Sasa Stanisic - How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone

I put Nivea cream on my hair so that it would be arranged in the same gleaming way as Francesco's, and I learned the names of the Italian national soccer team by heart. He was still keeping out all my penalty shots. Italian music was slow and the singers did a lot of suffering. I discovered that not all Italians have black hair, and I let Francesco know that not all Yugoslavians like börek . Francesco never smelled of sweat or detergent but always of the same lemony perfume. When I was as old as Francesco, I decided, I wanted to wear shirts with an alligator on them too, and shoes that were always shiny; I wanted to smell of lemon from a world where every word ends in i . And one evening Čika Sefer, a small, elegant man in a suit who was deputy Comrade in Chief of the dam, or something like that, visited us at home and said that Francesco loved men. I switched off the TV. Everything was different now, and the difference had something to do with Francesco. I listened to Čika Sefer and didn't understand. Čika Sefer was keen on something that he called propriety and something else that he called the climate of work. And that, he said, is really not right or proper. Čika was amused by Francesco's tidy hair, and my mother echoed Čika Sefer: it really isn't right or proper, she said; I'd never have thought of such a thing.

What was “such a thing” and what would “never have been thought of ” in the rocking chair where Francesco sat to read old Italian newspapers? What was “such a thing” and what would “never have been thought of” in our street, where my mother stood with the other women who lived nearby the next day, casting surreptitious glances at Francesco's veranda? Just what would she “never have thought of”?

Soon everyone was whispering about Francesco, not only the women. That kind of thing was sick, said people, shaking their heads, and I discovered that there is love and love, and not every kind of love is good. Francesco went on going to work punctually with his hair combed back, he understood all this even less than I did, or else he didn't mind, and it made me furious. He read something from his newspaper aloud to me, in a good humor, and brooded as usual over his silly plans, even after he found the scratch on his car door one morning, a scratch that looked to be both intentional and the work of a wrench. Only Walrus still played boccia with us now. The other men sat on the benches on the riverbank, eating pumpkin seeds and looking at the river.

I was furious because I didn't have to protect my mother from Francesco's undershirt anymore; instead my mother told my father that I had to be protected from the Italian — look at the way they talk together. I was furious because our dictionary didn't know the words for “I would never have thought of such a thing.”

A week after Čika Sefer's visit I was sitting on the veranda with Francesco. There was no lemonade and the cake had been baked the day before yesterday. I coughed, I sat down in the rocking chair in the corner, then at the table again, then on the veranda steps. I pulled up grass and rubbed it between the palms of my hands, and I shrugged my shoulders when Francesco pointed to “what” and “happened” in his dictionary. Ke kose sucesso, Alessandro?

I leafed through the dictionary to “I'm sorry.”

Old Mirela came out on the veranda kneading a checked tea cloth in her hands and asked me to translate for her: Francesco was to move out next week at the latest, she said. I shrugged and strung a few Italian-sounding syllables together. Confused, Francesco asked again: ke kose su ć esso?

I said: sućesso kvatromila much, and to Mirela I said: he would like to stay for two weeks and then he's going anyway.

Mirela thought about it. But not a day longer, she said, taking away her lemonade carafe, her cake tin, and her coffee service. As she went out she whispered to me: it's late, you ought to be home by now.

My fury had turned into something with a muzzle and fangs and claws, and it was stuck in my throat, rocking back and forth.

Francesco had written down the date when he was leaving for me on one of our nicest evenings on the veranda, when nothing had sucesso yet; he had shown me photos, including one of the badly built tower. I put my finger on it and asked: tu . . engineer? and we laughed.

Pisa, said Francesco, my Višegrad! Several black-and-white pictures showed a particularly large dam. Francesco turned serious and pointed to the lake: Lago di Vajont. The dam rose to an alarming height in the sky. I knew that in my next dream about falling I'd be up there on it. Francesco narrowed his eyes and leafed on — to a village under water. Then he went back to the gigantic dam with gigantic amounts of water foaming over it, water that must have hit the village and its people. Francesco tapped the dam and said: mio papà.

On the evening when old Mirela gave Francesco notice to leave I slipped away from the veranda without an arrivederci. I sat down in front of the bookshelf and read Das Kapital . But I wasn't really reading. I thought of Francesco's lemon scent, I thought of lemonade and the summer wind in the garden humming with insects, and the night when Francesco had pointed to that slice of bread hanging in the sky between the branches of the cherry tree and said: la luna è molto bella!

I lay flat on the floor so as to disappear.

There are no ugly women, only men who never learned to look at women properly when they were boys, Francesco had tried to explain to me that first evening. There was nothing in any encyclopedia about men loving men. In the school yard we called the weakest, palest boys “queer,” but that was all. I'd call people I hated the same in a fight, except that I hated being thumped even more than calling people names, so it never happened. The next morning I waited until Francesco went to work and then climbed the fence into Mirela's garden. Francesco's drawing instruments were lying on the veranda table. I weighed the compasses in my hand; the metal was cool. I dug a hole.

I didn't visit Francesco anymore, and I avoided going out into the street when he was sitting on the veranda. I was ashamed of myself. Shame has a heartbeat of its own. Everything people said about Francesco and everything I thought made the heart of my shame beat louder.

After a week Francesco rang our bell. He'd never done that before. I was in my room. Father came out of his studio and opened the door to him. I listened with my door just a crack open, my ears and my whole head felt colored, and no color weighs you down as heavily as red. Alessandro, kalcio? Francesco asked, and my father said: no, no.

On the day he was leaving, Francesco leaned on the fence with his foot on the ball. He was waiting for me to get back from school, waiting for a last penalty shoot-out. I had turned into the street, seen him, and hidden. Like a thief, I pressed close to the wall of a building and went the long way home through the plum orchards. I peered out of the kitchen window: schoolkids were running past Francesco, ciao Francesco! they called, he passed them the ball, laughing: ciao ragazzi ! I went to my room and went on with the list of possibilities to be magicked into existence. There was a ring at the door. Mother called my name. I thought something was being stolen from me. I didn't reply.

Oh, there you are, she said when I left my room that evening, feeling hungry. There was a package on the table. From the Italian, said my mother, who had taken to calling Francesco only by his nationality. I ate beans, it was always beans when I was feeling wretched.

If I were a magician who could make things possible, I'd have lemonade that always tasted the way it did on the evening when Francesco explained how right it was for the Italian moon to be a feminine moon. If I were a magician who could make things possible, we'd be able to understand all languages every evening between eight and nine. If I were a magician who could make things possible, every dam in the world would keep its promises. If I were a magician who could make things possible, there'd be kvatromila ways out of any miserable mood. If I were a magician who could make things possible, we'd be really brave.