Asylum Road

by Olivia Sudjic

He asked me about the last time I’d seen them in person and I lied and said I couldn’t recall. That was my mother’s way of dealing with things she didn’t want to discuss, but I could remember it perfectly. It had been a weekend visit after my niece Hana was born. While my sister slept, I’d taken her baby for a walk in Veliki Park. There were lots of women pushing prams, but I held Hana, about six months old, tightly to my chest, stopping on a bench. Her little hand caressed one of the rotating memorial cylinders that bear the names of children who died during the siege. I realised I was gripping her too tight. Protectively. She began writhing so I loosened my hold a little, but when I next looked down, I saw a leaf disappearing into the dark O of her throat. She must have plucked it from a low branch over my shoulder, and now she began to choke.

  I held her upside down and beat her violently until it came loose. She started screaming and would not stop although I reassured her, and myself, this had been an act of love.

  When we arrived in my parents’ neighbourhood, Luke’s expression was that of a child who realises he has followed the wrong figure in a crowd. He looked at me as if I was a stranger.

  It hasn’t aged well, I found myself saying. It’s different from the Austro-Hungarian stuff.

  What are you getting defensive about, brutalism?

  It’s supposed to be about collective living.

  Relax, you’re making me nervous.

  Sorry. I’m sorry.

  So, he rubbed his hands, Elena and Jusuf?

  He said it once more under his breath as we stood waiting for someone to buzz us inside the building.

  And she’s a teacher?

  Yes. Was.

  I’d not told him she’d been sacked for teaching Macbeth to her class and setting them the task of writing a suicide note.

  And your dad?

  A writer.

  Like books or?

  Sort of . . . bits of journalism. For a local paper.

  And your sister’s name again?

  Daria.

  And her husband?

  Boyfriend. He won’t be there.

  But his name?

  I, I actually can’t remember.

  My sister answered and told us which floor to come up to. In the lift I took his hand and watched his face, half in shadow in the mirror, his expression set. But I’d noted his disorientation before he caught it. As the lift rumbled upward, smelling of stale smoke, I slid the ring on my finger around to hide the yellow diamond.

  Hana answered the door. She wore a translucent nightgown like some gothic heroine, and a chalky substance on her skin that smelt medicinal. I bent to embrace her but she took a quick step back and held her palm up to stop me.

  Chickenpox, she said with the dignity of someone terminally ill. I’m off school. Have you had it?

  Oh. Yes.

  Noli me tangere.

  In that case, she submitted graciously, we can touch.

  The calamine smell was overpowering. Luke looked on bemused, waiting for an explanation. Hana glanced at him shyly, then waved us both through and ran out of sight, leaving us standing in the small corridor.

  She has chickenpox. You’ve had it right?

  No, he said slowly. I don’t think so.

  Oh. Well this probably isn’t the right time to be exposed to it.

  I don’t know. I’ll ask my mum.

  He retreated to the doorway and took out his phone. I studied what was visible of the apartment – I didn’t know it but I also did.

  The little ghost returned with a glass bowl of bright orange crisps in one hand and a bag of peanuts in the other.

  This way, she said primly.

  She wanted me to see a house she’d made for woodlice on the balcony, though all the lice must have recently escaped. Luke joined us and stood gazing at the view. The hills dotted with white tombstones.

  It was a relief to me that we’d been met by Hana, who appeared to harbour no discernible resentment, though I’m sure Daria discussed her own antipathy toward me in front of her daughter.

  How old are you, I asked, as she crouched down to shut the sliding door again behind us.

  I’m six now. And three-quarters.

  The sun was nearly gone and I began to feel cold. Luke had seated himself in a plastic chair and was still scanning the silhouette of the hills as the sky turned swiftly violet. Setting off the geraniums growing in the red slouchy boots that were actually terracotta pots. My father adored these – one of the few things we still had from the first flat. Or he might’ve bought a replica. I guess that makes more sense. I felt Luke throbbing beside me, as if he was about to go on stage.

  Actually Hana, I’m a little cold can we go back inside now?

  She took a crisp from the bowl as she led us back again, the white gown floating behind her. It had been my mother’s, I now realised. I motioned to Luke to sit down.

  She set the crisps down on the table. I noted her downy moustache and seeming unselfconsciousness. I thought of myself, two years older, on my first day at Mosspark. I’d spent hours that morning tugging at my fur with my fingernails, pulling it out in clumps. All I’d wanted was to be blonde and otherwise hairless with a name like Amy. While it was not that remarkable to encounter foreign surnames on a class register in Glasgow, mine glowed radioactive in the nineties. Certain teachers looked up from the list in horror – as if I myself was violently disintegrating.

  And then, on that first day, I was one of two who couldn’t make it to the top of the rope to ring the bell in Gym. Hearing the screams below to GO GO GO, I panicked. Unable to go on or to let go and fall to the mat, though the rope cut into my hands as I clung to it. Suspended there, halfway between the peeling paint of the ceiling where the brass bell hung and the baying mob below, I noticed new growth along my thighs. Gradually I understood what they were chanting in syllables. Hair-y An-ya. Hair-y An-ya. That night I got hold of my aunt’s foul-smelling depilatory cream and nearly burned my skin off.

  Mummy’s helping Nena. Daddy’s with Deda. Out.

  She says Daria’s helping my mother get dressed and my father’s somewhere with her dad.

  Luke eyed the little ghost warily as it offered him the bowl of crisps.

  Tell them to get comfortable Hana, a voice – my sister’s – called, then, switching to English, I’ll be out soon.

  By the time I left Sarajevo, I knew lots of English words already from school and subtitled films. Even during the siege when schools had closed, Daria would read to me from what books she still had, books that had not yet been used for fire.

  When are you going to tell them? Luke muttered. He seemed unsure if Hana could understand him.

  He’d been the one to suggest we do this in person rather than before we arrived. That’s the kind of thing his parents cared about, along with thank you letters and other arcane formalities I’d come to excel at.

  I’d wanted to do it in an email ahead of time. I’d written long ones, which I’d cut down to short ones, then hadn’t sent. I knew we would have to do it on the first night, get it over with, and that then there would be the question of whether they would come, with the answer being that of course they would not.

  Dinner, I replied.

  Now Daria emerged. I noticed, with some satisfaction, that she’d gained a bit of weight. Her skin looked grey, her dark hair was scraped back from her face.

  Zdravo, she nodded.

  Turning to Luke: Hi.

  Her eyes barely met mine, surveying me briskly and shaking Luke’s hand, explaining my mother still wasn’t ready to greet us. I was sure even Luke could pick up on it.

  So, you found us. Eventually.

  She had a way of making statements so that I sensed she was actively avoiding posing questions to me. Making a point of her lack of interest in my life, in case I mistook curiosity for envy.

  Minus a near-death experience, Luke said, reddening as the words left his mouth.

  Daria’s eyebrows raised a fraction.

  We’ll eat at nine,
if that’s alright with you.

  Of course, I said, we had burek half an hour ago.

  Daria went toward – but not onto – the balcony and lit a cigarette. She did look much older. Our aunt had stuck her Bristol graduation picture to the fridge, saying she looked like Olivia Hussey. None of us had heard of her. But when she put on the VHS of Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, her daughters and I were furious, though I was proud as well. I hadn’t realised how beautiful Daria was until I saw her likeness on a screen. I have a similar thing when I look at photos of Luke. Without being there, without it being the real him, he looks completely perfect.

  Mira says hi, I said, switching out of English for a moment to be conciliatory as I came toward where she was looking for an ashtray. It was nice for us to see her. Her parents send their love.

  Hana arrived with glasses and a jug on a tray in the same style as the copper serving dish. I noticed Luke fiddling with the gift at his feet while we spoke our language. His eyes wandering again to the hills which were now blue, as though they’d moved further away into the distance.

  She found the ashtray and opened the sliding door a crack.

  What was the near-death experience?

  Oh, a road fell away, or had fallen, and there was no warning put in place.

  My sister snorted and Luke looked awkwardly around the cramped room.

  Doesn’t feel smaller, this apartment. You said –

  It is, she shot back, flicking the ash so it blew inside.

  She nodded to the leather sofas crammed behind her.

  And the building has a communal laundry instead of each apartment having their own machine. You get electric shocks from it so we wear rubber shoes to go down. You can borrow mine if you need to do any washing while you’re here. However long that is this time.

  I ignored the non-question.

  Thanks. Where do we sleep?

  Goran and I are going to stay with his cousin.

  Goran, that was it. It means man of the mountains.

  OK, if that’s OK with you.

  My sister shrugged.

  Hana poured out glasses of lukewarm water then sat between us, eating peanuts from her white hand.

  How long’s she had it? I asked.

  She’s not infectious anymore. It’s crusted over.

  I had to wear gloves before, Hana piped up proudly, so I couldn’t scratch it. But now I can use my fingers.

  She wiggled them. I wiggled mine back, grateful for her presence if only as a buffer.

  OK, I said, well that’s good. Luke isn’t sure if he’s had it.

  Luke? I switched to English, has your mum replied?

  She hasn’t, he said, looking up from his phone on the sofa. I don’t think I’ve had it, but I’m sure it’s fine. He smiled at my sister meekly. No problem.

  Daria raised her eyebrows unmistakably this time. A voice called from inside and she excused herself.

  That was the end of the universe, I said to Hana who had followed my gaze to the hills. Even now, I continued – surprised, feeling something like adrenaline coursing through me – when I see them, even though I know we just drove through them, it’s like I’m looking at a photograph and there’s nothing out there, beyond them.

  I glanced at her and she nodded.

  Can you show me to the bathroom?

  I followed where she pointed, the door open beside the one Daria had just shut. I pulled the cord for light and a fan came on. The walls were peach-pink and peeling. I sat on the side of the bath and took deep breaths. A framed picture hung on the wall above the towel rail. My mother holding me as a baby, taken in our old bathroom, in our old bath. Her smile blissful, eyes shining, the skin on her naked shoulder shining too, her body curving around mine. It was so bleached by sunlight it looked almost artfully overexposed.

  My hangover was maybe kicking in again and my stomach made strange gurgling noises. I reminded myself I always got this sensation of dread when I’d been drinking. Daria knocked to tell me Mum was ready. Looking in the door’s direction, I noticed strange marks in the painted plywood where the light caught them, like someone had once struggled to get out.

  *

  The living room, when I returned, looked even more crowded and was now lit by some unforgiving ceiling lights. The two identical sofas faced each other with a narrow strip of floor between, the width of an armchair sandwiched at one end. Luke looked claustrophobic. My mother was now sitting in the armchair between the two sofas. She also looked very small and boxed-in. Her face unfamiliar thanks to the way her hair had been clipped back, and new white teeth that appeared when she smiled. They were too big, making her face seem even more shrunken. Under her eye, a delicate swell like an aubergine. A faint crust at the corners of her mouth when she closed it. The teeth pushing against the skin stretched over them. She stared at me placidly. Luke sat beside her as if waiting for someone to take a photograph, Daria took a seat opposite him. As I leant in toward her I caught the smell that had so disturbed me the last time I’d visited.

  Whether it was really Alzheimer’s or something more in her control, it began before the siege. That’s when Daria says she first noticed something. Nothing dramatic. She would repeat or forget small things. Clear away a cup of tea that my sister had just put down, then if asked why it was missing she’d insist angrily that she hadn’t touched it. If she’d just brushed it off as something she’d done absent-mindedly, Daria said, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it. But she was often aggressive, saying I was criticising her and making things up.

  During the siege, such symptoms barely registered. Depression, apathy, paranoia . . . these made her seem sane. She developed a slight tremor in her hands and said she felt weak, and that too seemed entirely reasonable. Then, to my father’s exasperation, she began to act out her dreams, often hitting him squarely in the face.

  When the siege was over, my father told my aunt she’d begun to experience hallucinations and would often seem disoriented, but many of their neighbours were experiencing similar things. It wasn’t until after Drago died that there was a noticeable decline, though again the symptoms were masked by what was happening. She was only in her mid-sixties but had finally been diagnosed a few years ago, right after she had a fall. It became harder to speak to her on the phone after that. I felt even more self-conscious and my calls seemed to make her more agitated.

  She appeared to confuse Luke for Drago at first, rubbing his arm distractedly. Then, from the greetings Daria translated, she seemed to decide we were being visited by another foreign journalist.

  She wants to know if you know Christiane Amanpour, Daria said. She thinks you work for CNN.

  I stared at my sister in disbelief. For years, until Drago died, we avoided talking about the war – quickly tiring of the same bad news. After he died, it was never spoken of at all. Daria stared back as if to say yes, this is what we are dealing with now, what I am dealing with while you are not here.

  Luke smiled nervously.

  She’s been stuck in a version of the siege since August, Daria explained. Dad’s convinced it’s best to go along with it.

  Around the time I met Luke in Venice, Daria had persuaded our father to try a home. She was supposed to be safer there, but she hated sleeping alone in unfamiliar surroundings. In turn she became unrecognisable. He’d told me the doctor prescribed her antipsychotics. She could barely move her eyes while she was on them. I remember getting a call saying he’d taken her out again and devised his own system for her care.

  The idea was to embrace the alteration, as Daria said, like putting on a play. Resisting or trying to reorient her only got all of us more lost. You couldn’t persuade someone back into who they used to be if they were dead set on living in the past. To find her we had to enter her reality, he’d concluded, and meet her at whatever landmark she’d found.

  War metaphors were banned. Mum was not fighting a disease, there was no winning or losing. Nothing was invading her or taking over. When we spoke afte
r the 2016 presidential election, Dad said the new guy proved what he’d always said. We lived in a demented society and everything was coming apart, so why not embrace the fragments like the pebbles on a beach.

  Some things, he conceded, were harder to play along with. Letting her believe she had to keep away from the window – where until recently she had liked to sit – seemed cruel, for example. But as a result of his methodology, she’d passed from a state of anxiety into one of occasional euphoria.

  I did not have the same abilities with her as Daria or our father, switching between these multiple worlds. I felt neurotic when I did, and afterward it was I who needed consoling. I longed for her to hold me. For her old smell. It felt like another casting out, this change, even as my mother’s look charged me with abandonment.

  Instead Christopher soothed me. Making up for husband and family. He said it didn’t matter whether she recognised me now because I still knew who she was. I didn’t say that I was constantly looking for ways to erase this knowledge. Because her deterioration had accelerated exactly when we started dating, each time I saw Luke with his family the desire grew sharper to escape mine. To learn to stop wanting something from them it was now too late to get. I was afraid that if Luke ever met them he’d recoil. Feel the sudden vertigo I did watching my mother grapple with reality. Without telling him things I was ashamed of, complex things, I couldn’t make him see that coming back was no homecoming for me. That I felt surer of my place there if I stayed away.

  On my rare visits, I’d attempt to do practical things for her instead, cleaning her teeth or spooning her food, but I could see she found me threatening.

  It reminded me of our first reunion but in reverse. I’d been nervous on the journey from Glasgow, but assumed the feeling in my stomach must be excitement. Then when I finally saw her, something froze. I couldn’t speak. She went to hold me and I felt myself go limp. My eyes rolled back and away from her. I shut my lips, clenched my arms, and would not submit even though she begged me.