Miljenko Jergovic - Mama Leone

I get really careful in the run-up to special occasions like New Year’s Eve and my birthday. I don’t even laugh when I’m on my own; I keep my mouth shut like the angels on Grandma’s postcards, and I squint to see if I’ve already grown wings or if I still need to wait a bit. I never know what those two are going to get me for my birthday or New Year’s, only that Grandma’s presents are always better. She buys me books — encyclopedias and picture books — and Mom always gets me practical stuff. Practical stuff is stuff that they were going to have to buy anyway, but instead of just getting on with it without all the pomp, they wait for special occasions and give them to you all wrapped up in shiny wrapping and expect you to get excited. But who can get excited about socks, undies, undershirts, and winter slippers? Mom expects me to get excited about her presents. If I don’t, it means I’m malicious. There’s no such thing as everyday stuff for her, not even socks, everything’s a special treat, you have to earn everything in life, you have to bust your gut. If you listened to her you’d think humanity would go naked and barefoot if everyone told their mother that undershirts and slippers don’t cut it as birthday presents. But I pretend to be excited about her presents because if I don’t she gets angry and starts with the nurturing stuff. When she cranks up the nurture rant it’s much worse than when she gets a migraine. Mom’s kind of nurturing is out of books called You and Your Child and Your Child Is a Personality . She bought them from a traveling salesman, spent a month reading them, and then decided to put her foot down about my nurturing. Luckily she doesn’t have time to stick at it, so unless I remind her, she totally forgets the whole thing. Nurturing amounts to Mom screwing up her face and repeating the same sentence ten times, wanting something from me without ever actually saying what it is. The less I understand, the happier she is because then she thinks she’s being strict, and no strictness means no nurture. For me strict nurturing involves keeping your mouth shut, saying yes , nodding your head and not asking any questions because there’s nothing to ask because you don’t understand anything.

For special occasions Dad gives me model railway, motorway, city, and chemistry sets, all with thousands of little pieces. Then we sit down on the living-room floor and open the box. Dad puts his serious face on and starts scratching behind his ear, spreading the thousands of little pieces out on the rug. I watch him and he’s as funny as the little slant-eyed mothers, and he gives me a nod that says trust me and starts putting the thousands of little railway pieces together. He knows what he’s doing, and I like watching him put it together much more than I like the railway itself. Mom thinks he likes this stuff so much because when he was a boy they didn’t buy him toys, so he never got a chance to play his little heart out and now he’s making up for it. I don’t think she’s right. If that’s how it was, he’d buy toys for himself.

Nano gives the best presents. He’s not actually Nano, his name is Rudolf Stubler, but nobody calls him that. Nano is Grandma’s older brother and once, a long time ago, he studied math in Vienna. Today he spends his time exploring far-off cities, going hiking, beekeeping, and playing the violin. We see him in photographs: Nano in London, Nano in Paris, Nano in Berlin, Nano in Moscow, Amsterdam, Kiev, Prague, Rome, Florence, Madrid, and Lisbon. They know Nano in all these cities because their buildings and bridges, cathedrals and skyscrapers have their photos taken with him. They don’t have any pictures of their own without him, without him these cities are just postcards, and postcards aren’t real cities, they’re just letters with photos where nothing is real. Nano stands waving in front of the Trevi Fountain, a coin in his hand and a wish in the coin. We don’t believe the wish, Grandma says wishes don’t come true in water, but that doesn’t matter because the Trevi Fountain believes in wishes, and so Nano tosses a coin in and has his picture taken, so we’ll know what Rome looks like. Nano comes over before every special occasion, puts a pen and paper down on the table, and says come on, tell me what you’d like for New Year’s, doesn’t matter if it’s a sewing needle or a locomotive, leave it up to me to see if my financial means stretch . Only Nano uses phrases like financial means , because he talks to me like I’m a grown-up, so I talk to him like he’s a grown-up too: For a start I need to say that I don’t want a sewing needle or a locomotive. I can borrow a sewing needle from Grandma, and I’d need a driver’s license for a locomotive. . Very well, let’s see, how do you feel about musical instruments?. . I think I’m tone-deaf and that it’d be a complete waste of money. I’d prefer something that might stimulate my intellectual development. . What do you think would be most appropriate?. . I’m not sure, perhaps a volume on world history, an encyclopedia of sports or of the animal kingdom. . Got it, I’ve made a note. And where do you stand in regard to sporting activities?. . I’ve already got a bike, and I don’t need a ball because somebody might steal it. Don’t get me roller skates because only girls go skating, and I could fall and break my neck. . How about a chess set?. . Well, perhaps, but a wooden one. I think I’ve outgrown plastic .

And that’s how it went. Nano would neatly jot everything down, and then when the occasion rolled around he’d be there with two presents, one I’d chosen and a second one that he liked. The second was usually better, better because it was a surprise and there’s no such thing as a bad surprise. A bad surprise is called a disappointment, and a special occasion is not a time for disappointment. I’m not even disappointed with Mom’s practical presents because that’s what I expect from her, and when you expect something it can’t be a disappointment.

The day before a special occasion Mom bakes a cake. When Mom bakes a cake we all have to put our serious faces on and cross our fingers, just like we did when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. Baking cakes is an unpredictable business: Mom mixes the dough, or actually it’s more like she gets a mountain of flour and makes a deep hole in the middle so the flour mountain looks like a snow volcano or a heap of sand and cement to make concrete, and then she breaks the eggs and puts them in the hole. When she’s broken all the eggs, she knocks the mountain over, mixes the flour with the eggs, and starts with her oh boy, what if the dough doesn’t rise , and I laugh at her, but she doesn’t get angry, she just says and that’s the thanks I get . She’s happy because she’s enjoying her anxiety.

The dough kneaded and ready for baking, she covers it with a cloth and waits. Smoking one cigarette after the other, every five minutes she peeks under the cloth and calls Grandma over to say how the dough’s going. Grandma says no, not yet, just a little longer , and then she says ready , and then Mom almost flips out and I’m not allowed to laugh at her anymore. With trembling hands she covers the cake dish in oil and keeps repeating God save me, what if the dough sticks .

As soon as she’s put the cake in to bake Mom starts cussing out our oven. First the upper heating bars are no good, then the bottom ones aren’t working, and then she starts cussing out the company in Čačak that made the oven and looks up at the ceiling, as if she’s looking up at the sky where the whiteware bosses of the world are in a meeting to decide who deserves an oven that might bake a decent cake this New Year’s. Grandma just listens and nods her head. Mom gets on Grandma’s nerves sometimes. She’ll give me a nervous breakdown one day , and later she’ll complain to Auntie Doležal, her and her cakes , and Auntie Doležal clasps her hands and says oh, the young ones, my dear Olga, those young ones, they’ll make a science out of baking a cake yet, and to think I once made five cakes for my Jucika’s habitation and it didn’t faze me none . Jucika was Auntie Doležal’s husband, they killed him in Jasenovac, but she always talked about him as if he were alive, as if he was going to appear on the doorstep in about half an hour, so I felt like I knew Jucika too, and wouldn’t have been in the least surprised if he had actually shown up and said I’m home and Auntie Doležal had again baked him five cakes for this habitation thing.