Mama Leone Read online

  The altitude was ttttterrible, sputtered Auntie Lola. Higher than Jahorina? I asked. Ttttwice as high! . . . And were there big snows and was it twice as cold as on Jahorina? . . . No, there was almost no snow and it wasn’t very cold . . . Why did you come back then? . . . Because the altitude was ttttterrible . . . And did everything look really small from up there? . . . No, everything was big, but at such a ttttterrible altitude there’s no air . . . Is there a lot of smoke and clouds? . . . No, there isn’t a lot of anything. There’s just no air and it’s all empty there. And you, you little dork, quit jerking me around. If I ssssay that the altitude was ttttterrible, then that’s that, end of sssstory.

  You couldn’t hold a conversation with Auntie Lola for very long. As soon a conversation started getting interesting she’d start a fight. That was just her nature: cantankerous. And when someone’s cantankerous, you have to be mindful of this because they can’t do anything about it. Cantankerousness – at least how Granny Almasa from Ulomljenica used to explain it – is a sign that someone’s from a better home and that not even life itself can change them. Auntie Lola was the only cantankerous one in the family and generally speaking she’d fought with everyone except Grandma because we, to my regret, had never worried too much about who was cantankerous and who wasn’t.

  Auntie Lola and Uncle Andrija had a son called Željko. He was a pilot. He graduated from the Royal Air Force Academy in Belgrade, and when the war started he became a Home Guard pilot in Rajlovac. It was never hushed up in our house; we didn’t even bother with hushed voices, because Željko was our only family hero. One day he’d defected to the English in his plane. We’ve got photos of him in his RAF uniform next to Big Ben, and Tower Bridge, and playing golf on some meadow with men dressed in white.

  But we shut up about Željko when Auntie Lola came over. I was under strict instructions to not ask anything about him, but as soon as she left Grandma started her stories. When the Allies bombed Sarajevo near the end of the war, Željko had been in one of the planes. Afterward he said Auntie, I was really careful not to hit your house. Grandma always repeated the line and then added little sop, how was he going to be careful, he well knew you can’t be careful about anything from that height.

  In the spring of 1945, Željko flew over Europe and saw everything. He saw Berlin, which was no more, Warsaw, which was no more, Dresden, which was no more, Auschwitz, which was also no more; come to think of it, how did he see everything when everything was no more? It would be better to say that he didn’t see anything or that he saw nothing, but Grandma didn’t think like that. Half-closed eyes, her gaze gently raised like she was talking about angels and birds, she’d tell of everything Željko saw from above, it was as if back then he’d taken care of some really important job for the whole family and now the rest of us had inherited that picture of Europe from May 1945 and we all had to follow Grandma’s lead and repeat sentence by sentence, city by city, camp by camp everything Željko saw. Today when I hear the word Europe, everything Grandma said Željko saw assembles before my eyes, and it can’t be helped; from a great height I dream a Europe frail and real, through the eye of an old aircraft, a Europe scorched and devastated, beautiful and small, enveloped in barbed wire, telegraph poles ripped out, a Europe of a thousand tiny cities, little boys digging through the ruins, little girls hugging exhausted soldiers and giving them flowers, a ruin of Europe without the dead and wounded because you don’t see them from such a height, they’re buried in the ground, hidden in hospitals.

  Željko brought peace to Europe and Željko bombarded Sarajevo, but he never wounded or killed anyone. That’s what we believed because we need belief like soldiers need bouquets of flowers. Having brought peace, in August 1945 Željko got drunk with some pilot friends, and was drunk when he took off from Zagreb Airport. Airborne a short time, he died in Zagreb Hospital. The son of Auntie Lola died an ally, not the enemy, so you could talk about his death. We talked about it often, it was as if his death had offered someone salvation, it was as if Željko had to die so that my uncle M.R. could find peace beneath the earth even if he never managed to find it in his parents’ hearts.

  Željko is buried at the Boninovo Cemetery in Dubrovnik, in a tomb full of old skeletons for which no one grieved anymore, only the very eldest among us remember who they once belonged to. Auntie Lola and Uncle Andrija seldom visited the grave of their only son; in actual fact they only went on All Saints’ Day because you had to go that day, it was the custom. I didn’t know why that day, but I know both of them went, and that probably they didn’t want to, and that they probably wanted to put as much distance as they could between themselves and that grave, so they moved to Peru.

  They didn’t write or get in touch with anyone, one day they just came back. It was pretty high over there and there wasn’t enough air, the living can’t survive without air, Grandma said, as if to justify Auntie Lola’s coming back, and it was then I thought there were only dead people in Peru, and that Lima was a city of the dead where Auntie Lola and Uncle Andrija had got lost by mistake, and that they had to come back because the living can’t live with the dead, so they justify themselves and their coming back and explain it away by saying that there’s no air. I dreamed of Lima and Peru and the dead, but in my dream they were calm, friendly, and smiling; I flew above them and then I began to fall, I fell a long time, children grow when they fall in their sleep, I was growing and happy in my dream among the Peruvian dead and the condors, dead birds in a land of dead people who my Auntie Lola and Uncle Andrija had seen with their living eyes. A condor’s wingspan is as wide as this room, Auntie Lola spread her arms in the living room, the biggest room in her Dubrovnik apartment, and I believed her.

  I believed everything and from this grew the world I have in my head and today it resembles what I believed it to be back then. In vain I imagine a Europe without detonated cities, barbed wire, and the expanse of a charred Auschwitz, but there is no such Europe in my head, there’s no room in it, because I’d first need to get rid of this old one, but it doesn’t work, just like I can’t get rid of Peru, the land of dead people and condors with no need for air, whom the living visit only sometimes and only by accident – Auntie Lola and Uncle Andrija – and the living me, in my dream. Željko is sometimes alive, the Allied pilot who belongs to our whole family, he soars above us, looking at us as we are now and how we might be in our thoughts and dreams. If only he’d let us know what we look like from such a great height and whether we’ve changed in any way, or whether we are as beautiful and sad as Europe in May 1945.

  When I try and hunt him down in the sky and the ground beneath my feet moves, the same way my cities and homelands move and disappear, and my native soil becomes a Europe without the soldiers little girls greet with flowers, when I search the sky for the living Željko, I feel how easy it is to be someone else; it’s like going into a changing room in some big department store and after two minutes leaving as one of the thousands of faces I can imagine because I know they exist and that they live someplace far away; just not in Peru, because only dead Peruvians live there, and the parents of dead sons who need air.

  Mama Leone

  You have to remember this! I said. What do I have to remember? Mom asked. I’m not talking to you, I’m talking to myself. She held me by the hand, deeply frustrated that she isn’t a mother like other mothers, and her son isn’t a son like other sons, because he mostly talks precocious garbage. You’re not allowed to talk to yourself. Thinking’s okay, but not talking, you’ll be nuts before you know it. She’s obviously wound up, so I just nodded my head. When she’s wound up I nod my head so she doesn’t start yelling, doesn’t start her ranting and raving and I end up getting it on the snout. For me the word snout is yuckier than any box on the ear. Mom just had to say snout and it was message received loud and clear. You’ll get it on the snout grossed me out so much I would just shut my trap.

  We walked along the seashore, almost to Zaostrog. She held my hand, never letting go.
She thought I’d disappear if she let me walk on my own. Mom was like moms aren’t allowed to be. She didn’t feel enough like a mom, so out of fear, she put it on. Actually, she was most scared that maybe I was more of a grown-up than she was, a kind of mini-forbear who’d popped out of her uterus by mistake, just wanting to check up on her and how she was doing in life, put her through an exam she was bound to fail. So she played at being a grown-up and put me in my place with stuff about me going nuts if I talked to myself.

  I noticed she was holding back, expecting me to say something, something for her to pounce on. I bolted my tongue to the roof of my mouth, silent as the grave, breathing real quiet so she couldn’t make words out of my breathing. But she couldn’t help herself. What do you have to remember?

  I had to choose a strategy fast: either to pretend I didn’t understand the question, or to make her think that the whole time I’d been thinking about what it was I had to remember. I have to remember a precise moment in time, the moment three scents came rushing to me: the scent of the sea, the scent of the pines, and the scent of olive oil.

  She stood there, let go of my hand, a look of shock on her face but a harmless one. She smiled and said you’re my son! She hugged me tight and asked who’s your mom, who do you love most?

  This was already way past stupid and I don’t remember what happened next. I don’t remember if we went to Zaostrog. Maybe we went to the confectionary for cake or to the diner for an ora, an orange lemonade that I called oratalismaribor, like in the ads. I don’t know if we sat inside because Mom couldn’t smoke in the open air, or if we sat outside because she wasn’t so anxious and jumpy that she needed a cigarette, or if we went back the same way by the sea, or if we took the main road . . . I don’t remember any of this, nothing at all. I’ve forgotten everything after who’s your mom, who do you love most, and I’ll never remember. That part of my life is dead. My mom killed it.

  Fifteen years later, I was twenty-two, and I’d had a terrible fight with Nataša at a campground. You’re so awful when you talk to me! she said, her face turning into revulsion itself. No one before or after her could do that, turn their whole face, ears and everything, into an expression of revulsion. The horror cut my legs out from under me, my sweetheart turned monster. But she wasn’t gross or disgusting, it’s not like she transformed into a festering boil that would have made me leave any sweetheart in the world. Just her face turned into revulsion, like a kid turns into a rat in a horror film. Normally I’d put my hand on her shoulder and pull her toward me; she’d try and break free and in the breaking free she’d go back to her old self. She had to smile and come back, because the old Nataša always came back.

  But I was shitty that day on Korčula. I turned around and stormed off. By the fifth stride I didn’t know where I was going. I wanted to stop but couldn’t, there was no point in going any farther, yet no point in stopping either, so I just kept going and going and going . . . Of course it hurt that Nataša didn’t come after me. She stayed put in front of the tent or wherever she was at that moment. She didn’t put her hand on my shoulder. She never did that, nor would she ever. I wanted to hate her for it. When you’re on an island it doesn’t matter how shitty you are, or if you don’t actually know where you’re going, you hit the sea eventually. I stopped at some jagged rocks, as cutting as a final decision, the waves lapping stroppily as a big boat passed the island. You could see little people on the boat waving to someone. I was lonesome because they weren’t waving to me. Or maybe there was some other reason I felt lonesome, however things were I remember that that’s exactly how I felt, and it was then I became aware of the three scents: the scent of the sea, the scent of the pines, and the scent of olive oil.

  My God, why do I do it to myself! I said aloud – or maybe I just thought it, I don’t know – but by then I was already running back, across the rocks, through a stand of pines, through the camp, trampling on people’s towels and getting caught on guy ropes. Nataša wasn’t there in front of the tent. She wasn’t inside either. I ran for the water fountain and spotted them both from ten meters away, Nataša and the fountain. Nataša was cleaning a big round tomato, and a few people were waiting in line behind her. I didn’t have time to stop. I couldn’t change anything. I had really run, it’d been a good long run and it seemed like I’d been running for hours. Yet those ten meters were the longest. I remember every split-second, every drop of water on the smeared surface of the tomato, every drop that fell at her feet. Like at every campground on the Adriatic, there was mud in front of the water fountain. But I didn’t even slow down through the mud, splattering myself, the people in line, and her, who’d started to turn around. This splattering and turning around went on and on, but she didn’t quite make it around in time, she couldn’t see who was coming, she didn’t know it was me, that I was throwing myself at her. Then it was us falling in the mud, the tomato falling from her hand, her letting out a short, sharp cry, me lying above her, me lying on top of her and holding her tight.

  Get off me already! she said, careful that not a single word, not a single sound rang harshly, and in that moment itself everything, her body, hair, muddy clothes, breathing, gave her away as wanting me to stay. I couldn’t let her go because I thought she’d disappear, just like everything had disappeared from Zaostrog so long ago. I wanted her to stay silent, for her to stay here, immortal in this moment and never again, in the mud next to a water fountain, in a campground on Korčula, half a meter from an abandoned tomato no one will ever slice. The tomato dead the instant it fell from her hand.

  Five years passed in the blink of an eye. Nataša was in Belgrade, and I was in Sarajevo. The war was raging. The war of my life, the only one I remember and the only one in which it seems that I’ll die, yet remain alive, undamaged and whole, like some kind of Achilles who didn’t even get hit in the heel. The phone lines were down. I was in the Jewish Community Center at the Drvenija Bridge. All around there were people waiting for a connection, in front of me a ham radio operator with a funny machine like something out of the Second World War. From the machine you could hear the hum of all the world’s oceans, the cracking and creaking of every shipwreck, all at once. A voice surfaced from between and beneath the waves. The voice said she’s asking how are you?

  I turn to the operator: I’m good, how are you? He almost swallows the microphone: he’s good, how is she?, I repeat, he’s good how is she?, receiving you. And then again the cracking of ancient ships, the roar of the waves, the terror of the seamen: she’s good, what should she send him? I’m not too cool with about fifty people listening in on my conversation. I lean down and say to the operator send me newspapers and bacon! He quivers invisibly from the breath in his ear and continues have her send newspapers and bacon, I repeat, newspapers and bacon! The whole room bursts out laughing, probably about the newspapers, and the voice from the other side crackles she’s thinking of him and wants him to be careful! The time had come for the conversation to end. People were waiting in line, and I had one more sentence to say, one worth more than every silence, one that had to do the same thing as the hug in the Korčula mud. I was frozen in terror confronted by words, words, words that I could say, ones I didn’t have to say, words that seeped like sand from a smashed hourglass, like mercury on the wooden floor of a chemistry lab, like a little death growing inside me, the death of a tomato next to a water fountain. It was then I remembered it, the tomato, I’d thought it had died, but it hadn’t; it appeared one last time, falling from her hand, it came back to me, right here now as I sent my cry in the stormy night, because on the other side there’s no one anymore, there’s no me, no campground, no Korčula, no fight, no face turned to revulsion, a beautiful precious revulsion that is no more . . . I didn’t move my lips down to the manly ear, nor did I whisper. I said in a loud voice, like we were really there, in her living room, alone because the general and his wife had gone to the seaside: I love you more than anything in the world! The operator turned to me. He saw my face for the
first time ever. I’d always been at his back. He’ll probably never see me again. That you’ll say yourself, he whispered, taking the headphones off, me sitting down in his place. The hum was much louder in the headphones. I didn’t know where my words were going nor who was listening, the kind of waves they were being lost on or whether there was a momentary lull from which they might be clearly heard, as clearly as they would, just this once, be spoken: Nataša, I love you more than anything in the world!

  The Jewish Community Center cried like people do after a good theater performance. Everyone cried, men and women. A single sentence made so many people cry. That sentence had a weight to it, but only for he who had said it and she who had heard it. At that very moment everyone else could’ve snoozed away or picked their noses, fired their machine guns, prayed to God, or spoken some commonplace truth, words to save the world, but instead they cried, probably because at that very moment they too were bidding farewell to their lives, another little death already eating at them. Today I don’t remember a single one of those crying faces.

  I don’t remember the important moments, I forget them the second I say you have to remember this. Life would be long if I remembered more. I’ve forgotten almost everything. Except when I was running from the shoreline to the campground or being careful that Mom not say snout. Everything else is gone. Things that are gone divide into those I’ve managed to preserve in memory and those that have become a series of my little deaths. These deaths are like gray marks on an old map. Unless it’s another India, nobody actually knows what’s really there. I managed to preserve in memory the sentence I love you more than anything in the world, but I didn’t know how to love someone more than anything in the world, and I didn’t want to know that fear wasn’t the best ally to have in life. Nataša stayed in Belgrade for a time, then she went to Canada because I never got in touch again. I tried that I love you more than anything in the world at different times and it felt as banal as a ham radio operator translating words across waters and oceans, every I becoming he, every you becoming she. Or something like that. Whatever, no one ever cried again.