Let’s hit the road, said Dad. The shirt was on a hanger hanging out the window to dry. Mom kept looking back to see how I was doing, and Dad drove in his undershirt, from behind looking like those truck drivers you see in American films. A stranger who caught a glimpse of us at that particular moment would’ve thought we were a happy family who did everything in life together. In actual fact, maybe back then we were a happy family, and maybe our life consisted of two parts that alternated back and forth, on and off, something like that. In the first part they were divorced and lived their totally separate lives. She was sore because he was how he was and because fate had had her meet him, and he was sore because he hadn’t known how to hold on to her and had done everything wrong, and grown men aren’t allowed to do everything wrong. Only Mom and Dad knew the truth about that first part, nobody else, and if they did tell other people anything about themselves and their dead marriage, then — and this I’m sure of — they only told lies or said things to shift the blame. In the other part of their life, which occurred once a week or twice a year, the two of them were a happy family, bound to me like horses tied to a waterwheel plodding one behind the tail of the other, never touching the whole day through.
We arrived in Kladanj. The hotel was empty; the receptionist stood at the counter, head resting on the guest book, asleep on his feet. The waiter was whistling one of those songs where there’s a couple who love each other, but one is sick and the other gloomy. He carried a big silver tray, his face contorted in a grimace, and it appeared a distinct possibility that when the song was finished, he was going to slam the tray against the wall, rip his waiter’s jacket off, and throw himself in the river, heartbroken that whatever had happened in the song had happened. I don’t understand why people sing and whistle those kinds of songs if afterward they’re going to feel so bad they want to smash stuff.
What can I get you? the waiter said, having forgotten to change the expression on his face. Two coffees and a Coca-Cola, said Dad. We’re out of Coke! the waiter shot back. Fine, a cloudy juice then, Dad quickly recovered. Coffee, coffee, and a cloudy, the waiter translated the order into waiters’ language, and showed up a couple of minutes later with his tray balanced like a circus act. The coffee cups and juice glass slid from one end of his tray to the other, but they never collided, and he didn’t spill a drop either. Pleased with himself, he completely forgot the song with the sick and gloomy lovers.
There’s a pool behind the hotel, shall we take a look? Dad knew this place well. Mom didn’t care either way. C’mon, c’mon, I jumped up. The pool was big and blue, that blue color you only see in swimming pools, but there was no one in the water and no one just hanging out. Full to the brim with water, a totally deserted pool stretched out before us. Up above there was a diving board as high as a skyscraper. Shame we don’t have our swimming gear, I said. It wouldn’t be allowed, Dad hurried, and Mom gave him the look you give people when you’ve caught them lying like a dog. Dad was sorry he ever mentioned the pool, because even though it was impossible, he now thought we were going to strip off and jump in, and that he’d have to stand there on the edge and simper, and that we’d try and get him to jump in too and then he’d have to dream up an explanation and excuse why he can’t. The thing is, my dad can’t swim, and he thinks I don’t know that. Mom told me ages ago that he never learned to swim and that he’s ashamed about it. She told me that he’s even more ashamed because he suspects that I can, but he’s too embarrassed to say or ask anything. He’s made such a fine art of not swimming I never notice what I already know, so we can be in Drvenik for fifteen days and the whole time it seems perfectly natural he never goes in the water.
Nice diving board, said Mom, and then went and climbed right up to the top. Fully clothed, one step at a time, she walked slowly out along the board, which was trembling and wobbling under her weight. When she got to the end she looked down and spread her arms wide as if she was going to fly away, but then slowly let them fall. Dad looked up at her, beads of sweat lining his forehead, he opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something, and he did want to say something, but he didn’t know how, or whether to say it to me or to her. Mom spread her arms wide again, the board trembled beneath her, she laughed at the depths below, and then let her arms fall, happy, like someone who has scaled a great height and now really feels they’re on top of everything in their life and that nothing bad can happen anymore, because people are tiny as ants, houses are small like they’re made out of Lego blocks, and there isn’t a single problem or fear that doesn’t shrink from such a height.
Is she going to jump? I asked, not caring that she was still in her clothes, high up there, and that water is hard when you hit it from that high. I didn’t care that my mom could smash like a glass object or come out of the pool dripping wet, in her bright skirt and her shoes, her hairdo all messed up, even though when that happens Mom gets depressed, takes Lexilium, and says she’s old and already halfway gone, her best years behind her and that nothing beautiful will ever happen to her again. I wanted her to jump so bad, just as she was, so that in the pool she’d turn into something else and then climb out, or that the sleepy receptionist and desperate waiter would drag her out, that we’d call an ambulance, that she’d lie on the edge of the pool, that Dad would check her pupils and take her pulse, happy and relieved to have her back on dry land, and that on dry land you don’t need to know how to swim.
Is she going to jump? I asked louder so he couldn’t say he didn’t hear me. I don’t know, she shouldn’t, his voice sounded like he’d been hauled in front of a firing squad and he’d wanted to die bravely, but what can you do, he’d shit his pants. Why shouldn’t she, of course she should, why did she climb up there if she’s not going to jump?. . It’s awfully high, and she’s still got her clothes on. . So what, her clothes will dry out, why doesn’t she just jump? I was impatient and enjoying his fear; I wanted it to go on and on, that she would stand up there and spread her arms wide, that we would torment him until he burst out crying. She was tormenting him for her own reasons, probably because of a truth she’ll never tell anyone, and I was tormenting him because I was enjoying it. I was tormenting my dad like I torment ants, removing their little legs and wings, watching how they thrash around trying to walk with a missing leg as though it were still there, because they’re ashamed someone might notice, that other ants might notice they’re missing something, and that in the ant world they’re never going to be what they once were. I beg you, don’t let her jump, Dad stammered, begging me for the first time, the first time in my life, that is — it had never happened before because he was big, and I was a kid. I had already known that this day would come, the day when fathers beg their children, I knew it from the story of my grandpa’s dying, the one I wasn’t supposed to know but did because they didn’t know how to keep anything secret, because they’d always mess up thinking I was asleep or that I couldn’t hear what they were saying behind closed doors. Grandpa lay on the bed where I’d slept since we came back from Drvenik, they brought him from the hospital because he wanted to die at home. Maybe he thought he wouldn’t die if they brought him home; you can’t die among things that remember you being alive. Mom sat at his feet, sometimes he brought his middle and index finger to his lips, I beg you, give me a cigarette, he said, no Dad, you’re not allowed to smoke, she replied, though she knew it didn’t matter because when someone’s going to die, nothing can damage their health anymore. They stayed there in silence for half an hour, he’d bring his fingers to his lips, the only sound the rustling of starched bed linen. No one knew why Grandma starched the linen, maybe so our every movement, including our very last one — before sleep and before death — left a rustle behind. Then he repeated I beg you, give me a cigarette, and she yelled all stroppy don’t be crazy, Dad, you’re not allowed to smoke, because she thought she had to hide death from him. Grandpa looked at her with his blue eyes, our blue eyes. There aren’t many people in the world with blue eyes, but our whole family has them. Don’t you be crazy, I know it all already and beg you to the high heavens, give me a cigarette, he said. Mom says he said it with a melancholic inflection in his voice, but I don’t believe her because I know Grandpa yelled with all the might of the dying, and that there was no melancholic inflection because one thing he couldn’t stand was horseshitting. She lit a cigarette, took a drag, and gave it to him, his last cigarette, the cigarette for which he as a father had had to beg his child. One day I saw a young guy and his girlfriend in front of the Hotel Europa, first they kissed and then she lit a cigarette, took a drag, and held it out to him. One day when I’m grown up, if I ever see a guy and girl do that again, I’ll tell them that you’re not supposed to do that and that they should wait until they’re on death’s door before they start that stuff.