Miljenko Jergovic - Mama Leone

There’s a pool behind the hotel, shall we take a look? Dad knew this place well. Mom didn’t care either way. C’mon, c’mon , I jumped up. The pool was big and blue, that blue color you only see in swimming pools, but there was no one in the water and no one just hanging out. Full to the brim with water, a totally deserted pool stretched out before us. Up above there was a diving board as high as a skyscraper. Shame we don’t have our swimming gear , I said. It wouldn’t be allowed , Dad hurried, and Mom gave him the look you give people when you’ve caught them lying like a dog. Dad was sorry he ever mentioned the pool, because even though it was impossible, he now thought we were going to strip off and jump in, and that he’d have to stand there on the edge and simper, and that we’d try and get him to jump in too and then he’d have to dream up an explanation and excuse why he can’t. The thing is, my dad can’t swim, and he thinks I don’t know that. Mom told me ages ago that he never learned to swim and that he’s ashamed about it. She told me that he’s even more ashamed because he suspects that I can, but he’s too embarrassed to say or ask anything. He’s made such a fine art of not swimming I never notice what I already know, so we can be in Drvenik for fifteen days and the whole time it seems perfectly natural he never goes in the water.

Nice diving board , said Mom, and then went and climbed right up to the top. Fully clothed, one step at a time, she walked slowly out along the board, which was trembling and wobbling under her weight. When she got to the end she looked down and spread her arms wide as if she was going to fly away, but then slowly let them fall. Dad looked up at her, beads of sweat lining his forehead, he opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something, and he did want to say something, but he didn’t know how, or whether to say it to me or to her. Mom spread her arms wide again, the board trembled beneath her, she laughed at the depths below, and then let her arms fall, happy, like someone who has scaled a great height and now really feels they’re on top of everything in their life and that nothing bad can happen anymore, because people are tiny as ants, houses are small like they’re made out of Lego blocks, and there isn’t a single problem or fear that doesn’t shrink from such a height.

Is she going to jump? I asked, not caring that she was still in her clothes, high up there, and that water is hard when you hit it from that high. I didn’t care that my mom could smash like a glass object or come out of the pool dripping wet, in her bright skirt and her shoes, her hairdo all messed up, even though when that happens Mom gets depressed, takes Lexilium, and says she’s old and already halfway gone, her best years behind her and that nothing beautiful will ever happen to her again. I wanted her to jump so bad, just as she was, so that in the pool she’d turn into something else and then climb out, or that the sleepy receptionist and desperate waiter would drag her out, that we’d call an ambulance, that she’d lie on the edge of the pool, that Dad would check her pupils and take her pulse, happy and relieved to have her back on dry land, and that on dry land you don’t need to know how to swim.

Is she going to jump? I asked louder so he couldn’t say he didn’t hear me. I don’t know, she shouldn’t , his voice sounded like he’d been hauled in front of a firing squad and he’d wanted to die bravely, but what can you do, he’d shit his pants. Why shouldn’t she, of course she should, why did she climb up there if she’s not going to jump?. . It’s awfully high, and she’s still got her clothes on. . So what, her clothes will dry out, why doesn’t she just jump? I was impatient and enjoying his fear; I wanted it to go on and on, that she would stand up there and spread her arms wide, that we would torment him until he burst out crying. She was tormenting him for her own reasons, probably because of a truth she’ll never tell anyone, and I was tormenting him because I was enjoying it. I was tormenting my dad like I torment ants, removing their little legs and wings, watching how they thrash around trying to walk with a missing leg as though it were still there, because they’re ashamed someone might notice, that other ants might notice they’re missing something, and that in the ant world they’re never going to be what they once were. I beg you, don’t let her jump , Dad stammered, begging me for the first time, the first time in my life, that is — it had never happened before because he was big, and I was a kid. I had already known that this day would come, the day when fathers beg their children, I knew it from the story of my grandpa’s dying, the one I wasn’t supposed to know but did because they didn’t know how to keep anything secret, because they’d always mess up thinking I was asleep or that I couldn’t hear what they were saying behind closed doors. Grandpa lay on the bed where I’d slept since we came back from Drvenik, they brought him from the hospital because he wanted to die at home. Maybe he thought he wouldn’t die if they brought him home; you can’t die among things that remember you being alive. Mom sat at his feet, sometimes he brought his middle and index finger to his lips, I beg you, give me a cigarette , he said, no Dad, you’re not allowed to smoke , she replied, though she knew it didn’t matter because when someone’s going to die, nothing can damage their health anymore. They stayed there in silence for half an hour, he’d bring his fingers to his lips, the only sound the rustling of starched bed linen. No one knew why Grandma starched the linen, maybe so our every movement, including our very last one — before sleep and before death — left a rustle behind. Then he repeated I beg you, give me a cigarette , and she yelled all stroppy don’t be crazy, Dad, you’re not allowed to smoke , because she thought she had to hide death from him. Grandpa looked at her with his blue eyes, our blue eyes. There aren’t many people in the world with blue eyes, but our whole family has them. Don’t you be crazy, I know it all already and beg you to the high heavens, give me a cigarette , he said. Mom says he said it with a melancholic inflection in his voice, but I don’t believe her because I know Grandpa yelled with all the might of the dying, and that there was no melancholic inflection because one thing he couldn’t stand was horseshitting. She lit a cigarette, took a drag, and gave it to him, his last cigarette, the cigarette for which he as a father had had to beg his child. One day I saw a young guy and his girlfriend in front of the Hotel Europa, first they kissed and then she lit a cigarette, took a drag, and held it out to him. One day when I’m grown up, if I ever see a guy and girl do that again, I’ll tell them that you’re not supposed to do that and that they should wait until they’re on death’s door before they start that stuff.

So that’s how it was then, in my eighth year of life my dad had already begged me for something. Instead of feeling grown up, fear took hold. What do you mean — I beg you, don’t let her jump. If she wants to jump, she’ll jump, what’s it got to do with me, leave me out of it, I didn’t talk her into climbing up there , I was furious with him because he was scared and so weak, and because he’d begged me in that voice I beg with when I’m scared and weak and they’re going to do something terrifying to me. But that begging never works, and no one ever pays it any mind, not even he who now expects me to make amends for the fact he never learned to swim, or me to make amends for something else, something I can’t grasp, just like he can’t grasp a single one of my fears.