We drive slowly through the village and we pass people with inflatable mattresses and a girl wearing a rubber ring with a duck’s head around her waist, half girl, half duck. People we know line the roadside, Auntie Senka, Uncle Tomislav, Granny Tere, they wave to us because they know we’re not leaving like we do every year but we’re leaving forever. Grandma waves back and I lower my head because I’m ashamed. I’m ashamed because something important in our lives is happening and everyone knows about it. Important things are supposed to happen in secret. We should have slipped away in the night while everyone was still asleep, so that no one saw or heard us or knew we’d gone. They might’ve thought we’d never been there in the first place. In actual fact, we should have made our exit as if we had died too.
Uncle Naci is driving us, my uncle from Ilidža. He’s got whiskers, glasses with black frames, and size thirty-nine shoes, and he looks to me like a French table-tennis player who’s always going to lose to a Chinaman in the end. He turns around and asks are you sad, I say no, I’m not sad, and stare out at the tiny heads of bathers in the glistening sea, two yachts far from shore and Hvar still farther off, right out there on the horizon where earth and sky meet, where Hvarians live, who, before they took me to the island for the first time, I thought were half human, half Martian.
I don’t know if I’m sad, I just know that I’m scared, but I’m not admitting to one or the other. One shouldn’t ask such questions, and when I grow up, the first chance I get I’m going to say one shouldn’t ask such questions, because there’s only one answer, there’s only no, no, no, there’s always only no, I’m not sad, I’m not scared, I’m not anything, and now everyone can smile themselves to death and jump for joy and have everything fall out of their pockets and jingle on the asphalt because for the zillionth time someone said they’re not sad and not scared, but everyone well knows that that’s exactly what you say when you’re sad and scared but don’t dare tell.
Down there in the pines, poor little Fićo’s down there, I tap Uncle Naci on the shoulder. Fićo, who’s that?. . He’s not a person, he’s a car. He flew off the highway last summer and nobody’s come to get him yet. . Maybe that’s because he’s just a wreck and he’s no use to anyone now. . No, that’s not the reason. It’s because Fićo doesn’t have any family anymore because they all died, the driver and the two passengers. . Poor things. . No, last summer they were poor things, but now Fićo is the only poor thing. They took them to Bjelovar and buried them there because they were from Bjelovar, but Fićo stayed down in the pines, even though he’s from Bjelovar too. I saw his license plates. . Doesn’t matter where a wreck’s buried. A wreck is just a heap of junk. . Fićo isn’t a heap of junk, he’s a poor little Fićo and he was their car. Someone loved him once. Uncle Naci shrugged and the Duck shrugged with him — there you go, now let him say the Duck might be a heap of junk one day too — just like grown-ups always shrug when they don’t understand something and you have to explain it to them. Nothing is forever, so what if someone used to love him. Now he’s a heap of junk, end of story, he said. Are dead people a heap of junk too? I asked, and I knew what he was going to say in reply, just like I knew that dead people actually meant my grandpa. Quit your babbling, Grandma cut in, and Uncle Naci just drove and kept his mouth shut all the way to Sarajevo.
The city was steaming and empty. The river stunk like a million people had forgotten to flush a million toilets. I came to the conclusion that someone had to be responsible for all of this, or that I was being punished for something I hadn’t done but for which I’m being punished anyway, and everyone knows about it and now treats me like I’m a jailbird or a prisoner of war on some Pacific island, in a film where Japanese people scream and shout, women write letters, and Lee Marvin lies tied up in the sand, the sun burning his eyes. Poooo! I said as we passed the National Library. You little brat! Mom tried to hit me, but I moved out of the way in time. She’s been pissed since we arrived. Don’t think she doesn’t love you, Grandma whispered. I made like I didn’t hear her; I moved farther away, dead set I wasn’t going to say anything else. That I was never going to say anything else ever again. I don’t care if the Miljacka stinks, she can yell all she likes, anything can happen, but I’m never saying anything ever again.
The whole problem is that my mom is scared of me. She’s not scared of me per se, she’s scared because she’s got a kid. She wasn’t scared before because Grandpa was alive, because we were apart a lot and then she could see how I was growing up. When someone’s always there with you, you don’t notice how much they’re changing, they’re always the same to you and you only see their bad sides. Since we came to Sarajevo forever, Mom and I have discovered each other’s bad sides. I don’t know all the bad things she’s discovered about me and I don’t want to think about all the bad things I’ve discovered about her, but it’s like we’re really disappointed in each other, and that most of all, we’re disappointed because we’re scared. In the fall I’ll be going to Silvije Strahimir Kranjčević elementary school; I don’t know anyone there and I don’t want to get to know anyone. I want to be invisible and only show up every now and then, show my face to my dead grandpa for example, who is nice because he keeps quiet and doesn’t get angry, he doesn’t do anything, but he still exists somewhere, in my head, in Mom and Grandma when they avoid opening the wardrobe where his ties are still hanging, still crumpled in the spot where he tied the knot.
Dad arrives like the guy from the ads on TV. He takes something out of his pocket or briefcase, says something important, and for the rest of the day this sets the tone for all of us. This is possible because Dad only comes over once a week so he has six days to think something important up. Today we’re going to take a good look around our local environs and we’re going to drink miracle water from a special spring, just for us men, he said, packing us into the Renault 4. I felt a little like puking but tightened my tummy to stop it slipping out, and when a bit slipped out I’d swallow it. You need to puke? Mom asked on the approach to Olovo. No! I said. That was a mistake. I shouldn’t have opened my mouth: The second I opened it I puked right down Dad’s neck while he was driving. He just sunk his head down a little bit between his shoulders, his neck getting shorter somehow, and kept driving until we got to the first road-house. He stripped off his shirt and went over to wash it at the hose. He was wearing an undershirt that looked like a fishing net, his gray hair poking out everywhere from underneath. From behind my dad looked like a monkey someone had dressed in a human undershirt for a laugh. Don’t worry about it, said Mom, but for chrissakes, next time don’t lie, if you need to puke say you need to puke, it’s fine. I was real surprised neither Mom nor Dad was mad at me. Normally they get mad about much smaller stuff. When you say you’re fine, act tough and make like there’s no way you’re going to puke, no one holds it against you even if you do. I don’t know why it’s like that, but the next time I need to puke I won’t let out a peep either.