Sasa Stanisic - How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone

No? said Mickey Mouse in surprise, opening his mouth wide, and when Kiko next headed the ball he certainly was not sitting, but stood as if rooted to the ground. He didn't leap into the air, the ball bounced and it was three-two.

After this successful shot, with the Territorials now only one down, General Mikado managed to foil all their efforts to get anywhere near his team's goal. Every tackle was said to be a foul, the whistle blew every time there was an attacking pass. Every throw-in went to his team, even for obvious clearing kicks that landed out of play.

Two minutes before the end of the game Kiko forced his way through on the inside left, avoiding any kind of physical contact. He swerved, he dodged, he leaped. With the last of his strength he centered the ball in front of the Serbian goal and took a harmless shot at the goalpost. The Serbian defender on the right kicked the air, Mickey Mouse missed the ball on the bounce, the rest of them, friend and foe alike, either slid past the ball or were too surprised to react, and so it rolled to Meho's feet. Meho had done nothing during the second half but wander around the pitch, lost in thought, muttering to himself as if hypnotized: it can't be so difficult, Audrey darling, it can't be so difficult.

So there lay the ball at his feet, but Meho didn't even look at it; he was staring eastward, enraptured. The sound of heavy artillery fire came from the valley, metallic, hollow. Moving in slow motion like an action replay on TV, Meho shifted his weight to the left and easily clipped the ball into the goal with his right leg, acting as if the movement had nothing to do with him. This is for you, he murmured, reaching under his shirt, a goal for you. Eyes shining, he put the photo of Audrey Hepburn to his lips and whispered: hey, real Hollywood stuff, Audrey love, oh, fuck me, what a happy ending!

Meho had been in the States in 1986, the only time he had ever been to the West. He'd saved his wages as a brick layer for five years, living with his father and never spending money unnecessarily. Evening after evening he had watched American films, mostly thrillers, horror movies, and films featuring Audrey Hepburn. He learned to swear in English and could order coffee without an accent.

After scoring his goal, Meho wandered over the field with his head tilted back. The game went on, the ball hit him in the back once, but Meho wasn't interested in that, he was interested in the sky. Someone shouted his name. We are the champions, replied Meho in English. Arriving at his team's penalty area he stopped and put out his hand to see if it was raining. Wrinkling his nose, he crossed his arms over his chest, as if rain really were falling and it was cold. Someone fell at his feet, there was excitement, uproar, a whistle, a salvo of gunfire.

A group of players had gathered around General Mikado. Only when someone fired into the air did the men scatter. Penalty! shouted the general, taking the ball. Dino Zoff shook his head, that was never a foul! he protested, and gazed at the ball that was now lying at the requisite point. General Mikado stepped up to take the penalty himself.

You shut your stupid mouth! the Serbian goalie snapped at Dino Zoff from one side. He had run all the way across the pitch from his own penalty area after the alleged foul, got one of the touchline soldiers to give him a pistol, and was now aiming it at Dino from the left-hand spruce tree. Maybe you can stop the penalty, he said, squinting along the pistol, but can you stop a bullet too?

General Mikado grinned, jerked his thumb in his goalie's direction, and took a run-up.

Meho had turned his back to the penalty kick by this time and had moved away from the penalty area. He didn't look back. Perhaps they're just shooting in high spirits down there, he told his Audrey, perhaps it's because this filthy war is over and they're celebrating. Audrey looked like a boy with her short hair. She was wearing black and leaning against a white wall. Meho looked up from the photo and glanced absently at the place where some beech trees grew on the edge of the plateau, and the cart track took a sharp curve to the left before beginning the steep descent into the valley. The wind rose in the east and grew stronger. Meho, already near the trees, could see the wind making the leaves tremble. Meho was trembling too, even more than he had trembled in the forest when surrounded by mines. The gust of wind cooled Meho's face amid the tears that came after a shot rang out behind his back from the Serbian goalie's pistol, followed by a sharp sound like a very loud slap. Oh, fuck these bloody waterworks, muttered Meho, rubbing his eyes, but the tears wouldn't stop.

The crowd was murmuring behind him, then there was a shout of glee, then sounds and cries that the weary Meho probably didn't hear at all, and could hardly have made any sense of, just as he wouldn't have been able to tell Serbian from Bosnian jubilation, people cheered in much the same way in this country. And even if he had seen the goal that was greeted with such cheering he couldn't have said for certain from this distance whether the ball had flown sixty, seventy or even eighty yards before going into the Serbian goal. For any moment now Meho would have reached the beeches at the far end of the clearing. He would look down into the valley, although from a height of over thirty-two hundred feet it's as difficult to tell war from peace as it is to tell the words and laughter of your friends from the laughter of your enemies. But the view was impressive: indescribably beautiful, Meho whispered to Audrey seconds before he was shot down. The bullets hit the number ten on the red and white shirt. It had been worn by Dejan Savicević on 29 May 1991, when Red Star beat the French champions Olympique de Marseille in a penalty shoot-out in the final of the European Cup.

The Serbian goalie had driven tears to Meho's eyes with his first shot and two bullets into his back with two more shots. The first shot was meant for Dino Zoff, but it had missed him by a few inches and hit one of the spruce-tree goalposts. The goalie had fired too soon, the noise took General Mikado's mind off his run-up, his penalty shot crashed into the right-hand spruce tree, and the ball rebounded straight into the arms of the motionless Dino Zoff. He looked incredulously from one dismayed marksman to the other, then from one goalpost to the other, and last of all to the abandoned goal at the far end of the pitch. Then he kicked the ball with all his might.

Well, hurricanes fuck me! Meho would have greeted the lurching trajectory of the ball that scored this goal with those or similar words. It may even be that the same gust of wind that first dried his tears also gave Dino Zoff 's shot the impetus it needed to end up in the Serbian goal. General Mikado froze rigid amid the cheering of the Territorials, clearly not sure what to do next.

Our ball! Goal kick! he said. No one heard him, so loud were the jubilations over the three-four score. Goal kick, that wasn't a goal! He whistled through his fingers, but only when the Serbian goalkeeper's second two bullets hit Meho did everyone fall silent around him. The general pointed at the Serbian end. No goal! No goal!

Gavro joined in with Mikado's shrill whistling, extended it, raised it to the key of F major, linked it to a series of light, catchy, childish tunes, unexpectedly turned it into a waltz, then suddenly launched into a wild csárdás —and while his composition gained in color and speed Dejan Gavrilovic, known as Gavro, sat down on the grass.

The csárdás stung Mickey Mouse into action. Don't just sit there, he growled at his teammate who had fetched the ball out of the goal. Mickey Mouse took it from him and marched across the pitch. Don't just sit there, he called rather louder. Two more Serbian players joined Gavro and, like him, gave no sign of wanting to play on.