Mama Leone Read online

  Uncle Momčilo has a wife called Auntie Mirjana. He’s got a son called Boban too, but I’ve only ever seen him once in my life. Boban is short and fat, and he’s got a squeaky voice and doesn’t look like a grown-up even though he goes to work and drives a green Fiat 1300. Auntie Mirjana bakes bread rolls and cooks baked beans. Bread rolls and baked beans are the two best things to eat in the whole world. Auntie Mirjana loves it when I ask her when are you going to bake bread rolls again? And she always brings me some the next day, and Grandma gets mad and says you little scallywag, the woman’ll think you’re a little bread piggy, and then I tell that it’s not bread I like but bread rolls. You buy bread at the supermarket, and you bake bread rolls in the oven. Grandma says that bread rolls are actually just bread. Grandma isn’t lying, I know that for sure, but I don’t believe the meaning of some words, because any word can mean what I want it to mean, just like it could to her if only she weren’t so grown-up and worried someone might punish her if a word means something to her that it doesn’t to them. I hear the words bread roll and I’m flat-out hungry, I hear the word bread, I couldn’t care less.

  Auntie Mirjana taught me how to walk. I was nine months old and it was my first time in Drvenik. Grandma was cooking lunch, Mom had gone to the bank in Makarska, and I was with Auntie Mirjana in their yard. She held my hand and said c’mon, left leg, c’mon, right leg, now left leg, now right leg, and then she yelled Olga, Olga, Miljenko’s walking. Grandma ran out holding a knife for gutting fish, oh no, not now when Javorka’s in Makarska . . . Maybe we shouldn’t tell her, Auntie Mirjana worried. Out of the question, you can’t keep such things from the mother, said Grandma.

  Mom came back on the afternoon bus, Auntie Mirjana said watch this, lifted me up by my fingertips, and I was away. Mom burst out crying and scooped me up in her arms, my boy, my big boy, and then I started to cry. She was supposed to be crying out of happiness, why I was crying I don’t know because I don’t remember a thing.

  Today everyone says that Auntie Mirjana taught me to walk and it’s a really big deal for them, but bread rolls are a really big deal for me, and so is Uncle Momčilo teaching me how to look at the world from upside down.

  It’s a shame when people only see each other once a year, aging so quickly in each other’s eyes, Grandpa said. Franjo, believe me, you haven’t aged a bit, said Uncle Momčilo. Get off with you, the old fossil’s mummified like Tutankhamen, said Grandma. And you, Miss Olga, you just get more beautiful with age . . . Oh please, Momčilo, mocking old ladies doesn’t become you. I wear every wrinkle as a memory, and you know, I remember a lot. That’s why I don’t go senile, because every single one reminds me of something.

  They repeat the same story year after year; one year the old fossil is mummified like Tutankhamen, the next he’s as shriveled as a dry plum, and the one after that he’s embalmed like Lenin, everything else stays the same. They lie and they’re happy when they’re lying, and I’m happy when I lie too, it’s just that everyone gets mad at me but there’s no one to get mad at them. I don’t get mad because I can see that they’re somehow sad. Grandma’s sadness is in the corners of her mouth, Uncle Momčilo’s in his eyes, Grandpa’s in his nose. Each of them is sad where you can see the sadness best, and they’re sad because they really can see each other getting older. For grown-ups, old age is reason enough for sad mouths, eyes, and noses, because they think it’s better to be a child, and no one can convince them otherwise.

  We didn’t come by ourselves, said Uncle Momčilo. Momir is with us, Auntie Mirjana folded her arms. Who’s Momir? I asked. They’d thought I wasn’t there again because I was building a castle for Queen Forgetful. They looked at one another, startled. Grandpa shrugged his shoulders, Auntie Mirjana raised her eyebrows, and Grandma said you know, Auntie Mirjana and Uncle Momčilo have a grandson now . . . Good for them, I answered coldly and returned to the castle, which had been under heavy snow for right about three seconds now.

  I don’t want to see him . . . But why not? He’s a baby, baby Momir . . . What do I care? You go, I’m not . . . But Auntie Mirjana has baked bread rolls . . . Good for her, I’m not hungry, I don’t care. So Grandma and Grandpa went to see baby Momir, and I stayed with my castle and everything suddenly went quiet. I’d never heard such silence. All you could hear was a big summer fly and my breathing. I stared at the wall and listened. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, just like that, but then it was more choppy inhale, long exhale, choppy inhale, long exhale, and then came the flood. I thought about Auntie Mirjana’s bread rolls and how I’d never eat them again. I was all alone, but my loneliness wasn’t mixed with fear, it was loneliness mixed with sadness; mouth, eyes, and ears, all sad. I didn’t have anyone anymore, they were all with baby Momir.

  When Grandpa and Grandma came back I was already sitting in the broom closet, there behind the heavy curtain where Uncle kept the oars and motor for the dinghy. Here you go, Auntie Mirjana sent this along for you, said Grandma and held out a bread roll wrapped in a white cloth. I took the bread roll, hot and heavy, and put it in my lap. But I didn’t want to eat it. I can’t eat on such sad occasions. I can just stare at the tips of my toes, listen to my breathing, shake my head at every question I’m asked, a rusty old buoy no one’s ever going to tie their boat to.

  How about a walk in the clouds, Uncle Momčilo came over as soon as I woke up. I looked him straight in the eye and didn’t say a thing. I know you want to. It’s our thing, just between you and me. No one else knows how beautiful it is . . . I will if you promise me something . . . If I can do it, I can promise you, shoot, just don’t forget that I’m not Il Grande Blek or Commandante Mark . . . Promise me you’ll never show Momir how to walk in the clouds. Uncle Momčilo went quiet and put his finger to his bottom lip, like he always does when he’s thinking. You know, this is a complicated business. I mean, you’ve caught me on the wrong foot, on my left foot. You see, the thing is, I wanted to ask you something about that, and now I don’t know how to begin . . . You mean, you won’t promise me . . . Wait a second, that’s got nothing to do with it. It’s something else. I need your help, but I don’t know how to explain it to you . . . Promise me you’ll never show Momir how to walk in the clouds, I repeated, word by word, slowly because my inhale had gotten choppy, and Uncle Momčilo’s face had shattered into a thousand pieces, flashing in brilliant strips of light, the rays with which tears begin on a sunny day. Of course I promise you, but I also want to ask you to promise me something . . . Promise you what? . . . You know, I’m already an old man, and when Momir grows up a little bit, I’ll be even older and weaker, my strength will have gone, you understand, so if I may, I’d like to ask you something, if it’s not going to be too big a problem for you . . . C’mon, just tell me what I need to promise you. I wanted to be serious because Uncle Momčilo was really jumpy and it seemed like I was his only hope. I’d like you to promise me that you’ll show Momir how to walk in the clouds. You’ll be big and strong by then, and you’ll be able to show him, and because I taught you how to walk in the clouds, I can’t ask anyone else. That’s it, that’s what I’d like to ask you, if it isn’t too big a problem.

  That night, my promise to Uncle Momčilo went to the top of my list of priorities in life. I needed to be strong, to be really, really strong, to be so strong that when baby Momir isn’t a baby anymore I’d be able to teach him how to walk in the clouds because his grandpa can’t teach him. And he can’t for two reasons: The first is that he promised me he would never teach him, and the second is that people get older and in old age they lose their strength, so one day they become children who need someone to show them how to walk in the clouds, but no one shows them because it’s impolite to grab old people by the ankles and hang them upside down. There are lots of impolite things that could make the whole world happy. I don’t mean burping, because burping has never made anyone happy, and you only burp because you’re asking for trouble and risking a box on the snout. I was more thinking of all the beautiful things forbid
den to old people. My grandpa would definitely be happy if someone picked him up by his ankles and flipped him upside down, so one last time he could see how beautiful the sky is beneath our feet.

  I decided that first thing in the morning I’d go over to Auntie Mirjana and Uncle Momčilo’s, take a look at baby Momir, and expertly assess how much time I had before I’d teach him to walk in the clouds.

  You’re funny, be funny for us again

  It’s hard to believe there are Germans who catch colds. Take Hans for example: He pulls into Drvenik every February, parks his camp trailer, doesn’t bother unpacking but just strips to his swimming trunks, throws his clothes on the backseat and a towel over his shoulder, and dashes off to the beach. Grandma says Hans is as ugly as a bulldog with his stubby legs and shoulders as broad as three non-German men. I like Hans because he’s funny, and he’s funniest when he runs through Drvenik in his trunks on the first day of February, wheezing like a locomotive, tearing down the pier, and plopping into the water – really, he just plops. Hans doesn’t jump in feet- or headfirst; he throws the length and breadth of himself into the water, the same way other people happily flounce onto a soft bed that’s been waiting for them a good long while.

  The Drvenik kids all gather on the pier, cheering Hans on as he battles the waves and the wild, unfazed whether it’s blowing a southerly or a northeaster – and there’s always something blowing in February. Hans doesn’t care about the cold either, whether the peaks of the Biokovo range are dusted in snow or crabs have frozen in the shallows. Hans just swims, yelling ah fucking son of a bitch as he goes, and the whole of Drvenik, from Ćmilj to Lučica, knows the crazy Kraut has arrived and opened the goose-bumps and winter swimming season. When Hans swims, everyone who spots him out there in the sea gets goose bumps too.

  The first few years people thought Hans was going to drown, it was just a matter of time before his heart stopped or the waves carried him off, but in time they got used to his ways. People figured that the world was full of all sorts but that only Germans were this sort; the miracle was that they had cold blood, as if they were fish and not people. Whenever someone caught a winter cold they’d think of Hans, because Hans never caught cold, because Hans didn’t care about the cold and he’d plop into any February sea.

  Every winter Grandma fretted about our bougainvillea. That’s a flower that once lived in the ancient forests of the Amazon and was brought to Europe by a Frenchman. Europe is dry and cold for a bougainvillea, so it always needs protecting from drought or the chill, at least until it shoots up into a big rambling vine with pink-and-violet flowers. Someone should actually take it back to the jungle, but since no one knows where that is or how much a ticket costs, my grandma is in charge of protecting it from cold and drought; in February she wraps it in netting and plastic bags, and in August she gives it plenty to drink.

  She’d just finished wrapping it when Hans ran past. You poor wee thing, where on earth has the wind blown you, she said to the bougainvillea. She doesn’t think the flower understands but knows plants don’t really die because a seed or root always remains, but Grandma wants to save this bougainvillea’s life all the same and carps on about how it’s going to flower beautifully and be such a pretty sight. This is a lie: She’s not thinking about beauty or pretty sights, she’s just afraid that one morning she’ll find a dead frozen plant in front of the house, and that this will give her the feeling you feel for everything that’s dead but was once alive. She’d like our bougainvillea to be like Hans, and she’d like Hans to be like our bougainvillea. A flower shouldn’t have to suffer cold and drought, and a German wouldn’t make a fool of himself if he were a little more sensitive to the cold and didn’t go swimming in the wild winter sea.

  Franjo, the Kraut’s back, she said coming inside. Grandpa puts the paper down and asks if there’s any beer without waiting for the answer because he already knows there isn’t any because there’s never any if Hans isn’t here, so he takes his wallet and heads for the store. Hans and Staka will be over before the hour’s up. That’s how long Hans needs to plunk in and dry off and Staka to sort out the camp trailer. Grandma calls them Krauts even though Staka is from Smederevo and isn’t a Kraut at all, but Grandma’s in the habit of giving joint names to everyone who comes to visit: our relatives from Zenica are Zeničanians, Auntie Mirjana and Uncle Momčilo are the Nikoličs, Uncle Ismet and Auntie Minka the Brkićs, Uncle Postnikov and Auntie Borka the Postnikovs, and Rajka and Božica the rubes, so it never takes much to know who’s over. Hans and Staka’s family name is Kirchmayer, so it’s easier to call them the Krauts than the Kirchmayers.

  Hans comes in hollering Hey Franjo, what’s up, what’s down, and gives Grandpa a hug, backslapping him so hard I always notice how full of dust Grandpa’s back was before Hans beat it out of him. Madame Olga, you just get more beautiful, like Greta Garbo in Ninotchka, Hans bows and kisses Grandma’s hand. Only Hans and actors in black-and-white films kiss women’s hands, I mean, maybe there are other people who kiss them too, but not in my life. Then he comes up to me: you’ve still got blond hair, if you’re blond the next time I see you I’ll teach you German so you can hit on a Berlin girl. He takes me in his arms, throws me in the air, and catches me. Every time I’m scared I’ll get stuck up on the ceiling and stay there like the saints in Sarajevo Cathedral.

  Staka stands to the side smiling, just waiting with a bag full of presents. She always gives me a bar of Braco chocolate because she thinks I’m the little boy on the cover, and I always tell her that I’m not, but it never helps. That’s Staka for you: She believes what she believes and that’s the end of it. Grandma says she couldn’t be with Hans if she were any different, but I don’t get what that is supposed to mean. Why couldn’t she be with Hans otherwise? I don’t know, probably she couldn’t be his wife or couldn’t travel to Drvenik with him unless she was sure that I was really the boy on the chocolate packet.

  The only time Hans stops shouting is when he talks to Grandma and Grandpa in German. Then he’s quiet like everyone else. He says he didn’t learn to speak our language but to shout it, and that if he had to speak it, he wouldn’t know a single word. Nobody believes him when he shouts that, but everyone laughs. Staka laughs along too, and I think that it’s real love when you can laugh along with someone even though you see them every day and you’ve lived with them your whole life or maybe a bit less.

  Hans became a German soldier when he turned eighteen and he came to fight in Yugoslavia. When I was little, two, three, four, I’d always look out for Hans in Partisan films because no one ever told me they were all actors and that in a film nothing’s real, but even then I knew none of them were Hans because they all died and Hans was still alive. Hans, were you at Sutjeska, I ask him. I was, I was, Hans yells, twice, with Staka and without Staka . . . And did you kill Sava Kovačević? . . . I didn’t, I shot up into the treetops, you know, into the pines. I was afraid of killing . . . So who killed Sava Kovačević? . . . I don’t know, there were lots of Germans, and when there are lots of people, it’s hard to know who’s killing whom.

  When the war finished, Hans got taken prisoner. He worked building a factory in Smederevo, Partisan Staka keeping watch on him through the crosshairs. Back then he didn’t know how to shout in our language, but there, from a distance and staring down the barrel of a machine gun, he told Staka he loved her, and when she somehow understood what he was saying she loaded the gun and sought permission from Commandant Joža Beraus to execute the prisoner. He said there had been enough killing, confiscated her rifle, and decreed that henceforth she had to keep guard unarmed. Staka bridled and burst into tears, and Commandant Joža gave her a hug and said lassie, you’re fifteen years old, and you’ve got no idea what that weapon’ll do to your sweet little finger, the one that wants to pull the trigger. You’re angry with me now, but one day you’ll say thank you, Uncle Joža.

  So it went, Partisan Staka guarded the prisoners, and every morning Hans clutched at the air in front o
f his chest, made the shape of a heart with his fingers, and blew the heart to Staka. She got mad and reported him to the commandant and got a chiding for her trouble: you should be ashamed of yourself, are you a Skojevka or are you not? You’re there to guard the prisoners, not to worry about their flirting. Things went on like this a whole six months, until one day Hans wasn’t a prisoner anymore and showed up at the construction site in an ugly gray suit and with an army satchel on his back. He stood before Partisan Staka, took a piece of paper from his pocket, and read aloud: I apologize if I offended you, but I loved you and loved it most when you were on guard to stop me escaping. I will always remember you.

  Staka spat at his feet, but not hard: just hard enough for him to get the message that she was a Partisan, and that he’d been an occupying soldier. Come the next day she was desolate without him. My heart has gone, she said, and someone reported her. Enough’s enough, said Commandant Joža, I’ve had it up to here with bloody kids who want to kill one minute and fall in love the next. He sent Staka packing, her Partisan days were over.

  Hans left for his city, but when he got there his street, his parents, his sisters, none of them were there anymore; everything lay in ruins, and what wasn’t in ruins was dead. Without a single living relative, Hans was left all alone. Back then I could have been a German or a Chinaman, it was all the same, you’re nothing without your kin. Staka was the only one Hans had, so he swung his step back to Yugoslavia. They put him straight in jail. Hans told them he wanted to be a Communist. They asked him why he wanted to be a Communist, and he said it was because of the working class and because he’d been left all alone in the world, and as a good Communist he wouldn’t be alone anymore. They said very well then, you can stay in Yugoslavia, but don’t let us catch you spying. Hans said he wouldn’t spy and headed for Smederevo to look for Staka.