Yugoslavia, My Fatherland

26

I woke with the worst headache of my life. My stomach turning and the pressure in my bladder jointly pulled me out of my restless sleep. I narrowed my eyes and looked at the nearest wall, wondering, for a long time, where I was. Only then did I start remembering images from the night before at the Stomach Restaurant, which leaked from my head like a just-finished nightmare.

Nadia was lying on the bed with her clothes on, waiting for me to wake up. Something in her gaze told me that I hadn’t been able to tell her anything last night, and that it had not been the most peaceful evening for her. I tried to remember my return, but the unfamiliar streets and buildings of Vienna were turning before me, as if I had wandered around the undiscovered parts of the city last night. I tried to sit up straight, but this undemanding bodily motion provoked an even greater and more piercing pain in my head.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Head.’

I couldn’t say anything more, because words were just as painful, and I realized that it would be best for me not to move again.

I urgently needed a massive dose of aspirin, or at least a litre of ice water but, at this point, I didn’t dare drag myself to the bathroom. I closed my eyes and saw Nedelko saying goodbye to me. Instantly, I was overwhelmed by an unbearable feeling of shame, overshadowing my physical weakness.

I didn’t deserve to feel like this. I shouldn’t be the villain of last night, but I didn’t know how to avoid it. I saw Nedelko’s disappointed, helpless look in front of me, the look with which he had been mercilessly bombarding me. And I felt sorry for him.

General Borojević didn’t defend himself last night against my attacks. He didn’t fight back. He played the part of a weak, innocent victim, skilfully drawing out undeserved mercy from me all evening. He was convinced that he would win me over this way, and thus didn’t respond to my drunken aggression. Maybe he didn’t even understand it, and didn’t know where it was coming from, and why. Instead, he had stared at me with those eyes of his, my eyes, and asked me wordlessly, why I, his son, didn’t want to be on his side, why I didn’t even want to hear his story.

His story. His damned, lying, fucking, screwed up, planted, motherfucking, stupid, manipulative, phony story. The story I bought so easily when Emir, Danilo and Brane had told it to me in pieces, that it felt like it had told itself. It was so beautifully composed and matched itself before me, as if somebody had made it up especially for me. I was ashamed because of it now, because of its inadequacy and my naivety.

I was ashamed because I wanted to believe this story the whole time, which was probably at least partly made-up to defend a war criminal to me. I was ashamed because I silently wanted for this story to be true, from the first letter to the last, ashamed because I had subconsciously longed for the understanding and justification of my father from the very beginning.

This was the sin that lay on my consciousness that morning. At some point, I had subconsciously stepped onto his side, and I was willing to believe in his fate. In bodies stacked in piles, hidden truths, concealed heart stopping pain, latent fury that can turn a man into an animal… I was willing to believe all of this.

I was ashamed of this belief, and even more ashamed of the naivety and unawareness that its greatest believer had been telling me this same story, all this time. A believer who wanted to present himself as the greatest victim of this story, and who expected me to complaisantly nod and unconditionally accept all the aforementioned, just like I had done. I was appalled at myself, disappointed that I let myself be enticed and misled by him so easily, that I got caught in the trap he’d set up for me.

My nausea was getting worse, and I finally had to move. Nadia didn’t say anything, only stroked my back while I was getting up. In the bathroom, I pushed my head under cold water in the sink without hesitation, and let the water run down my neck and flow to the floor. Then I was drinking it, gulping it, and hoping it would put me out of my misery, at least for a second. It didn’t help. I took my clothes off and stepped into the bathtub. My exhausted body couldn’t stand up straight anymore, so I sat down and just let water fall all over me. I pushed my foot in the drain to stop it from flowing out, and then watched the surface slowly rising.

But the sense of shame wasn’t vanishing, and I felt like a part of me was ashamed of my own attitude to this lost father, of the fact that I resisted being on his side with all my might, that I’d looked him in the eyes (my eyes) and had rejected him. I rejected the man who had been the centre of my world for eleven years and who, in his own way, was apologizing to me last night for everything that had happened to him since those eleven years finished. This man eternally trapped in the body of a war criminal, who in the end, only wished for me to believe the story he was telling me. But I didn’t want to believe anyone or anything.

I heard a gentle knock on the door.

‘Vladan, are you okay?’

‘I will be.’

I didn’t have any intention of moving from my temporary position. I still had to sort out so many thoughts in my crazed head. Thoughts about him: Now evading me, and running back into the unknown.

Yesterday I thought I knew everything about the man who used to be my father. But now I only knew that I didn’t know the first thing about him. Last night everything was scattered back into doubts and questions. I went back to the beginning of this story and again, I could only see Nedelko’s empty gaze on the day my childhood had ended. Did this man live after that day at all, or was it him who was carrying his name? Was the man who sat with me at the same table last night at the Stomach Restaurant the same man who had taken me to the market in Pula on that distant hot June day, and bought me his last gift?

All the same questions were popping up again. And, again, I didn’t have any answers. I was sitting in the bathtub, locked in the bathroom of a hotel room at the Wild Pension in Vienna, pushing my head between my knees and staring at the cold water gathering around my feet. I shivered with cold, but it was easier to put up with the cold than the pain that merely subsided and waited for me to step back out into today’s morning, back into the first day of my new life.



A few minutes later, I saw Nadia in front of the bathroom door, holding two aspirins in her hand.

‘Take them.’

I did as she said and went back to the bathroom to down the pills with water. Then I went back out and lay on the bed. I had a feeling that the world under my feet still hadn’t settled, and that it was still restlessly swaying. Nadia sat down next to me and put her hand on my chest.

‘Do you want to get some breakfast?’

‘No.’

‘How about a walk? Maybe fresh air would do you some good.’

I shook my head. All I needed at that moment was somebody to listen to me. For the first time in my life, I felt the physical need to shake out all the amassed bitterness pounding inside my chest beneath Nadia’s hand. I had to get last night out of me, word by word: I had to spit it out.

So finally, hurt and not completely devoid of cynicism, I began telling Nadia about the bloodthirsty executioner who had convinced himself that he was just an innocent victim of fate. About a criminal who wanted to make me believe in his innocence, and had almost succeeded, because it was so tempting to buy a story that transferred all responsibility on to something so intangible, invisible and almighty as ‘fate’. I told her about Nedelko’s faith in it, about his faith as his redemption, in the same manner as all other faiths that helped people face whatever they couldn’t face themselves. Death, for example, and even more, sin. I confided in her that I thought that Nedelko’s fate was his God. Nedelko, I said, became just another believer at the hands of the Almighty, who led him on and who would forgive all his sins in the end.

‘If his faith was as firm as you say, he wouldn’t need you to confirm it for him.’

‘On the contrary. It is difficult to firmly believe without help.’

I also told her about the farewell he had predicted. I tried to convince Nadia, and myself even more, that it was just about enticing my pity, that is was a game which Nedelko had decided to play last night, but she just shook her head.

‘Maybe he called you just to help him die in peace.’

These were words I didn’t dare say, even though they were constantly on my mind. I was too afraid to admit such a role was being assigned to me last night. I was afraid of the realization that Nedelko had been looking to me as someone who would reinforce his belief that he was just a tiny, helpless marionette on the great string of history. I was afraid of the realization that he had wanted my understanding only to finally justify himself to himself, to calm him down and satisfy him and prepare him for death. The death he had forecasted to me.

‘And if I understand correctly, you didn’t help him do that last night. Quite the opposite.’

‘Is it okay to help a war criminal die in peace? Even though this war criminal is your father?’

Nadia finally helped me, maybe even without knowing it, arrive at the question that had been haunting me this whole time. It only had to be articulated. But she was silent, as if she had wanted to tell me that I was the only one who could ask himself such a question. And that I was the only one who could answer it.



The train was slowly carrying us towards home, and returning us to our everyday life. Her to her microbiology; me to my coffee vending machines and occasional lectures. We were again threatened with the normal life that we hadn’t known how to live before going to Vienna, and that would test us all over again. We sat opposite each other, and I could feel that both our minds were wandering toward tomorrows, when we’d be alone again, and have to fight the silence between us. I felt Nadia asking herself if this train wasn’t returning us to the place she’d wanted to escape so badly, the place where she’d tried to talk to me in vain.

‘Vladan… ’

This was the ‘Vladan’ that didn’t promise anything good, the ‘Vladan’ that scared me, the ‘Vladan’ after which something was ending.

‘I was thinking… I decided to go back to my parent’s house. At least for a while. All this… the thing with your father… this was too much for me. I hope you understand. Maybe we could… after we take a break from everything… I want us to start again. From scratch. Not immediately, but after everything settles down. When you’ve resolved… when I’ve resolved everything. Maybe we could try again. If it works out. But now I’d like to go home for a while.’

Instead of answering, I began to guess which of the many silences had killed our story. I was toying with turning back time, and imagining how it would have ended if everything that did happen, hadn’t. But I didn’t object because, after everything she’d done for me, I didn’t have the heart to convince her to sacrifice herself for me some more. For us. Even though I wanted to more than anything, and I was scared to death of being left without her. Nadia was looking through the window and crying, and I wished I could cry with her. To show her I cared, to show her my gratitude, my commitment. At that point, I realized that I had never loved anyone as much as I loved her, and I was determined not to let her disappear from my life, like I had with everybody I had loved before her. I’ll let her go, but I won’t let her stay away.

I was telling myself this, and yet I didn’t believe it. I didn’t believe that I could bring her back into my life. My fear grew and I panicked again. After Nadia, I couldn’t see anything, because after Nadia there wasn’t anything. I wanted to at least thank her, thank her for everything she had done for me. Or at least to apologize. Tell her that I understood, that I knew that she was too young, that I knew that she was just a kid who needed attention and love. But instead, I let us drown in our last silence.