Grandpa tells everyone he doesn’t fear death. When he’s coughing away in the morning thinking he’s never going to catch his breath again, he murmurs oh death, sweet death, as if he were wooing it because he’s fallen in love with it, but death’s not interested. Does death hurt? I ask. I don’t care if it hurts, just as long as it doesn’t suffocate. Grandpa doesn’t believe in pain and so nothing ever hurts him. Any kind of pain is something strange, like it’s got nothing to do with him. When he had a tooth out he told Leitner the dentist, our neighbor, take it out, but no injections, and Leitner said to him but Mr. Rejc, it’s not the Middle Ages. Grandpa ignored him and said I don’t care what age we’re in, so Leitner took his tooth out just like that and Grandpa didn’t even clench his fist in pain. My Franjo’s no hero, said Grandma, he’s just scared of the anesthetic. . I’m not scared of anesthetic, I just want to know what’s happening to me.
But Nikola, who’s from Ćmilj, he’s afraid of pain and dying and anesthetic. He comes over to see Grandpa and says Signore Franjo, I’m a dead dog am I, and Grandpa replies Nikola, buddy, get yourself off to the doctor, and Nikola mopes: I can’t, I don’t know if I’m more scared or more ashamed. After that Grandpa doesn’t say anything, just pours him a rakia and they just stare at each other until Nikola drinks up and leaves. Nikola comes over to our place so someone actually looks at him because in the village people have been looking straight through him for years. They go by him looking at the tips of their toes or out to sea, giving Nikola and his fears and his shame the widest berth. Some people say hi and look away at the same time, but most just make like he’s not even there, like he’s committed some terrible crime and you can’t forgive his just being alive.
Nikola’s got tuberculosis, and in Drvenik tuberculosis is a disgrace. He doesn’t go to the doctor because he’s ashamed and because his family won’t let him out of the house in any case. Everyone knows what he’s got, but it’s still better the doctors in Split don’t find out, that way at least the story doesn’t spread all the way there. When someone has tuberculosis in Sarajevo or in other cities, they aren’t ashamed and neither are their families, they just go to the doctor, stay in the hospital for a while, and go back home happy and healthy. A disgrace in the city is different from a disgrace in the countryside. In Drvenik it’s a disgrace Nikola’s got tuberculosis, but in Sarajevo it’s a disgrace when someone pees in the building hallway and they catch him.
There will be heavy rains this spring, that’s what Grandpa reads in the newspaper. That’s not good news for people with sick lungs. He and Nikola have both got sick lungs, but Nikola’s problem is infectious and Grandpa’s isn’t. His asthma is his business and he can’t give it to anyone else — except I could inherit it because he’s my grandpa — but Nikola could give his tuberculosis to anyone, especially if they blew their nose with his handkerchief. Once Nikola took his hankie out of his pocket and I got shivers up and down my spine. I wanted to grab it and blow my nose so bad. I’m scared of pain and the doctor and I don’t like being sick, but I wanted that hankie, and if Nikola had accidentally dropped it I would have grabbed it and got sick. It’s like when I’m standing on a really high balcony. I always want to jump, even though I wouldn’t like to be dead. Putting your nose into Nikola’s hankie is an adventure, but I know that I won’t because we’re not daredevils, we’re people quietly and politely getting on with our lives, and we don’t go looking for the real devil; he shows up on his own account. Daredevils spend all their time daring the devil, trying to catch him by the tail, but he gets away, and they just laugh and that’s why they burn bright and die young and are always a burden to everyone.
It’s really been raining a month now. Grandpa’s finding it hard to breathe and he’s always real pissed. Grandma says it won’t be his heart, asthma, or kidneys that kill him, but his impishness. Only Grandpa and I have impishness, but everyone yells at me because of mine and I have to scram so I don’t get it on the snout, but they never say anything to him when he’s being impish, they just stay out of his way, everyone except for Dad when he comes from Sarajevo. He’s always testing Grandpa for something, holding his hand and checking his pulse, tapping him with his finger, looking him up and down, and even though Grandpa answers all his questions he’s even more pissed when Dad goes. He’s pissed because he’s kept something to himself and now he feels guilty about it. Asthma is for Grandpa what a cake-baking disaster is for Grandma: It’s something that chanced upon him one day and made him sick, but it didn’t just happen to him all willy-nilly but because he’d done something wrong and because in life in general he didn’t know the ratio of flour to milk to eggs or something else you make life with, so that’s why he got asthma, to torture and suffocate him and it would always be his own fault. It’s always worse when it’s your own fault because then you’re even more pissed with everyone else. And there’s something more besides: Grandma can hide her baking from guests and no one ever knows about it, but Grandpa can’t hide his asthma from anyone because we all hear him wheeze when he breathes. There was a time when roosters woke people in the morning in Metjaš and Drvenik, but now my grandpa’s cough does the job. He coughs away and all the while fathers are tying their ties, mothers are getting ready for the office, and fishermen are returning to shore.
It looks like Nikola died, said Grandma when she came back from the store. What do you mean — it looks like he died, Grandpa asked. That’s what it looks like, nobody wants to say anything but they’ve all gone to Lučica, the whole village is there. The road to Zaostrog has probably collapsed. . Can we go to Lučica too, I asked. No, we can’t, looking at a dead man isn’t like going to the circus. It’s always like that, the minute something interesting happens in Drvenik I’m not allowed to see it and they always tell me it’s not a circus, that it’s not for my eyes and it would be better if I put a sock in it and quit asking my questions. I’m going to miss all the important stuff, so when I’m in Sarajevo and they ask me what’s up in Drvenik I’ll only be able to say I don’t know because my grandma and grandpa didn’t let me see if there was anything up.
The next day I found out what happened to Nikola. All the kids were talking about it so I just made like I knew it all already and hung on their every word. He took ill where the highway makes a sharp bend and sat down on a rock even though it was raining. He felt so bad he preferred getting wet to walking. Then he started to cough up blood. There was more and more blood and it rained harder and harder. In the end he coughed up all the blood inside him, but the rain was so hard it washed the blood away and half the highway turned pink like someone had melted the Pink Panther and poured him all over the road. Blood goes from red to pink in the rain and that’s why it’s better to bleed in the rain because then you don’t scare anyone. Nikola wouldn’t have been scared, or at least less scared than if he’d bled on a sunny day when all the colors would have been brighter and there would have been nothing to make the red blood go Pink Panther pink.