Every night my mother went to the hospital, where she stayed until the early hours of the morning. On her return she didn’t say very much. She just shook her head a few times and went to bed. It was the summer of 1986, and the World Cup was being staged in Mexico. My grandmother’s long-drawn-out death throes began as the soccer teams were playing the various group matches prior to the knock-out phase but continued during the quarter-final matches which were broadcast live on tv throughout the night. With only soccer players and commentators to keep me company, I waited for my mother to return from the hospital each night. As soon as she came through the door I would switch the television off and scrutinize her in the few minutes it took her to say goodnight and go upstairs. Then I would sleep until midday.
The whole city seemed to be relaxing in sidewalk cafés. Tired of winter and spring flu, everybody soaked up the mild weather before the heatwave. I used to drink my coffee on the sunny side of a street full of cars going south. I discussed the previous night’s matches with my friends or found other ways of killing time until nightfall, when the familiar cycle of waiting for death and watching late-night soccer games from Mexico would begin all over again.
During the first semi-final my mother came back unexpectedly from the hospital and went into the kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee. Of course I turned down the volume on the tv — the Germans were silently celebrating a goal — but neither of us said a word. So this is it, I thought — The End. Nevertheless we went to bed earlier than usual because we knew that in the morning, according to custom, the house would be full of family and friends who had come to ease our pain with hugs of comfort and funeral presents.
In the pantry I neatly arranged the bottles of whisky, packets of coffee and sugar cubes. I welcomed dozens of familiar and unfamiliar faces and said a lot of goodbyes. I was polite, if a little cold, in response to the expressions of concern, hardly able to wait for the ordeal to end.
The next day we were told that my grandmother could not be admitted to the mortuary because she was still wearing her wedding ring. Apparently some families had complained in the past because — or so they claimed — certain valuables belonging to their dead relatives had been stolen. A new code of practice had been introduced as a safeguard, and henceforth items of jewelry had to be removed from the deceased before the body was transferred to the mortuary. My mother went to the hospital and sorted the problem out.
“We’ll slide it back on her finger before the funeral,” she said, absent-mindedly putting grandma’s ring on the bedside table. I don’t think she remembered where she’d left it until several days later.
It was a quiet funeral without melodrama or tears. On a small bronze plaque nailed to the black coffin were inscribed the facts of grandma’s life, her christened name and her family name, year of birth, time of death, the sixth of June 1986. But nobody displayed much interest in those details. In the future perhaps, a long time after we’re dead and forgotten, I like to think a team of archeologists will dig up the remains of our society — like they did in Pompeii — and, coming across grandmother’s plaque, regard it as something utterly fascinating.
After the funeral our house seemed emptier than before. No doubt the other mourners returned to wherever they lived, while my mother told us the familiar stories about grandma’s life — it was mostly for her own sake — and I switched on the tv in order to see the World Cup final. The rest of the cycle was over and now it was time for me to say farewell to the soccer tournament. On the other side of the world a huge stadium burst into life in an orgy of excitement. I could not really identify with the supporters’ noisy enthusiasm, but perhaps that is why it appealed to me. In the absence of my own feelings, it was possible to be happy watching a spectacle that made me forget about reality, just as it is sometimes possible during orgasm, for example, to pretend that nothing else in life matters.
My grandmother’s death was the last pure sadness of my innocent childhood. The darkness of my teenage years owed something to adolescent moodiness, and in that respect it was kind of private, but otherwise I like to think my doom-and-gloom phase was just a sign of things to come, like the approaching cataclysm — a time of numberless deaths and prolonged sufferings. There was no point in getting used to the bereavement, since war made a habit of death without sadness. Public displays of grief seldom occur nowadays, but when they do they are full of tears and inconsolable wailing — and it happens quite unexpectedly. The more trivial the cause of hysteria, the more difficult it becomes to control the wide-spread sobbing. That’s why melodramatic films, silly love stories and the deaths of animals on the road are things I prefer to avoid.
Many gallons of my funeral booze were consumed in the early months of the war. The bottles had stayed in the pantry for years, but with the first sip their contents began to course through our veins faster than the blood that only a miracle left unspilt.
My grandmother’s ring has not been stolen yet. In fact it remains on the ground, like half a memory. The other half is several feet below — with my grandfather, who died and was buried several years earlier, before the mortuary introduced its new code of practice vis-à-vis jewelry.
Mr. Ivo
In the old days the street-traders used to carry wicker baskets laden with produce as they climbed up Šepetarovac on their way to Bjelav stores and the shops on Pothrastovina. The same thing happened for centuries — the reward for getting up the hill was a drink from the water fountain at the top. Not only did the pedlars regard the fountain as a source of refreshment; it was a source of encouragement too, always renewing a hope that one day the hill would be flattened by the tramp of their boots. Nobody remembered exactly when the fountain was built — it was a long time ago, during the Ottoman Empire — but it was generally accepted that the local pasha had been responsible for the project, which he had undertaken for two reasons: in order to help the people of Sarajevo and also to improve his chances of being treated favorably in the afterlife. Over the years the fountain never dried up, even after the street-traders were replaced by juggernauts and there was only the name itself — roughly translated, “Šepetarovac” means “Basket Street” — to keep alive the memory of the old-fashioned peddlers.
Mr. Ivo lived at the bottom of Šepetarovac nearly all his life, but in the eyes of everybody, including Mr. Ivo himself, he continued to be the Gentleman from Dubrovnik. The roses in his garden were more fragrant and colorful than anybody else’s. His flagstone path was always neat, and his small talk was invariably perfect in terms of decorum: not over-familiar like the common people’s, not too distant like the nouveaux riches’.
After the Chetnik bombing of Dubrovnik in the early autumn of 1991, Mr. Ivo suddenly bought five hens and a cock and dug up the roses in his garden. By accident, in the course of rearranging what used to be the flowerbed, he uncovered an old blocked-up well. In no time Mr. Ivo reopened the shaft and rebuilt the well using flat white stones. His neighbors had a pretty good idea of what he was doing but, even so, they were reluctant to believe that anybody could be such a pessimist, or that a gentleman like Mr. Ivo could suddenly metamorphose into a muddy laborer or peasant, the kind of person who was able to put up with the stink of chickens.