Sasa Stanisic - How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone

I don't have to go to Osijek, I tell Mother, trying to comfort her; you — any of you — really couldn't have guessed that I'd win.

Because Osijek is a problem; no one can drive me there because no one could have guessed that I'd win, so they've all made other plans. So my mother says. She doesn't say: it's because there's shooting in Croatia. She doesn't say: it's because a tank crushed a red car in Osijek. She doesn't say that the final was canceled long ago for that reason, that is, if anyone can even stop to think of canceling things.

I'm scared myself.

Number Three, my starting number, is still sticking there in the bank. Today at noon I landed sunbleak after sunbleak, several enthusiastic chub, and even a small Danube salmon. That one got away because Uncle Miki shouted behind me: what are you doing, you fool, don't let go, are you crazy?

I make sure that no one is watching. I crouch down and pass the back of my hand over the surface of the water. What does your heartbeat sound like?

I keep my medal on at home too. My mother calls down to the cellar: we're back, Picasso, come on up, there's something you've got to see here.

Uncle Miki flings himself down on the sofa and switches the TV on. The coffee starts to brew, my father comes into the living room whistling, rubbing his hands on a cloth.

You smell of fish, he says, about to pat me on the head.

You smell of acetone, I say, ducking out of the way.

He taps my medal. Not bad!

Yes, I say, it's good, but Father isn't looking at me anymore, he's looking at his brother's feet on the sofa. He pushes them off roughly and sits down beside him.

Coffee and a rainstorm. That's how it is on August afternoons. Osijek comes on-screen; even the Drau is shown. It may be very beautiful, but if there are houses burning all around you, being beautiful is difficult.

The war is switched off when Grandpa Slavko comes in and sits down opposite me. He looks at the certificate and the medal. I guessed it, he says, or no, I knew it.

No one else could have guessed it. Grandpa, what do you mean, you knew it?

Grandpa raises his eyebrows. I was watching you at the bridge last week and the estuary yesterday.

I never noticed you.

I can watch very quietly.

And how could you tell that I was going to win?

I could see that you were happy. I saw your mouth moving although you were alone.

I had to learn a poem by heart.

I think you were talking to someone.

I was alone, Grandpa.

Grandpa Slavko leans over to me and whispers: I don't think you were alone. I think the river was there with you.

Grandpa!

Aleksandar!

We both lean back, resting against the backs of our chairs like two boxers between rounds, except that boxers don't often smile at each other. Grandpa's hair is thick and strong and gray at the sides, like Father's hair, like my hair will be in thirty years' time, he sticks his thumbs in the suspenders over his chest; we both shake our heads. I'd like to be a grandpa who's friends with my grandpa; we'd talk to our grandsons in riddles and go out walking every evening with our shared memories and old arguments clasped behind our backs.

Would you have won in Osijek too? Grandpa asks, knowing that I'll never go to Osijek now.

No.

Why not?

I lean forward now and whisper: it's not my river there.

Do you know, says Grandpa, that there are people who don't have any games where there's a winner at the end?

People in Amazonia?

More or less.

We lean back and look at each other contentedly. Only now do I realize that no one else has said anything all this time. Mother is standing in the doorway, and she has no worry lines today. Miki and Father are both kneading something in their hands. Granny is making plates clink softly. I look at my family as if we've all succeeded at something.

Shall we watch Carl Lewis tomorrow? I ask Grandpa. I'll catch fish for our supper, you can fry it, then we'll watch Carl to see if he can stay under ten seconds, right?

Later, when everyone has gone and I'm in bed, my mother asks what I'd like if I could have a wish. She calls me her Comrade Angler in Chief. She knows I like the term Comrade in Chief. People treat tired winners gently.

I'd wish for everything to be all right forever, I say.

What do you call all right? asks Mother, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

It's all right when you make me sandwiches this evening for tomorrow, and I can go fishing tomorrow and you don't worry about where I am, and Grandpa lives forever, and you all live forever, and the fish don't stop being in the river and Osijek stops burning and Red Star win the European Cup again next year and Granny Katarina never runs out of coffee and women neighbors, and Nena Fatima can really hear everything, even though she's deaf, and the houses play music, and no one has to bother about Croatia anymore, starting now, and there are little boxes containing tastes so that we can swap them with each other, and we don't forget how to hug, and. .

My mother's lips are trembling. That's fine, she says, and for the first time since there have been first times she doesn't say: but don't go too far.

I choose the fattest worms. They wriggle. I make holes in the jam-jar lid with a screwdriver. Along the Drina on my bike, two hours through the morning mist, through villages without any names. Go fishing, catch fish, swim, talk to the river, tell it everything, eat my sandwiches. Smoked ham on kaymak . Plum jam on plum jam. Laugh out loud because I know the Drina likes winners to laugh like that. Let the Danube salmon go. I laugh out loud, and the Drina says: I knew it all along.

My town of Višegrad has grown into the mountains in all directions. My Višegrad rises from two rivers, they've made a date here, the Drina and the Rzav, an endless date, going on forever, every second. Who was here first? I call from the estuary. And what did they look like and what did they sound like: those last ten seconds when the water was still on its way and then — suddenly — you met?

The mountains accompany the Drina, they fold her in between steep rocks, making what I say echo. The higher the rocks, the deeper the river, it seems to me, and the more lost you are, whether you're in a boat or here on the bank.

Yesterday no one could have guessed I was going to win, today I ride my bike along the Drina and I just want to go fishing. It's early morning, it's Sunday, the mist whistles around my ears, it's chilly. My mother has made sandwiches and put two apples in my rucksack. You can get some on the way, said my father, taking the apples out again and down to the studio with him. Still Life of a Shipwrecked Regime and a Yugo Broken Down on a Stony Road is the name of the picture he's been working on for weeks.

Smoked ham, kaymak, plum jam spread thickly on rye bread. My two rods stick out of my rucksack. Two years ago Uncle Miki promised to give me an even better one every birthday. Uncle Miki is someone who has almost as good an idea of fishing as I do, and is not a man to break his promises.

I want to live to be a hundred and thirty years old beside the Drina.

I've never been this far on my own before. The fact that it's early morning and a Sunday doesn't stop the farmers from working in the narrow fields. Three women with head scarves holding hoes in their big hands straighten up and watch me go by. The rocks and the river hem the earth in; the fields are long and narrow. So is the apple orchard where, on my father's instructions, I steal apples, two red and two yellow: an unfenced strip of land between the rocks and the water. I'm just about to get back on my bike when the sun breaks through the mist, breaks so abruptly through the still thick swathes of it that its light splinters, the splinters fall on the river and cut into the rippling surface, glittering. Almost hidden by the long-haired branches of two weeping willows and the towering white cliffs, it sparkles brightest in a little bay beyond the orchard. From now on its name will be the Lagoon of Light, because unusual places need a name, it's the same as with stars. I lean the bike against the rickety fence; a lizard immediately climbs onto the handlebars and darts its tongue out at me. I tap my forehead and go through the arch of exuberant willow branches to the water, which is still racing with splinters of sun. A moss-grown tree trunk lies across the bay, rimmed on the left by rocks with peaks that you can only guess at in the misty air. A hawk takes off from the tree trunk, its slate-blue feathers disappear into the mist, the tail feathers are red; kyu, cries the hawk, ket-ket, it cries, turning head over heels in the air as if this is all great fun. The fluttering of its pointed wings dies away slowly, then there's no sound but the wind in the willow trees. The silence leans forward. I look around, from here I can't see the fence anymore, or the apple trees or the road; I'm in a room, a lagoon of light.