Mama Leone (14 page)

Grandpa tells everyone he doesn't fear death. When he's coughing away in the morning thinking he's never going to catch his breath again, he murmurs
oh death, sweet death
, as if he were wooing it because he's fallen in love with it, but death's not interested.
Does death hurt?
I ask.
I don't care if it hurts, just as long as it doesn't suffocate
. Grandpa doesn't believe in pain and so nothing ever hurts him. Any kind of pain is something strange, like it's got nothing to do with him. When he had a tooth out he told Leitner the dentist, our neighbor,
take it out, but no injections
, and Leitner said to him
but Mr. Rejc, it's not the Middle Ages
. Grandpa ignored him and said
I don't care what age we're in
, so Leitner took his tooth out just like that and Grandpa didn't even clench his fist in pain.
My Franjo's no hero
, said Grandma,
he's just scared of the anesthetic. . . I'm not scared of anesthetic, I just want to know what's happening to me
.

But Nikola, who's from
Ć
milj, he's afraid of pain and dying and anesthetic. He comes over to see Grandpa and says
Signore Franjo, I'm a dead dog am I
, and Grandpa replies
Nikola, buddy, get yourself off to the doctor
, and Nikola mopes:
I can't, I don't know if I'm more scared or more ashamed
. After that Grandpa doesn't say anything, just pours him a rakia and they just stare at each other until Nikola drinks up and leaves. Nikola comes over to our place so someone actually looks at him because in the village people have been looking straight through
him for years. They go by him looking at the tips of their toes or out to sea, giving Nikola and his fears and his shame the widest berth. Some people say hi and look away at the same time, but most just make like he's not even there, like he's committed some terrible crime and you can't forgive his just being alive.

Nikola's got tuberculosis, and in Drvenik tuberculosis is a disgrace. He doesn't go to the doctor because he's ashamed and because his family won't let him out of the house in any case. Everyone knows what he's got, but it's still better the doctors in Split don't find out, that way at least the story doesn't spread all the way there. When someone has tuberculosis in Sarajevo or in other cities, they aren't ashamed and neither are their families, they just go to the doctor, stay in the hospital for a while, and go back home happy and healthy. A disgrace in the city is different from a disgrace in the countryside. In Drvenik it's a disgrace Nikola's got tuberculosis, but in Sarajevo it's a disgrace when someone pees in the building hallway and they catch him.

There will be heavy rains this spring
, that's what Grandpa reads in the newspaper. That's not good news for people with sick lungs. He and Nikola have both got sick lungs, but Nikola's problem is infectious and Grandpa's isn't. His asthma is his business and he can't give it to anyone else – except I could inherit it because he's my grandpa – but Nikola could give his tuberculosis to anyone, especially if they blew their nose with his handkerchief. Once Nikola took his hankie out of his pocket and I got shivers up and down my spine. I wanted to grab it and blow
my nose so bad. I'm scared of pain and the doctor and I don't like being sick, but I wanted that hankie, and if Nikola had accidentally dropped it I would have grabbed it and got sick. It's like when I'm standing on a really high balcony. I always want to jump, even though I wouldn't like to be dead. Putting your nose into Nikola's hankie is an adventure, but I know that I won't because we're not daredevils, we're people quietly and politely getting on with our lives, and we don't go looking for the real devil; he shows up on his own account. Daredevils spend all their time daring the devil, trying to catch him by the tail, but he gets away, and they just laugh and that's why they burn bright and die young and are always a burden to everyone.

It's really been raining a month now. Grandpa's finding it hard to breathe and he's always real pissed. Grandma says it won't be his heart, asthma, or kidneys that kill him, but his impishness. Only Grandpa and I have impishness, but everyone yells at me because of mine and I have to scram so I don't get it on the snout, but they never say anything to him when he's being impish, they just stay out of his way, everyone except for Dad when he comes from Sarajevo. He's always testing Grandpa for something, holding his hand and checking his pulse, tapping him with his finger, looking him up and down, and even though Grandpa answers all his questions he's even more pissed when Dad goes. He's pissed because he's kept something to himself and now he feels guilty about it. Asthma is for Grandpa what a cake-baking disaster is for Grandma: It's something that chanced upon him
one day and made him sick, but it didn't just happen to him all willy-nilly but because he'd done something wrong and because in life in general he didn't know the ratio of flour to milk to eggs or something else you make life with, so that's why he got asthma, to torture and suffocate him and it would always be his own fault. It's always worse when it's your own fault because then you're even more pissed with everyone else. And there's something more besides: Grandma can hide her baking from guests and no one ever knows about it, but Grandpa can't hide his asthma from anyone because we all hear him wheeze when he breathes. There was a time when roosters woke people in the morning in Metjaš and Drvenik, but now my grandpa's cough does the job. He coughs away and all the while fathers are tying their ties, mothers are getting ready for the office, and fishermen are returning to shore.

It looks like Nikola died
, said Grandma when she came back from the store.
What do you mean – it looks like he died
, Grandpa asked.
That's what it looks like, nobody wants to say anything but they've all gone to Lu
č
ica, the whole village is there. The road to Zaostrog has probably collapsed . . . Can we go to Lu
č
ica too
, I asked.
No, we can't, looking at a dead man isn't like going to the circus
. It's always like that, the minute something interesting happens in Drvenik I'm not allowed to see it and they always tell me it's not a circus, that it's not for my eyes and it would be better if I put a sock in it and quit asking my questions. I'm going to miss all the important stuff, so when I'm in Sarajevo and they ask me what's up in
Drvenik I'll only be able to say I don't know because my grandma and grandpa didn't let me see if there was anything up.

The next day I found out what happened to Nikola. All the kids were talking about it so I just made like I knew it all already and hung on their every word. He took ill where the highway makes a sharp bend and sat down on a rock even though it was raining. He felt so bad he preferred getting wet to walking. Then he started to cough up blood. There was more and more blood and it rained harder and harder. In the end he coughed up all the blood inside him, but the rain was so hard it washed the blood away and half the highway turned pink like someone had melted the Pink Panther and poured him all over the road. Blood goes from red to pink in the rain and that's why it's better to bleed in the rain because then you don't scare anyone. Nikola wouldn't have been scared, or at least less scared than if he'd bled on a sunny day when all the colors would have been brighter and there would have been nothing to make the red blood go Pink Panther pink.

He was dead when they found him. He sat on the stone, his face as white as lime and smiling like an angel. I don't know how angels smile, but that's what Granny Tere said Nikola's smile was like and she always goes to church so she knows how angels smile. Nikola was smiling because he was dead and wasn't scared or ashamed anymore, so he could finally smile again, like back when he didn't have tuberculosis. People smile when they think something's funny but it's nicest to smile when it's nothing to you. Something was up, you were in pain, suffocating
and worrying, and then it's nothing and it's funny because it's nothing and you think there was nothing there to start with, you just got a bit anxious and thought you were in pain, suffocating and worrying.

The next day they took Nikola up into the mountain and buried him in the cemetery on Biokovo, out from which you can see the whole vastness of the sea; the sea beyond Hvar and Pelješac, beyond Kor
č
ula, beyond Vis, all the way to Italy. In the end, beyond everything there is still the ocean, but out there it gets round. When you're up on Biokovo, when you're at the cemetery, you understand why once upon a time people thought the earth stretched out flat: that's because they'd never climbed Biokovo and couldn't see the ocean is round, and if the ocean is round, then the earth is round too. I think the cemetery is built so high, right up there on Biokovo, so when the living bury the dead they can take comfort that they know what the dead didn't. When someone in Drvenik dies, you learn that the earth is round.

Grandpa and Grandpa went to the funeral and came back all red. After the rain a fiery sun had beat down; Grandpa was furious and breathing heavily and cussing Nikola out for not dying some other day, like some sunny day so that when they buried him it would be raining, so the funeral procession wouldn't have fried climbing up Biokovo and baked all the way down.
No one cried
, said Grandma.
They've washed the shame from their hands
, said Grandpa, disgusted not by the shame that was no more – by Nikola – but by the living, now all relieved there was no one in Drvenik with tuberculosis anymore.

Fine, I'll take you to see where he died
, said Grandpa and reached for his umbrella. There had been five days of rain and I couldn't wait for it to stop. I wanted to see the place of death and was worried the highway wouldn't be pink anymore like a melted Pink Panther. And my worry was well-placed: The asphalt was black, like any other highway. I looked around and everything looked rainy and normal, no trace of a special place for dying, no sign of anything Nikola must have left for us so we'd know where he died.

That's where he sat down
, Grandpa pointed to a white rock where the number 480 was written under a red line.
It means he died on the four hundred and eightieth kilometer of the highway, but that doesn't matter. Nikola's gone, no story, straight to bed. You happy? We can go home now
. Actually I wasn't that happy. I was confused. I thought there would be a mark at the spot where he died; maybe the highway wouldn't be pink but at least there'd be something giving away that someone had been there and then suddenly wasn't there. If there isn't something like that, then there's also no reason for someone to die and when there's no reason for someone to die, then the sadness is much bigger than a little cry and bye-bye. Then you would never stop crying when someone you loved died.

Why do people die? . . . They die because they get old and because if people just kept being born and didn't die there wouldn't be enough room on earth . . . It would be better if no more people were born and people didn't die . . . Why would that be better? . . . Well, because then only people we know would be
alive, who were good, and new people who we don't know wouldn't come along and make old people die . . . How do you know those new people wouldn't be better than the old ones? . . . No one is better than you . . . Nonsense, of course there are people better than me. There are lots of people better than me, you just haven't met them yet. You'll see when you grow up . . . I'll see when you die? . . . Yes, you could put it that way. When I die, you'll see how many better people than me there are. Your friends will be better, the woman you marry will be better, and your children will be better. They'll all be better than me and one day you won't be sad about my death anymore . . . You'll die for those better people? . . . Yes, and you'll die for those better people too. The important thing is we die in the right order and children don't die before their parents
.

He'd never spoken for so long and so quietly and calmly. He let the umbrella down and shook it out. The drops splashed all over the kitchen tiles and all over Grandma's hair. He did it deliberately and smiled.
You old fool
, said Grandma without even looking at him. She doesn't have to look at him to know why he shook the umbrella out on the tiles and all over her hair, and he doesn't have to see her eyes to know she's not mad. Even when he doesn't shake the umbrella out, he knows she thinks the same thing –
old fool
– it's just there's no reason to say it aloud. They're happy because in the rainy season when it's tough for people with sick lungs so some people have to die, that it was Nikola who died, who no one said
old fool
to, and who didn't have anyone to shake the umbrella out on. There are big crowds in places where people die; it's like at the bus station with everyone pushing
and shoving, so when you look from afar, it seems everyone wants to get on, but actually they're pushing and shoving to not get on, to hang around until the last bus comes along, which you climb aboard because the crowd's gone, because you've got a ticket in your hand and there's no one left to say excuse me to if you stay alive.

It was summer, wildfires burned red beneath the Biokovo range, fire-brigade sirens wailed, people ran with containers full of water, the sea smelled of Coppertone and glimmered in the colors of a petroleum rainbow, and we packed our things in the Duck, our Citroën, and got ready for the journey to Sarajevo. Grandpa had died eight months ago, I'd finished first grade in Drvenik, and now we could head happily home. Sarajevo would be home now, the time of a little Sarajevo, a little Drvenik was over. It was all over with Grandpa's asthma too, and from now on we'd only go to the seaside as tourists. Drvenik wasn't our home, which is what I'd thought; it was the home of Grandpa's illness, like a hospital where you go to get well but everyone knows you're going to die there in the end.