Miljenko Jergovic - Mama Leone

Barbara Veronesse had lived with her granddaughter in Poreč for two years. They had made it out of Sarajevo in the fall of 1992, a month after Azra’s father was killed. Her mother, Eva Veronesse-Teskeredžić, had been dead for exactly how long Azra had been alive. She died two days after giving birth, eaten up by a tumor that had grown inside her for nine months, maybe a little longer; the doctors had told her she must abort to save her own life, a childless one for sure but a life all the same; she didn’t want to, the doctor, Srećko, asked her whether she believed in God, and not waiting for her answer said even Christ would forgive you, don’t kill yourself, please , to which Eva looked at him sadly and said but doctor, I don’t believe in him and I know there is no God . Azra’s mother only saw her once in her life. She was given her first dose of morphine shortly after, and the next day she was already dead.

Nana Barbara had wanted to show Azra Venice, believing the child would remember her by the city for the rest of her life. In seven days she was to see Azra off on an airplane that would take her to Boston, where her uncle Mehmed, a computer scientist, lived, with whom Azra would live too, with him and his wife, Nevzeta, in a big house with a yard full of cats and dogs. The truth was that Nana had only heard about the one dog, but she had told Azra there were at least ten to make the leaving easier on the child, and so she wouldn’t cry because Barbara Veronesse couldn’t stand tears. Tears were all that remained of her own daughter and she wanted to avoid them, even if she had to make up all the cats and dogs in the world. With her granddaughter leaving, she would return to Sarajevo, and then what would be, would be; if we have to die, let us die where we belong, where we’ve lived our whole lives.

Aldo tapped the old woman on the shoulder, who opened her eyes to see Azra bent over the seat throwing up. My child , she searched her handbag for a tissue, the Italians had squashed into their corner, palely looking on, Azra was crying, the conductor came in and asked Grandma something, she replied, and Azra choked Grandma, don’t leave me , she squeezed her hand, I won’t, sweetheart, I’d never leave you, just relax , Azra threw up again, it’s nothing sweetheart, you just had a bad dream , the girl with the water came, trying to catch Azra’s eye and make her smile, yet the child didn’t see her, but Grandma, I don’t want cats and dogs , Barbara Veronesse struggled to breathe, the child threw up again, who knows where she’s getting it all from, the doctor came in mumbling something in a foreign language and pinched Azra’s cheek, Grandma, don’t let me go , Barbara Veronesse started to get dizzy, God, just not now, don’t kill me now , she closed her eyes, she just had to close her eyes a little, Azra cried, the doctor murmured, someone held Barbara’s hand, someone held both of Azra’s hands, Azra screamed and lost her voice, let’s go home, please Grandma, let’s go home to Bistrik , Barbara Veronesse remembered her piano, the brothers would open the monastery windows when she played, when Brother Ivan died she had played Eine kleine Nachtmusik the whole night through. Don’t cease God’s work , a young seminarian had told her, and she had played until five in the morning when Brother Ivan’s soul expired; she felt someone trying to take her pulse, she couldn’t hear Azra anymore, the child must have stopped crying, must have calmed down, a silence grew from all sides, as big as Trebević and as wide as Sarajevo, she tried to open her eyes but couldn’t, Barbara Veronesse’s eyelids were as heavy as the big red curtains at the National Theater and didn’t want to rise. Mi aiuti, per favore , his voice was shaking, she felt someone grab her feet, someone grab her shoulders, she was lying down, signora, signora , somebody had undone the buttons on her blouse, someone was slapping her face, someone’s hands were pressing violently on Barbara’s chest, they must have taken the child out of the compartment, signora, signora , there was a humming in her ears, she remembered the Bistrik stream and how it flowed when she was a little girl, she could tell apart every stone at its bottom, the hands pressed her chest in the same rhythm as the Bistrik’s flow, and with each press the stones would jump from the bottom, just look how light they are, like they aren’t stones at all but full of air, before sinking again, the water so deep you could drown in there in the fall, who had drowned? Barbara Veronesse was afraid, she was so terribly afraid that she opened her eyes and saw a big sweaty forehead with glasses. Azra wasn’t beside the window anymore and the water was gone. That calmed her, it calmed her so much she no longer even needed to sigh. Signora, signora, come sta, come va, signora , the bald face shouted. Barbara opened her mouth, smiled, and said ho freddo, ho molto freddo and closed her eyes. The doctor took Marco’s coat and covered her with it. For some time he held the wrist of Barbara Veronesse, the retired piano teacher from Sarajevo, and then he slowly laid her hand on her chest and with his fingertips, as if he was scared of waking her, placed the coat over her face. His eyes were full of tears. At that moment all the doctors in the world detested him, him, the doctor who cried.

In the next compartment Aldo and Marco tried to laugh, Gianni performed a pantomime for Azra. He played a man building a house, but the bricks kept falling down, then a man trying to change a light-bulb, then a man doing something else, he tried everything, but Azra just watched him, the nausea had passed and she didn’t want to cry, she was in wonder at this mute world, seemingly at peace with it. In this mute world there was no Nana and no Bistrik, but neither were there people who lived their whole lives in foreign languages.

The sky above Surčin is low and heavy. Drunken angels have installed themselves on the clouds somewhere high above and are now celebrating, oblivious that they’re sinking lower and lower, that they’re about to hit the ground, among the plowed fields, where the Vojvodina plain begins and forgotten pumpkins freeze. The plane has just broken through the clouds, and here it is, growing, bigger and more real than when the story began. In a few seconds it’ll touch down, the landing gear has long been extended, and the captain just needs to say those few words of signing off, of welcome and the weather, the hoping we’ll see you again.

Marina is sitting in a fourteenth-row window seat looking out. Her gaze is empty; she can’t see what she was wanting to see, nor can she even remember what it was she’d wanted. Marina is on her way home for the first time in three years. Actually it’s not home, it’s just where her parents live and where her things are, things she doesn’t need anymore or perhaps never needed, things not for junking because wherever they are means you’re home. She’s never lived in Belgrade apart from the several months between their leaving Sarajevo and her leaving for Canada. But still she tries to recognize the ground beneath her, the runway expanding like it might swallow the plane, the screech of the wheels as they touch ground; she searches for the code to a former world, to which, as the story goes, she belongs.

It’s cold outside, she inhales, catching on the air the faint scent of petrol and a hint of frozen winter grass, but this is all. Nothing she knows, nothing that after so much time would make you say hello again, I’m back, take me in again for a little while .

They don’t know her time of arrival. She couldn’t bring herself to tell them; who could have handled a meeting in the airport terminal, voices echoing to eternity, thousands of eyes rubbernecking at scenes that are none of their business, a situation where you have to stand, hug, wave your arms, wipe away tears, swallow pounding hearts, no sitting or lying down, no way, no cushioning your head, because it’s an airport, people spit on the floor, you can’t sit or lie down, crying’s no good in a place like this, what would everyone think, each with his own opinion and explanation of the spectacle. When in the hour of greatest weakness and vulnerability, in the midst of sorrowful joy, people find themselves under a stranger’s gaze, in a stranger’s imagination, they risk spilling like water, their fates draining down into whatever strangers have dreamed up for them.