Sasa Stanisic - How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone

Kiko's son, Milan, sits down beside me and shows me a very large booger. Got any chocolate? he asks.

Do you go to nursery school? I ask him.

Hanifa was the first girl I spoke to in Sarajevo and the first girl I ever kissed at all, says Kiko, and he goes into the next room to find photos of the kiss.

And I'm going to be the last too, okay? she calls after him.

Not if our next is a daughter! says Kiko, coming back with photo albums. I volunteered to join up. Thought I could fix it so that I'd stay in the city. That worked for two years. Then I was sent to Mount Igman. We were told: the fate of Sarajevo depends on Mount Igman. I always had a ball with me. Always.

Got any sweets?

Kiko puts the album down on the table in front of me and gets down into a kind of crouching position beside Hanifa, which looks grotesque with one leg — I actually think that, grotesque, although at the same time I'm thinking that such a thought ought not to have crossed my mind.

Then the war broke out and no one called it war. People said: that . Or: the shit. Or: soon-be-over, like someone trying to make an injection easier for a child. Kiko had told Hanifa, you go away, and she said: I'll be back when it's over. Let's hope the shit will soon be over, thought Kiko, and he was sent to Mount Igman.

So there I was in the worst vukojebina anyone can imagine. Kiko shows me his beautiful Hanifa on the backseat of a moped in the photo album. He's sitting on the front seat without a helmet on. That was in the autumn of '91, he says. My moped! My pride and joy!

He leafs on through the album. Milan whines, rubbing his eyes.

Hanifa says: I learned a little German during those three years in Graz. But I couldn't translate vukojebina . Do you know vukojebina ?

Where wolves. . with each other. . I say cautiously, with an eye on Milan.

Behind God's feet, Kiko says, I saw a horse throw itself into a ravine because it didn't have the strength to go on hauling our artillery up and down the mountain, along paths that weren't paths. It killed itself. . Lost in thought, Kiko goes on leafing through the album. Here he is standing beside a giant of a man. The giant wears dungarees and a cap that looks lost on his massive head. They are both armed. Kiko has the lily of the Bosnian army on his breast pocket, the big man has the Serbian double eagle cockade on his cap. They have their arms around each other's shoulders and are looking grimly straight ahead. The bleak rocks tower grimly up behind them too.

Who's that? Kiko asks his son, pointing to the man in dungarees. The little boy stuffs half his fist into his mouth. Milan, who's that? Kiko repeats.

Čika Mickey Mouse! cries Milan happily, as if naming someone who always brings chocolate and sweets when he visits, and Hanifa says: yes, there's really no translating vukojebina.

There's no need to. Kiko puts Milan on his lap. No language but ours has a word to describe such a place, he says.

The soldier beside Kiko has his mouth open as if gasping for air. How did you come to have this photo taken? I ask.

A cease-fire. The man beside me is Milan Jevric, says Kiko, and his son shouts: Mickey Mouse! Kiko kisses the back of his head. It's because of him my Milan has a Serbian name. Kiko leafs on. A photo of him in a trench, ankle-deep in murky water. Mount Igman, behind God's feet, he says, and goes on turning the pages. The one in the green beret is Meho. A lunatic. A lunatic because he had too big a heart. And here am I giving cigarettes to the prisoners. Here's Hanifa and me in Mostar. My Milan after he was born, he weighed seven pounds, twelve ounces. We must sort these photos out some time, says Kiko, leafing through them, and the last one shows a ball, a worn old soccer ball lying in long grass.

I get on the one P.M. bus for Višegrad. Three other men are already sitting there, one of them is reading a newspaper, one is asleep, one is looking at me. I sit in the back row, the seats are patterned brown and yellow, the headrests have a greasy shine. One ÇÃ.ÇÀ. comes. Five past one comes. Outside the door a man with thinning hair and lines under his eyes smokes a cigarette, then another; after the third he climbs in and gets behind the wheel. Just before the engine starts, the bus sighs. I can understand how it feels; it doesn't have an easy time on these roads at this time of its life, I go to sleep with my head against the vibrating window.

The Drina wakes me. I open my eyes when the bus turns into a little village with a name I can't remember, driving down the road to Višegrad parallel with the river. A great many tunnels keep cutting off the daylight; only a few of them are lit at all. I move over to the window on the right-hand side; large rocks are piled up on the left, covered with thin moss and sparse plants struggling to survive. My river flows on the right. I confirm that thought to myself: my river, the deep green Drina, calm and immaculately clean. The anglers, the rocks, the many shades of green.

We approach the town along the winding road, past the dam. Driftwood and plastic have collected close to it. The valley widens out; we'll soon be able to see the bridge. Can you stop here, please, calls a young man who must have got in during the journey, and the bus groans.

When the view of the bridge comes in sight after a sharp bend I am surprised, although I was fully expecting to find everything the way it always was. I resist the reflex action of counting the arches; the bridge is complete. The driver puts a cassette in, and I think of Walrus and my promise never to shoot a music cassette. It's Madonna singing.

Hey, Boris, with all due respect, do you have to play that every time? asks the man with the newspaper. The driver turns up the volume, like a virgin, he sings, tapping the steering wheel in time.

To me, the bus station looks smaller than it used to but just as shabby. Boris makes for one of the five parking spaces, four dilapidated old buses parked over to one side, including — I recognize it at once — the Centrotrans bus in which Walrus drove through half of Yugoslavia. The carriage-work is in a bad way, rust is baring its teeth, gray weeds grow through the windows from inside, cover the wheel rims.

Where are you going, young man? Boris calls, but I act as if he doesn't mean me and go into the small waiting room in the station. There's no door anymore, the smell of urine rises to my nostrils, the ticket window is deserted, the paint on the walls, some kind of color between beige and yellow, is flaking.

Hello? I call. There's an echo, which doesn't reveal what happened to Armin, the stationmaster with the uncontrollable leg, he's on one of my lists.

Who are you looking for? Boris is standing behind me smoking, one hand playing with the key in his trouser pocket.

Armin the stationmaster, I say, turning to go, but Boris bars my way, draws on his cigarette, and says: there was never any Armin here.

Ah, I say, looking past Boris. The other passengers have disappeared. Boris, five buses, four of them wrecks with rusty wheel rims, and I, have to sort it out between us.

Where do you want to go? he asks, pointing his cigarette at my bag.

A man who listens to Madonna can't be dangerous, it occurs to me, and I say as casually as possible: oh, I'm visiting my grandmother.

Boris frowns, holds his cigarette between thumb and forefinger when he draws on it. What's her name?

Katarina, I say, louder than I intended, Katarina Krsmanovic, it's her blood sugar and diabetes, I say, stammering, she can't do much these days, I try to explain, but then I see a change come over the bus driver's face. His expression changes from pestering to curious. He lets me finish and after one last short pull on his cigarette, he puts it out with the sole of his shoe.