Sasa Stanisic - How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone

I've made lists but that's not the point.

I've made lists. Girls. Elvira. Danijela. Jasna. Nataša. Asija. No, Marija, you can't join in. Marija was too young and too girlie for just about everything we wanted to do.

Her mother opens the door, a dark-haired woman with rosy cheeks, Marija's curls, and floury handprints on her apron. She points apologetically to the apron and goes into the kitchen. Come on in, Aleks! she cries — in German. Pots and pans clatter, oil hisses, you're looking well, she cries, your granny said you were coming to visit. Want to see Marija? She's downstairs.

Yes, I'd like to say hello, I reply, also in German, relieved by this uncomplicated encounter.

She's in the cellar, says Marija's mother, peering out of the kitchen. There'll be schnitzels in a moment.

Down on the ground floor a cat startles me, hissing and jumping up. I stop; the cat stops and circles around me. Music drifts up from the cellar, light casts the shadow of the banisters on the wall. I follow the gray cat down, what's Marija doing here? The music gets louder. I'm not going back down the steps of my memory, I'm going down into a cellar, it's only a cellar.

This is where my parents quarreled.

This is where I was the fastest.

This is where frightened Asija sat.

This is where a soldier passed the butt of his rifle over the posts of the banisters, clack-clack-clack-clack-clack.

It's only a cellar. I've gone around in enough circles these last few days. I'd like to be a pigeon; pigeons never do anything but what they always do. There's a small CD player on the floor. I know the playful beat. “Swayzak.”

Swayzak, a young woman says on the other side of the room reading my thoughts. I met James Taylor in Munich, he told me that whatever he dreams, there are always dogs in it, barking at him. It felt so strange that he got himself a Doberman and slept in the same bed with it, and the dream dogs shut up. Hello! says Marija in her wraparound skirt made of scarf fabric with another scarf in her hair to keep her curls off her forehead. She hands me a spatula as thin as the edge of a screwdriver, points to a small wound on her thumb, says: the bloody cat scared me. Marija's eyes are yellowy green in the dim light, she bows her head, dust over her eyebrows, lips pressed to the wound.

Hello, I say, I'm Aleksandar.

Are we going to introduce ourselves to each other, shaking hands and all that? says Marija, smiling.

I look for a handkerchief for her thumb although I know I don't have one, I'm thinking: what a green those eyes are! I'm thinking: after all, I've made lists. Marija switches the music off. I'll show you around, she says, but let's eat first, you will eat with us, won't you? Good.

The schnitzels are coated with egg and breadcrumbs, Marija and her mother describe Munich to me. Marija says: the Starnberger See, says: you just automatically support FC Bayern, says: of course I'm going back there, as soon as I'm finished with my work here, says: I can't manage without good music. The two of them have been living near Munich for eight years, they came back because Marija's grandfather died and her grandmother fell sick — she's sitting at the table with us, rocking back and forth and smiling whenever her name is spoken. I tell them what I like about Essen, I defend the Ruhr when Marija says it's a dreary dump; we talk about dialects and mentalities, we talk about Germany, no I say, really, Sylt is better than its reputation. Marija asks if I've ever pushed a sleeping cow over, laughs, and puts her hand in front of her mouth as if to catch her laughter.

Marija, you can't play, she says later in the evening, of course I still remember that, boys!

The second glass of wine tastes of caramel, we lie on yellow loungers in the cellar. Marija is studying art in Belgrade, sculpture, it's her second year. She calls what she's doing here her first serious work, she doesn't think too much about things that are larger or more abstract than the seasons, so she makes plaster models of ordinary people and puts tennis socks on them, or ear muffs with rabbit ears, or a T-shirt with an ad for an arthritis remedy. She's hung wall coverings in the two largest rooms in the cellar, aluminum spirals hang from the ceiling, plastic bows, colored glass mosaics, papier-mâché dolls, and there's a landscape painting in the middle of the room: conceptualist, says Marija, and Provence! A generator gives a little light, the rough, gray walls of the past seem to me as improbable as

the plywood tables by the longer wall,

our mothers' anxious voices,

the stove in the corner,

Čika Aziz's C64 around which we gathered while the town

took a beating outside,

the yellow begonias under the ventilation grating where

Marija now stores her scrapers, knives and files. She's made casting boxes out of the plywood tabletops, square frames covered with veneer.

My last boyfriend was the Serbian Tae Kwon Do Number Two, she says. We were together for twelve hours, then he told me he was the Serbian Tae Kwon Do Number Two. Marija pauses. Are you really all right, Aleksandar?

Not always, I say, raising my glass, but I am now.

To the people we knew, she says, drinking. Have you ever heard from Edin?

He's in Spain.

And?

I examine the color of the wine closely. Black currant color. To be honest, I don't know any more. All I know is that he is or was in Spain. I called him once but he was out. I left my number on the answering machine, he never called back.

And that's all? I don't believe it, Aleks! You two were inseparable! A single phone call. .

I've called Sarajevo three hundred times, I say.

Marija waits for me to go on. Are you doing all right? I ask instead. It's colder now, we've nearly finished the wine, and this evening I don't want to remember anything that's more than three hours old.

I put boxer shorts on little plaster men, says Marija, finishing her wine. Shall we have breakfast together tomorrow? Will you fetch me? she asks, writes down my phone number, pulls off her headscarf and takes the cellar stairs two at a time.

I switch off the music. The generator hums. I breathe in deeply. Plaster. I sit down on the stairs.

There are the loungers.

There are the wall hangings.

There are the empty wine bottles.

There's a priest with a Tarzan apron frying a fish.

There's a boy in a tanga buttering bread.

There's the gray cat asleep.

Here am I. The rules of the game say it's an armistice at the bottom of the stairs. Here on the steps, Asija sat beside me, crying. Here am I, who didn't mean to remember anything else this evening.

Here was Uncle Bora chain-smoking at one of the plywood tables, telling us he'd vowed to give up smoking the day before, Pioneer's word of honor! The plywood tables were put together so that we could eat and play dominoes more easily. I learned the word “provisional” and two men carried a stove into the cellar. The stove isn't here anymore, but a man in flip-flops is mowing the lawn over there, and my uncle swore he meant his vow seriously, Sundays are the best days to give something up, and Mondays are the best days to start something. Just before midnight, he said, he'd smoked his last pack, and then he began constructing famous buildings with matches: the Eiffel Tower, the Egyptian pyramids, the Berlin Wall. When the first grenades fell on Višegrad in the morning, one of them hit the roof of Uncle Bora's house. Auntie Typhoon dropped the breakfast tray in fright, the two coffee cups lost their handles, and my uncle praised his glue in glowing terms: the Berlin Wall stood firm whereas the tiles of his roof and the dishes hadn't.

Since Bora, Typhoon and their little Ema moved into Granny's cellar, Uncle Bora has been smoking again, describing what it sounded like, and how everything shook when the shell took the tiles off his roof. He balances a small square clump of matches on his knees, pointing to it every time he says, “The Berlin Wall.”