Miljenko Jergovic - Mama Leone

But none of them slept puffing, not even Grandpa and he’d lived with Grandma for more than fifty years and he even said that in fifty years two people become very alike. But he coughed in his sleep because of his asthma.

I heard a last puff. A lot of time went by and I was waiting for a new puff, but it never came. I wasn’t really scared, but I was starting to get a little bit worried. I mean, Grandma was still breathing and she was still alive, but I didn’t think this was enough. I was worried something wasn’t right. I sat on my bed and wanted to wake her up, but for some reason didn’t dare. You need to be tough because only when you’re tough does everything work out. You’re not allowed to panic — oh boy, she’s not breathing, or maybe you just can’t see it ’cause it’s dark — I don’t know what’s going on, but somehow she’s not moving anymore. That’s it, here we go, I’m going to scream , but I’m not allowed to scream. If I scream, Mom won’t come back from Ljubljana, and I’ll be left on my own before I grow up, but that’s not allowed because children aren’t allowed to be left alone, just like they’re not allowed to kill ants, and they’re not allowed to cross the street without looking left and right. They’re not allowed to scream, that’s panicking, and I don’t get panicky, the kid never panics , my mom tells her work colleagues, and when she says it, she’s all aglow, my mom who’s in Ljubljana at the moment. The kid never panics is the nicest thing she ever says about me and if I scream now she’ll never say it again, and I’ll just be a regular kid, a kid you can’t say anything about, and I’ll spoil that story from Dubrovnik from when I was two and a half when Nano lost me at the Pile Gate and I calmly made my way to Auntie Lola’s place, the length of the Corso and around behind St. Blaise’s. I’d knocked on the door and Grandpa had opened it and asked where’s Nano? And I said Nano got lost and quickly got it in that it wasn’t my fault he got lost. They were all proud of me then, and Mom said the kid never panics for the first time, and when we got back from Sarajevo she told Dad how Nano got lost, and then Dad said my big boy and that’s how the legend began, the one they still tell to this very night when I’d rather howl, but I’m not allowed, or this whole world made up of Mom in Ljubljana and Grandma who’s not breathing in the dark will be destroyed, just like I destroy Queen Forgetful’s castle when I’m bored.

That time in Dubrovnik I did something bad. I didn’t burst out crying in the middle of the Pile Gate like other children, and I didn’t because I was scared of crying in front of so many strangers and I was ashamed about being left alone. Others would have cried and they wouldn’t have been scared or ashamed. Being scared and ashamed is no good and it’s better to burst out crying. It’s definitely braver. I couldn’t because I’m a coward and that’s why I went to Auntie Lola’s and gave it my all to remember the way, even though I’d always walked it with someone else. But I remembered. It was the longest journey I ever made in my life. When I’m a thousand years old like an old king, even then I’ll never go on such a long journey because when you’re two and a half there isn’t a longer journey than the one from the Pile Gate to St. Blaise’s.

You know, I’d never even thought about it before. I liked them thinking I was a kid who never panics, but the truth is I really am a scaredy pants and I get ashamed, and when this happens I make journeys that kids who cry in front of a crowd of strangers would never make. But my mom doesn’t cry either and she isn’t that big. She’s smaller than Grandma, Grandpa, and Dad, and she gets ashamed and is always scared of this or that. She takes her fears out on all of us, on me most of all, and we all love her when she’s ashamed. Shame is something worse than fear, but it’s nice to watch. Mom would have found her way home like me if Nano had lost her at the Pile Gate, she would have found her way back no matter how far it was, I know that for sure because you can spot fear and shame really easily, much more easily than courage, and that’s why I know Mom better than anyone else and that’s why I always know what she’s capable of. So anyway, if she knows how to get back from the Pile Gate on her own, she’ll find her way back from Ljubljana. Ljubljana is much closer because Mom is much older than me and she’ll make it back easily. She’s scared and ashamed and that’s why she can’t stay in Ljubljana, she can’t die, the bump can’t hurt her, the rules for big people don’t apply to her. Fairy tales exist for the scared and ashamed because in them people cross seven mountains and seven seas just so they won’t be scared and ashamed.

I breathed a sigh of relief. My face is wet, my back and stomach too. If I’ve cried, I didn’t cry down my back, everyone has to believe I’m telling the truth there. Grandma has to believe me too. Is she breathing? I can’t see anything, but if she’s breathing I’ll tell her in the morning that everything is fine with Mom. Actually, I won’t tell her anything because I don’t think she’ll understand, just like she didn’t understand the thing about split shadows. But I’ll show her that tomorrow, and she’ll just have to wait for Mom, she’ll have to worry for the whole fifteen days until Mom comes back from Ljubljana, and then I’ll tell her I knew the whole time. I’ll tell them all, Dad and Uncle and all those worriers on the phone who call when I’m not around, and I’ll tell Grandma, and Mom, I’ll tell them that only I knew, only I knew she had to come back. Tomorrow we’ll keep reading White Fang . I’m brave enough for any sad ending.

If only Grandma would let out a little puff, then I’d fall asleep, my first time after her.

We lived from one special occasion to the next in a happy and ordered world, sometimes sick with feverish kids’ sicknesses and sometimes with serious grown-up ones, in a world in which everything had its place and moment in time. Don’t run before you can walk , Grandma used to say. We didn’t know what she meant, or maybe some did, but they weren’t saying, so I kept running because time passed by so slowly. I couldn’t wait for it, I had to hurry, get out ahead, skip the good-for-nothing days because they weren’t special occasions.

You couldn’t buy ice cream in the winter back then. It disappeared from the confectionaries in the first thick November fog and only showed up again in April. Why don’t people eat ice cream in winter too? Because ice cream gives you a sore throat. They were looking out for us, making sure we didn’t get sick for no reason, and that every day had its place in the calendar and time in the seasons, that we would never think that we were alone and abandoned, forsaken like the faraway countries we heard about on the radio. Young slant-eyed soldiers were dying in those countries, a little machine gun in one hand and a tiny baby in the other. That’s how they died, leaving behind little slant-eyed wives to hold their heads in their hands and grieve in their funny incomprehensible language.

I laugh whenever I see little slant-eyed mothers next to their little dead husbands on the TV. Saigon and Hanoi are the names of the first comedies in my life. I spell them out loud, letter by letter, laughing my head off. Those people don’t look like us, and I don’t believe they’re in pain or that they’re really sad. Words of sadness have to sound sad, and tears have to be like raindrops, small and brilliant. Their words aren’t sad, and the tears on their faces are too big and look funny, like the fake tears of the clowns I saw at the circus. I’m just waiting for Mom and Grandma to leave the room so I can watch Saigon and Hanoi and have a laugh. When they’re there I’m not allowed to laugh because Mom will think I’m crazy, and Grandma that I’m malicious. Craziness and malice are strictly forbidden in our house. Great unhappiness is born from malice; malicious children put their parents in old folks’ homes, never thinking that they themselves will one day get old and that their children might bundle them off to old folks’ homes too; Grandma and Mom were scared of malice and craziness because they were born old and with fears I don’t understand, but I knew one day I’d have my turn; it’ll happen the day they say I’m a grown-up, the day I run when I first meet someone who’s crazy, because craziness is infectious, just like all the sicknesses and misfortune in this city. When you grow up and have your own house and your own children, then you can do whatever you like. But in my house you won’t . Grandma loved the little slant-eyed mothers and pretended she understood them.