Sasa Stanisic - How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone

Edin has stopped the ball with the sole of his foot. He takes a piece of chalk out of his trouser pocket and twirls it in his fingers. He jiggles up and down on the bent garage door that a tank smashed yesterday when it was trying to park. A soldier climbed out, examined the damage, cursing, wiped his sleeve over the metalwork and drove away. The door fell off its hinges and the little panes in it broke. Edin imitates the sound of the door breaking and stirs the fragments with the toe of his shoe. One way or another, he says, the whole town is breaking up into splinters. Are you going now too?

Only for a little while, I say, and I have to swallow.

So we never will cross the bridge again together. I bet you, he calls, already waving, there won't be another flood this year. It can't come, he shouts, there can't be one, not another flood, he weeps, how could there be? A town without its people or its bridges, bridges with us standing on them to feed fish with our spit, how could there be? he says — or perhaps he says it, because I can't hear him anymore. I look in the rearview mirror and I can see him drawing the goalposts with his chalk, the crossbar so high that he has to give his hand a good shaking three times. He sends the ball flying, top left, stops the ball in midturn, a bouncing ball, going halfway up to the right — every shot a goal, until rain washes the chalk away.

I carried Emina through her village in my arms, says the soldier with gold in his mouth and dough on his hands, I carried Emina's weight from house to house, gravely and saying little. Her arms around my neck so that she wouldn't fall. Kicking wardrobe doors open with my boots, looking at thousands of dresses, touching hundreds of fabrics, until at last I found the right one for my Emina in a chest made of the darkest cherrywood. Softer than silk, white as snow for Emina's white skin and her black hair. I carried that wonderfully beautiful material and my wonderfully beautiful gypsy girl to the village square. My comrades gave the thirsty villagers water and herded them into the trucks.

What are you doing? I shouted to my companions. You can't take them yet! I need a dressmaker, I need someone to play music for me and my bride! I sang the song, and the company, all in chorus, agreed that I was right. I told dressmakers to feel the material, holding the end of it well above the ground; no dirt was to get on it except the dirt of these hands of mine. I told musicians to rescue their instruments from the flames: who's lighting fires now? We're going to have a wedding here at first light! Are you the accordionist, old man, is it your fast fingers they all talk about? Dressmaker, can you make this material into a dress for Emina, a finer dress that anyone ever wore? Old man, good dressmaker, do you want to save your lives?

Just let my daughter and my grandson live, begged the old man. Just let my sister and her little ones live, whispered the dressmaker, and she kissed the white fabric. The trucks drove away, and as soon as they had left the village the guns began chattering.

Why all that shooting? I cried when my comrades came back five minutes later, hitting the driver's ear with the flat of my hand, don't do that again! Don't you ever do that again! Drive them farther into the forest!

You crazy idiot, said the driver flatteringly, hitting me back, get your gun, you idiot! We're under attack! And then there's shooting and standing firm and securing the bridge and ten on our flank and get away from the flames and there's the radio operator and where are the heavy machine guns and Vladimir cries no and runs and Mayday Mayday Eagle please come in we're under fire there's explosions and Vladimir and Dule on the ground with Vladimir twitching and get back and stay close together men get back and there are hits and rubble and blood trickling through fingers just leave him there — don't leave me here — we retreat and when night falls and the battle's over I call Emina's name into the dark and there's no answer. Has she taken the dress material with her? Is she wandering through the burning countryside with the dressmaker and the old musician? We abandoned the village and I've been looking for my Emina ever since. I can never rest.

The soldier picked dry bread dough off his fingers. He sat there with his wet, bare torso beside old Musa, playing with Musa's handcuffs. Emina, Emina, he whispered, Emina.

Dear Asija,

If my Grandpa Slavko were still alive, I'd ask him what we ought to be most ashamed of now.

I'm writing to you because I couldn't find you, I was ashamed of the earth itself for carrying the tanks that came to meet us on the road to Belgrade. My father hooted at every tank, every jeep and every truck. If you don't hoot, they stop you.

They did stop us at the Serbian border. A soldier with a crooked nose asked if we had any weapons in the car. Father said: yes, gasoline and matches. The two of them laughed and we were allowed to drive on. I didn't see what was so funny about that, and my mother said: I'm the weapon they're looking for. I asked: why are we driving into the enemy's arms? and then I had to promise not to ask any more questions for the next ten years.

The rain never stopped, the road was jammed, we kept coming to a halt. Once armed men wearing masks and white gloves were walking along behind two other men, beside the column of vehicles. The men were gagged, their eyes were blindfolded, and I wanted to promise to wipe that memory out for the next ten years, but Granny Katarina wasn't in favor of forgetting. To Granny, the past is a summerhouse with a garden full of twittering thrushes and twittering women neighbors, and you can draw coffee from a well while Grandpa Slavko and his friends play hide-and-seek. And the present is a road that leads away from the summerhouse, swarming with tank tracks, smelling of heavy smoke, killing horses, dogs, houses, people. You have to remember them both, Granny whispers to me from the backseat, the time when everything was all right and the time when nothing's all right.

We got away, Asija, and our acquaintances in Belgrade embraced us, first as if we were oak trees, then as if we were the most fragile glass, and I hope all of you in Višegrad can get away and be hugged too.

Višegrad was on the TV first but the people who are defenders on our TV at home are the aggressors here, and the town didn't fall, it was liberated, because a madman and not a hero was trying to blow up the dam.

Nena Fatima cast the beans for Granny Katarina, and read Granny Katarina's future from them without words.

I asked my deaf-mute granny what she really wants. Nena took no notice of me. I said: not telling me now could mean traumas for me with far-reaching consequences later. When Mother asked me where I got that from I told her: no idea.

Asija, can you read the beans?

Granny Katarina wants to go back to her home and her friends in Višegrad. Father didn't try to persuade her not to, Mother shouted when she heard that Father was keeping quiet about it.

Father wants to keep quiet about it.

Mother wants to shout.

I wonder what Uncle Miki wants. No one knows where he is.

I want to listen to a story from another world or another time, but everyone just keeps talking about now and asking: now what? If I were to tell a story of this time and this world, after I'd told it, I'd have to promise never to do such a thing again for the next ten years. It would begin like this: The mothers have only just called us, in a whisper, to come for supper when soldiers storm the building, asking what's on the menu; they sit down beside us at the plywood tables in the cellars.

I don't have to invent anything to tell a story of another world and another time.