How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone

by Sasa Stanisic

  The cellar is large enough, three hundred footsteps from corner to corner and corner to corner. No one sends us out to play, although everything is said in whispers as if we ought not to hear it. We're beginning to get bored. Marija is blindfolded and can't find anyone, she wanders down the corridors, groping her way. Neo is here, Edin is here. When I talk to Marija I always look at her hair. Marija has curlier hair than anyone else I know. I have to look at her dimples too because they make little whirlpools in her cheeks when she laughs. And at her eyes, because they're yellow and green. In the cellar Marija spends most of her time playing alone under the begonias in the ventilation shaft, she makes little pans and spoons and a table out of plasticine, and drinks invisible coffee with invisible guests out of plasticine cups.

  More and more people who don't live in the building stream into the cellar. I'm particularly glad to see Walrus and Zoran. And Milica the ladybird trips her way down to us too. Walrus has brought a bag full of fruit. There's a lot of firing in the mountains, he says, it nearly got the green house with the peculiar roof, the one where the Japanese disappeared, and the vegetable shop on the corner. But I left money on the counter, honest I did. We need vitamins. He breaks an apple in two and gives Zoran half of it.

  Do mosquitoes actually suck the vitamins from our blood?

  Milica sits down beside Auntie Typhoon in her red and black outfit. Lovely, she says to Ema's downy hair and to the rest of us all around, I hope it's all right for us to stay until this is over.

  I started liking Milica long ago.

  I don't ask the following questions:

  Who's firing?

  Who are they firing at?

  Why?

  When will it be over?

  Will roofs burn in Višegrad like the roofs burning in Osijek?

  Will the soccer season go ahead?

  Will school go ahead?

  Who's defending us?

  When will it be over?

  Suppose a shell hits Grandpa Slavko's grave?

  Why doesn't Auntie Typhoon stand up, run off and disarm them all before they can reload?

  Will the building fall on us if one of those cramped, polished things hits it?

  Is it all the same as usual for the fish now?

  What do we need?

  What is the pocketknife for?

  What are the fifty marks for, and what exactly does it mean when someone says: in case we get separated?

  My God, what's going on here?

  When will it be over?

  Where is Nena Fatima?

  My mother! screams my mother, rushing out of the cellar. Father catches up with her halfway up the stairs, are you out of your mind, he cries.

  I forgot my mother, oh, let me go! She can't hear what's going on outside, that's why, just let me go!

  But Father doesn't let her go, he has one arm around her.

  I have to go find her, says Mother, a little more calmly, trying to twist out of his grasp. Father takes her by the shoulders, tries to force her down the stairs again, there's a silent tussle, Mother moans.

  I feel embarrassed by my parents. I don't like to think they forgot Nena, and now everyone is staring at them. I sit there, wondering to myself in Uncle Bora's voice: my God, what's going on here? It's shell-firing time, and my parents look as if they're about to fight each other. Mother isn't fighting back so hard now. I forgot her, she says, my own mother, she wails, pressing the balls of her hands to her eyes. Milica comforts her, it will be all right, he'll be with her in a moment. By “he” she means my father. No one stops him halfway up the stairs.

  My God, what's going on here?

  My God, what's going on here?

  My God, what's going on here?

  Čika Aziz, known to us as Potato Aziz because of his large toes, first tied a white scarf around his forehead as a headband, then he plugged in his C64 down in the cellar, and now he is making a speech. Gun in the crook of his arm, barrel pointing at the ceiling, sunglasses in his shirt pocket, toothpick in the corner of his mouth: everyone come over here!

  Everyone goes over there. When I'm as old as Aziz I'll have side whiskers too and I'll be Comrade in Chief of the Cowboys' Defense. I'll use any number of toothpicks and call loud and clear: everyone come over here!

  Aziz, by your mother's life, tell us what's going on? says Čika Milomir from the first floor. Milomir must go on smoking even in his sleep, he smells so strongly of cigarettes. Aziz looks past him, looks past us all, tightens his belt by one notch. With his khaki trousers and his open shirt over a white undershirt Aziz is a provisional soldier but also the only person in sight with a real weapon, even Walrus doesn't have his shotgun with him. Aziz lives on the third floor and has the most amazing games on his C64. He says to the air above our heads: now, everyone step back. However, those prepared to face the aggressor in defense of this building and the persons around it come with me.

  Nobody moves.

  Who's the aggressor?

  Why is he aggressing?

  How many cramped, polished things will a dam stand up to?

  Can Aziz save us?

  Which is worse: if a bullet hits you and comes out again through your ribs, or if a bullet hits you and stays there, for instance in the neck, or if thirty cramped, polished items hit the dam and there's a flood?

  Will Višegrad look like the village below Francesco's Lago di Vajont?

  What's the technique for shifting a toothpick from one corner of your mouth to the other so fast?

  Nena Fatima sows sunflowers in her garden. Nena Fatima is as deaf as a post, so she doesn't hear the cannons sowing shells over our town. I don't believe my Nena is deaf at all. She always looks at me as if she understands every word, and knows clever answers to every question, and once, after they said what the fourth number in the lottery was, she ran out of the kitchen into the living room and she had all four numbers, and was waiting for the fifth. You can't see the TV set from the kitchen.

  But then a shell hits the hill above Nena's little house and all she does is—she goes on just as usual, loosening the earth with a hoe and sowing sunflower seeds. Gunfire, flames, sirens, and Nena Fatima connects the hose to the tap outside the house and waters the ground.

  My Nena went deaf the day Grandpa Rafik married the river Drina, facedown. The marriage was legal because Nena and Grandpa Rafik had been divorced for years, something unusual in our town. After Grandpa Rafik was buried, they say she said at his graveside: I haven't cooked anything, I haven't brought anything, I haven't put on black clothes, but I have a whole book full of things to forgive you. They say she took out a stack of notes and began reading aloud from them. They say she stood there for a day and a night, and word by word, sentence by sentence, page by page she forgave him. After that she said no more, and she never reacted to any kind of question again.

  Nena Fatima has eyes as keen as a hawk's, kyu, ket-ket; she always recognizes me before I turn into her street, and she wears head scarves. Nena's hair is a secret—long and red and beautiful, she gives the secret away to me as we sit outside her little house eating börek in summer and feeding the Drina with minced meat. Cold yogurt, salted onions, the warmth of Nena rocking silently as she sits cross-legged. The dough is shiny with good fat. Nena rocks back and forth and lights a cigarette when I've had enough. I am the quietest grandson in the world, so as not to disturb her stillness and our sunset. Sultry heat gathers over the river and looks attentively at Nena Fatima, who is humming as she plaits her secret into a long braid. I don't laugh with anyone as softly as with my Nena, I laugh with her until I'm exhausted, I don't comb anyone else's hair.

  Nena Fatima comes down into the cellar with my father. She stops on the bottom step of the stairs, like Aziz making his speech. She straightens her head scarf, leaving an earth mark on her forehead.

  She was in the garden, says Father.

  Mother hugs Nena Fatima, furious and glad, as if Nena were her daughter and had run away. Nena points to her mouth with her thumb: I'm
thirsty. I write “Fatima” on a mug. All the mugs have our names. I've called one “Slavko,” another “Johann Sebastian,” a third “Herpes,” and a fourth “Jürgen the biker.” Milica thought that was incredibly funny, and wrote “Ladybird” on hers. Nena drinks the mug of water. She washes her hands with water from the second mugful. Everyone is looking at her. She opens her mouth, taking a deep breath as if to explain herself. But then she just yawns, smacks her lips with relish, and kisses Ema on the forehead.

  Ema is a depository for kisses.

  Nena, I whisper, good, good!

  If you hear that racket all day long, and then it stops, you wonder: where has the noise gone? Is it coming closer so as to score hits more accurately? Has the ammunition run out? Don't soldiers work in shifts? Or is it all over? In spite of this nocturnal calm I have to sleep on the floor; rule number one is to keep away from the windows, says my mother. I sleep under the coffee table, Mother has stuck a pillow to the bottom of the table above my head, so that I don't hurt myself if I wake and sit up suddenly. She covers me up.

  An apartment building, and everyone's sleeping on the floor because you'd be closer to the window on a bed. Everyone watches TV from the floor. There's nothing but news and press conferences and pictures of people in long lines. I learn what “organized resistance” means, who the Territorial Defense are, and what barricades are for.

  I close my eyes and hear Grandpa Slavko's voice. In the living room and in the cushion above my head and outside the window. I concentrate on it so hard, trying to make out where the voice is coming from, that I don't understand a word of it. Grandpa has come back to life for the first time since he died, and I've missed out. I haven't a hope of going to sleep now, I get a toothpick from the kitchen and break rule number one: someone is crossing the road junction outside the building with a fridge on his back. It's Radovan Bunda from the fifth floor; he never once puts the fridge down, and goes on along the road into the dark. I lie down under the table again, waiting for Grandpa's voice to come back. By midnight I can shift the toothpick from one corner of my mouth to the other very fast. The next morning my father wakes me.

  Here, Aleksandar. Your uncle left you the Wall.

  Where's he gone?

  Hm.

  Uncle Bora, Auntie Typhoon and Ema left the town overnight. No one thought it was a good idea, no one thought it wasn't a good idea, no one stopped them.

  If I were a magician who could make things possible, we'd all be as fast on our feet as Auntie Typhoon so that we could avoid every bullet. And the clouds would cling together like cobwebs so that the shells would stick to them. The gunfire would have its own opinion; it could decide whether to fire or not.

  I paint a campfire without any smoke. I paint a baked bean casserole without any beans. I paint a sniper's gun without any sniper. I paint a sheet of paper without a crease in it.

  My mother is very keen not to forget any more family members today; after the second detonation she hauls me away from the door where I'm listening to Father and Mr. Popović the music teacher. He may be up there now, says Father to Mr. Popović, and what will he do if they order him: shoot, Miki! What will he do then?

  He'll refuse, replies the distinguished old gentleman. Miki is a good boy. He'll have made his way to safety long before then. He's a clever lad.

  The light in the stairwell flickers when a third explosion comes, one of those cramped, polished items quite close. People run down the corridors to the cellar in their pajamas. Teta Magda serves the coffee on a large tray. She curses roundly and kicks the door of Teta Amela's apartment several times with the toe of her shoe: Amela-a, bring some sugar with you if God gives you luck Amela-a!

  Aziz waves us through like a traffic cop, I stop and ask: Čika Aziz, isn't it a bit dangerous, sleeping with a toothpick in your mouth? And as I ask my question I shift my own toothpick from left to right.

  After shaving, Aziz doesn't look so much like a soldier.

  Strangers at the plywood tables in the cellar. They don't ask if they can stay, which is a good thing, because it seems to me that of course they can. Milica looks after them, talks to everyone, takes off her red high-heeled shoes, is barefoot as she helps them to sort out their baggage.

  Zoran says: come on, no, Marija, you can't join in.

  With everyone's united strength, the ventilator grating is raised and pushed to one side. Are you scared? Zoran asks. Who'd admit it now? We're already outside, crossing the yard. We stop outside the kiosk in Tito Street. No one in sight. Explosions in the distance.

  Hey, not bad, says Zoran, showing us the blonde wearing green camouflage trousers and nothing else on page four. He puts the stone he's used to break the tobacconist's window in his trouser pocket. Tobacconists, watch out when there's a Walrus about!

  Edin reads the front page of yesterday's newspaper. Nothing about war yet, he says, just barricades and sports. We could do with a time machine, there's a flash and we go back to last week and warn everyone. And no one believes us because we don't even know what the barricades are there for.

  I do, I say, but before I can explain there's a shrill whistling over our heads, there's a genuine flash, glass breaks, a shove on my back pushes me to the ground. I shield my face with my hands, splinters fall on me, a shower of glass like hail, someone shouts.

  Smoke rises from the asphalt. Zoran and Neo are lying in the street, stretched flat. Edin is still standing there with the newspaper in his shaking hands. Edin is pale, so pale, with blood running from his nose, that I feel as if all his blood is draining out of his face through his nostrils.

  Oh, go fuck the sailor-woman, spits Zoran, frantically shoving the section of the paper with unusual careers for women under his shirt. Neo slowly gets to his feet. His hand is bleeding; he counts his fingers. The blast caught all the windows in the building opposite, including the big display window of the shoe shop on the ground floor. Edin says: I'm hearing everything and nothing at the same time. He licks blood from his upper lip with his tongue. The tobacconist's window behind him is full of holes; cracks have sucked their way into the glass, splaying out.

  I get to my knees, Zoran gives me a hand.

  A large triangle of glass, pointy end down, comes away from the window frame rather late in the day and breaks on the pavement, a starting shot: we run for it, four Carl Lewises, two in pajamas, two bleeding. Were you scared? Zoran asks again, and in spite of everything we're not going to admit it in front of Zoran.

  Is there any glass in my back? I ask.

  Edin taps his forehead with his finger: I can hear a kind of note, he says, a very, very shrill kind of note.

  The Berlin Wall in my trouser pocket is still in one piece.

  Is Ema safe? is what I don't ask after we've stolen back to the cellar as if nothing had happened.

  My hand shaking, I paint a slim Uncle Bora.

  Am I bleeding?

  I paint a wound without any blood.

  Suppose that man really does blow up our dam the way he swears he will on the radio, cursing, although the other man tells him: with all due respect, please don't do that! The man at the dam has wrecked Ivo Andric's statue in the park by the bridge too, with a sledgehammer. He's capable of anything.

  I paint a lizard with a tail.

  Suppose someone finds out we broke into the tobacconist's?

  How much dynamite does it take to blow up a dam like that, and what would the river Drina and the fish think of that?

  I paint a moment of peace.

  Over there a baby in a military tunic is reading the newspaper.

  Over there a boy with a gold tooth is putting on a Rolex.

  Over there a one-eyed giant with a cross on a string around his neck and a crescent moon on his armband is stirring a pot.

  Over there a dentist in a miniskirt is busy drilling.

  Here am I on the steps down to the cellar. Here is Asija beside me. Asija's long fingernails.

  Over there a woman in an apron is feeding a dog with
miniatures of a woman in an apron.

  Over there a still unhewn figure is hoovering; here, Asija is saying: your pictures are horrible, twisting her hair around her finger. I'm Asija, she says. They took Mama and Papa away. My name means something. A man once came to our village to answer all our questions. He was as thin as a rake, with only one ear, and you had to shout into it so that he would understand the question. Everyone in the village could ask the one-eared man a question, and in return for the answer they gave him a box with ten chicks inside, or a bottle of schnapps, or an envelope. The one-eared man had a one-eared horse that pulled a cart. The cart was piled high with presents. I showed the man a piece of wood with my name scratched into the bark. What does Asija mean? I shouted in his ear. No idea, the one-eared man shouted back, why do you ask? He had such a strong smell of new wine and horses that I had to wash my face in our stream. A year later the soldiers lined up everyone from the village. Uncle Ibrahim and I managed to hide in the forest. A soldier read the names on our papers out loud. Another soldier crossed himself and poured gasoline over the door of our house.

  Over there a gentleman with a monocle is cleaning his teeth.

  Over there a woman with a top hat is shaving her legs.

  Rules of the game: the place at the bottom of the stairs means memories. I stand up and switch the generator off. The light goes out.

  A list: silences. Silence of those dark seconds with Asija in the stairwell before we press the light switch. Silence baring its fangs. My father. Silence after Kamenko fires his shot. Francesco and the silence of the veranda. My silent Nena Fatima. The silence of my last ten years.

  The box is still behind the wardrobe in Granny's bedroom. I lay the pictures out on the floor. I lay the pictures out on the chest of drawers, I lay the pictures out on the beds. I lay the pictures out on the windowsill, on the table, under the table. Ninety-nine pictures of unfinished things, with writing on the back, I'm going to finish painting every one of them now. There isn't a picture of an unfinished childhood among them. I'll begin with the hawk diving through the air, the hawk I painted that day in the Lagoon of Light, I am still the . . .