How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone Read online

  Walrus put Milica's baggage down carefully and flung his own sports bag onto the pavement, sending dust flying up. He handed Armin the key of the bus as if it were the stationmaster's birthday, and there was nothing Armin could do but thank him and finally stop kicking the tires. Walrus's new girlfriend put her scarf around her slender neck, and I'd never seen such a tiny handbag as hers; her lipstick might fit into it but then there'd be no room left for her headache tablets.

  Where's the driver? I asked Walrus after he'd shaken hands with everyone present the way presidents do at airports, clasping their hosts' hands in both their own.

  Picking mushrooms on the Romanija, replied Walrus, punching my forearm in a way I liked. And where's my son, you young rascal?

  Sweeping up hair for Maestro Stankovski, I replied, dancing about in front of Walrus like Muhammad Ali, I've just come from there. He's still wearing your jacket.

  Ah, my jacket, nodded Walrus, and the palm of his hand sketched a straight right and an upper cut. Then today's the last time he'll wear that old thing, no one wears denim jackets in Trieste, and I've bought him everything new.

  Milica pushed her sunglasses down from her hair to her face and ran her eyes over the little bus station, frowning. The pale bushes around it, all pale green like that, could hardly appeal to anyone so dotted. And probably neither did the oil stains on the asphalt, or the pack of dogs lying there dozing, or the holes in the rusty fence, or Armin the tire expert scratching his belly under his shirt. Milica concluded her inspection over the top of her sunglasses with me. What was wrong about me? I had big ears, but normally women of marriageable age liked that. I had a wonky haircut, but that was Maestro Stankovski's fault, not mine. Milica slowly opened her lips, showing her teeth; she had about forty more of them than most people, and a diamond sparkled on one of her twelve incisors. Those teeth could be giving a kind of smile, I thought, and sure enough, there was something she liked about me! She clasped her hands in front of her breasts with delight, her disappointment at the sight of the shabby bus station gone. She pinched my cheeks with both hands and an incredibly sweet perfume hit me in the face. Look, if there's one thing, I cried, wiping my cheeks with my sleeve, if there's one thing that I personally find distressing, it's having fingers jabbed in my face!

  “I personally” is what my mother said when she wanted to disagree with something, and “distressing” was what she said when she was very upset.

  Just hark at him talking! cried the delighted Milica, clapping her hands. Her voice sounded like the last piano key on the right. And see the funny way he opens and closes his mouth! She took a step back from me as if admiring a picture in a gallery. Walrus was pleased because his Milica was pleased, he wanted to hug her, but by now he was so laden with suitcases and bags and carriers that he couldn't really move at all.

  How old are you, darling? Milica took another step closer. I took three steps back.

  There are various rumors, I muttered, ranging from eight to fourteen, it all depends, but too old to have my cheeks pinched anyway. To avoid any more questions I followed Walrus, who had set off in the direction of the town center, walking heavily. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Armin reversing the bus, he couldn't have the right-hand side of one of his buses trespassing on the pavement. I kept my eye on the ladybird. Goodness knew what else someone who wore tights like cobwebs would be capable of.

  Čika Walrus, where have you been all this time?

  On my travels—all over the place. Across the Pannonian plain, over the Dinarides, to the coast, all the way to Italy. Not a bad trip. I didn't have much money, so I used five sentences of French from “La Marseillaise” and my recipe for leg of lamb Breton style to pretend that I was Jacques, and I introduced my Milica to everyone as Mademoiselle Bretagne. The French always make our sort happy because, like us, they know how to love, they're just as good at playing the accordion, and they've made a real art of their inability to bake proper bread. As Jacques and Mademoiselle Bretagne we always had enough to eat, and a bed in which to sleep and get to know each other better. Everywhere we went people told us why Yugoslavia had been such a fine country, it sounded as if they were talking about someone dead. Our act worked until we met a real Frenchman. We got drunk with him on French rosé, and then he confessed that he'd just been speaking Macedonian with a French accent and the wine was local wine cut with schnapps. Then he had too much of his local wine as well, and he wept in Milica's lap, telling us how he'd saved up for years to buy a motorbike to impress the most beautiful woman in the village, but the most beautiful woman in the village had gone and married someone who didn't even have a bicycle.

  On our way through Višegrad on 2 April 1992 Walrus said: it would be a good thing if everyone had trained to be on the road, same as me. Because everyone will soon have to go on a long trip. But I'm staying put, come what may.

  On the way past the fire station Walrus turned serious and said: Milica and I will be happy here.

  On the way past the mosque Walrus stopped and drank water from the tap in the wall.

  On his way, and it wasn't far enough for him to tell me all the things he could have told me, Milenko was glad to see every passerby who recognized him and stopped to say hello, because then he could put the heavy bags down. Many of them welcomed him warmly, for one thing because they were glad to see one more person back in the town, which was shrinking daily.

  Musa, said Walrus to Musa Hasanagic, who was leading his mare Cauliflower along by her reins, Musa, brother, shall we stick together?

  Always, said Musa, and Cauliflower nodded the way horses do.

  On the way to his son, and it was much too long since he'd seen him, and on the way to saying: I'm back and the war is hard on my heels, Walrus told me about his trip, the last trip, he said, to be made in this country for a long time by someone so full of care and yet so carefree.

  Where bad taste in music gets you, what the three-dot-ellipsis man denounces, and how fast war moves once it really gets going

  My car broke down on the Romanija, would you believe it? Right where my son, Zoran, and I once stopped for a pee, the engine gave out. Mist like cement, same as before. So off I go on foot, and then the bus comes along. The driver's switched some music on. My head's going around and around. I tell him: you're not on your own here. He laughs at me: no, I'm not, but I'm driving you, and as long as I'm driving you the volume of the music is my business and sitting there is yours. He's right. I admit it. I have no quarrel with that. But not only does the music stay as loud, it also gets worse too. It gets revolting. He's put a cassette in and is singing along with it, something about sharp swords by the bloodstained river Drina. I speak up again: right, the volume and the radio and the steering wheel and the speed and the hairs in your nostrils are your business, but these ears are mine. And I'm not happy with the insult to my ears and my river Drina, I don't approve of it at all. And since you're singing along—here I tap him on the shoulder—I'm not happy with you either, I don't approve of you at all. Not as a driver or a human being, if you know such garbage by heart. Switch it off or I'll shoot your balls off! However, he turns around, ready to fight. Into battle, heroes all! he shouted at me, and I thought we were going to drive off the road any minute, and the last thing I'd hear in my life would be this Greater Serbian donkey braying. He couldn't sing at all, or he wouldn't have been a bus driver.

  I have a headache and my life is not the easiest of lives at this moment, I whispered in the donkey's ear. And I may be Serbian but I'm ashamed to hear this kind of stuff. There's nothing more dangerous than a cuckold with a headache who feels ashamed of himself and has a loaded gun in his bag. Aleksandar, promise me that you will never hold a gun before a bus driver's eyes, throw him out of his bus, give him a good kicking and shoot his cassette player!

  Word of Pioneer's honor!

  There aren't any Pioneers now, you young rascal.

  Once a Pioneer, always a Pioneer.

  Walrus nodded, satisfied. Right, so
now I'm in charge of the bus, I told the passengers, and you can have it any way you like. I'll take you home or anywhere you say, you've paid your fares. Anyone who doesn't fancy traveling with a headache like mine and a gun like this can get off the bus; I won't take offense.

  So there were these faces, men and women, gaping at me, all rather concerned, all black-haired—except for my Milica, she was red-haired, she was sitting on the fifth seat at the back painting her mouth. Aah! I realized at once that I hadn't really meant it, or not entirely, when I said I'd let anyone out. Because a girl like that doesn't get away from me.

  Milica smiled and lowered her eyes. Walrus put the bags down, took her waist in his big basketball player's hand, and traced circles on her red and black blouse.

  Three people got out at once, said Walrus, raising three fingers, and a fourth—Walrus wiggled his little finger—stood up. A tiny old man with a hat much too big for him, long locks of hair at his temples, and a shabby frock coat. So tiny I hadn't seen him at all behind the seat that was hiding him. Everything about him was either small and short or large and long. He had to climb on the arm of the seat to get his bag down from the baggage rack. He was a grouch, but you could see his honesty and his grief on his lips. Still standing on the arm of the seat he put a small pair of glasses in front of his enormous eyes and made a speech in his own three-dot elliptical language: to think we always have to settle things by violence . . . we always have to . . . it upsets me . . . it upsets me . . . weapons . . . fighting . . . even with words . . . fighting . . . vulgar abuse . . . spitting . . . cursing . . . like the old days . . . again and again . . . and it's only . . . you just wait . . . this is a land of thugs . . . it never stops . . . it never ends . . .

  Aleksandar, you never saw such a long beard as that beard with the three-dot-ellipsis man grouching away into it! He wore it combed down past his bow tie, in two long waterfalls of beard. So there he was, standing in front of me, I can still repeat everything he said: senseless . . . senseless . . . do we always have to keep on this way . . . it could be much easier . . . like back then . . . boots on the ice . . . the lake frozen over . . . so cold . . . even the smallest nail they . . . it's just fifty years ago . . . someone gave me food . . . I wanted to go to God . . . so hungry . . . the priests, the kind priests . . . faith or food . . . young man, young man . . . you can go blind with cold . . . I saved nothing . . . nothing . . . that's what wars are like . . . that's how it was back then . . . I saved nothing . . . the loneliest people love only themselves . . .

  All this was exactly what the three-dot-ellipsis man said, you can't forget a thing like that. Then he lay down in the front row of seats and went on muttering into his beard. You never saw such a long beard, really, you never saw one like it.

  You never saw one like it, repeated Milica.

  You never did, I agreed, and after a pause, quietly and squinting at the ladybird, I said: so why did you bring her back?

  No one brought me anywhere! Milica said indignantly, I came here because I wanted to. I'm impressed by men with opinions, large hands, a headache, a gun, and—here she looked over at Walrus—and an arse like that in their trousers. Oops! Are you allowed to use such words here?

  Like impressed? I'm a Yugoslavian!

  Walrus laughed, and Milica laughed. She wasn't like the Višegrad women. She was always searching her surroundings with her eyes as if she was expecting someone, even when she was talking, even when she was laughing. She concentrated entirely on Walrus.

  I never did get another copy of Das Kapital, said Walrus. I used to read my old one at night when I couldn't sleep, and I swear I didn't understand a word of it. I understood my Milica very well. She and the three-dot-ellipsis man were the last passengers left after I'd taken all the others home. The three-dot-ellipsis man told us how his home and his synagogue and his memory of how to end sentences had all been looted. He had nothing left but his hat, his suitcase, his beard and his bow tie. Tarirara, that's what you could . . . that's my . . . I'm called . . . But Tarirara wasn't his real name, they'd taken his real name away as well. Tarirara was his song. Deep in thought, he scratched the strip of rubber under the bus window with his fingernail, tarirara, tarirara, he sang. He drove around with us for two months. I let him take the wheel so that I could get to know my Milica better on the back row of seats.

  Once, at night, we're somewhere in the high mountains of Slovenia and I'm just getting to know Milica's neck better, when there's a big bang! The bus has gone right through the crash barrier on the left, it careers downhill through undergrowth in a way liable to rearrange all your bones, then all of a sudden it comes to rest at the bottom, I'm only just able to hang on to Milica.

  Not bad . . . calls the three-dot-ellipsis man from the front, waving good-bye to a hubcap. All around us there's wind and a huge, empty surface. The three-dot-ellipsis man takes a couple of steps and almost tumbles over. He says: this is . . . this is . . . I couldn't save anything . . . so many years have . . . but now . . .

  We're on ice, Aleksandar! The bus is standing on ice. On a frozen lake. Nothing but the dark blue of the lake as far as the eye can see. My Milica and I dance a polka on the ice. I get to know her ice-blue eyes in the beam of the headlights. The three-dot- ellipsis man takes a pair of skates out of his little suitcase and tells us his story. He tells it fluently—he's been cured of those three dots!

  Skating on ice by night, said Milica, and the three-dot-ellipsis man skates into the darkness, tarirara, tarirara.

  I switched off the lights, and Milica and I finally got to know each other really well. Next morning we drove over the lake, our faithful bus performed several pirouettes, no one in the world was ever as happy as us with our bus. Until we heard about Croatia on the radio. We must go to Osijek, cried Milica at once, my father!

  Do you know about Osijek, you young rascal?

  I did know about Osijek.

  Well, just you remember Osijek!

  I knew about Osijek from TV. Osijek was burning, and there were things you saw there and couldn't understand, you saw them again and again, lying under blankets or sheets in the street, in farmyards. Boots. Forearms. Grandpa Slavko wasn't there to confirm that what I saw was what I was afraid of. My parents said it was a long way off.

  In Osijek I kissed Milica's father on the left cheek and the right cheek, and I told him at once, I told him straight. Milica, I said, it's Milica or no one for me!

  Don't make life hard for her, then, he said, and he gave me his watch, his bedside table and his caramels. Then we philosophized for a bit. About women, marriage, tobacconists, wood chopping, life and its heavy weight. That was me philosophizing. He philosophized too: life weighed heaviest in the summer of '43. Running away from the Italians. Nothing to eat all day long. Nothing to drink. A sky like blue lava. Sets the hair of your head on fire. A farmyard. Nobody there. A shed. Nobody there. Only hams and yet more hams. Hams in brine. Smoked hams. We ate ham straight off the beam where it was hanging. Licked the salt off it. And forgot about water. No one had any water. Too much salt, too much sun. And the Italians sunning themselves around the village well. Three times as many of them. Life weighed heavy then. We mowed them down. Tactics and good order. Every shot went home. None of us were killed. And then the well was empty. The empty well. Ah, life weighed heavy then.

  I told him a joke: the Italians and the Partisans are fighting day and night in a forest, then along comes the forester and throws both sides out.

  Milica's father didn't laugh. He had taken off his undershirt and poured us more sauerkraut juice when we heard the first shots outside. We were only talking about it, that's all, what the hell's going on now? he shouted. Milica took her father with one hand and me with the other. Papa, you must go. Milenko, you must drive him. I'm staying here or they'll take the whole house apart.

  You're coming with us!

  I'm not leaving the house alone!

  I'm not leaving you alone!

  Then prove it and come straight b
ack to me!

  And as my Milica stood there, a truly commanding woman, I vowed all my love to her. Milenko, this isn't the time for it, she said. Her father protested, but we got his undershirt back on him. Off to Zagreb—no checkpoints, we were in luck. I went straight back, I got there in the middle of the night. Sheer hell. Coming from the west you could still get in, but sheer hell! The streetlights smashed, houses in darkness or in flames. People everywhere, none of them happy. I left the bus in a yard, goodbye bus! I thought. I almost couldn't find the house again. A candle in the window. Milica was sitting in the kitchen peeling a potato very slowly. With an ancient TV program on in front of her. She was crying.

  I thought you were—Milica interrupted him.

  But I wasn't, he said, and Milica kissed his shoulder.

  Out of here and off to the sun, off to Italy. The bus was still there, it was even intact. Milica got behind the wheel because she knew her way around the town. But the soldiers knew their way around it too: they stopped us and said: get out, this bus is being commandeered for military purposes. But this is a peace-loving bus, I said. And that's how I got this—Walrus bent down, Milica pushed the hair back from his forehead. There was a scar running along Walrus's parting. I didn't lose consciousness, he said, I'm proud of that. Then Milica said: let's see which can go faster, our bus or your war. She stepped on the accelerator and off we went, right through the roadblock. There was still a soldier in the bus, my gun was in the bus too, he lost his balance, I didn't, and then there was no soldier in the bus anymore.

  And I never took my foot off the pedal until we reached the Piazza Verdi in Trieste, said Milica, stopping to look in a shop window.

  What about the war? I asked.

  The war was hard on our heels all the way, but it didn't have a visa for Italy, said Walrus.