Sasa Stanisic - How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone

We have to leave most of it lying there. Fizo removes his glasses, takes a handkerchief out of his shirt pocket, wipes first his eyes and then the glasses. Edin finds an unbroken pipette, holds it up, says good-good-good, and laughs. Fizo nods, yes, good, and gets the broom. We'll go on with lessons in a minute, do you have your exercise books with you? I want to dictate some formulas to you. After that you can go home, right?

Nothing in the lab is in its usual place except for Tito over the board. The more quietly I try to put my feet down, the louder the glass crunches under them. Tito's white admiral's uniform. Tito's German shepherd dog. Tito's right eye: a bullet hole in it. Tito has died yet again, for the fourth time. Shot dead this time.

Trite symbolism, says Fizo.

I can't really take anything seriously under Tito's one-eyed corpse, in a school that isn't a school anymore, or if so it's only Fizo's school, the school of his resistance, his energy, his power. I'll look up “symbolism” later, but only because the word annoys me. I want to know whether one-eyed people would rather be blind in the left eye or the right eye, I want to know how much blood we really have in us, and I want to know if every shot to the throat is fatal. I want to know how many deaths Tito still has to die.

Nothing in the lab is in its proper place. I stand there.

Krsmanović, calls Fizo, aren't you going to help us?

I don't know how, Comrade Jelenić.

I clean the board with the dry sponge. If I were a magician who could make things possible, then glass could decide for itself whether it broke, and Fizo, who is the strictest teacher in the school, would say: good.

Good, says the soldier with the gold tooth when Edin and I turn into our street with the fishing rods, the fish, and the exercise books from the department store. Perhaps our mothers won't have noticed we were gone, and anyway, we've been to school, that's not a lie. So we just have to get rid of the fish. The first thing we do is hide the rods in the yard.

Good, but what are those fish doing on the roof? asks the soldier as I put the bag with our catch on the roof of the tobacconist's just as he's coming out of the shop, doing up his zipper, bread dough on his hands.

They're for the cat, says Edin. A dead loss for humans.

Right, says the soldier, a dead loss, everything's a dead loss, all battles are a dead loss, all my poor corns are a dead loss if I don't find my Emina. Do you two know Emina? Amela isn't my Emina.

I remember Great-Grandpa's song at the harvest festival, I remember vain Emina and her hyacinthine hair. The soldier sits down on the pavement beside a sparse-haired man who wears a flowing white garment. The man's hands are inside a black top hat up to the wrists, and he's fidgeting nervously with it. It's only by his top hat that I recognize the man, his face is so swollen, and he's sitting there so bent over. It's Musa Hasanagic, but where's his mare, Cauliflower?

Please, Musa begs the soldier, please tell me what will happen to her!

I feel sorry for horses, says the soldier, licking his cigarette paper, now which war has been the worst for horses? Which war is this one? Nineteen-fourteen, nineteen forty-two, nineteen ninety-two. . once it was horses that died like flies. Now humans are dying like that, but the horses have forgotten how to be free.

Edin digs his elbow into my ribs: let's go! But I can't move, I can't leave while the soldier is talking in that tone, telling stories in that tone. He puts Musa's hat on Musa's head and pushes the cigarette between Musa's lips. He takes a loaf from his rucksack and breaks off large chunks, feeds the old man. Amela's bread. Musa chews toothlessly; handcuffs rattle on his hands.

I've tumbled many girls, says the soldier, and I left only one of them unkissed: my Emina. How she'd eat cherries from my hand! How she'd tickle my wrist with her chin! The soldier bows his head awkwardly and scrapes dough out from under his nails.

Emina escaped you! She escaped you! cries Musa, and his eyes are shining.

There you are, there you are! My mother runs to meet me as Edin and I come into the yard. Listen, Aleksandar, we're leaving. Pack your things. Hurry. A couple of days and we'll be out.

The stairwell's almost empty. Čika Milomir is sweeping the corridor, smoking, dropping ash and sweeping it away again.

The doors of most of the apartments are open; our neighbors are clearing up in silence. There's glass everywhere.

Granny Katarina is standing at the open window. Granny?

Edin and I go and stand beside her. Granny?

Four bearded soldiers are trying to throw a horse off the bridge and into the river. They are leading it by the reins. The horse and the soldiers look down into the river over the railings of the bridge. The soldiers are pushing hard. The horse stands there. It's not going to clamber over the railings by itself. I'm sick and tired of this obstinate nag, shouts one of the bearded men like someone who's hard of hearing, and he holds his pistol to the white blaze on the horse's forehead. The soldiers smoke. The soldiers pat the horse's nostrils. The soldiers lead the horse off the bridge and back to the bank.

Oh, just shoot it for Christ's sake! a soldier with sunglasses calls to them. He's playing with a Gameboy on his tank, which is wet after the rain.

You shoot horses when they can't work anymore, cries the man with the reins in his hand, leading the horse into deeper water, we want to see it drown.

Cauliflower likes to eat cauliflower, says Granny. Wherever else would you hear of a horse with a name like that?

Musa Hasanagić used to wear the top hat when he trained his mare Cauliflower. Edin and I often watched. The gramophone played Boléro and the mare would walk around in time to the music, trotting with her head held high. Half-pass! cried Musa, tapping his top hat. Passage, he cried. He clicked his fingers, and Cauliflower would turn around on the spot.

A shot rings out, the horse shies, Granny jumps. Oh, if my Slavko had seen this, she whispers behind her hand, his heart wouldn't have stopped, it would have broken into ten thousand pieces.

The soldier with dough on his hands is walking slowly across the street, Musa's top hat on his head, carrying the bag with our fish in it. I press my face into Granny's side. She ought to send Edin and me away from the window, she ought to close the window. She whispers: Cauliflower, what an ugly name for such a beautiful creature.

The beautiful creature shies, the beautiful creature bucks, the beautiful creature kicks out at the soldiers with her forelegs, the beautiful creature tears free, the beautiful creature races through the water toward the bank. Three bearded soldiers are standing on the bank smoking, look-no-hands, their guns raised to fire.

Trembling, I step back from the window and put my hands over my ears. I stumble backward out of the room, I pack my rucksack. Edin helps, silent and serious. I quickly get three last pictures of unfinished things down on paper and hide them behind Granny Katarina's wardrobe with the rest — ninety-nine in all. Pictures of Emina far away from the soldier with the gold tooth. Of Cauliflower galloping off, no fences in sight. Of pistols that were never loaded.

I meet my father in the stairwell, he's racing upstairs, nods to me as if he were a mere acquaintance. There are damp patches under his arms. I call Asija's name on every floor, but get no answer. I stuff my things into the heap on the backseat of our heavily laden Yugo, which now looks like the other cars that have given up on Višegrad these last few days. Nena, do you have enough air back there? Nena Fatima smiles at me, and the bag with my painting things falls into her lap. I want to take my soccer ball. Mother shakes her head, so I pass it to Edin. Father and Granny come out of the building. Granny, in tears, kisses her women neighbors, they're in tears too, then stops in front of one of the soldiers on guard. She looks him up and down, she stands on tiptoe to hiss something into his ear. The soldier gives a nasty grin and shrugs. Granny squeezes herself into the backseat beside Nena Fatima.