Ukulele Jam

by Alen Meskovic

  His wife had died many years earlier. Behind the dingy glass of a brown display cabinet he kept a framed photo of her. Next to it was a fading photo of the two of them, taken in the seventies at some point, judging by his sideburns and her middle parting.

  For a long time I observed their smiling faces while he was in the kitchen, quietly washing his face.

  ‘Okey-dokey!’ he said at long last. ‘Let’s go downstairs!’

  The workshop was on the ground floor. The room was at most ten square metres and had a low ceiling. Another image awaited me there – one I had not seen since my last day of school in Bosnia.

  Josip Broz Tito. Wearing glasses. Serious.

  On the wall above the workbench, the former comrade of the southern Slavs looked out on a pile of random tools, several coils of cables and a German Playboy calendar hanging on the opposite wall.

  ‘We’ll have to tidy up down here,’ the master electrician said.

  Meaning I had to tidy up.

  ‘Now?’

  ‘No, no! Not now. After the holidays. When you start your work experience. Now we’re going to go and grab ourselves a little something to drink. Okey-dokey?’

  ‘Okay.’

  We went to the nearest bistro. Master electrician Boro polished off three glasses of cognac while I contented myself with one large cup of cocoa. Boro seemed to be on friendly terms with the waitress, Lucija, and as she polished wine glasses and emptied ashtrays she nostalgically harked back to her days as a student.

  I noticed her cleavage. Hanging from her necklace was a silver crucifix.

  THE NEW DISPLACED

  When the Bosnians started to leave to go abroad, loads of rooms lay vacant at the camp. A lot of people complained and pressed to get one of them. Especially people with children over the age of fifteen.

  Then news arrived that a number of us would have new neighbours.

  ‘The new displaced,’ as we called them, moved into the vacant rooms in the middle of June. The campsite near Grozvin, where they had lived, was sold into private hands, and another place had to be found for them to live. They were all Croatian Croats – from Slavonia and the Knin region – so to send them over to us was an obvious move.

  At first I was indifferent to the news. There were people my age among the newcomers, but I dared not get my hopes up. The letters from the north were making me rather envious: the brothers were now living in the same city. Amar had learned the language, was working as a newsboy and earning a packet. I listened to Azra, Pearl Jam and the Sex Pistols. My hair was getting long. I could already manage a small ponytail. Kaća and Fabio supplied me with all kinds of cassettes. The threadbare T-shirts that Dad brought home from Caritas, Merhamet and the Red Cross, I sorted through them cynically. I only wore black, purple and grey. I was looking more and more like a proper band member. All I was missing was a band.

  Kaća and I went around deliberating over all the big subjects like a couple of endangered monkeys. For example: is it wise to bring children into the world, considering its wretched state?

  Everyone in the camp thought we were going out together.

  ‘The new ones’ disappointed us. A bunch of pop guys, all with smart haircuts, bulging muscles and bad taste in music. They stuck together. Worst of all: no girls. Not a single one worth three glances. I was doomed to staring at the ceiling, fast-forwarding and rewinding Kaća’s tapes and listening to Dad’s moaning.

  ‘The sun is shining, dammit, and you’re sitting inside! Go outside for a while. Get some fresh air!’

  ‘Yeah, and what are you going to do while I’m outside, man? Sleep the day away. Lie down listening to the news.’

  ‘I am old and you are young. It is not healthy for you to be inside. You will get milky white skin like some sort of princess. Go outside for a while!’

  During the war, when the shells were whizzing past our ears, he refused to make decisions on my behalf. When I asked him for advice, he would always say:

  ‘Do what you like! You are not going to be a child much longer.’

  There was no consistency. All he wanted was to be able to listen to the news. I said as much.

  ‘It was different during the war,’ he defended himself. ‘If I said to you “stay here,” and a shell fell on you: my fault! If I sent you somewhere else, and the shell fell there: also my fault! It was unbearable. It’s different now.’

  I did as he said. Went outside and sat on the terrace in front of the restaurant. Baked in the sun, studied a small pine cone.

  Suddenly Vlado and Robi appeared with five or six of ‘the new ones’. The entire group sat down at my table and before I even managed to say a word, the conversation turned to the war and the current battles.

  One of the new ones, Pero, was from Slavonia, but his grandfather was from Hercegovina. He quoted his grandfather in every other sentence. He repeated non-stop that the Muslims had no chance. That he could hardly wait for ‘Francek to loosen the reins a little, so we put an end to that matter.’

  Even if I was brave enough to get up and leave, I would not have been able to: they were both to the right of me and to the left.

  Then he started:

  ‘Robi, what would you do to a Muslim if you captured him?’

  Robi, sat directly opposite me, got a dazed expression on his face from being asked such a direct question.

  Luckily for him Pero did not wait for a reply but managed on his own:

  ‘I would tie him to a table and have four or five rats walk on him. So he was so scared that he shat himself!’

  One of the others asked if that was supposed to be a punishment; why would anyone be scared of rats.

  Pero more than hinted that the person in question had no idea how hard a rat can bite. He had been bitten by a rat once and had only managed to tear the beast off by a whisker.

  And while two or three of his friends laughed at that gem, he looked me directly in the eyes and said:

  ‘Tied to a table with a rat crawling on you! There’s no bigger punishment than that, my friend. Isn’t that right?’

  Everyone went quiet. I looked at him.

  ‘Isn’t that right?’

  I was not sure whether I should keep my mouth shut or try to lighten things up a little.

  I kept my mouth shut. Glanced down towards the beach.

  A holidaymaker was waving a piece of fabric, possibly a jumper, while she called her child. Some boys from the camp jumped into the water at the end of the pier. In the middle of the bay a Dutch yacht was dropping anchor.

  The whole thing only lasted a handful of seconds, no more. But if felt like minutes. Finally Pero’s voice sounded again, repeating the same idiotic sentence:

  ‘Isn’t that right?’

  No reply.

  My heart was pounding, but I held my tongue.

  ‘Are you deaf?’

  Zilch.

  ‘DID YOU HEAR WHAT I SAID?’

  A man asking such a stupid question should know better than to shout that loud. I was one and a half metres away. Of course I could hear him.

  Small drops of his spittle had struck me in the ear and the temple, but I did not dare wipe them away. I just tried to keep a straight face and stick it out.

  But I couldn’t. I was too embarrassed. And too scared. There were a lot of them.

  ‘I heard you,’ I muttered.

  ‘Isn’t that right then?’

  ‘HOW IN THE WORLD SHOULD I KNOW?’

  Downer.

  Total defeat.

  My voice was loud, but shaky. Everyone could hear that.

  Robi got up and said:

  ‘Hey, does anyone want to go in the water with me?’

  Vlad and the others slowly followed him.

  Pero remained behind.

  ‘Pero, are you coming?’ Vlado asked, clearly trying to save my arse.

  I looked down at the scored table in front of me. For a few long seconds I endured his gaze.

  ‘Pussy!’ he said and headed for the pie
r.

  I found Dad in the room and started to complain.

  ‘But why are you hanging out with them?’

  ‘Hanging out with them? I just told you, they surrounded me. On purpose!’

  ‘But why were you sitting alone? Why weren’t you with someone?’

  ‘Right, and who would that be? You were the one who forced me to go outside!’

  ‘Where is Katarina? Or Igor? Why don’t you find some new friends? The beach is teeming with young people, and all you do is lie in here listening to music. What the hell is wrong with you?’

  ‘Friends aren’t like mussels, you don’t just find them on a beach! And do you really think having Kaća there would have changed anything?’

  ‘Fine, then tell me! What do you want from me? Eh? Do you want me to go out and fight them?’

  ‘No … I just don’t know what you’re waiting for here. Why don’t we leave like all the others? Amar’s parents didn’t have money either. They borrowed it. Can’t we at least move to the barracks in Vešnja?’

  It was appalling there. Two families to a room. The food was worse than ours, there were communal toilets and due to a lack of beds many people slept on mattresses on the floor. But only Bosnians lived there, so I tried to argue that it was probably better to live poorly amongst one’s own than to live well amongst psychopaths.

  Futile.

  ‘Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know.’

  Even when the hot water was reduced to twice a week, and dinner was changed to bread, tinned sardines and an overly salty Danish cheese, they did not change their stance.

  There was no point discussing it. I just let them listen to their news and wait for the journey home –‘to the hearth and home of their ancestors,’ as the radio continued to call it.

  I went outside. Thought about Neno, who surely would have agreed with my idea. I did not doubt it for a second. Sweden’s music libraries –that would be just the thing for him. But first a couple of nights at the camp and an uppercut to the face of that psycho Pero:

  Boom!

  And then we take off to Sweden, just the two of us.

  BEADS OF SWEAT AND SWIMMING

  The summer holiday, the one we so impatiently awaited in the winter, passed mercilessly. Sunburnt foreign tourists stared up at the balconies of D1 and D2, unable to understand the reason behind all the flags and all the ethnic sounds that droned out from unseen speakers. They blew up their air mattresses and rubbed suncream into their skin, while I sauntered past with the strangest ideas in my head. The beaches of the Adriatic, which I dreamt of as a kind of promised land during the war, they no longer meant anything to me. The bay and the sea were only there to remind me of last summer, of the day on the island, when Samir and Andrea swapped spit, of all the parties on the tip of the peninsula, and of Marina, the chubbiest girl in the camp. She was now seeing an older guy from Vešnja. He was at least twenty-two and picked her up in his car on a side street up by the roundabout.

  Before the anniversary of our capture and forced departure from Neno, Dad travelled to Zagreb. There he had talked to a prisoner who had been exchanged, and bribed every Tom, Dick and Harry at the Bosnian embassy. He also got Neno’s name on a new list of missing persons. He did not have his birth certificate, and that caused all sorts of fuss.

  I spent the majority of those two days alone on the peninsula. A grey-haired nudist with a microscopic member was swimming in my vicinity, keeping an eye on me. I stood on a cliff staring out at the horizon. Did I look like someone about to commit suicide? Or was the old man just a pervert? My fist was bleeding when I left. It was two months after Uncle brought the only news we had of Neno. One year away from home. One year since I had last seen him.

  I wondered: what would it be like to steal a Walkman and take it down to the beach? Find a hidden location, lie under the open sky and listen to some really angry tunes? Or something sleep-inducing or melancholic à la ‘Us and Them’ by Pink Floyd? I imagined a bundle of cables from master electrician Boro Krivokapić’s workshop and pictured it extending from the yellowed socket in our room. It rolled across the balcony, down the terrace, the stairs and all the way down to the beach, where I lay on my back listening to my favourites songs over and over again.

  When I went swimming, I chose places that were as far from Pero and his crew as possible. Igor was away that entire summer. Kaća and I went swimming from time to time. Then she went to visit family in Koper.

  Counting breasts, buttocks and legs was made into a sport. I fantasised about all the foreign, unconquered flesh. I masturbated spiritually: is there a god? If not, why not? Lay on the balcony deep in thought. Listened to Red Hot Chili Peppers and Led Zeppelin. Lazed about. Masturbated for real. Lay with my eyes shut, my mind blank. Wrote long letters and sent them off to Sweden. Waited for ‘this too’ to pass, for something good to happen, but nothing passed, and nothing good happened.

  The sun roasted, the earth cracked, the asphalt glowed. The ultraviolet rays that Lugarić had raved about were lurking on all sides. I was not afraid of them, so I often walked to Majbule and all the way to the road to Vešnja. I stuck out my thumb and waited. Not a penny in my pocket and no plan whatsoever, I trudged through the streets, peered into the shop windows and held my breath when I had to walk past the restaurant tables where tourists with wide smiles were served their ćevapčići. Then I hitched back to the run-down holiday camp in Majbule, where Mum and Dad, two frail and feeble individuals, were sat with their ears pricked up, waiting for a miracle. The radio continued with its favourite lines:

  ‘Fierce battles … heroic resistance … heavy enemy losses …’

  Nobody was turning towards home.

  On one of my strolls through the city, I felt a proper smack on my shoulder:

  ‘What’s up, Bosanchero? What’s going on?’

  It was Horvat, the future university graduate. He was with one of his friends. They had large towels that looked like ponchos slung over their shoulders.

  ‘Why don’t you to come to Belvedere with us?’ he asked. ‘We’re taking the bus.’

  I tried to get out of it by saying it as it was: I had no trunks and no money for a ticket. The Red Cross did not give out bus passes during the holidays.

  ‘As if we have tickets! We’ll figure it out, obviously.’

  We hopped on through the back door of the bus and remained on the step. The bus was packed. Overheated bodies wearing Bermuda shorts and flip flops were pasted against one another. There was no way the driver could see us.

  ‘If the ticket inspector comes, I’ll whip him with my towel!’ Horvat said. ‘And then with my fist!’

  ‘If the ticket inspector comes,’ his friend said, ‘I’m taking off. You do whatever you like.’

  They started talking about some experiences they had shared at Ukulele, as well as a band I had not heard of: Type O Negative.

  ‘Why don’t you come to Ukulele?’ Horvat asked. ‘There’s nothing but ladies there. What are you doing in Majbule, man? It’s a hole. Total crap.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ I said and decided not to repeat my point about money, or rather the lack thereof.

  I had dreamt of going to Ukulele ever since I heard about the place. Fabio had filled my mind with images. But the entrance fee was a little expensive and my pockets were empty.

  Life was a stingy arsehole.

  The beach was teeming with people. Children wailing, adults gorging themselves. It was ten times worse than Majbule.

  We met up with another of Horvat’s friends and continued towards a quieter location. Horvat’s friends all had long hair and listened to death metal. The guy from the beach had brought his heavy-girlfriend with him, and they tickled each other and sniggered incessantly, like they were still in year seven.

  Out on the cliffs it was a little quieter. We met up with two of the sniggering heavy-chick’s girlfriends. One wore a black Slayer T-shirt, a pair of cut-off jeans and Doc Marten boots.

  Boo
ts in the middle of the summer, I thought. Jesus Christ!

  They got ready for a swim then ran down towards the water. I was the only one left behind. Beads of sweat the size of nuts ran down my forehead and temples. I wiped them off and observed the back of six heads swimming out towards the horizon. They took loads of breaks. Then they split up into three couples. Horvat was clearly chatting up one of the girlfriends and his friend was trying it on with the other. The ladies were first-rate, and I wondered when a go-getter like Horvat had managed to scrape together so much self-confidence.

  And what was that he was shooting off about, I thought. Something about whipping the inspector? He was the most chilled guy in our class, absolutely. What sort of nonsense was that?

  The sun was glistening off the water. I had no sunglasses, had to squint, regretted I had not even brought them with me.

  What the hell am I doing here? If only I had someone with me, it all would have made more sense.

  I imagined the five of them questioning Horvat about me, about what I was doing on the beach wearing so much clothing. And why I was not swimming. Could I swim? The general understanding was that since Bosnians came from the mountains they were afraid of the water.

  What would Horvat tell them? Both he and his friend could see that I was strolling around town like a bum. If I was better at making excuses, I would not be sitting here baking in the afternoon sun now. It was utterly hopeless.

  They came back from their swim. Twittering and hopping over the shiny, scorching rocks. They used their towels to dry off, praised the water temperature and lay down on their stomachs. They chattered away about all sorts. When the conversation turned to music, I had lots of things I could say. I had an entire bookcase of songs memorised by heart. I knew a sea of bands. But I just sat there for more than half an hour like the biggest loser and said nothing.

  They had long since forgotten about me. The couple were snogging the whole time, Horvat and his friend continued chatting up the two girls, and I sat next to them with a lump in my throat and swallowed my saliva, sweating away.