My uncle and his wife still helped us out, but less and less. He was worried he’d lose his job in Slovenia, so he was saving for a tractor. One day he brought me a blue soccer jersey and cleats and told me a junior soccer league, the Pioneers, would be starting at the Miners Croatian Soccer Club. I was excited, but anxious because he said each boy would be asked to show what he could do with a soccer ball. I didn’t have one. I felt a little better when Franjo, my only friend, said that he was going to try out for soccer, too. He was in fourth grade and lived a few houses down from me toward the Mura.
The very fact that his parents had named him Franjo suggested they didn’t care much for him. It was the kind of name that made you think of granddads, and his last name was Klanz. So of course everybody called him Franz Klanz. His parents were pretty old and drank a lot, which I knew because they didn’t mow their grass often. I also knew they were poor, because they had a black-and-white TV set with no remote, and for Christmas they just had a scrawny little tree on the table with colored bulbs that blinked nervously, and—this was the biggest giveaway—they used a wooden outhouse behind their house. The outhouse must’ve clogged up for a while, so they did their business outside, in the garden and the bushes. They had a dog they tied to a scraggly tree on such a short leash that it could hardly move. Its head would poke out from one side of the tree, its rump from the other. Sometimes it had to sleep half standing and half lying in its own shit because it had no way to kick dirt over it. Every time Franz’s dad walked by the dog, he’d deliver a kick to its muzzle. The dog was overjoyed when someone tossed it a scrap of something from the kitchen window, along with cusses and reminders that it was a mongrel and ought to be grateful to be getting anything at all and they were so kind. Franz’s mom always smelled of wine and onions, and talked like she was sleepy. In the morning she’d go to the store and come back with only bottles. Once, around nine at night, she came over to our house, and I heard her say that guests had stopped by, and she was wondering if, by any chance, she could borrow a bottle of wine or something a bit stronger. She took pains to be polite, talked loud and fast, and laughed at herself for not having wine to serve her guests. Mom gave her a bottle, and after she left, we watched her through the window. There was nobody at their house as far as we could tell. Mom told me she was a drunk, and I shouldn’t be like that. I asked her how much a person has to drink to become a drunk, but she couldn’t say. I reminded her that during the grape harvest everybody said they’d have a little to “make them abler” or to “give them cunning.” Then she said drunks are people who can’t stop drinking. I thought that could never happen to me because my cousin and I took Uncle’s beer to Granny’s bedroom and tried it one Christmas, and it was disgusting. It burned in my mouth, nose, and throat, and I couldn’t imagine why anybody would want to drink it, no matter how cunning or able they’d be.
I often heard yelling from the Klanz house. At first I had the impression that Franz was a bit dense, but he talked a lot and fast, and he repeated words and sentences, so I started doing the same. His special talent was saying words backward. He was proud of this, because neither of us knew anybody who was as smooth at it as he was. We had every reason to believe he was the world champion at saying words backward. He was Znarf, or Ojnarf, Znalk, and I was, Ajitam Cečnelod. He explained that the secret was to picture the word and then flip it around. I liked him because his head was too big for his body, and I thought that as he got bigger his head would grow, too, and nobody would want to play with him. His eyebrows were always arched in the middle, which made his eyes look sad, but his mouth always stretched to the sides as if he were smiling. This made him look happy and sad at the same time. I saw no contradiction in this. Every day at home his eyes saw ugly things, but his mouth didn’t.
We went to school and Mass together. He’d talk, and I’d be quiet and sit with my thoughts. When I was with him, in a strange way it was like I was by myself. When I was there without him, it seemed like I wasn’t really there, or that I was somebody else. I didn’t always listen to what he was saying, but I was glad for his company. He talked, and I looked at my toes in the grass, and that was enough that day for me to count myself among the happier beings.
2.
In early May 1991, about two weeks before the suicides began, the killing had already started in eastern Croatia, and people in the village spoke with a terrible satisfaction about the special forces and the massacre at Borovo. Franz and I were worried about our first soccer league meeting. For days he’d wondered if they’d choose him to be goalie. He asked if we should go alone or with his dad. I was scared of his dad, so I suggested we go alone. There hadn’t been a junior league in our village before, but Goran Brezovec, son of the new village head, had reached junior soccer age, so a team was in the making. Within a few years, they said, there’d be a generation of strong young players. The coach was going to be Bogdan from Mursko Središće, who’d played for the Miners some years back and was famous for having slid into the best player from the neighboring village and breaking both of his legs. After that he drank for free at both bars in our village. When we got to the field, Bogdan was in a heated discussion with some men. His gaze was glassy, and his pudgy, ruddy, calloused face hinted that he often enjoyed his drinking privilege.
Franz and I didn’t know where to stand, so we waited by the fence and eavesdropped on some grown-ups. A smallish man was saying what a little skeezicks his boy was, how he was as good as the older boys, how quick and nimble he was. I tried to figure out who he was pointing to, and it turned out he meant Krunek, who was maybe the clumsiest of them all. He was too tall, and when his feet struck the ground, they weren’t in line with his knees and hips. He couldn’t hang on to the ball; somebody would kick it out from beneath him every time. At one point he fell, and all three men stopped talking.
“Krunek, come here,” yelled the little man. “Just wait till you see him do his push-ups. He does fifty like it’s nothing. I’ve been coaching him myself. Yep, indeedy, that’s my boy. Krunek, show us your push-ups.”
“Now don’t push yourself so hard, Krunek, don’t tucker yourself out before the training starts,” cautioned Coach Bogdan.
Krunek threw himself to the ground and began doing push-ups. He did the first four at the same pace, the fifth and sixth slower, and after the seventh his arms started wobbling. His shoulders sagged, and his head hung down, as if all he needed was to catch his breath for a minute and then he’d pump another forty in no time flat, but nothing happened. An awkward silence settled in, interrupted by Krunek’s dad: “Well, what’s wrong? Do it.”
Krunek took a deep breath, shoulders sagging, and lowered himself one more time but couldn’t push himself back up, and so he collapsed on the ground. His father hoisted him up and shook him, supposedly for getting mud on his shorts. The men went on talking soccer, and I began telling Franz about my dad.
I told him how my dad had played soccer in Germany and had been able to nail bicycle-kick goals, so his teammates had carried him on their shoulders and bought him a car that went over a hundred miles an hour, but he didn’t dare drive it in Yugoslavia. I told Franz how Dad had flown a plane on the weekends because he was a pilot. Then a man named Zdravko Tenodi interrupted me.
“Hey, hey, what’s this I’m hearing? Where was it now your daddy played?” He was frowning and cocking his head to the side, looking at me as though with intense interest. He smirked, spoke loudly, and jabbed the man beside him with his elbow.