On the morning of the third day Nano heaved two deep sighs and stopped breathing. Life ends with a sigh, that’s no surprise at all. When I sigh I say to myself okay, fine, let’s start again from the beginning. Sighs are like sleeping, they separate life into a thousand thousand pieces, and before going to bed you put them together and that’s how memories are made. There’s no sighing or sleeping in memories; in memory life is whole again. When death came Nano sighed, told the deep coma well that’s that, and left without saying goodbye. The deep coma waved to him, but Nano didn’t see it, so it was left there with its hand in the air. Nobody ever says goodbye to deep comas when they leave.
Dad hugged Mom and whispered we lost him. Mom cried a little on his white coat, then Dad called Dr. Smajlović over and said exitus, and Dr. Smajlović looked at his watch, took out his fountain pen, and entered the exact time of death in Nano’s hospital notes. Even though they straight-out forget it, don’t have to tell anyone, and nobody ever inquires about the hours and minutes in question, the exact time of death is very important to doctors. In a filing cabinet somewhere there’s a file with the time of death written down, just in case it becomes important one day as some details in life do. Auntie Doležal is of the view that one day God is going to assemble all souls and assign them grades. The time of death in one’s hospital notes is just waiting for that day, even though we live in communism and none of the doctors believes God exists. But like our own, this belief is a little shaky. So, who knows, maybe Nano will appear before God and maybe God’ll say so often you used to say I didn’t exist, and now you’re not in the least surprised to see me.
Dad and Mom went outside. He took out a packet of cigarettes, and Mom said look how much snow there is already. The snow was as thick as the pillows in the rooms of gentle giants, falling without pause on Mom’s black jacket and Dad’s white doctor’s coat. By the time they’d each finished their cigarette their shoulders were covered in snow, and if a bird had chanced overhead, they would have looked as white as each other, my mom and dad, and the bird would’ve thought them two creatures of winter, in love.
Mom said go, you’ll catch cold, and he said no; I think in that instant he was ready to remain in the snow forever, just to hear her say that go, you’ll catch cold a few more times. A love sometimes returns like a word you believe to be true, then it flies away and never comes back; but in its wake it leaves a brilliant trail, which gives a winter morning a certain meaning, and so even after a farewell a little hope remains — let’s say the hope of stumbling upon the magic word, even if it comes after a death and the sacrifice of a Nano.
A taxi arrived and Dad asked do you want to see him again? They went back inside, the taxi driver opened his newspaper and switched the meter on. Nano’s pillow was gone, Mom looked at him but didn’t cry, she just stood there silently, not moving, at a loss. She’d seen her uncle for the last time and knew that from now on she’d only be able to imagine his face or look at him in photographs. He was dead, and she’d seen him for the last time in her life. When she leaves this room, something in her will be forever, just as death is forever. My mom felt a little dead, something she’d later repeat quite often. There was no sadness in the story, just astonishment in the face of how little it takes for one to bid farewell to the world, just a single glance, how much one sees each day for the last time in one’s life, unaware, not thinking, goodbyes the furthest thing from one’s mind.
Dad went up to Nano, placed his hand on his forehead, and said the last gentleman. Every summer he’d play Preference with Nano in the gardens in Ilidža, and Nano would tell him stories about Vienna and the beautiful Jewesses who in the fall of 1917, as the dual monarchy crumbled, would open their ladies’ umbrellas, their ankles so slender and angular, so fragile you had to approach them on tiptoes in case they would break. Dad didn’t know anything about Vienna or Viennese women. He grew up in a harsh, hard world in which you had to guard your refinement and sensitivity, and for him Nano was someone from another world, one where things of beauty seemed inherent and certain, where now forgotten words still existed, a world where such things could be preserved. That morning my dad only managed to remember the word gentleman.
So in the end I missed out on the wristwatch. Nano was buried the day after Christmas, Mom baked her cakes, and everything was ready in time for a strange celebration at which nobody celebrated anything, but because of me, she and Grandma decided we couldn’t just skip New Year’s. They went around the house all in black, the mood not festive in the least. I don’t understand this! I never understood how they didn’t know how to celebrate and grieve at the same time: celebrate the special occasion and grieve because of Nano’s death. With them it was always one or the other, as if they were scared someone was secretly watching them, testing the depth of their grief and the height of their celebration. When Nano died they wouldn’t have paid any mind if I laughed at little slant-eyed mothers, but they weren’t on the news anymore. The war in Vietnam was over, and other wars didn’t make the news in the lead-up to New Year’s. What a shame! If I’d laughed Mom wouldn’t have started with the nurturing stuff. That was a sure bet.
Dad came over on New Year’s Eve, bringing something with a thousand pieces. He sat down in the middle of the room and began putting it together. I sat down next to him, my hands on my knees, waiting to see what it would be. I wanted his building to go on and on, that we would stay here forever, in this room, on this rug, that the whole world would wait until we were finished, that nothing would happen before Dad had built whatever he was building, that time would stand still too, that everyone would look at their watches believing everything comes to an end, that eventually they’d see what he’d built, that it would be and stay like this forever and that nothing would ever happen anymore.
My dummy dear
Dad brought the kitten home. It’d been meowing in a doorway up on Koševo in the late-November rain, a little black kitten the size of a child’s hand, one eye open, the other closed. Kittens are born with their eyes closed; sight only comes when they’ve sniffed and licked the world around them, once they know what they’re going to see. Dad had it in his pocket, I had to, he said, it’s okay, said Mom. Grandma fetched a saucer of milk and an eyedropper. Placing the kitten in her lap, she turned it on its back and fed it, drop by drop, while Mom and Dad discussed its chances of survival. Grandma didn’t say anything, not then, and not in the days to follow. I’d head off to school and she’d be there with the dropper in her right hand and the kitten’s head in her left, and when I came back she’d be doing the same. And so it went for days. It was three weeks before the kitten began to drink milk on its own, to explore the house and to purr. When her other eye opened we knew she would live.