Miljenko Jergovic - Mama Leone

I looked up and saw a big round silver platter stacked with slices of roast meat. Dad grabbed a fork, dug it into the biggest bit, and put it on Uncle’s plate. He gave a smaller piece to Grandma, then a bit to Mom, and then he fixed his eyes on me. Gosh, you’re pale. More blueberry juice, more beetroot, and more meat for you . That’s what he said putting a bit of the infant’s flesh on my plate.

He didn’t live with us. Mom and Dad were separated, but he’d come visit once a week or whenever I’d get the flu, bronchitis, a cold, measles, tonsillitis, angina, diarrhea, or rubella. He’d place his stethoscope on my back and say deep breath, now hold it , and I’d take a deep breath or not breathe at all. I assumed Mom and Dad didn’t love each other, but I would have never figured Dad bringing dead babies over for Mom to roast. Today was actually a first, the day we were all supposed to remember my dead grandpa.

I ate the meat, but couldn’t taste the flavor. When Grandma said eat the salad , I thought I was going to cry, but I didn’t because I was too scared. That night I shouted in my sleep for the first time. When I woke up, Grandma was stroking my forehead. But it wasn’t her anymore, it wasn’t her hand, and it wasn’t my forehead, and I was no longer me. Nothing in my life was ever the same after the day we ate that suckling. For a while I hoped Grandpa wouldn’t have let us eat babies, but later I realized that it didn’t have anything to do with him, that it was just a custom, that people scare naughty children with this one everywhere, because really naughty children end up in the oven.

I never mentioned Grandpa’s death, not even after I accidentally found out that a suckling was the name for a little pig, and not a baby person. It didn’t matter anymore because I’d already started shouting in my sleep, and the shouting continued, the reasons don’t matter, and I don’t even know what they were anymore.

Words flowed in cascades, gushing over the edges of the world being born, making laughter, lots of laughter, echoing through all our rooms and the biggest of all, the room under the sky, the one where we’re all still ourselves, and so speak words out of joy, words superfluous and with no connection to the world or to the pictures in which we live and which cause us pain. Only words cause no pain, in them there is no sorrow, they take nothing from us, and never leave us on our own in the darkness.

On my first birthday Mom went back to Sarajevo; I stayed behind in Drvenik between Grandma and Grandpa, between stone walls and below high ceilings with spiders crawling along them, hanging by the barest of threads, free as the air, and lying on the bed, completely still, as if bound to the earth, I understood that the difference between me and them, me and the spiders, was one of eternity, and that I would always remain down here, lying on my back gazing up at them, and that nothing, only words, could help me get closer. Someday I’ll say that that’s where I go, up there, that I hang by a thread like they do, that at night, when Grandpa and Grandma are sound asleep, I live among the spiders and that’ll be the truth, they’ll be words, everyone believes in words, and it’ll be no matter that I’m stuck to the bed and that I’ll never be able to jump high enough to stay up with the spiders. In words I could do anything, even before I knew how to say them.

I’m three years old crouching bare-bottomed in the sea shallows in front of our house. Old Uncle Kruno is coming down the street, calling to me what are you up to Signore Miljenko? I’m happy about being a signore , but I know he’s only joking. I’m catching crabs , I reply, and Uncle Kruno laughs because he hears something else; he thinks I’m saying I’m watching wabs , because I can’t say words beginning with c properly. He doesn’t know I’m just saying that I’m catching crabs, because actually I really am just watching them, I’m scared of their claws, but what I’m saying is the truth. He goes away thinking I’m catching crabs.

Six months later I caught my first crab, his claws were weak and he was really mad and tried to get my finger, but his claws only tickled me. I pulled one off, then the other, but he kept thrashing his legs, not like he was hurt but like he was still really mad. Then I pulled his legs off; he had lots of legs, more than I knew how to count. I left him with just one and put him down on a rock. He wriggled across, but he couldn’t walk. I didn’t know if he was still mad. I looked for his eyes but couldn’t find them, maybe a crab doesn’t have eyes; they don’t know how to talk, maybe they can’t see anything either. I picked up a rock and banged him with it. He splattered everywhere, but he didn’t have any blood in him, he was yellow inside. That one crab turned into lots of pieces, but none of them wriggled. Then the waves carried them off somewhere, washing from the rock any trace that a crab had ever been there.

The day Mom came back from Sarajevo I decided to show her the crabs. I’d already told her that I catch them, and she’d just nodded her head and said yes, yes, that’s my boy , but for her words were something else. Everything she said you had to be able to be see, and she only believed in words when there was a picture to go with them. I didn’t like that about her, but then I realized that everyone, really everyone was like Mom, and that only Uncle Kruno believed I was catching crabs if I just told him so. I got a plastic bag and went down to the shore where there were lots of crabs, I caught some and put them in the bag, Mom called me inside, yeah, just a little bit longer , but she didn’t ask what I was doing, she thought I was playing, and when you play, for her that’s like you’re doing nothing, she never thought I’d ever catch crabs because she didn’t know how to catch them.

I crept back in the house, opened the drawer where the knives and forks were kept, and tipped the crabs in. They were all alive and started crawling over the silverware. It’ll be lunchtime soon, Mom will set the table because that’s what she always does when she comes back from Sarajevo, here she is, opening the drawer, now Mom’s screaming, Mom bursts out crying Dad, look at this , Grandpa puts the newspaper down, jumps up from his chair, looks in the drawer, and laughs your boy was out catching crabs . Mom looks at me, her eyes are big like the biggest blue Christmas tree decorations; she won’t get mad at me, she can see how little I am, but I can do something she can’t and that she’ll never be able to do, I catch crabs for her, I catch them so she’ll believe me and won’t think my words are things that don’t exist.

Then Mom goes back to Sarajevo again. It’s winter, I’m scared of the dark, there’s no power, but there are two lights in the room: the brown light of the gas lamp and the blue light of the gas stove. The blue light is like night snow, but actually it’s hot. Grandpa lights a cigarette, he’s all wrinkly; when he sweats, beads run down his wrinkles, and his face turns into rivers running through a gray-gold land. When he sweats, I can imagine a whole crowd of people building houses on his face, sitting in the dark and sweating like him; on Grandpa’s face lives another little grandpa, who also sits in the dark, lights a cigarette, rivers run down his face too, and next to them live even smaller people and even smaller grandpas, and they too sit in the dark, in blue and brown light, next to their grandsons who on their grandpas’ faces see crowds of even smaller people and even smaller grandpas. Only we don’t live on somebody’s face, we live in the big wide world, in which everything is real and terrifying.