Little Bastards in Springtime (5 page)

“Dušan!” Papa shouts, and Dušan looks down at his hands, his lips kind of quivering. He looks like he’s going to cry.

Mama comes home finally, and everyone sighs with relief and looks a bit happier. She’s windswept, rattled. Her eyes are squinting as though she’s travelled for days through a sandstorm.

“A state of emergency has been announced,” she says, standing perfectly still in the middle of the living room, with her purse still over her shoulder, a plastic bag in one hand.

I
’M IN
Dušan’s room, sitting on his floor, half listening to the Kovacics argue in their bedroom right above. Dušan’s lying on his bed looking through a magazine. There’s a 10 p.m. curfew now, and he’s pissed off, he wishes he could be out. He says that the Muslim Green Berets are out guarding our neighbourhoods, standing around on street corners, men and boys both, with their automatic rifles cocked. He wants to be out there too, holding a gun. And so do I, but I’m not sure who I’d be shooting at.

“At the Bosnians Serbs, you moron, the Chetniks, in the hills and in the suburbs,” Dušan says. “They like Yugo the way it is, they say they’re defending themselves, defending their life the way it used to be.”

But I’m still kind of confused. Those Chetniks are Papa’s whole family—Baba and Deda, Stric Ivan, Obrad, and Pavle—and their neighbours who we know quite well, so how can we shoot at them?

“Baba and Deda won’t be fighting,” Dušan says. “Of course not, they’re old. It’s their militias that are attacking us.”

Who are their militias, I ask, and Dušan says, their militias are their men and boys. Our uncles? I ask. Yes, maybe our uncles, probably our uncles. But why would they shoot at us, I ask, they
know us, they know that we’re nice people, that we like them. But Dušan gets annoyed with all the questions. He pulls me up, shoves me out of his room, and bangs his door shut.

We’re all meant to be asleep, but I crouch in the hallway and listen to Mama and Papa talking. Defended by Muslim paramilitary militias funded by Iran, Saudi Arabia. Juka’s wolves. The nationalists on all sides armed for months now. Petty criminals selling weapons in front of Hotel Europa in complete fucking openness. Papa is saying that word a lot now. Fucking kalashnikovs, fucking bazookas, fucking sniper-rifles fucking weapons pouring in from the four corners of the fucking hypocritical world. In the countryside arms dealers went everywhere, sat down with village elders and said the next village over would definitely attack, so the men bought weapons. What could they do, stay unprepared? They sold livestock, furniture to raise the money, then surprise, surprise, every village was suddenly armed to the teeth, and a few people were getting very rich. You see, that’s how they got us, Papa says. That’s how propaganda works. When you fear the worst and prepare for the worst, the worst comes.

I can hear their glasses clinking against the table. They get louder the more they drink, that’s how it is with adults. Warlords, Papa barks, local and international. Now the extremists will start moving populations around to strengthen their negotiating position, to match on the ground the new ethnically determined maps they want the EU and UN to recognize on paper. Geopolitical engineering. Cartographic final solutions. Our very own apartheid. Mama’s and Papa’s words keep pouring out of their mouths, they do this every evening when we’re in bed, sentences they fling at each other even though they agree about most things. It’s the stress, Baka says.

I feel tired and lie down on the hallway floor for a moment, trying to remember what Mama and Papa used to talk about before all this independence stuff, what we used to do on holidays and weekends. When I wake up, Mama and Papa are standing over me and staring down.

“Jevrem, what are you doing out here, lying on the floor?” Mama says. “My love, you have to sleep.”

Papa picks me up and carries me to my bed. “Don’t worry about all our yacking,” he says. “Let us do the worrying; you just go on being our little Jevrem-full-of-dreams.” Then he puts his big hand on my forehead and sings to me, his voice so deep and rumbling and his breath smelling bitter of cigarettes and alcohol. “
Sleepyhead, close your eyes, father’s right here beside you. I’ll protect you from harm, you will wake in my arms. Guardian angels are near, so sleep on, with no fear.
”

M
AMA’S
all twitchy today because a concert was cancelled and she’s mad about that. All those things should keep going, concerts, plays, readings, lectures, she says, that’s how the civilized people will defeat the barbarians. The university is still open, that’s something, anyway, Papa says. And
Oslobodjenje
is publishing every day.

Mama pounds away at the piano like a demented witch for hours, her hair flying in all directions, like she’s trying to make enough sound in our apartment to reach the roadblocks and barracks, the militias and their commanders, the foreign leaders far away in their fancy government offices. I go downstairs to Baka’s apartment to get some chocolate and to comfort her because Mama said Ujak Luka’s gone; he did as he said he would, was gone one night with the pretty young girl, not
a word to anyone. “He’s a good-for-nothing,” Mama shouted when she found out. “He’s selfish, just a degenerate playboy, worse than the thugs, smugglers, pimps, and criminals who have stayed behind to fight. He’s leaving to make a comfortable life for himself getting up to no good, while we suffer and die defending our city.” Mama was so angry with him that she broke down and cried for an hour after she’d finished calling him names.

“Oh, him,” Baka says. “A disgrace. What if every able-bodied man picked up and left?”

I think about this for a minute. “There’d be no war,” I say.

“But one has to defend against the enemy,” Baka says.

“I mean, if
no
man wanted to fight, even the enemy men.”

“But you have to be prepared to fight in case the enemy wants to fight.”

“But, let’s say
no
man on the whole planet ever stayed around to fight when the politicians told them to.” To me it’s just a matter of logic.

“That’s not how the world works, Jevrem,” Baka says. “There are always men who want to fight. They think they can conquer the world. They get frustrated and angry about their little lives and need to create mayhem, just to feel like men. This happens when things aren’t going well in the economy—that’s the most dangerous time for any society.”

“You just asked,” I say, slowly and patiently, because sometimes adults are idiots, they just don’t use their brains, “what if
every
able-bodied man picked up and left? And I’m telling you, Bako, there’d be no war, that’s what would happen. Isn’t that a good thing? Isn’t Ujak Luka doing a good thing?”

“Oh, Jevrem.” Baka shrugs her shoulders like she’s shaking off an irritating hand. “Sometimes you’re just like your father.”

“Right all the time?” I mumble under my breath so Baka can’t hear.

I like Ujak Luka, I don’t think he’s a coward, I don’t think that’s why he left. I think he left for good reasons, but I’m not exactly sure what they are. And Baka’s not that sad, I can hear it in her voice; she’s secretly happy he’s safe, somewhere out there in the normal world.

“He’s always done his own thing,” she says. “He’s always been a rebel. Don’t tell anyone, Jevrem, but he called me. He’s in California, America. He’s doing crazy things, as usual.”

“What crazy things, Baka?” I ask. I picture him robbing banks in the hot, dusty afternoons like in westerns, a big glinting gun on each hip, and then in the evenings throwing parties for Mafia dons and movie stars in tuxedoes who stand around drinking champagne beside gleaming blue swimming pools full of girls in tiny yellow bikinis.

But she just shakes her head; she doesn’t want to talk about him and his outlaw behaviour. So I ask her about the criminals and gangsters here, and Baka says, at least they’re doing some good for once. Standing up for their community, their city. She thinks our new defenders are scum, but that’s all we have right now to stand up to the scum on the other side. I feel happy about the criminals too. It must feel nice for them to be doing some good for once, getting some respect. Maybe it will turn them into better people. I tell Baka I overheard Mama saying they’re just in it for the money, so they can carry on their shady deals, smuggle, take over the black market, drive fancy cars, get all the girls they want, and basically get rich and have a lovely time while the rest of us are tormented and trapped like rats. Baka says, as long as they save us from the fascist mobs I don’t care why they’re doing it. Sometimes you just have to be practical-minded,
Jevrem. She wags a finger in my face. Sometimes you just have to do what needs to be done to survive, and not worry what everyone else thinks about it.

I play with my Transformers on Baka’s kitchen table. She does the crossword puzzle. She lets me help sometimes and I’m quite good at it.
Grateful? A-S-H-E-S.
She brings out half a chocolate cake, which her friend made for their weekly get-together, and we each have two big pieces.

I
GO
home at suppertime, but no food has been prepared. Mama’s friend Olga is over, the one with a man’s haircut and bright red glasses who plays violin in the symphony. They’re sitting at the table drinking coffee, talking about the usual thing.

“Barricades. Everywhere,” Olga is saying. “The First Corps Sarajevo are very badly armed, compared to the Serbs and their Territorial Defense Forces. But we have more men.”

“Men,” Mama says. “Always men, men, men and their violence. Wearing stockings over their heads so their neighbours won’t recognize them at the barricades. Women set up counter-barricades and serve meatballs. That’s what the women do. They feed people. Lazar, did you hear that story? Women
feeding
people, men
shooting
at people.”

Papa appears in the hallway, irritated. “What?”

“The men have guns to shoot each other with, the women have meatballs. I want to see a day when meatballs are more powerful than bullets. But where are the women tonight? Oh yes, they can no longer go out because it’s too dangerous.”

“Oh,” Papa groans, “it has nothing to do with that. Women can be just as nationalistic and fascistic as men.” He disappears back into his office.

“Jevrem,” cries Olga, finally seeing me standing in the kitchen door. “There you are. I don’t see you for a few months and what do you do? You grow big and handsome.”

Here it comes. I remember her now, she’s a hugger.

“Come here. Let me give you a hug.”

I don’t move. Mama laughs, then rescues me by pulling me onto her lap. “Jevrem is our soccer star. He runs like a cheetah.” I love sitting on Mama’s lap. She presses me against her chest like I’m her most precious possession in the world.

“Tomas is organizing the ten-part series,” Olga says. “Bach, Scriabin, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev. How is your piano playing, Jevrem? Your mama tells me you have promise.”

“Okay,” I say. But I haven’t practised for days. Now that I think of it, I kind of miss it.

“That’s wonderful,” Mama says. “What is the venue?”

“The Academy,” Olga says. “Tomas goes on and on about Leningrad, their endless siege, how the city’s musicians dropped dead from starvation in the middle of performances. This he thinks is terribly romantic, an example of the noble human spirit, how music overcomes all worldly evil. But I think it’s sentimental horseshit, Sofija. No, actually, I think it’s sick.”

“Shh. Please, Olga,” Mama says, and nods her head at me.

“Oh, he has to hear these things, Sofija. Real life is already harsher for him than anything we can say. We must keep playing, but we must never pretend that playing until we die means that we’ve won some kind of moral victory. We will win when the men in the hills are driven away, when our fascist leaders are driven out of office.”

“Who can live with themselves, shooting at women and children and old men?”

“It’s just a tactic of war.” Olga is fidgety. She twists a corner of her scarf round and round her forefinger. “They’re told it’s essential to their survival, for their children’s survival, that it’s necessary. Twentieth-century war is waged against civilians, all of it, siege or no siege. There is no ethical and unethical war anymore, it’s all a massacre.”

Mama shivers and shakes her head. She doesn’t want to talk about this anymore. “I hear Ponthus is coming to give a concert,” she says, and walks her fingers up and down my arm.

“Oh yes, just watch. All kinds of international artists and personalities will suddenly pour into our city to cheer us up by feeding our poor, savage souls.”

“You’re so cynical, Olga. People need to be uplifted.”

“People need this war to end. The negotiators are just protecting their own interests.” Olga knocks back the rest of her coffee.

“Well, what can we do about that?”

Olga shrugs her shoulders, lights another cigarette. “The process has been hijacked by all the wrong people telling the wrong stories.”

They sit in silence, staring off at nothing. They never have an answer past this point: why the wrong people are in power, who let them get there, how to get rid of them. I fiddle with the bracelet on Mama’s wrist, I steal a sip of coffee.

“Well, on a more cheerful note,” Mama says suddenly, “shall we get Papa to go out and find us some pizza?”

“Yes, yes,” I say.

“It’s still safe in your mahala,” Olga says. “But I wouldn’t stay out too long.”

I want to go with Papa, but Mama says no. I slouch to my room and stand in the middle of it, not knowing what to do
next. Boredom feels like a terrible flu. My bones hurt. I knock on Dušan’s door but he ignores me. He just wants to be out with his friends. Aisha and Berina are in their room. I can hear them through the door talking in high chipmunk voices. They’re lucky, they have each other to play with all the time.

“Do you want to play with us?” Berina has suddenly opened the door. She has this way of looking up at me, her head tipped to one side, that is hard to say no to. “No,” I say anyway, just so they know they can’t push me around, but after a few minutes I go in and lie on their floor.