Sasa Stanisic - How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone

I say, as an aside: I only want to compare my memories with here and now.

Zoran's eyes are red, he doesn't blink. I'll tell you something by way of comparison! he shouts, sounding angry, and not just because his voice is raised.

aleksandar?

Hello?

aleksandar?

Who's there? I can't hear you at all well!

it's me it's me the trees are so tall here so healthy it's lovely trees so tall

Nena? Nena Fatima, is that you?

i saw it in the moonlight on my way it has such a slender neck i want to go

up it tomorrow i want to

Nena, where are you, what. .

two black people are putting my tent up they're polite but i can't sleep there

it's far too cold

tomorrow we'll take the way with the strongest wind

i'll be sitting by the crater at midday

What? Does Mama know. .?

oh dear boy why should I wait any longer yes it's me here

snow will lie on Mount St. Helens they say

i want to be proud of something no one would believe of me

Nena, please put Mama on the line, is she there?

you really can't be happy in silence forever my boy i have a good reason now

i've oh yes dear boy i've flown and i had to strap myself in but i didn't

Nena. .

aleksandar i was never happier i'm going to throw a stone into a volcano

Will you call Mama, please, will you call her now?

don't worry she'll understand

the black people don't understand me i want to sleep in the hut i'm going in

there now

oh dear boy dear boy such tall trees and such space to breathe and an

unmasked moon

Nena. . Will you do me a favor?

you have rafik's voice my boy

Will you throw a stone in for me too?

i will dear boy i'll throw a whole mountain in

i'm there now.

Nena Fatima giggles. Nena Fatima's laughter is the laughter of a boy.

I try to be as quiet as possible, the garden gate squeals, I sit down at a small table that wasn't here before. The gate doesn't belong to us, nor does the garden or the table. Only what was here before still belongs to us, Nena and me; the sunflowers in my Nena's garden used to turn her way when she braided her hair.

Nothing moves inside the house. The view of the Drina doesn't belong to us either: when the poplars and chestnuts were blossoming it used to snow in summer on the riverbanks outside the house. Nena stood under the trees letting down her hair. A rope hung from one of the chestnuts, a tire dangled from the rope, a boy dangled from the tire, trembling with cold and pleasure as the leaping wind sowed flower flakes.

The view of the bridge doesn't belong to us. I held tight to the soapy stone of the fifth arch of the bridge, feeling furious with Grandpa Slavko for the first and only time. He had made me swim through the arches, but it was too cold for me, the current was too strong. I was scared and I didn't want to dis- appoint him. I swam again and again, upstream through the arches, downstream through the arches, until the Drina received me with casual persistence, as if my body belonged to the river. The light breaking through the surface of the water, seen from below, was uncanny when it began to burn in my head behind my nose. Grandpa reached for me, slipping away, disappearing, dragged me coughing and protesting to the bank, said: you'll soon be seven, you must be able to swim through all the arches by then.

The poplars and chestnuts have gone for firewood. A dog is rummaging in the rubbish on the bare slope. An angler stands near the drainpipe feeding bread to the fish. I never did swim through all the arches, Grandpa, but Nena will throw a stone into the magma for me.

Aleksandar, I know what skin looks like when the person it belongs to is tied behind a cart and dragged through the town for hours. Back and forth, Zoran shouts through the music. Do you remember Čika Sead? People say they impaled him and roasted him like a lamb somewhere near the Sarajevo road. If you remember Čika Sead you'll remember Čika Hasan. He gave eighty-two pints of blood before the war, he was always boasting about it. They took Čika Hasan to the bridge every day to throw the bodies of the people they'd executed into the river. Hasan spread the arms of the dead wide, he supported their bodies with his own, he let them rest against him before he let them go. He buried eighty-two of the dead in the river Drina. And when they ordered him to throw in the eighty-third he climbed on the railings and spread his own arms out. That's all, they say he said, I don't want any more.

I've made lists. Čika Hasan and Čika Sead.

Pokor isn't on any of the lists. On the way back from Nena Fatima's house—986 steps — I meet a policeman trying to stuff an enormous net bag of onions through the door of his police car. When he takes his cap off in his struggle with the onions I recognize him by his untidy red hair. Pokor was a policeman before the war too. I often met his son out fishing — we were good at keeping quiet with each other. Later, the rumor that Pokor had been promoted — from easygoing policeman to leader of a violent band of irregulars — reached us even in Germany. Pokor was nicknamed Mr. Pokolj, and it was said that Mr. Bloodbath often ordered his men to live up to his name.

Mr. Pokolj is in Liberation Square, which isn't called that anymore now; it bears the name of some Serbian king or hero. Pokor is only Pokor again and wears his blue police uniform. He struggles with the net of onions, but it won't go through the door. The whole car is full of onions; their skins peel off and drift out into the street. Other cars drive slowly around the blue Golf, and I stop. Pokor throws the net bag on the ground and kicks it several times, snorting with rage. Breathing heavily, he looks around and hitches up his trousers, which are slipping down over the crack between his buttocks. There are onions in his trouser pockets too. He jerks his head challengingly at me: what's the matter? What are you gaping at?

Can I help you? I ask.

So whose are you? replies Pokor.

I don't understand the question at once, no one's asked me that for so many years; only gradually does it dawn on me that by “whose” he means who are my parents — it's a question you ask children who have lost their way. I tell him my father's first name and last name.

You're Aleksandar, right? He repeats my father's first name, and speaks my mother's too, he says it twice; the second time it's a question. I ought to repeat her name immediately, in a firm voice, I ought to confirm my mother's beautiful Arabic name proudly and tell Pokor that it means “ship,” or “spring,” or “pleasure.” And I ought to tell Pokor to his face that it is monstrous for murderers to be able to go around freely in this country, and not just that, but wearing a police uniform too. However, I hesitate; I look past the man in his grubby blue uniform to the onions filling the whole car. I hesitate, and swallow, and pretend not to have heard the question. I can't swallow the shame rising inside me.

Pokor gives himself a little shake as if he were cold. Miki's in town, is he? he asks, and when I don't reply he squeezes himself, without a word of good-bye, into the car, which is much too small for such a man and such a quantity of onions.

Here I am, afraid of a Serbian policeman described as a “presumed war criminal,” and people say “there are plenty of witnesses to that.” Perhaps it's a groundless fear, but it's enough to make me disown my mother to the little policeman Pokor who has put on sixty-five pounds in the last ten years and is now surrounded by a strong smell of onions. He leaves that last net bag lying on the asphalt. And fails to give way to another driver as he turns into the street that — like the square where I stand rooted to the spot by shame — now has a new name. The name of a king or a hero.