Mama Leone Read online

  That time in Dubrovnik I did something bad. I didn’t burst out crying in the middle of the Pile Gate like other children, and I didn’t because I was scared of crying in front of so many strangers and I was ashamed about being left alone. Others would have cried and they wouldn’t have been scared or ashamed. Being scared and ashamed is no good and it’s better to burst out crying. It’s definitely braver. I couldn’t because I’m a coward and that’s why I went to Auntie Lola’s and gave it my all to remember the way, even though I’d always walked it with someone else. But I remembered. It was the longest journey I ever made in my life. When I’m a thousand years old like an old king, even then I’ll never go on such a long journey because when you’re two and a half there isn’t a longer journey than the one from the Pile Gate to St. Blaise’s.

  You know, I’d never even thought about it before. I liked them thinking I was a kid who never panics, but the truth is I really am a scaredy pants and I get ashamed, and when this happens I make journeys that kids who cry in front of a crowd of strangers would never make. But my mom doesn’t cry either and she isn’t that big. She’s smaller than Grandma, Grandpa, and Dad, and she gets ashamed and is always scared of this or that. She takes her fears out on all of us, on me most of all, and we all love her when she’s ashamed. Shame is something worse than fear, but it’s nice to watch. Mom would have found her way home like me if Nano had lost her at the Pile Gate, she would have found her way back no matter how far it was, I know that for sure because you can spot fear and shame really easily, much more easily than courage, and that’s why I know Mom better than anyone else and that’s why I always know what she’s capable of. So anyway, if she knows how to get back from the Pile Gate on her own, she’ll find her way back from Ljubljana. Ljubljana is much closer because Mom is much older than me and she’ll make it back easily. She’s scared and ashamed and that’s why she can’t stay in Ljubljana, she can’t die, the bump can’t hurt her, the rules for big people don’t apply to her. Fairy tales exist for the scared and ashamed because in them people cross seven mountains and seven seas just so they won’t be scared and ashamed.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. My face is wet, my back and stomach too. If I’ve cried, I didn’t cry down my back, everyone has to believe I’m telling the truth there. Grandma has to believe me too. Is she breathing? I can’t see anything, but if she’s breathing I’ll tell her in the morning that everything is fine with Mom. Actually, I won’t tell her anything because I don’t think she’ll understand, just like she didn’t understand the thing about split shadows. But I’ll show her that tomorrow, and she’ll just have to wait for Mom, she’ll have to worry for the whole fifteen days until Mom comes back from Ljubljana, and then I’ll tell her I knew the whole time. I’ll tell them all, Dad and Uncle and all those worriers on the phone who call when I’m not around, and I’ll tell Grandma, and Mom, I’ll tell them that only I knew, only I knew she had to come back. Tomorrow we’ll keep reading White Fang. I’m brave enough for any sad ending.

  If only Grandma would let out a little puff, then I’d fall asleep, my first time after her.

  That nothing would ever happen

  We lived from one special occasion to the next in a happy and ordered world, sometimes sick with feverish kids’ sicknesses and sometimes with serious grown-up ones, in a world in which everything had its place and moment in time. Don’t run before you can walk, Grandma used to say. We didn’t know what she meant, or maybe some did, but they weren’t saying, so I kept running because time passed by so slowly. I couldn’t wait for it, I had to hurry, get out ahead, skip the good-for-nothing days because they weren’t special occasions.

  You couldn’t buy ice cream in the winter back then. It disappeared from the confectionaries in the first thick November fog and only showed up again in April. Why don’t people eat ice cream in winter too? Because ice cream gives you a sore throat. They were looking out for us, making sure we didn’t get sick for no reason, and that every day had its place in the calendar and time in the seasons, that we would never think that we were alone and abandoned, forsaken like the faraway countries we heard about on the radio. Young slant-eyed soldiers were dying in those countries, a little machine gun in one hand and a tiny baby in the other. That’s how they died, leaving behind little slant-eyed wives to hold their heads in their hands and grieve in their funny incomprehensible language.

  I laugh whenever I see little slant-eyed mothers next to their little dead husbands on the TV. Saigon and Hanoi are the names of the first comedies in my life. I spell them out loud, letter by letter, laughing my head off. Those people don’t look like us, and I don’t believe they’re in pain or that they’re really sad. Words of sadness have to sound sad, and tears have to be like raindrops, small and brilliant. Their words aren’t sad, and the tears on their faces are too big and look funny, like the fake tears of the clowns I saw at the circus. I’m just waiting for Mom and Grandma to leave the room so I can watch Saigon and Hanoi and have a laugh. When they’re there I’m not allowed to laugh because Mom will think I’m crazy, and Grandma that I’m malicious. Craziness and malice are strictly forbidden in our house. Great unhappiness is born from malice; malicious children put their parents in old folks’ homes, never thinking that they themselves will one day get old and that their children might bundle them off to old folks’ homes too; Grandma and Mom were scared of malice and craziness because they were born old and with fears I don’t understand, but I knew one day I’d have my turn; it’ll happen the day they say I’m a grown-up, the day I run when I first meet someone who’s crazy, because craziness is infectious, just like all the sicknesses and misfortune in this city. When you grow up and have your own house and your own children, then you can do whatever you like. But in my house you won’t. Grandma loved the little slant-eyed mothers and pretended she understood them.

  I get really careful in the run-up to special occasions like New Year’s Eve and my birthday. I don’t even laugh when I’m on my own; I keep my mouth shut like the angels on Grandma’s postcards, and I squint to see if I’ve already grown wings or if I still need to wait a bit. I never know what those two are going to get me for my birthday or New Year’s, only that Grandma’s presents are always better. She buys me books – encyclopedias and picture books – and Mom always gets me practical stuff. Practical stuff is stuff that they were going to have to buy anyway, but instead of just getting on with it without all the pomp, they wait for special occasions and give them to you all wrapped up in shiny wrapping and expect you to get excited. But who can get excited about socks, undies, undershirts, and winter slippers? Mom expects me to get excited about her presents. If I don’t, it means I’m malicious. There’s no such thing as everyday stuff for her, not even socks, everything’s a special treat, you have to earn everything in life, you have to bust your gut. If you listened to her you’d think humanity would go naked and barefoot if everyone told their mother that undershirts and slippers don’t cut it as birthday presents. But I pretend to be excited about her presents because if I don’t she gets angry and starts with the nurturing stuff. When she cranks up the nurture rant it’s much worse than when she gets a migraine. Mom’s kind of nurturing is out of books called You and Your Child and Your Child Is a Personality. She bought them from a traveling salesman, spent a month reading them, and then decided to put her foot down about my nurturing. Luckily she doesn’t have time to stick at it, so unless I remind her, she totally forgets the whole thing. Nurturing amounts to Mom screwing up her face and repeating the same sentence ten times, wanting something from me without ever actually saying what it is. The less I understand, the happier she is because then she thinks she’s being strict, and no strictness means no nurture. For me strict nurturing involves keeping your mouth shut, saying yes, nodding your head and not asking any questions because there’s nothing to ask because you don’t understand anything.

  For special occasions Dad gives me model railway, motorway, city, and chemistry sets, all with th
ousands of little pieces. Then we sit down on the living-room floor and open the box. Dad puts his serious face on and starts scratching behind his ear, spreading the thousands of little pieces out on the rug. I watch him and he’s as funny as the little slant-eyed mothers, and he gives me a nod that says trust me and starts putting the thousands of little railway pieces together. He knows what he’s doing, and I like watching him put it together much more than I like the railway itself. Mom thinks he likes this stuff so much because when he was a boy they didn’t buy him toys, so he never got a chance to play his little heart out and now he’s making up for it. I don’t think she’s right. If that’s how it was, he’d buy toys for himself.

  Nano gives the best presents. He’s not actually Nano, his name is Rudolf Stubler, but nobody calls him that. Nano is Grandma’s older brother and once, a long time ago, he studied math in Vienna. Today he spends his time exploring far-off cities, going hiking, beekeeping, and playing the violin. We see him in photographs: Nano in London, Nano in Paris, Nano in Berlin, Nano in Moscow, Amsterdam, Kiev, Prague, Rome, Florence, Madrid, and Lisbon. They know Nano in all these cities because their buildings and bridges, cathedrals and skyscrapers have their photos taken with him. They don’t have any pictures of their own without him, without him these cities are just postcards, and postcards aren’t real cities, they’re just letters with photos where nothing is real. Nano stands waving in front of the Trevi Fountain, a coin in his hand and a wish in the coin. We don’t believe the wish, Grandma says wishes don’t come true in water, but that doesn’t matter because the Trevi Fountain believes in wishes, and so Nano tosses a coin in and has his picture taken, so we’ll know what Rome looks like. Nano comes over before every special occasion, puts a pen and paper down on the table, and says come on, tell me what you’d like for New Year’s, doesn’t matter if it’s a sewing needle or a locomotive, leave it up to me to see if my financial means stretch. Only Nano uses phrases like financial means, because he talks to me like I’m a grown-up, so I talk to him like he’s a grown-up too: For a start I need to say that I don’t want a sewing needle or a locomotive. I can borrow a sewing needle from Grandma, and I’d need a driver’s license for a locomotive . . . Very well, let’s see, how do you feel about musical instruments?. . . I think I’m tone-deaf and that it’d be a complete waste of money. I’d prefer something that might stimulate my intellectual development . . . What do you think would be most appropriate? . . . I’m not sure, perhaps a volume on world history, an encyclopedia of sports or of the animal kingdom . . . Got it, I’ve made a note. And where do you stand in regard to sporting activities? . . . I’ve already got a bike, and I don’t need a ball because somebody might steal it. Don’t get me roller skates because only girls go skating, and I could fall and break my neck . . . How about a chess set? . . . Well, perhaps, but a wooden one. I think I’ve outgrown plastic.

  And that’s how it went. Nano would neatly jot everything down, and then when the occasion rolled around he’d be there with two presents, one I’d chosen and a second one that he liked. The second was usually better, better because it was a surprise and there’s no such thing as a bad surprise. A bad surprise is called a disappointment, and a special occasion is not a time for disappointment. I’m not even disappointed with Mom’s practical presents because that’s what I expect from her, and when you expect something it can’t be a disappointment.

  The day before a special occasion Mom bakes a cake. When Mom bakes a cake we all have to put our serious faces on and cross our fingers, just like we did when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. Baking cakes is an unpredictable business: Mom mixes the dough, or actually it’s more like she gets a mountain of flour and makes a deep hole in the middle so the flour mountain looks like a snow volcano or a heap of sand and cement to make concrete, and then she breaks the eggs and puts them in the hole. When she’s broken all the eggs, she knocks the mountain over, mixes the flour with the eggs, and starts with her oh boy, what if the dough doesn’t rise, and I laugh at her, but she doesn’t get angry, she just says and that’s the thanks I get. She’s happy because she’s enjoying her anxiety.

  The dough kneaded and ready for baking, she covers it with a cloth and waits. Smoking one cigarette after the other, every five minutes she peeks under the cloth and calls Grandma over to say how the dough’s going. Grandma says no, not yet, just a little longer, and then she says ready, and then Mom almost flips out and I’m not allowed to laugh at her anymore. With trembling hands she covers the cake dish in oil and keeps repeating God save me, what if the dough sticks.

  As soon as she’s put the cake in to bake Mom starts cussing out our oven. First the upper heating bars are no good, then the bottom ones aren’t working, and then she starts cussing out the company in Čačak that made the oven and looks up at the ceiling, as if she’s looking up at the sky where the whiteware bosses of the world are in a meeting to decide who deserves an oven that might bake a decent cake this New Year’s. Grandma just listens and nods her head. Mom gets on Grandma’s nerves sometimes. She’ll give me a nervous breakdown one day, and later she’ll complain to Auntie Doležal, her and her cakes, and Auntie Doležal clasps her hands and says oh, the young ones, my dear Olga, those young ones, they’ll make a science out of baking a cake yet, and to think I once made five cakes for my Jucika’s habitation and it didn’t faze me none. Jucika was Auntie Doležal’s husband, they killed him in Jasenovac, but she always talked about him as if he were alive, as if he was going to appear on the doorstep in about half an hour, so I felt like I knew Jucika too, and wouldn’t have been in the least surprised if he had actually shown up and said I’m home and Auntie Doležal had again baked him five cakes for this habitation thing.

  It riled Grandma most of all that Mom wouldn’t let her bake cakes for New Year’s or my birthday. Other times were fine, but for New Year’s or my birthday, no way. I’m her son, and it was her job to bake her son a cake on special occasions. Okay, you bake them for him then, but quit dragging me up to see whether the dough has risen, Grandma said once, and that made Mom really wild and she yelled back You’ve been hounding me my whole life, burst into tears, and immediately got a migraine. Grandma never again complained about being called over to see whether the dough had risen. Just let it be, said Auntie Doležal.

  The most exciting part was when the cake came out of the oven, because then nobody, not even Grandma, knew whether a catastrophe was in the cards. A catastrophe was when the middle of the cake caved in or shrank, so the cake didn’t look like a cake anymore but like something else, it’s hard to say what, but something awfully funny that you weren’t allowed to laugh at, because Mom and Grandma would be there hovering over whatever that something was. Mom would bury her face in her hands like those little slant-eyed mothers when their husbands were killed, and Grandma would start cussing. She never cussed otherwise, just when a cake flopped. And if the cake flopped a replacement had to be made. Then we’d have two cakes for the special occasion: a normal one to serve to guests and a second that tasted normal but looked so bad nobody was allowed to see it except us. We ate that one on the sly before the guests showed up.

  Before the New Year of 1977 Nano came over, got his pen and paper out, and again I told him I didn’t need a sewing needle or a locomotive and that we could get straight down to business on the present list. I told him that my relationship to time and its passing had fundamentally changed and that as such, I needed a wristwatch. He wrote it down, went home, and three days later died.

  He was in my dad’s ward, in a deep coma, and at the time it was all everyone talked about. I didn’t actually know what a deep coma was, but it meant this New Year’s wasn’t going to be a special occasion and that there’d be no one to take the blame for unfulfilled promises. Up until this point promises had been disregarded or broken because someone had forgotten them; grown-ups were promise-killers, all you could do was look at them, shake your head, and think: But why? Why one more little graveyard, full of unfulfilled wishes
and forgotten words strewn on balmy city streets like summer hail that melts in the blink of an eye, leaving nothing but an image behind, a single, tiny, inconsequential image at the bottom of the gaze of all for whom it has fallen like a promise?

  Nano couldn’t keep his promise because he was in a deep coma. Mom sat at his bedside for two nights saying things like Nano, sweetie, it’s just started snowing, it’ll be New Year’s soon, it’s already scrunchy underfoot, and soon we’ll be eating this year’s apples. She said all kinds of things to him, watching for an eyelash to flicker or a quiver in the corners of his mouth, because Dad had told her that you never know with a deep coma, that you can’t be sure whether Nano could hear anything, feel her hand, or sense the slipstream of words through the world and the cosmos, along the nerves that lead to the brain, like unstamped letters dropped in a distant post-office box, letters in which we all tell him that we love him.