Sasa Stanisic - How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone

The package was very heavy. It had my name on it, and underneath: FRANCESCO BALLO. The package had a metal sound. Bocce. I undid the string and lifted the lid. On top was a photo of the big dam on the Lago di Vajont. I'll never know if Francesco's papa was the engineer or one of the villagers.

Mama, quanto costa un biglietto per Pisa? I asked, and Mother put her nose close to my throat: mm, young man, you smell nice.

I know, I said, because I did know, really nice, I said, and I leafed through the little dictionary. I pointed my fingertip at “ grazie, ” I pointed my fingertip at “ di, ” I pointed my fingertip, now wet with tears, at “ tutto .”

Mio caro amico Alessandro,

Puoi dirti fortunato to be boy in such nice town. Drina make eyes at everyone. Ground grow cherries, plums and clear water per la limonata. I let Walrus win boccia. Your dam never go wrong now. Your papa e mamma et tu e tutto — safe. But no one say arrivederci. So Francesco say: arrivederci allora e a presto!

Presents per te, mio caro mago: bocce, perfume with lemon, dictionari, azzurri jersey! e cartina di Višegrad. I draw! Your house e house di good old Mirela! La vita, mio Alessandro, è solo questione di fortuna. We remember us well, please, and veranda and silence and jungle with horned viper and baroque girls under la luna!

Grazie quattromila!

Francesco

Buildings are sympathetic and unselfish and they can't play musical instruments, which is a pity. If buildings were people they would be vegetarians or vegans or vgtrns or just vgs. If you are a vg you don't eat or drink anything that might have a heartbeat, even just theoretically, which means not even water, because Grandpa told me that South American Indians believe there can be a whole god swimming in a river like the Amazon, or at least a whole religious faith.

If there were a god in the Drina too, I once asked Grandpa, would the catfish be fish-priests?

Or fish- hodjas, said Grandpa, nodding.

If I were a magician who could make things possible, there'd be houses making music, houses as musically gifted as Johann Sebastian Bach — I know about his merits and his wonderful wig from the Encyclopedia of Music that Mr. Popović the music teacher gave me, a grandpa who is friends with Grandpa Slavko. You can look up the meaning of the word “baroque” in the encyclopedia too, I learned it by heart; for quite a while “baroque” was my main term of approval; it's only recently been replaced by “exquisite.”

The house would play songs for a grandmother living alone and watching TV and watering flowers and giving them fertilizer and waiting for someone to come through the door; a grandmother who's always cooked too much to eat because she can't get used to being on her own; it would play songs from a time that was much quieter, because there were more cows chewing the cud, and not so many car exhausts and vacuum cleaners.

My Serbo-Croat teacher Mr. Fazlagic's house would make a sound like the sea, because that lowers your blood pressure.

My family's house would have a repertoire as wide and unpredictable as the many different moods living under our roof and inside us. Our kitchen would play The Doors because Jim Morrison turns my mother's anxious look into a wistful expression. There'd be French chansons when my father disappears into his studio. Johann Sebastian when Uncle Miki and my father are watching politics and Father shouts: no, we are not quarreling, we are just raising our voices in a discussion! When Father, whistling French songs, takes Mother to supper in the Estuary Restaurant there'd be Pink Floyd. Mr. Floyd makes you feel grown up and nice and tingly. I sip Father's cognac and watch the TV with the sound muted.

There'd be the last three minutes of Ravel's Bolero at full volume when Auntie Typhoon comes to visit.

The sunflowers in Nena Fatima's garden by the Drina would play the songs Nena sang when she was a girl, she still knows them all by heart. Nena would hum along silently, and when her tears came — because knowing something by heart can sometimes be the saddest thing in the universe — the clever chimney would play a medley. Tears and medleys don't go together. The really special thing about my musical houses would be that even someone as deaf as a post could hear them.

My own house would sing in Great-Grandpa's voice, and once a day it would promise something that would last.

I put the Encyclopedia of World Music back on the shelf and ask my mother when she is finally going to make me learn an instrument, the accordion or the organ. She is watching the news: barricades and burning flags. I ask the same question again in the same words.

I paint ten soldiers without any weapons.

I paint Mother's face, smiling, happy, carefree.

If I were a magician who could make things possible, then pictures could talk while we painted them.

If I were a magician who could make things possible, then houses could keep their promises. And they would have to promise not to lose their roofs or go up in flames. If I were a magician who could make things possible, the scars made in them by bullet holes would close up again over the years.

What music does an apartment building make in war?

No one could have guessed that I'd win. Uncle Miki claps me on the back of the head and says: no one could have guessed that you'd win. My mother tucks a strand of my hair back behind my ear, but it falls straight back over my forehead. Really, no one could have guessed it, she says, taking my face between her hands.

The no-one-could-have-guessed-it victory celebrations are just over, the man who came second is at least six times older than me and twice as tall. He shakes hands, our fishing rods cross like swords. Uncle Miki pushes him aside — he doesn't particularly like me, but he likes other people even less, and congratulations that go on too long are always suspect.

My father didn't come with us. He had to finish a picture in his studio. Recently he's been finishing pictures all the time, and as soon as he's through with one he starts two more. There's no room left for them in his studio; they have to go into the bedroom. Mother wakes in the night screaming: faces everywhere!

I look at the river, then at my gold medal; I'm never going to take it off. With that medal I've qualified, and next Saturday everyone who's qualified is to meet in Osijek on the Drau. Among the best anglers in the republic, says a short, fat man when he hands me the certificate, whereupon Miki shouts at him from the back of the crowd: no need to look so doubtful about it, fatso!

Miki, so close to the water and related to a winner, is all enthusiasm. Apart from me, he's the only one in the family with any idea about fishing. He wasn't allowed to compete today because not so long ago he threw Čika Luka into the Drina when Čika Luka wanted to see Uncle Miki's fishing license. Miki says he didn't do it: the stupid snooper slipped, he says, and if I hadn't been nearby to pull him out, someone would soon have had a rather ugly catfish on his hook. Miki shrugged his shoulders, the picture of innocence.

I was on his side, because Čika Luka doesn't like people or fish or even himself — it's through him that I discovered the meaning of the word “frustrated.”

I won today because of the secret in my bait. Breadcrumbs mixed with water, a little vanilla sugar, small pieces of liver sausage, plus the secret. The chub freaked out when I fed them the bait, they jumped out of the water shouting: stop, stop! because my secret mixture tasted so good to them.