Sasa Stanisic - How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone

Guest workers aren't welcome anywhere except in their own families.

Now Uncle Bora is nailing the tablecloths to the tables in slow motion, while down at the foot of the hill Auntie Typhoon is racing around among the trees shaking their branches: we-don't- need-any-rest-go-on-go-on-go-on! Bora is wheezing with a sound like Father's circular saw when it's about to run down.

The cutlery clatters in the plastic bucket that Great-Granny bangs down on the table beside the stack of plates. She plants herself four-square in my way, looking just like her hero the Comrade in Chief of all cowboys, Marshal Rooster, although with forks at her hips instead of Colts: where are you going, jailbird? She's even wearing her eye patch. Every time we visit Veletovo I have to sit with Great-Granny and watch that grumpy drunk Rooster and Mattie Ross quarreling.

That was how I used to look, just like that, only my skin was pinker, sighs Great-Granny, pointing to Miss Ross. GreatGranny's tears as the final credits roll are followed by High Noon on the veranda. In winter when the grasshoppers don't chirp, Great-Granny takes over from them. She presses her lips together, chirping fit to terrify you. She keeps her finger pistols low, she's always quicker on the draw than any tenderfoot around. Great-Granny is faster than the wind, and with her eye patch she can look even more cynical than John Wayne.

Very old people live two lives. In one life they cough, they walk with a stoop, they sigh: oh dear, oh dear, oh dear! In the other life, their eye-patch life, they talk to stinging nettles about the neighbors, they believe they're sheriffs, or they fall in love with deck chairs or bees.

Where are you going, jailbird? Great-Granny's hand moves down to her hip; her thumb takes the safety catch off the fork. I feint to the right, then storm past her on the left and into the house. Oh wow, Great-Granny! High Noon in my guts! Only seconds to go before I break the world record for an accident in my trousers, out of the way!

The new bathroom. The inside bathroom. Great-Grandpa and four oxen demolished half the wall for it, four oxen can do that kind of thing well but two would have been better, then no one would have had to think what to do later about too much hole in the wall and the ripped-out banisters. Great-Grandpa soon found the answer; he fitted the new bathroom next to the balcony — which is smaller now, but the bathroom is bigger, and you can get into it from the balcony through a curtain, fresh air thrown in for free, says Great-Granny. At the same time the four-hundred-year-old outside toilet was jettisoned, and no one ever had to go standing up again. They had the first TV set in the village, years ago, black and white, two channels, the second channel showing busy little scurrying dots for Great-Granny to watch before going to sleep, now the first inside bathroom — my great-grandparents were always twenty-five miles ahead of the times in Veletovo.

There was a party to inaugurate the new bathroom. Abroad they think we have parties here the whole time, says my uncle the guest worker. Which is not entirely right, because we have to spend time clearing up after the parties too. And a party costs a lot, so parents have to go to work in the day. However, it's a fact that my great-grandparents see anything as an excuse for a party. Once they partied through two whole nights because Great-Granny had found a meteorite the size of a man's fist among the carrots. That was an hour after they'd been showing Superman on the new TV set. Great-Granny made soup out of the meteorite, six pounds of carrots and seven secret seasonings of her own. The whole village, she cried around midnight when her eyes were glazed and she was trying to uproot an oak tree with a judo hold, the whole village smells of kryptonite! She failed, because Yugoslavian oak trees are stronger than super powers.

All the neighbors came to the party for the bathroom. Even Radovan Bunda from the high mountains, who knew about electricity only by hearsay and who talked to his chickens. By neighbors they don't mean the same in Veletovo as they do in Viegrad. In Veletovo even the Peics count as neighbors, though it's half a day's walk for them to visit my great-grandparents. Not because they're too poor to own a car — they are poor, yes, but there isn't any road to drive a car on where they live. The grown-up Peics are all over six and a half feet tall, including the women and the old folk. Once, long ago, I visited their place. I remember the sourish goat's milk, and the wooden toys, and wondering why they didn't build higher ceilings, with all of them being so gigantic. When a baby is born or someone gets married in the Peic family or in ours, we exchange visits. The families are godparents to each other's children and witnesses at weddings. My mother says I didn't have a Peic godparent, though, it has something to do with her and the religion on her side of the family. Nothing bad, says my mother, and she asks: would you have liked to be baptized?

What's that? I ask.

Well, there you are, she says.

Lining up for the new bathroom, the neighbors were shifting restlessly about with bladder pressure and anticipation. Great-Grandpa had first go. He was wearing his black frock coat, he tapped his stomach and he crowed at the top of his voice: haven't gone for four days now! Bong bong, tom tom, bong bong, he beat out a rousing rhythm with the toilet lid.

Some people, including me, clapped along. Everyone was in good humor waiting for the inside bathroom, sixteen spectators, a five-man band to play music, perfect bathroom weather, I said, presenting the show. Great-Granny gave Great-Grandpa a bottle of spirits as solemnly as if she were handing him the Baton of Youth. He put the shot glass on top of the bottle like a hat and stayed sitting on the toilet for forty-five minutes. Outside, the neighbors and relatives began talking in loud voices so as not to hear all the noises inside the new bathroom. When he wasn't groaning and crying out and clattering like a moped, Great-Grandpa sang. I put my ear close to the door so that I could hear his deep voice. How the door vibrated! My GreatGrandpa sounded like the lowest string of a double bass! In his songs, someone called Kraljevic Marko jumped across the river Drina astride a wine-drinking horse and butchered some Turks. So many that I couldn't keep up with the head count. But more exciting than the poor wretched Turks, I thought, was the question of whether all horses who drank wine could fly. When Great-Grandpa came out after forty-five minutes, triumphantly raising his clenched fist, the bottle of spirits was half empty and the shot glass was gone for ever.

Flush it, you idiot! Great-Granny said, loud and earnestly, then she looked down into the bowl and crossed herself for the first time in sixty years. They drank the rest of the good pear schnapps and the five-man band played a waltz. After that the band opened the dancing with gypsy music that no one liked because the fast bit came too soon. We can still lie down without holding on to anything, you amateurs! cried Great-Grandpa, and he couldn't stop dancing.

Now the neighbors had a go on the new toilet too, starting with the men. Oh, how my heart is pounding, someone said before closing the door behind him. Radovan Bunda was last in line. He kept on grumbling more and more crossly, holding on to himself in front and behind. When it was nearly his turn he roared out: what an idea, tormenting a man who's come all this way, you tramps, with your newfangled notions! He was rapidly unbuttoning his trousers as he raced off in the direction of the outside toilet.

What outside toilet, Radovan must have asked himself when he got there, because two oxen had uprooted the little cubicle from the ground like a weed. I don't need any bowl, any flushing mechanism, any tiles! I don't even need a hole in the ground, Radovan would say later, drinking to liberty.