Armin laughed, “Boy Wonder, you’re not too swift!”
Then he explained that he and the innkeeper have been locked in combat for over fifteen months. As a result, they know each other better than Flash Gordon and Dr. Zarkov. From a distance they have already studied each other in minute detail.
“You know,” Armin said, “the innkeeper would probably be my best friend if I didn’t have to kill him. The Redcoats are people like us, don’t forget. Their only mistake was choosing to be Redcoats. Mind you, if it were any other way, life would be very boring, wouldn’t it? Instead of DC Comics, say, or Luno’s Big Book of Comic Strips, there’d be only blank notebooks in which you could write nonsense or draw love-hearts with Cupid’s arrows and silly things like that. You’ll understand when you grow up, Harun. Boy, does it piss me off that a fucking Redcoat has a tattoo of Zagor.”
I continued to nod my head while Armin was speaking, because I knew that if I stopped for a moment or, even worse, tried to ask him any questions, like the one about his scars, he’d just snap at me and say, “You’re dumb, Boy Wonder,” and refuse to look at me again.
But I know that Armin is lying when he says that he owns all the comic strips featuring Zagor, and that he knows the number of each adventure. Because when I said to him, “Chico the Seducer,” he replied, “Four hundred and thirty-seven.” He was wrong, of course, so I ran home to fetch Chico the Seducer, number 239, but when I got back he was nowhere to be seen.
You never really get to know his movements. Most of the time he’s in Muče’s café, unless he’s gone to fetch water for his mother. But then you try to pin him down and he claims he was in the war zone fighting the Redcoats. In fact, I happen to know that he’s deeply ashamed to have lied about the scars he doesn’t have, and the comics he doesn’t possess, and the back issues he doesn’t know. I don’t say anything, however. Armin is still a fighter, and you should always be grateful to them. I am useful to him in terms of logistics — which is to say, I bring him lots of comics.
Once I gave Armin an unused bullet, and he was really pleased. He put it in his shirt pocket and said, “Boy Wonder, I promise you I’ll take out Mitar Kalpoš with your bullet. I had him in my sights, you know, at least three times, but I wasn’t in the mood. Now I’m going to jump out of the trench straight in his line of fire, and as soon as he puts his finger on the trigger, I’ll kill him with your bullet. And I’ll tell everybody that Robin has once again saved Batman’s life. You know what your bullet means, don’t you, Boy Wonder? It means that the damn raving Redcoats will never capture Ontario or float down the Miljacka in a steamboat!”
For a month now Armin has not returned from Mount Igman. I’m worried in case something’s happened to him. Perhaps he really did jump out of the trench, only to discover that he’d left my bullet in the pocket of his other shirt. The weather has improved during the last four weeks. Spring has finally arrived, and the snow has melted in the city. The line across Igman is moving upwards. Soon the white will be overrun by the green. I’m worried that Armin will not return before the snow melts on Igman. I have a feeling that if I ever see a completely green mountain, then he will never come back. The trick is in the line — and I know it. If the line disappears, the hundreds of invisible scars and the adventures of Batman and Robin will have meant almost nothing, but certainly no more than back issue 239 of my favorite comic, the one with Chico the Seducer, who only killed a Redcoat by accident.
The Communist
Ivo T. always was a communist — and he always will be. The year before the war, not long after the various nationalist parties won the elections, he led his wife and children on to the patch of grass in front of his apartment block, made a fire and began to roast a lamb on the spit. We couldn’t help watching from our window, but we weren’t amused. Ivo T. was dressed in a white shirt and a suit with a red carnation in his buttonhole. As he turned the spit, he made a point of holding his head high like Emperor Franz Josef. It was as though he’d forgotten that nobody celebrates May Day anymore. His wife and children perched on wooden stools, looking equally festive. But you could tell that they didn’t really know where to put themselves. Every passerby stared disapprovingly at the family, and a handful even made rude comments.
Ivo T. pretended not to see or hear anything, but when he just couldn’t help noticing, he responded with the national sign language of Bosnia — an obscene gesture involving the forearm.
In nineteen sixty-something Ivo T. was chosen as president of the local council. Every day he came to work on his bike so that he wouldn’t stand out from the workers. His trouser legs always bore the traces of bicycle clips, and you could always see the imprint of the saddle on his bottom. On Sundays, however, he used to stick his wife and children in the Yugo 1300, and drive slowly up and down Princip Street or around Vitez so that everybody could see them. Of course he only bought the Yugo in order to help the country’s economy — unlike some, who bought Mercedes and thus helped the capitalists. But after only a month Ivo T. resigned from his council job. Nobody could understand why, although he claimed it was because he just couldn’t deal with those criminals.
When Tito killed a prize bear in the woods near Bugojno, Ivo T. said, “It’s a pity for the bear, I guess, but it’s only a wild animal after all. As long as that’s where it ends.” Some people claimed that Ivo T. was against the state and against self-management, but he replied, “I knew the right path even when Tito broke with Stalin, let alone when it comes to a bear hunt.”
The others bowed their heads and went home without saying a word.
When Tito died Ivo T. locked himself in his room and drank a bottle of gin before dawn. He summoned his wife, Ruža, his son and daughter and gave them a pep talk along the lines of, “Now the old man has gone, there’ll be no more messing around. I expect you all to behave responsibly. .”
All the party officials stood to attention as the pall-bearers lowered Tito into his grave. Ivo T. also got to his feet. Tears ran down his face as the Internationale was being played.
Ruža, however, was a God-fearing woman. In the run-up to Christmas she always did a bit of dusting, replaced the curtains, went to the hairdresser’s, and made sure the children looked neat while her husband looked on grumpily.
He knew her game. Two or three days before Christmas he went up to her and gave her a talking to. “There’ll be no Christmas celebrations in this house,” he said. “I have already made my position clear, and I’m not going to be like some people. You know the type — on the one hand he’s a communist, but on the other his house looks like Zagreb Cathedral. If you want Christmas, take the kids and go to your mother’s or my mother’s or wherever. Celebrate as much as you like, but leave me out of it.”
Ruža used to go with the children to her mother’s one year and to her in-laws’ the next. Without fail Ivo T. would appear at the relevant house several days later; it was as though he was just passing. He’d be dressed in his everyday clothes, and he’d sit down, have a drink and a bite, wish a merry Christmas to the family, and then announce, “Socialism guarantees the freedom to worship.”
Ivo T. was friendly with everybody except thieves. Walking through Vitez, he would never fail to greet his acquaintances politely. He was equally fond of the Germans and the English and the Americans. In spite of capitalism. As a matter of fact, the only people he hated were the Japanese. Nobody knew why. One evening his children were watching a Japanese film on tv and he’d fallen asleep in his chair. (He always sat on the ordinary wooden chair, because he had a bad back and it hurt even more when he stretched out.) He was snoring away when a samurai suddenly yelled out and startled him from his sleep. He began to shout at the tv — it was “the Japanese this” and “the Japanese that.” The children managed to get their father to calm down, but his tirade ended with a rather strange question. “Well, my old Darwin,” Ivo said, “if a man comes from an ape, where does a Japanese come from?” Then he returned to his chair and began to snore again. Later, everybody in Vitez laughed about Ivo and the samurai.