Little Bastards in Springtime (23 page)

“Did you hear,” Baka says, “about the ambush? It was a mess, with those Croatian planes strafing all over the place.”

“Oh yeah?” I stare at her. She hasn’t stopped eating. Her mouth is filled with cake, her cheeks bulging like a frog’s. She’s staring off into the middle distance, the past unfolding before her like a film.

“These German uniforms,” Baka says, clutching at the collar of her nightgown, showing me the seams of her sleeves. “They come in so many different sizes, even for really small German soldiers, which is good for us women. Amazing, those fascists, such well-made uniforms, such idiotic ideas. With communist
insignias on them, the red star, the commissars’ hammer and sickle, it’s the best of both worlds.”

“You took uniforms off dead soldiers?”

“What are you talking about? Of course we do. And everything else too. Those lousy British and Russians haven’t done a damn thing for us yet.”

Baka tries to get up again, but doesn’t make it past a forward wobble. “Oh, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“Maybe you’re just tired,” I say. “Maybe you should just sleep a bit.”

“But we’ve got to get going … we’ve got to …” Baka is fading, her voice all air and no vibration.

Her head falls sideways. I worry about her neck, so brittle and thin, but when I move in close, I can hear short, light breaths coming out of her mouth.

I light up and smoke and smoke until the room disappears in a deep fog. The one candle left glows eerily like the moon in thick weather. I sit next to Baka while she dreams the dreams of her life. Every now and then she twitches and moans, and I move closer.

S
AVA
wakes me. She sometimes lets herself in through the back door and slips down the stairs to my room. She says it’s morning but I don’t remember going to bed. I stare out the window. It’s true, the sun seems to be up. The sky is pale blue.

“How is Baka?” I ask, suddenly remembering.

“Your mom says she’s sleeping.”

I stare at Sava. She has grey circles under her eyes like she’s been punched in the face, but I know it’s lack of sleep. Sava often stays up all night, reading or watching TV. I sit up, feel
suddenly hungover, disgusted, self-conscious. I look around my room.

“Does my room smell?”

“It’s kind of stuffy,” she says.

“What kind of stuffy?”

“You know, unwashed clothes, bed, hair …” she says.

I think about this. “Do you mind?”

“I don’t give a shit,” she says. I smile. That’s my Sava. “As long as I don’t have to live in it,” she adds. “It reminds me of the war, all those nasty basements. But if you don’t mind, whatever.”

It does look and feel a bit like a war basement down here. Clothes piled up, bare bed, dusty surfaces, grimy window, crusty plates, cutlery, scrunched-up wrappers, fast-food containers, cans, bottles.

“Okay, then,” I shout, springing out of bed. “It’s cleaning day.” I’m suddenly stamping around picking up clothes and crushed, greasy pizza boxes. I feel rage at myself for being such a pig.

“Jevrem, what the hell? Calm the fuck down.”

“No, you’re right,” I yell, “it’s like a fucking war zone down here.” I’m totally naked but Sava doesn’t seem to notice.

“Shh, don’t shout,” she says. “Your baka needs her rest. The two of you drank a lot of wine or something last night, your mom said. It made your baka more perky than she’s been since you came over.”

I pull on boxers and a pair of jeans that I find on the floor. Then I run up the stairs.

“Jesus Christ, relax,” Sava calls after me.

I know we have an old vacuum cleaner in the house somewhere, and garbage bags, and cleaning stuff, whatever it’s called.

Mama is sitting at the kitchen table with Aisha. I see that Aisha has prepared boiled eggs, soft cheese, baguettes, coffee, a perfect breakfast for Mama. Perfect for Mama on this strange day. And I see that Aisha’s ready for school, her knapsack full of books on the table, her violin case against the wall, her hair freshly washed.

“How did it go?”

“We got first place.”

“Of course you did,” I say. For a moment I stare at Aisha, really see her, her thin, serious face, her genius eyes, her pulse ticking away at high speed where her neck slides into her collarbones. I can see that she’s starting to look like Mama, which makes me happy, like something has been saved. I want to pick her up again, to carry her out of the city and into the countryside, up into the mountain forests, to find a cave, a safe quiet place where I can put her forever.

“You’re staring, Jevrem,” she says, and flashes me a smile.

“Where’s the vacuum cleaner?” I ask.

Mama looks at me blankly. “The vacuum cleaner?”

“Yes, the goddamned vacuum cleaner.”

“Do you want to vacuum?” Aisha asks. She laughs as though I’ve told a joke.

“Yes, I want to vacuum,” I shout.

“Shh …” says Mama. “Baka is asleep.”

“But I need to clean.” I feel desperate to muck out, like it might change everything once and for all.

Sava might suddenly notice I’m not a freaking little boy anymore, that I’m a decent-looking guy with solid sex appeal, that I’m at least worth checking out, for Christ’s sake. I feel a flood rising from my chest through my neck to my eyes, but push it down with a big, jaw-cracking yawn. And maybe Baka
would sense it from the limbo she’s floating in and see that I’m trying to get my shit together to be a better person, or whatever she wants of me. A lame try, to be sure. But it’s all I can do right now, rattling around this house, just fucking waiting for death to come again.

Mama gets up and rummages below the sink. I run down the stairs and begin stuffing clothes into garbage bags. I pull out everything from my closet and cupboards. I’ve not noticed my jumble of stuff in months, years, but suddenly it’s all sickening to me. I feel covered in grime, filth, rot. Sava is sitting in the chair now, reading from my notebook.

“Hey,” I say. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“You lie all the time?” she asks me.

“Yes,” I say.

“To me too?”

“No, not so much to you.”

“Is that a lie?”

“Maybe.” Maybe I’ll never lie to her again, it would be a start. “Fuck you,” she says.

“Want to go to the laundromat with me?” That place that Mama goes to every Saturday morning, pulling a cart behind her like a peasant woman. I grab my sleeping bag, my pillows, and stuff them in a garbage bag. I pick up all the garbage from the floor, which takes exactly six minutes. Why did I wait so long? It’s so easy when you get going. I eye my mattress.

“We’re doing a place tonight and we’re getting me a new bed.”

“Okay,” says Sava. “Where do you—?” but I’m not listening, I rush off to have a shower.

I never use shampoo, soap. What’s the point except to be liked by the other kids? This time I do. When I’m done my skin feels tight, my head ten pounds lighter. I stop at Baka’s open door. The
curtains are closed. It’s murky in here and smells of apples. She’s lying on her back in the bed, her mouth wide open, her cheeks and eye sockets caved in, creating dark shadows. She looks dead. I sink to my knees, crawl toward Baka’s bed, put my chin on the mattress. From this angle I can see that her tiny chest is still moving up and down. I wonder whether she can smell the shampoo on me, all those fake nature scents in a bottle.

I say, “Baka, I’m clean.”

T
HE LAUNDROMAT
is peaceful, even with the murmuring and whirling of machines. I like it here, it feels like a train station or a doctor’s office, strangers slouching around killing time together with books, newspapers, brooding thoughts, sideways glances, lukewarm sodas. I stare at my fluffy hair in the mirror. It feels straw-like and brittle. I’m wearing one of Mama’s turtleneck sweaters and a pair of track pants I found in my closet that smell somewhat clean, taken from some sucker’s house in the inner suburbs of the city, someone who has a regular laundry day, Saturday afternoons, maybe, or Sunday evenings, along with popcorn and a movie.

Sava is slumped on the floor, her back to a dryer. “It feels nice, Andric,” she mumbles, “it’s warm and it vibrates.”

There are quarters all over the floor. Sava enjoys using the change machine. She’s fed it nine ten-dollar bills and six five-dollar bills, everything on her. My laundry is in four machines. Now I’m thinking maybe it would have felt better to just burn it all. Outside in the parking lot behind the Dominion. A slug of gasoline, a few matches, a light breeze.

‡ ‡ ‡

A
T MADZID’S PLACE WE TAKE OFF OUR SHOES,
shake his father’s hand. His father is a small, tidy man who wears a shirt and tie, a wool vest, and slippers that look brand new. He traps Sava and me in the hallway with non-stop chatter, cracking jokes, reporting a weird assortment of facts, standing very close to us. His breath smells of almonds. He’s a nice guy, one of those people who don’t get angry or mean no matter what disaster strikes, and disaster got him good. Robbery, roundups, expulsions, concentration camps, torture, starvation, he was in every ring of the sick, fucked-up circus.

He says, “Did you know there are no clocks in Las Vegas casinos? A timeless fantasyland. Did you know a violin is made up of seventy separate pieces of wood? Absolute geniuses, those violin makers. Did you know that China has more English speakers than the United States? We can all see where that will end.”

I nod and look impressed. Sava has a rare expression on her face, like she wants to grab this man and give him a hug.

“Tell your mother I said hello, Jevrem. Such a brilliant pianist. I met her several times back home, once at a book launch in that café. Hmm, which one was it? Can’t remember. She was famous in Sarajevo back then, did you know that?”

There’s a smile in Madzid’s mother’s eyes when she looks at us, but she disappears as soon as she can into the kitchen, where she’s cooking something that smells like home. We make her nervous, the sound of our voices, Madzid says. Madzid’s grandparents were killed one fine morning of the war when Croat militiamen came into their village to change its ethnicity, or maybe it was Serb militiamen, I can’t remember, it doesn’t really matter, they were the same drugged-up freaked-out lunatics trying to prove to foreign eyes that this land was theirs.

Four hours later, when we finally stumble to the front door, numb from lying around for too long and needing to get moving on my very important mission, Madzid’s mother brings us a bag of food for the road. I wonder what she thinks we’re going out there to do. She doesn’t ask. We thank her, but she shakes her head.
No, no
, she says,
I do it with pleasure.

“A really good mattress,” I say when we’re in the car. I’m thinking that it should be at least a double, maybe a queen. I imagine Sava sleeping over. I imagine feeding her nutritious porridge in the mornings, nuts and bananas in it, seeds and cream and maple syrup, so that she stops looking so pale, so that she finally falls asleep. I imagine us having sex, both of us naked, in the dark, just flesh on flesh, flesh in flesh. Sweat, saliva, tears of happiness, maybe, I’ll take it all.

“A queen size,” I say. “And the bit that goes underneath.”

“The box-spring,” Zijad says, dreamily. He’s persuaded a doctor to put him on antidepressants because of the war, it’s a steadier supply than stealing. They make him feel floaty and untouchable. “But not the metal frame. Takes too long to dismantle.”

“Do you know that most lipsticks contain fish scales?” I say.

We’re all slumped in our seats. The car’s windows are fogging up. I can tell that no one is focused, it’s going to be one of those nights.

“Do you know that there’s a word for the fear of being buried alive?
Taphephobia.
It’s actually a phobia.” Madzid blows steam onto the window, then rubs it off with his sleeve. “Isn’t that the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard?” He laughs quietly. “I mean, how can it be called a phobia if it’s objectively the most fucking scary thing anyone can imagine, and leads to death? I wonder if there’s a word for a phobia of torture? Or rape?”

“Or of sticking needles in your eyes.”

“Please don’t rape or torture me, or kill my children. I have this phobia. It’s very distressing. But George over here, you can torture him, and rape and kill his wife and all his children, he doesn’t have that phobia, he’s cool with all of that.”

We drive to a neighbourhood where we think construction workers might live. It takes us ten minutes to spot the kind of van that’s good for moving a bed. But once we’re in the house and have found the bed, the construction worker who’s sleeping in it says he doesn’t want to give it up, that he was dreaming something really nice in it when we woke him, a bunch of wild kids in his house. And when Sava tells him that I
really
want his bed, first asking what kind it is and how long he’s had it, he says no, flat out, just like that.

What to do? We’re at an impasse, all four of us sprawled on the floor of the bedroom drinking beer that we find in the fridge. The construction worker sits in his dishevelled bed like a child in a playpen, staring at us with open mouth.

“I mean,” he says, “why should you have my bed?”

“Because mine is old and I slept in it for a long time without sheets. Sava here said my room smells terrible. I want a new start.”

“But it’s
my
bed. Why don’t you go out and get one of your own?”

“With what? I’m a high school student.”

“
So?
” he says.

“And my mother cleans houses. She’s a brilliant pianist.”

“Oh, I see. You’re poor. You don’t have the money.”

“You got it, genius,” I say, and offer him a beer.

He shakes his head. “It’s the fucking middle of the night, I was asleep a minute ago, I don’t want a beer now.”

“I like a beer at any time of the day or night,” I say.

“You see,” says Zijad. “You can claim it on your insurance
and then go out and buy another bed. Then we’re all happy. That’s the thing about life over here. No one gets fucked over for good. There’s always a way to make everything okay again. You know, that’s not how it works everywhere.”