Sasa Stanisic - How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone

Asiya (Asija), f.

1. As Arab. name: healing, tending the sick; peacemaker.

2. Traditionally the name of Pharaoh's devout wife who rescued Moses from the Nile.

My father asks if I knew that more people are killed by coconuts than sharks every year. Coconuts are murderers, he says.

I decide to have dreamed everything.

With love, from

Aleksandar

I packed it up myself — for you. Karl and Friedrich and Clara and Tito. The whole bunch of them are in it. Do you remember? You liked Karl. And I really, really want to send you Slavko's Party book. His speeches on special occasions. His articles. What picturesque handwriting your grandpa had! Capital letters twining like tendrils! No one writes by hand anymore. I'm sure you type everything too. It's not right! How do you find out who you're dealing with through a machine? I mean, do you want to kiss only a girl's lipstick and not the girl? I really do want to send you some newspaper articles about Grandpa! You used to sit on his lap and do crossword puzzles with him! Oh, Slavko and his crossword puzzles! What else? You really must have the photos of Vladimir Ilyitch and the photos of Tito! What have I got here? “The Mission of Revolutionary Youth”? Yes, wonderful! You're the youth in the title! Oh, your Grandpa's handwriting in those crossword puzzles! Tito's uniform, and we thought we had it so good then, sheep that we were! I only couldn't stand all the fuss they made. I didn't marry my Slavko for his minutes of Party meetings and his reports. Politics and kissing don't go together! What am I supposed to do now with workers' songs and Clara Zetkin postage stamps and leaflets explaining how people have to act when Tito comes to town? Point One: we're to decorate our front gardens and put out as many green plants as possible! Everything except the green plants — for instance underpants, bedclothes, etc. — is to be taken out of the front gardens! Did you ever hear of such a thing? Then there's Point Four, that's a good one too: everyone must bring at least one flower to throw into the street three hundred feet in front of the first car in Tito's column. Whatever happens, nothing must be thrown at Comrade Tito's own car. I could never be doing with any of that, Aleksandar, but I expect you still have ambitions of that kind. You and Slavko may never have got beyond the chapter on goods and commodities in Das Kapital without nodding off, but you could quote whole passages by heart. And you wore your blue cap and red cravat of your own free will even when it wasn't a festival day. Even when wearing the Pioneer uniform wasn't a duty anymore, hands clasped behind your back the way your grandpa always clasped his. At the end-of-year celebrations in Class Four you carried the flag. Half the school marched behind you and the Red Flag. Your ears were glowing with happiness and excitement. The flag was huge. During a break in the marching, a poem was recited about some commandant or other, and you sat down and laid the flag on the ground. There's a photo of you resting in front of the flag. I really do want to send you that photo. Tell me, do the Germans still open all packages from Yugoslavia? Are they still keeping tabs on us? I wouldn't like to put you in the awkward position of having to explain why you need these things. Slavko would have made a speech at the Ninth Congress of the Communist League of Yugoslavia. That was in nineteen-seventy and quite something. But then unfortunately none of the speakers fell ill, so no sub stitute was required. I really would like to send that speech — it's for you. “The Role and Perspectives of Marriage and the Family in the Proletariat”! Oh, Slavko and his perspectives! The maternity question! The education question! The sexual question! All so topical! Slavko was annoyed by hypocritical bourgeois virtues! And I. . I was his proud comrade! Oh, my Slavko. . Aleksandar, when are you finally going to get married?

When Everything

Was All Right

with a foreword by Granny Katarina

and an essay for Mr. Fazlagić

For my Grandpa Slavko

Foreword

Ice cream

Wish

Parade

1 May 1989, or, The Chick in the Pioneer's Hand

There are no Partisans now

A wonderful trip

How to disappear

Why Čika Doctor cut the calf of someone's leg open

Why Vukoje Worm whose nose has been broken three times doesn't break mine

Why Čika Hasan and Čika Sead are inseparable, and what even those who know most about catfish can't count on

How the game of chess relates to world politics, why Grandpa Slavko knows revolutions may come tomorrow, and how things can sometimes be so difficult to say

The promise a dam must keep, what the most beautiful language in the world sounds like, and how often a heart must beat to beat shame

Why houses are sympathetic and unselfish, what music they make, and why I want them to stay sympathetic and unselfish, and above all to stand firm

What victory is the best, what Grandpa Slavko trusts me to do, and why people act as if your fears are less if you don't talk about them

How the bold river Drina is feeling, how the lipless Drina is really feeling, what she thinks of little Mr. Rzav, and how little you need to be as happy as a falcon

Aleksandar,

You were four years old. You were sleeping with us, in bed between Grandpa and me. That's the way you liked it best. Grandpa had to go out early. A Party committee meeting. You were whining, you wanted to go too. He whispered something to you. You quieted down. You laughed, yes, you laughed. Your mother came to our place later, wanting to take you to the barber's. She knew Grandpa wasn't there. He usually took you to the barber's with him, and then didn't allow him to cut properly. When people are deep thinkers their hair falls over their foreheads, that's how it was with your grandpa. Mama and I went for a coffee nearby, at Amela's. Waste of time, you said. You stayed behind upstairs and sorted out your little cars. You never really played with them, just changed the places where you'd parked them. You made up a story about each car. Where it came from, where it was going. The problems of the driver's prim and proper wife. The exhaust of the Porsche was belting out Partisan songs. We came back an hour later. The cars hadn't been put in any order, they were just lying there. You were lying there too, in front of Slavko's sofa. You were watching TV. The volume was turned down, then you switched the TV off. You pushed your hair back from your forehead. The cars were just lying around. I noticed the vase at once, I noticed that it wasn't on the windowsill. Or anywhere else. You hadn't got the Hoover out because you were scared of vacuum cleaners. Washing machines too. Those tiny little pieces on the carpet.

You never said anything about the vase afterward; I never said anything about the vase afterward. And Grandpa probably never noticed the vase. I mean, that it wasn't there anymore. Even though it had been his present. You knew that. He had spent three days picking flowers for me. He had filled the whole apartment with flowers. I'd never seen so many flowers at once, either before or afterward. And there'd been red poppies in the vase. The cars lay there. You dressed yourself. I watched you. You said the two of you would go to the barber's now. Your mother was surprised, I didn't say anything. I didn't kiss you on the forehead. I didn't tell you there'd be hot milk in the evening. You always used to wait exactly twelve minutes before you drank the milk while it was still warm. I didn't tell you it was all right. I didn't tell you you were only a child. I didn't tell you that you were our sunshine, and there was no need for you to feel scared over a few bits of broken china. I didn't tell you how much I liked it when you slept between Grandpa and me. And I didn't tell you how much I liked the way you began every day with five questions. Five questions be fore saying good morning. Whatever had you been doing in your dreams? I didn't tell you everything was all right. The two of you went out. I put the milk on the stove. I rearranged your little cars. The Ferrari in front. It had a driver who's a desert nomad with a very sick grandfather lying in a tent in a nonaligned African state. He tells his grandson in a faint voice, My boy, you're my sunshine, I'm going to die soon, but I have one last wish. There's a place far away where the water is solid. You can throw it like a stone. If you hold the stone in your hand long enough it turns to cold, soft water. I want to drink a stone like that before I die. Bring it to me, my sunshine. And ever since then the young nomad has been roaming the world in his Ferrari, looking for a way to bring the stony water to his grandpa in the desert. That was your story, the story you told at a time when no one thought anything was wrong. A time when everything was all right.