How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone

by Sasa Stanisic

  We spit down from the bridge into the little tributary of the Drina. The chub come close to the surface of the water and lick it from below with their fishy lips. Edin spits again, says: a school like ours isn't wrecked so easily, why do you think fish eat spit?

  It's going to rain any minute, I say. Maybe this is the last time we'll cross this bridge. Why don't they build a bridge like the one over the Drina? That stands up to anything.

  This one will make it, says Edin, it stood up to the tanks.

  Want to bet it'll be gone by the day after tomorrow at the latest?

  Living at the mouth of two rivers. Learning to swim well and early, learning to fish well and early, learning early how to pump meltwater out of flooded cellars. Last night was a nonstop cloudburst—the soldiers gave us blankets, but the walls of the stairwell breathed out the cold of cement, and I woke up several times. Light fell into the corridor from Ci" ka Sead's apartment, I made bird shadows fly over the wall with my fingers, and hoped real thunder would break the constant rushing of the rain, but there was only thunder of explosions in the distance. Grandpa Slavko had shown me how to train the shadow animals you make with your fingers. Long ago I'd magically given the birds the power to fly my sleeplessness away to the south. The rain stopped in the morning, just before the dancing, singing soldiers left the building, but the clouds didn't clear.

  If our mothers find out we've gone, I say, you can bet we won't be allowed down to the Rzav when the floods carry the bridge away. What are they afraid of ? If their own soldiers are in our town they can't shoot at it.

  Edin shrugs his shoulders. Raindrops are making the first ripples on the river. We go and stand under the bridge. I put a worm on my hook and cast it out. Edin pokes around in the mud with a stick for a while, imitating the noise of the rain falling on the river. Our floats drift with the current, it rains harder, and the soldiers ask: are they biting? Three bearded men and the victorious soldier with the biggest head in the world. Where did they spring from?

  No. Only minnows. Too much noise for the fish these last few days. They go down into deeper water.

  Ah, yes. Hiding. Let's see how well they hide.

  The hand grenade sinks at once. The soldiers are wearing raincoats; they bend forward as they speak. It's bucketing down, it's raining in torrents, more rivers are raining on the river, and now the rain is falling on the fish scales and fish bellies drifting downstream too. No use trying to collect them, the Rzav is too deep here and too fast, still too cold in April as well, and a catch like that would definitely not taste good.

  A mongrel emerges from the undergrowth on the opposite bank, drinks from the river.

  Want to bet, boys?

  No!

  The first volley doesn't hit the dog. The dog starts, jumps up, dances sideways, stops and raises its pointed muzzle. Has it caught the scent of the bet?

  Bet you fifty I get it this time, says the victor to the bearded men, one of them spits in his hand and shakes on it. How can a head be so big and a bet smell of schnapps and earth?

  The second volley of shots.

  It must have been a catfish! Two hundred pounds, maybe four hundred, Edin guesses on the way to school, spreading his arms wide as if hugging someone: it must have been that big, at least that big!

  I know about catfish and I don't believe a word of it. Another reason why your line can break is if the hook gets caught somewhere at the bottom, and catfish are conceited anyway; they're not going to bother with a little river like the Rzav. We've caught two chub, and I wish I knew who's stirring up the clouds like that—the rain has soaked us to the skin.

  Soldiers on the porches of buildings, soldiers behind sandbags, soldiers in bars acting as landlords and guests combined. Outside the biggest department store in town we ask: are we allowed in? The soldier clambers out of the display window, says: mind the broken glass, and straps a TV set into his passenger seat. We avoid the splintered glass, although it makes a good crunching noise. We're out shopping, the soldiers, Edin and I. We two take as many pencils and exercise books as we can carry. By the time we get to school they're all wet. We stack the limp paper on the radiators, but what are we going to do with five hundred pencil sharpeners? The way our school looks, we won't be needing those again. We lay a trail of pencil sharpeners down the dark corridors, over splintered glass and rubble, through devastated classrooms. There isn't an intact window in the staff room, there are towers of tables and a tangle of chair legs in front of the broken windows, and ten thousand empty cartridge cases among a hundred thousand splinters of glass. Our trail of pencil sharpeners meets a trail of blood. Edin and I follow it to a large window and look out at the town in the rain; still no thunder. In the middle of the room there's a mountain of red volumes, shabby class registers. Some teachers asked questions in alphabetical order, others opened at a random page.

  Want to see how we're doing in oral Russian? I ask, but there's a huge pile of dried shit on top of the mountain, with two flies performing in rectangular formation above it, so we content ourselves with discovering that our mark for written Russian is four, which is kind of all right.

  Hey, Edin, why did they shoot the dog like that?

  Edin shrugs his shoulders, picks up several cartridge cases and throws them through the broken window one by one. Last summer, he says, I drew a goal down there on the front of the building. With red chalk, standing on tiptoe. The crossbar was so high that I had to lower my arm twice and shake the stiffness out of it. I'd just finished when Kostina the caretaker came out and asked: what's that supposed to be? A goal, of course, I said. Wipe it off, he said, it'll be detention for you.

  Didn't you get to shoot at it even once? I ask.

  Not once, says Edin, unwedging a couple of chairs. Well, I could have broken a window.

  In the lab, our physics teacher Fizo is kneeling in front of another carpet of fragments, and when we get down on the floor beside him he says: there'll be lessons, we just have to clear up first. I've found three intact measuring beakers and two burners. All the pinhole cameras but two are broken, the spring pendulum's all right, most of the lightbulbs aren't. Put gloves on and be careful of the glass. Don't touch anything with blood on it.

  We have to leave most of it lying there. Fizo removes his glasses, takes a handkerchief out of his shirt pocket, wipes first his eyes and then the glasses. Edin finds an unbroken pipette, holds it up, says good-good-good, and laughs. Fizo nods, yes, good, and gets the broom. We'll go on with lessons in a minute, do you have your exercise books with you? I want to dictate some formulas to you. After that you can go home, right?

  Nothing in the lab is in its usual place except for Tito over the board. The more quietly I try to put my feet down, the louder the glass crunches under them. Tito's white admiral's uniform. Tito's German shepherd dog. Tito's right eye: a bullet hole in it. Tito has died yet again, for the fourth time. Shot dead this time.

  Trite symbolism, says Fizo.

  I can't really take anything seriously under Tito's one-eyed corpse, in a school that isn't a school anymore, or if so it's only Fizo's school, the school of his resistance, his energy, his power. I'll look up “symbolism” later, but only because the word annoys me. I want to know whether one-eyed people would rather be blind in the left eye or the right eye, I want to know how much blood we really have in us, and I want to know if every shot to the throat is fatal. I want to know how many deaths Tito still has to die.

  Nothing in the lab is in its proper place. I stand there.

  Krsmanović, calls Fizo, aren't you going to help us?

  I don't know how, Comrade Jelenić.

  I clean the board with the dry sponge. If I were a magician who could make things possible, then glass could decide for itself whether it broke, and Fizo, who is the strictest teacher in the school, would say: good.

  Good, says the soldier with the gold tooth when Edin and I turn into our street with the fishing rods, the fish, and the exercise books from the department store. Per
haps our mothers won't have noticed we were gone, and anyway, we've been to school, that's not a lie. So we just have to get rid of the fish. The first thing we do is hide the rods in the yard.

  Good, but what are those fish doing on the roof? asks the soldier as I put the bag with our catch on the roof of the tobacconist's just as he's coming out of the shop, doing up his zipper, bread dough on his hands.

  They're for the cat, says Edin. A dead loss for humans.

  Right, says the soldier, a dead loss, everything's a dead loss, all battles are a dead loss, all my poor corns are a dead loss if I don't find my Emina. Do you two know Emina? Amela isn't my Emina.

  I remember Great-Grandpa's song at the harvest festival, I remember vain Emina and her hyacinthine hair. The soldier sits down on the pavement beside a sparse-haired man who wears a flowing white garment. The man's hands are inside a black top hat up to the wrists, and he's fidgeting nervously with it. It's only by his top hat that I recognize the man, his face is so swollen, and he's sitting there so bent over. It's Musa Hasanagic, but where's his mare, Cauliflower?

  Please, Musa begs the soldier, please tell me what will happen to her!

  I feel sorry for horses, says the soldier, licking his cigarette paper, now which war has been the worst for horses? Which war is this one? Nineteen-fourteen, nineteen forty-two, nineteen ninety-two . . . once it was horses that died like flies. Now humans are dying like that, but the horses have forgotten how to be free.

  Edin digs his elbow into my ribs: let's go! But I can't move, I can't leave while the soldier is talking in that tone, telling stories in that tone. He puts Musa's hat on Musa's head and pushes the cigarette between Musa's lips. He takes a loaf from his rucksack and breaks off large chunks, feeds the old man. Amela's bread. Musa chews toothlessly; handcuffs rattle on his hands.

  I've tumbled many girls, says the soldier, and I left only one of them unkissed: my Emina. How she'd eat cherries from my hand! How she'd tickle my wrist with her chin! The soldier bows his head awkwardly and scrapes dough out from under his nails.

  Emina escaped you! She escaped you! cries Musa, and his eyes are shining.

  There you are, there you are! My mother runs to meet me as Edin and I come into the yard. Listen, Aleksandar, we're leaving. Pack your things. Hurry. A couple of days and we'll be out.

  The stairwell's almost empty. Čika Milomir is sweeping the corridor, smoking, dropping ash and sweeping it away again.

  The doors of most of the apartments are open; our neighbors are clearing up in silence. There's glass everywhere.

  Granny Katarina is standing at the open window. Granny?

  Edin and I go and stand beside her. Granny?

  Four bearded soldiers are trying to throw a horse off the bridge and into the river. They are leading it by the reins. The horse and the soldiers look down into the river over the railings of the bridge. The soldiers are pushing hard. The horse stands there. It's not going to clamber over the railings by itself. I'm sick and tired of this obstinate nag, shouts one of the bearded men like someone who's hard of hearing, and he holds his pistol to the white blaze on the horse's forehead. The soldiers smoke. The soldiers pat the horse's nostrils. The soldiers lead the horse off the bridge and back to the bank.

  Oh, just shoot it for Christ's sake!, a soldier with sunglasses calls to them. He's playing with a Gameboy on his tank, which is wet after the rain.

  You shoot horses when they can't work anymore, cries the man with the reins in his hand, leading the horse into deeper water, we want to see it drown.

  Cauliflower likes to eat cauliflower, says Granny. Wherever else would you hear of a horse with a name like that?

  Musa Hasanagić used to wear the top hat when he trained his mare Cauliflower. Edin and I often watched. The gramophone played Boléro and the mare would walk around in time to the music, trotting with her head held high. Half-pass! cried Musa, tapping his top hat. Passage, he cried. He clicked his fingers, and Cauliflower would turn around on the spot.

  A shot rings out, the horse shies, Granny jumps. Oh, if my Slavko had seen this, she whispers behind her hand, his heart wouldn't have stopped, it would have broken into ten thousand pieces.

  The soldier with dough on his hands is walking slowly across the street, Musa's top hat on his head, carrying the bag with our fish in it. I press my face into Granny's side. She ought to send Edin and me away from the window, she ought to close the window. She whispers: Cauliflower, what an ugly name for such a beautiful creature.

  The beautiful creature shies, the beautiful creature bucks, the beautiful creature kicks out at the soldiers with her forelegs, the beautiful creature tears free, the beautiful creature races through the water toward the bank. Three bearded soldiers are standing on the bank smoking, look-no-hands, their guns raised to fire.

  Trembling, I step back from the window and put my hands over my ears. I stumble backward out of the room, I pack my rucksack. Edin helps, silent and serious. I quickly get three last pictures of unfinished things down on paper and hide them behind Granny Katarina's wardrobe with the rest—ninety-nine in all. Pictures of Emina far away from the soldier with the gold tooth. Of Cauliflower galloping off, no fences in sight. Of pistols that were never loaded.

  I meet my father in the stairwell, he's racing upstairs, nods to me as if he were a mere acquaintance. There are damp patches under his arms. I call Asija's name on every floor, but get no answer. I stuff my things into the heap on the backseat of our heavily laden Yugo, which now looks like the other cars that have given up on Višegrad these last few days. Nena, do you have enough air back there? Nena Fatima smiles at me, and the bag with my painting things falls into her lap. I want to take my soccer ball. Mother shakes her head, so I pass it to Edin. Father and Granny come out of the building. Granny, in tears, kisses her women neighbors, they're in tears too, then stops in front of one of the soldiers on guard. She looks him up and down, she stands on tiptoe to hiss something into his ear. The soldier gives a nasty grin and shrugs. Granny squeezes herself into the backseat beside Nena Fatima.

  Edin has stopped the ball with the sole of his foot. He takes a piece of chalk out of his trouser pocket and twirls it in his fingers. He jiggles up and down on the bent garage door that a tank smashed yesterday when it was trying to park. A soldier climbed out, examined the damage, cursing, wiped his sleeve over the metalwork and drove away. The door fell off its hinges and the little panes in it broke. Edin imitates the sound of the door breaking and stirs the fragments with the toe of his shoe. One way or another, he says, the whole town is breaking up into splinters. Are you going now too?

  Only for a little while, I say, and I have to swallow.

  So we never will cross the bridge again together. I bet you, he calls, already waving, there won't be another flood this year. It can't come, he shouts, there can't be one, not another flood, he weeps, how could there be? A town without its people or its bridges, bridges with us standing on them to feed fish with our spit, how could there be? he says—or perhaps he says it, because I can't hear him anymore. I look in the rearview mirror and I can see him drawing the goalposts with his chalk, the crossbar so high that he has to give his hand a good shaking three times. He sends the ball flying, top left, stops the ball in midturn, a bouncing ball, going halfway up to the right—every shot a goal, until rain washes the chalk away.

  Emina carried through her village in my arms

  I carried Emina through her village in my arms, says the soldier with gold in his mouth and dough on his hands, I carried Emina's weight from house to house, gravely and saying little. Her arms around my neck so that she wouldn't fall. Kicking wardrobe doors open with my boots, looking at thousands of dresses, touching hundreds of fabrics, until at last I found the right one for my Emina in a chest made of the darkest cherrywood. Softer than silk, white as snow for Emina's white skin and her black hair. I carried that wonderfully beautiful material and my wonderfully beautiful gypsy girl to the village square. My comrades gave the thirsty
villagers water and herded them into the trucks.

  What are you doing? I shouted to my companions. You can't take them yet! I need a dressmaker, I need someone to play music for me and my bride! I sang the song, and the company, all in chorus, agreed that I was right. I told dressmakers to feel the material, holding the end of it well above the ground; no dirt was to get on it except the dirt of these hands of mine. I told musicians to rescue their instruments from the flames: who's lighting fires now? We're going to have a wedding here at first light! Are you the accordionist, old man, is it your fast fingers they all talk about? Dressmaker, can you make this material into a dress for Emina, a finer dress that anyone ever wore? Old man, good dressmaker, do you want to save your lives?

  Just let my daughter and my grandson live, begged the old man. Just let my sister and her little ones live, whispered the dressmaker, and she kissed the white fabric. The trucks drove away, and as soon as they had left the village the guns began chattering.

  Why all that shooting? I cried when my comrades came back five minutes later, hitting the driver's ear with the flat of my hand, don't do that again! Don't you ever do that again! Drive them farther into the forest!

  You crazy idiot, said the driver flatteringly, hitting me back, get your gun, you idiot! We're under attack! And then there's shooting and standing firm and securing the bridge and ten on our flank and get away from the flames and there's the radio operator and where are the heavy machine guns and Vladimir cries no and runs and Mayday Mayday Eagle please come in we're under fire there's explosions and Vladimir and Dule on the ground with Vladimir twitching and get back and stay close together men get back and there are hits and rubble and blood trickling through fingers just leave him there—don't leave me here—we retreat and when night falls and the battle's over I call Emina's name into the dark and there's no answer. Has she taken the dress material with her? Is she wandering through the burning countryside with the dressmaker and the old musician? We abandoned the village and I've been looking for my Emina ever since. I can never rest.