Read How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone Online
Authors: Saša Stanišić
How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone (9 page)
Edin isn't moving away at all, but the move is a good excuse, because Mr. Fazlagić asks no more questions, he just says: you can leave discussion of that question until break.
These first warm weeks of the year are going-away time. There's a general mood of departure, as infectious as a cold in spring. Whole families get itchy feet, you can hardly see the cars under so much baggage. People are leaving town in such a hurry, they're so intent on getting away, they can't even find time to say good-bye to the people staying behind. They're setting off in frantic haste, as if to save their carpets and their sofas from a flood. I like the idea of loading cars up with sofas. When I go to see Granny I always sit on Grandpa Slavko's sofa. When I'm watching TV, when I'm eating, when I'm sleeping, when I want to listen to my heart to find out if it's stopped. The Ladas and Yugos are so heavily laden that their floors scrape the bulging asphalt of the gas station. This road will take them to Titovo U
zice, perhaps even Belgrade or Bulgaria, or if they turn off the main road a little sooner, they'll reach Veletovo. But something tells me no one wants to go there. Edin and Zoran don't know where all these people are going, my parents don't know either, and yesterday after school when I asked Kostina the caretaker where people were off to on holiday, he laughed nervously as if he was scared of me.
Yesterday Edin and I spent all afternoon at the gas station. Everyone in Višegrad knows that road and its bumps: if you take your foot off the accelerator your exhaust will stay put. But yesterday it seemed as if the drivers had forgotten what their own roads were like; they raced over the bumps and the floors of their cars protested so loudly that an old lady in the house opposite the gas station put a cushion on her windowsill and leaned out of the window so as not to miss a thing. By early evening, cars with suitcases on the roof had stopped driving past. A woodpecker flew by, and I thought of the various different kinds of birds. Some birds spend the winter here in spite of the cold; others fly to warmer places. Do birds of the first kind sit on the overhead wires to watch the other birds leave, the way we watched the cars? Do they get an uncomfortable feeling when the other birds sing about places in the south? Quick, off we fly to the sun to build nests in coconut palms and eat mandarin oranges all day! Do they roll their eyes and twitter: oh, you conceited formation flyers! It doesn't bother the birds who fly away that the other lot are staying, they couldn't care less what the other birds think: you could come too instead of freezing your beaks off.
Can birds actually roll their eyes? I asked Edin.
Danilo Gorki's Golf approached the gas station so fast that Edin and I jumped up from the side of the road and took a few steps back. Danilo is our neighbor, old Mirela's son, and a waiter at the Estuary Restaurant. He's a young man known to half the town because his last girlfriend wrote him a letter after she dumped him. Her letter consisted of a single sentence, and she wrote it in spray paint on the road under Danilo's window.
The floor of Danilo's Golf crashed over the biggest bump. He stopped and kicked the exhaust pipe, which wasn't attached to his Golf anymore. Edin and I congratulated each other as if we and the road had just succeeded in some great mission. The furious Danilo was cursing the road, mentioning cunt, pig's guts, grape must and mothers in the course of his tirade. We greeted him with extravagant enthusiasm as he walked into the gas station, dragging the exhaust pipe behind him. Old Mirela got out of the car, stood at the roadside and looked back at the town as if waiting for someone. An hour later, she and her son were able to drive on again.
Edin spat through his teeth, watched Danilo's Golf chugging away and said, looking in the direction of Titovo
, in the direction of Belgrade, in the direction of Bulgaria: Hey, Aleks, I think they're all clearing out of here.
I didn't argue with him. The twittering of weary birds surrounded us in the dusk. They're running away, said Edin more quietly, picking pebbles off the palm of his hands. He'd been leaning his hands on the ground, and the little stones had stuck to them.
But why? I asked.
Danilo, everything about you, from your brain to your prick, is tiny!
Mr. Fazlagić turns away; he's satisfied with Edin's answer. Get your exercise books out, he says, I hope you were listening properly yesterday when I explained the difference between an event and an experience, because today you are going to write an essay on the subject of “A Wonderful Trip.”
Well, it makes a change from “My Native Land” and “Why the View of My Town from My Window Makes Me Proud and Happy,” or “Why the Day of the Republic Is My Day Too.”
A wonderful trip, and it has to be an experience—not just an event! Mr. Fazlagic looks at us. Vukoje, I shall stop reading after the twentieth spelling mistake. Faruk, anything illegible will lose you marks. And Aleksandar, I don't want to know anything about your great-grandma uprooting oaks, or inauguration parties for the family bathroom, or your Auntie Whirlwind running a race with Carl Lewis over the bridge and ending up in Tokyo. You've wandered off the subject in every essay you've written this year, so kindly restrain your imagination! Mr. Fazlagic comes up to my desk and bends down toward me. And we use quotation marks for direct speech, he says, leaning his fists on the desk top, you know that, I don't have to explain it to you every time. Now, you all have an hour!
Mr. Fazlagic sounds cross. When he was still Comrade Teacher he once gave me a punishment because I did restrain my imagination, and my essay on “My Native Land” was seven pages of geographical and economic statistics about Yugoslavia that I'd learned by heart. We were given “My Native Land” for an essay at least twice a year. So I wrote a footnote referring to my previous essays on the subject, and added that, despite inflation, I hadn't changed my mind and wasn't likely to change it in a hurry. In a second footnote, I suggested to Mr. Fazlagic that he might like to look at my poetry collection, particularly the poems “8 March 1989, or I Send My Political Adviser Whole Spruce Woods Full of Motherly Love,” “1 May 1989, or The Chick in the Pioneer's Hand” and “Comrade Tito, in My Heart You Will Never Die.”
Grandpa Slavko had liked my inappropriate choice of subjects, Mother wasn't quite so keen on my bad marks, and Father didn't think school mattered much. Just don't get into fights, he said.
I open my exercise book at the first blank page. “A Wonderful Trip.” I go to the Adriatic every summer, always to Igalo. It's organized by the workers' syndicate at Varda, the firm where my father wears a shirt and tie. Hundreds of the people of Višegrad who work for Varda pack their suitcases, gather their families together and tell them: we're being put up in this hotel, though we'd rather have the one where we stayed in '86. All Varda goes to Igalo, its people are moved from a little town without any seaside to a little town by the sea for one month. I know my way around Igalo as well as I know my way around Višegrad, and not just because of the annual trip there, it's also because the hotel beds and shelves, in fact all the furniture, even the wooden floorboards and the wooden paneling, are made by Varda, exactly the same as we have in our bedrooms and on our walls at home. So if you want to write about a wonderful trip you don't write about Igalo.
Thinking about Igalo, I've drawn a head in one corner of the sheet of paper. The corners of its mouth are turned down, I give it a mustache. Now the head gets two long arms instead of ears. Walrus. A wonderful trip for Zoran's father, Milenko Pavlovic, the three-point shooter once feared for the number he shot, but not quite such a good shot with a gun! Walrus's wonderful trip to a new wife and new happiness!
Secure in the knowledge that a good story is never an inappropriate subject, I write the title:
. . . the reason being that anyone can say anything, or think it and not say it, and what would be the point of quotation marks around thoughts you don't say, or something you do say that's a lie, or thoughts that aren't important enough to be said out loud, or something said out loud that
is
important but no one hears it?
Drunk and deceived as he was, Milenko Pavlovic, known as Walrus, had taken his son aside and said: Zoran, I'm going away now, I have to get everything new for us:
Das Kapital
for me and a new mother for you. He had got into his car and driven out of town, hooting the horn. No one knew where he was going.
Yesterday, one year later, Walrus came back. He drove into town still hooting, just as he had left, but this time at the wheel of a Centrotrans bus. These days everyone was leaving town, no one knew where they were going, only Walrus came proudly back, no one knew where from, and the first thing he said when his shoes touched the ground of Višegrad was: anyone want to buy a bus?
You won't sell a bus like that in a hurry, I told Walrus, breathlessly. I'd run after the bus as it drove down the street at a slow and victorious speed. I wanted to see what Walrus had brought back from his journey.
That bus isn't quite straight, said Armin the bus stationmaster, scratching his head under his stationmaster's cap. He didn't mean the bus itself, he meant the way Walrus had parked it—with the front right-hand side up on the pavement. Armin crouched down, his knees creaking, he looked underneath the bus, he ran his finger over rusty metal, opened the baggage space and kicked the tires. Nodded three times and said: a good bus, I know this bus, you can't sell it to us, it's ours already.
Of course you know it, said Walrus, throwing his hands up jubilantly in the air, but are you and the bus related? I'm not selling you your uncle, and the days when you could only sell what's yours were over in this country long ago.
A young woman appeared in the doorway of the bus behind the grinning Walrus. He forgot about doing any kind of deal and tucked his shirt into his trousers. Red hair with black slides in it, a red scarf with black stripes, red high-heeled shoes with black buckles, size four at the most; a low-cut blouse and a miniskirt with a pattern of red and black dots too. The ladybird laughed, and it was a great relief to see that her teeth were plain white.
Walrus offered the redhead his arm, which she took with a smile. Her red shoes hardly touched the cracked asphalt. Batting her eyelashes and practically hovering in the air, the young woman looked at the little group that had gathered to welcome the miracle of Walrus's return, and insofar as it consisted of men, the group lowered its eyes, and insofar as it was wearing a cap, it took the cap off.
Wouldn't you like to sell
her?
was the thought that shot through Armin's mind, or at least he was staring at Walrus's new girlfriend in a greedy way that suggested it. As if she were a Sunday evening Western that had never been shown before. Armin whistled through his teeth, barely but still audibly, the way you whistle at the sight of something really expensive. The redhead's eyes, bright blue in the middle of all that red and black, had something to do with Armin's whistle. And her long, slender neck! Armin kicked the hot right-hand front tire for about the twentieth time; he didn't have that leg under control anymore.
This is my Milica! said Walrus, introducing his Milica in a voice as solemn as if he were really announcing: listen, all of you, I want everyone to know that this is my Milica! Milenko's beautiful Milica!
Everyone knew about Walrus's misfortunes; everyone had heard how he was cuckolded before the eyes of his only son, and how a tobacconist had humiliated and soiled his bookcase along with
Das Kapital
. All the same, no one applauded when the ladybird tripped along beside Walrus. We weren't impressed by all that red and black, the bus station isn't a cinema, and from a purely medicinal viewpoint such a heavy dose of lipstick can't be good for anyone's mouth.
Walrus put Milica's baggage down carefully and flung his own sports bag onto the pavement, sending dust flying up. He handed Armin the key of the bus as if it were the stationmaster's birthday, and there was nothing Armin could do but thank him and finally stop kicking the tires. Walrus's new girlfriend put her scarf around her slender neck, and I'd never seen such a tiny handbag as hers; her lipstick might fit into it but then there'd be no room left for her headache tablets.
Where's the driver? I asked Walrus after he'd shaken hands with everyone present the way presidents do at airports, clasping their hosts' hands in both their own.
Picking mushrooms on the Romanija, replied Walrus, punching my forearm in a way I liked. And where's my son, you young rascal?
Sweeping up hair for Maestro Stankovski, I replied, dancing about in front of Walrus like Muhammad Ali, I've just come from there. He's still wearing your jacket.
Ah, my jacket, nodded Walrus, and the palm of his hand sketched a straight right and an upper cut. Then today's the last time he'll wear that old thing, no one wears denim jackets in Trieste, and I've bought him everything new.
Milica pushed her sunglasses down from her hair to her face and ran her eyes over the little bus station, frowning. The pale bushes around it, all pale green like that, could hardly appeal to anyone so dotted. And probably neither did the oil stains on the asphalt, or the pack of dogs lying there dozing, or the holes in the rusty fence, or Armin the tire expert scratching his belly under his shirt. Milica concluded her inspection over the top of her sunglasses with me. What was wrong about me? I had big ears, but normally women of marriageable age liked that. I had a wonky haircut, but that was Maestro Stankovski's fault, not mine. Milica slowly opened her lips, showing her teeth; she had about forty more of them than most people, and a diamond sparkled on one of her twelve incisors. Those teeth could be giving a kind of smile, I thought, and sure enough, there was something she liked about me! She clasped her hands in front of her breasts with delight, her disappointment at the sight of the shabby bus station gone. She pinched my cheeks with both hands and an incredibly sweet perfume hit me in the face. Look, if there's one thing, I cried, wiping my cheeks with my sleeve, if there's one thing that I personally find distressing, it's having fingers jabbed in my face!
“I personally” is what my mother said when she wanted to disagree with something, and “distressing” was what she said when she was very upset.
Just hark at him talking! cried the delighted Milica, clapping her hands. Her voice sounded like the last piano key on the right. And see the funny way he opens and closes his mouth! She took a step back from me as if admiring a picture in a gallery. Walrus was pleased because his Milica was pleased, he wanted to hug her, but by now he was so laden with suitcases and bags and carriers that he couldn't really move at all.
How old are you, darling? Milica took another step closer. I took three steps back.
There are various rumors, I muttered, ranging from eight to fourteen, it all depends, but too old to have my cheeks pinched anyway. To avoid any more questions I followed Walrus, who had set off in the direction of the town center, walking heavily. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Armin reversing the bus, he couldn't have the right-hand side of one of his buses trespassing on the pavement. I kept my eye on the ladybird. Goodness knew what else someone who wore tights like cobwebs would be capable of.
Čika Walrus, where have you been all this time?
On my travels—all over the place. Across the Pannonian plain, over the Dinarides, to the coast, all the way to Italy. Not a bad trip. I didn't have much money, so I used five sentences of French from “La Marseillaise” and my recipe for leg of lamb Breton style to pretend that I was Jacques, and I introduced my Milica to everyone as Mademoiselle Bretagne. The French always make our sort happy because, like us, they know how to love, they're just as good at playing the accordion, and they've made a real art of their inability to bake proper bread. As Jacques and Mademoiselle Bretagne we always had enough to eat, and a bed in which to sleep and get to know each other better. Everywhere we went people told us why Yugoslavia had been such a fine country, it sounded as if they were talking about someone dead. Our act worked until we met a real Frenchman. We got drunk with him on French rosé, and then he confessed that he'd just been speaking Macedonian with a French accent and the wine was local wine cut with schnapps. Then he had too much of his local wine as well, and he wept in Milica's lap, telling us how he'd saved up for years to buy a motorbike to impress the most beautiful woman in the village, but the most beautiful woman in the village had gone and married someone who didn't even have a bicycle.
On our way through Višegrad on 2 April 1992 Walrus said: it would be a good thing if everyone had trained to be on the road, same as me. Because everyone will soon have to go on a long trip. But I'm staying put, come what may.
On the way past the fire station Walrus turned serious and said: Milica and I will be happy here.
On the way past the mosque Walrus stopped and drank water from the tap in the wall.
On his way, and it wasn't far enough for him to tell me all the things he could have told me, Milenko was glad to see every passerby who recognized him and stopped to say hello, because then he could put the heavy bags down. Many of them welcomed him warmly, for one thing because they were glad to see one more person back in the town, which was shrinking daily.
Musa, said Walrus to Musa Hasanagic, who was leading his mare Cauliflower along by her reins, Musa, brother, shall we stick together?
Always, said Musa, and Cauliflower nodded the way horses do.
On the way to his son, and it was much too long since he'd seen him, and on the way to saying: I'm back and the war is hard on my heels, Walrus told me about his trip, the last trip, he said, to be made in this country for a long time by someone so full of care and yet so carefree.