Sasa Stanisic - How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone

The silence is baring its fangs, whispered Walrus. He usually said that about the sun in April when it shines without warming you. Even when the mothers called: Suppertime! it sounded as if they were whispering.

The grandfathers put their heads together over a little transistor radio. I wished Grandpa Slavko was among them. What would he say now that everything had turned to untold silence? It was a long time since there'd been any music on the radio, it was now all talk. At that moment someone with a hoarse voice was saying that our troops were withdrawing from their positions in order to regroup. In silence, the grandfathers propped their elbows on their knees and their heads on their hands. Everyone was feverishly following our troops and their positions, even though no one knew exactly who these troops of ours were, and what kind of important positions had to be abandoned. Only when the hoarse voice on the radio mentioned a town with exactly the same name as ours did everyone know something. Even I knew a little — the hoarse voice said “Višegrad” like something you wouldn't be safe from wherever you hid. So this was the knowledge baring its fangs in the silence. I arranged the marbles from my pockets side by side on the floor, running from light to dark, then trod on them. Every single marble had to crunch.

The mothers told us what else we should know. Drink only boiled water, be in the cellar from nine-thirty onward, don't go breaking Čika Aziz's C64 records when he's got his gun around. When the hoarse voice on the radio said Višegrad, and I wondered: how can a town fall, wouldn't there have to be an earthquake? even the mothers didn't know what to do. They salted the peas and stirred the pan.

Outside, a wedding party broke the silence, hooting horns. Zoran, Edin and I slipped out of the cellar — first into the stairway, for a cautious look out the window, then into the yard, then into the street. No one stopped us, but we could already hear the mothers calling behind us. What was all this about? Bearded bridegrooms in camouflage jackets and training-suit trousers drove past. Cross-country vehicles hooted, heavy trucks hooted. An army of bearded bridegrooms drove by, shooting at the sky to celebrate taking their bride, our town. Bridegrooms on the roofs and hoods of the vehicles swayed in time to the potholes in the roads that they'd made themselves from nine-thirty in the morning onward, every day for nine whole days. They shielded their eyes with their hands; they squinted out from under them, avoiding the setting sun. Legs in green and brown hung out of the backs of trailers, dangling like decorations.

The first tanks chugged up the street. Their tracks scored white grooves in the asphalt and turned concrete to gravel where they drove over the pavement. There was no holding us now: who oils those, then, why do they squeal like that? I shouted, and we were running toward the tanks — we could run faster than anyone! The mothers held on to their long skirts and wailed after us, we were running so fast toward the tanks. Who's driving them, then, what does the steering wheel look like, can we come too? Clattering past the gardens, clattering past the yards where there are suitcases standing ready and people desperately cramming them into car trunks and stacking them on car roofs. What a whimpering and trilling sound there was under those metal fists, forefingers outstretched! Even the bridge sagged under those toothed gearwheels; the arches of the bridge will break, Granny Katarina's china is nothing to that. We stopped in the little park by the bridge where the statue of Ivo Andric used to stand before it was torn down. We wanted to hear how loud the bridge would sound when it broke.

The mothers raced up to us, mine gave me a slap in the face, and she really meant it. She knew I'd have followed the tanks right over to the other side. The slap was still making my head ring, like the tiled roofs vibrating as the tanks passed. I put my hand to my cheek and listened to the steel centipedes grating the street into dust.

The bridge held.

Our mothers dragged us back to the cellar, Edin by his ear, me by my sleeve.

Asija, my Asija, hadn't run after the vehicles with us. She was sitting on the bottom step of the stairs where you go when you've run out of ammunition. That's in the rules of the game: the way out to the stairs means an armistice. I sat down beside her, rubbed my smarting cheek, she rubbed her eyes. I said: gun barrels. I said: camouflage colors. I said: faster than Edin. Asija got up and ran up the stairs, crying.

Asija had cried once before, two days ago. She had cried until she fell asleep with her hand in mine. Asija's Uncle Ibrahim had been shot when he went to shave in Čika Hasan's bathroom and moved his head close to the mirror. He was shot in the neck through the little bathroom window, and his chin was grazed too. And I could hear it through the door, Čika Hasan told the others, Ibrahim struggled for air for minutes on end, fought for air as if he were trying to take a never-ending breath and tell us about all the things that lie ahead. But I didn't have any air to give Ibrahim, said Čika Hasan, lowering his voice, and he climbed down to death without beginning his story. Či ka Hasan showed us how he'd raised his hands, because everyone else was just standing around Ibrahim, and Hasan told us how he'd closed Ibrahim's eyes, because there was blood everywhere sticking to Ibrahim's head and the tiles and the mirror. Blood everywhere, he said — blood the color of cherries everywhere, that's how I imagined it dripping off the fingers that had been digging into Ibrahim's throat so that he could get some air.

I would have run straight after Asija if the mothers hadn't called us to supper for the second time, and if there hadn't been the sound of breaking glass in the stairwell, and all the silence vanished because of the shots and shouting and cursing. Asija is crying because soldiers' fists smell of iron, never of soap. Because the soldiers' guns are hanging around their necks, and doors give way when they kick them in as if there were no locks on them at all. Asija is crying because that's the way soldiers kicked in the doors in her village too, she's crying, and she'll be hiding in the storeroom where we chase mice, where there's dust on the glass cases, and bikes stand about getting rusty. I'll go and find my Asija there any moment now.

Here in the cellar the mothers are ladling out peas for us and the soldiers. The one with the black headband breaks the bread and hands it around — I'm not going to touch that bread with the dirt from under his nails on it.

The hoarse voice on the radio says: Višegrad.

The soldier with the headband says: okay, we heard, and stands up.

The voice on the radio says: fallen after a bitter struggle.

The soldier scratches himself under his headband: all right, that'll do. And he gets ready to take a run at it.

The voice on the radio rises: but our troops are regrouping!

The soldier murmurs: hm, interesting, but somehow kind of. . irresponsible. Or do you lot want another punch in the gob? He kicks the little black box, hard, and the voice on the radio says nothing more. The soldier throws the bent aerial and one of the knobs at the grandfathers' feet: something for the do-it-yourself lot, if any of you can repair it I'll buy it off him. And you there! More bacon in the peas! I'll never get a bellyful this way! Life would be a poor thing without bacon. You — yes, you over there — you go and cut me some bacon. And he points his spoon at Amela from the second floor. Amela with the long black braids lays strips of raw meat over the soldier's hand, trying to cover it. Hey, did you make that dress yourself? the soldier asks Amela, licking the meat, say yes and I'll kiss your clever fingers. Don't even think of saying no.