined the resistance early. My old man called him an udbaš, which means a member of the Secret Police, though he didn’t start calling him that until the Commies started losing ground. My old man was a shit. Then again, most people are shits. They blow hot and cold. By the way, what makes you think the Commies are so different from Sai Baba? The Commies tried to perform miracles, too. Until the lid came off, that is. And I don’t believe they read all those books.

  If anybody asked me to paint a representative portrait of my family, you know what I’d put next to the old man? A Zastava 101, because he paid a lot more attention to that old jalopy than to me. And next to the old lady I’d put the plastic bag she used to carry groceries back from the market. And next to me a soccer ball. And next to Grandpa the old revolver he kept in his bedside table and never let me near. The old man and the old lady were a couple of hicks. The Commies were cool!

  ANTE: INVITATION TO A BALL

  I remember the tea dances we had in school when we were twelve or thirteen. They disappeared after discos came in. They never served tea at tea dances, or anything else for that matter, and I’m still not clear about why they called them tea dances. The room had chairs along two walls. Boys sat on one side, girls on the other. Every tea dance had its “matron.” The matron’s job was to make sure we didn’t drink too much of the tea they didn’t serve. Somebody else took care of the music. Those were the days when they still had record players and tape recorders. They’re gone now, too. Each of us would go up to a girl and stand in front of her. Like a beau or something. Without a word. That meant we were asking her to dance. Every once in a while the matron would call out, “Ladies’ choice!” and the girls would stand and come over to us. That was how you could tell which girl liked you.

  Those being our “hormonal years,” we all looked forward to the close dances or what we called “squeezers.” They were slow—“Only You”–slow—and you’d press the girl real close, so close that both of you could hardly breathe. You were almost numb with excitement, but you made believe it was nothing. Just the thought of it still takes my breath away. It was like I was diving and I’d come up with my cheek against hers. We’d be so close my eyes would lose their focus and cross. I could feel her transparent, milky white skin; I could make out the blue veins in her eyelids. Her breath smelled of green peppermint drops. Just the thought of it makes me dizzy still. The girl’s name was Sanja Petrini.

  MELIHA: BOSNIAN HOTPOT

  Memory aids survival.

  Marcel/a Proust/i

  Ingredients: ½ kilo boneless pork and ½ kilo boneless beef, cubed; ½ kilo small potatoes, unsliced; 2 onions, sliced in half; 10 cloves of garlic, unsliced; 40 decagrams of fresh tomatoes; 4 green or red peppers; 30 decagrams of kale; 20 decagrams of cabbage; 2 carrots; 2 bunches of parsley; 1 bunch of celery; 1 kohlrabi; 10 string beans; 2 heaping teaspoons of sweet paprika; 15 to 20 peppercorns; several bay leaves; approximately 30 decagrams of water, broth, or white wine. Chop the vegetables coarsely. Place the meat, onions, and vegetables in a pot, preferably earthenware. Add the liquid. Place a border of dough along the pot lid’s inner rim (to prevent steam from escaping) and cover. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 4 to 5 hours.

  JOHANNEKE: VANILLA CONES

  I come from a big family. My parents loved Yugoslavia. So did us kids. Now I see that another reason we took our summer holidays in Yugoslavia was that it was so cheap. We would make the rounds of the camping sites along the Adriatic with one of those big house tents. We were among the first foreign tourists. I had seven brothers and sisters. My father had a job, but my mother stayed at home with us, so we had to watch every guilder and couldn’t throw money away on holidays. Even the Dutch were poor back then. After the war the Dutch went off to foreign countries (New Zealand, Canada, Brazil) and worked by the sweat of their brow just like the Yugos. So for us the Adriatic was heaven. Every day we’d line up, all eight of us—little, bigger, biggest—with Mama and Papa bringing up the rear, and go out for ice cream, and every day Nazif would greet us with the words, “You Dutch, you’re as white as vanilla.” Well, word got round, and soon everyone in town was calling us “the Vanillas.” “Hey look! Here come the Vanillas!” (Our real name was Ter Bruggen Hugenholtz, which nobody could pronounce.) We each got first names, too. Summer names we called them. I was Joka, my brother Gerard Grga, Frans was Fra
ne, Wouter Walter. After Walter in that movie everybody saw, the one about the defense of Sarajevo. “Das ist Walter!” they’d call after him in their pidgin German. “Das ist Walter!” To this day I call him Das ist Walter.

  That ice cream was my earliest memory of Yugoslavia. Our parents never took us out for ice cream at home. It cost too much. The locals called Nazif the ice cream vendor a Shiptar. I didn’t know about your different national groups at the time, so I didn’t know it meant Albanian. You all looked the same to us. We looked like vanilla to you, you looked like hazelnuts to us.

  SELIM: HOMESICK FOR THE SOUTH

  We were all required to study the history of Macedonian, Slovenian, Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin literature, as you are well aware. I never got more than a D. There was this one Macedonian poem called “Homesick for the South.” I only knew the title, because I’d never read it, but the title always sounded funny to me. More like an ad than a poem. Then one day I found a fax of it in the departmental reading room here. It was written by Konstantin Miladinov more than a hundred and fifty years ago, as you are well aware. Anyway, you know how our Dutch friends are always rambling on about their summer plans, their summer holidays, getting ready for them or just back from them or wondering where you’re going this year—well, this poem is like that. You’d think it was written by a Dutch rather than a Macedonian. I just had to translate it for my Mieke. So I start reciting it in Macedonian, and—Tito be my witness—my brain scans it without a glitch! I don’t want to bore you, but let me remind you how it starts in case you haven’t got the book handy.