Miljenko Jergovic - Mama Leone

When I try and hunt him down in the sky and the ground beneath my feet moves, the same way my cities and homelands move and disappear, and my native soil becomes a Europe without the soldiers little girls greet with flowers, when I search the sky for the living Željko, I feel how easy it is to be someone else; it’s like going into a changing room in some big department store and after two minutes leaving as one of the thousands of faces I can imagine because I know they exist and that they live someplace far away; just not in Peru, because only dead Peruvians live there, and the parents of dead sons who need air.

You have to remember this! I said. What do I have to remember? Mom asked. I’m not talking to you, I’m talking to myself . She held me by the hand, deeply frustrated that she isn’t a mother like other mothers, and her son isn’t a son like other sons, because he mostly talks precocious garbage. You’re not allowed to talk to yourself. Thinking’s okay, but not talking, you’ll be nuts before you know it . She’s obviously wound up, so I just nodded my head. When she’s wound up I nod my head so she doesn’t start yelling, doesn’t start her ranting and raving and I end up getting it on the snout. For me the word snout is yuckier than any box on the ear. Mom just had to say snout and it was message received loud and clear. You’ll get it on the snout grossed me out so much I would just shut my trap.

We walked along the seashore, almost to Zaostrog. She held my hand, never letting go. She thought I’d disappear if she let me walk on my own. Mom was like moms aren’t allowed to be. She didn’t feel enough like a mom, so out of fear, she put it on. Actually, she was most scared that maybe I was more of a grown-up than she was, a kind of mini-forbear who’d popped out of her uterus by mistake, just wanting to check up on her and how she was doing in life, put her through an exam she was bound to fail. So she played at being a grown-up and put me in my place with stuff about me going nuts if I talked to myself.

I noticed she was holding back, expecting me to say something, something for her to pounce on. I bolted my tongue to the roof of my mouth, silent as the grave, breathing real quiet so she couldn’t make words out of my breathing. But she couldn’t help herself. What do you have to remember?

I had to choose a strategy fast: either to pretend I didn’t understand the question, or to make her think that the whole time I’d been thinking about what it was I had to remember. I have to remember a precise moment in time, the moment three scents came rushing to me: the scent of the sea, the scent of the pines, and the scent of olive oil .

She stood there, let go of my hand, a look of shock on her face but a harmless one. She smiled and said you’re my son! She hugged me tight and asked who’s your mom, who do you love most?

This was already way past stupid and I don’t remember what happened next. I don’t remember if we went to Zaostrog. Maybe we went to the confectionary for cake or to the diner for an ora , an orange lemonade that I called oratalismaribor , like in the ads. I don’t know if we sat inside because Mom couldn’t smoke in the open air, or if we sat outside because she wasn’t so anxious and jumpy that she needed a cigarette, or if we went back the same way by the sea, or if we took the main road. . I don’t remember any of this, nothing at all. I’ve forgotten everything after who’s your mom, who do you love most , and I’ll never remember. That part of my life is dead. My mom killed it.

Fifteen years later, I was twenty-two, and I’d had a terrible fight with Nataša at a campground. You’re so awful when you talk to me! she said, her face turning into revulsion itself. No one before or after her could do that, turn their whole face, ears and everything, into an expression of revulsion. The horror cut my legs out from under me, my sweetheart turned monster. But she wasn’t gross or disgusting, it’s not like she transformed into a festering boil that would have made me leave any sweetheart in the world. Just her face turned into revulsion, like a kid turns into a rat in a horror film. Normally I’d put my hand on her shoulder and pull her toward me; she’d try and break free and in the breaking free she’d go back to her old self. She had to smile and come back, because the old Nataša always came back.

But I was shitty that day on Korčula. I turned around and stormed off. By the fifth stride I didn’t know where I was going. I wanted to stop but couldn’t, there was no point in going any farther, yet no point in stopping either, so I just kept going and going and going. . Of course it hurt that Nataša didn’t come after me. She stayed put in front of the tent or wherever she was at that moment. She didn’t put her hand on my shoulder. She never did that, nor would she ever. I wanted to hate her for it. When you’re on an island it doesn’t matter how shitty you are, or if you don’t actually know where you’re going, you hit the sea eventually. I stopped at some jagged rocks, as cutting as a final decision, the waves lapping stroppily as a big boat passed the island. You could see little people on the boat waving to someone. I was lonesome because they weren’t waving to me. Or maybe there was some other reason I felt lonesome, however things were I remember that that’s exactly how I felt, and it was then I became aware of the three scents: the scent of the sea, the scent of the pines, and the scent of olive oil.

My God, why do I do it to myself! I said aloud — or maybe I just thought it, I don’t know — but by then I was already running back, across the rocks, through a stand of pines, through the camp, trampling on people’s towels and getting caught on guy ropes. Nataša wasn’t there in front of the tent. She wasn’t inside either. I ran for the water fountain and spotted them both from ten meters away, Nataša and the fountain. Nataša was cleaning a big round tomato, and a few people were waiting in line behind her. I didn’t have time to stop. I couldn’t change anything. I had really run, it’d been a good long run and it seemed like I’d been running for hours. Yet those ten meters were the longest. I remember every split-second, every drop of water on the smeared surface of the tomato, every drop that fell at her feet. Like at every campground on the Adriatic, there was mud in front of the water fountain. But I didn’t even slow down through the mud, splattering myself, the people in line, and her, who’d started to turn around. This splattering and turning around went on and on, but she didn’t quite make it around in time, she couldn’t see who was coming, she didn’t know it was me, that I was throwing myself at her. Then it was us falling in the mud, the tomato falling from her hand, her letting out a short, sharp cry, me lying above her, me lying on top of her and holding her tight.

Get off me already! she said, careful that not a single word, not a single sound rang harshly, and in that moment itself everything, her body, hair, muddy clothes, breathing, gave her away as wanting me to stay. I couldn’t let her go because I thought she’d disappear, just like everything had disappeared from Zaostrog so long ago. I wanted her to stay silent, for her to stay here, immortal in this moment and never again, in the mud next to a water fountain, in a campground on Korčula, half a meter from an abandoned tomato no one will ever slice. The tomato dead the instant it fell from her hand.

Five years passed in the blink of an eye. Nataša was in Belgrade, and I was in Sarajevo. The war was raging. The war of my life, the only one I remember and the only one in which it seems that I’ll die, yet remain alive, undamaged and whole, like some kind of Achilles who didn’t even get hit in the heel. The phone lines were down. I was in the Jewish Community Center at the Drvenija Bridge. All around there were people waiting for a connection, in front of me a ham radio operator with a funny machine like something out of the Second World War. From the machine you could hear the hum of all the world’s oceans, the cracking and creaking of every shipwreck, all at once. A voice surfaced from between and beneath the waves. The voice said she’s asking how are you?