One day after receiving a phone call and agreeing to meet in Vešnja after school, I went down to the beach below D3. I sat down on a bench and scratched my name into the wood. Gogi must have forgotten his flick knife there. His name was freshly etched into the backrest.
The bench looked ludicrous. There was barely room for more names, and the middle board of the seat was missing. You had to sit on the two outer boards, with your arse bulging towards the ground.
I fiddled with the knife, felt a light breeze in my hair and enjoyed feeling that everything was going to be all right. Fuck Sweden. I was not going anywhere. I had Jelena, Kaća, Fric, Zlaja, Gogi and Fabio. I had my nights at Ukulele and my red Sanyo cassette recorder.
What do I care about you, Sweden, I thought. You are so far away. What do I care about your music libraries, I can’t even get a membership card! What am I going to do with my knowledge of your cities, your climate and your history, I was never going to be able to cross your distant border anyway! And all the parties in the vicinity of Stockholm. What do I care about them! I was not invited.
Then he came – Pero’s cousin, who had just moved into the camp. A thickset, broad-legged musclehead with a crooked neck, which meant that he always looked a little to the side when he addressed you. It was like he was talking to a parrot on your shoulder.
‘WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?’ he shouted from the path.
‘Not much. What are you doing?’ I shouted a little boldly back to him.
I did not know him at the time; it was our first encounter. Otherwise I would not have been that bold. But I was in a really good mood and could not hide it.
He left the path and flip-flopped quickly towards me:
‘WHO GAVE YOU PERMISSION TO SCRATCH YOUR NAME IN THAT BENCH?’
‘No-one.’
‘DO YOU REALISE THAT IS STATE PROPERTY?’
‘No.’
‘SO NOW YOU KNOW! DON’T SCRATCH YOUR SHITTY NAME ON THE BENCH!’
‘But … there are loads of scratches … names …’
‘WHAT’S THAT GOT TO DO WITH YOU! IF I SEE YOU DO THAT ONE MORE TIME, YOUR MUM IS GOING TO PAY! YOU FOLLOW?’
The gate to the nuthouse must have been left wide open last night, I thought. Who the hell let this madman out? I see him for the first time in my life, and here he is, shouting at me like we’ve known each other for years. What’s wrong with him?
Later he turned out not only to be Pero’s cousin, but also a family man, and the future night watchman at reception. Bruno was his name. The madman was going to look after us while we lay asleep.
‘YOU FOLLOW?’
‘Yeah, yeah.’
I did not complain to Dad. I did not complain to anyone. I was not even humiliated. I put the flick knife down and said, ‘Sorry. It won’t happen again,’ and thought: You can’t touch me, you moron. I’m seeing Jelena tomorrow. We’re going to hang out in the park, on the beach, or up by the citadel, not talk for hours and enjoy the silence. You and the other psychos at this camp will not be there. I won’t spare you a single thought. I’ll barely spare a thought for Neno. So just keep shouting, you idiot, it’s like water off a duck’s back!
JELENA LEAVES
She told me over the phone. The booth went quiet and it remained silent for a long time. I could not manage a single word.
Only later, lost in a diffuse monologue, I said:
‘Those bloody fascists! Those grey-haired presidents. Why didn’t they play war back when they were sixteen?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You’re right. But imagine: if there hadn’t been war, the two of us would never have met.’
I was already feeling lonely. Who was going to impress me by saying things like that from now on? ‘If there hadn’t been war, the two of us would never have met.’
‘Jelena, you’re pretty clever,’ I said. ‘It’s no wonder that you met me.’
She let out a fake laugh.
Pero knocked: ‘Are you almost finished, you little faggot!’
‘You should have told me you were applying for a visa,’ I said.
‘We didn’t think we’d get one. Who’s that knocking?’
‘A country bumpkin. I’ll pound him later. Keep going!’
‘I didn’t want to scare you off. That’s why.’
‘Yeah, I know. But still … It’s just …’
The moron knocked again. This time louder.
‘Is that him again?’
‘Yeah, I’m going to have to go. See you tomorrow?’
‘Yeah. Same place?’
‘Great.’
‘Then we can talk things through, if you like.’
‘Nah, I don’t think it will help,’ I said.
‘Okay, or we could just leave it. And do what we normally do.’
‘That’s probably a better idea.’
She travelled to the USA before the school year ended. Our relationship did not even last one and a half months. The spontaneous periods of silence, which taught me to shut out the rest of the world and think of nothing at all, they came to an end. Even as we walked through the city silently for hours, the air was heavy with the knowledge of a certain date in the calendar – the day Jelena would board a plane that would take her out of the country, while I would stand on the pier and stare at the clear, calm water – gloomy and dark inside like the Peter Steel vocals that Type O Negative played late at night.
The old feeling of being unlucky and cursed returned with a vengeance. Of course she’s leaving, I thought. Everyone I care about leaves. Everyone that means something to me, in some way dies. How could I forget that?
Our final hours were spent in Parkolio, the famous park in Vešnja that had a nine hundred-year-old olive tree in the centre. I had bunked off school. Jelena gave me the hand-written lyrics to ‘Fade to Black’ and I gave her a mixed tape with the best of Powerslave and Piece of Mind. It was my last desperate attempt to change her opinion of Iron Maiden.
‘Take care of yourself,’ she said down by the bus stop.
‘You too,’ I replied. ‘Say hi to America.’
I kissed her gently on the cheek and got on the bus. With her tear resting on my bottom lip.
The back of the bus stunk of aftershave and farts. I tried to cry but couldn’t. My sorrow had withered up inside me.
Through the grimy rear window I saw her for the last time. She stood in her unbuttoned red lumberjack shirt waving at me. Her hair was in a long plait.
She was crying.
For a brief moment it was as though I was the one leaving, and she was staying. But then the bus turned at the first set of lights and continued on its usual course to Majbule.
LIFE SHOULD BE LIVED
Jelena, Jelena, Jelena …
How’s it going – on the other side of the globe?
Is there liberty – And Justice for All – where you live? Or is it all just one big sham?
Send me more lyrics. Send me a song or two.
Her first letter had a sad ring to it. I tried to reply in a brighter tone, describe the past few weeks to her on one hand, and on the other hand keep my bitterness at bay. I was not particularly successful. I could not string two positive words together in the same sentence. I had to crumple up page after page and chuck them in the bin.
At the entrance to D1, I saw Kaća hurrying towards reception.
‘Do you fancy going for a walk?’ I asked.
‘Can’t. I’m going into town.’
She had found a boyfriend in Vešnja. He was in his first year of secondary school and a fan of Ice Cube. A rapper with baggy trousers!
‘Oooh, Kaća! Are you going to change your style soon?’ I teased her.
She scampered off when she heard the bus coming, and I decided to go for a walk to the end of the peninsula.
It had been raining. The air smelt of wet asphalt and seaweed. Sitting at the far table in front of the restaurant, I saw Gogi smoking a fag. He flicked the butt away with his middle finger and looked up as he heard me kick
a dry pine cone. He had a long face.
‘What’s up, Gogi?’ I shouted. ‘What’s happening, man? Are you ever going to get some, or what?’
‘Haven’t you heard?’
‘Heard what?’
‘Bad news, neighbour. Bad news.’
He lit another cigarette and put the lighter in his breast pocket. He blew some smoke through his nose and told me that he had just got back from Vešnja.
‘Yeah, and?’
He was hitchhiking and got a lift from Ivan from D2. The guy who shagged shamelessly. Ivan was all cut up. He could barely drive while he told Gogi that Igor – good old Igor – was dead. He had stepped on a landmine somewhere near Vinkovci and died instantly.
Gogi shook his head, swore and repeated how he didn’t get it. I pictured Igor walking towards us.
Bare feet, tight black Speedos.
He burped:
‘Do you want to go out to the end of the peninsula? … Yes. The peninsula. How’s your English?’
Gogi stubbed out the cigarette and lit another. We sat there, confirming to each other how shitty it was. That of all people, Igor had not deserved it.
Then we went for a walk on the peninsula, and I told him about the German girl and Igor’s legendary words ‘What do I know, maybe she’ll get upset.’ Gogi believed that Igor had died a virgin. That was why he talked about women so much.
I did not agree. I remembered a slightly mad brunette who stayed in Igor’s room for a few days. She was from Split, looked like a squirrel and had run away from home. Igor had picked her up somewhere in Vešnja and hidden her in the camp, until someone blabbed and the police showed up and took her away.
I also told him about the Christmas Eve where Igor pounded his fist on the table and said, ‘YES! BUT LIFE SHOULD BE LIVED! NOT FUCKED UP!’ I described our first trip to Wicky, the man with the goats and the newly erected fence – the bodybuilder whose wife Igor had tried to chat up. I went on and on for as long as I could. Was afraid I would bawl my eyes out if I stopped.
But when I finally stopped, nothing happened. We just sat on the flat roof of the bunker and looked out at the horizon. Gogi lit his last fag and threw the pack into the water.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Igor was a fine fellow. Dumb as a doorknob, but fine.’
‘Dumb? He wasn’t that dumb.’
‘Going to war for money, that’s dumb. Getting killed during a ceasefire – even dumber.’
‘Don’t talk about him like that!’ I said. ‘Jesus, Gogi! What’s going on with you? I thought you were upset.’
‘You don’t know shit, Miki. You don’t know what that idiot did.’
‘What did he do?’
Gogi looked at me in his characteristic manner: provocative, a trace of irony.
‘He ran after a pig.’
‘A pig?’
‘Yeah, he ran after a pig. He was drunk.’
‘Drunk?’
‘Yes! Him and the pig flew into the air. Don’t tell anyone.’
‘Bullshit!’ I said and waved my hand. ‘That makes no sense. What would he do with a pig?’
‘I don’t know. Eat it? Fuck it? How do I know?’
‘Shut up! You’re full of shit, man! I don’t believe a word you say!’
‘Fine. Let’s leave it at that then. I’m full of shit. He stepped on a mine. On patrol! Forget all about the fucking pig!’
PARANOIA
Gogi never mentioned the pig again. We never talked about Igor again either, the two of us. A death notice with a photo, date and everything was posted on the window in reception for a while: ‘It is with great sorrow and pain we announce that …’ Later it was removed.
Igor was gone. He had left the stage in May that year, and nothing on earth could bring him back. Not even my frequent dreams, where I saw him on the terrace between D1 and D2 – with no legs, in a wheelchair, disabled, but despite everything, alive.
I would get really scared when I woke up in the morning. Not like normal, scared of something specific, more scared that something unexpected would happen. I thought about war, Neno and God. Would there be more? Would more people die? Were we just some small figures at the end of some thin threads, with some Master of Puppets tugging on them? There were plenty of facts that bore witness to that. Was it a coincidence that I was on my way out to the end of the peninsula when I ran into Gogi that day? The first time I met Igor, he asked me to go out there with him. To top it all off, it happened in the exact place where Gogi gave me the bad news.
Even more chilling was the fact that Igor stepped on a mine. That completely knocked me flat. It was one thing that he always talked about evading the bullets, never hinting at the danger of being hit from below. It was another thing altogether, that for a long time I had connected Igor with the story about Dad’s cousin, Zijo, who had walked through a minefield. I never forgot Igor’s expression when I told him the story. When I asked him the odds of something like that happening, Igor said:
‘It depends on the minefield. Obviously there was something wrong with that one. The ones we make, nobody makes it through!’
His haughty expression and that final comment, I could not get them out of my thoughts. The peninsula, the place in front of the restaurant and, ‘The ones we make nobody makes it through!’ Metallica’s third album and the cool title track.
There was no doubt: the Master of Puppets was up there somewhere.
I started to see his threads everywhere and was terrified of his next tug.
CASSETTE SWAP
Luckily there were also other threads. There were also cables, cords and strings. There were also cassette tapes.
One day I went to visit Mauro and Fabio with a bag full of cassettes and some song lyrics in my pocket. They lived on the ninth floor of a sixteen-storey building. The lift was broken.
I stopped at the seventh floor. Thought about Jelena and Igor. Thought about Mister No. Thought about everything that could be done differently. Everything that could be done differently to a person. Constantly.
Fabio opened the door and said hello.
‘Mauro’s in the shower,’ he said. ‘Probably be done in an hour or two.’
Their room was in a state of emergency: cardboard boxes and dust sheets everywhere. It gave me a bit of a shock when I saw it.
‘What’s all this? What’s happening?’
‘Uhh … the parents,’ Fabio said. ‘They want to paint … I think.’
He did not sound convincing.
‘Before you go to Verona?’
‘No, when we get back.’
‘Hmm.’
I left it alone. It might actually be true.
We went into his room and sat down. I sank into his deep armchair and stretched out my legs.
‘Make yourself at home,’ Fabio said and put on Icon by Paradise Lost. ‘I don’t need to tell you that.’
‘Embers Fire’ started. I hummed along and looked at Fabio’s new poster on the wall above his bed. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Last Action Hero. My arse.
‘Is your brother going too?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, the whole family.’
He leaned back on the bed and started picking at the worn edge of his trousers. He wound bits of fabric around his index finger. He looked away.
‘How long are you gone for?’
‘Dunno. The folks are driving. Didn’t you say something about some tapes?’
‘Yep. I've got some for you guys, too. When do you get back?’
‘Probably about six weeks from now. What have you got?’
I pulled ten or fifteen tapes out of the bag.
‘Bit of everything. But you have to take care of them,’ I said. ‘That’s practically my entire collection.’
‘I didn’t think you had that many.’
‘That’s where I spend my money. That guy Fric I told you about – the one who re-records them for me – he gave me a whole bunch.’
‘Cool.’
‘A few originals, too. I’ve got the
original Somewhere in Time now. The Yugoton edition, with the cover and everything. The sound is so clean.’
‘Doesn’t he want it for himself, or what?’
‘Nah, he only listens to death metal now. Everything else is too soft, he says. You should hear him.’
I handed Fabio a couple of cassettes:
‘Look at this! King Diamond, Mercyful Fate, Fric thinks they’re all too soft. Paradise Lost: too slow. Iron Maiden? “Kid’s stuff, I used to listen to that when I was sixteen.” He’s twenty now, you know, going on strong at me with his grown-up attitude. But I don’t care, as long as he keeps me supplied. I’ve got practically all of Metallica now.’
Fabio had started getting into metal when we changed schools. He’d had enough of punk, but his brother still worshipped it.
‘What’s does he listen to then, this guy Fric?’
‘Obituary, Napalm Death. All that shit, man. Occasionally Slayer.’
‘You should play this for him!’
‘What is it?’
‘Sepultras’s latest. Have you seen the video for ‘Chaos AD.’ It kicks ass!’
‘Actually the song is called, ‘Refuse/Resist,’ not Chaos AD. Chaos AD is the name of the album.’
‘But they sing, “Chaos AD Tanks on the streets” and … what’s this? Helloween?’
‘Maiden copy. They’re German. You should hear “I Want Out.”’
Mauro came in without knocking. His hair was wet. He was wearing a white Psihomodo Pop T-shirt. It depicted Mickey Mouse lying on his stomach in a pool of blood. With an axe stuck in his back and his red tongue hanging out of the corner of his mouth.
‘Hey, Miki!’
‘Hey! What did you do to my namesake?’
‘It wasn’t me. It’s from the album cover.’
‘Ah, okay.’
‘Hey, what’s your real name anyway?’
He had known me for more than six months and had never asked. I like people like that.
‘Eustahije Brzić,’ I answered.
‘No, seriously.’
‘The Blue Racer. I love that cartoon!’
‘Emir,’ Fabio said. ‘Emir Pozder. Bosnian with a vengeance!’
Ukulele Jam Page 20