Yugoslavia, My Fatherland

8

The first time I heard about Uncle Danilo was the last time I saw my father. The evening before, after yet another one-sided phone monologue to mother, she made the public address that we would be joined for breakfast the next morning by his royal highness, Colonel Borojević. She added that said colonel was no longer either her husband or my father, but merely an officer of the Yugoslav People’s Army.

I had a pretty good idea that nothing good would come of breakfast, aside from thin slices of cheese and salami, a theory confirmed by my mother’s midnight walk, which began and ended at the hotel restaurant, where she smoked an entire pack of cigarettes and drank her first schnapps. Then she called me from reception to come down and join her for a Coke. It was half past one in the morning, and I was sitting there with my mother, drinking my favourite beverage, watching her chain-smoke. She ordered another schnapps at two o’clock, without asking if I wanted anything else to drink, and the sleepy waiter who brought her a glass in silence likewise neglected to ask me. At half past two, my mother suggested we go to bed when she finished the cigarettes, and at ten to three we finally went to the room and fell asleep, or at least I did.

We had already finished our breakfast the next morning by the time Nedelko stroked my head and sat at our table. Mother asked if he was hungry, but he shook his head. It turned out that, instead of my father, we were being visited by the voice from the telephone that merely inhabited his body, asking me stupid questions I had already answered at least eighteen times during our calls. When he ran out of questions, he fell silent and just sat there with us. To my only question, — ‘When are we going home?’ — he just shrugged. Then mother asked me to go up to the room, so she and father could discuss serious things — a sentence I’d not heard for years. When I was younger, they didn’t want to fight in front of me, so they’d send me to my room, but for ages they’d ignored my presence and let rip wherever they stood, no doubt reasoning that I was old enough to learn about how the real world worked. So I was well aware that serious things were now more serious than usual, and that they would speak quietly, almost in a whisper, even more quietly than they had when they’d spoken of Aunt Enisa in the hospital. I rose silently and headed up to the room without really saying goodbye to my father. For an hour, I impatiently sat there on the bed, flipping through the channels on the TV. Then my mother finally returned to the room. She shot straight for the bathroom, emerging a few minutes later to say, oh by the way, that she was looking for something in her suitcase, and that we were going to Novi Sad the next day. To see Uncle Danilo. I nodded and didn’t ask who Uncle Danilo was, because I knew very well that this was not the time for questions, much less answers.

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When packing up room 211, my mother had need of someone who would oppose her, a face into which she could throw her arguments and convince herself that Uncle Danilo in Novi Sad, my father’s first cousin once removed, was the best short-term option for us. She needed this, because she didn’t believe in her decision enough, and was furious with my father, and with herself, for having allowed herself to be in such a position, so out of control, so completely dependent on strangers. I was silent and afraid, because I wasn’t used to visiting unknown people, and I was worried that I wouldn’t have my own room wherever we were going. I was even more afraid of how other kids in Novi Sad would look on me, sizing up my every move, waiting for me to do something that they could use against me later. Few creatures are as fearsome and mean as pre-pubescent boys. Would I have to prove myself, fight for them to accept me? Mother had no time for my concerns, busy enough with her own. She couldn’t comfort me, I know this now, because she was preoccupied with her own self-soothing, repeating to herself that Danilo was family, and that meant something to these people, not like the Podlogars. They would be kind, and we must be grateful, and we had no other choice than to wait for this ‘extraordinary situation’ to pass, and for father to come back and for us to return to Pula.

But when father called in the evening to say that he was going ‘to the field,’ and wouldn’t be able to come to Belgrade or see us off to Novi Sad, like he’d promised that morning, mother finally cracked. She collapsed onto the floor of room 211 and cried. I wanted to hug her, take some of the pain away, pain I didn’t understand but was eager to suffer myself if it would ease her, but she kept moving away from me, as if afraid she’d infect me with her despair. I think her remaining courage left her for good that day at the Bristol Hotel. She was a woman not only defeated, but left to realize that she was alone in her own story. I don’t know if she felt, at the time, that the ‘extraordinary situation’ would ever end. I believe that her sixth sense tingled in anticipation of the horrors drifting her way. Sitting among the boxes and suitcases, she was now a woman on the run, someone who would end up running for years and years, from all that dragged her down to the floor of room 211.

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My mother was already reconciled to all that awaited her as she entered the apartment of Danilo Radović, on the fifth floor of a building just beside the fish market in Novi Sad. Beside her, I was overwhelmed with fear, in anticipation of the imminent union with distant relatives. When we finally reached the building, I almost wet my pants, my heart shook under my shirt, legs quivered, palms greased with sweat so I almost dropped the box I was carrying. I would’ve liked nothing more than to sit down on the ground of Novi Sad, like my mother the day before, and cry. I probably would have done that very thing, but Danilo came running out to us, hugged and kissed us, and began to shout, a habit he would not cease until the day he drove us to the bus station and sent us off to Ljubljana. At that moment, I was saved from fainting by his infectious buoyancy, physically lifted by his strong hands, which encouraged me towards the entrance of his apartment building, up the stairs five flights, and into the door of his flat. He never stopped talking: how I should leave my things, that they’d be brought up later, that I shouldn’t worry, that all that mattered was that mother and I were alive and well and safe with them. And of course, that I was ‘just like Nedelko was at age twelve,’ when the two of them lived together like brothers.

So mother and I found ourselves temporary members of the Radović family, the first relatives I’d ever met. Besides Danilo, there was his wife, Sava, their seven-year-old daughter, Jovana, and a ten-year-old son, Misho. All waited in line to welcome us into their home. To add to the festive atmosphere, their neighbour, Kosa, her husband Risto, and daughter Natasha, who was a bit older than me, were also there. It soon became clear that Kosa, Risto and Natasha spent more time there than in their own apartment across the hall, so we were then the eighth and ninth residents of this fifty-square-metre flat. Our arrival interrupted this neighbourly idyll for a few moments, before they all kissed me three times, and asked us, on repeat, if we were hungry, if we’d like some coffee or juice, or if we were tired. They showed us a pair of mattresses on the bedroom floor, and explained that we would sleep in Misho and Jovana’s room, while they would squeeze into Danilo and Sava’s double bed. This all took place across a barrage of rapid-fire shouts and questions and shouted questions, everyone speaking over each other, wondering about Pula and Belgrade and my father, and then about my father, Belgrade and Pula, and then about my father again.

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Following the moving-in ritual and the unavoidable cascade of snacks, the evening news began, and the welcome committee gathered around the extremely loud television set, as if on command, and fell strangely silent, at least for a short while. I managed to learn that the Yugoslav People’s Army was trying to reconcile the various parties involved in a conflict in Slavonia, which was where my father had been sent ‘into the field.’ I couldn’t hear which parties were in conflict, and what sort of conflict it was, because Danilo and Risto began yelling at the politicians on TV, then at each other, then outshouting the news reporter, just as he was saying something important. Sava and Kosa were no shrinking violets either, engaged in an equally vocal discussion. All I could make out from their shouting duel was that Sava and Danilo were convinced that Risto and Kosa should bring Risto’s parents to Novi Sad, but Risto refused, saying that ‘the Gojković family will continue to live in the place they were born.’ I didn’t really follow much of this ‘conversation,’ as it was about politics and Serbs and Croats and Slovenians, and it sounded a lot like sports coverage of a competition between the republics. The more enthusiastic the shouts, the less I understood, when I had always thought that increased volume was to make it easier to be heard. I sat on the couch, huddling close to my mother in fear, while she strained to hear the TV, failing to even react when Danilo smacked the table with his hands to punctuate an opinion. Little Jovana sat beside me, eating bread and chease spread, showering breadcrumbs across the room. Like my mother, she acted as if nothing special was going on around her. Only when Danilo’s slaps spilled her glass of milk did she react, ordering her father to clean the mess himself, which made everyone laugh, as Danilo proudly squeezed and kissed his daughter. Misho sat on the far side of the room, watching his parents with what looked like interest, before shooting quick glances to my mother and me.

The TV screen was thick with police, soldiers and politicians that day and by the evening I had a reasonable idea that the situation was very serious. All the while, Risto and Danilo provided vituperative play-by-play commentary, telling each other to go and do various things to themselves, calling their wives this and that, pouring schnapps and toasting. This continued into the night and hours later, they were still at it, repeating the same phrases over and over again. Risto repeated his state of the Gojković family address (‘the Gojković family will continue to live in the place they were born’), while Danilo rhetorically inquired, many times, ‘Why Slovenians can go their own way, but Serbs can’t?’

At some point, Slobodan Milošević appeared on the screen and, in an instant, it was clear to me that no one in the Radović apartment would speak over, or contradict, his words. His thoughts were adopted as their own and repeated because, it seemed, Slobo always said exactly what Danilo and Risto thought, but in a wiser, more articulate way than they could hope to conjure. Only Sava frowned and shook her head, as if apologizing, explaining that she couldn’t help herself, that there was something gruesome about him, that she was scared when she saw him, probably because she’d always been scared of people who were very clever. While Danilo warned us all to calm down and shut up, so he could hear Slobo’s every word, Natasha rolled her eyes in disbelief.

Slobo’s presence meant that the children were banished to the kitchen, and we had dinner there, too. That was when Misho and I spoke for the first time. He asked if I’d already been swimming that summer, and I said that I’d swum only once, and he said that, if he lived by the sea, he would swim in May and go twice a day, and would never move from the beach. Natasha told him not to babble, because he didn’t know what it was like to live by the sea, and then they had a quick fight over who knew better what it was like to live by the sea. Jovana, eating bread and chease spread again, admitted that she’d never been to the seaside, but that she’d go on her own next year, if her parents didn’t take her. They all laughed and, this time, she got a kiss from Kosa, who was serving us in her neighbour’s kitchen as if it were her own. We later returned to the living room, where Risto and Danilo were still steaming along in their altercation, a steam engine fuelled by schnapps, which made them even surer of the points they had to make, though they made less and less sense. By the end of the evening, it was abundantly clear to me that, ‘the Gojković family will continue to live in the place they were born’ and that ‘Slovenians might drive the Serbs away, but the Croatians can’t.’

At some point, while leaning against my mother, I fell asleep in front of the TV, probably just when Risto, Danilo, Sava and Kosa jointly figured out that ‘Tito always hated the Serbs’ and Danilo, forgetting that my mother was sitting next to him, simply blurted out: ‘Fuck Slovenians!’

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The next morning I woke to an empty room. Where my mother had fallen asleep now lay a tangle of Jovana’s long scraggly hair, peeking out from beneath the blanket. It was so quiet that I was certain that the apartment was otherwise empty, so I was surprised to run into the seven others in the kitchen, drinking coffee in complete silence, whispering a word or two only now and then, tiptoeing to the toilet in turns. The only one who uttered a sound was Natasha, who wore headphones that did little to shield us from the rock music flowing out of her Walkman.

Sava asked me, in a whisper, if I’d like some breakfast, and scrambled eggs with bacon and a cup of warm milk awaited me on the table. Danilo was reading a newspaper with Cyrillic script that I’d never really gotten the hang of, and I finished eating before I’d made it through a headline on the first page. Danilo constantly tugged at Risto’s sleeve, pointing at an article here and there. Each time Risto would bend over to the newspaper for a second, then they’d both nod in satisfaction or shake their heads in outrage. They could even hash out the news of the day with one another in total silence.

Eight silent people crammed around a kitchen table, and the hour almost eleven, meant that they had already been at this for several hours, having risen at seven. It didn’t seem probable that they had been so quiet for so long just to avoid waking me and Jovana: based on the howler monkey behaviour in front of the TV news the night before, this didn’t seem to fit the profile. Those gathered in the kitchen this morning seemed like a different group of people altogether: considerate, lenient, understanding, inclined to the irrational spoiling of their sleeping children. These were people who did not think it was right to introduce their kids for the cruelties of life, but instead thought, ‘Let them sleep, sweet fortunate youths, while they still can!’ In those miserable times in which we found ourselves, assuring peaceful sleep was one of the only privileges Danilo, Risto, Kosa and Sava could offer their children. Perhaps this was why they could tiptoe for hours, drain copper pots of Turkish coffee, read newspapers, nod and shake their heads, all without making a sound. They had created their own little world, in which all phones, radios, kettles, pressure cookers, intercoms, shavers, hair dryers, TVs, coffee grinders, food processors and washing machines went silent for a few morning hours, so as not to wake Jovana, Misho or Vladan, so sweet in their sleep, as Sava had whispered while peeking into the bedroom.

My days in Novi Sad were spent trying to unwind the mystery of who the Radović and Gojković families really were. I wondered, over and over again, whether these were really those affectionate morning monastics, quiet until the long-slumbering Jovana would wake, or the vampirical evening nationalists, who ignored their children when the nightly news was on, cursed and shot down schnapps, berating all Slovenians, dirty Muslims, treacherous Serbs, Montenegrins, Croats, Gypsies, stingy Jews and Albanians. I gathered, from speaking to Misho and Natasha, that this was all pretty normal, and they saw nothing unusual in their parents’ behaviour. In fact, they were stunned by my questions on the subject.

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Since my mother and I had arrived in Novi Sad, my father’s calls came less frequently and he only spoke to mother, who regularly summarized these conversations, saying she couldn’t hear well, but she thought he’d said that he was okay and would be back soon. It was probably clear to her that my father was in a place far from the concept of ‘okay.’ She also probably sensed that he would not be back soon, but it was likewise possible that father had said something entirely different over the phone, but mother hadn’t felt like sharing his real words with me, much less the Radović and Gojković families.

They clearly tried to avoid talking too much directly to my mother, so as not to torment her, but also because a conversation on politics with a Slovenian from Croatia might lead into dangerous territory these days. They assumed that she had her opinion about everything that they chewed over in the living room each night, and these Serbs seemed accepting of whatever they had guessed was her distorted Sloveno-Croatian opinion. So they kept offering mother things, asking her if she was cold at night or would rather sleep on the couch in the living room, if she’d like to use the phone, if she needed something from the shop, if she’d like to see some of the picturesque villages around there, a hundred other questions, all designed to make her feel comfortable, but also to keep her from being provoked to the point where she might say something real, and convey her opinion. They seemed to forget about her presence during the evening news, but I saw that they were careful not to provoke her unintentionally to engage in their discussion, and they never once asked her opinion. If Slovenians or Croats were mentioned, they pretended that she was part of neither group, instead asking if she’d like to watch some American series called ‘Twin Peaks’ that was running on Channel 2.

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Misho and I spent more and more evenings in the kitchen. Jovana occupied the bedroom and didn’t like our company, so we would play cards, Monopoly or just talk. Though a year and a half younger than me, Misho was immensely curious, interested in many unusual things, none of which had to do with current events in this country of ours, on the verge of an ‘armed conflict,’ as they kept saying on the evening news. He wanted to know how we pronounced words in Pula, and what words we used that he didn’t even know. He found all the Italian words that people in Pula throw into conversation amusing, and had me constantly repeat our local word for towel, ‘šugaman’, because he thought it sounded hysterical.

Misho and I were often sent to the shop, to the farmer’s market for vegetables, to the neighbour for honey and mushrooms, or to Mirsada, the hairdresser. On our treks, which could stretch to several hours, Misho showed me all manner of wonders, and we often got stuck in front of the window of a small bookshop in the city centre. Misho would show me all the dictionaries for foreign languages that he wanted to buy. What a He-Man action figure meant to me, Franco-Serbo-Croatian dictionaries meant to him. He tried all sorts of tricks to get his father, Danilo, to buy him dictionaries. The only problem was that, besides Misho being less cunning and resourceful than I, my action figure cost eight dinars, while his dictionary cost forty. So Misho had only one; a pocket-sized English-Serbo-Croatian dictionary, sent to him by his Grandma from Bosnia on his ninth birthday.

Of all our hikes around town, one engraved itself into my memory. It was a Wednesday, which I remember because my father called us for the last time that Wednesday and, for the next few days, we were all saying, ‘Nedelko hasn’t called since Wednesday.’ It was terribly humid and Misho and I were sitting beside one of the stalls in the fish market. There was a Hungarian woman selling jeans there and, whenever one of the many Hungarians in Novi Sad visited her, she spoke to them in her native language. Misho tried to convince me this was the case, and claimed that Hungarian was the funniest language in the world, and that eavesdropping on Hungarians was an experience I shouldn’t miss.

So we loitered around the market, like two abandoned urchins, waiting patiently for the Jeans Lady to say a few words in Hungarian. But, as if to spite us, called out to all like a proud Serbian: ‘C’mon, tuck yourself into these skinny jeans and fuck the crisis! Hey, boy, what’s up with you? Shame on you, brother! Come here so I can make a man out of you. Hey Granddad! Wanna be trendy? Lady! I’ve got everything for your son, husband, lover, whatever you want,’ and so on and so forth, while we fried in the thick heat, until she was sick of herself and went quiet for a second.

At that moment, an older man in a three-piece suit and tie, an elegant form of slow suicide, approached her and started to look over the jeans. Misho poked me wildly with his elbow, and I saw he was about to start laughing, but tried to hide it from the saleswoman and her new customer. I thought that he might’ve been laughing at the old man’s vest, but he whispered, ‘Listen!’ Only then did I notice that the lady with the jeans and the gentleman in the vest were talking, but I couldn’t hear anything, and it was obvious that this was their purpose. Misho, sitting nearer, could probably hear them, as he was happily chuckling, I assumed from overhearing the conversation in Hungarian. I moved closer to them, but I could still hear only the thrum of cars and a guy selling foreign currency a few metres from us. In the meantime, the gentleman in the vest had bought his jeans and left, and the only thing I could determine was the strange language, so very different from Serbian.

On the way home, still chortling away, the thrilled Misho taught me that ‘cheers’ in Hungarian is ‘egeshegedre.’ He imitated drunk Hungarians and I laughed, even though it was Misho, not ‘egeshegedre,’ that I found funny. He found things funny that my friends in Pula wouldn’t. And while Misho repeated the only Hungarian word he knew for the twentieth time, I decided that Pula was much more amusing than Novi Sad. I found it much more amusing to watch the guy with the huge red lump in place of his head at the Valkane swimming area than to listen in on normal-looking people speaking a foreign language. And then I thought how nice it would be if my mother and I could return there as soon as possible.

In front of the entrance to our apartment building, two somewhat older guys were waiting, sizing us up as we approached. One wore a baseball cap and was smoking, while the other had one of those early teen half-moustaches, afraid to shave for fear that it might not grow back. The first one looked at me and set about trying to appear daunting, like he saw villains do in American movies, while the other stopped Misho, who hadn’t even noticed them until that point, because he was so excited about Hungarian.

‘Misho, boy. Is this that Croat of yours?’

I knew where such questions led and went numb for a second, knowing that my guide to Novi Sad was not particularly resourceful. But Misho’s answer surprised me as no answer has, before or after.

‘He’s not a Croat. His dad kills Croats!’

Misho then pushed past the two baffled idiots, while I followed, convincing myself along the way that I didn’t know what he had been talking about.