My Cat Yugoslavia

by Pajtim Statovci

  Only now did the cat turn his head toward me, peer through his narrowed cat’s eyes, and find a face for the name he found so disagreeable, ears and eyes, a mouth and body. He crossed his legs, all the while brazenly gawping at me, and started guffawing, his mouth set in a grimace.

  “Nomen est omen,” he said. “Did you know that? The name is an omen, ha ha.”

  Of course I’d heard that, I told him, it’s just a collection of letters and, by the way, my name means “blessing.” But before I could continue, the cat burst into a volley of such raucous laughter that I could no longer think anything at all, and he rolled and writhed on the spot without trying to control himself in the slightest.

  “Well, in that case it’s the worst possible name you could have!” shouted the cat through the roar of his laughter.

  “Well. It might well be quite a bad name, but isn’t that a little impolite?” I said, trying to affect a mature, adult tone of voice.

  “Well, now!” the cat shouted and sat up straight. “Sourpuss. It wasn’t the least bit impolite,” he said, trying to imitate my tone of voice, and continued laughing as though he didn’t care how uncomfortable he’d made me feel.

  “Oh, do forgive me, monsieur,” he began, raised both front paws into the air, and with a pout began straightening his whiskers on both sides. “Or should I say, mademoiselle, ha ha,” he continued. “I didn’t realize I wasn’t allowed to joke about your name. This is all deadly serious, meow!”

  I gulped. “Do you want a drink?”

  “Of course I want a drink,” he replied. “And only now you ask me—how rude!”

  I stood up and fetched us both a gin and cranberry juice, and when I placed the tall drink in front of him, the cat muttered something to the effect of how bloody long it had taken me to bring the fucking drinks.

  “There was a bit of a line,” I said in my defense. “Sorry.”

  “Ooh, what beautiful eyes you’ve got, what beautiful dark-brown hair,” said the cat once he had relented. He leaped onto my shoulder and began stroking my hair.

  The tender, soft touch of his paws made my skin tighten into goose bumps, but after only a short moment the cat jumped back to the sofa again.

  “So, what do you do for a living?” the cat asked, now serious, and pressed his fingers against his lower lip.

  And so I began to tell him this and that, talked about my studies and my lowly job as a postman, my apartment and all the various classes I’d taken in all the various departments, my hobbies, my likes and dislikes, my free time.

  The cat didn’t seem to think my story sufficiently interesting, as his attention drifted and he stared at other men in the bar, their bodies and their bottoms. His eyes were half shut and drool trickled from the corner of his mouth.

  “Ugh,” he said as though he were about to vomit.

  “What?”

  “Gays. I don’t much like gays.”

  I was astounded. People don’t normally come to a place like this if they don’t like gays. When I asked the cat why he didn’t like gays, he explained he had nothing against homosexuality per se, just gays. Before I could ask him another question and point out that people usually liked gays but not homosexuality, the cat clarified his answer.

  “Obviously, I like all kinds of toms, but I hate bitches!” he said abruptly and crossed his paws on the table. “You have to decide whether you’re a man or a woman,” he continued and leaped suddenly onto the table, raised his backside in the air, and stretched his front paws.

  “Just look at that,” he said quickly, fixed his eyes on the men on the dance floor, and wagged his tail. “How repulsive. Men’s hands don’t move through the air like that, and men don’t talk the way women talk. And men don’t wear such tight tops or wiggle their bottoms like that—like a prostitute, a whore!” the cat snapped so loudly that the dancers turned to look at us.

  The cat wound his way between the pints of cider and jumped back onto the sofa. Christ alive, and sex between men is even more disgusting! Unnatural through and through. Horrid, absolutely horrid! he declared. Wouldn’t it be easier just to leave people in peace, I asked, and let them be themselves?

  “Hippie,” said the cat pointedly. “It so happens the world works rather differently. People have expectations and opinions, there’s no getting away from it.”

  “Yes, I think you’re right,” I said.

  “That would hardly be a surprise,” he said, wallowing in self-satisfaction; he smugly stretched out his paws and gave a brazen smile.

  The cat assured me that his opinion of gays wasn’t based on mere hearsay but on bitter personal experience, for he had once met two gays. He had been backcombing his luxuriant fur in the bathroom of a local restaurant when two gay men had cornered him. According to the cat, the men marched up to him, stood on either side of him, and began pointing at his handsome flanks and shiny tail as they might a piece of meat, and the cat had felt so objectified that he’d been forced to stop his preening and cover up his sweet curvature.

  A moment later the cat said I should tell him something that would make me special, someone worth getting to know, because otherwise he would go straight home. Apparently everything I’d told him was meaningless nonsense, as boring and predictable as the government’s budget proposals, pthui, again he almost spat. Good grief, you certainly know how to bore a person so completely and utterly!

  “Now, tell me something you’ve never told anyone else!”

  At this, as if by accident, I began telling the cat about my past, the country I had come from, about the situations in which people moving from one country to another find themselves, and about the small Finnish town where I had grown up. The cat sensed that I don’t normally talk about my past, because now he was listening more intently; he narrowed his eyes and cupped his paw at the edge of his chin the better to hear through the music.

  I told the cat about people for whom my name was always something I had to explain, people who, when I answered their questions and told them where my name came from, were always disappointed. That’s why I’m so insecure about it; surely you appreciate that a name can cause more bad than good.

  I told the cat that it always feels as though people are scrutinizing my behavior at school, at work, everywhere, watching how much food I take for lunch and checking whether I remember to thank the people working in the cafeteria, to see whether I write my essays in flawless Finnish and how often I change my clothes.

  Whenever we talked about Islam, dictatorships, or foreign languages at school, I always lowered my head, as I could feel them all turning to look at me. And when they asked me to say something in my mother tongue, some of them even said out loud what a shame it was that speaking such a language was useless here. And whenever I was late, I often heard it was high time I learned this wasn’t a third-world country. Living and going to school in Finland is like winning the lottery. Remember that.

  Spring 1980

  SHE WANTS ALL THE LINEN

  By Thursday afternoon everything was almost ready. I sat in the middle of our living room and looked at the piles of linen that would eventually bear the porcelain cockerels from the glass cabinets in Bajram’s home, tablecloths on which he would eat his meals, sheets on which he would lay his skin. It was customary for the bride and the women of her family to prepare all the linen the new couple would need throughout their years of marriage. Handmade duvet covers, pillowcases, sheets, tablecloths, bedspreads, hand towels, and bath towels, all of which formed the qeiz. They represented a new start for Bajram and his family, a life as yet untouched.

  My siblings looked at me with fascination as I sat among the linen. They were doubtless thinking about their own futures too. Is this what it will be like when my time comes?

  At that moment I felt a strange sense of closeness to them, now that their task was to serve me, to make sure I had everything I needed. They woke early to prepare food for the guests, to clean the house and pack, relieving me from my chores. For the duration
of her wedding preparations, the bride was not allowed to work at all; she was a queen who had to be kept happy.

  The bridal linen was ready. Duvet covers, pillowcases, sheets, dozens of towels, hundreds of hours of work. Fatime and Hana admired them, saying they were practical and would last for years to come.

  “And eventually you can cut them up and use them as cloths,” said Fatime.

  “Though this linen will last many years,” Hana added.

  The three of us stroked the sheets. All I could do was imagine the moment at which they descended onto a proper bed, covering up the squared pattern of the upper mattress and hiding its ragged corners, leaving the room smelling clean and fresh. The kind of bed that was only a bed, that didn’t double as a sofa, the kind I’d seen in the pages of Kosovarja. Bajram would lie down on it, and the sheets would stretch and shape around his body, and his skin would smell of my home, our shared home.

  “Can you leave me alone?” I asked and they respected my wishes.

  I looked at the glass cabinet, which ran the length of the living-room wall, the three threadbare sofa beds along the walls, the wooden table with the scratched legs, its surface scuffed, and I was so exhausted that it felt as though I’d run home all the way from Prishtina.

  “They’re coming!” Hana ran to the door and shouted.

  “What?”

  “The clothes, motër, the clothes!” she shrieked and clapped her hands. “They’re here!”

  —

  Bajram’s family had bought me so many clothes and belongings that they had to be delivered in two cars. I didn’t recognize the men in the driving seats, but when we introduced ourselves it turned out they were Bajram’s uncles.

  My father showed them inside. My sisters and the relatives gathered at our house began carrying the clothes into the boys’ bedroom. I secretly wished they would all leave straightaway because I wanted to get my hands on the clothes immediately, but we were expected to serve the guests something to eat and drink.

  It was only a few hours later that they started getting ready to leave. Once we had said our good-byes and they had driven out of sight, my siblings, my mother, and I dashed toward the clothes like a herd of animals.

  I’d wanted to examine the clothes in peace, but my sisters started rummaging through the plastic bags, reading out the names of the brands, the materials and sizes. Look how much he’s bought! Oh, what a pretty skirt. If only I could have one like this. They really have splurged.

  “Stop it,” I said, but they didn’t listen. They carried on, thrusting their hands into the plastic bags and shoe boxes, holding the clothes up against their own bodies.

  “Stop it!” I shouted at the top of my lungs.

  They froze on the spot and looked at me, bewildered.

  “Get out!”

  I don’t think I’d ever shouted the way I shouted then, because they quietly laid the clothes aside and left the room apologetically.

  I closed the door behind them and looked at the array of dresses and shoes for everyday use and special occasions. There were dozens of them, as there were dozens of sweaters, scarves, pairs of trousers, tights, and underwear.

  And when I thought of the following Monday, when all my friends and relatives were invited to Bajram’s house to look, green with envy, at all the clothes, the perfumes and makeup, all the gold that my husband had bought for me, there was no one else and nowhere else I would rather be.

  5

  The cat was visibly shocked by what he’d heard. He blinked his eyes as if to make sure he’d heard right.

  “How unpleasant,” he said. “That some people can be so black-and-white about things.”

  “Not really,” I said and looked at the cat, who seemed to be seething on the inside.

  After a moment the cat asked whether I had any other stories like this to tell him. He was very interested in this; he’d been waiting for a long time to hear stories about such things.

  I promised to tell the cat more next time and decided to ask him something instead. I asked where he had come from, what his family was like, whether his mother had similar black-and-white stripes, but the cat refused to tell me anything. Instead he said we shouldn’t talk about that just yet, because there were so many incorrect preconceptions about cats that should be addressed first. For a start the idea that cats aren’t really independent, they’re just lonely.

  Once I got going, I couldn’t stop introducing myself, because now the cat was listening intently, nodding encouragingly, punctuating my monologue with follow-up questions and elongating their final vowels in strange, fanciful curls.

  I explained to the cat that I avoided people, avoided talking to them, eating in large restaurants, sitting in lectures, standing in crowded trams or long lines or at bus stops with a steady stream of cars speeding past.

  The cat burst into laughter.

  “Surely nobody behaves like that!” he exclaimed and picked his teeth with a long claw.

  I disagree, I replied. People can be afraid of anything. Walking on a blustery street, for instance, worried that a traffic sign might fall on your head, that its sharp edge might slash your jugular. You’d bleed to death and die. Or you might worry that the wheels of a passing car could burst right next to you and that flying pieces of rubber would strike you in the face and that you’d never recover from the blow. All through winter and spring there was the risk that lumps of ice might fall from the roof and land on your head and split your skull open. You could trip on the curb, slip on an icy pavement or a step and break your arm, your leg, or your mind. And every single day, all year round, there were dangerous people out and about, strange, unpredictable people who could do or say anything at any moment. They don’t ask. Pavements don’t ask, and neither does the ice.

  The cat thought such fears were irrational. He didn’t seem to appreciate all the things that could happen once you realized you ought to be afraid. The cat interrupted my rebuttal and asked whether I should be concentrating on my studies instead, because my studies were something he thought particularly special. Finnish isn’t even your mother tongue, he said, somewhat sycophantic, and waited for me to praise his extraordinary powers of perception and his keen eye.

  “Yes, you’re absolutely right,” I said.

  “I most certainly am right,” he retorted and commented that most immigrants are stupid and brash and that when they walk past the smell is enough to knock you out.

  “Try to teach them something, but they’ll never learn. Give them a job and they’ll steal your money. Give them an apartment and they’ll trash it, though they don’t even have to pay for it themselves,” said the cat sternly. “Good God,” he continued contemplatively, assuming a truly bizarre position: one paw on his hip so that his fur now looked like a tulle skirt, while the other paw fumbled blindly at the air in front of him, making him a great, clumsy, furry sight in front of me. “If it was up to me, I’d ship the troublemakers back where they came from.”

  I squirmed uncomfortably on the sofa, flicked back the hair that had fallen across my brow, and gave a forced smile.

  Eventually I told the cat that things were different in our house. Nothing else was considered as important as studying and educating oneself. We spent all our time reading and studying. My parents were doctors. They cured the sick and brought them back to life. Did you hear? Doctors who spent their evenings reading books.

  “Hmm,” the cat mumbled pensively, his expression as mysterious as that of a secret agent. “What genes you have!”

  The cat retreated into his own thoughts like a Renaissance philosopher. His cheeks were round and drooping like Jeremy Bentham’s, and the Jeffersonian tufts of hair behind his ears made his head look like a cauldron of unfathomable depths. The only problem was that nobody listened to what he had to say, for what could a cat possibly know about politics, economics, or other sociological issues.

  “It’s a shame you can’t pass on your genes,” he said. “At least, not very easily.” He paused fo
r a moment. “Unless someone desperately wants to create problems for her child with a father like you!”

  At that he burst into a volley of cackling laughter. He beat his paw against the table, shook his head, and waggled his hind legs like a madman. Kaboom! Here comes the cat! Hahaha!

  Once the cat had spluttered out the last of his guffaws, he asked me to continue. So I carried on with my story until I’d tied up all the loose ends, until there was nothing else to say about me. An entire life fitted into such a small collection of words that when I reached the end of the story it felt as though I hadn’t said anything at all.

  The cat seemed to recover from my story as he nudged me with a long, sharp claw, its edges caked in plaque, and urged me to tell him more about myself and my family, more still.

  “This is all fascinating,” he said.

  I told him that all my siblings were academics, they’d studied communications, photography, economics, information technology, law, psychology, and computer programming—we’re not like other immigrants that turn up here and laze around, don’t even think that.

  “Hmm!” The cat seemed suitably impressed, fiddled with his thick-rimmed sunglasses, and pulled his face so that his two incisors appeared at the sides of his mouth like two anchors lowered from the deck of a ship. “It seems you’re quite a catch,” he said.

  Apparently it hadn’t occurred to the cat that I was telling him the first things that came into my head, that I was tailoring my story to what I thought he wanted to hear. The cat wanted a story whose protagonist’s life began from a set of impossible circumstances, a story that would be so heart-wrenching that it might make him shake his head at the state of the world. But he wanted the story to end in such a way that he was able to applaud the protagonist’s ability to take matters into his own hands—despite the fact that the protagonist had learned that skill specifically so that he could shake off the burden of other people’s pity—and in order to reaffirm his own beliefs. Anyone can change the direction of his life, any time at all, if only he has enough motivation: that was the moral of the story. The cat found it easier to believe this than to think about what it actually meant: that the word anyone actually referred to a very small group of people, that time has no direction, and that motivation is rarely the salient difference between people.