I left the room all dressed but only partway ready because we did our makeup in Marina’s room away from their questioning eyes; she turned down the light in case one of her folks came by. It’s not that we had much makeup to do, or that we even knew how to apply it, but we had Marina’s older sister. A black eyebrow pencil and an almost used-up dark-red lipstick were what she’d left us, and we did the best we could. When we finally went downstairs at about nine to show off there was hardly anybody about. Only the occasional little old lady who hadn’t yet retreated to her room and a kid here and there, the untended rug rats who were born here and knew only about scampering around the hotel halls, shinnying up the railings, and crawling in and out of all the Political School nooks and crannies. They were like no-see-ums, yet they served as the higher consciousness of our living space, well-adapted little cockroaches who knew their way around every conference room when they were still in diapers: baptized in one, at day care in the second, smoking their first cigarette in the third. They wrote to Santa that most of all they longed to go home. When the little Mihaljević girl said something to her dad with a Zagorje twang, he beat her something awful and she couldn’t understand why. She was six and her sisters were five and two; after that they knew they must never use Zagorje dialect. Their dad was desperate for a son so every other year the family added yet another room. The middle girl, Dragana, was climbing around on the armchairs that evening and when she saw us she froze. Behind our backs we heard her voice, still in a baby’s lisp: “You aw scawy.” Rug rats. We left her, and through the fragrant evening air someone, drunk and young, ahead of us sang out the refrain: “Bolje biti pijan nego star.”
In the dark of the disco club I couldn’t tell whether Igor was there or not and my eyes were already starting to smart from the smoke and the squinting so I headed out for air. Suddenly I felt a light touch on my back, and when I turned, I saw him. He smiled and said hi. And I said hi. “On your way out?” he asked, looking me straight in the eye. “Yeah, the smoke’s getting to me.” Outside, we moved a few feet to the side and perched on a low wall. “I saw you here last Saturday,” smiled Igor, he was really seeing me, I couldn’t believe it, and meanwhile I was thinking about what to say. “Yeah, I was here, it’s super, only the music’s a little lame.” From inside you could hear Coco Jumbo. “Right, my sister’s boyfriend is the DJ, he has to spin this shit, but at around four he switches to Azra and Psihomodo Pop.” I could only dream of the day I’d be allowed to be out until 4:00 a.m., but this would do for now, seeing him up close, having him smile just at me. “Can I bring you something? A beer? Vodka juice?” he asked, and behind him I thought I heard a voice I knew well. My brother. How I hated him; I’d been sure he’d come down to see what I was up to and embarrass me. He was headed our way and I knew he’d say something. Something stupid. “Mama’s waiting for you, hurry home. Oh ho, look at that boy’s hair! And I was thinking you were out with one of your girlfriends! Nobody can tell who’s a boy or a girl anymore, ha ha!” he quipped and walked on by. I felt awkward and when Igor came back with the drink I downed it in a gulp for the first time ever, and when I noticed he was watching me in surprise and laughing, I said, “That’s how I like it.” “Tough cookie, eh?” he said. “Gotta go,” I whispered, and when he offered to see me home I thought I’d swoon. The walk was short, we were swaying and he took my hand after a Lepi cajti country-music number. I stared straight ahead because it felt silly to be looking at him and smiling, and I was feeling woozy. We were standing out in front of the Political School when he moved in close, and I still hadn’t figured out what was up when I felt his tongue in my mouth. Warm and moist, both the most thrilling and most disgusting thing I’d ever known. I was stumped, where to put mine? No one had told me about that part and I hadn’t thought we’d be going that far. When he stepped back I was still frozen, and he asked, “Can I call you?” “Yes,” I gave him the number, “and when the front desk picks up, ask for extension 385.” “Extension? What’s that?” he asked, surprised. “My room,” I answered, “it’s where I live.”
Waking up this time was even more painful than it had been the first time. Željka’s mother had already left and mine was pacing nervously around the room. I observed through halfopen eyes that she was scraping our little white hot plate, she was being strangely loud about it, there was nothing left to scrape, and then I remembered Uncle was maybe coming today. It must be early still, nobody was sending me down to breakfast so I pretended to sleep a little longer. After tidying up, Mama sat across from me, sighing, and glanced at her wristwatch. Since we left Vukovar she’d never taken it off, she slept with it on, sometimes she’d sit there unbuckling and buckling the watchband. She’d been given the watch by Uncle’s wife, the German lady, who didn’t know how to say a single word in Croatian so that’s probably why we called her Uncle’s wife instead of Aunt, and besides she was only eight years older than my brother. Every summer when they visited, Papa’d be excited. He’d save the best prosciutto and kulen, and if Uncle, for instance, said, “That leather jacket is sharp,” Papa would take it right off and hand it to his brother. Mama disapproved, but Papa protested, saying Uncle would do anything for him. Granny approved with a cackle, saying: “You have only one brother, but you can have as many wives as you like.” Her attitude about Mama could be summed up in that one sentence. In the hotel restaurant where Papa worked, Uncle would be given the best seat, though Papa had to leave the tip afterward for the waiters. If Uncle’s wife wanted to go to a disco, they all went to the disco. The summer before the war they were staying with us and while I was up in my room, dressing their poodle in baby clothes, I heard Uncle boasting about something that it could be dunked in water or smashed on a rock but it would never stop working. I didn’t hear Papa say anything, and then Uncle said, “There, little brother, it’s yours.” I went into the room to see what Papa’d been given, and he was gazing at the watch like I gazed at my huge stuffed Garfield. Then Uncle’s wife took off hers, a woman’s version of the same watch, and with a smile and nasal tone, she gave it to Mama, who protested, “Nein, nein,” and I thought, I have the nicest family in the world. They were all so happy just then, all of them but Gina the poodle who was yipping in the baby carriage. Now I’m not so sure.
At around 4:30, once the wait had drained away all our joy, into the miniature bubble of our world strode Uncle through the hotel room door. He was tall, tanned, nearly as handsome as Papa. “Hello, hello!” he filled the room with his congenial baritone. A man, not the one who’d gone missing, who’d disappeared, the one we were waiting and searching for, not quite, almost, his blood, his brother. I jumped up to kiss him, he didn’t have to bend down, I’d grown, I looked him straight in the eye. “Sit down, would you like something to drink?” Mama’s voice quavered with the excitement. “Sure, sure, coffee would be great,” drawled Uncle while Mama maneuvered around the cramped space, from the hot plate to the cupboard, from the package of coffee, to the box of cups, to the box of cookies. “Nice, cozy, not a bit musty,” said Uncle, pleased, like we’d been living before in a basement. “I visited our aunt this morning,” he said, meaning Granny’s sister, “they’re over in Špansko, or whatever they call it, their room is bigger, but the bathroom, the bathroom is shared by like a hundred old codgers. And it’s pleasant around here, none of the, you know, traffic.” “How’s your family?” Mama interrupted his assessment of our accommodation. “Yeah, good, good. The kid was held back in kindergarten, they said he’s maybe hyperactive, they’re so strict there. And he’s a little devil, I bought him these two turtles, you should see how they scuttle around his room. And the good lady, you know, she’s always harping on about one thing or another, and, sure, she’s getting fatter. She’s fine, how else could she be.” My brother laughed at first out loud, and then softer and softer. I didn’t. Uncle had brought some bags with him and he began pulling out balls of socks, one after another, and handed them to my brother. I’d never seen so many socks. At the bottom
were also two of his shirts. A little stretched, a little oversized. “You’re broad in the shoulders,” he grinned at my brother. “And here’s something for our girl, you’re so big now,” he said and set on my lap a green package wrapped in transparent cellophane. In it, in an array of colors and shapes, were six little bars of soap. I’d been given little soaps. So now I was a big girl. What would a kid do with soaps? When the conversation lulled, he sighed and said, “What can you do, there’s no shedding this skin of ours.” Two or three seconds later I said, just loud enough so he could hear, “Some do.” He turned to me and color flooded his smoothly shaven face. “They sent me packing, beat it or you’re dead, I had to choose. They all knew me.” I thought he’d go on but he stopped, halfway through a sentence, and I stopped, staring at the floor so I wouldn’t have to look at them, at Mama and my brother. Soon we said our goodbyes and when he left, he took with him his voice, mood, jokes, ease, life.
Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Croatia
Deliver to: Minister G. Š.
Dear Mr. Minister,
Please forgive me for taking your valuable time, I will be brief. Please help me solve what is such a huge problem for me, and that is my housing problem. I am from Vukovar, I have two children, and my husband, as a member of the Croatian Army, was taken prisoner at the Vukovar hospital and to this day, I’m sad to say, we know nothing of what befell him. We have been housed at the former Political School in Kumrovec in a tiny room for five years now. My son is twenty and studies in Zagreb, my daughter is thirteen and now she’s finishing the eighth grade and should be enrolling in high school but there is no high school in Kumrovec. I submitted my petition for an apartment in 1991 and since then we have received nothing but empty promises that this problem would soon be resolved, so here we are still today in this little room in Kumrovec. Mr. Minister, sir, we went to you to ask for help once already and we approached our president as well and, believe me, we’d be most grateful if you and our president would send the housing commission a recommendation to grant us an apartment because they would obey you. We wrote to the president on June 12, 1995, and to you on November 23, 1995, as you will easily ascertain. After that we were sent a letter from the housing commission saying that as soon as the first housing unit became available they would resolve our case immediately, yet since then many people have been granted apartments. Mr. Minister, I came to see you once with a group of several wives and mothers from Vukovar and I remember your words well when, with tears in your eyes, you said: “Don’t ask of me what I cannot do, but as far as your welfare is concerned, you are free to ask about that.” I therefore resolved to ask you once again for help because I don’t know what to do. It is terribly difficult for me to see my children so sad because I feel that though they lost their father they have the right to a life of dignity until they are able to look after themselves.
Thank you again!
A.B.
Ministry of Defense, Republic of Croatia p.p. 21 Kumrovec
Housing Commission
To the President of the Commission
Mrs. I. P.
Dear Mrs. P.!
I know I am not the only woman who has not resolved her housing problem, but believe me I have been waiting patiently since 1991, and now I am truly suffering. I am housed in Kumrovec with two children in one small room. My son is studying in Zagreb, and my daughter has finished eighth grade and is about to enroll in high school. Since she finished all eight grades with straight As, she would like to enroll in a gymnasium in Zagreb because here in Kumrovec there are no high schools. I am the wife of a missing Croatian Army defender from Vukovar, and my father-in-law was killed in Vukovar, also as a member of the Croatian Army. Believe me it is much harder for the families of the missing because there are things we can never accept, and the uncertainty is crushing us. Mrs. P. I pray to you to help my chil-dren lead lives of dignity because if their father were by their side they would never be suffering as they are now.
Thank you in advance!
A.B.
Ministry of Defense, Republic of Croatia p.p. 21 Kumrovec
“Come on, are you done in the bathroom now or what?” my brother banged at the door. A little longer, I’m in no rush, I said to myself. I tucked the letters back into the blue envelopes and wondered why Mama was writing them. My brother had always been the one to do that before, but recently he’d gone off the deep end so he’d probably caved. Maybe because he’s a student now at the university and thinks no one’s his equal. Before, I was the only stupid one, now Mama is, too, it’s not enough that she’s always miserable, he has to knock her even further down. “Take a computer course! Driver’s ed! Folks with an eighth-grade education are more capable than you! Go ahead, sit here and rot in this room, why don’t you, you’ve forgotten how to talk with people,” these were his most frequent barbs. She would edge away and tell him to leave her alone. I could hardly wait for him to move to a student dorm and stop with the complaining, but I, too, would be moving soon to a dorm.
All my friends were boarding, everyone who wanted to go on to high school or the university. My brother was in a university dorm, I would board at a high school dorm. I tucked the envelopes into my pants so I could slip them back when no one was looking, tuck them into our aunt’s black briefcase where all the documents and important papers were kept. Mama photocopied all our letters that had to do with the apartment or Papa, fewer and fewer about Papa. So one day we’d have proof. For whom and what, I couldn’t say. As I walked out of the bathroom I jabbed my brother in the ribs with my elbow. “I can’t wait till you move out,” I muttered and sat on my bed. Like so many other times, I was saved by the Walkman I’d been given in Italy and singer Djordje Balašević. On my brother’s way out of the bathroom, over my earphones I could hear him grumbling about Chetnik music, though he wasn’t saying it directly to me, so to him, without taking the earphones off and facing the wall, I said, “I can tell the difference between music and politics, I’m not dense.” He suddenly lunged at me and grabbed me by both arms. He thrust his face into mine and shouted, “You don’t get it, do you!” There our conversation ended.
Pajamas, two pairs
Towels, two
Soap box, one
Toothbrush, one
Plastic cup, one
Slippers, one pair
The list was on a sheet of paper glued to the inside of the glass doors to the girls’ dorm. “Will you remember or should we write it down?” asked Mama, rummaging through her handbag for a pen. “I’ll remember, I’m not senile,” I said, peering inside. Those were all the things I’d need once I moved into my dorm, my new room. We’d signed me up, we’d had the conversation with the head, there’d be no problems, plus I had a big advantage because I had no dad. I was a displaced person. I had no apartment. I was from Vukovar. Who could top that? While Mama talked in the office, I saw a few more girls in the halls. They didn’t look especially interesting, they were scared and a little pitiful. The ones who usually lived here were not around, it was summer so they were home for vacation. But the stuff they’d put up on the doors announced their presence. They lived here and they were in charge. A poster of the Ramones on one door, heart-shaped and bear-shaped stickers, high heels snipped out of a magazine. Clearly there were all kinds. Who would be my roommates? We still didn’t know. They’d give us our rooms on the first day when we moved in. Marina, Vesna, and Božana were assigned to a different dorm, across town, I had no idea which tram went there and I didn’t know how to find out. I didn’t know the street name or the number. I was assigned this one because it was closer to my new school. But not too close because I still had to take a tram and then walk. Mama and I went from the school to the dorm only once and I wasn’t sure I’d know how again, even Mama had to ask the driver where to get off. All of us were in different schools, the high school for tourism, the high school for commerce, the gymnasium. I chose the gymnasium because I’d had perfect grades so far and my brother had attended
a gymnasium so I obviously had to, just to make him stop calling me stupid. “So what about the tourism high school? You’d learn languages, and later, if you want to study you can, but if you don’t, you don’t have to.” No. The gymnasium. I won second place in a national competition organized by the Zagreb European Center. The assignment was to write an essay on the theme “We’ll build a house of sunlight and children’s smiles!” Europe. Sunlight. Children’s smiles. A house. Each of these a theme of mine, and I had something to say about them all. I had a fine grasp of pathos and words of many syllables, and I knew what was expected of me. An optimistic forward-looking gaze without naming the culprit directly responsible for my woeful history. This went over big with the grown-ups. At the urging of my Croatian teacher I wrote essays for every occasion and on any topic for the school magazine, always with reference to the life of displaced persons. People adored them, especially my teacher. So she offered me this opportunity as well, and the answer came a few weeks later. There it was, I’d placed second in the national competition. The first three winners were allowed to enroll directly in any secondary school and received two pounds of Cedevita orange-drink mix and the Serbo-Croatian Dictionary of Differences. Mama called Uncle Grgo. “Which is the best Zagreb gymnasium?” she asked. “The seventh, that’s where my wife’s daughter is starting,” he said. “It’s the elite school.” I wasn’t sure what that meant. “The seventh gymnasium, that’s where you’re going,” said Mama brightly, but she looked a little sad. The school was close to the center of town, it was easy to get there from the main square. No matter where we were going we always started at the main square. This was a reflex left over from when we first explored the city. School registration was teeming. Some students were there without their parents; they probably lived nearby. While we stood in line to submit our paperwork, again I heard a woman say: “They are all excellent students, the elite.” When it was our turn, Mama handed a teacher our papers. He leafed through them and set them aside. “You made the cut?” he asked. Mama was a little confused; she pointed to the papers. “In there is her certificate from a national competition, she came in second. They said she has the right to direct enrollment.” The man sighed and picked the papers up again. “Why didn’t you say so?” “But she’s had only excellent grades, we live in displaced persons housing, my husband went missing in Vukovar . . .” “The results will be posted on the bulletin board in a week,” he cut her off and glanced up to see who was next.
The Hotel Tito Page 9