How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone Read online

  Pictures upon pictures of Tito were still around too—in offices, in shop windows, in living rooms next to family portraits, in schools. Tito on a yacht, Tito standing on a speaker's podium, Tito with a girl handing him flowers. You could get a jigsaw puzzle of Tito and E.T. holding hands. So when those pictures were removed from the classrooms, Tito died for the third time. Comrade Jeleni, known to us as Fizo, still wanted to be called Comrade. He was the only teacher to leave Tito's portrait hanging on the wall that first day of the school year—Tito in his admiral's uniform with a German shepherd dog. Fizo placed himself behind his desk without a word of greeting, put on his glasses, and entered something in the register. You'd better all invest in a workbook and a formula book, said the strictest teacher in our school without looking up; you have a hard year's work ahead of you.

  That day Mr. Fazlagi, not-Comrade-Teacher-now, didn't just take away Tito's steely brow in its gilded frame; he also took the red flag carried at the head of the procession in every school parade out of its glass case. When I'd asked whether we Pioneers couldn't clean Tito up he embarked very seriously on a long and serious speech: this is a serious matter, Aleksandar Krsmanovic, and your irony is wholly misplaced! Serious changes to the system are in progress. The new forms of address and the abolition of all remnants of any personality cult are constituent parts of the process of democratization and should be taken seriously! The teacher's lips went on moving; the teacher's mouth produced one long sentence after another. Mr. Fazlagic put the picture down several times and shook his arms about. But instead of leaving the picture on the floor, he kept picking it up again, and went on talking to us until break.

  To show that I'd understood how serious the whole business was—the system, new forms of address, the personality cult—I came to school the next day in my dark blue Pioneer uniform, which was much too small for me, but I thought it still looked smart. I sat down in the front row of Mr. Fazlagic's class, my back straight and Socialist as Grandpa always demanded. I'd even scrubbed my fingernails clean. I spread my fingers out on the table in front of me as we used to do in the old days when a hygiene supervisor came to inspect the class. At the first question Mr. Fazlagic asked us, I sprang to my feet and said: now let's consider what's left of labor products. There's nothing left except the same old eerie realism, just a jellified mass of indistinguishable human labor, that's to say the expense of the labor force without any thought for what it's expended on.

  Three hours' detention. Three teachers invigilated, their grim expressions speaking volumes about the social and political shift in ideology, otherwise known as radical change. If you don't see sense, they threatened me, you'll be here after school every day.

  Students are left lying in school like sailors on the bottom of the sea, I said, drawing two diagonal lines in red felt pen on my cheeks; I'm only sorry that I shall die a student and not a miner.

  After that there was another voluble and angry exchange, but then I was allowed to go home, because even teachers have a private life. I decided to take a closer look at the meaning of the expressions “provocation,” “family brainwashing,” and “political shifts in ideology otherwise known as radical change.” I knew the meaning of “irony” by now. Irony is when you ask a question and you don't get an answer, you just get trouble instead.

  Edin turns to me and says: Jasna's shirt. Edin, Comrade in Chief of human biology, explains what's making Jasna's shirt swell out like bodywork that has to be flattened when a car's been in an accident. Friday, third period, Mr. Fazlagic wipes the board clean with such vigor that water drips off the sponge and runs up his sleeve. Edin and I quickly agree that Edin's explanation is not quite the right way to describe those swellings, because what's suddenly appeared under Jasna's shirt has nothing to do with car repair workshops. Nor is Jasna's red shirt in any way connected with bent axles. It is rather clearer to Edin than to me why, when he and I come anywhere near her, we act as if she were both the most important and the most unimportant thing in the world. Kneading bread, stroking a dog, trying to find a radio station, that's the best way to work on those nontechno-logical swellings under Jasna's shirt, Edin explains. You have to be gentle and precise. You have to master the art of touching and do it perfectly or girls will run away from you, whispers the Comrade in Chief of biology, and he looks dreamily at Jasna. If I could touch her just once, he sighs, then I would die happy.

  I've never heard the word “precise” in Edin's mouth before, and when his voice rises a little on the word “perfectly,” Mr. Fazlagic flings his bunch of keys down on the teacher's desk with full force. Silence. All of a sudden. Precisely.

  The bunch of keys is an experience. For Edin, for me, for Jasna too. Because Edin, Jasna and I are personally responsible for Mr. Fazlagic's irritation. The former Comrade Teacher is unbeatable in the irritation line anyway. At least once a week he predicts in a shaking voice: you lot will have me in Sokolac yet! By “you lot” he means us when, for instance, he catches us trying to set fire to the board, or when we've all ganged up to write the first school essay of the year in the Cyrillic alphabet, although express orders went out after Tito's third death: no more writing in Cyrillic characters. And there's a lunatic asylum at Sokolac. It's where Adolf Hitlers and people who think they're chairs go. Mr. Fazlagic might make it to the asylum too. And when his nerves are reaching Sokolac-point, he likes to bang things down on his desk. The flat of his hand, the register, the map of Turkey—a country that Mr. Fazlagic has recently taken to holding up as an example for this, that and the other. Today it's his bunch of keys, which must weigh thirty pounds. All Yugoslavia and half of Turkey could probably be opened up with those keys. The echo of the bang hasn't quite died away when he shouts: perfectly? Do what perfectly, Edin? And just what do you want to touch? Your marks are far from perfect, so you might touch your books for a change!

  The noise and the shouting alarm Edin; he jumps up from his chair, performs a pirouette, thrusts his chest out, spreads his arms wide and cries: I don't want to touch anything! And when I said “perfectly,” I was talking about our move, my mother and I are moving away, Aleksandar said he'd help and I said with him we'll do it all perfectly.

  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 Uzice, 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 fl
ew 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:

  What Milenko Pavlović, known as Walrus, brings back from his wonderful trip, how

  the stationmaster's leg loses control of itself, what the French are good for, and why

  we don't need quotation marks

  . . . 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 re
d 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.