Yugoslavia, My Fatherland Read online

  

  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.

  9

  Sixteen years later, Misho’s answer accompanied me like irritating music, all the way from Goražde on to Novi Sad, on those bumpy Bosnian and Serbian roads. This ten-year-old, a year and a half my junior, knew very well back then what he was talking about, but I decided to be ignorant. Every kid, no matter how young, would have found out, sooner or later, that an officer of the Yugoslav Army in the ‘field’ in Slavonia could only be there to kill Croats, even though at the Radović’s house, the TV only indicated when Serbs were in danger. Now, when I think back on it, Dusha at least anticipated all of this, or maybe even knew that such killings brought an end for those who were killed, but never for those who killed. I was sure that, on those muggy August days, surrounded by ever more ferocious news, Dusha was, night after night, inconspicuously saying goodbye to her husband, and squeezed on the couch between the Radovićs and Gojkovićs, was gathering strength to set off on a new life. The strength to escape the madhouse, where the television helped lunatics to believe they were normal, day after day.

  I drove on the bridge past Petrovaradin Fortress, and my gaze dived into the invisible currents of the Danube River. Novi Said, which awaited me on the far side, was still a charming town, despite its eternal searching for better times. I circled its dusty streets and tried to discover places I’d last seen sixteen years ago. This way I intentionally avoided reaching my destination, in front of Danilo Radović’s home. Instead, I watched the people of Novi Sad walk around their town on a beautiful winter’s day, from the warmth of my moving shelter. With swift steps adjusted to the parasitic Pannonian cold, they moved from ‘the hairdressers to the bakery to the market to the Chinese shop.’ I had never seen these people wrapped up in scarves, and I didn’t recognize them in this flat icehouse as the people from my memories.

  My gaze soon shifted from the faces to the walls, which were scrawled in writing. The once beautiful walls of Novi Sad, poorly hidden behind crowds of rushing citizens, threatened everyone: Hungarians, Albanians, Croats, Gypsies, Fags, Undertakers... . The walls of Novi Sad believed that Kosovo was Serbia, that General Maldić was a hero, that fags were sick and, above all, that ‘Only Unity Saves the Serbs.’ A new war raged upon these walls, between spray-painted Chetnik symbols and Nazi swastikas, while locals had clearly grown used to them, and walked past without taking any notice. Perhaps once they used to say to each other, ‘Leave them to their graffiti, they’re just kids,’ then grew silent and looked away from the writing on their ancient walls, the backdrop to their own town, and convinced themselves that this was none of their business, looking to the ground and thinking, ‘Rain will wash this away.’

  

  I climbed up the stairs which Danilo had once enthusiastically dragged me up to his apartment. The stairway was just as savaged by ne
gligence as it had been back then, and memories vividly leapt before my eyes, as if nothing had changed in all these years. Even my present fear, which mounted with each stair, was like an echo of the fear I experienced during that first visit.

  This time, my arrival was unannounced. I wasn’t the touted son of Nedelko Borojević, Danilo’s first cousin once removed. My ties with the Radović family had long ago been broken, and I approached the apartment as a stranger. According to unwritten rules, and people from the Balkans adhered more to unwritten rules than written ones, I should not have shown up without a gift in hand. But the rules in this place no longer applied to me, or so I told myself, and my inappropriate guest behaviour would probably be chalked up to the perverse world I had just driven in from. ‘This is how things work in Slovenia,’ they’d say and, at best, wonder what irreparable damage had prompted the beautiful little boy who had once lived with them to ‘become a skier,’ as they said of the Slovenes, referencing their love of this sport, so unimaginable for those who lived on the plains of Slavonia.

  What will give me away, I thought, is my instinctive move backwards after the second greeting kiss on the cheek, forgetting that Serbs always give a third. What will give me away, I thought, is that I won’t hug and squeeze my cousin Jovana, as was appropriate in this touchy culture, instead offering my hand, like a banker who had just increased my credit rating. What will give me away, I thought, is that I’ll keep addressing Danilo and Savo formally, even after they will have said to stop this Slovenian nonsense, because I was one of their own, and should only use the informal form of address. What will give me away, I thought, are the thousands of trivialities, which, now more so than on my first visit, divide me from these people, make me different and foreign. As I stood before the front door of Danilo Radović’s apartment, I felt more Slovenian than ever before. I was Slovenian head to toe.

  

  I couldn’t hear a thing from beyond the door. I was pretty sure that meant no one was home, because otherwise at least one member of the howler monkey family, surely the loudest in the Balkans, would be heard? I was about to turn and knock on the neighbour’s door and ask about them, when I heard steps coming towards me, soon followed by the sound of a lock being slid open. The door opened a crack and I saw a skinny old man who could only be Danilo, though he looked nothing like the Danilo of my memories.

  ‘May I help you?’

  ‘Danilo?’

  ‘Yes, I’m Danilo.’

  ‘It’s me, Vladan. Vladan Borojević. Nedelko’s son.’

  The old man did not respond to my words, and his dehydrated, wrinkled face was unreadable. He seemed to be studying me with his gaze, still peeking from behind the half-closed door. Then, suddenly, he approached, so close alongside me that I could fell his mildly unpleasant breath, and looked right at me. He seemed to be digging through the archives of his memory; but in vain. I thought that maybe he was a victim of early senility, and that I had irreversibly slipped away from his past.

  But then Danilo gently leaned his small head against my chest, slowly wrapping his veiny arms around me and began hugging until I hugged back.

  ‘Vladan... where did you... why didn’t you call and tell me you were coming... holy fucking shit... ’

  

  Life had stopped in the apartment of Danilo Radović: each piece of furniture was still just where it had been, as if no one had touched anything in all these years. An out-of-date wall calendar was still affixed to a cupboard door with tape. The phone was still perched on a stool in the hall, and the mirror had never been mounted but just learned against a wall. The apartment was littered with awkward silences, which reminded me of the sleeping Jovana and the eight kitchen-whisperers, which had highlighted the gaping emptiness, placid and dead, like a bad still life.

  I followed Danilo into the kitchen, where leftovers were laid out on the table for lunch, or at least something that looked like lunch. The smell of food was a week old, and the stove spoke of someone driven into the kitchen by a life emergency.

  ‘Sit down, Vladan, my boy, sit down. Well... why didn’t you call and tell me you were coming?’

  Danilo quickly moved the dishes from the table to the sink, which was already stacked high, but he somehow managed to slip in a plate and saucepan. When he had squeezed in the saucepan, he waited a moment, to see if the dishes would remain in place or ooze onto the kitchen floor. Then he removed a full ashtray from the table, swept the breadcrumbs to the floor with his hand, and tried to kick them under the table without my noticing.

  ‘Oh my, what can I offer you now?’

  ‘I’m fine, Uncle Danilo. I’m not hungry. You can just sit down.’

  ‘Do you want me to put on some coffee?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Coffee it is. And a glass of schnapps. Which would you like more?’

  ‘We can have schnapps.’

  ‘You drink one for me, I mustn’t drink it. But we’ll have coffee together, okay?’

  He buzzed around the small kitchen, wearing confusion, opening and closing drawers and cabinets, unsure where he kept his copper coffee pot, where he’d left his coffee, where he stashed the sugar. He tried to dig up a coffee spoon from a mound of unwashed dishes, gave up, then went back to it with no more success than before. I watched, wondering what had happened to him in all these years, why he no longer looked like the man I remembered. He was emaciated almost beyond recognition and his once round face was now inhabited by haggard age.

  It was sad to watch him, as he seemed almost intentionally neglected. His hands shook as he turned on the gas stove, as he heaped coffee into the hot water, as he poured schnapps into a teacup, apologizing that he had nothing else on hand to offer. His pants were too wide and his over-large shirt was stuffed awkwardly into them. He had lost all his former savagery, eaten his former pride and, for someone who once appeared to be an inconsiderate tough guy, he had folded into this humble little creature who could not even hide his misery from an unannounced visitor.

  ‘Vladan, my child, what are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m looking for Nedelko.’

  ‘What? Here?’

  ‘Everywhere.’

  ‘But... he isn’t in Novi Sad.’

  ‘I thought you might know where he is.’

  Danilo poured us some coffee and finally took a seat beside me. Now his eyes began to hide from this man on the hunt for a war criminal, and I had the impression that I had scared him.

  ‘He was here once, but that was... back then.’

  ‘Did he keep in touch?’

  ‘Are you hungry? I can go to the shop... ’

  ‘No need. Please.’

  ‘Is the coffee okay?’

  ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘Would you like some milk?’

  ‘No, I’m fine.’

  ‘Here’s some sugar.’

  ‘No thanks. I like my coffee bitter.’

  ‘Just like Nedelko.’

  I looked at this man, a heap of smoking bitter blackness, and he put his weak hand on mine. He slowly squeezed it and tried to smile at me, as if he wanted to show that he was pleased I was there with him.

  ‘Did Nedelko happen to get in touch with you? Later, I mean.’

  ‘I hope you don’t believe all this.’

  ‘All what?’

  ‘This crap he’s being framed for.’

  I could only shrug my shoulders. Danilo’s words suddenly made me feel uncomfortable. I was overwhelmed by this feeling of guilt, with the realization that this hadn’t even occurred to me as a possibility. I hadn’t instinctively defended my father, hadn’t relied, for a moment, on what I had known about him. The thought that my father was indeed responsible for the murder of innocent people sent shivers down my spine, but I didn’t even try to escape this unbearable idea, never slipped into denial, never tried to convince my
self that it must be a lie.

  Unlike me, Danilo was my father’s ally.

  ‘Don’t believe it, my dear Vlado. Don’t believe it, please. It’s all part of their game.’

  In some strange way, Danilo’s words felt good, and encouraged a now mounting desire to believe in them, to hide my doubts and fears behind them.

  ‘You can see that they’re chasing anyone they choose. You know that there is no war without victims. And besides... In that army of his, maybe there were even a few real soldiers, but most of them were ordinary people whose families had been killed, or their houses burnt. They were desperate, poor devils without anyone, without homes. And now you tell me how to forbid such people to take revenge.’

  He believed his every word, and gave the impression of a speaker re-articulating well-circulated thoughts.

  ‘If they’d like to sell this story, they should begin at the beginning, and ask themselves who killed those families and burnt the homes of Nedelko’s soldiers. But they don’t want to do that, because it ruins the foundations on which they’ve built their lies. So they need Nedelko, a so-called mass murderer with a grand plan to obliterate the poor and the innocent. This is a cleaner morality play, not the whole story, from beginning to end. They need a cartoon villain, a Serbian general who appears out of nowhere and starts killing women, children, and old men, for no reason. Because this is the only way their version of truth can exist, the idea that only Serbs fought and killed. That’s why they made up that Hague Tribunal of theirs; so they could imprison one Serb after another. Because of this simple story about evil Serbs, that serves all their interests. No one wants to combine three stories in order to get the real picture about what happened. Then we would see who they really are. And what they did. Only then would the right questions be asked.’