Yugoslavia, My Fatherland

13

Even after sixteen years in Ljubljana, returning to the town now felt like it had back then: buffeted by fierce, cold air that felt as if it was trying to chase you away. It was a town to which Dusha and I had retreated when we had nowhere else to go. Each time I drove out of Ljubljana and returned, I was hit by the same anxious feeling as I had that first time, the feeling that no one was expecting me here, no one here had missed me. I used to hope that maybe one day, after many years, I would get off the motorway toward the city and feel like I was returning home. But that has never happened. So tonight, at the first glance of the distant silhouette of the town I live in, I’m cast back to our lonely apartment.

This has always been a town better left to sleep during the night. But that night, rather than waking Nadia, I woke up the guy selling burek outside the train station, a poor soul that life chose to award with the task of serving fatty Albanian savoury pies to the drunken citizens of Ljubljana as they waited for the first night buses.

‘You want yogurt as well?

I nodded and, soon after eating the first piece of burek, I ordered another, which coaxed a barely-visible smile from my saviour. This was the indisputable climax of the communication between the Albanian slave and his customer. He was locked inside his kiosk, where laws that applied to those of us outside, on the road, did not reach. As I happily ploughed into my second burek, as I had many times before, I could only wonder if there was a way out of his kiosk-embowered existence.

It was the same guy, in the same kiosk, who had first welcomed me with burek when I celebrated my first pay cheque, and got drunk for the first time, aged sixteen. I found him there on the three or four occasions when I’d managed to come with drunken ex-girlfriends. He had been there for me when I foolishly lost a good job. But never, in all those years, had we been any more friendly than the exchange of silly smiles.

‘Hungry?’

I nodded, mouth full. Thus ended our communication.

‘Serbia! Serbia!’

‘We’re going for a burrrrrgeeeeeeeeeer! A Serbian burger!’

Three drunken guys on the other side of the road waved towards my kiosk-imprisoned companion, three fingers lifted high in the symbol of Serbian solidarity, and for some reason, in high spirits, considering their primitive provocations. They wore expensive clothes and found this awfully funny. Maybe they even thought that the burek guy was having fun too. But glazed in behind me, he only gave them the same wan smile he’d given me. The smile that kept hidden the answer to the question of whether he’d only recently resigned himself to eternal live burial inside that aluminium kiosk, or if they’d prepared him for this fate as a child. I was sorry for him but, at the same time, he got on my nerves, because he refused to let me understand him. I suspect that he was incapable of seeing me as any different from the Serbian burger guys. We were all equally unimportant factors in his glazed life. I even thought for a moment that maybe he could hardly see out into the street, like suspects in a police line-up who can’t see the witness while he tries to recognize them. I looked straight at him once more, wanting to force some kind of reaction, make a deeper connection. But then it dawned on me that this man hadn’t done anything to deserve another provocation, so I withdrew my inquiring gaze. But the damage had already been done as he, out of learned caution, had already moved back and sat down on the stool in the corner of the kiosk, so that all I could see was a lock of his black hair peeking out from behind the counter.

Our story for that night had ended.



Despite the late hour, I was still afraid to go home and knock on Nadia’s door. I knew that I would be welcomed by her questioning eyes, expecting words that I still felt incapable of saying. So I went to the nearby platform, below the Stock Exchange building, where something vaguely resembling music emanated from a coffee shop. I thought I might have a coffee and settle my thoughts in a dark corner there, as I imagined whoever was inside would show no interest in me. I didn’t look dangerous enough for any stoned wimp to see me as a target for their inferiority complex, nor did I look like a helpless creature on whom some third-class hooligan might test new intimidation techniques. My dimensions were ideal for being ignored.

As I approached the bar, the undefined thumping sound slowly transformed into a deafening series of grunts. Inside I found a bunch of tracksuit-clad guys dancing by a table full of vodka-and-Red-Bulls, as well as the three Serbian burger guys. What little will I had to spend voluntary time with these unsavoury people vanished but, in a town suffering from traditional Central European exhaustion, the selection of night-life available didn’t offer much choice. I was aware that, no matter which of the two or three other night bars I might try, I would be equally bothered by the sub-cultural exhibits living it up inside. So I ordered two large beers and sat at an empty table in the corner, where I could observe how the Serbian music drove my fellow passengers on this night train into a pre-orgasmic state, while the sloppily-emptied ashtray on the table before me bounced and shook to the beat.



After the first beer, I decided that the hormonal deviants dancing nearby would not be sufficient to drive me off. I pulled a letter from my pocket, the one I’d found in Tomislav Zdravković’s apartment in Brčko, and read it again slowly, letter by letter, from beginning to end, knowing that I only did so out of desperation. The letter was my only remaining tie to my lost father, and I couldn’t accept the fact that it would bring me no closer to General Borojević.

As I reread it, I lingered over the name of Bojan Križaj. I remembered how Nedelko and I had cheered for him together and how, in the midst of the second run of a slalom race in Wengen, my father had even promised me, ‘if our Slovenian guy thrashes the Swedish guy today,’ he’d take me skiing to the Slovenian resort at Kranjska Gora the following winter.

Then I started reading it again. I was browsing, jumping from one end to the next until, at some point, just as the guys on the other side of the bar came up with the original idea of dancing on top of the table, I stopped short. I realized that another person I had ignored up until now actually appeared in the letter. ‘My darling, J. should soon set off,’ it said. The letter J indisputably marked someone who should have taken the letter to Dusha in Ljubljana.

While the drunken-howling idiots, spouting famous quotes from old Serbian films, could be heard from their tabletops, accompanied by hyena laughter, my heart started pounding more and more quickly, and my exhausted brain began to whir. I was thinking that, if she had wanted to tell me who her link to her ex-husband had been all those years, then Dusha would’ve already done so. So she either didn’t know who was represented by the letter J, or she was determined not to tell me. I was in the same boat either way. After our last meeting, at the Second Aid bar, Dusha was no longer available to chat about my father.

I had a second beer. It went down my throat faster than beer had in a long time, and I felt it would not be my last. After a long day’s drive, total exhaustion lurked beneath a crust of irritation. The first beer unlocked me, the second stoned me, while a third and fourth would’ve probably pushed me into dangerous territory, for my own health and those in my immediate vicinity.

‘Woohoo! Genius! Way to goooo!’

At that moment I looked around the room, because the waiter had cranked up the music, as per the request of the gentlemen dancing on tables. Further fuelled, two glasses crashed to the floor, as the table-dancers imitated a scene from a Serbian film, which had apparently intoxicated them more powerfully than the song to which they currently gyrated. At any other moment, this might’ve seemed funny to me, but that night they seemed as retarded as the music they danced to. They couldn’t have been more than sixteen, and were dancing to something that should probably look like a wedding party dance.

It was obvious that they belonged to a generation crazy about the idea of the Balkans, which at the same time managed to mix up everything completely: the good and the bad, the sane and the crazy, the banal and the evil. It was all the same to them. The only thing that mattered was that they were like people from the southern parts of ex-Yugo, that they dressed, spoke and partied like southerners. They couldn’t care less about war and war criminals. They couldn’t care less about anything in this world.

‘Just turn it up and rock!’

I got up, walked to the bar and ordered another beer. But in order to pull this off, I had to drown out the vocals. So I shouted to the waiter to turn down the music and, to my surprise, he did.

‘Another bee… ’

‘Hey! Hellooooo!’

I turned around and saw an overly proud representative of the sixteenth generation of immigrants standing before me, or I should say many inches below me. He appeared determined to prove his Balkan temperament in front of his friends, and live up to the genetic intricacies of his great-great-grandmother, who was doubtless a renowned brawler. He held his glass in his hand in such a way that I was meant to believe he was about to smash it over my head.

‘Who allowed that, huh?’

Two large beers had intoxicated me just enough to have no remaining tolerance for teenagers who wanted to measure their dicks against mine. So as soon as this kid brushed against me, everything went black and I pushed him back with all my strength, so that he toppled back and fell over a chair, onto the floor.

‘Why don’t you go fuck yourself!?’

The moment I said those words, everything around me stopped. I put these guys on mute and stared absentmindedly in front of me. This was Nedelko’s favourite curse, and it had flown out of my mouth as if he had spoken from within me. After all these years, I heard him speak again, and suddenly, I could see him, holding my hand tight, arguing with the guy at the entrance to the Arena theatre.



It was at the Pula Film Festival when, in the middle of the film Volunteers, my constant laughter made me urgently want to go to the toilet. But despite Nedelko convincing me to go, I really wanted to see the film all the way through, fearing I would miss one of the funniest bits. As the film’s cast and crew took their post-showing bows on stage and Nedelko realized, with some disappointment, that his favourite Yugoslav actor wasn’t among them, we finally made our hasty way to the toilet, but a long line of people, each shifting from one foot to the other, had got there first. I just couldn’t wait any longer. At first, Nedelko tried to convince me to take a splash right there, in the darkness, reasoning that I was just a kid, and kids can get away with anything. But I heard my mother’s voice inside my head, saying that only Bosnian scum pissed around the Arena. So Nedelko had no choice but to quickly take me to the nearest bar, where we managed to push our way to a free urinal, a second or two before it would’ve been too late.

But then they wouldn’t let us back in the Arena to see the next film, which was about to start. Old habits die hard, and Nedelko had crumpled the tickets to the first screening in his pocket without realizing it, and had thrown them to the floor. The young man at the door insisted that anyone could come up with the slipping-out-to-piss story, though I doubted there were many other people who would smuggle themselves into the Arena at midnight with an eight-year-old in tow. Increasingly nervous, Nedelko initially focused on attempts at diplomacy, and patiently tried to convince the young man of our innocence. Then I noticed that the film had already begun inside. That’s when he lost his temper. For the first and last time in my presence, everything went so black before his eyes that he raged like a beast at this young man, punctuating the outburst with his favourite six-word curse. Then he was instantly calm, and took me past the petrified ticket-tearer, straight to the Arena, where our empty seats awaited us.

I could no longer remember the second film we saw that night, but I certainly saw and heard Nedelko, as vividly as if it were yesterday, shouting ‘Why don’t you go fuck yourself’ just like I had, so that all the energy amassed in the one-syllable ‘go,’ and the rest of the phrase was an echo articulated at a slower cadence. This allowed the word ‘fuck,’ towards the end, to go on and on, while the emotional charge moves toward the threatening gaze, which finally slays the interlocutor, after the beginning of this perfect curse has paralyzed them with its sharpness.



When I returned to the present, I saw the waiter trying to hold back the frenzied teenagers, and was half aware that someone was dragging me out of the bar. I wanted to pull myself away, but he was stronger and soon I was out under a streetlamp and immediately recognized a familiar face.

‘You sure know how to pick your places to make a fuss, you fuckin’ southern scum. In my bar, huh?’

‘I didn’t know it was yours, asshole!’

‘Oh piss off. I’ve called you a hundred times to come down for a drink with me, and then when you finally show up, you start tap-dancing with some kids.’

We were yelling, because of the adrenaline, and it echoed around the street. Then Daniel suddenly hugged me and started laughing, in his own inimitable way, while I stood still, rooted to the spot. The kids didn’t follow us out of the bar, and I expect they knew who they were dealing with. But then some screams were heard back inside, and Daniel flew in. For some time I listened to him shouting, trying to restrain his drunken customers, but then I set off towards the car. Just before I disappeared around the corner, Daniel’s voice boomed out, despite the early hour.

‘Vladan! Vladaaaan!’

I turned and saw him standing in front of the bar, trying to see some of his young guests on their way back to their mamas.

‘Call me tomorrow, bro’. Urgently. Got something’ to tell you.’

‘What?’

‘You’ll see. Come to Vevče in the morning and we’ll talk. Come. You must.’

I wanted to respond, but he’d already returned to the bar, the door closing behind him. Daniel was the only person I could conditionally call a friend, though for a long time we had been aware of how we’d grown apart over the years. I wasn’t interested in his dodgy retail business and he wasn’t interested in my aimless wanderings. After all those years, I sometimes felt that the only thing we still shared was our fifth grade writing desk back at school. He usually got in touch when a nostalgic wind blew through his ears, and he wanted to talk about our old classmate, Sandra, whom he’d wanted to do from the year five till year eight and, come to think of it, still did to this day. Sometimes he just wanted to show me his new car so that I, who did most of his homework from year five until year eight, could see that he was now better off in life than I was, driving around in my twenty-year-old wreck. He even invited me home once, so that I could admire his apartment and learn how his neighbours envied him. But most often we provided each other with gossip and information while out for a quick coffee, perhaps out of some sense of ‘after-all-these-years’ duty. A new job, a new child, a new woman, a new mobile phone, a new haircut. Then see you next year.

A few months ago, he had called me to come see his new bar. I had told him I’d come, but I’d never felt like it.