Little Bastards in Springtime (21 page)

I
T’S
6:30
A.M.
and I come in through the backyard, which is deep green and filled with dawn shadows. I stand by the door, have a smoke, watch light seep back into the world. The sun will rise very soon, and then we’ll all shuffle through another day.

Baka is scurrying around the kitchen looking for something. I haven’t seen her move this fast in months.

“What are you doing, Bako?” I say.

“I’m looking for something, what do you think?” she says.

“But it’s six thirty in the morning,” I say.

“So, what’s your problem? I’ve lost something at six thirty in the morning.”

“What have you lost?”

“Well, it’s not lost, it’s here somewhere.”

“What?”

“My bathing suit. We’re leaving in a few minutes and I can’t go without it. I can’t swim naked.”

I stare at her, and she looks up at me, and I can see that
she doesn’t recognize me, not this morning. So I run downstairs, pack my canvas bag, and leave the house again. I walk back along lumpy residential streets with their small shabby houses to Sava’s building, which isn’t far, just on the other side of Dufferin. I don’t care that it’s freezing, that my eyes are scratchy and my ears are ringing from exhaustion like I’ve just been punched in the head. I can’t take that Baka’s looking for her bathing suit at dawn on a cold spring day in Canada, that when she looks at me she sees a stranger.

I knock hard on Sava’s apartment door. There is no answer. Sava is probably still in the closet, stoned out of her mind. I don’t care. I knock some more. Then I pound. A neighbour a few doors down opens her door tentatively.

“Shut your fucking door,” I shout at her, and she does, quickly, and I hear bolts snap into place..

Finally the door in front of me opens. It’s Sava’s mother, looking like hell. Her bleach-blond hair is up in a rat’s nest. Bags under her eyes bulge pale purple.

“Jevrem,” says Sava’s mother, “be quiet, for God’s sake. You must go home, you must leave us alone. Sava’s asleep. You’re too much trouble, Jevrem, you’re always trouble.”

I push past her and walk down the hall to Sava’s room.

“You can’t just come in like this,” Sava’s mother yells after me. “You kids are all screwed up, you’re just like the imbeciles we had back home.”

I go into Sava’s room and lock the door. I open the closet. I’m right, Sava is still passed out in there. It still smells strongly of weed. I grab a couple of pillows off the bed and climb in again to be with her. Sava stretches, her long arms tangled in her clothes.

“How did you get past my mom, Andric? Why are you back?”

“My baka was looking for her bathing suit again.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, to go to the lake with.”

“Veliko? I loved that lake.” Sava is hardly awake. She mumbles, her voice hoarse. “We went there a few summers. My uncle had a summer house nearby.”

“Oh, the figs, pomegranates, grapes, kiwis, rose hips, and mandarins, oh, they all grow in sunny Herzegovina,” I say. It’s our joke, the tourist angle.

“The rugged mountains.”

“The woolly sheep.”

“The fairy-tale castles.”

“The primeval forests.”

“The Olympic-sized swimming pool.”

“The whitewater rafting.”

“The magical skiing.”

“The waterfalls.”

“And Lipizzaner horses.”

“Sarajevo, the European Jerusalem.”

“Multicultural since the Middle Ages.”

“Where Catholics, Orthodox, and Muslims—”

“—pound the shit out of each other … in perfect harmony.”

Now we’re singing, quietly, out of tune, “
Ebony and ivory live together in perfect harmony. Side by side on my piano keyboard, oh lord, why don’t we?
”

It always ends like this. We smile, we don’t laugh. Sava puts her leg between mine and rests her head on my arm. The thing is, we know it’s true, those tourist ads. Bosnia-Herzegovina
is
a motherfucking jewel, and it
was
proudly multicultural since the Middle Ages. One fucked-up war, and suddenly hundreds of years don’t count for shit.

We wake up to Sava’s mom looming over us, one hand on
each closet door, a look of deep disgust on her face. “Why are you acting like little children?” she asks. “Playing fort in a closet. Oh my God. You’ll finish high school soon and you’re acting like this?”

I do feel a bit oxygen deprived, but not very much like a child. I have a decently hard erection in my pants that’s feeling cramped. Sava rolls over slowly and raises herself onto her hands and knees. She stays that way for a while, trying to wake up.

“I want you out,” says her mother, pointing at me. “Please. I want you out. Now. Please. OUT.” Her disgust has turned into true distress. I wonder how we can really be bothering her so much when we’re asleep in a closet.

Sava’s mother is bending down now and trying to grab my arm. “Get up, boy,” she says to me, as though I’m some kind of wild animal that’s found its way in through a hole in the wall. Why is it that I’m always the animal? She’s the one who’s behaving inhumanely.

“Get up. Get up.
Get out.
” She manages to get my arm, holding her head away as though I might lunge up and bite her face.

This is pathetic, I think, it’s time to go. I suddenly feel sorry for us all. I spring up. Sava’s mother backs up so fast she falls onto the bed, mouth open, eyes wide, chest heaving. I take her hand.

I say, “Thank you very much for having me, Mrs. B., it was such a pleasure staying in your lovely home.”

In the elevator, we watch the light move down from number to number as we glide to earth. Smoking up, remembering, forgetting, dreaming, huddling in closets is important in life, but it can really fog up the brain. Now we’re on the hunt for the real world, the one that exists in the here and now. Sava needs a rush of adrenaline, I need money. Mama is broke, the rent is due.

‡ ‡ ‡

S
AVA
wants a convenience store. I consult with Papa, but he doesn’t have much to say on the subject. He never has much advice about my means of raising cash. He sort of looks out at the horizon whenever I ask, as though he hasn’t heard me.

“Only if it’s a 7-Eleven,” I say. “I’m not going to ruin the life of some poor-ass boat-person making five cents on a can of cream-of-mushroom soup and thinking he’s hit the high life.”

“It’s probably more than five cents,” Sava says.

“Whatever. I don’t like 7-Elevens. The stores are empty, they don’t sell anything. You can’t even
get
a can of cream-of-mushroom soup. It’s irritating. And those bright lights. Late at night it really gets to you.”

We walk east along Bloor Street, which is the ugliest street in the history of streets, non-stop shabby, mismatched two-storey buildings with depressing storefronts selling random shit. It’s so ugly it’s exhilarating, like the wild west with its dust storms, dingy saloons, and wide open space. It’s dead at this time in the morning, no more action than small swirls of cigarette butts in the breeze and a handful of cars and bicycles heading downtown. At Ossington we’re over the walking, we get in a cab, and five minutes later we’re at the 7-Eleven on Dundas Street. We go in and Sava wastes no time. She gets her baseball bat out of her duffle bag and starts whacking away at bags of potato chips. They make a popping sound when she hits them at a certain angle, which is thrilling in a small way. The guy at the counter, from Sri Lanka or Pakistan or Iran or somewhere Eastern like that, yells, “What you doing? What you doing?” I walk over and hold my gun to his head. I feel ten feet
tall, invincible, untouchable, like I’ve just snorted a giant line of blow through a thousand-dollar bill.

“Excuse me,” I say, “can you quiet down for a minute? My friend here has something to work out of her system. Her mother is very high-strung.”

I lean over and get the register open. I take out a wad of cash. Sava has now worked her way to the ice-cream freezer and has smashed the lid. She fishes out two Popsicles from the glinting piles of shattered glass, the blood on her hand bringing her back to herself in a way that’s familiar and comforting. The wreckage is a relief. I can see steadiness returning to her eyes.

“What flavour?” she asks the counter guy. She throws him a grape Popsicle but he doesn’t catch it.

I notice that he’s breathing very light, very quick, focused one hundred percent on the barrel at his temple. I notice that his face is tight with terror, and something else too, something like despair. Maybe he thinks I’ll actually shoot him. It’s in this moment that I remember that the evil 7-Eleven corporation makes its money on franchises sold to suckers from poor countries. Which makes me think of all the other immigrants in this city who come from desperate places and drive taxis, wash laundry, sell pop, chocolate bars, magazines, clean houses, look after babies, make lives happen against all the odds. Just like Mama. And my skin burns for a short fiery moment.

I lower the gun. My face feels sweaty, and suddenly I’m thinking of Baka. I can’t breathe, there’s a cramp in my chest, my vision blurs. I run outside and stand in the middle of the small parking lot, panting. The sun is popping over the eastern horizon really fast. The CN Tower twinkles happily to the southeast. A light breeze is blowing up from the lake, smelling like it’s escaped from a deep cave. The coolness feels ancient,
but also alive, that’s the kind of spring morning it is.

“Baka’s dying,” I say, when Sava runs out a second later. “I just got it. She’s not just sick, she’s not disoriented, she’s dying.”

“The cops will be here in four minutes, Andric,” Sava says.

I run inside again. The counter guy is slumped over the counter, heaving. “No,” he shouts when he sees me. “Please. Please. No.”

“I’m sorry, man. I’m going to take this pack of gum, and I’m going to give you the cash back and some more to pay for the damage. Okay? You can collect insurance too. Break some more stuff and you can get a vacation out of it.”

Lie. I don’t say that. I just take the gum and run. But I feel like saying that, I have the urge to say it. It’s a strong urge, it’s insistent.

‡ ‡ ‡

M
AMA’S PLAYING THE PIANO, LISZT’S SONATA IN
B Minor, I know it, I know them all, and my lungs are collapsing, I’m on my knees on the living room floor, I’m clutching at my throat, trying to catch a breath. It’s embarrassing. Mama looks over at me, but she sees nothing. She’s lost in the music. So am I. It’s crushing me, this wave of sound, this avalanche of vibrations. The air in this house has been still and grey and dead for so long.

“Why are you praying?” Baka’s voice wavers.

“I—I’m not praying, Baka,” I stammer. It’s only nine in the morning, but I’m exhausted. “Mama’s playing again. I don’t know what the hell is going on.”

“Praying to God does one thing only, Jevrem,” Baka says. “It reveals doubt in your fellow human beings.”

She is sitting on the couch, a blanket pulled up to her neck, her tiny shrunken head swaying back and forth to the piano. I’m shocked by the sight of her, because now I know what’s going on. She’s moving on, she’s leaving us, she’s had enough of this world, she’s off to communist heaven. On the coffee table a candle is burning. Mama has lit it. She used to light a candle back home in the evening when someone was killed. After about a week there was a candle going all the time. And then that’s all we had, when the power was gone, candles everywhere, our evenings spent in glowing, flickering light that would have been kind of nice if we weren’t waiting to die. But now it’s morning, daylight. Everything’s upside down, something’s about to happen.

“I’m not praying, Bako.” I get up from the floor and look through the kitchen drawers. I find more candles in with paper napkins and toothpicks. I start dripping melted wax on a plate.

“You know, Jevrem,” says Baka, “your mother could have been a concert pianist, she’s that good. Listen! Music is the soul of the people.”

“Bako, she
is
a concert pianist. And, she’s playing again. Isn’t that amazing?”

Mama looks blankly over at me again, she’s somewhere far away. I’m carrying a plate full of lit candles. I put it on the coffee table.

“Oh, how nice, how wonderful,” says Baka. “Candles are so hard to come by.”

I turn off the living room light and feel relief. The day has turned soft grey after a vivid sunrise. In this living room, it’s a glowing, shifting world. Mama is playing music to die to, Baka
seems happy for the first time in years, the wall between two worlds is dissolving, and I’m about to explode into a thousand pieces and disperse throughout the known universe, no way to ever draw me back together again.

“Did I ever tell you, Jevrem, about our beloved leader, our dear Joza?” Baka turns her head slowly in my direction.

“Oh yes,” I say. “Many, many times.”

“Well,” she says. “Those were good times, working hard during the day, evenings full of song, theatre, games, we enjoyed them so. And then, one afternoon, there he was. He’d come to visit us.”

“Where? Who?” For the first time, I actually encourage her. I want her to keep talking until the end of time.

“Well, our Joza, of course. That’s who. It was after the war and we were volunteers in the youth brigades. Railroads, railway tunnels, highways, public buildings, we built them all. And the evenings in our camps, we enjoyed those evenings so, singing, performing, games, sports, romances—but I was already in love, oh my.” Baka sighs. I can see that her eyes are filled with sunny days, brown muscular bodies, pickaxes, shovels, stone dust, red flags blowing in fragrant breezes.

“It was a hot day on the line, I remember that well. We were sweaty, covered in dust, levelling dirt with rakes, when a group of important-looking people in fancy clothes arrived on the narrow-gauge railway parallel to the new one. Our foreman called out,
it’s Marshal Tito, it’s him!
And we all stopped our work and rushed over to the cars, and there he was. In sparkling uniform, his sunglasses perched on his handsome, tanned face, and he said,
you work hard now, and the nation is grateful, but tomorrow you will live your lives with all the dignity and joy that every working person in the world deserves.
He said some other things as
well, and we cheered and whooped like schoolchildren until we were hoarse. Then he was gone again, the train rattling down the line to the next section, and we got back to—”