Kiko's son, Milan, sits down beside me and shows me a very large booger. Got any chocolate? he asks.
Do you go to nursery school? I ask him.
Hanifa was the first girl I spoke to in Sarajevo and the first girl I ever kissed at all, says Kiko, and he goes into the next room to find photos of the kiss.
And I'm going to be the last too, okay? she calls after him.
Not if our next is a daughter! says Kiko, coming back with photo albums. I volunteered to join up. Thought I could fix it so that I'd stay in the city. That worked for two years. Then I was sent to Mount Igman. We were told: the fate of Sarajevo depends on Mount Igman. I always had a ball with me. Always.
Got any sweets?
Kiko puts the album down on the table in front of me and gets down into a kind of crouching position beside Hanifa, which looks grotesque with one leg—I actually think that, grotesque, although at the same time I'm thinking that such a thought ought not to have crossed my mind.
Then the war broke out and no one called it war. People said: that. Or: the shit. Or: soon-be-over, like someone trying to make an injection easier for a child. Kiko had told Hanifa, you go away, and she said: I'll be back when it's over. Let's hope the shit will soon be over, thought Kiko, and he was sent to Mount Igman.
So there I was in the worst vukojebina anyone can imagine. Kiko shows me his beautiful Hanifa on the backseat of a moped in the photo album. He's sitting on the front seat without a helmet on. That was in the autumn of '91, he says. My moped! My pride and joy!
He leafs on through the album. Milan whines, rubbing his eyes.
Hanifa says: I learned a little German during those three years in Graz. But I couldn't translate vukojebina. Do you know vukojebina?
Where wolves . . . with each other . . . I say cautiously, with an eye on Milan.
Behind God's feet, Kiko says, I saw a horse throw itself into a ravine because it didn't have the strength to go on hauling our artillery up and down the mountain, along paths that weren't paths. It killed itself . . . Lost in thought, Kiko goes on leafing through the album. Here he is standing beside a giant of a man. The giant wears dungarees and a cap that looks lost on his massive head. They are both armed. Kiko has the lily of the Bosnian army on his breast pocket, the big man has the Serbian double eagle cockade on his cap. They have their arms around each other's shoulders and are looking grimly straight ahead. The bleak rocks tower grimly up behind them too.
Who's that? Kiko asks his son, pointing to the man in dungarees. The little boy stuffs half his fist into his mouth. Milan, who's that? Kiko repeats.
Čika Mickey Mouse! cries Milan happily, as if naming someone who always brings chocolate and sweets when he visits, and Hanifa says: yes, there's really no translating vukojebina.
There's no need to. Kiko puts Milan on his lap. No language but ours has a word to describe such a place, he says.
The soldier beside Kiko has his mouth open as if gasping for air. How did you come to have this photo taken? I ask.
A cease-fire. The man beside me is Milan Jevric, says Kiko, and his son shouts: Mickey Mouse! Kiko kisses the back of his head. It's because of him my Milan has a Serbian name. Kiko leafs on. A photo of him in a trench, ankle-deep in murky water. Mount Igman, behind God's feet, he says, and goes on turning the pages. The one in the green beret is Meho. A lunatic. A lunatic because he had too big a heart. And here am I giving cigarettes to the prisoners. Here's Hanifa and me in Mostar. My Milan after he was born, he weighed seven pounds, twelve ounces. We must sort these photos out some time, says Kiko, leafing through them, and the last one shows a ball, a worn old soccer ball lying in long grass.
I get on the one P.M. bus for Višegrad. Three other men are already sitting there, one of them is reading a newspaper, one is asleep, one is looking at me. I sit in the back row, the seats are patterned brown and yellow, the headrests have a greasy shine. One ÇÃ.ÇÀ. comes. Five past one comes. Outside the door a man with thinning hair and lines under his eyes smokes a cigarette, then another; after the third he climbs in and gets behind the wheel. Just before the engine starts, the bus sighs. I can understand how it feels; it doesn't have an easy time on these roads at this time of its life, I go to sleep with my head against the vibrating window.
The Drina wakes me. I open my eyes when the bus turns into a little village with a name I can't remember, driving down the road to Višegrad parallel with the river. A great many tunnels keep cutting off the daylight; only a few of them are lit at all. I move over to the window on the right-hand side; large rocks are piled up on the left, covered with thin moss and sparse plants struggling to survive. My river flows on the right. I confirm that thought to myself: my river, the deep green Drina, calm and immaculately clean. The anglers, the rocks, the many shades of green.
We approach the town along the winding road, past the dam. Driftwood and plastic have collected close to it. The valley widens out; we'll soon be able to see the bridge. Can you stop here, please, calls a young man who must have got in during the journey, and the bus groans.
When the view of the bridge comes in sight after a sharp bend I am surprised, although I was fully expecting to find everything the way it always was. I resist the reflex action of counting the arches; the bridge is complete. The driver puts a cassette in, and I think of Walrus and my promise never to shoot a music cassette. It's Madonna singing.
Hey, Boris, with all due respect, do you have to play that every time? asks the man with the newspaper. The driver turns up the volume, like a virgin, he sings, tapping the steering wheel in time.
To me, the bus station looks smaller than it used to but just as shabby. Boris makes for one of the five parking spaces, four dilapidated old buses parked over to one side, including —I recognize it at once—the Centrotrans bus in which Walrus drove through half of Yugoslavia. The carriage-work is in a bad way, rust is baring its teeth, gray weeds grow through the windows from inside, cover the wheel rims.
Where are you going, young man? Boris calls, but I act as if he doesn't mean me and go into the small waiting room in the station. There's no door anymore, the smell of urine rises to my nostrils, the ticket window is deserted, the paint on the walls, some kind of color between beige and yellow, is flaking.
Hello? I call. There's an echo, which doesn't reveal what happened to Armin, the stationmaster with the uncontrollable leg, he's on one of my lists.
Who are you looking for? Boris is standing behind me smoking, one hand playing with the key in his trouser pocket.
Armin the stationmaster, I say, turning to go, but Boris bars my way, draws on his cigarette, and says: there was never any Armin here.
Ah, I say, looking past Boris. The other passengers have disappeared. Boris, five buses, four of them wrecks with rusty wheel rims, and I, have to sort it out between us.
Where do you want to go? he asks, pointing his cigarette at my bag.
A man who listens to Madonna can't be dangerous, it occurs to me, and I say as casually as possible: oh, I'm visiting my grandmother.
Boris frowns, holds his cigarette between thumb and forefinger when he draws on it. What's her name?
Katarina, I say, louder than I intended, Katarina Krsmanovic, it's her blood sugar and diabetes, I say, stammering, she can't do much these days, I try to explain, but then I see a change come over the bus driver's face. His expression changes from pestering to curious. He lets me finish and after one last short pull on his cigarette, he puts it out with the sole of his shoe.
Do you know Miki Krsmanovic? he asks.
Yes, he's my uncle.
Your uncle, is he? Boris looks around, hitches up his trousers and puts on a huge pair of sunglasses. He reaches for my bag. I withdraw my hand and take a step into the waiting room. We're going the same way, he says.
Don't you have to drive any farther?
Yes, he says, but I don't like driving on an empty stomach. Come on, I'll help you with your bag.
That's all right, it's not heavy, I s
ay, taking it from him. Do you know my uncle?
No, he says, spitting through his teeth, no, I don't know him, thank God.
I've made lists. Nicknames. The man with the uncontrollable leg. Top Hat. My sad man. The three-dot-ellipsis man. Typhoon. The man who climbed the mountains singing and never came back. Walrus and Ladybird. Potato Aziz. Massacre. The soldier with gold in his mouth.
Boris and I pass the soccer stadium. Young men are training, doing headers, I think of Kiko's head. A man with a long braid throws them balls to be headed into the net. The man wears a suit and a silk scarf. There's no one in goal. Boris and I walk side by side in silence, the slap of the ball against the woodwork behind us. Boris shrugs. We cross the bridge over the Rzav where Edin and I fed the fish with spit on the day when the soldiers sang and danced. The river is shallow, white islands of foam drift with the current. I spit. The bridge has stood up to all high tides.
I've made lists. Barbel, chub, roach, gudgeon, dace, Danube salmon, carp, sunbleak, catfish with spectacles and a mustache.
We say no more about Uncle Miki. When I ask a question, Boris waves it away and brings up other subjects. He distracts me from the smells and colors of the town, asks how old I was back then, where exactly I've been living in Germany, whether I can get him a visa, what I think of the rumors about Madonna and Guy Ritchie. As we part outside the apartment building where Granny Katarina is living, he says: don't take offense, but it's like this. If you don't know anything you're an idiot. If you know a lot and admit it you're a dangerous idiot. Višegrad always knows just how much it may know, and how much it should tell.
In the yard outside the apartment building six black-haired boys are playing soccer, using their school satchels as goal-posts, the ball rolls to my feet; I put my bag down. After a moment's shyness they join in, who's on my side? I call, who's on my side? One of them runs clear on the left, Ci" ko! he calls, I pass it to him running; he has only the goalie ahead of him and feints.
There's no light in the stairwell; the light switches have been torn out, wires stick out of the holes, thin red and blue necks without any heads. The corridors are narrower and the flights of steps shorter than they used to be; the air smells as overpoweringly of bread as if everyone in the building were baking at the same time. No name by the bell where Teta Amela, the best baker in the world, used to live. My granny coughs behind the closed door with the name “Slavko Krsmanovic” beside the bell. The bell doesn't ring, no power, I knock.
I've made lists. The mosques. One of them is supposed to be being rebuilt. There are concrete plans for it, and concrete protests against it. Death notices still hang on the chestnut trees not far from the square where the minaret of the larger mosque once pointed to the sky. The ones with green rims are in Arabic letters, the ones with black rims have the cross on them. It's fourteen to one for the dead Christians. Very few Muslims have come home.
Aleksandar, says Granny Katarina, I've been baking bread. I'll put the milk on in a minute.
Our hug is a brief one. Granny comes up to my throat, she kisses me on the throat, I'm horrified by her and horrified by myself because I'm slightly repelled by her moist mouth and the tickling little hairs on her top lip. Come on, she says, you're tired, let's have a look at you. Oh yes, your Grandpa.
Granny's hair is dyed black, white roots show, she has a sourish smell like damp maize and is trying to pick up my bag. Do you drink coffee these days? she asks.
Leave that to me, I say, taking my bag into the bedroom. I can see the mark on the door frame telling me how tall I was on 6 April 1992: five feet. As the first shells were exploding, my father sharpened his pencil and called to me. Still time for this, stand here. Today I measure myself and cheat by standing on tiptoe, just as I cheated Father back then by one or two inches. I mark the wood of the door frame with a pencil line just above my hair. I smell milk in the kitchen. I wait, five feet, eleven inches tall, twelve minutes, and I drink the milk still warm.
I've made lists. The green house with the peculiar roof is still a green house with a peculiar roof. A bonsai in the single large window. A satellite dish on the peculiar roof. The roof slopes steeply almost all the way down to the ground. I peer through the window. A young woman is sitting cross-legged on a bamboo mat in the middle of the small room. She has closed her eyes. Her hands are resting on her knees, palms upward. Her thumbs and middle fingers are touching.
The old locomotive stands in the little park near the building. It's been restored and repainted. I pass my hand over the front of it: smooth, cool iron. Grandpa Rafik, gray, railway engine. An elderly couple of tourists ask me to take a picture of them in front of the engine. They wear panama hats. They're buying souvenirs made of wood, the bridge and the mosque as pendants, a mini Ivo Andric; there are no limits to my imagination.
I unpack. Diabetic cherry jam. Granny Katarina laughs heartily, I don't eat any jam I haven't made myself! She wraps the jam up again and asks me to put it away in the pajz.
List of smells: the cellar smells of peas and coal. The graveyard in Veletovo: freshly mown grass. Zoran's Aunt Desa: honey. Soldiers: iron and schnapps. The Drina: the Drina. The pajz, the larder: sour bread and rotten wood—and in it the bread box, cans, sugar, flour, bags inside more bags, moths, bottomless boxes and rusty mousetraps. My fishing rod has been lying behind a shelf ever since we left. I'll have to oil the spool; the hook is rusty. Granny, I call from the little room, since when have mice eaten corks?
We go everywhere now to drink coffee, says Granny, leaving the apartment. I respect a clever mouse, I call from the stairs.
To Granny coffee isn't just a drink: coffee is praising her neighbor's white net curtains to the skies because they're so well washed. I drink the first coffee of my life with my grandmother at Teta Magda's on the fourth floor. I've made lists. People living in the apartment building. Legend has it that I took my first steps in Magda's arms. Neither sweets nor plums nor minced meat were necessary on that occasion. With her long neck and long nose Magda looks like a stork. Magda from the fourth floor is now a weary and mythical figure; she has to prop her head up because it can't hold itself straight anymore. She puts her hand under it, which makes her look dreamy and exhausted at the same time. Her cheeks are hollow, her thin hair is strands of silvery lead. Oh, Katarina dear, says Magda, I could sleep and sleep until the cows come home. You've grown, Aleksandar. She examines me with her green eyes.
You're looking well, I say, not sure what I mean by that.
Yes, yes, says Magda, pulling a leaden strand back from her forehead. Back then, but you won't remember it anymore, she says, and Granny and I lean back, because now the legend is about to be sung in her worn old voice, back then you walked into my arms, tottered over to me without holding on to anything, a smile on your face, your conquests were just beginning, hello big world, I'm ready for you now, you were enchanted by your own strength, you'd found your sense of balance there in my arms.
Milomir from the first floor makes strong coffee. During the war, he says, my main worry was whether a grenade or a sniper would get me; now I have so many worries I don't know which is the main one. Pockmarked, arthritic, holding a lit cigarette behind his back, he bows and kisses my grandmother's hand as we leave. Katarina, he says to the hand, come and see me again soon.
After two sips you came to the coffee grounds.
I've made lists. Bars, restaurants, hotels. The Estuary Restaurant where the Rzav and the Drina meet, with a view of both rivers. I remember the domed building with its large terrace, I remember the rare evenings with mosquito bites and the sleepy croaking of the frogs when Father, Mother and I, just the three of us, sat in the Estuary and musicians came to our table. Father would fold a banknote and put it in the accordion, and the accordionist would grin and bow in my mother's direction.
Rubble, stones, iron bars, rusty beams and broken boards are woven into the round foundations of the Estuary to make a wreath. I'm standing in the middle of it now, looking at the Drina on my
left and the Rzav on my right. The shards of a saltshaker crunch under my feet. The frogs are croaking.
Granny Katarina and I sit in the living room watching Isabella. I've drunk so much coffee today that I'm shaking and I can't imagine ever being able to sleep again. That's not really the name of the soap opera, Isabella is the beautiful heroine, always suffering a little but good at heart. Granny watches three soaps a day: one at four in the afternoon, another at seven in the evening, and Isabella at nine. She injects insulin during the ads. I can't watch. She pushes up her blouse and tells me about a bomb that exploded under a newly married couple's table just as the bridegroom was cutting the cake. The bride and a dog that was asleep under the table at the bridegroom's feet died. They made the dog a little golden coffin and threw it into the Drina. The bride was buried in her wedding dress, but without her shoes, because they were only borrowed.
Granny injects insulin and breathes loudly through her mouth. I can't watch. I can't listen. The more stories I know, I say, turning up the volume on the TV, the less I know about myself.
Granny looks straight at the TV set. Isabella, she says, pressing her forefinger and middle finger to the place where the needle went in, ought not to trust her stepmother so blindly.
Someone, I write later in the when-everything-was-all-right book, which I'm going to give back to Granny before I leave, someone ought to invent a tool, a kind of plane to shave the lies away from stories and deception away from memories. I'm a collector of shavings.
I've made lists. Mr. Popović the music teacher. I ring at the door on the fourth floor, his wife Lena opens it, an elaborately dressed lady with her hair pinned up, gold earrings, and a musky perfume, she's ready to go out though she doesn't go anywhere. I don't have to explain anything to her. Katarina told me you were here, she says, smiling, come on in!
Mr. Popović turns the TV off and gets to his feet when I come into the living room. He looks at me curiously and gives me his hand. He doesn't remember me until his wife introduces me. Aleksandar! What a surprise! Sit down, my boy, sit down. To be honest, I'd hardly have recognized you. Mrs. Popović disappears into the kitchen and comes back a minute later to offer us a plate piled high with cheese, a beer for me, and for her husband water and two red pills on a silver salver.
How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone Page 23