Ukulele Jam

by Alen Meskovic

  ‘A car.’

  ‘A car?’

  ‘A star,’ he said. ‘He means a star.’

  ‘Fine. Show me.’

  It was a sham. We had practiced. ‘Why a star?’ I had asked him. ‘Because!’ he had replied, as though that word alone was explanation enough.

  The woman handed me a pen and a piece of graph paper. I drew five red lines on the paper and showed her the result: a near perfect star.

  The expression on the woman’s face changed, and in the midst of her broad smile I glimpsed a lonely gold tooth.

  Everything was going to turn out all right.

  Hanging on the wall of the woman’s office, there was a picture of a man. An identical one awaited me in the classroom. At night the man often appeared on the television screen. Sometimes he sat in a car waving. Children and women stood alongside the road. Their faces were joyous, and they were throwing red, white and blue flowers into his open limousine.

  Later I was told:

  – that he was dead.

  – that he still lived in all of us.

  This man was everywhere. In the music room he sat behind a piano fingering the black and white keys, smiling harmoniously. In the woodwork room he stood assembling a perfect birdhouse. At the library he sat with his feet resting on a plump stool, immersed in some unknown book.

  The walls of the school were adorned with profound quotes attributed to him. Under each of them his brief name was written in sloping block letters. My favourite was the one in the history room: ‘We must live as though peace will last for a hundred years, and be prepared as though war will start tomorrow.’

  I was sad that he was dead. Got tears in my eyes when we sang in music class: ‘Joy spreads in every direction. We now walk freely in our country. But the great days, we will remember them. Comrade Tito, we swear it!’

  Maybe it was because my grandparents – all four of them – were also dead and gone. Maybe it was because he looked so old and so kind on the framed photographs at school.

  My schoolbag was made of a light-brown leather. It was wider than my shoulders, but I persuaded Dad to buy it for me.

  The salesperson shook his head and Dad apologised:

  ‘What can I do, the child wants Vučko!’

  Vučko – the wolf that served as mascot for the recently held Olympics – was my friend. I wanted a bag with a picture of Vučko and the writing, ‘Sarajevo ’84.’

  ‘It’s too big for him,’ Mum said when we came home.

  ‘Yes,’ Dad said, ‘but what can I do, the boy wants Vučko!’

  I had to pull the straps down and press my knuckles against my ribs so the bag did not dangle against me as I walked. Mum always made sure I wore plenty of clothes. Way more than necessary. My back was sweaty under the thick leather bag and the extra layer of clothes.

  ‘Look at that idiot,’ my tormentor Bobi said to a classmate. ‘Look! His bag is bigger than him!’

  I did not even try to get by him. As soon as I spotted them I turned around and took the usual detour. Running this time, because I was already late.

  When I entered my classroom, my back was drenched in sweat. The teacher was talking about our extra elective. She outlined several possibilities. In my overheated condition I chose ‘Down Tito’s Revolutionary Paths.’ The only image the words evoked in my mind was a chilly, green park with a statue in the middle and two paths that twisted around the statue. The atmosphere was friendly and relaxed. A group of students and their teacher strolled down Tito’s revolutionary paths, took photos of one another and had a great time.

  I was mistaken. ‘Down Tito’s Revolutionary Paths’ did not take place in a chilly green park, but in a run-down classroom with large windows facing the courtyard. We went to class and listened. The teacher read from a brochure, one that a couple years later we would subscribe to and read out loud to each other. The brochure was printed on rough paper, but the front page was smooth and colourful. We read about how the partisans ate grass in the woods. About how Tito’s Alsatian, Luks, saved his life during one of the many German air bombardments. Luks threw himself on top of Tito and faithfully took the blow of most of the shell fragments. Tito escaped with a wounded arm. Tito thrashed the Germans and became president. Our country was free again. We had Luks to thank for that. Man’s best friend.

  Like Tito, I liked dogs. I played with our puppy Boni beneath the walnut tree in the garden. I made my voice as deep as possible and shouted ‘Boom! Boom!’ but Boni never threw himself over me.

  ‘Maybe if there was a real shell,’ I said to Dad, who at the time was still a member of the party.

  He came towards me carrying a bowl of milk:

  ‘No! It would run for cover before you could say biscuit. Straight to hell!’

  ‘But Luks saved Tito?’

  ‘Yes. Luks. Tito. Right. How should I put it … Maybe that’s the way it happened. And maybe that’s not quite the way it happened.’

  One day in November we were assembled in the city’s new sports centre. It was on the same street as the garrison, diagonally opposite our school.

  The changing room reeked of smelly socks and leather balls. The classes were called out from the dim player’s tunnel and gathered on the pitch, where all the year ones in the city were assembled. The audience clapped every time a class was called out. The girls from the older years knotted our red scarves and crowned us with blue partisan hats. The cool silk felt nice around my neck. The star on Adi’s cap was not sewn on properly. I scanned for Neno’s face amongst the spectators but could not see him. Mum and Dad could not make it. They were working.

  We were arranged in rows so that we could see the stage while we swore the oath. Hanging on the wall behind the stage was a picture of the kind man from the classroom, flanked by two large flags – that of the country and the republic. A girls’ choir sang about the forests and mountains of our proud homeland, about the roads that should not be strayed from. There was singing and clapping, clapping and singing. Finally, it was quiet. The girls left the stage. An older man wearing a peaked cap and an olive-grey uniform approached the lectern. Under his smoothly shaved chin there was a fuzzy microphone, and the sound from the speakers travelled directly into our protruding seven-year-old chests. Sentence by sentence, it was replaced by our simultaneous roar. There were so many of us shouting so loud, that you could barely hear your own voice. Still I was nervous as hell of making a mistake and getting some of the more difficult words wrong:

  TODAY, AS I BECOME A PIONEER, I GIVE MY PIONEER’S WORD OF HONOUR: THAT I SHALL STUDY AND WORK DILIGENTLY AND BE A GOOD COMRADE: THAT I SHALL LOVE OUR HOMELAND, THE SELF-MANAGED SOCIALIST FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF YUGOSLAVIA: THAT I SHALL SPREAD BROTHERHOOD AND UNITY AND THE PRINCIPLES FOR WHICH COMRADE TITO FOUGHT: THAT I SHALL VALUE ALL PEOPLES OF THE WORLD WHO RESPECT FREEDOM AND PEACE.

  Back home we celebrated with a layer cake. The tray was yellow and scratched. The whipped cream stuck to the chin. I was still wearing my partisan cap.

  ‘… crisis…’

  ‘…currency…’

  ‘…inflation…’

  Mum, Dad and Neno were using some strange words that day. Mum collected the plates and I switched on the telly.

  One channel showed a sailing boat sinking in a foreign black-and-white film. Another had Tom and Jerry and then EPP, The Economic Propaganda Programme, now called for short, Adverts.

  STAMPS AND SNOT

  All that was gone now. The Vučko bag, the partisan cap and the pictures of the kind man from the classroom.

  The summer of ’92 drew to a close. A new school year had begun. For some earlier than others, and for some not at all. I was among the latter. My school report had gone up in smoke along with the chest of drawers back home. I had no documentation to prove that I had completed primary school.

  I explained that to a stressed out secretary one day at the secondary school in Vešnja. She looked at me. I stood there in my sorry, dated, washed-out trousers, worn-out Adidas trainers
and tattered T-shirt. I handed her my yellow refugee card and continued to describe my complicated situation. Told her why I wanted to go to secondary school, how I had always got the best marks, and why I had to leave Bosnia.

  Just finding the school and the right office was something of an accomplishment, and finally standing there, I was stared at as though I was from another, less advanced planet.

  ‘According to the Republic of Croatia’s new laws all foreign citizens, be they Bosnian or Japanese, must pay for their schooling.’

  ‘No way. How much?’

  An amount corresponding to five hundred German marks per annum.

  ‘Five hundred marks! For each year? I … Can’t we find another solution?’

  The secretary, an older woman with bleached pageboy hair, shook her head and voiced her regret that she could not do anything. I did the same, voiced my regret and said that neither could I. For me and my parents, that was a staggering sum. Five times our combined fortune.

  ‘But why I am only hearing about this now?’ I asked. ‘I was just here last week. They told me I should come back in a week! Couldn’t your colleague have just told me that back then?’

  ‘Young man, here we speak politely to one another!’

  ‘Sorry, but the school year has already started. What am I supposed to do now?’

  ‘Regrettably, it costs what it costs. Those are the rules. Next!’

  In the long corridor on the first floor there was a good vibe. It was noisy, people were laughing and calling one another. It was the first day of school, and for normal people the day held special importance. I maintained my mask as best I could and hurried off.

  Upon arriving at the school, I had seen GIVE US ANDRIĆ BACK spraypainted on the wall by the main entrance. Now the graffiti was disappearing under a thick layer of paint. An elderly caretaker was flourishing a paintbrush as he spoke to a woman who I assumed was a teacher. I heard her clear opinion about ‘those communist brats, running around making a mess of the buildings.’

  I was indifferent. Completely. Both regarding the Nobel Prize winner, whose books had evidently been removed from the syllabus, and the entire secondary school as such. As recently as the spring I had been looking forward to saying goodbye to primary school and starting secondary school in my hometown. I had promised Neno I would enrol as soon as possible. Of course I was going to study the same courses as him. Of course I was going to follow in his footsteps. But then war came, bringing with it the soldiers and their fucking shells. The buses we were crammed inside, and all the details I did not care to talk about. When you have been put through the mill like that, you do not cry over a single locked door.

  They could stuff it.

  All of my classmates back home had very concrete dreams. One wanted to be a lorry driver, the other a teacher, the third a mechanic or a director of some reputable company. I was the only one who had no clear goal.

  ‘Musician … maybe,’ I once replied when asked.

  I knew four chords on the guitar and one popular refrain. Neno had taught me to play, after borrowing a guitar from a friend. I had talent, in his opinion.

  But when I told him of my plans, he shook his head:

  ‘Forget it. You can’t make a living doing that. Not in this hole of a town.’

  ‘What should I do then?’

  ‘What do you want to do?’

  ‘I dunno. When I’m at the hairdresser’s, I think about being a hairdresser. When I’m at a restaurant, I think about being a waiter. And so on.’

  ‘If you don’t know what you want, then just enrol in secondary school like I did. Then you have four more years to think about it. Otherwise you’ll end up like Dad. Working at the factory. Do you know how long he had to slog it out there before they made him manager? Besides,’ he added, ‘there are lots of girls at secondary school.’

  I walked down Zagrebaćka Street and ran into Robi and Vlado, who were wrapping their tongues around two tasty-looking ice cream cones, practically in sync.

  I explained my problem to them.

  ‘At technical school, they accept everyone,’ Vlado said, ‘even people without school reports. It doesn’t cost a thing. You just have to fill in an application, inform them of your grades and sign a solemn declaration.’

  ‘Really? Is that all?’

  ‘Yes. Until the war calms down and you can get hold of the necessary papers.’

  ‘Wow!’ I pretended to be hugely enthusiastic. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Up by the citadel.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Technical school. What was I going to do there? If it’s not secondary school, it’s all the same to me, I thought.

  But then I pictured Mum and Dad. Waiting for me back at the camp. I needed to come home with something.

  Of the two possible routes to the school, I chose the wrong one. It cost me more time in the baking sun. My armpits were damp with sweat by the time I found the school.

  What a day! From first thing in the morning, it had been all uphill. First Radio Zagreb informed us that our alarm clock was wrong. Dad had wound it during the night; he really needed a new pair of glasses. Then I dashed out the door – with no breakfast and no shower. I made it to the bus in the nick of time.

  The secretary’s office smelt of glue and fresh orange peel. I stammered out a hello and explained my situation with a sincere desire that the meeting would be over quickly. I stunk like a donkey, and my conversation partner was a young and far from ugly woman. Secretary to the headmaster. That was her official title.

  ‘That is not entirely correct,’ she said.

  I blushed and avoided her gaze as she spoke. That’s how hot she was.

  ‘Your friends must be Croatian citizens.’

  ‘They are. They’re from Vukovar.’

  ‘There you have it. But don’t worry. We have a list of students … of your type. If you inform me of your previous subjects and marks and get your parents to sign a declaration, we can get you on the list and send it to the Red Cross.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They’re looking for international sponsors.’

  ‘Sponsors?’

  ‘Yes. People who would like to pay for your schooling’

  ‘Ah, I understand,’ I said even though I did not. ‘That’s fine by me. I’d like that.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Mum and Dad were worried. So much so that following my detailed description of the events of the day, they decided to splurge on three bus tickets. They wanted to join me at the meeting between the headmaster and other students ‘of my type,’ as the secretary to the headmaster had put it.

  ‘What kind of crap is this?’ Dad asked rhetorically. ‘Are children no longer permitted to go to school? What kind of world are we living in? I was a child during Hitler’s war. And I still went to school!’

  ‘I’m not a child any more,’ I said.

  ‘No, that’s right,’ Mum said.

  ‘You’re my biggest problem,’ Dad grumbled. ‘That’s what you are.’

  ‘Stop saying such things,’ Mum warned him. ‘We’re on the bus.’

  ‘Small children, small problems. Big children, big problems. It’s always been like that.’

  We found the school, the floor, and the room. The latter smelt of chalk and sharpened pencils. Hanging above the blank chalkboard, in Tito’s old spot, was a picture of the Croatian coat of arms with its red-and-white chess board and blue crown. The bright colours blinded me in the otherwise dull room, where myself and twenty to thirty students ‘of my type’ were crowded together. Several others also had their parents with them.

  For nearly half an hour, nothing happened. A mute fellow with frog-like eyes and an apathetic gaze was picking his nose in the front row. He rolled bogies between his fingers and stuck them to the leg of the desk. He only stopped when the headmaster’s secretary entered the classroom. A small man with obscenely thick glasses followed hard on her heels. After a quick hello, the man intr
oduced himself as the headmaster, apologised for the delay and welcomed everyone. He told us about the school and the prospects and, without beating about the bush, explained that the school, the local council or the Red Cross, I cannot remember which one – in any case someone not present in the room – still had not found a solution for all of us.

  ‘It’s not proceeding as quickly as we had hoped,’ he said. ‘But there’s progress. Bosnian-Herzegovinian citizens who hold Croatian nationality can immediately enrol on certain courses, if there are still places, mind you. The rest of you must arm yourselves with patience for a little while longer.’

  I looked at Dad. It looked like he had not understood either. The headmaster scratched his nose and continued:

  ‘I know it might sound a little strange – and for some perhaps uncomfortable and unpleasant – but the stipulation is that you must enclose a copy of your birth certificate or some other document to confirm your … nationality. As you are not Croatian citizens, it is necessary to have some form of documentation.’

  The final remark gave rise to a sea of murmuring and worried comments. Half the people in the room started to dig into their pockets and bags. When the first birth certificate was carried through the room in the lively, flapping hand of a Croatian, a woman with tidy hair in the very back row asked the headmaster a question:

  ‘Why are we being treated like this? As recently as last year, refugees from Croatia could be enrolled on any course in Bosnia. I can’t imagine it’s because you’re short of chairs!’

  The headmaster ignored the laughter that spread through the room, and endeavoured to provide a sensible answer. A year ago Croatia and Bosnia were still not independent states, he explained, and even if they had been, the situation would be the same. At the end of the day, the fact that displaced citizens of Croatia could enrol at educational institutes in Bosnia-Herzegovina last year was and would continue to be a decision for the authorities in Bosnia-Herzegovina, just as this was the current decision by the Croatian authorities. For that reason, despite his best intentions and a desire to help, he could not change the existing rules, which had been made ‘further up the system.’