The photo where I’m in a cardboard box, I mean, in my car, driving to America, was taken by a German guy last summer. Back then I was afraid of having my picture taken. Actually, that wasn’t what I was afraid of; I was afraid of injections, and every week they’d trick me into having an injection, so I started pretending I was scared of having my picture taken too. As soon as I spotted someone with a camera I’d burst into tears and run for my life. Put a camera in front of me and I was even prepared to jump into the sea, and I was only three and a half and didn’t know how to swim, that’s how much I pretended about being scared of having my picture taken. I kept it up for months, and they all tried, Mom, Dad, even Grandpa, until one day this German showed up, because Grandpa used to translate tourist stuff for them, and the German crept into the bushes and hid there until I got into the car, and just as I was about to turn the ignition he jumped out and snapped. I let out a howl but it was already too late.
The German sent the photo from Germany, and Grandma put it in an album to show guests. Some aunties from Sarajevo who I didn’t know, but were important and had gray hair as blue as the sea — I didn’t get it how something could be gray and blue at the same time — said uuuu, what a sweet little boy, he could be in a fashion magazine, and I was so embarrassed that I’d lower my head, shrug my shoulders, and hide my eyes. So they’d see I was a dimwit and leave me in peace. When they gave me a hug I’d go all floppy like a chicken just come from the butcher’s, and let them pinch my cheeks with their thumbs and fore-fingers, all the while their gray heads blue like the sea smelling of pickled paprika, roses, and high fever.
It was hard for me to hit the road after the photo, because it got tougher and tougher to turn the box into a car, because that photo, where it was clear as day that I wasn’t in a car but an ordinary cardboard box that used to have little packets of cookies in it, was always in front of me. Photos are like grown-ups because they show everything in a way that can only make you get all worried; in photos everything looks like it’ll never change, like it’ll never turn into anything else. Nothing is as you imagined and it never will be, the only thing you can be sure of is that in the picture you’ll look confused, confused smiley or confused angry, because your eyes see everything differently to how the camera sees it, and now they’re there in the photo without all the stuff you’ve imagined, and the whole world appears exactly as it would if there were no one who played and no one who made anything up, there’s just the eyes that once saw other stuff and now are confused because that stuff’s not in the photo.
I lie in the dark and can’t stop my breathing, I can’t sleep, and I can’t be here when morning comes. Tomorrow I’m going a long way away and I won’t be back. I’m never coming back, and I’ll never again look them in the eyes, nobody who knows, not Grandma or Grandpa, not Mom or Dad. It’s all finished with them. I said to myself if only they were dead, but I know they won’t die and that they’ll grab my head and force me to look them in the eyes, and in my eyes they’ll look for me, their child, the one they can do anything to if they think it best for him. I don’t like them doing what’s best for me because everything that’s best for me makes me cry and turn into something I don’t know the name of, but it looks like a box that turns into a car and then back into a box; I’m that box when they do what’s best for me.
In the morning I’ll hop into the car and go far away. I’m going to screw my eyes shut tight and then open them and take a good hard look. If it’s still a box and not a car I’ll set off on foot, taking only the essentials, just the stuff I won’t be able to do without when I get where I’m going: my little yellow spade, my teddy bunny, and my winter sweater. Everything else I’m leaving behind for them, for the child they get to take my place and who won’t be called Miljenko, because from tomorrow on they’re going to cry whenever anybody says Miljenko. I know they’re going to cry; they’re going to cry like they do when someone dies, but I’m not going to die, I’m simply going to leave. But I’m going forever, and when you go forever it’s like you’re dead for those who remain.
It all started on a Saturday. Mom and Dad arrived from Sarajevo, and Grandma said the kid hasn’t been on the potty for three days. Dad raised an eyebrow — three days? — and I was already scared, but I pretended I couldn’t hear anything and continued building a castle for Queen Forgetful, my heart pounding hard. I thought they were going to grab me by my hands and legs and cart me off to the hospital or some other place, some big toilet where nurses, paddles in hand, scare little boys into pooping. But nothing happened. Dad gave me a hug and said my little man, and Mom said you’re not having any more chocolate ’cause chocolate blocks you up, giving Grandma another dirty look like she was about to scream at her for stuffing me with chocolate, but Grandma hadn’t, and we all well knew that. Grandma says that bananas and chocolate are luxuries and that we should eat spinach and carrots because spinach is good for the blood and carrots for the eyes, but best of all, they’re not luxuries. A luxury is something you should be ashamed of because Mom and Dad work from morning until night and we can’t indulge in luxuries and eat bananas and chocolate, because Mom and Dad could lose their jobs because of bananas and chocolate, and then we’d die of hunger like those black people because we’d all have to live off Grandpa’s pension.
On Sunday Dad went to Makarska but came back before lunch. They were really good at the medical center. Not a problem, what are colleagues for, how about a cup of coffee, how are things in Sarajevo, just a minute, the nurse will bring it out to you. And they didn’t charge me a thing, he said. I slunk under the table thinking: if he calls me to come out in that wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly voice I’m gonna yell and get ready for a fight because that wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly voice always means one thing — an injection’s coming my way. If he calls me to say I’ve got to take a pill, then I’ll come out because it’s beneath his dignity as a doctor to lie to a patient and be there waiting with an injection instead of a pill. That’s what he once said and I took him on his word.
I waited anxiously, not letting out a peep. And they knew I was waiting and were all silent too. Dad got up from the table, took a glass, and filled it with water. He crouched down next to the table, but I was already pressed up against the wall. Here you go, this is a pill for constipation, you gotta take it, you gotta drink up, he said as if he were scared of me. Actually, I think he was a little scared that I was going to start howling, and I was sure he’d spent ages dreaming up that word constipation, which didn’t even exist, he just dreamed it up so I’d believe he was talking to me like I was a grown-up.
Anyway, I took the pill and drank up. Grandma asked when it should start working and Dad said if nothing’s happened after twenty-four hours and six pills, then. . I froze, because he didn’t say what would happen then, and I already knew it was going to be something terrible and that’s why he interrupted himself, so I wouldn’t hear. They’re going to take me to the hospital to see the surgeon and he’s going to cut my tummy open and take all the poop out.
Grandma asked you want to go potty? But I didn’t. A bit later she brought the potty over, c’mon, sit down, maybe you’ll go poopoo, so I sat down, but nothing happened. C’mon, squeeze a little, she said. Mom rolled her eyes, and Dad said it’ll all be fine, and Grandpa sat there the whole time chuckling to himself, trying to keep it down so no one would hear him and Grandma wouldn’t call him an old hillbilly. The thing is, for Grandpa everything to do with farting, the toilet, and going to the shittery, which is what he used to say when someone — usually me — needed to go poop, was the funniest thing ever, and he’d laugh like he was retarded because he thought nature invented these things to give people something to smirk about and make women get embarrassed.