Yugoslavia, My Fatherland Read online

  There were no candles by the grave, but the flowers in the vase seemed fresh, which could mean that Maria was still a regular visitor. And I hadn’t seen her for ages. Actually, after Dushan died, I only saw her once, when I visited her in hospital a few years ago. She was laid up following a throat operation, waiting for chemotherapy. I remembered that I didn’t feel the least bit sorry for this motionless woman who couldn’t talk, and observing her eyes fearfully roaming the hospital room, I even thought that I wouldn’t be sorry if she died. I couldn’t forgive her that she had asked me, back then, to go back to my mother’s. I knew she hadn’t said that because of Dusha, but because she didn’t want me, and there, in that stuffy room in the Medical Centre, I thought about the pointlessness of my visit: she had never wanted me to be her grandson, and I had never wanted her to be my grandmother, and so it made no sense for us to play this game. And then I got up and walked out, without saying a word.

  Later, she once called me and congratulated me, on my birthday. She claimed that Dusha had reminded her. Then she complained that she wasn’t feeling well, and spoke about her health, her thrombosis and her veins. I remember that she sounded like a lonely old lady who wished for someone to comfort her with words, but she wouldn’t get that from me, and after that she never called me again. And so I gradually stopped asking Dusha how she was. I knew she would tell me if Maria died, so I supposed that she was still alive.

  I felt foolish just standing there by Dushan’s grave with my arms crossed, as if I was at a funeral. I imagined that the usual visitors here probably thought about their dead ones, connected with them for a moment and returned to their memories. But my thoughts kept straying to Maria, instead of to Dushan. I thought about how old she must be, and it crossed my mind that she could be in an old people’s home. I could easily imagine her face, saggy from sheer bitterness, silently complaining about everything. I saw how her nice young care workers tried to cheer her up, but to no avail, and how they failed in their attempts to get her to socialize with other tenants. Then I thought about the empty house, and suddenly started wondering if it was really empty.

  

  As I was leaving the cemetery, I was determined to just drive past, to just glance at it and then head back to Ljubljana. I didn’t want Nadia to become more worried about me. But from the street I couldn’t guess what was going on in the Podlogar’s homestead, and a few metres beyond the house, my car almost stopped by itself. I got out and walked back, sure that the house was empty. So I didn’t ring or knock on the door, but decided to peek through the window, although I could barely see anything through it. Then the sound of a door being unlocked startled me.

  Maria still looked like herself, although she was a tiny old woman now. She was straining her eyes to recognize the visitor; never having let herself be talked into wearing glasses. Not even now, when she was carefully touching her surroundings to get her bearings, and it was clear that her sight had almost completely failed her. So, to her, I was probably just a moving shadow, and I could be anybody.

  ‘It’s me. Vladan.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Vladan. Your grandson.’

  Maria waddled towards me with insecure steps, leaning against the wall. When she approached me, she stretched out her hand to look for me. She grabbed my wrist and slightly pulled me towards her. Then we went back towards the front door together. As she was stepping over the doorstep, she leaned on me for support. She trustfully held on to me with both hands, and allowed me to help her through the hall, and then to the kitchen table, and to seat her on a chair. Then she let me go.

  ‘You can get some juice from the fridge in the kitchen.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  An unpleasant smell spread through the house, and everything was covered in a visible layer of dirt. I ran my finger across the window shelf in the kitchen with such pleasure it’s difficult to explain, and looked at the black dust gathered on the tip of my finger. This was, I thought to myself, a fair punishment for a woman who had been so obsessed with cleanliness and orderliness all of her life, a vortex for everything that got caught up in it but, in the end, she was too vain to admit her helplessness, or too stingy to afford household help.

  ‘I told Dusha everything I knew.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘About Nedelko’s letters.’

  Luckily, Maria couldn’t see my confused face very well, for I was struggling to believe what I had just heard. That following out meeting Dusha had tried to find out more about Nedelko’s letters and their origin was unimaginable for me, and spoke of a Dusha I hadn’t known for a long time. If she had ever had any interest in the letters, she could have done this ages ago. So I couldn’t imagine why she had decided to ask Maria about them now.

  The fact that Dusha had inquired meant that Maria was expecting me, and this put me on the spot. I was the vulture who was calling after so many years, wanting to buy some of her memories at a low price, while she still had them. The coincidence of my visit seemed no longer relevant, no longer a part of the existing reality. My attempts to convince Mrs. Podlogar otherwise would have been in vain. By not losing time and getting straight to the point, she let me know that she accepted my predatory game. She was ready for interrogation.

  ‘I told her about the truck driver.’

  ‘What truck driver?’

  ‘That Bosnian guy who brought Nedelko’s letter around, when you’d already moved out. Dushan told him that you didn’t live here anymore, but he’d forward him your new address. He probably didn’t know it by heart, and didn’t feel like asking me. Then Dushan asked him not to bring anything from Nedelko anymore. The guy seemed nice, and I wanted to invite him in for a coffee, but Dushan was angry with him, because he was angry with Nedelko, so I didn’t say anything. I would have given him your address, but I kept quiet, because I thought to myself that Dushan knew why he didn’t want to give it.’

  The actual story might be quite different, and I could easily imagine Dushan leaving a guy standing outside the front door for Maria’s sake and not asking him, because he was Bosnian. On the other hand, he might’ve been in a rush, so that the poor guy wouldn’t stand too long in front of the house, where all the neighbours might see him. He might’ve looked for his little black notebook where he had carefully written down our new address, like an important piece of evidence in his police investigation. And I imagined how Maria, distant like a shadow, followed him around the apartment, not telling him where she had put that little black notebook, but instead, discreetly whispering to him that it wasn’t a good idea to reveal personal information to such people, and that their daughter’s address was very personal.

  I had been able to see for myself, several times over the course of these years that people were classified as ‘such people’, regardless of who they really are, where they were from and what they did. She didn’t want anything to do with them beyond what was strictly necessary. Of course, she wouldn’t admit it out loud to anyone, because she knew full well that such things were inappropriate, and so she continued to try to show herself in a good light, not knowing that she couldn’t hide her misanthropy from ‘such people,’ for ‘such people’ tend to be more observant and insightful than people like her think.

  ‘Do you remember what the truck driver’s name was?’

  ‘The Bosnian guy?’

  Maria felt the need to degrade this person, even after sixteen years, from a truck driver to a Bosnian guy, thus additionally emphasizing her contempt for him: But also for Dusha, and me of course, for even being interested in such a person. My resentment for this woman rose in my throat once more but to calm myself down, I just brushed my foot against the dusty floor, and admired the trace it left behind, remembering that life had already told her; vegetating as she was, all alone in the empty house for over ten years, everything my chastising tongue might’ve said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I
don’t know. The truck said Lazić. And it had our license plates.’

  ‘But you don’t know what the driver’s name was.’

  ‘I didn’t talk to him.’

  ‘Are you sure it said Lazić?’

  ‘I’ve already told Dusha.’

  I wanted to add something, but I changed my mind. She was my only grandmother, and this was our farewell, and it wasn’t worth me regretting anything relating to her.

  

  To me, truckers have always seemed slightly intimidating creatures who are constantly pushing their way into countries everybody else is avoiding. Daniel’s father, Samir, was a ‘trucker,’ at least until he graduated in shadow economy, and Daniel used to regularly tell me about his adventures in motels in Belarus and at petrol stations in Bulgaria, stories about customs officers in Moldavia and female hitchhikers in Poland.

  But regardless of how funny these stories were, I was a little afraid of Samir, because he was always silent when I was around. As a child, I didn’t know many silent people, because everybody I knew in Pula was a big talker. After a litre of plum schnapps, even Emir Muzirović started talking.

  Who knows when I first realized that I had grown up to be a gloomy and silent loner, who could drive through Russian forests for days and weeks and years without wishing to talk to anyone. I sometimes imagined myself slowly driving along an endless straight road, absorbed in my thoughts, gazing into the unchanging distance that grew both dark and clear, but remaining distant and alone. And each time I thought about how much my father hated people to whom he had to ‘force words out of their mouths,’ and how he wouldn’t approve of me having become one of them.

  Luckily, Nadia got slowly used to my silence, and that evening she didn’t try to get anything out of me about Dushan’s grave, Maria or the trucker Lazić, who had tried to bring Nedelko’s letter so many years ago. She let me keep all this from her, and our normal life went on. She went to bed alone that night, without saying ‘good night’ to me, and I waited for her to fall asleep. Only then did I lay down next to her, and thought about the hauler, Jovan Lazić, the owner of the logistics company Lazić Ltd., and how I might finally find person ‘J’ from Nedelko’s letter the next morning. I knew I should be thinking about Nadia and about us too, but I comforted myself that it was adequate for me to just feel guilty for not thinking about it.

  

  On a parking lot in the overheated sheet-metal dump, I started looking for a truck emblazoned with ‘Lazić,’ but to no avail. The guy in the booth muttered wearily that he didn’t have time to watch what trucks had written on them, and that he didn’t count truckers either, and redirected me to a buffet, as he called the container behind the fence of the parking lot. A few truckers waiting for further instructions were hanging around in the cold silence. I sat down and instantaneously invited a series of gazes, as they were surely not used to unfamiliar faces. When the waitress saw that I had no intention of taking off, that I was serious about staying in her canteen, she slowly dragged herself to my table.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Excuse me, do you happen to know Jovan Lazić?’

  She didn’t answer; just examined me suspiciously. I thought that she needed an additional explanation as to why I was interested in the gentleman in question, but then she turned towards other guests.

  ‘Miro, ring Lazo and ask him when he’s coming.’

  Miro, who was lazily leaning against the wall of the container, didn’t exactly jump to carry out the task assigned to him.

  ‘Who’s he?’

  I assumed he meant me, but he was asking her and didn’t even look in my direction. This was a special kind of communication, or so I presupposed, between people who have given up hope for a better future while waiting here, and didn’t have the strength for redundant words. They just sat there and silently shared their disappointment in the direction this world was going.

  ‘What do I know? Here he is, ask him.’

  None of them looked at me, so Miro just sluggishly shook his head and picked up the phone.

  ‘Hello, Lazo? It’s Miro... Are you coming to see Dragica today? Oh... Yes... Gooood... A kid’s here looking for you... Hey, you!’

  He turned to me for the first time.

  ‘Why are you looking for Lazo?’

  ‘Actually... he once brought a letter from my father... and I want to know if they’re still in touch...’

  Miro didn’t feel like listening anymore. My explanation was too complicated for him.

  ‘Something about a letter... I don’t know! Listen, Lazo, why the fuck are you asking me? Come here and ask him why he is looking for you! Fuck your curiosity!’

  Miro didn’t feel the need to bother me with information about whether Lazo was coming or not, but I decided to stay optimistic, and told myself that his silence meant that that Lazo was on his way. There was no point in asking Miro when I could expect him. Time here passed differently than in the rest of the world, and I would probably get a useless answer to my question. Something like, ‘Any time now.’

  

  Lazo was from another story than the rest of the buffet clientele. When he drove straight up to the container with his rig half an hour later, I could tell from his jump out the door that he was much more satisfied with his life than Dragica’s other customers. Even though temperatures outside plummeted below freezing, he was walking around in an open leather jacket and light patent leather shoes, and tried to give the impression that he, being ‘old school macho,’ was never cold. His entrance was dramatic:

  ‘Where’re ya, veterans of the war for Slovenia? Here you are on a well deserved break, as the Americans would say. Dragica, look at them, aren’t they cute?... Fuck your smaller and great Serbia! No wonder your State is in a crisis, if its best employee’s are here! Fuck it, Miro, that dork Tadić’s gonna sell the country, but you’re just sittin’ here and don’t give a fuck about anything. Have you seen them letting Albanians take our Kosovo? Any time now, they’re gonna declare independence, sick motherfuckers...’

  One of the ‘veterans’ he spoke to even muttered something in response, while others made no effort to participate in this political debate. Lazo sat down at the only empty table, ordered Dragica to get him a pear schnapps, and then turned to me.

  ‘Are you looking for me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Come here.’

  I sat down next to him, and Lazo offered me his hand.

  ‘Lazić Yugoslavia.’

  ‘Vladan Borojević.’

  I was observing him, to see if my name triggered any kind of a reaction, but Lazić Yugoslavia couldn’t care less about my name and me.

  ‘Maybe you knew my father, Nedelko Borojević?’

  ‘What did you say? Borojević? From where?’

  ‘From Pula. He was from Vojvodina originally, but we lived in Pula until the war. He was an officer. Then he lived in Brčko.’

  ‘Why do you think I knew him?’

  ‘He sent letters to my mother during the war through you.’

  ‘Through me?’

  ‘With your truck.’

  ‘During the war?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You know when that was? Shit... ’

  ‘He sent the last letter to my mother three years ago, from Brčko.’

  ‘From Brčko?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘With my truck?’

  ‘I don’t know that.’

  ‘What do you know then?’

  ‘I know that someone once brought a letter with your truck, and I thought that you had some kind of contact with him, that you knew where he was.’

  ‘Do I look like a postman to you? I don’t know this Borojević of yours.’

  ‘What about Tomislav Zdravković?’

  ‘Who the hell’s he?’
<
br />   ‘That’s his new name. He changed his name.’

  ‘Changed his name?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘From Borojević to Zdravković?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh man... what the fuck?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Lazo obviously wasn’t used to discussing strangers with strangers, and he had even less patience for aspiring young interrogators.

  ‘Listen. I can’t help you. You know, I immediately forget everything. Who I saw, who I met and who I fucked. If you knew the people I’m dealing with... Bastards are everywhere these days. You can’t believe what’s going on in this country. You don’t see this anywhere else – believe me. And the best thing to do is to forget. If I were normal, I’d have gone nuts ages ago. So even if I’d met your father, I would have forgotten by now. Because that’s what I’ve got to do. In this country, there’s no law, no order, no nothing. People just steal; thieves are everywhere. And I can’t... I can see what’s happening and if I keep all this in my head... I’d go berserk! So with me, everything goes in one ear and out the other. I don’t give a fuck anymore. I won’t lose any sleep over it. No way, Jose. I got fucking rid of them all, excuse my French.’