Miljenko Jergovic - Mama Leone

It was a Sunday, that I’m sure of, because in our house guests always came over on Sundays. This was probably how things were before I was born, so my family just kept it that way even after everything changed. I’m not actually sure, but it doesn’t matter in any case. The fact is that the guests had come from all over: Uncle and Auntie had come from Moscow where Uncle was a rep for the Zenica steelworks, and Vesna had come from Helsinki where she lived with Perti, but he hadn’t come from Helsinki, he’d come from Vladivostok. I don’t know what he did in Vladivostok, but I remember Grandma saying poor fellow, he’s been at the end of the world . For some reason she thought the end of the world was terrible.

We ate lunch, talked over the top of each other, and Auntie called me Miki , dead set that every child had to have a nickname, and I remember feeling somehow privileged that in addition to my real name I’d gotten another one besides. Grandma looked at me reproachfully every time Auntie said Miki . She didn’t like the nickname, but I’m not sure how that made it my fault. Uncle poured himself a whiskey he’d brought from Moscow, it’s from Beryoshka, only foreigners buy stuff from Beryoshka , and then he slapped himself on the forehead: uh shit, I forgot the camera . We weren’t too bothered though, fine, he’d forgotten the camera, we kept talking over the top of each other and he did too, but every fifth sentence he’d throw something in about the camera, like what a bloody donkey leaving it behind like that or my brain obviously checked out when we left . Soon everyone was upset about the camera, so I made like I was upset too and tried to tell the story of how I once forgot my sneakers for PE, but no one wanted to listen.

We’ll call Dobro, he’s got a camera , said Mom. She picked up the phone and fifteen minutes later my dad arrived with a camera already loaded with film. Uncle quit his anxiety act, which let everyone else relax too, he poured Dad a whiskey, told the Beryoshka story again, and then he said now, everyone on the terrace, light’s best there . We took our marching orders, probably scared his anxiety might come back if we jerked around. Dad was photographer for the day. He took pictures of us in all combinations, but no one took a picture of him. He’s the only one who doesn’t have a picture with Grandma. I wanted to ask why someone didn’t take his picture too, but shut up in time. When your parents are divorced you’ve always got to shut up in time because what you’d like to ask might make your elders stutter and blush or make them want to say or do something to please you, and then you feel like a whipped-cream pie that’s been standing in the sun all day and they all say oh, what a lovely cake . Actually, I know what would’ve happened if I’d asked. Dad would’ve had his photo taken with Grandma but either the laboratory wouldn’t have developed it or no one would have wanted to have it.

The next week the guests went back to Moscow and Helsinki, leaving us with three complete sets of pictures, one each for Mom, Grandma, and me. In other circumstances one complete set would have been fine because we all lived together and didn’t fight over photos. Mom got some albums, put the photos in, and by the next day we’d forgotten we’d even had our pictures taken.

On the thirteenth of December of the same year, the phone rang at half past two in the morning. I woke with the first ring and waited with closed eyes for what was going to happen next; there was a second ring, then a third, fourth, and fifth, then Mom’s sleepy voice said hello and then a suddenly awake yes . She’d never gone from being asleep to completely awake so fast. Yes. . I can hear you. . Yes. . Yes. . When. . How is he. . Is she there. . Oh my God. . Fine. . All right . She put the receiver down without saying goodbye. She flicked the light on in my room, I opened my eyes, the light straining them, her face was gray and somehow taut, she spoke like she’d been wandering the desert for days without water: pull yourself together, Vesna’s dead . I was hurt by what she said, that pull yourself together . It was the first death in the family directly communicated to me. I was eleven years old.

I don’t know how she told Grandma that her granddaughter was dead, but later Mom said she’d feared for Grandma’s heart. We all thought Grandma had a weak heart. That’s actually what the doctors had told us, but it turned out they had it wrong. Her heart could withstand what the strongest in the world couldn’t. It swallowed the sadness like a big snake swallows a rabbit, and kept beating, and we never saw anything on her face, just sometimes a tear would fall when she was watching television. But she didn’t cry.

The next day the three of us went to Zenica. The wake was at Uncle’s apartment and all the mirrors were covered in black shawls. I didn’t know any of the guests. Mom sunk into her brother’s embrace. Grandma held my hand tight. I was big enough for this sort of stuff, but still too small to offer Uncle my hand and say a few of those weird sentences people say in these situations. I felt really awkward, the angst in Uncle’s apartment smacking me around and eating me up. I sat in an armchair with my head down, just wanting it to all be over as soon as possible. People took turns crying. Uncle was beside himself, but there was always someone ringing the doorbell, offering Uncle their hand, and he’d just cry again and again and again. The terrifying flood of grown-up tears made me fear life for the first time, not life, just the growing up. I didn’t cry for years because of his tears. Actually, I didn’t cry until the war, but ever since then I can almost cry on demand. I mean, if you were to say to me now cry for five seconds, I’d cry for five seconds. I can do that sort of thing like a party trick. You need tears, I’m your man. I’m not telling you how I make them come, it’s my secret, a little trick of the trade. Just like fakirs and their secrets when they lie on a bed of nails, I’ve got mine when it comes to crying. But that’s all a different business, at the time of this story I sat dead still in a giant armchair trying not to look at Uncle’s crying because I couldn’t imagine him without tears anymore.

I didn’t get around to thinking of Vesna, although I should have, and I should have because I loved her. She was fifteen years older than me, but because I didn’t have any brothers or sisters, she was my sister; we said my sister on my uncle’s side . Anyhow, that’s who she was to me and how I felt when she was alive. When she died, I was an only child again.

It was already night when people stopped coming and when everyone who didn’t belong to the inner circle of grief left. I was still sitting there in the armchair. Uncle was flushed red, veins cursing in his forehead, next to him sat Auntie, but she wasn’t crying, across the way sat my mom and she wasn’t crying either. She said to Grandma Mom, go lie down . With neither words nor tears Grandma left the room in complete silence. It was the only time in my life Grandma left a room and didn’t look at me.

Uncle was crying again. He started to say my darling child’s gone, and this summer I forgot the camera, I thought we could all have one more picture together, that she could have one more picture with her grandma before Grandma dies, my child, my darling, darling child . . He hid his face in his trembling hands. Auntie hugged him like you hug a little kid or how every man would want the woman who loved him to hug him. It should have been a distressing sight, but in that instant I couldn’t grieve and I couldn’t love him; he, my uncle, had just explained something that in the world of grown-ups was probably normal but in mine wasn’t. He wanted to take a picture of Grandma with us all because he thought she was going to die. As soon as he could think that, it was like he killed her, and like he wanted to take our picture with someone dear who was already dead, who appears like a hologram, beamed into our hearts, forever captured on tape, and then she goes and disappears like dreams disappear in the morning when you wake up or later when you don’t remember them anymore.