Sasa Stanisic - How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone

Where's the driver? I asked Walrus after he'd shaken hands with everyone present the way presidents do at airports, clasping their hosts' hands in both their own.

Picking mushrooms on the Romanija, replied Walrus, punching my forearm in a way I liked. And where's my son, you young rascal?

Sweeping up hair for Maestro Stankovski, I replied, dancing about in front of Walrus like Muhammad Ali, I've just come from there. He's still wearing your jacket.

Ah, my jacket, nodded Walrus, and the palm of his hand sketched a straight right and an upper cut. Then today's the last time he'll wear that old thing, no one wears denim jackets in Trieste, and I've bought him everything new.

Milica pushed her sunglasses down from her hair to her face and ran her eyes over the little bus station, frowning. The pale bushes around it, all pale green like that, could hardly appeal to anyone so dotted. And probably neither did the oil stains on the asphalt, or the pack of dogs lying there dozing, or the holes in the rusty fence, or Armin the tire expert scratching his belly under his shirt. Milica concluded her inspection over the top of her sunglasses with me. What was wrong about me? I had big ears, but normally women of marriageable age liked that. I had a wonky haircut, but that was Maestro Stankovski's fault, not mine. Milica slowly opened her lips, showing her teeth; she had about forty more of them than most people, and a diamond sparkled on one of her twelve incisors. Those teeth could be giving a kind of smile, I thought, and sure enough, there was something she liked about me! She clasped her hands in front of her breasts with delight, her disappointment at the sight of the shabby bus station gone. She pinched my cheeks with both hands and an incredibly sweet perfume hit me in the face. Look, if there's one thing, I cried, wiping my cheeks with my sleeve, if there's one thing that I personally find distressing, it's having fingers jabbed in my face!

“I personally” is what my mother said when she wanted to disagree with something, and “distressing” was what she said when she was very upset.

Just hark at him talking! cried the delighted Milica, clapping her hands. Her voice sounded like the last piano key on the right. And see the funny way he opens and closes his mouth! She took a step back from me as if admiring a picture in a gallery. Walrus was pleased because his Milica was pleased, he wanted to hug her, but by now he was so laden with suitcases and bags and carriers that he couldn't really move at all.

How old are you, darling? Milica took another step closer. I took three steps back.

There are various rumors, I muttered, ranging from eight to fourteen, it all depends, but too old to have my cheeks pinched anyway. To avoid any more questions I followed Walrus, who had set off in the direction of the town center, walking heavily. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Armin reversing the bus, he couldn't have the right-hand side of one of his buses trespassing on the pavement. I kept my eye on the ladybird. Goodness knew what else someone who wore tights like cobwebs would be capable of.

Čika Walrus, where have you been all this time?

On my travels — all over the place. Across the Pannonian plain, over the Dinarides, to the coast, all the way to Italy. Not a bad trip. I didn't have much money, so I used five sentences of French from “La Marseillaise” and my recipe for leg of lamb Breton style to pretend that I was Jacques, and I introduced my Milica to everyone as Mademoiselle Bretagne. The French always make our sort happy because, like us, they know how to love, they're just as good at playing the accordion, and they've made a real art of their inability to bake proper bread. As Jacques and Mademoiselle Bretagne we always had enough to eat, and a bed in which to sleep and get to know each other better. Everywhere we went people told us why Yugoslavia had been such a fine country, it sounded as if they were talking about someone dead. Our act worked until we met a real Frenchman. We got drunk with him on French rosé, and then he confessed that he'd just been speaking Macedonian with a French accent and the wine was local wine cut with schnapps. Then he had too much of his local wine as well, and he wept in Milica's lap, telling us how he'd saved up for years to buy a motorbike to impress the most beautiful woman in the village, but the most beautiful woman in the village had gone and married someone who didn't even have a bicycle.

On our way through Višegrad on 2 April 1992 Walrus said: it would be a good thing if everyone had trained to be on the road, same as me. Because everyone will soon have to go on a long trip. But I'm staying put, come what may.

On the way past the fire station Walrus turned serious and said: Milica and I will be happy here.

On the way past the mosque Walrus stopped and drank water from the tap in the wall.

On his way, and it wasn't far enough for him to tell me all the things he could have told me, Milenko was glad to see every passerby who recognized him and stopped to say hello, because then he could put the heavy bags down. Many of them welcomed him warmly, for one thing because they were glad to see one more person back in the town, which was shrinking daily.

Musa, said Walrus to Musa Hasanagic, who was leading his mare Cauliflower along by her reins, Musa, brother, shall we stick together?

Always, said Musa, and Cauliflower nodded the way horses do.

On the way to his son, and it was much too long since he'd seen him, and on the way to saying: I'm back and the war is hard on my heels, Walrus told me about his trip, the last trip, he said, to be made in this country for a long time by someone so full of care and yet so carefree.

My car broke down on the Romanija, would you believe it? Right where my son, Zoran, and I once stopped for a pee, the engine gave out. Mist like cement, same as before. So off I go on foot, and then the bus comes along. The driver's switched some music on. My head's going around and around. I tell him: you're not on your own here. He laughs at me: no, I'm not, but I'm driving you, and as long as I'm driving you the volume of the music is my business and sitting there is yours. He's right. I admit it. I have no quarrel with that. But not only does the music stay as loud, it also gets worse too. It gets revolting. He's put a cassette in and is singing along with it, something about sharp swords by the bloodstained river Drina. I speak up again: right, the volume and the radio and the steering wheel and the speed and the hairs in your nostrils are your business, but these ears are mine. And I'm not happy with the insult to my ears and my river Drina, I don't approve of it at all. And since you're singing along — here I tap him on the shoulder — I'm not happy with you either, I don't approve of you at all. Not as a driver or a human being, if you know such garbage by heart. Switch it off or I'll shoot your balls off! However, he turns around, ready to fight. Into battle, heroes all! he shouted at me, and I thought we were going to drive off the road any minute, and the last thing I'd hear in my life would be this Greater Serbian donkey braying. He couldn't sing at all, or he wouldn't have been a bus driver.

I have a headache and my life is not the easiest of lives at this moment, I whispered in the donkey's ear. And I may be Serbian but I'm ashamed to hear this kind of stuff. There's nothing more dangerous than a cuckold with a headache who feels ashamed of himself and has a loaded gun in his bag. Aleksandar, promise me that you will never hold a gun before a bus driver's eyes, throw him out of his bus, give him a good kicking and shoot his cassette player!