‘The autumn cried with you …’, ‘When the love dies …’ and such.
Ekavian words echoed across the terrace at full blast.
Then Pero’s voice was heard from D2:
‘Shut that off!’
‘Shut yours off first!’
‘Shut it off! You should be ashamed of yourself! They’ve killed scores of your neighbours, and you come here playing that Serbian crap!’
‘You should be ashamed! Your father was a member of the party, and you’re playing Ustashe songs now!’
‘Don’t you say anything about my father!’
‘Don’t you say anything about my neighbours!’
‘When I tell you to shut it off, shut it off!’
‘You shut it off!’
‘Shut it off! I’ll call the police!’
‘Hah! The thieves are going to call the police now? Ha! Ha!’
I sat by the open balcony door and enjoyed every moment of it. Finally Čavoglave was faced with an opponent! Finally someone defied that stupid butchering song!
But Gogi – he was just being provocative. He was as much Croatian as President Dr Franjo Tudjman. The homeland was not in any danger.
He had broad shoulders and thin hair and looked closer to thirty than twenty-one. His physique and my friendship with him would get Pero and his crew off my back for good.
‘If he bothers you again, just let me know,’ he said. ‘His father used to steal our apples back home. Later I ran into him on the street and asked him purposely: “Why don’t you give me a bite?” And do you know what he said? “You can’t tell by eating.” Those thieving rats! In the entire village there was no one worse than them, the scoundrels, and now they’re being smart-arses here!’
Gogi grafted away at a number of building sites and occasionally came into possession of some money. In rare moments of generosity he took me with him to Wicky. Here he would buy me a mineral water, a cup of coffee or a small glass of Coke. Sometimes we shared a beer. Igor, who blinked as unpredictably as always, came with us sometimes. He predictably returned to the inexhaustible topic of which members of the opposite sex played a leading role. Then he travelled back to the front without saying when he would be on leave again.
Gogi and I met Zlaja and Fric at Wicky. Gogi needed a light, and soon the two of them sat at our table smoking Gogi’s fags. I knew who they were beforehand; everyone in Majbule knew that.
Zlajo, or Zlatko, as his parents christened him, hung out with some pop boys from Majbule, guys who drove mopeds and chased girls. Then they started to avoid him. He had allegedly felt up one of the guy’s younger sisters and fallen out with him. Then he began to hang out with Fric, who the pop boys already avoided. Not because his parents were from Kosovo, but because he was considered Majbule’s greatest and only death metal fan. His real name was Hamid, and how he came by the nickname Fric, even he was no longer able to explain. His hair was black as tar. His genes did not exactly have Germanic origins.
Gogi called them both ‘goat-fuckers,’ because they were locals, and called me ‘neighbour’ because we lived on the same floor. I think Gogi made contact with those two for the same reason as he made contact with me. He was curious. Fric’s black T-shirts with monsters and skulls on them, Zlaja’s torn jeans and my curly head must have made an impression on him.
Our evenings in Wicky always began in the same way. We sat down at a table and emptied our pockets. Counted up the change, added them together and discussed the possibilities. A small Coke, a cup of coffee or a mineral water? Maybe a local beer for each of us this time?
Gogi called the waitress over. He plonked a handful of coins into her palm. She snorted in obvious irritation – oh, not again! – and spread the coins out on the table.
‘No need to count,’ Gogi used to say nonchalantly. ‘It’s the exact amount. Exactly!’
Then she received one of his legendary smiles. Nobody I knew had such a broad and provocative smile as Gogi.
She brought us our order, thus giving us permission to occupy the table for the rest of the evening, listen to their terrible music and look around: would just one girl come in? Would something happen soon?
As a rule, nothing did.
Zlaja was one year older than me. He played the acoustic guitar and taught me ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’ so I could also tell the girls that I ‘played the guitar.’
According to Fric, Zlaja was good with the girls. He had a nice face, tanned skin and long, dark hair. He spoke Italian. In addition he occasionally drove his father’s corpse of a Yugo, which in this context was not a bad thing. Several times it had actually turned out that the chicks ‘could certainly be content’ with the three things that, ‘in spite of everything,’ Zlaja owned, Fric told us: good looks, a propensity for spiritual values – guitar, ergo music, ergo art – and last but not least an eye for material possessions – Yugo, ergo technology, ergo comfort. The only thing Zlaja did not have was a driving license. He had still not turned eighteen.
Fric turned twenty that winter and kept saying that it was time for him to be more serious. That was why he later cut his elbow-length hair short enough that he could barely manage a ponytail. He described it to us in detail, how three female hairdressers cried as they tried to talk him out of such a drastic step. He had, to the rest of us, some rather strange and unfathomable ideas about life. He claimed that coffee gave energy, and that for that reason athletes drank a lot of coffee. He was the only one I knew who was able to say the phrase ‘imagine this’ more than a hundred times a day.
‘Hey, imagine this, we’re old. The year is 2044. Zlaja is still driving his Yugo, the wheels are falling off. Zlaja looks good for his age. His hair is grey, but still long, you know. And then what happens? Then I come by. Me and my band. We are playing in Vešnja. At the stadium. Big concert; I’m working my magic on the drums. They call me the new Dave Lombardo. The concert ends, I hurry to Majbule. There, the three of you are sitting in the car. The Yugo is rocking: loud bass, death metal. Zlaja behind the wheel, Gogi and you in the back, old men, both with beards down to your dicks. And then what? Where do we go? To Wicky, of course. Grab a bottle of … gin … or wine, for example. And then the ladies flock to us. Hey, imagine this, Zlaja! Zlaja with a beard!’
‘Look here, Fricko,’ Gogi began in a pedagogical tone. ‘For one thing: you don’t have a band. Second: Zlaja’s Yugo will barely make it to next summer. Thirdly: thankfully very few people listen to death metal. Even today! Not to mention what it would be like in fifty years. And at a stadium!’
Fric criticised Gogi’s lack of imagination and referred to some serious books and articles he had read in the paper. About how everything ‘only existed in our heads,’ and how everything around us, including people and animals, was merely ‘an illusion’ that is born and dies with us.
Two parts of Fric’s illusion – Gogi and I – could not agree whether there was something to that or not. I referred to various programmes on HTV, which persuasively claimed that reincarnation was possible. I thought that life after this one was worth hoping for. Especially when it was impossible to turn back the clock and live the old life again.
Gogi was not buying it.
He took a small spray can out of his pocket, kicked off his shoes and sprayed his sweat-plagued toes.
With no warning whatsoever.
JELENA
We rode in Zlaja’s Yugo and emptied a bottle of homemade red wine. The music thundered away. Fric was disgruntled. He complained about the smell of Gogi’s toes and rolled the window down. Zlaja fast-forwarded and rewound Obituary and imitated the morbid tunes. He kept saying:
‘This! It really swings!’
Gogi moaned:
‘I don’t get how you two can listen to this. Honestly. I like happy music. Something popular. Or something you can relax to. And this guy, hell … He shouts like a zombie!’
Fric tried in vain to open Gogi up to the qualities of the drummer. He translated individual lines of the
lyrics and recurring words like blood, hell, war, desperation and destruction.
‘Their album name, Gogi. Do you know what it means?’
‘No, and I couldn’t care less.’
‘Slowly we rot.’
‘Speak for yourself, Fricko! I’m in top form.’
‘Ha! Ha! Yeah! We can smell it.’
‘Ha! Ha! Ha!’
‘Cheers!’
‘Cheers!’
At Ukulele they played Master of Puppets. I could hear the first slow solo while we stood in the queue, and the second fast one as we crossed the terrace. The place was teeming. Inside, on the dance floor, some twenty or thirty people were head-banging away. Zlaja and I moved to the edge of the dance floor and stepped into character.
We were so cool. We did not go full throttle. We observed the other people and nodded to one another.
But something was missing. Something in our hands. Something you could take a sip of. We only had enough for the entrance fee.
‘Hey!’ I shouted to the guy next to me. ‘Can I have a sip?’
‘What?’
He could not hear a thing.
‘A sip! A sip of your beer!’
‘It’s empty,’ he said and held the bottle up to the light.
‘Why are you still holding it then?’
He shrugged and looked away. He did not put it down.
Gogi started to complain that the place was not for him. Saying we should go home soon. They had just started to play loads of hits: ‘Everything’s Ruined’ by Faith No More, ‘Bombtrack’ and ‘Killing in the Name' by Rage Against the Machine. It was one massive party. Fric was totally buzzing. He was head-banging in the middle of the dance floor with his hair over his face holding an air guitar at head height.
‘Not now, man! We just got here.’
‘We have to celebrate, Gogi! This is wild!’
A bunch of requests came next. ‘London Calling’ by The Clash, ‘Pet Sematary’ by Ramones. Plus a few I did not recognise. Fric’s request – Obituary – was rejected out of hand by the DJ.
The switch to a more melodic repertoire drew a bunch of chicks out onto the dance floor. Zlaja and I stepped forward. We pressed up as close to them as possible. Got their long, freshly washed hair in our tough, wicked faces.
‘That’s alright,’ we said in response to their apologies.
Their hair smelled nice. We said as much, asking them what shampoo they each used.
One answered: ‘Coconut,' the second: ‘Apple’ and the third – ‘I don’t actually know.’
That was how I met her. She stood smiling with her palms in the air:
‘No name shampoo.’
Just then the song ended and she had to go home.
Weeks later the camp was paid a visit by a circus caravan. A colourful box van and two cars were parked in front of the restaurant. A group of grown-ups and an infernal mass of children jumped out. Refugee children from a camp in Vešnja, a former YPA barracks. A group of Italian volunteers who lived in their camp, had taught them some tricks and took part in the performance. The caravan had already visited several camps in the area.
The performance was held in the corner of the restaurant in front of twenty onlookers, among them me and Zlaja. The children walked on stilts and rode unicycles. The stilt walkers had to climb off and on the stilts a couple of times, while one of the cyclists – a spotty boy of twelve or thirteen – crashed into a radiator and nearly flew out the window.
We laughed and clapped, clapped and laughed – in the right places too.
Our host for the evening was a girl dressed in black with chestnut brown hair down to her belly, wearing a top hat. Her face was covered in white paint, and it was only halfway through the show that I recognised her. It was her, the one who had answered ‘I don’t actually know,’ that night at Ukulele. The night Zlaja and I ruled the dance floor.
Was she a refugee too? Bosnian, maybe? I had to be investigated at once.
‘Do you recognise that girl over there?’ I asked Zlaja. ‘No name shampoo.’
‘Yes. But she’s not my type.’
‘I wasn’t offering, either. I’ve got to get her number.’
‘Ohhh!’
‘We’ll hang out by their van afterwards. Okay?’
‘Okay. Should I grab my guitar?’
While the participating circus artists loaded their junk into the vans, she spotted the guitar and recognised us. Zlaja called her over. He started to entertain the Italians in their mother tongue, while I plucked the strings and said clever things.
Then I boldly got to the point:
‘What should I play for you, Jelena?’
‘What can you play?’
The picks were too damn soft. My intro to ‘One’ was unrecognisable. I made loads of mistakes, also on ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.’ I was super nervous and had a hard time with C major anyway. My fingers always cramped up when I made that stupid chord. But she said, ‘Cool!’ when I was finished and gave me her telephone number.
‘I’ll call you one of these days!’ I promised when the caravan drove off, accompanied by a series of hideous, loud honks.
‘One of these days’ was the following day.
SCISSORS
Dad was telling me something very important. His story was contending with Jelena for my headspace. He had received his salary from the vineyard, he told me. On the way back to Majbule, as was the custom, the bus had stopped at a pub. It reeked of an arrangement between the bus driver and the owner of the pub, because it happened every time they got paid. He had made toasts and drank and was rather tipsy.
Back on the bus, he and his boss, Mišo, sat on the back seat singing, ‘By the thin shadirvan, where the running water trickles.’ An old Bosnian Sevdalinka, a traditional song about unrequited love. Mišo was from Vešnja, but had done his military service in our hometown. He and Dad got on well together.
Sitting in the middle of the bus was a group of Croatians from central Bosnia, the ones who had spat at Dad before. One in particular, called Blonde, he had it in for Dad. He would not accept Dad’s baskets when he delivered them to the lorry.
Now they all sat in the bus, drunk and overtired. Dad and Mišo continued singing loudly. I could picture Dad stretching out the song’s elastic vocals. He was actually a pretty good singer, even when he was drunk.
‘STOP THAT CRAPPY MUSLIM SONG!’ Blonde bellowed from the middle of the bus.
He was up on his feet, staggering down the aisle. Holding a pair of scissors in his right hand, Dad said.
Silence on the bus. The singing stopped. The bus kept driving; hands slipped inside bags, rustling in chorus. Hands reaching for their own pair of scissors.
‘STOP THAT SHIT!’ Blonde shouted. ‘I don’t wanna listen to all that Muslim –’
‘YOU STOP IT!’ Mišo interrupted him. ‘I myself am Croatian, and this is no Muslim song! It’s my wife’s favourite song! Now go back to your seat! Otherwise I’ll have you fired!’
Blonde stopped short, like a boxer who had just taken a shot to the chin but had not realised it yet. His intoxicated head swung a little to one side and then to the other, before Mišo’s straightforwards words registered. He muttered something and went back to his seat. Mišo nudged Dad and said:
‘Let’s take it from the top!’
Dad was buzzing as he described how Mišo handled the matter. He kept tossing around superlatives.
‘A great man!’ he praised Mišo. ‘Truly great!’
‘But I don’t understand why you don’t feel like taking off?’ I asked him. ‘Just disappear, get far away?’
He waved his hands predictably:
‘To Sweden? You and your Sweden!’
‘Yes. Away from all the fascists and their scissors. Them and their fucking hate.’
‘They already drove me out once!’ he said, raising his index finger as if ‘they’ lived upstairs. ‘That’s more than enough. I’m not going anywhere. Back to my own people, that’s it
. I don’t give a damn about Germany and Sweden and the West. Bloody capitalists! I just want what’s mine. Nothing more. Them and their humanitarian … their … hum … tinned food, dammit!’
‘Fine, fine, but what about me? Can I travel by myself since you can’t be bothered?’
‘When you’re eighteen, you can live wherever you want. And wherever you can! The door is open.’
Mum had just entered the room and had heard the end of our conversation. She said:
‘What are you babbling about? Are you drunk?’
‘No. Why?’ Dad said, and wrinkled his forehead in surprise. ‘It’s perfectly normal. The boy has to learn to stand on his own two feet. Myself, I was not kept on a tight rein. At his age I was …’
I thought about Jelena.
Jelena, Jelena, Jelena …
The most beautiful name in existence.
BELVEDERE REVISITED
I waited for her at the corner of the playground, besieged by the envious looks of her classmates. I was two years older than them, and the sun was shining on me. She was mine. They could just watch. Get turned on by her during the boring lessons. Dream they were walking in my shoes. In my super cool All Stars.
Dream on, guys, I thought, and just remember to blow your snotty noses! Look here, primary schoolboys!
She came to me with a smile on her lips and the taste of menthol in her mouth. She was a little shy. I removed a lock of hair from her forehead and gave her a proper, seemingly endless kiss. That will teach them, the brats!
We turned on our heels and slowly walked away. She was wearing a pair of tight black jeans, a white Nirvana T-shirt and a long-sleeved top underneath. She had a schoolbag printed with the words, WE DON’T NEED NO EDUCATION; a rebellious vocabulary and a heartfelt aversion for the terms system, government and nation.
Naturally I spoke against these terms, reasoned on the basis of sixteen years of life experience and scored cheap points in her clear almond eyes.
A few days earlier, at his home in faraway Seattle, Kurt Cobain had been found dead. Really, really dead. He had written a suicide note, loaded a sawed-off shotgun and pulled the trigger. All of a sudden the streets of Vešnja were teeming with all kinds of Nirvana T-shirts. Some wearing them. Others selling them.
Ukulele Jam Page 18