Read How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone Online
Authors: Saša Stanišić
After the end of his own career Milenko Pavlovic, once a three-point shooter and feared for his scoring prowess, who was nicknamed Walrus because of his bristly mustache and drooping cheeks, went off every Saturday to blow the whistle at basketball games in the top Yugoslavian league, getting home the next day in time for lunch. Of the sixty matches he refereed, fifty-five were won by the home side.
That particular Saturday in late April 1991 his son, Zoran, went to a match with him in Split, and Zoran suggested coming home straight after the bingo. Bingo and beans with pork ribs in the most expensive hotel in town. A hearty helping for Walrus, who had whistled valiantly. After the offensive foul for the away team four seconds before the final whistle the crowd had chanted: Walrus! Walrus! rather than the names of their players. The home team, Jugoplastika, nearly missed out on victory, but Walrus didn't miss out on good winnings at bingo.
I can't be doing with a sleeping passenger, said Walrus, if you drop off to sleep in the car I'll put you out on the Romanija. He licked the fingers that had been holding the pork ribs. Walrus, that diligent referee, had equally diligently gnawed the meat right off the bone. The bill was on the house. The pear cake was on the house. The pear schnapps was on the house. Walrus had tipped his third down the hatch, and over his fourth he and the hotel proprietor drank to Jugoplastika's victory. Walrus! Walrus! Walrus! cried the waiters and the guests of honor.
Walrus! Let's have a song for Walrus! babbled the hotelier, a sturdy Hungarian by the name of Agoston Szabolcs, loosening his tie. A lively accordion tune wound its way out of the kitchen and into the restaurant. The chef kicked the door open and swayed across the room. I'm the orchestra around here! He squeezed the red accordion back and forth over his magnificent paunch; a greasy meat fork dangled from his hip, sweat dripped into his smile. His stubby fingers slipped across the keys, the prelude smelled of beef, of garlic, of metal. Twenty well-fed men took up the song, twenty victorious voices, more seriously smashed, more rapturous, more enamored with every verse and every shot of spirits. The chef grinned as if under torture. The chef whistled. The chef dripped. The chef put his foot down on a chair to support the accordion. Yoohoo! cried the suffering chef, grabbing the schnapps bottle. He tipped spirits down his throat straight from the bottle, and there was no break in the singing when he took his hand off the keys. I'm the orchestra around here, he gurgled, that's me, the orchestra!
The waiters took orders, always ordering a double for themselves. They twirled trays on their fingertips, hugged one another and swayed in time to the songs, sailors dressed in black.
The eighth, cried Walrus, throwing the seventh glass over his shoulder, the eighth is for my little lad here, only he can't legally drink yet, so I'll just have to manage it for him.
Little means a lot smaller than me, Zoran protested, and he drank the dregs from every glass without making a face. Agoston Szabolcs did the same, only with full glasses, and he went to sleep after the tenth with his elbow in a brimming ashtray. All of you shut up! snarled the chef, and the accordion whispered an emotional
csárdás
in the hotelier's ear. The men rose to their feet, looked at each other, closed the circle, moving arm in arm. Glasses hit the wall and didn't break, whereupon Agoston Szabolcs stood up as well, joining the dance even before he'd woken up. Milenko joined in, tilting his head back, more wolf than walrus.
Zoran stayed awake for the first hundred and twenty-five miles —the way his father was singing, there was no chance of going to sleep. Two hours later he drank the first thermos of coffee, and just before Sarajevo and after his third packet of glucose he felt a little unwell. When his father woke him up in the Romanija region—look at that, Zoran, fog like cement!—he rubbed his eyes and instantly cried: I wasn't asleep!
No, no, you just closed your eyes for a minute, same as me. We'll both have to replace those eyes of ours, next time the meadows may not save us. The car had stopped a good way into a field, with a steep slope downhill on the right, you couldn't see where it went. Five in the morning, fog like cement, Zoran!
It was night, morning, and cold all in one in the Romanija. Father and son got out of the car, the big man stretched and scratched his mustache. Zoran yawned, picked up a stone and threw it into the fog. Dew lay on the grass and their shoes. They peed to the right and left of a fir tree, aiming downhill through the foggy cement, both of them whistling, both of them happy. Walrus leaned against the warm hood, one hand in his trouser pocket, a cigarette in the other. Zoran picked dandelions and daisies and something pale blue the name of which he didn't know and put them together in a bunch. He unwrapped the remains of the pork ribs and folded the foil around the stems. He didn't think much of flowers, and the bunch showed it; crap was his father's highest praise, but flowers are flowers, your mother will be pleased.
She wasn't pleased. The front door was unlocked; her hair was mussed. She wasn't pleased, she was naked, and why, Zoran asked himself, why fog like cement anyway? Nothing was ever as soft as the fog in the Romanija on the Sunday morning when Zoran and his father, Milenko, nicknamed Walrus, arrived home six hours earlier than planned. The door was open, and so was the zipper of Bogoljub Balvan the tobacconist's fly.
Zoran is sitting on the steps outside Maestro Stankovski's barbershop staring at a photo in his hands. Zoran likes the kinds of girls who are princesses—they have to have long hair, they have to be pale and slender and proud. Like the woman in the photo. And like Ankica, Zoran's Ankica with her black curls.
I sit down beside him and hand him the bag of sunflower seeds. Zoran is three years older than I am, and I get to do things for him now and then. Today I had to go and speak to his Ankica. I had to apologize to her on Zoran's behalf.
Although the shop is closed, Zoran still has to be there today. He has to help Maestro Stankovski pack because he's going on vacation in a few days' time. Holiday—ho, yes, said Zoran when we first met this morning, pulling the skin under his eye down with his forefinger.
Sure, I said, doing the same.
Usually Zoran sweeps up the hair, polishes the mirrors, and cleans the two Panesamig shavers with their tiny brushes. Maestro Stankovski claims they're better than Panasonic—sharper and cheaper, and let's be honest, how would the Japanese know what's best for beards?
Doesn't my little Austrian girl look like Ankica? asks Zoran as I hand him the sunflower seeds, and he wipes invisible dust motes off the crumpled black-and-white picture.
Her eyes seem familiar to me, I say, nodding, and I look more closely at the young woman with the long curly hair and the white dress with a bell-shaped skirt. I've seen the photo before, Zoran always shows it when he waxes enthusiastic about Austria or about girls.
They all look like that, says Zoran, and the princess gazes sternly at us, just think of it—a country where all the girls look like that! Wow!
Tell you what, Zoran, I say, she looks like Bruce Lee . . .
That's right, he replies dreamily, not surprised at all, Austrian women all look like Bruce Lee. But with prettier hair, and that neck . . .
We both sit in silence, just looking at the photo. That neck! Zoran smells the sunflower seeds. It's not difficult to sit in silence with Zoran because it isn't easy to talk to him. He's not interested in anything but books, princesses (first and foremost Ankica), Austria and his father Walrus. There's always a book in the back pocket of his jeans, the jeans are washed out, there's a white star on his sneakers.
Grüss Gott,
he whispers to the photo, kissing the corner where you can see Hissi or Sissi or something written with a flourish.
Grüss Gott,
kiss your hand, lovely lady! Zoran's lips are slightly pursed when he tries talking like an Austrian, pursed for a little kiss. Kiss your hand, pretty lady, kiss your hand! Kung fu!
Zoran leans back on the steps and narrows his eyes. The sun is low, there's hardly anyone out and about in the street. Another reason why it's easy to sit in silence with Zoran is because I never know how to ask him a question.
What kept you so long? he asks me, spitting the shell of a sunflower seed out in a high trajectory.
I looked in at home. My old folks were quarreling. I listened at the door.
Whose fault was it?
It wasn't about them. It was about everyone going away, like Maestro Stankovski. And the situation. The situation, the situation, the situation . . . well, what's in the offing, what we ought to do and all that.
Hm. Zoran cracks a seed in his teeth, puts the photo down on the steps and runs a hand through his hair. What
is
in the offing, then?
No idea. My old lady opened the door at that point.
Hm.
When I'm talking to Zoran I call my parents “the old folks.” We sit in silence again; there's nothing to hear but the cracking and spitting. A sparrow comes down beside the shells.
I went and told Ankica, I say after the silence has turned a little too silent. Zoran blinks at the sun. We were alone, like you said, and I just told her, this is how it is, that's it.
This is how it is, that's it, repeats Zoran.
Well, yes, I said you're sorry. You apologize. It won't happen again . . .
What did she look like?
What?
What was my Ankica looking like?
Hm, well, same as usual, curls and eyes and all that. She said you promised it wouldn't happen again the first two times as well. She said she hates you and she never wants to see you again. She said kindly don't send any midgets around when you want to speak to her, it's almost worse than your temper. I didn't think that was very nice of her.
She didn't really say temper. Zoran shakes his head and flicks a shell away.
She said “the slap,” that's what she said. She's had enough, she said, you don't make her feel good anymore.
Zoran has slapped his Ankica three times. His Ankica, because everyone knows that she
is
his Ankica, and Zoran is Ankica's Zoran. The first time he told her: this is for taking something away from me that I'll never get back again.
You really ought to apologize to her yourself, Zoran, I tell him, and I feel embarrassed having to say a thing like that. I heard it in a film, but it sounded a thousand times better there. The film was about a detective who spent ages hunting for the wrong woman.
Zoran stands up and leans on the handrail, relaxed. He looks at the photo again.
Why do you hit her, anyway? I ask. I dare not remind him of his part in the agreement.
After I'm through with school, Zoran tells the photograph, I'm going there, to Austria. And there'll be roses for my Ankica tomorrow. You just remember this, Aleksandar, roses aren't just flowers. My Ankica will come with me, then I won't need any Austrian girls, they can make Bruce Lee eyes at me all they want.
Grüss Gott
and so long, pretty lady, so long and good-bye . . . He stuffs the photo in his shirt pocket, says: that's how you want to treat your girl from the very start, and then what happened to my father can never happen to you . . .
. . . That Sunday morning Father and I came home six hours earlier than planned. The door was open and so was the zipper of Bogoljub Balvan the tobacconist's fly. My mother was kneeling in front of Bogoljub with her hair all messy as if she'd just woken up, but then at least she'd have had her nightie on. She was stroking the tobacconist's thighs and bobbing her head up and down like a chicken.
The bunch of flowers was jammed between Father's hand and his sports bag, the stems squashed flat, but flowers are flowers. I looked at him, I wanted him to explain all this to me, the chicken movements and the tobacconist. He dropped the bunch of flowers, then dropped his bag on top of them. Mother and Bogoljub hadn't noticed us yet. Father put his ref's whistle to his mouth and blew it. The two of them jumped in alarm, Mother clenched her teeth and Bogoljub shrieked with pain. She moved away from the tobacconist's lap, wiped her mouth and staggered toward Father. God help me, Milenko! she pleaded, with her hair falling over her forehead, and she snatched Granny's crochet tablecloth off the table to cover herself. The vase of flowers on it tipped over and water flowed over the tabletop, but flow ers are flowers—these were roses from Bogoljub's tobacconist shop.
Just a moment, murmured Father, striding toward her. He put out a powerful arm: offensive foul. Thus far and not a step farther, his fist showed her. There were two books lying on the floor at Bogoljub's feet. Just a moment, is that Marx and Hemingway lying side by side?
Bogoljub Balvan widened his eyes. Mary, mother of God, he whimpered, tiptoeing his way between
Das Kapital
and
The Old
Man and the Sea
and tugging at his zipper. Holy Mother of God, he squealed, blowing on his crotch where it was still painful, Mary, my soul's salvation, don't let it stick!
But the zipper did stick, so Bogoljub cursed the name of God's mother, the holy mother of all zippers, and gave Father no option but to bellow at him loud enough for the whole neighborhood and half the town to hear and never forget it: go fuck the sun, Dragica! Did I build this house with my own hands for you to whore around in it? Did I make those bookshelves and choose the books just for some arsehole of a tobacconist to bring himself off on Comrade Marx and Mr. Hemingway? Take that tablecloth off this minute, do you hear? Soiling the work of your own mother's hands! As for you, Bogoljub, have we known each other since we were in the Pioneers for you to break the Pioneer oath of friendship right here in my house, to shame me and madden me by stuffing yourself in my Dragica's mouth, making an adulteress of her? Did I lend you money back then for the tobacconist's shop and never ask for a dinar of interest, just for you to turn all reactionary and religious in my house and land your prick in debts you can never repay? Go fuck the holy mother of all tobacconists! Get out of here! Both of you! And if you value your lives, put those books back on the shelf !
Trembling, Mother picked up the literary classics and collected her clothes. Bogoljub still had his hands too full to help her. He hunched his shoulders and sobbed, barely audibly: I didn't mean to . . . we were only . . .
Just a moment! Father took his shirt off and looked at the flickering TV screen. Our C64 console was lying on the floor, a jumble of cables, along with two joysticks, salted nibbles, and toothpicks stuck into pieces of cheese on Father's favorite plate, the one with the little basketballs. That just-a-moment had hardly died away before Father turned and Hemingwayed Bogoljub so forcefully that the tobacconist was sent flying against the bookshelves. Tito's
The Party,
Volume 2, and
Thus
Spake Zarathustra
fell out; that pair weren't such a tragedy. Mother picked them up too, whimpering, and Father perpetrated a technical foul on the TV set: just a moment . . . were you two playing Tetris?
The list of high scores was visible on screen: Bogoljub had taken over the first three. He had written BOG [God] under his results. Father reached behind the shelves and loaded his shotgun. Have you gone and broken my record in my own home? He closed his left eye and took careful aim. Mother and the tobacconist ran out of the house in panic. Father put the safety catch on the shotgun and leaned it against the bookshelf. He raised his hands in front of his face, turned them around and examined them, as if surprised to find he had such things as thumbs or fingernails or lines of destiny. Then he sat down in front of the TV and played Tetris late into the night, in his undershirt, without saying a word or washing his hands, which he usually did when he came home from a basketball game, even before hugging Mother and me.
I ate what was left of the pork ribs, which tasted of earth. I picked the petals off the flowers: Ankica loves me, she loves me not, she loves me and she loves me. Father didn't answer any of my questions. I set to work on the savory nibbles and the cheese. Father didn't eat anything, didn't say anything, stacked blocks and now and then polished up his shotgun until the metal gleamed. Around midnight he topped out with a score of 74,360 points—MIL MIL MIL, it said on squares one to three.
God, said Father, is dead.
Bring all the drink here, Zoran, I won't be needing a glass. He stripped to his underpants, and I brought him schnapps, brandy, wine. I watched him for a while—drinking, putting the bottle down, drinking, putting the bottle down. But serious drinking without any singing or company is the most boring thing in the world, so finally I went to sleep on the sofa.
Father drank until the sparrows started twittering. Then he shouldered his shotgun, walked through the street, shot at sparrows in the light of dawn and failed to hit a single one of them. He rang Bogoljub's doorbell, shouting: come out and let's kiss like brothers! But as nothing moved inside the house he shot out all the windows, forced the door open, knocked the bookshelf over and slammed his gun against the TV set, but didn't break the glass. So he plugged in Bogoljub's C64, laid the gun across his lap, and did better than BOG's highest Tetris score at the first attempt. Then he set fire to Bogoljub's edition of the collected works of Marx, and as the flames rose higher he crapped on the carpet.
The first shots had woken me and I followed Father through town, first alone, later with some of the old men of Višegrad who went out angling at this time of day. They were eating salted sunflower seeds and laying bets. Not many were betting on the TV set. I bet ten thousand dinars on my father's talent for Tetris—in her haste Mother had forgotten her purse—and I won forty-five thousand. Just as Father was taking his trousers down and straining over Bogoljub Balvan's carpet, the two policemen—Pokor and Kodro—arrived, sleepy, pale and unshaven. Their uniforms smelled of fried liver and they were smoking. Papa hadn't thought to bring any toilet paper, but Bogoljub's scarf proved useful. He wrapped the soiled scarf around the TV and the policemen asked him to wash his hands now, please. This kind of thing won't do. Private property. Willful damage. Fire. A fine. Come with us.
Father listened to what Pokor and Kodro had to say, leaned on his shotgun, and agreed with them in every particular. But then he told them, sadly and truthfully, what that bastard had been doing in his house, how broken trust hurts worse than broken ribs, how many sparrows he'd left alive because sparrows are tormented so much anyway, and how very badly ashamed he felt, how ashamed he would feel all his life, that his only son had been forced to see these shameful things with his own fair eyes.
The policemen took off their caps, scratched the backs of their necks with the peaks of the caps, nodded, and shook their uncombed heads. Finally Father shrugged his shoulders and showed them the palms of his hands: go on, tell me again this won't do, it's private property! I'll pay any fine you like, but I'm not going with you until I've settled accounts. I'll never get back what was taken from me, not the way it was before. Everything I'm going to take from him can be replaced, so I'm taking plenty.
Pokor and Kodro retreated to Bogoljub's kitchen, had breakfast and consulted together. The anglers unpacked their stools and offered me apple juice out of unlabeled cans. When Pokor and Kodro put their caps on again and went off without a word to drink coffee, the old men nodded approvingly. The policemen had lost their bet—they didn't take Father away.
Bogoljub had guessed what was coming to him. He was a tobacconist through and through, he always wore the same dark red smock, and he could get hold of anything for his customers—instantly, or by the day after tomorrow at the latest. He had salvaged what he could carry and driven away with it from the tobacconist's shop. My father cleared out what was left. He knocked the window panes in, threw all of Bogoljub's wares off the bridge into the Drina one by one, down to the very last pen. Drawers, the shelves from the walls, newspaper stands—everything that hadn't been screwed down landed in the river, and later on so did everything that
had
been screwed down. No one stopped him; over twenty men were watching when he finished by tearing the door off its hinges and chucking that into the river too.
Word had gone around town of what had happened to us in our own home. People gave Father schnapps and leeks, Amela brought him warm bread and salt. Amela baked the best bread in the world. Old men patted me on the head and looked as if they were going to curse and cry at the same time. Drunk as he was, my father took me aside and said: Zoran, I'm going away now. You can stay with Aunt Desa. I'll be coming back, but first I have to get everything new for us:
Das Kapital
for me and a new mother for you. He put two hundred deutschmarks in my shirt pocket and rubbed the back of my neck by way of saying good-bye. He rammed the car into the tobacconist's shop twice and then drove out of town, hooting his horn.
So now what? I ask Zoran, although I know the answer: Zoran's mother ran off to Sarajevo with Bogoljub the same day as his father went out of town. She left some money for him with his Aunt Desa, but Desa managed the money on his behalf the same way as Zoran's father had managed the pear schnapps meant for Zoran in Split. Zoran was sleeping in his aunt's attic, and beating up his two cousins every day, once after getting up and once before going to bed. Zoran only beats up people who really deserve it: his two cousins because they kept shooting their mouths off, and Edin because he learns ballet dancing, but he apologized for that when he discovered that Edin doesn't have a father. Desa let his parents' house to seasonal laborers working on the dam. She was divorced, and spent a lot of time with those tired men. They always spoke highly of her. Uncle Miki says: Desa is our Marilyn Monroe.
Now, says Zoran, standing up and interrupting my thoughts about his aunt, who always smells of honey, now I can't stand daisies and dandelions—crappy flowers are crappy flowers. My mother preferred those filthy roses. Flowers are not just flowers.
That's true, I can confirm it, Danijela with the very long hair had an alarming fit of laughter when I gave her my daisies.
Zoran takes the broom and sweeps up the sunflower-seed shells in front of the steps. He's lanky like his father, long arms, long legs, sturdy torso. His hair is thick and uncombed above his ears. However hot it is, he never takes off his father's worn old denim jacket. The twigs of the broom scratch over the asphalt, the only sound in the afternoon silence.
Mother and I talked on the phone, says Zoran, sweeping away with the broom. She says she can't come back. Because of people, and what the town would say. She says none of it is true, and she wants me to move in with her in Sarajevo.
What did you say to that?
Zoran gathers the mucus in his throat with a hard, grating sound, and spits on the ground. I said: right, Mother, okay, but what I'd have to say to you is worse than anything the people here are saying. That's why I'll never move in with you and you'll never move in with me—because I'd be telling you those things every day till the end of my life, and I'd have to see you bobbing your head about like a chicken every day when you answered me.
The bell inside the shop door rings, and Maestro Stankovski's bald patch appears around the door: Zoran, I said take a break, not a holiday!
Comin', says Zoran, leaning the broom against the handrail. We can hear the clip-clop of hooves. Musa Hasanagic is leading his mare Cauliflower across the square by her reins. Zoran and he shake hands. Musa takes off his top hat, and Zoran pats the white blaze on the mare's forehead.
Zoran doesn't know many stories. It's because so many incredible things happen in his own life that he doesn't have to invent anything. He can always tell the tale of his cuckolded father's revenge on Bogoljub Balvan again and again. Sometimes the story takes less than two minutes—there's no Tetris playing and nothing gets thrown into the river, Zoran's father spends all day polishing his shotgun and weeping over it and then polishing his tears away and weeping and polishing again. That version ends with Zoran on his knees, begging his father to take the barrel of the gun out of his mouth.
Zoran and Musa gravely say good-bye. Zoran shakes hands with me too, nods, and disappears into the shop. I set off for home. A long-distance bus turns the corner behind me, its driver wears a cap. His mustache, his long arms, his long fingers on the steering wheel, the dark hair coming out from under his cap above his ears—just like his son's.
Anywhere there are stories, I'll be right there.
How did Milenko Pavlovic, known as Walrus, the three-point shooter once feared for the number of points he scored but not quite such a good shot with a gun, come to be behind that steering wheel? And shouldn't I run straight back to the barbershop and tell Zoran that his father was back again, not too early this time, more like a year too late?