Sasa Stanisic - How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone

Nena Fatima comes down into the cellar with my father. She stops on the bottom step of the stairs, like Aziz making his speech. She straightens her head scarf, leaving an earth mark on her forehead.

She was in the garden, says Father.

Mother hugs Nena Fatima, furious and glad, as if Nena were her daughter and had run away. Nena points to her mouth with her thumb: I'm thirsty. I write “Fatima” on a mug. All the mugs have our names. I've called one “Slavko,” another “Johann Sebastian,” a third “Herpes,” and a fourth “Jürgen the biker.” Milica thought that was incredibly funny, and wrote “Ladybird” on hers. Nena drinks the mug of water. She washes her hands with water from the second mugful. Everyone is looking at her. She opens her mouth, taking a deep breath as if to explain herself. But then she just yawns, smacks her lips with relish, and kisses Ema on the forehead.

Ema is a depository for kisses.

Nena, I whisper, good, good!

If you hear that racket all day long, and then it stops, you wonder: where has the noise gone? Is it coming closer so as to score hits more accurately? Has the ammunition run out? Don't soldiers work in shifts? Or is it all over? In spite of this nocturnal calm I have to sleep on the floor; rule number one is to keep away from the windows, says my mother. I sleep under the coffee table, Mother has stuck a pillow to the bottom of the table above my head, so that I don't hurt myself if I wake and sit up suddenly. She covers me up.

An apartment building, and everyone's sleeping on the floor because you'd be closer to the window on a bed. Everyone watches TV from the floor. There's nothing but news and press conferences and pictures of people in long lines. I learn what “organized resistance” means, who the Territorial Defense are, and what barricades are for.

I close my eyes and hear Grandpa Slavko's voice. In the living room and in the cushion above my head and outside the window. I concentrate on it so hard, trying to make out where the voice is coming from, that I don't understand a word of it. Grandpa has come back to life for the first time since he died, and I've missed out. I haven't a hope of going to sleep now, I get a toothpick from the kitchen and break rule number one: someone is crossing the road junction outside the building with a fridge on his back. It's Radovan Bunda from the fifth floor; he never once puts the fridge down, and goes on along the road into the dark. I lie down under the table again, waiting for Grandpa's voice to come back. By midnight I can shift the toothpick from one corner of my mouth to the other very fast. The next morning my father wakes me.

Here, Aleksandar. Your uncle left you the Wall.

Where's he gone?

Hm.

Uncle Bora, Auntie Typhoon and Ema left the town overnight. No one thought it was a good idea, no one thought it wasn't a good idea, no one stopped them.

If I were a magician who could make things possible, we'd all be as fast on our feet as Auntie Typhoon so that we could avoid every bullet. And the clouds would cling together like cobwebs so that the shells would stick to them. The gunfire would have its own opinion; it could decide whether to fire or not.

I paint a campfire without any smoke. I paint a baked bean casserole without any beans. I paint a sniper's gun without any sniper. I paint a sheet of paper without a crease in it.

My mother is very keen not to forget any more family members today; after the second detonation she hauls me away from the door where I'm listening to Father and Mr. Popović the music teacher. He may be up there now, says Father to Mr. Popović, and what will he do if they order him: shoot, Miki! What will he do then?

He'll refuse, replies the distinguished old gentleman. Miki is a good boy. He'll have made his way to safety long before then. He's a clever lad.

The light in the stairwell flickers when a third explosion comes, one of those cramped, polished items quite close. People run down the corridors to the cellar in their pajamas. Teta Magda serves the coffee on a large tray. She curses roundly and kicks the door of Teta Amela's apartment several times with the toe of her shoe: Amela-a, bring some sugar with you if God gives you luck Amela-a!

Aziz waves us through like a traffic cop, I stop and ask: Čika Aziz, isn't it a bit dangerous, sleeping with a toothpick in your mouth? And as I ask my question I shift my own toothpick from left to right.

After shaving, Aziz doesn't look so much like a soldier.

Strangers at the plywood tables in the cellar. They don't ask if they can stay, which is a good thing, because it seems to me that of course they can. Milica looks after them, talks to everyone, takes off her red high-heeled shoes, is barefoot as she helps them to sort out their baggage.

Zoran says: come on, no, Marija, you can't join in.

With everyone's united strength, the ventilator grating is raised and pushed to one side. Are you scared? Zoran asks. Who'd admit it now? We're already outside, crossing the yard. We stop outside the kiosk in Tito Street. No one in sight. Explosions in the distance.

Hey, not bad, says Zoran, showing us the blonde wearing green camouflage trousers and nothing else on page four. He puts the stone he's used to break the tobacconist's window in his trouser pocket. Tobacconists, watch out when there's a Walrus about!

Edin reads the front page of yesterday's newspaper. Nothing about war yet, he says, just barricades and sports. We could do with a time machine, there's a flash and we go back to last week and warn everyone. And no one believes us because we don't even know what the barricades are there for.

I do, I say, but before I can explain there's a shrill whistling over our heads, there's a genuine flash, glass breaks, a shove on my back pushes me to the ground. I shield my face with my hands, splinters fall on me, a shower of glass like hail, someone shouts.

Smoke rises from the asphalt. Zoran and Neo are lying in the street, stretched flat. Edin is still standing there with the newspaper in his shaking hands. Edin is pale, so pale, with blood running from his nose, that I feel as if all his blood is draining out of his face through his nostrils.

Oh, go fuck the sailor-woman, spits Zoran, frantically shoving the section of the paper with unusual careers for women under his shirt. Neo slowly gets to his feet. His hand is bleeding; he counts his fingers. The blast caught all the windows in the building opposite, including the big display window of the shoe shop on the ground floor. Edin says: I'm hearing everything and nothing at the same time. He licks blood from his upper lip with his tongue. The tobacconist's window behind him is full of holes; cracks have sucked their way into the glass, splaying out.

I get to my knees, Zoran gives me a hand.

A large triangle of glass, pointy end down, comes away from the window frame rather late in the day and breaks on the pavement, a starting shot: we run for it, four Carl Lewises, two in pajamas, two bleeding. Were you scared? Zoran asks again, and in spite of everything we're not going to admit it in front of Zoran.

Is there any glass in my back? I ask.

Edin taps his forehead with his finger: I can hear a kind of note, he says, a very, very shrill kind of note.

The Berlin Wall in my trouser pocket is still in one piece.

Is Ema safe? is what I don't ask after we've stolen back to the cellar as if nothing had happened.

My hand shaking, I paint a slim Uncle Bora.

Am I bleeding?

I paint a wound without any blood.

Suppose that man really does blow up our dam the way he swears he will on the radio, cursing, although the other man tells him: with all due respect, please don't do that! The man at the dam has wrecked Ivo Andric's statue in the park by the bridge too, with a sledgehammer. He's capable of anything.