Miljenko Jergovic - Mama Leone

Look, the first one! Mom yelled. A little lump that really didn’t look much like a kitten popped out of the cat. Then she remembered what to do. She licked the lump until it became a furry something. The tiny kitty was as big as a key ring. Look, there’s the second one! It’d been ten minutes. Look, the third!. . the fourth!. . the fifth!. . Look, the sixth! Mom was hollering as if she were the courtier at a royal feline court and it was her job to announce the number of neonates the queen had borne to city and state.

Now she needs peace and quiet , Grandma commanded, and Mom exited the broom closet obediently. I was proud of Grandma; it was like she had this infinite feline or maternal experience. But my pride was short-lived, because three days later something happened that I’ve never told anyone and which I spent years trying to forget. The season of great deaths had to come, so I could start processing it and add my offering up to the time when the seasons and February disappeared, and all victims became something we could speak freely of until we made someone cry or fly into a rage.

Where are the kitties? I asked. They’re gone , she said. How come they’re gone, where are they?. . I don’t know, they’re gone. . The cat’s looking for them, where are they?. . I don’t know, they’re gone. . You do know! I screamed, you know where they are, go get them!. . I can’t go get them, they’re gone , Grandma had turned pale and was trying to get away from me. Bring the kitties back, shame on you!. . I can’t bring them back. . Bring them back, stupid! I was crying now, bring them back you bitch, bring them back or you deserve to die . . Grandma clammed shut, looked away, and tried to disappear every time I’d come near. Something terrible had happened, but I didn’t know what. Something so terrible that I wanted to say the most vile things to her, but luckily I didn’t know how to say them; if I’d known I would have, I would have killed my grandma with words.

When Mom came home from work she found me whimpering under the writing desk, doubled up like a fetus. The cat roamed the house, meowing in search of her children. But her children weren’t there. Grandma sat in the living room staring at the wall. She didn’t make lunch that day. Mom crouched down beside me repeating my name, but I didn’t respond. I didn’t want to say anything, or I couldn’t, I don’t remember anything else. She wanted to run her fingers through my hair, but I moved my head and hit the wall. My forehead bled; tears mixed with blood. The blood was sweeter than the tears, but it burned my eyes. Mom was crouched there trembling. Grandma stayed where she was. Grandma wasn’t there. I hope she never comes back , I thought.

She’d drowned the cat’s children in the washbasin and tossed them in the garbage. I’ll never do that again! she said to Mom, never again, those kittens have cost me half my life . I made like I didn’t hear them and that I’d forgotten everything. That’s the best thing to do if you can’t forget anything. I couldn’t forget those kittens.

Grandma had fed the kitten with an eyedropper, had given her a life already lost and taught her things only grandmothers can teach people and cats, had helped her give birth, and then she killed her children. I couldn’t understand that; I’ll never understand it, even though one day, along with a world and a city that had lost the seasons of the year, I’d get used to living with death and with exile from a life without death.

Ten years later Dad brought a puppy to the house, black and less than a month old. We’ll call him Nero , said Grandma. For the first few weeks Nero stayed in the house with us, until Schulz, the super, built him a wooden kennel in the yard. By the time he’d grown up Nero had a split personality: one minute he was a guard dog on a chain in the yard, the next he was a household pet sprawled out on our living-room floor. He was a good dog and a stupid one. Though he liked everyone he’d still bark his head off; he even liked cats, but they didn’t like him. The only thing Nero hated was the hedgehog that lived in our garden. He’d go wild when the hedgehog trundled the yard at night, pricking his snout on its quills, his muzzle frothing. Grandma used to say myohmy, my dummy dear , and he’d yelp and whine at a world where there were hedgehogs and a dog couldn’t live without constant stress. That’s what my mother so wisely observed.

The three of us felt pretty guilty the days and nights we left Nero in his kennel, down in the yard. We were actually fine with it when he slept up with us, but for some reason it was unacceptable he switch from being a guard dog to a household pet. I don’t know why we didn’t want him as a pet, but I fear we gave him a kennel and chain because we thought he was dumb, that it was beneath us to live with an idiot. Or maybe we thought we’d be less tied to Nero if he was farther away. I don’t know what it was all about, why we banished him from our daily lives.

Grandma passed away in early June, out in front of his kennel Nero howled the whole night long. At dawn I went down to the yard, it was a full moon, everything lit up. I sat down to give him a hug; faithful, four-legged Nero. My grandma was dead, but I couldn’t howl like him; it was as if the dog was sadder than me. Though he lived on a chain, he’d lost something I could never be conscious of, something I obviously didn’t even have, so my loss could never be like his. I took him in my arms, trying to make the sadness mutual, to take on a little of his grief, a little of his goodness, so that I too might be ennobled by this late-night grief and for a moment enter a better heaven, a dog’s heaven, where there’s no place for people, because such a heaven doesn’t have anything to do with God but with friends who die in dogs’ eyes.

Six months later, on the coldest day of the year, worried about Nero I hurried home from university. He was still in his kennel because I hadn’t let him in to warm himself by the coal stove. No one had looked after the animals or plants since Grandma died.

Nero wasn’t out in front of his kennel. He wasn’t inside either, nor was his chain. I found him dead, hanging over the neighbor’s fence. He was stiff, eyes half open. I lifted him up, a cold, furry object. I tried to close his eyes, but it didn’t work. They stayed open. I saw the empty and vacant eyes of death, nothing there, nothing of the world or hope; everything that had once lived there gone, never to return. This is what the eyes of all the dead look like. I didn’t ever need to see them again, because every man or woman who had ever lived and now lived no more had Nero’s eyes.

It took me three hours to dig a grave in the frozen earth and bury my dog along with his chain. Why with his chain, like he was a galley slave! said Mom. She wasn’t wrong actually. Nero really was our slave; he appeared at the wrong time, to people who didn’t deserve him and who he couldn’t save. Sometimes there really is no hope for us until we’ve strangled the very last thing we have left, that which will haunt us more than any horror or suffering to come.

That there in the picture, that’s a toy box, but when I want it to, it stops being a toy box and turns into a car. I wake up early when all the others are still asleep, wrap a sandwich in a checkered napkin, and write a letter, even though they haven’t taught me to write yet. The letter’s for them, but they don’t have to read it. I’m leaving one because it’s the thing to do, because everyone who suddenly goes off somewhere leaves a letter behind. I write how I’ve had enough of them, that I’m never coming back and that I’m going to a place where there aren’t any other people, and I’m going to stay there forever, and be rich, with a real car and a real train, a real pistol and real cowboys and Indians, and Partisans and Germans, who I’ll play war against and beat whenever I want, and when something needs rescuing, like when Sava Kovačević saved the high command or when Chief Big Bear sent smoke signals to the world so that stars might fall to the earth, but the Gold River would never fall to the white man. I’m going because they tricked me again, I don’t know how, but they tricked me, just like they do every time they know I don’t want to go somewhere, and I’m going to cling to the table leg with all my might and scream my head off, and no one’s going be able to tear me loose, because I know that wherever they’re taking me something’s going to hurt like hell, or something else is going happen to make me sorry I ever let go of that table leg. I leave the letter behind for them and on top of it the big key to the cellar. That’s my key and they can give it to whoever comes to take my place.