How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone

by Sasa Stanisic

  Café Galerie. My list: bars, restaurants, hotels. Turbo-folk and Eminem and the boy with the side parting and a scar peeling off on his chin. He puts a fabric heart on every table, and under the heart a handwritten explanation of his disability. There are red hearts and pink hearts. The boy doesn't look anyone in the eye, he's almost invisible amid the drunken singing. They know the songs by heart in the Café Galerie, and the boy collects his fabric hearts with as much concentration as if he were clearing an empty room. It's hot, the café is too full, the window panes are clouded with condensation.

  It's odd, I say to Zoran, this is the first time I've been out in Višegrad.

  They have teletext screens here too, with results coming in live. Essen versus Düsseldorf, one-all. I've won.

  Zoran says: you don't miss much.

  We're sitting opposite each other in the far corner of the café, I can hardly hear him, the speaker is right above our heads. Zoran keeps silent most of the time, I ask questions and seldom get more than a shake of his head in return. Sitting in silence with Zoran was never really uncomfortable, it was more of a feeling that I didn't know what to say to get the words out of him. It's much the same this evening: never mind if I talk about the war, the time after the war, women, studies, soccer—nothing in Zoran reacts, his answers are brief, mostly no more than gestures. After the third beer, I give up shouting remarks on these subjects into Zoran's ear like a journalist. I lean back in my chair and nod in time to the music. Zoran orders two beers and then waves to me as if calling me in from another room. He comes quite close to my ear and shouts, so loud that it makes me jump: look around you, Aleks! Just look around you! Do you know anyone here? You don't even know me! You're a stranger, Aleksandar! Zoran stares at me at close quarters. You'd better be glad of it!

  I say, as an aside: I only want to compare my memories with here and now.

  Zoran's eyes are red, he doesn't blink. I'll tell you something by way of comparison! he shouts, sounding angry, and not just because his voice is raised.

  aleksandar?

  Hello?

  aleksandar?

  Who's there? I can't hear you at all well!

  it's me it's me the trees are so tall here so healthy it's lovely trees so tall

  Nena? Nena Fatima, is that you?

  i saw it in the moonlight on my way it has such a slender neck i want to go

  up it tomorrow i want to

  Nena, where are you, what . . .

  two black people are putting my tent up they're polite but i can't sleep there

  it's far too cold

  tomorrow we'll take the way with the strongest wind

  i'll be sitting by the crater at midday

  What? Does Mama know . . . ?

  oh dear boy why should I wait any longer yes it's me here

  snow will lie on Mount St. Helens they say

  i want to be proud of something no one would believe of me

  Nena, please put Mama on the line, is she there?

  you really can't be happy in silence forever my boy i have a good reason now

  i've oh yes dear boy i've flown and i had to strap myself in but i didn't

  Nena . . .

  aleksandar i was never happier i'm going to throw a stone into a volcano

  Will you call Mama, please, will you call her now?

  don't worry she'll understand

  the black people don't understand me i want to sleep in the hut i'm going in

  there now

  oh dear boy dear boy such tall trees and such space to breathe and an

  unmasked moon

  Nena . . . Will you do me a favor?

  you have rafik's voice my boy

  Will you throw a stone in for me too?

  i will dear boy i'll throw a whole mountain in

  i'm there now.

  Nena Fatima giggles. Nena Fatima's laughter is the laughter of a boy.

  I try to be as quiet as possible, the garden gate squeals, I sit down at a small table that wasn't here before. The gate doesn't belong to us, nor does the garden or the table. Only what was here before still belongs to us, Nena and me; the sunflowers in my Nena's garden used to turn her way when she braided her hair.

  Nothing moves inside the house. The view of the Drina doesn't belong to us either: when the poplars and chestnuts were blossoming it used to snow in summer on the riverbanks outside the house. Nena stood under the trees letting down her hair. A rope hung from one of the chestnuts, a tire dangled from the rope, a boy dangled from the tire, trembling with cold and pleasure as the leaping wind sowed flower flakes.

  The view of the bridge doesn't belong to us. I held tight to the soapy stone of the fifth arch of the bridge, feeling furious with Grandpa Slavko for the first and only time. He had made me swim through the arches, but it was too cold for me, the current was too strong. I was scared and I didn't want to dis- appoint him. I swam again and again, upstream through the arches, downstream through the arches, until the Drina received me with casual persistence, as if my body belonged to the river. The light breaking through the surface of the water, seen from below, was uncanny when it began to burn in my head behind my nose. Grandpa reached for me, slipping away, disappearing, dragged me coughing and protesting to the bank, said: you'll soon be seven, you must be able to swim through all the arches by then.

  The poplars and chestnuts have gone for firewood. A dog is rummaging in the rubbish on the bare slope. An angler stands near the drainpipe feeding bread to the fish. I never did swim through all the arches, Grandpa, but Nena will throw a stone into the magma for me.

  Aleksandar, I know what skin looks like when the person it belongs to is tied behind a cart and dragged through the town for hours. Back and forth, Zoran shouts through the music. Do you remember Čika Sead? People say they impaled him and roasted him like a lamb somewhere near the Sarajevo road. If you remember Čika Sead you'll remember Čika Hasan. He gave eighty-two pints of blood before the war, he was always boasting about it. They took Čika Hasan to the bridge every day to throw the bodies of the people they'd executed into the river. Hasan spread the arms of the dead wide, he supported their bodies with his own, he let them rest against him before he let them go. He buried eighty-two of the dead in the river Drina. And when they ordered him to throw in the eighty-third he climbed on the railings and spread his own arms out. That's all, they say he said, I don't want any more.

  I've made lists. Čika Hasan and Čika Sead.

  Pokor isn't on any of the lists. On the way back from Nena Fatima's house—986 steps—I meet a policeman trying to stuff an enormous net bag of onions through the door of his police car. When he takes his cap off in his struggle with the onions I recognize him by his untidy red hair. Pokor was a policeman before the war too. I often met his son out fishing—we were good at keeping quiet with each other. Later, the rumor that Pokor had been promoted—from easygoing policeman to leader of a violent band of irregulars—reached us even in Germany. Pokor was nicknamed Mr. Pokolj, and it was said that Mr. Bloodbath often ordered his men to live up to his name.

  Mr. Pokolj is in Liberation Square, which isn't called that anymore now; it bears the name of some Serbian king or hero. Pokor is only Pokor again and wears his blue police uniform. He struggles with the net of onions, but it won't go through the door. The whole car is full of onions; their skins peel off and drift out into the street. Other cars drive slowly around the blue Golf, and I stop. Pokor throws the net bag on the ground and kicks it several times, snorting with rage. Breathing heavily, he looks around and hitches up his trousers, which are slipping down over the crack between his buttocks. There are onions in his trouser pockets too. He jerks his head challengingly at me: what's the matter? What are you gaping at?

  Can I help you? I ask.

  So whose are you? replies Pokor.

  I don't understand the question at once, no one's asked me that for so many years; only gradually does it dawn on me that by “whose” he means who are my parents—it's a questio
n you ask children who have lost their way. I tell him my father's first name and last name.

  You're Aleksandar, right? He repeats my father's first name, and speaks my mother's too, he says it twice; the second time it's a question. I ought to repeat her name immediately, in a firm voice, I ought to confirm my mother's beautiful Arabic name proudly and tell Pokor that it means “ship,” or “spring,” or “pleasure.” And I ought to tell Pokor to his face that it is monstrous for murderers to be able to go around freely in this country, and not just that, but wearing a police uniform too. However, I hesitate; I look past the man in his grubby blue uniform to the onions filling the whole car. I hesitate, and swallow, and pretend not to have heard the question. I can't swallow the shame rising inside me.

  Pokor gives himself a little shake as if he were cold. Miki's in town, is he? he asks, and when I don't reply he squeezes himself, without a word of good-bye, into the car, which is much too small for such a man and such a quantity of onions.

  Here I am, afraid of a Serbian policeman described as a “presumed war criminal,” and people say “there are plenty of witnesses to that.” Perhaps it's a groundless fear, but it's enough to make me disown my mother to the little policeman Pokor who has put on sixty-five pounds in the last ten years and is now surrounded by a strong smell of onions. He leaves that last net bag lying on the asphalt. And fails to give way to another driver as he turns into the street that—like the square where I stand rooted to the spot by shame—now has a new name. The name of a king or a hero.

  I've made lists but that's not the point.

  I've made lists. Girls. Elvira. Danijela. Jasna. Nataša. Asija. No, Marija, you can't join in. Marija was too young and too girlie for just about everything we wanted to do.

  Her mother opens the door, a dark-haired woman with rosy cheeks, Marija's curls, and floury handprints on her apron. She points apologetically to the apron and goes into the kitchen. Come on in, Aleks! she cries—in German. Pots and pans clatter, oil hisses, you're looking well, she cries, your granny said you were coming to visit. Want to see Marija? She's downstairs.

  Yes, I'd like to say hello, I reply, also in German, relieved by this uncomplicated encounter.

  She's in the cellar, says Marija's mother, peering out of the kitchen. There'll be schnitzels in a moment.

  Down on the ground floor a cat startles me, hissing and jumping up. I stop; the cat stops and circles around me. Music drifts up from the cellar, light casts the shadow of the banisters on the wall. I follow the gray cat down, what's Marija doing here? The music gets louder. I'm not going back down the steps of my memory, I'm going down into a cellar, it's only a cellar.

  This is where my parents quarreled.

  This is where I was the fastest.

  This is where frightened Asija sat.

  This is where a soldier passed the butt of his rifle over the posts of the banisters, clack-clack-clack-clack-clack.

  It's only a cellar. I've gone around in enough circles these last few days. I'd like to be a pigeon; pigeons never do anything but what they always do. There's a small CD player on the floor. I know the playful beat. “Swayzak.”

  Swayzak, a young woman says on the other side of the room reading my thoughts. I met James Taylor in Munich, he told me that whatever he dreams, there are always dogs in it, barking at him. It felt so strange that he got himself a Doberman and slept in the same bed with it, and the dream dogs shut up. Hello! says Marija in her wraparound skirt made of scarf fabric with another scarf in her hair to keep her curls off her forehead. She hands me a spatula as thin as the edge of a screwdriver, points to a small wound on her thumb, says: the bloody cat scared me. Marija's eyes are yellowy green in the dim light, she bows her head, dust over her eyebrows, lips pressed to the wound.

  Hello, I say, I'm Aleksandar.

  Are we going to introduce ourselves to each other, shaking hands and all that? says Marija, smiling.

  I look for a handkerchief for her thumb although I know I don't have one, I'm thinking: what a green those eyes are! I'm thinking: after all, I've made lists. Marija switches the music off. I'll show you around, she says, but let's eat first, you will eat with us, won't you? Good.

  The schnitzels are coated with egg and breadcrumbs, Marija and her mother describe Munich to me. Marija says: the Starnberger See, says: you just automatically support FC Bayern, says: of course I'm going back there, as soon as I'm finished with my work here, says: I can't manage without good music. The two of them have been living near Munich for eight years, they came back because Marija's grandfather died and her grandmother fell sick—she's sitting at the table with us, rocking back and forth and smiling whenever her name is spoken. I tell them what I like about Essen, I defend the Ruhr when Marija says it's a dreary dump; we talk about dialects and mentalities, we talk about Germany, no I say, really, Sylt is better than its reputation. Marija asks if I've ever pushed a sleeping cow over, laughs, and puts her hand in front of her mouth as if to catch her laughter.

  Marija, you can't play, she says later in the evening, of course I still remember that, boys!

  The second glass of wine tastes of caramel, we lie on yellow loungers in the cellar. Marija is studying art in Belgrade, sculpture, it's her second year. She calls what she's doing here her first serious work, she doesn't think too much about things that are larger or more abstract than the seasons, so she makes plaster models of ordinary people and puts tennis socks on them, or ear muffs with rabbit ears, or a T-shirt with an ad for an arthritis remedy. She's hung wall coverings in the two largest rooms in the cellar, aluminum spirals hang from the ceiling, plastic bows, colored glass mosaics, papier-mâché dolls, and there's a landscape painting in the middle of the room: conceptualist, says Marija, and Provence! A generator gives a little light, the rough, gray walls of the past seem to me as improbable as

  the plywood tables by the longer wall,

  our mothers' anxious voices,

  the stove in the corner,

  Čika Aziz's C64 around which we gathered while the town

  took a beating outside,

  the yellow begonias under the ventilation grating where

  Marija now stores her scrapers, knives and files. She's made casting boxes out of the plywood tabletops, square frames covered with veneer.

  My last boyfriend was the Serbian Tae Kwon Do Number Two, she says. We were together for twelve hours, then he told me he was the Serbian Tae Kwon Do Number Two. Marija pauses. Are you really all right, Aleksandar?

  Not always, I say, raising my glass, but I am now.

  To the people we knew, she says, drinking. Have you ever heard from Edin?

  He's in Spain.

  And?

  I examine the color of the wine closely. Black currant color. To be honest, I don't know any more. All I know is that he is or was in Spain. I called him once but he was out. I left my number on the answering machine, he never called back.

  And that's all? I don't believe it, Aleks! You two were inseparable! A single phone call . . .

  I've called Sarajevo three hundred times, I say.

  Marija waits for me to go on. Are you doing all right? I ask instead. It's colder now, we've nearly finished the wine, and this evening I don't want to remember anything that's more than three hours old.

  I put boxer shorts on little plaster men, says Marija, finishing her wine. Shall we have breakfast together tomorrow? Will you fetch me? she asks, writes down my phone number, pulls off her headscarf and takes the cellar stairs two at a time.

  I switch off the music. The generator hums. I breathe in deeply. Plaster. I sit down on the stairs.

  There are the loungers.

  There are the wall hangings.

  There are the empty wine bottles.

  There's a priest with a Tarzan apron frying a fish.

  There's a boy in a tanga buttering bread.

  There's the gray cat asleep.

  Here am I. The rules of the game say it's an armistice at the bottom of the stairs.
Here on the steps, Asija sat beside me, crying. Here am I, who didn't mean to remember anything else this evening.

  Here was Uncle Bora chain-smoking at one of the plywood tables, telling us he'd vowed to give up smoking the day before, Pioneer's word of honor! The plywood tables were put together so that we could eat and play dominoes more easily. I learned the word “provisional” and two men carried a stove into the cellar. The stove isn't here anymore, but a man in flip-flops is mowing the lawn over there, and my uncle swore he meant his vow seriously, Sundays are the best days to give something up, and Mondays are the best days to start something. Just before midnight, he said, he'd smoked his last pack, and then he began constructing famous buildings with matches: the Eiffel Tower, the Egyptian pyramids, the Berlin Wall. When the first grenades fell on Višegrad in the morning, one of them hit the roof of Uncle Bora's house. Auntie Typhoon dropped the breakfast tray in fright, the two coffee cups lost their handles, and my uncle praised his glue in glowing terms: the Berlin Wall stood firm whereas the tiles of his roof and the dishes hadn't.

  Since Bora, Typhoon and their little Ema moved into Granny's cellar, Uncle Bora has been smoking again, describing what it sounded like, and how everything shook when the shell took the tiles off his roof. He balances a small square clump of matches on his knees, pointing to it every time he says, “The Berlin Wall.”

  Auntie Typhoon sits opposite him, breast-feeding little Ema. I can hear my mother say to Granny Katarina: Gordana looks so pale.

  That upsets me. Not because Auntie Typhoon is pale, or so unusually quiet, but because my mother calls her by her proper name. I paint a chamomile flower without a stalk and give it to my aunt because I know that chamomile tea is soothing. Ema reaches for the paper. Her whole hand fits in my fist.

  After the fiftieth hit I stop counting—I'd rather count the kittens. A gray mother cat is washing her four gray kittens in the far corner of the cellar. Uncle Bora has told everyone present the tale of the coffee cups, the roof, and the glue twice over; that means he's uttered the word “handles” about sixty times, he has said, “The GDR was just a joke” about twenty times, and he's asked, “My God, what's going on here?” exactly three times.