I shouldn’t have given them the cigarettes, I said to myself, mounting the stairs. I handed Mama the two cartons. “That’s all they gave me,” I said. “So they stiffed us for that, too, well, I guess I’ll smoke less,” she sighed. I was relieved she hadn’t seen through my ruse so I sat in her lap and hugged her. After that Miro always said hi in the halls. My friends kept asking why and I pretended I had no clue. By New Year’s I’d begun wearing a bra with no underwire and managed to sneak Marina and Jelena in with me to the party.
The infirmary was in Conference Room Number One. Our nurse, Ružica, worked there with Dr. Big Pig. The nurse let us play with plastic syringes, bandages, and leftover boxes. We hung around the improvised waiting room, which was actually in the front entrance hall next to the big stairs. Along the wall, across from the door, stood ten chairs that were all full when the infirmary was open. The waiting room was always crowded with old folks, and to the left of the crowd, by the door, was a spot where we played Chinese jump rope. There were dozens of places all over the Political School that were roomier and empty, but nobody would have been there for us to bug, and things were always happening here, like anywhere where people come for help, and needle each other, and squabble. This was where the action was. We knew we irritated them but we didn’t care. Once we’d figured out who the regular patients were and who were the meanest, we were mean back. They became an everyday, essential part of our twisted little games. Old lady Pundjara lived alone, no family, not even distant relatives, and she visited the infirmary daily. Her only friend was old lady Milica who had diabetes and was a little quirky, and every time she walked by us she’d stop, lean on her elbows, and sing: “A cute young thing goes strolling by, her little chick is open wide, Granddad says tuck it, Grandma says fuck it.” Then she’d cackle and walk on. She was a nutcase but she didn’t hate us. Old lady Pundjara had a swollen, gnarled leg; her other leg was normal. She limped, but when she ran after one of us she’d scamper with amazing speed. If she caught whomever she was chasing, she’d crush the kid between her vast waist-length tits and between them was a smell so sickening your head would spin. We’d set our jump rope up right in front of her or tie it to the chair next to hers, and start hopping like elephants, as wild and loud as we could possibly be. After a few minutes old lady Pundjara would get up and try to yank away our elastic band, shouting furiously, “Beat it, vermin!” Once she managed to grab little Ivana’s ponytail and yanked out a handful of her hair. After that we decided to take our revenge. We followed her and found which room she lived in. We multiplied the room number by 100 to get her phone number, and we crossed our fingers that she had a phone. We chose Marina’s room because she and her sister had it to themselves and dialed the number. “Hello?” said a hoarse voice. We said nothing. “Hello? Who’s this?” said the voice. I took the receiver from Marina and blew into it, I’d seen this in the movies. “Motherfuckers, rats! Beat it, rotten pipsqueaks!” the receiver squawked so loudly that those standing farther away could hear. We were solemn. Nobody said a word, and then Marina hung up, picked up the receiver again, and dialed the number. We sat in silence, staring at one another. “Hello?” the same voice said. Jelena puffed into the phone. “Oh, you filthy creeps! God willing worms gorge on your gut, crabs drag you down the road, your own mother poisons you! Beat it, stinking vermin . . .” This time I was the one who hung up. We all were silent. The curses we’d heard scandalized us and we didn’t want to listen to any more of them, but still, at the same time, this was all super thrilling. We didn’t call her back that afternoon, but we gave her number to Zoki, Ivan, and the other boys. They liked it even more and thought this was a riot so they called her all the time, sometimes even at night. After that, whenever we ran into old lady Pundjara, we always said loud hellos and laughed. We didn’t play Chinese jump rope right next to her anymore. And only sometimes, hardly ever, when we didn’t have any other way to kill the boredom, we’d dial the number, set the receiver next to the phone face down, wait a minute or two, and hang up.
After a few years old lady Pundjara came down with cancer and died, so she never lived long enough to go back to Vukovar. They buried her in Zagorje, on the little hill, and she had no family of her own to take back her bones.
A hundred of us enrolled in the village elementary school. Most of the kids were from the Political School and a few were Hilltoppers, our nickname for kids from Vukovar who were staying at another hotel on a hill. They’d been accommodated there before we arrived, their hotel was fancy and partly underground, and it had been used before the war for tourists and conferences. We joined forces in our war against the Piglets— our favorite nickname for the Zagorje locals—which began on our first day at school. The war was cruel and went on for ages, with the rare ceasefire and only sometimes real friendship. We were all about the same age, all equally poor, but our group had come from Vukovar, a city, a real urban center with a main square, baroque buildings, a café, and a Nobel Prize winner, while all they had was a pastry shop, Suljo’s, and their mangy commie president Tito who made this whole mess in the first place. Our main arguments were rock-solid. And besides, they reeked of pigs, their boots were caked with mud to the knees, the kids in the upper grades came to school drunk, and there were pregnant Miss Piggies. A few of the Piglets were from a real village where there was a school and street lamps, but the rest were from scattered hamlets, too small to even have a name, so we dubbed them, collectively, Zagorje Village. The backwoods Piglets spoke in a language we couldn’t understand, it sounded more like Albanian mixed with Slovenian. We called them basket cases. We and they received handouts, but they did so willingly, or were simply stupid and lazy, while we were stuck there because of the Serbs. We despised the Piglets and they despised us, and we clashed individually and in groups. To them we were trespassers, a threat, displaced persons with government subsidy and VCRs, living in a hotel where we were served meals; they’d have given one of their cows for a week of a life like ours. Meanwhile, we were clueless about whether a cow had horns, so they made fun of us. They couldn’t imagine how little we cared.
With me in class were Dumbelina, Vesna from Vukovar—a Hilltopper who’d become my close friend—and Ivan, but he dropped out a year later, so it was just the three of us from our crew. At first we scoffed at the other kids, while maintaining diplomatic relations with the ones who kept cleaner and had better grades. There were a few we could understand, crib from on a test, fend off the loneliness with. As the years went by some became almost friends, but we were always us and they were them.
Most of them were your standard Zagorje Village issue. Brothers Ivek and Marijan walked three miles to a bus stop where they were picked up every morning at 6:00 a.m. and dropped off at 4:00 after the bus had made a big loop through the hills. Marijan kept up with Cs, he was quiet and had not a single front tooth. Ivek was a little slow, more so than our Dumbelina, yet he knew all the saints’ days. This was all he knew. He sat with Zdenko who was horribly fat and stupid, and when we had a test for Croatian, two identical tests appeared with Zdenko’s first and last name on both. The second was Ivek’s. They both made it to the eighth grade. Žućko sat in the dunce’s seat, he was small and bad. He came to school drunk because for breakfast he ate bread soaked in wine. He lived with his grandmother who told him this was what baby Jesus ate. Žućko, too, made it to eighth grade. In front of me sat Veronika who always stank of pigs, she had greasy hair and bulgy blue eyes. They all had the last names Antolić, Županić, or Broz. I’d hardly spoken to Veronika but then Granddad made friends somewhere with her dad, who liked to drink too, and he gave them things from Caritas that none of us wanted, like UN shampoo and toothpaste, and Veronika said they foamed up real nice and smelled good so she started being nice to me. We still didn’t talk much because she was sure there was this city in America called Chichago, but she was always bugging us to come visit and see her baby bunnies. One spring afternoon we went.
She was living in a tiny house on
a hill with countless snotty brothers and sisters who were all small and grimy. They had only two rooms, one where they cooked and ate, and the other where they slept. We had only one, but we decided they were worse off. The baby bunnies were behind the house in a wooden stall. As soon as we went in we were hit by a sour stench and it took us a minute to get used to the dark. On the floor was a cardboard box and in it were a few furry balls. “Here they are,” said Veronika, in awe. “Wow, they’re so tiny. Super sweet!” said Marina and I. Never in my life had I seen such tiny rabbits, I was entranced and felt it had been worth climbing up the hill. “Can I hold one?” I asked. “Mama doesn’t let me, but you can, just be real careful,” she answered. They were all adorable, most of them were sleeping, but they wiggled their little snouts in their sleep. I chose a white one. Once I’d seen my grandfather carry a rabbit by the ears. I grabbed it firmly and lifted it up. Something went crunch. “Not the ears! Not the ears!” screamed Veronika. I set it down fast but the little snout wasn’t wiggling anymore. “Mama’ll kill me, why’d you go do that for?” “I didn’t do anything, I didn’t even pick it up all the way,” I started protesting. “Can’t you see it’s done for, you dummy!” she wailed. “You still like our shampoos, jerk!” said Marina because she, too, had given her some. “Let’s go,” I said to Marina and headed for the door. We were blinded by the sun and Veronika’s dad surprised us, standing in the doorway. “Hey there, city girls, are those bunny rabbits cute or what?” he leered with a toothless grin. We didn’t answer, we hurried toward the gate. When we’d slipped through we ran down the hill. The next day in school Veronika and I didn’t greet each other. She didn’t talk to anybody, she kept flicking a lock of greasy hair over her left eye.
The last class on Fridays was catechism. If we’d had a choice, we would have preferred even a math class, but we didn’t, and we hadn’t learned yet about skipping. We all had to attend; whoever loved Croatia was supposed to love God, too. Only Aida from the C group went home early. Reverend Juranić came into our classroom before the bell; as soon as it rang he’d start praying and it wasn’t just the Our Father, like the other catechism teachers, but the Hail Mary, the Creed, and sometimes, if he was inspired, a circle of the Rosary. He’d flash his eyes at us one by one, walk around, lean over, and when he caught a kid mumbling he’d hush us all and the kid would soldier on alone. If the kid didn’t know the words, he’d get an F or a knock on the head. Then the reverend would go to his seat in silence, and take out a juice box and straw and one or two chocolate bars, a Mars bar or a Snickers, from his black bag. We’d watch him eat and drink, our mouths watering. If he heard a word from somebody in one of the back rows, he’d heave a piece of chalk or whatever he could lay his hands on at them. He told us we were fools, idiots, lazy. None of us seriously thought we’d fail catechism, but the fear and uncertainty that Juranić, with God’s help, radiated were so intense that we trembled before him. Sometimes he’d take groups of students on trips to the Marija Bistrica shrine and then, in rare high spirits, he’d pull one of the girls with long braids onto his lap. Her cheeks would blaze red and all the way home she’d stare at the floor. We felt he hated the Vukovar kids, we weren’t given special treatment but we were on our guard. Toward us he was every bit as derisive as he was toward the others, but he tailored his questions to us: “So tell me, Vukovar kids, how does one clean a stable?” And then he’d say, “You’re too high and mighty, the village kids are closer to God. Jesus slept in a stable, not a hotel,” and he’d roar with laughter. Once he asked Dragan, who was in eighth grade, about the Holy Trinity, and when Dragan said, “Dunno,” the reverend gave him an F. Then Dragan asked, “Do you know what they call the Pope’s cock?” The reverend’s face swelled and he reached for the class register to bash the boy, but Dragan flew out from behind his desk and flung himself at the reverend, shouting, “The Holy C, the Holy C.” The reverend bellowed and Dragan fled. He ended up at the school psychologist’s office, but nothing horrible happened. The reverend scowled but no longer threw things at us.
As Christmas neared, we were asked to write an essay for catechism homework about “My Christmas.” The best essays would be read at the school pageant. I believed in God and essay writing was my favorite assignment. I had almost no competition in our class except a Piglet, Željka, who excelled in grammar and whose sentences bristled with epithets. I made an effort to write the best essay because with all my heart I wanted to read it at the school pageant, I knew that would bring Mama out of our room, and maybe for the occasion she might wear something dark blue instead of black. The reverend and the Croatian teacher chose Željka and me. I was over the moon; before the reading I was also performing a dance with my friend Ivana, we were presenting choreography I’d come up based on the song “Paloma Nera.” I hadn’t shown it to Mama because I wanted to surprise her, I was hoping this would be a big treat. She knew I could write well, but I thought I’d outdone myself this time. I changed from the sailor top and frayed hot pants I’d worn for the dance number into a white blouse and plaid pleated skirt and went out onto the stage for the second time. I was solemn, standing tall, and I waited until everybody was quiet and I had the total hush my essay deserved. I began to read. I breathed all my air into each sentence; soon I was breathing more shallowly and running short of breath. I hoped no one noticed that I was speaking more and more loudly until I was almost shouting the words and phrases that mattered most. All the highlights were here: a poignant pine branch, a missing father, Mama’s widow’s weeds, my brother who didn’t have the change to buy a cola, and only one wish: home . . . When I finished, the people in the audience applauded, some wildly, others less so, the moms from the Political School dabbed at their eyes. Željka climbed right up, stood next to me, and began to read. I felt the audience would have liked to applaud me more but couldn’t because she was already reading and they’d miss hearing her. Confused, I stood there, my head spinning, her words ringing: roast turkey with dumplings, midnight Mass, bracing fresh air, baby Jesus, gifts, dreams . . . When she finished she bowed so low to the audience that her long hair swept over her blushing cheeks. She was pretty. People rose to their feet and clapped like crazy. It was the end of the whole pageant so the applause was for all of us.
From the loudspeakers music rang out and the dance began. Students and parents were scattered across the hall and stage and there was no way I could spot my mother. I pushed with difficulty through the crowd of glowing faces, large and small, thinking she might have left. When I finally reached the exit I caught sight of her through the glass door where she was standing outside, smoking. She was wearing a big black coat with white epaulettes and her curls were full of fat snowflakes. I almost knocked her down when I flew over to throw my arms around her, shouting, “How did I do?!” “Where’s your jacket? You’ll catch your death!” she said, hugging me. “In the locker room, tell me, tell me,” I pressed. I saw her chin wobble, like with kids when they start crying, and I was sorry. I realized I should have written about something else, I was stupid for not remembering the essay would make her sad. Like for her birthday two weeks before, when I’d given her a card with a picture of a king and queen and her eyes filled with tears, probably remembering Papa. From now on I’ll write only for a good grade, I thought. I hung around her neck and said, “Don’t cry, Mama, you know dear God disciplines those he loves most.” She gave a strange little sigh and brushing away tears she said, “Uncle Grgo sent you a big bag of sweets.” I was happy, I left the dance behind and went back with Mama to our cozy room. It was a nice Christmas Eve, we snuggled and watched good movies about Jesus, with the bag of candy by the bed. The only bad part was that I threw up and the next day my stomach hurt.
Once we’d crossed the border we were given bag lunches and then for the first time I tasted iced tea which I’d never heard of before, it was disgusting but I had to drink something to keep from dehydrating and recover. At just after five in the morning, when my brother had come to see me off, I’
d thrown up twice on the Zagreb city bus, before the real trip in the charter bus had even begun. I could have wept it was so embarrassing, but I pressed my lips together and stopped my chin from trembling, hoping I wouldn’t cry because that would have been even worse. I clung to my brother who held, as far away as he could, the stinky bag and said for the third time that I never should’ve eaten bread soaked in milk for breakfast. This was the first time I was traveling on my own, and it was to a foreign country, to visit a family I’d never seen before and whose name I didn’t even know, but for some reason they’d chosen me of all people to be their guest for two weeks. It was supposed to be fun, they’d take me to Gardaland, we’d go on daytrips, hang out together, and I’d forget all the bad things that had happened to me, while they’d pat themselves on the back about their good life. I was thrilled, I knew no Italian except the one word they taught us on the bus, grazie, probably assuming we’d need to say that the most. The closer we came, the more intense was the fever pitch of excitement. Jelena and I sat together and fingered the cards with the names of our families. Her parents were Mr. Gabrielle and Mrs. Nicola, and we were sure the names had been switched by mistake because we couldn’t imagine a woman could be named Nikola. In my Italian family there were three kids, in Jelena’s just one, so we thought mine would have more toys. The other kids on the bus weren’t asleep anymore, some of them were boisterous and jumping around, I didn’t know most of them because they were from other accommodations. There was one little girl who crouched silently, despondent, alone; I heard her mother and father had been killed and now all she had was her grandmother. She didn’t even have a suitcase, just a plastic bag with six pairs of underpants. Vlatka told us about her, she knew her from Plava Laguna. The girl’s name was Ana. Our hearts sank when we passed through the Mantua suburbs. Supposedly we were visiting well-to-do families, we were expecting villas with swimming pools like the ones in the Beverly Hills, 90210 TV series, but what was rolling by us was totally different. Little houses in rows, all a strange shade of orange, and then buildings that weren’t even high-rises, and wherever you looked there were tall smokestacks in the distance. Finally we came to our town, drove through the city gates and pulled up at the town hall where our families were waiting. It was a noisy crowd of grown-ups and kids waving at our bus. Some of them held big cardboard signs with names: Jelena, Marko, Sasha, others. The organizers left me with an older couple and a little boy, and I smiled at them and didn’t understand anything. Just as I was beginning to wonder where the other two kids were, a little curly-haired girl appeared. She tweaked me by the card around my neck and called out: “Eccola qui, eccola qui!” She grabbed me by the hand and pulled me away. I didn’t understand what was happening. There were two families fighting over me. I was starting to feel uncomfortable when a translator showed up and explained to the older couple that their little girl had stayed in Zagreb after coming down with something before the trip.
The Hotel Tito Page 4