Yugoslavia, My Fatherland

17

‘Whatcha talkin ‘bout, dude? What scooters?’

I waited for Mladen in Sombrero, a bar at the edge of his home territory, where there was the least chance we might accidentally stumble across Dragan. My brother agreed to drag himself down here, but only after I had threatened to talk to Dusha about the stolen motorbike if he didn’t. He sat next to me, and I discovered that he had indeed slowed down more since our last meeting, having taken up the tradition of young hipsters, who thought it was cool to walk slowly, like their over-weight fathers. Mladen was a typical victim of an extreme form of puberty, and so there was no point in explaining anything to him.

‘Call Dusha and tell ‘er to get over here.’

‘Call ‘er yourself.’

‘Kid, stop screwing around. I know you’ve been riding around on a stolen motorbike, and I can tell her that right now.’

‘Don’t you stolen-motorbike me, okay? It wasn’t even mine.’

‘Yeah, that’s the problem.’

‘Whatcha want?!’

‘Call Dusha.’

‘Suck my dick.’

I reached across the table towards him with my hand, but he reflexively jumped back, as if he was used to dodging punches. His chair went flying to the floor and three great hopefuls at the adjacent table from the local bowling league turned towards us.

‘Would you like me to call Daniel over here? Want him to tell Dusha who brings him stolen motorbikes?’

‘Daniel who?’

The tone of his voice had changed. His slow pose finally got the acceleration it needed and Mladen started moving at a normal speed in front of me. He picked up his chair and sat at the table.

‘I took one moped to him just once. I knew the dude was an asshole.’

‘I don’t give a flying fuck. Just call Dusha and tell ‘er to get over here. And don’t mention me.’

‘Why don’t you call ‘er yourself?’

‘She’s not answering my calls.’

‘Then text her.’

‘Listen, what I have with her… got nothin’ to do with you.’

‘You’re full of shit!’

‘I’m not.’

‘Swear?’

‘Swear.’



While we were waiting for Dusha, Mladen’s conscience unravelled its tight coils out of sheer boredom. Without really wanting to, I found out everything about how he and some characters named Vito and Viktor and I don’t know who else ‘snatched a scooter from a chick in the city centre, just for fun,’ and during said snatching, if I understood Mladen correctly, they ‘laughed their heads off.’ At night, they broke into a garage in the adjacent neighbourhood. ‘Abracadabra kaboom.’ Actually Vito and Viktor broke in, already masters of this craft, while Mladen was just there, watching out to make sure ‘some dick wouldn’t catch them.’ They passed the motorbike around, and then ‘redneck Vito got cold feet,’ and they drove the motorbike to Daniel, who was ‘Vito’s bro’s pal.’ And this Daniel character was ‘a fuck-face motherfucker. He could just repaint and repair it without shitting around. He’ll get fucked up one day.’

‘Yeah, sure.’



Dusha examined us strangely, but Mladen pretended, convincingly, not to see her doing so, while I tried to non verbally communicate to her that I had no intention of explaining the situation. I don’t know if she understood me, or if she just wanted to know how she’d ended up in a bar with her two sons, but she sat down without saying anything, and then we all pretended that this was normal.

‘I went to see Danilo.’

‘And?’

‘He says that Nedelko is in Slovenia.’

She turned towards Mladen. Dusha was probably deciding whether to send him home, but I wanted to know if the kid would react in any way to the subject of the conversation. But he continued to play his own game, and was presently dying of boredom for his loyal audience.

‘Do you know anything about this?’

Dusha glanced at her younger son again, but he was still showing no signs of life.

‘I don’t believe that.’

‘What do you mean, don’t believe that?’

‘Vladan, there’s no point…’

‘In what?’

‘There’s no point…’

‘I asked in what!’

Dusha took another look at Mladen, but it was obvious that she was just intentionally withdrawing from me. Then she turned to the waitress, as if calling for help. Her fingers nervously stroked the table, and I remembered that Dusha was a smoker, and that she was probably used to nicotine support in such moments of crisis.

‘I can go?’

Mladen directed his weary gaze at me, and waited for my answer. He was probably sure that Dusha and I had greater problems than his nocturnal joyrides out of other people’s garages, and so saw no real reason to keep hanging out with us. I nodded gently, without arousing Dusha’s interest in our psychological games.

‘Don’t fuck me up, bro!’

It was a cheap trick, but it worked. He had never called me ‘bro’ before, probably because he felt that I resisted being his brother as much as I resisted being Dusha’s son. I doubt that Mladen knew how hard it was to fully resist the desire to be something to someone, and I doubt that he intentionally revealed my repressed longing. He was probably just improvising, trying to win me over.

Dusha and I watched him drag himself back to his ‘office,’ in front of the apartment building and for a moment, probably still affected by this whole ‘bro’ thing, I thought that a nice guy might be hiding under that pose, someone to whom I could be able to say a word or two. But that was just my hidden wish, which probably had no tangible manifestation in the organism known as Mladen.

As soon as the kid disappeared around the corner, Dusha hastily reached into her purse and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, and lit one with shaky hands, which attested to her abstinence crisis. Her methods of child rearing were still misguided, and I thought that she was most probably something of a black hole when it came to educating others. I thought of telling her that, if her kid smoked like a chimney, that would undoubtedly be one of his smallest problems in life, but I refrained from doing so. No, this couldn’t and shouldn’t be my business. I could just be a ‘bro’ because of an unimportant story about a stolen motorbike. My life was complicated enough, without the stupid problems of my younger half brother.

‘Do you have schnapps?’

‘No.’

‘Whiskey then. And a large glass of water.’

I didn’t know whether her firewall was finally coming down, or if Dusha was just preparing for the final fight, mano-a-mano. Possibilities were always open with her.

‘Vladan… ’

The waitress brought her a whiskey, and Dusha immediately grabbed the glass, put it close to her mouth, and put it on the table again at the next moment, still holding on to it with both hands, which distracted them from uncontrollably shaking. She took a deep breath, but I could only hear a symphony of short staccato sighs, which revealed her mounting unrest. She tilted the glass again, took a sip of whiskey, and finally turned back towards me, while her gaze nervously paced the room.

‘Nedelko… He was always just promising. In Pula, he promised that we’d go to Belgrade for just a couple of days; that it would all end quickly and that we’d return soon. ‘Loza’s gonna take care of this,’ he said, and I felt like he really believed that. But I ended one life when I left Ljubljana and came to be with him in Pula, and I couldn’t shake off the feeling that everything was repeating itself all over again, that it would all end and that we’d never return there, to our home. Everything looked so much like an ending, so I couldn’t believe a word he said. He probably really did believe that we’d be back in a couple of days, and that everything was going to be like it used to. But I couldn’t. I was sitting on the bed in that hotel in Belgrade, listening to his promises and stories every day, which always began with ‘tomorrow’ or ‘in a few days.’ His words made less and less sense and he, I felt, said them just to say something. I felt horrible leaving you alone in that room, I felt horrible because I knew that you didn’t understand what was going on, and every time I came back, I could hardy keep from crying my eyes out in front of you. Each time I entered that room I saw that look of yours, full of expectation, I saw your fear, your loneliness, but I was afraid that if I started explaining, I’d just fall on the floor and cry, which would make everything even worse. I told myself that I mustn’t cry in front of you, I didn’t want to kill the little hope you had. So instead I wandered around Belgrade, crying in front of strangers, who looked at me in amazement, but I withdrew and ran away from them. Since I was little, I’ve stubbornly fought my father and would never cry in front of him. I never wanted to admit defeat to him, no matter how his slaps might hurt me, and I was used to hiding my pain. But one day an old man sat down next to me on the bench in that park in front of the theatre, to read the newspaper. He was a real gentleman from Belgrade, in his shirt buttoned up and nice shoes, and I remember the newspaper saying something about a war between the Yugoslav People’s Army and the Slovenian Territorial Defence, and about Ljubljana, and I couldn’t control myself any longer, so I started crying loudly. But the old man just got up and moved over to the adjacent bench. And from there, he politely smiled at me and nodded in greeting. At that moment, he reminded me of my clumsy and stupid father, who could never do what he was supposed to, and I wanted to sit down next to him and lay my head in his lap. I felt so helpless. Like a small child. That was when I knew I needed someone to hug me, to comfort me, to tell me what to do. But I didn’t have anyone. All my people were in Pula or Ljubljana, I only knew Goca in Belgrade, and I last saw her when she was seventeen, so I just didn’t dare ring her bell, because I was afraid she wouldn’t recognize me. I was afraid I’d lose her too, so I never called her.’

‘I was convinced, back then, that there wasn’t a person in the world lonelier than me. I told Nedelko that I couldn’t go on like that, that I’d leave, I didn’t know where to, but that I’d leave, that I’d leave him and go somewhere with you. To Bangladesh, if I had to. And he was just quiet. He called and kept quiet. He sometimes went fifteen minutes without uttering a word. It was killing me, I hated his silence from the bottom of my soul, I hated him because he was quiet. It was even better when he made those promises, even though I was losing my mind over them. But that silence was killing me. I couldn’t go on like that, and I started begging him not to call me if he didn’t intend to speak, but he kept calling and kept staying quiet. I asked him to speak, to say something. I was raging, I threatened him, I tried everything, but in vain. And then one evening I told him that I’d go to Dushan and Maria in Slovenia, and that I wouldn’t contact him anymore. I was dead serious, but he didn’t even react.’

‘That was the first time I got really scared of what he was so silent about, what no one wanted to speak about loudly and clearly, and what the evening news reported between the lines, when you could read in the silences what the newscasters wanted to tell you but were not allowed to say. I imagined all sorts of things, and I heard some stuff from other officers’ wives, so my fear grew. I couldn’t stay at that hotel anymore, not among those people. I didn’t want us to be one of the officers’ families anymore. And then he came that morning for breakfast…and he only said:

‘There’s going to be a war.’

I asked him what he meant by that, but he just shrugged his shoulders, shook his head and looked away. He couldn’t even look me in the eye. I feel now like he was telling me then to go, to leave him and forget about him, to run as far away as possible, to save you and me, but he couldn’t say a word. He was a pussy in a colonel’s uniform, but still a pussy, even worse than I was. He had his orders and his military world and he accepted everything in life, the whole shebang. He had surrendered; that morning or maybe long before then, maybe on the first day he came to Belgrade, but I hadn’t realized it. Or didn’t want to understand it. His only definition of self-worth was his uniform and his rank, but I still saw my husband, your father, my Nedelko, now half-buried beneath it.’

‘I know now that he didn’t exist for himself anymore. He was only Colonel Borojević, a soldier who came in to work one day and was welcomed by war, sitting on his desk and grinning up at him. I have no idea why I agreed to us going to see Danilo in Novi Sad. I don’t know, maybe just to change something, to move things along. Later it became clear to me that he’d suggested that because he didn’t know what to do, and he couldn’t keep promising me that everything would be different ‘tomorrow’ or ‘in a few days.’ Maybe I should have been grateful to him, that he didn’t want to lie anymore, but I was too desperate, too disappointed and too angry with him to see all that. Instead, I gave him an ultimatum. I gave him ten days to decide between the army and us. I felt guilty because I was blackmailing him with you, but I thought that I could reach him this way, that he’d take me seriously. But he just nodded, and I remember that I wanted to hit him then, that I hated him so much that, if we were alone, I’d probably have jumped on him and tried to strangle him. That’s when I realized that I had two potential fates ahead of me: to go berserk or to shut down.’

‘So I shut down. It wasn’t me who went to Novi Sad. That was another Dusha who didn’t hear or see anything who sat on that couch, sandwiched by those people, and absentmindedly stared at the TV. And that couch and that TV are the only things I remember. I know I comforted myself that at least you had company, and that you didn’t need me as much, that Sava cooked for you what you liked to eat. And I remember his calls. He would just say that everything would be okay, he asked how you were, but he no longer wanted to talk to you, and he told me to make up a reason. He probably shut himself down, too, and it was easier for him not to hear your voice, which would’ve brought him back to his past life. Actually, all his calls to Novi Sad were the same. He repeated his thing, and I repeated mine. I stopped asking him what was happening in the field, if he was going to desert, if he was going to run away with us. I only counted down the days and told him one day that we were going to Slovenia the next. I lied that we had already bought the tickets, and that we were all packed, and he didn’t resist, he just asked: ‘Where are you going to stay?’’

‘I can still hear this question, so trivial, so stupid and so painful. He accepted our departure so humbly, just like he had accepted the war and his role in it. I decided, at that point, that this was the last time he would hurt me, so I just told him not to call me again, and that I didn’t want to hear about him anymore. And he just went: ‘Okay.’ Okay! Okay?! He was tearing me apart alive and I could’ve screamed, kicked, banged my head against the wall, but I couldn’t do anything in that apartment full of his relatives. I wanted to kill him, to knock him down with my bare hands. Okay?! He said ‘okay’ and went quiet again. I probably didn’t realize that he was intentionally pushing me away from him, pushing us away from that place. Of course, I couldn’t know everything he knew, and I couldn’t understand what was really happening with him, around him. But I especially couldn’t, and wouldn’t, understand his resignation and his helplessness, and even today, I can’t understand that. His reconciliation with the fact that he had renounced the fight for his own life, as if it meant nothing to him. It hurt that he gave up on me, but I couldn’t accept the fact that he gave up on you too — his only son. And I couldn’t forgive him for that. I wanted to punish him for that, to call him monstrous, cruel and insensitive. And then I told him that I’d go to Slovenia, and that I’d tell you that he’d died and that he’d never see you again. And he replied: ‘Maybe it’s really better this way.’ I couldn’t believe those words; I didn’t want to understand them. I didn’t want to know that there really was a reason in this world for a man to wish himself dead in his own son’s eyes. I didn’t dare think about what that reason could be, what could be so horrible, so awful. I was sure that he was exaggerating, that he was dramatizing, as men do. Look, it still gives me the creeps thinking about his words, but back then I was shaking so badly that I could barely hold the receiver in my hand. You know, I wasn’t even serious I only wanted it to hurt him like it hurt me. I wanted to hurt him so he would bleed a little. But he just accepted his own death.’

‘I thought to myself, this is no longer the man I married. Someone else was calling me, pretending to be him. Someone was taking me for a fool, intentionally bullying me. Because I didn’t recognize him anymore. Maybe if I could have seen him once more, if I could have looked him in the eye once more, if I could have touched him. I don’t know, maybe I would have felt differently, but this way I had a feeling that I was leaving a mad stranger, a weird, foreign voice, which spoke only vague and illogical things. Otherwise, I would have probably never plucked up the courage to sit on that bus. Otherwise, I wouldn’t dare turn up outside my parent’s home.’

‘But despite all that, as you know, I couldn’t bury him right away. At first, I just left and broke off contact with him. I thought this would be enough for him to understand how far he had driven me, how far away from him he had driven me, so far that I knocked on Dushan Podlogar’s door. Nedelko was the only one who knew how hard that was for me, how humiliating, how unbearable it was to see that man’s hidden satisfaction again, and Maria’s sleazy submissiveness.’

‘After all that, it was a hundred times worse than ever before. I could only hate them even more for everything. I couldn’t have any understanding for anyone, least of all for them; with their reproachful eyes… every hour spent in that house was hell for me. They never asked where my husband was, and what had happened to him, or if everything was okay. He could have been dead, but they weren’t interested at all. They weren’t interested in me. It seemed to me that Dushan accepted you only to show me how very wrong everything in my life was. When you’re as desperate as I was back then, in that house, everything tells you that the world has conspired against you. I knew that we had to run away from there, too, because my home life continued right where it had once ended.’

‘Yes, Vladan, in the meantime, while I was running around, I forgot about you. I forgot, I know. And I feel awful about that. I forgot about you, Vladan. I know that now. I know that I left you behind, even though you were holding my hand all the time, and running around that mad world, right behind me. You were a part of that life, I couldn’t help myself, and you don’t know how very sorry I am, but you were, for me you were, the life I was running away from. I know that now. But then I felt I had to end that story, otherwise I would just die. I couldn’t be a part of that story on the other side of the phone line. I felt like it was all over, that we didn’t exist anymore, that there was no Pula and no Borojević family anymore, and I wanted to go on. Elsewhere. Anywhere. Just without Nedelko.’

‘But he started calling again. He wanted to hear how the normal world sounded. He began pretending that everything was as it had been, asking me all sorts of foolish things, about shops, the neighbours, the weather, all this nonsense. I was going crazy, and he wanted to hear what we’d had for lunch. I thought he’d lost it. Thinking about it now, he probably needed this impression of reality for a few minutes, an audible image of the world where people still went to supermarkets and cooked lunch. Maybe he tried to stay composed, but he seemed more psychopathic by the day. I know I was horrible to him then, I told him all sorts of stuff, but that was how he appeared to me.’

‘I began to grow afraid of him, I was afraid of his calm voice and questions about what we had watched on TV. You know, we never, not even once, spoke about the war. Never. Not a word. He didn’t try to explain anything to me. And I never asked him anything. Sometimes I tried to imagine a colonel who was calling his wife from the battlefield, after a bloody battle which left scores of young boys dead, talking to her about finding a job, about the price of rent, about painting walls. And I saw this madman in front of my eyes, and he didn’t even resemble the man I had once loved more than anything in this world. And I was more and more certain that I didn’t want to have anything to do with this man I imagined standing on the other side of the phone line. And I especially didn’t want you to have anything to do with him. I resented talking to him more with each call, and I was closer to breaking off contact.’

‘At some point, I don’t know what he said, maybe there was just too much of everything, I knew that I didn’t want to ever see him again, and what’s more, I didn’t want you to ever see him again. I couldn’t explain this to myself then, I still can’t, but I can’t regret it, either. I still feel it was the right thing to do. You should have heard him; then you’d know what I’m talking about, understand me. I had to tell you that he was dead. I had to bury him. If you could only hear one of those numerous conversations about nothing, if you could only hear his calm voice, you’d know that I had no choice. I had to. Because of you. I had to bury him…’

Dusha kept talking, carrying on with her story, but I could only hear that one non Slovenian word she said to me during our life in Ljubljana. I watched her lips move, still telling her story, so long-delayed, explaining it to me. I watched her finally open up to me after all those wasted years, but I could only hear her distant voice repeating a single word:

‘Dead! Dead! Dead!’