How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone

by Sasa Stanisic

  Or fish-hodjas, said Grandpa, nodding.

  If I were a magician who could make things possible, there'd be houses making music, houses as musically gifted as Johann Sebastian Bach—I know about his merits and his wonderful wig from the Encyclopedia of Music that Mr. Popović the music teacher gave me, a grandpa who is friends with Grandpa Slavko. You can look up the meaning of the word “baroque” in the encyclopedia too, I learned it by heart; for quite a while “baroque” was my main term of approval; it's only recently been replaced by “exquisite.”

  The house would play songs for a grandmother living alone and watching TV and watering flowers and giving them fertilizer and waiting for someone to come through the door; a grandmother who's always cooked too much to eat because she can't get used to being on her own; it would play songs from a time that was much quieter, because there were more cows chewing the cud, and not so many car exhausts and vacuum cleaners.

  My Serbo-Croat teacher Mr. Fazlagic's house would make a sound like the sea, because that lowers your blood pressure.

  My family's house would have a repertoire as wide and unpredictable as the many different moods living under our roof and inside us. Our kitchen would play The Doors because Jim Morrison turns my mother's anxious look into a wistful expression. There'd be French chansons when my father disappears into his studio. Johann Sebastian when Uncle Miki and my father are watching politics and Father shouts: no, we are not quarreling, we are just raising our voices in a discussion! When Father, whistling French songs, takes Mother to supper in the Estuary Restaurant there'd be Pink Floyd. Mr. Floyd makes you feel grown up and nice and tingly. I sip Father's cognac and watch the TV with the sound muted.

  There'd be the last three minutes of Ravel's Bolero at full volume when Auntie Typhoon comes to visit.

  The sunflowers in Nena Fatima's garden by the Drina would play the songs Nena sang when she was a girl, she still knows them all by heart. Nena would hum along silently, and when her tears came—because knowing something by heart can sometimes be the saddest thing in the universe—the clever chimney would play a medley. Tears and medleys don't go together. The really special thing about my musical houses would be that even someone as deaf as a post could hear them.

  My own house would sing in Great-Grandpa's voice, and once a day it would promise something that would last.

  I put the Encyclopedia of World Music back on the shelf and ask my mother when she is finally going to make me learn an instrument, the accordion or the organ. She is watching the news: barricades and burning flags. I ask the same question again in the same words.

  I paint ten soldiers without any weapons.

  I paint Mother's face, smiling, happy, carefree.

  If I were a magician who could make things possible, then pictures could talk while we painted them.

  If I were a magician who could make things possible, then houses could keep their promises. And they would have to promise not to lose their roofs or go up in flames. If I were a magician who could make things possible, the scars made in them by bullet holes would close up again over the years.

  What music does an apartment building make in war?

  What victory is the best, what Grandpa Slavko trusts me to do, and why peopleact as if your fears are less if youdon't talk about them

  No one could have guessed that I'd win. Uncle Miki claps me on the back of the head and says: no one could have guessed that you'd win. My mother tucks a strand of my hair back behind my ear, but it falls straight back over my forehead. Really, no one could have guessed it, she says, taking my face between her hands.

  The no-one-could-have-guessed-it victory celebrations are just over, the man who came second is at least six times older than me and twice as tall. He shakes hands, our fishing rods cross like swords. Uncle Miki pushes him aside—he doesn't particularly like me, but he likes other people even less, and congratulations that go on too long are always suspect.

  My father didn't come with us. He had to finish a picture in his studio. Recently he's been finishing pictures all the time, and as soon as he's through with one he starts two more. There's no room left for them in his studio; they have to go into the bedroom. Mother wakes in the night screaming: faces everywhere!

  I look at the river, then at my gold medal; I'm never going to take it off. With that medal I've qualified, and next Saturday everyone who's qualified is to meet in Osijek on the Drau. Among the best anglers in the republic, says a short, fat man when he hands me the certificate, whereupon Miki shouts at him from the back of the crowd: no need to look so doubtful about it, fatso!

  Miki, so close to the water and related to a winner, is all enthusiasm. Apart from me, he's the only one in the family with any idea about fishing. He wasn't allowed to compete today because not so long ago he threw Čika Luka into the Drina when Čika Luka wanted to see Uncle Miki's fishing license. Miki says he didn't do it: the stupid snooper slipped, he says, and if I hadn't been nearby to pull him out, someone would soon have had a rather ugly catfish on his hook. Miki shrugged his shoulders, the picture of innocence.

  I was on his side, because Čika Luka doesn't like people or fish or even himself—it's through him that I discovered the meaning of the word “frustrated.”

  I won today because of the secret in my bait. Breadcrumbs mixed with water, a little vanilla sugar, small pieces of liver sausage, plus the secret. The chub freaked out when I fed them the bait, they jumped out of the water shouting: stop, stop! because my secret mixture tasted so good to them.

  I don't have to go to Osijek, I tell Mother, trying to comfort her; you—any of you—really couldn't have guessed that I'd win.

  Because Osijek is a problem; no one can drive me there because no one could have guessed that I'd win, so they've all made other plans. So my mother says. She doesn't say: it's because there's shooting in Croatia. She doesn't say: it's because a tank crushed a red car in Osijek. She doesn't say that the final was canceled long ago for that reason, that is, if anyone can even stop to think of canceling things.

  I'm scared myself.

  Number Three, my starting number, is still sticking there in the bank. Today at noon I landed sunbleak after sunbleak, several enthusiastic chub, and even a small Danube salmon. That one got away because Uncle Miki shouted behind me: what are you doing, you fool, don't let go, are you crazy?

  I make sure that no one is watching. I crouch down and pass the back of my hand over the surface of the water. What does your heartbeat sound like?

  I keep my medal on at home too. My mother calls down to the cellar: we're back, Picasso, come on up, there's something you've got to see here.

  Uncle Miki flings himself down on the sofa and switches the TV on. The coffee starts to brew, my father comes into the living room whistling, rubbing his hands on a cloth.

  You smell of fish, he says, about to pat me on the head.

  You smell of acetone, I say, ducking out of the way.

  He taps my medal. Not bad!

  Yes, I say, it's good, but Father isn't looking at me anymore, he's looking at his brother's feet on the sofa. He pushes them off roughly and sits down beside him.

  Coffee and a rainstorm. That's how it is on August afternoons. Osijek comes on-screen; even the Drau is shown. It may be very beautiful, but if there are houses burning all around you, being beautiful is difficult.

  The war is switched off when Grandpa Slavko comes in and sits down opposite me. He looks at the certificate and the medal. I guessed it, he says, or no, I knew it.

  No one else could have guessed it. Grandpa, what do you mean, you knew it?

  Grandpa raises his eyebrows. I was watching you at the bridge last week and the estuary yesterday.

  I never noticed you.

  I can watch very quietly.

  And how could you tell that I was going to win?

  I could see that you were happy. I saw your mouth moving although you were alone.

  I had to learn a poem by heart.

  I think
you were talking to someone.

  I was alone, Grandpa.

  Grandpa Slavko leans over to me and whispers: I don't think you were alone. I think the river was there with you.

  Grandpa!

  Aleksandar!

  We both lean back, resting against the backs of our chairs like two boxers between rounds, except that boxers don't often smile at each other. Grandpa's hair is thick and strong and gray at the sides, like Father's hair, like my hair will be in thirty years' time, he sticks his thumbs in the suspenders over his chest; we both shake our heads. I'd like to be a grandpa who's friends with my grandpa; we'd talk to our grandsons in riddles and go out walking every evening with our shared memories and old arguments clasped behind our backs.

  Would you have won in Osijek too? Grandpa asks, knowing that I'll never go to Osijek now.

  No.

  Why not?

  I lean forward now and whisper: it's not my river there.

  Do you know, says Grandpa, that there are people who don't have any games where there's a winner at the end?

  People in Amazonia?

  More or less.

  We lean back and look at each other contentedly. Only now do I realize that no one else has said anything all this time. Mother is standing in the doorway, and she has no worry lines today. Miki and Father are both kneading something in their hands. Granny is making plates clink softly. I look at my family as if we've all succeeded at something.

  Shall we watch Carl Lewis tomorrow? I ask Grandpa. I'll catch fish for our supper, you can fry it, then we'll watch Carl to see if he can stay under ten seconds, right?

  Later, when everyone has gone and I'm in bed, my mother asks what I'd like if I could have a wish. She calls me her Comrade Angler in Chief. She knows I like the term Comrade in Chief. People treat tired winners gently.

  I'd wish for everything to be all right forever, I say.

  What do you call all right? asks Mother, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

  It's all right when you make me sandwiches this evening for tomorrow, and I can go fishing tomorrow and you don't worry about where I am, and Grandpa lives forever, and you all live forever, and the fish don't stop being in the river and Osijek stops burning and Red Star win the European Cup again next year and Granny Katarina never runs out of coffee and women neighbors, and Nena Fatima can really hear everything, even though she's deaf, and the houses play music, and no one has to bother about Croatia anymore, starting now, and there are little boxes containing tastes so that we can swap them with each other, and we don't forget how to hug, and . . .

  My mother's lips are trembling. That's fine, she says, and for the first time since there have been first times she doesn't say: but don't go too far.

  I choose the fattest worms. They wriggle. I make holes in the jam-jar lid with a screwdriver. Along the Drina on my bike, two hours through the morning mist, through villages without any names. Go fishing, catch fish, swim, talk to the river, tell it everything, eat my sandwiches. Smoked ham on kaymak. Plum jam on plum jam. Laugh out loud because I know the Drina likes winners to laugh like that. Let the Danube salmon go. I laugh out loud, and the Drina says: I knew it all along.

  How the bold river Drina is feeling, how the lipless Drina is really feeling, what she thinks of little Mr. Rzav, and how little you need to be as happy as a falcon

  My town of Višegrad has grown into the mountains in all directions. My Višegrad rises from two rivers, they've made a date here, the Drina and the Rzav, an endless date, going on forever, every second. Who was here first? I call from the estuary. And what did they look like and what did they sound like: those last ten seconds when the water was still on its way and then—suddenly—you met?

  The mountains accompany the Drina, they fold her in between steep rocks, making what I say echo. The higher the rocks, the deeper the river, it seems to me, and the more lost you are, whether you're in a boat or here on the bank.

  Yesterday no one could have guessed I was going to win, today I ride my bike along the Drina and I just want to go fishing. It's early morning, it's Sunday, the mist whistles around my ears, it's chilly. My mother has made sandwiches and put two apples in my rucksack. You can get some on the way, said my father, taking the apples out again and down to the studio with him. Still Life of a Shipwrecked Regime and a Yugo Broken Down on a Stony Road is the name of the picture he's been working on for weeks.

  Smoked ham, kaymak, plum jam spread thickly on rye bread. My two rods stick out of my rucksack. Two years ago Uncle Miki promised to give me an even better one every birthday. Uncle Miki is someone who has almost as good an idea of fishing as I do, and is not a man to break his promises.

  I want to live to be a hundred and thirty years old beside the Drina.

  I've never been this far on my own before. The fact that it's early morning and a Sunday doesn't stop the farmers from working in the narrow fields. Three women with head scarves holding hoes in their big hands straighten up and watch me go by. The rocks and the river hem the earth in; the fields are long and narrow. So is the apple orchard where, on my father's instructions, I steal apples, two red and two yellow: an unfenced strip of land between the rocks and the water. I'm just about to get back on my bike when the sun breaks through the mist, breaks so abruptly through the still thick swathes of it that its light splinters, the splinters fall on the river and cut into the rippling surface, glittering. Almost hidden by the long-haired branches of two weeping willows and the towering white cliffs, it sparkles brightest in a little bay beyond the orchard. From now on its name will be the Lagoon of Light, because unusual places need a name, it's the same as with stars. I lean the bike against the rickety fence; a lizard immediately climbs onto the handlebars and darts its tongue out at me. I tap my forehead and go through the arch of exuberant willow branches to the water, which is still racing with splinters of sun. A moss-grown tree trunk lies across the bay, rimmed on the left by rocks with peaks that you can only guess at in the misty air. A hawk takes off from the tree trunk, its slate-blue feathers disappear into the mist, the tail feathers are red; kyu, cries the hawk, ket-ket, it cries, turning head over heels in the air as if this is all great fun. The fluttering of its pointed wings dies away slowly, then there's no sound but the wind in the willow trees. The silence leans forward. I look around, from here I can't see the fence anymore, or the apple trees or the road; I'm in a room, a lagoon of light.

  I unpack my rods and sit down on a stone by the water. Here the river swerves into a branching embrace; I'm sitting in the crook of its elbow. Grandpa Slavko says the Drina is a bold river. That's why I don't mind when grown-ups call me bold. I think being bold is a good thing, and I shout at the water: you bold—you beautiful—bold—river—beautiful river. The canyon echoes; kyu, ket-ket, replies the hawk, and something large throws up foam in the river; perhaps the hawk has dropped a stone. But the splashing is deeper and lasts longer than the usual meeting of stone and water. I can't see rings or ripples anywhere, it can't have been a stone, perhaps it was the Drina herself, clearing her throat? The wind grows stronger, the Drina takes a breath and asks: what do you mean, bold?

  I scrape up some of the earth from the bank with the toe of my shoe and tread on it, because that's such a nice feeling under your sole. I don't know, I say, perhaps because you're unapproachably muddied and fast in autumn, you don't freeze over in winter, you flood everything in spring, and you drowned my Grandpa Rafik like a kitten in summer.

  I wait. The Drina is silent. The rocks aren't silent. Stones come away and tumble into the river. The Lagoon of Light grows darker. There's a rumble farther up the mountains. The Drina does not reply. I get my can of bait and my rods out of the rucksack. Kyu. Ket-ket. I am angry because the Drina is silent. Aren't you going to say something? Don't you even remember Grandpa Rafik?

  I push the ball of bait down below the surface, briefly, then angrily I throw it out. Breadcrumbs, gingerbread and ground licorice, oat flakes, chopped maggots. The ball lands with a h
ollow splash, and where it falls the Drina asks: what did your grandpa look like?

  You should know better than I do, I say, dipping my hands in to wash them. You saw him last, and I was still very little.

  I'm sorry.

  Well, I was very little.

  Would you like to swim?

  Thanks, but not so soon after talking about death.

  I decide on a plain hook, size six. Do the fishhooks hurt you? I ask.

  Why don't you ask the fish?

  I put the first worm on the hook and cast it out. The float moves slowly with the current.

  What does it feel like, fish swimming about in you?

  It tickles when they jump.

  I pass my hand over the surface. Does it tickle when someone throws an old washing machine into you too?

  Those bastards!

  I straighten up and pull the line in. The worm is still on the hook. I cast again, a little farther to the left, closer to the rocks. Drina? How come you don't speak in dialect?

  Do you?

  I look at the float and don't answer. If I say no, the river will reply: well, then! Perhaps if I don't say anything she will go on of her own accord, telling me what good friends she really is with the Rzav, how much the dam bothers her, and whether rivers feel afraid too. I don't say how much I envy her because she can see so much, from her source to the river Save, up to the sky, down into the ground, right, left, it's quite a view.

  The Rzav is a fine gentleman, she says, a good colleague, although he has his fits of anger every spring and bursts his banks. And the dam closes my mouth, flowing fast is like shouting out loud. Yes, she admits, she does feel fear. She defies the winter cold, the autumn rains don't bother her, but she's afraid the shooting will infect us with war too. Up against the rocks she complains, she's been through countless wars, each more dreadful than the last. She has had to carry away so many corpses, so many blown-up bridges lie at rest on her bed. I must believe her, she says, her waters are murky by the bank, nothing in the world suffers like the stones of a bridge without their bridge. And she has never been able to hide, or close her eyes to crimes, she says, foaming angrily, I don't even have eyelids! I know no sleep, I can't save anyone, I can't prevent anything. I want to cling to the bank, but I can't hold fast to anything. I'm a horrible state of aggregation! Look, no hands, not in all my long life! When I fall in love I can't kiss, when I'm happy I can't strike the accordion keys. Yes, Aleksandar, I have a wonderful view, a wonderful view and all for nothing.