The boy looked at his stepfather with dismay. He stopped in the middle of a particular declension and went to his room. The stepfather switched the video off, lit another cigarette and exhaled the smoke happily. He enjoyed the silence under the white ceiling, attempting to be here, in Zagreb, if only for a moment, what he used to be in Zenica. A successful man, that is, and full of himself.
After ten minutes the boy came back into the room. He closed the door after him but didn’t take another step, like somebody who had come into a rather daunting office. He remained silent.
Calmly at first, and then with irritation, the stepfather looked him straight in the eye.
“Zoka, are there any horrible pictures in this speech?”
The stepfather scratched his head and laughed, then he got up. He spent a long time fixing his tie in front of the mirror.
“Zoka, do we need anything from the shops?”
“I don’t know. . No, we don’t. . Ask your mom.”
“Do you need any beer?”
Another look, as in westerns, right in the eye.
“What is it that you want, Dino?”
“You know, Zoka, I’m very grateful to you. You bought me shoes, and everything. I mean, I have a pretty good idea of your financial situation, and so on. But of course I’m still young, I don’t understand everything, so. .”
“Yes, Dino, and —?”
“You’re going out now, aren’t you, Zoka?”
“So?”
“I’d like to watch the cartoons on the satellite channel.”
The stepfather put his jacket on and arranged his greased-back hair in front of the mirror. He went out in his slippers. Leaning on the doorway, he put his shoes on. Then he swayed like an old drunkard and pushed against the walls with his thumbs. The boy laughed. The other winked knowingly and went downstairs.
The following day. The boy goes to church with his best friend. A mass is being held, the hall is filled with black and pious figures. The boys sit down in an empty pew and open their mouths in time to the prayer. Play-back, of course, amateurish and inexperienced. The words are becoming more and more complicated and confused, and the boys can no longer follow the rhythm as they lip-sync. Toward the end of mass, the priest approaches the boys and takes them to his room. He asks their names. They timidly tell him what they are called and pull their sleeves over their sweaty hands. As if they were guilty. The priest smiles and asks them where they’re from. From Zenica and Prijedor.
The priest puts his hand in a drawer and pulls out pencils, notebooks and sweets. He pats them on the shoulder. They feel uncomfortable.
“You know what, you two really don’t have to go to church, to mass and such things. When you’re not well, when you’re sad or when you get frightened you can just say to yourself, ‘God, help me,’ and everything will be all right.”
The boys leave the church in silence. They don’t speak until they get home but they part with a few words to show that everything is, as it were, normal.
At home the stepfather tries to explain that not everyone has to go to classes of religious instruction because not everyone has the same beliefs. Of course, the stepfather is, like the priest, a Catholic. The boy, or course, isn’t. He tells him that a girl at school, for whom he has a soft spot, often corrects his pronunciation. The stepfather opens his arms, laughs and says that women are like that. The boy goes to his room, saying that he has to study more Latin.
He locks himself in the room. The stepfather and mother knock on the door. He tells them he’s got important things to do. He stays in his room for two whole hours. He emerges ready to go out, with a hockey helmet on his head. He’s going to make a snowman. The stepfather and mother go into his room. They try to smell his secret. They look under the bed. They flick through the boy’s notebooks. But they can’t find anything. Disappointed, they look at each other. The mother puts away various things that have been scattered around the room. The stepfather talks some pedagogical nonsense.
Later. The mother found some pages that had been torn out of a notebook. The boy was writing to his grandfather in Zenica. If it had been anybody else’s son, the sentences would have looked stupid and banal. As it was, they were perfect to cry over. The mother told the stepfather about the contents of the letters. He nodded and later told his friends about them. He translated the words for American editors, and they replied that they were wonderful and moving. The mother returned the boy’s letters to where she had found them. She didn’t say anything. She was just a bit more affectionate toward him from then on.
The boy made a snowman in the courtyard out of the remaining snow. He carved out the president’s face. He didn’t make a nose out of a carrot, because he thought that was stupid. Nobody had a carrot on their face. Especially not the president.
The Photograph
Our idea of love is not letting other people steal your woman.
Duško Trifunović
I don’t know what it’s like anywhere else, but in Europe it’s like this: Rick is unhappy because Ilse loves Laszlo. He knows that she loves him too, and yet she remains faithful to Laszlo. Rick wishes she’d be faithful to him instead — because it’s not enough to know that she loves him. No doubt you have heard and read the same story, with a few variations, a thousand times. The key to true love is faithfulness. You don’t need to think about it much — it is taken for granted. Mind you, if it wasn’t for faithfulness, there probably wouldn’t be any unhappiness in love. Nor any happiness either.
Senka and Mašo were often cited in the neighborhood as love’s young dream. She was unable to have any children, but he didn’t hold that against her as other Balkan husbands might have done. Senka worked in the Post Office and Mašo was a plumber. She always used to refer to him as “my Mašo”, and he to her as “my Senka.” Their story would not have been of any interest if the war had not broken out. We don’t usually find stories about long and happy relationships very interesting.
As soon as the shelling began Mašo joined the Territorial Army. Senka was not very pleased about this, but she realized that there was no other way of preserving their one-bedroom Eden. The very thought of leaving town scared her. A different place would mean different circumstances; it would be a story involving different characters.
One day a strange man in uniform with muddy boots knocked on the door. He hugged Senka and whispered to her that Mašo had been killed. He left a paper bag with Mašo’s possessions on the table — a hanky, the case for his spectacles and his wallet. After the first few days of mourning, which are usually more ceremonious than sorrowful, and which demand a certain presence of mind to avoid the compassionate gazers who thrive on any sign of tears, Senka took out all the things that had been returned to her instead of Mašo. She touched each object in turn and finally opened the wallet. Inside she found fifty Deutschmarks — an amount that any cautious man perhaps would always carry with him — and odd scraps of paper with phone numbers and notes about plumbing. In the little plastic window was a photograph of Senka. The only purpose of the plastic window is to give a glimpse of your intimate life to strangers at supermarket checkouts. But the wallet also had a secret invisible compartment. Senka peeked into it and found a photograph of an unknown woman. On the back was written, “Always yours, Mirsada.” The handwriting was flowery with many loops. The next day Senka told the whole neighborhood what those “bastards from the brigade had done to her.” Angrily, then bitterly and in the end tearfully, she showed the incriminating photograph to the women, who tut-tutted and shook their heads. They consoled her as she was leaving their houses and then immediately began to gossip about her. On the whole, everyone, except of course Senka, was pleased to discover that Mašo hadn’t been a saint. They secretly considered her pitiful for having revealed so publicly her shame, which she didn’t even acknowledge.