Miljenko Jergovic - Mama Leone

Fine, I’ll take you to see where he died , said Grandpa and reached for his umbrella. There had been five days of rain and I couldn’t wait for it to stop. I wanted to see the place of death and was worried the highway wouldn’t be pink anymore like a melted Pink Panther. And my worry was well-placed: The asphalt was black, like any other highway. I looked around and everything looked rainy and normal, no trace of a special place for dying, no sign of anything Nikola must have left for us so we’d know where he died.

That’s where he sat down , Grandpa pointed to a white rock where the number 480 was written under a red line. It means he died on the four hundred and eightieth kilometer of the highway, but that doesn’t matter. Nikola’s gone, no story, straight to bed. You happy? We can go home now . Actually I wasn’t that happy. I was confused. I thought there would be a mark at the spot where he died; maybe the highway wouldn’t be pink but at least there’d be something giving away that someone had been there and then suddenly wasn’t there. If there isn’t something like that, then there’s also no reason for someone to die and when there’s no reason for someone to die, then the sadness is much bigger than a little cry and bye-bye. Then you would never stop crying when someone you loved died.

Why do people die?. . They die because they get old and because if people just kept being born and didn’t die there wouldn’t be enough room on earth. . It would be better if no more people were born and people didn’t die. . Why would that be better?. . Well, because then only people we know would be alive, who were good, and new people who we don’t know wouldn’t come along and make old people die. . How do you know those new people wouldn’t be better than the old ones?. . No one is better than you. . Nonsense, of course there are people better than me. There are lots of people better than me, you just haven’t met them yet. You’ll see when you grow up. . I’ll see when you die?. . Yes, you could put it that way. When I die, you’ll see how many better people than me there are. Your friends will be better, the woman you marry will be better, and your children will be better. They’ll all be better than me and one day you won’t be sad about my death anymore. . You’ll die for those better people?. . Yes, and you’ll die for those better people too. The important thing is we die in the right order and children don’t die before their parents .

He’d never spoken for so long and so quietly and calmly. He let the umbrella down and shook it out. The drops splashed all over the kitchen tiles and all over Grandma’s hair. He did it deliberately and smiled. You old fool , said Grandma without even looking at him. She doesn’t have to look at him to know why he shook the umbrella out on the tiles and all over her hair, and he doesn’t have to see her eyes to know she’s not mad. Even when he doesn’t shake the umbrella out, he knows she thinks the same thing — old fool — it’s just there’s no reason to say it aloud. They’re happy because in the rainy season when it’s tough for people with sick lungs so some people have to die, that it was Nikola who died, who no one said old fool to, and who didn’t have anyone to shake the umbrella out on. There are big crowds in places where people die; it’s like at the bus station with everyone pushing and shoving, so when you look from afar, it seems everyone wants to get on, but actually they’re pushing and shoving to not get on, to hang around until the last bus comes along, which you climb aboard because the crowd’s gone, because you’ve got a ticket in your hand and there’s no one left to say excuse me to if you stay alive.

It was summer, wildfires burned red beneath the Biokovo range, fire-brigade sirens wailed, people ran with containers full of water, the sea smelled of Coppertone and glimmered in the colors of a petroleum rainbow, and we packed our things in the Duck, our Citroën, and got ready for the journey to Sarajevo. Grandpa had died eight months ago, I’d finished first grade in Drvenik, and now we could head happily home. Sarajevo would be home now, the time of a little Sarajevo, a little Drvenik was over. It was all over with Grandpa’s asthma too, and from now on we’d only go to the seaside as tourists. Drvenik wasn’t our home, which is what I’d thought; it was the home of Grandpa’s illness, like a hospital where you go to get well but everyone knows you’re going to die there in the end.

We’re leaving forever. I have the feeling we’re leaving forever because that’s the only explanation for why we’ve packed our winter sweaters and shoes in the trunk and we’re not leaving anything behind except the feeling we’re never coming back. If we do come back it’ll be as folks on vacation, folk just passing through, all nervy because they’re dead set on making the best out of their vacation, so they yell at each other and drag other people’s children along by the ears. I feel sick thinking that next year we’ll be tourists too, and already feel like a little German who’ll run screaming out of the water when he sees a crab among the rocks and gets marched off to the medical center in Makarska if he stands on a sea urchin. There are three tiny black dots on my big toe, three sea urchin spikes from three years ago. I didn’t tell Grandma and Grandpa I’d stepped on a sea urchin because then they would’ve heated a needle in a flame, which is a terrifying sight. It would’ve hurt like hell if they took the spikes out with that, so I tried myself with my fingernails, but they wouldn’t come out, so now I’m taking the three spikes to Sarajevo with me as a memento and proof that I’ll never be just a regular tourist.

We drive slowly through the village and we pass people with inflatable mattresses and a girl wearing a rubber ring with a duck’s head around her waist, half girl, half duck. People we know line the roadside, Auntie Senka, Uncle Tomislav, Granny Tere, they wave to us because they know we’re not leaving like we do every year but we’re leaving forever. Grandma waves back and I lower my head because I’m ashamed. I’m ashamed because something important in our lives is happening and everyone knows about it. Important things are supposed to happen in secret. We should have slipped away in the night while everyone was still asleep, so that no one saw or heard us or knew we’d gone. They might’ve thought we’d never been there in the first place. In actual fact, we should have made our exit as if we had died too.

Uncle Naci is driving us, my uncle from Ilidža. He’s got whiskers, glasses with black frames, and size thirty-nine shoes, and he looks to me like a French table-tennis player who’s always going to lose to a Chinaman in the end. He turns around and asks are you sad , I say no, I’m not sad , and stare out at the tiny heads of bathers in the glistening sea, two yachts far from shore and Hvar still farther off, right out there on the horizon where earth and sky meet, where Hvarians live, who, before they took me to the island for the first time, I thought were half human, half Martian.

I don’t know if I’m sad, I just know that I’m scared, but I’m not admitting to one or the other. One shouldn’t ask such questions, and when I grow up, the first chance I get I’m going to say one shouldn’t ask such questions , because there’s only one answer, there’s only no, no, no , there’s always only no, I’m not sad, I’m not scared, I’m not anything , and now everyone can smile themselves to death and jump for joy and have everything fall out of their pockets and jingle on the asphalt because for the zillionth time someone said they’re not sad and not scared, but everyone well knows that that’s exactly what you say when you’re sad and scared but don’t dare tell.