Mama Leone (23 page)

You have to remember this!
I said.
What do I have to remember?
Mom asked.
I'm not talking to you, I'm talking to myself
. She held me by the hand, deeply frustrated that she isn't a mother like other mothers, and her son isn't a son like other sons, because he mostly talks precocious garbage.
You're not allowed to talk to yourself. Thinking's okay, but not talking, you'll be nuts before you know it
. She's obviously wound up, so I just nodded my head. When she's wound up I nod my head so she doesn't start yelling, doesn't start her ranting and raving and I end up getting it on the snout. For me the word snout is yuckier than any box on the ear. Mom just had to say
snout
and it was message received loud and clear.
You'll get it on the snout
grossed me out so much I would just shut my trap.

We walked along the seashore, almost to Zaostrog. She held my
hand, never letting go. She thought I'd disappear if she let me walk on my own. Mom was like moms aren't allowed to be. She didn't feel enough like a mom, so out of fear, she put it on. Actually, she was most scared that maybe I was more of a grown-up than she was, a kind of mini-forbear who'd popped out of her uterus by mistake, just wanting to check up on her and how she was doing in life, put her through an exam she was bound to fail. So she played at being a grown-up and put me in my place with stuff about me going nuts if I talked to myself.

I noticed she was holding back, expecting me to say something, something for her to pounce on. I bolted my tongue to the roof of my mouth, silent as the grave, breathing real quiet so she couldn't make words out of my breathing. But she couldn't help herself.
What do you have to remember?

I had to choose a strategy fast: either to pretend I didn't understand the question, or to make her think that the whole time I'd been thinking about what it was I had to remember.
I have to remember a precise moment in time, the moment three scents came rushing to me: the scent of the sea, the scent of the pines, and the scent of olive oil
.

She stood there, let go of my hand, a look of shock on her face but a harmless one. She smiled and said
you're my son!
She hugged me tight and asked
who's your mom, who do you love most?

This was already way past stupid and I don't remember what happened next. I don't remember if we went to Zaostrog. Maybe we went
to the confectionary for cake or to the diner for an
ora
, an orange lemonade that I called
oratalismaribor
, like in the ads. I don't know if we sat inside because Mom couldn't smoke in the open air, or if we sat outside because she wasn't so anxious and jumpy that she needed a cigarette, or if we went back the same way by the sea, or if we took the main road . . . I don't remember any of this, nothing at all. I've forgotten everything after
who's your mom, who do you love most
, and I'll never remember. That part of my life is dead. My mom killed it.

Fifteen years later, I was twenty-two, and I'd had a terrible fight with Nataša at a campground.
You're so awful when you talk to me!
she said, her face turning into revulsion itself. No one before or after her could do that, turn their whole face, ears and everything, into an expression of revulsion. The horror cut my legs out from under me, my sweetheart turned monster. But she wasn't gross or disgusting, it's not like she transformed into a festering boil that would have made me leave any sweetheart in the world. Just her face turned into revulsion, like a kid turns into a rat in a horror film. Normally I'd put my hand on her shoulder and pull her toward me; she'd try and break free and in the breaking free she'd go back to her old self. She had to smile and come back, because the old Nataša always came back.

But I was shitty that day on Kor
č
ula. I turned around and stormed off. By the fifth stride I didn't know where I was going. I wanted to stop but couldn't, there was no point in going any farther, yet no point in stopping either, so I just kept going and going and going . . . Of course
it hurt that Nataša didn't come after me. She stayed put in front of the tent or wherever she was at that moment. She didn't put her hand on my shoulder. She never did that, nor would she ever. I wanted to hate her for it. When you're on an island it doesn't matter how shitty you are, or if you don't actually know where you're going, you hit the sea eventually. I stopped at some jagged rocks, as cutting as a final decision, the waves lapping stroppily as a big boat passed the island. You could see little people on the boat waving to someone. I was lonesome because they weren't waving to me. Or maybe there was some other reason I felt lonesome, however things were I remember that that's exactly how I felt, and it was then I became aware of the three scents: the scent of the sea, the scent of the pines, and the scent of olive oil.

My God, why do I do it to myself!
I said aloud – or maybe I just thought it, I don't know – but by then I was already running back, across the rocks, through a stand of pines, through the camp, trampling on people's towels and getting caught on guy ropes. Nataša wasn't there in front of the tent. She wasn't inside either. I ran for the water fountain and spotted them both from ten meters away, Nataša and the fountain. Nataša was cleaning a big round tomato, and a few people were waiting in line behind her. I didn't have time to stop. I couldn't change anything. I had really run, it'd been a good long run and it seemed like I'd been running for hours. Yet those ten meters were the longest. I remember every split-second, every drop of water on the smeared surface of the tomato, every drop that fell at her feet. Like at every campground on
the Adriatic, there was mud in front of the water fountain. But I didn't even slow down through the mud, splattering myself, the people in line, and her, who'd started to turn around. This splattering and turning around went on and on, but she didn't quite make it around in time, she couldn't see who was coming, she didn't know it was me, that I was throwing myself at her. Then it was us falling in the mud, the tomato falling from her hand, her letting out a short, sharp cry, me lying above her, me lying on top of her and holding her tight.

Get off me already!
she said, careful that not a single word, not a single sound rang harshly, and in that moment itself everything, her body, hair, muddy clothes, breathing, gave her away as wanting me to stay. I couldn't let her go because I thought she'd disappear, just like everything had disappeared from Zaostrog so long ago. I wanted her to stay silent, for her to stay here, immortal in this moment and never again, in the mud next to a water fountain, in a campground on Kor
č
ula, half a meter from an abandoned tomato no one will ever slice. The tomato dead the instant it fell from her hand.

Five years passed in the blink of an eye. Nataša was in Belgrade, and I was in Sarajevo. The war was raging. The war of my life, the only one I remember and the only one in which it seems that I'll die, yet remain alive, undamaged and whole, like some kind of Achilles who didn't even get hit in the heel. The phone lines were down. I was in the Jewish Community Center at the Drvenija Bridge. All around there were people waiting for a connection, in front of me a ham radio operator
with a funny machine like something out of the Second World War. From the machine you could hear the hum of all the world's oceans, the cracking and creaking of every shipwreck, all at once. A voice surfaced from between and beneath the waves. The voice said
she's asking how are you?

I turn to the operator:
I'm good, how are you?
He almost swallows the microphone:
he's good, how is she?, I repeat, he's good how is she?, receiving you
. And then again the cracking of ancient ships, the roar of the waves, the terror of the seamen:
she's good, what should she send him?
I'm not too cool with about fifty people listening in on my conversation. I lean down and say to the operator
send me newspapers and bacon!
He quivers invisibly from the breath in his ear and continues
have her send newspapers and bacon, I repeat, newspapers and bacon!
The whole room bursts out laughing, probably about the newspapers, and the voice from the other side crackles
she's thinking of him and wants him to be careful!
The time had come for the conversation to end. People were waiting in line, and I had one more sentence to say, one worth more than every silence, one that had to do the same thing as the hug in the Kor
č
ula mud. I was frozen in terror confronted by words, words, words that I could say, ones I didn't have to say, words that seeped like sand from a smashed hourglass, like mercury on the wooden floor of a chemistry lab, like a little death growing inside me, the death of a tomato next to a water fountain. It was then I remembered it, the tomato, I'd thought it had died, but it hadn't; it appeared one last time, falling from her
hand, it came back to me, right here now as I sent my cry in the stormy night, because on the other side there's no one anymore, there's no me, no campground, no Kor
č
ula, no fight, no face turned to revulsion, a beautiful precious revulsion that is no more . . . I didn't move my lips down to the manly ear, nor did I whisper. I said in a loud voice, like we were really there, in her living room, alone because the general and his wife had gone to the seaside:
I love you more than anything in the world!
The operator turned to me. He saw my face for the first time ever. I'd always been at his back. He'll probably never see me again.
That you'll say yourself
, he whispered, taking the headphones off, me sitting down in his place. The hum was much louder in the headphones. I didn't know where my words were going nor who was listening, the kind of waves they were being lost on or whether there was a momentary lull from which they might be clearly heard, as clearly as they would, just this once, be spoken:
Nataša, I love you more than anything in the world!

The Jewish Community Center cried like people do after a good theater performance. Everyone cried, men and women. A single sentence made so many people cry. That sentence had a weight to it, but only for he who had said it and she who had heard it. At that very moment everyone else could've snoozed away or picked their noses, fired their machine guns, prayed to God, or spoken some commonplace truth, words to save the world, but instead they cried, probably because at that very moment they too were bidding farewell to their
lives, another little death already eating at them. Today I don't remember a single one of those crying faces.

I don't remember the important moments, I forget them the second I say
you have to remember this
. Life would be long if I remembered more. I've forgotten almost everything. Except when I was running from the shoreline to the campground or being careful that Mom not say
snout
. Everything else is gone. Things that are gone divide into those I've managed to preserve in memory and those that have become a series of my little deaths. These deaths are like gray marks on an old map. Unless it's another India, nobody actually knows what's really there. I managed to preserve in memory the sentence
I love you more than anything in the world
, but I didn't know how to love someone more than anything in the world, and I didn't want to know that fear wasn't the best ally to have in life. Nataša stayed in Belgrade for a time, then she went to Canada because I never got in touch again. I tried that
I love you more than anything in the world
at different times and it felt as banal as a ham radio operator translating words across waters and oceans, every
I
becoming
he
, every
you
becoming
she
. Or something like that. Whatever, no one ever cried again.

I turned on the radio a little while ago, God only knows the station, but it was playing “Mama Leone” so it definitely wasn't one of ours. The scent of the sea, the scent of the pines, and the scent of olive oil rushed to me once more, all at the same time, as did everything those scents gave off. I don't know what the song's got to do with all this, but
there's definitely some connection, it's from something I've forgotten, from one of those little deaths. I need to find a place for “Mama Leone” somewhere here, but I don't know where or how because there's no room left in the story I'm telling. There never was. In the meantime my mom has become a real grown-up mom, and I've become her son. Not some forbear. She doesn't say
snout
anymore, but sometimes things sound like that.

That Day a Childhood Story Ended

That day a childhood story ended. His cough woke him up, his nose blocked, his cheeks and forehead on fire. He should have stayed in bed, just lain there and slept it off, but the devil wouldn't let him be. He got dressed and went outside. It was raining, cold drops on hot skin, the bus taking forever to come. He thought about pneumonia and meningitis. He remembered every sickness he knew by name, and a few others he didn't know anything about or his imagination had maybe dreamed up for the occasion. He was astonished to discover that he no longer feared a single disease in the world.

The bus was half empty. Where did all those people go, he thought, his head resting on the glass, banging against it the whole journey. He was reconciled to his fate for the day. Nobody was waiting for him, he
wasn't expecting anyone, and everything was like the first day, repeated for the thousandth time, just now he was more indifferent, sanguine even, the way a man should be who has never made any attempt to hold on to the things around him, never tried for any great happiness. To this very day he has been waiting on fortune's call, which like the magnificent end of a war, with confetti, fireworks, and the dumbfounded embraces of lost loves, would return his life to its old rhythm, return to him these past six years spent in despair. This was how long Deda had lived in Ljubljana, a city he hadn't actually chosen but had simply been the farthest he dared go, when at the beginning of April 1992, sensing the onset of war, he had left home. He'd packed a single suitcase, a handful of shirts, a few pairs of underwear, and a Walkman. He said his goodbyes to his mother, telling her that he'd be back in about two weeks, by which time he thought mobilization in the city would be over. At the station he bought a return ticket, sat down in the bus, opened a book, and started reading, never looking back. Two weeks later he was watching pictures of the city in flames on television. Mojca wiped her tears, he hugged her and told her
Mocja, it's nothing, it'll all pass
, and she collapsed in his arms, the inconsolable viewer of a cinematic melodrama. That summer Deda found a job in a planning office, and a few months after that he got Slovenian citizenship, but the whole time he lived in the belief that he'd be going home and that this transitional period would come and go like an annual vacation. Setting off to America, Canada, and Australia, friends passed
through Ljubljana, he'd spend an evening with them and they'd all ask
you planning on getting out of here?
and Deda always answered
no, I'll go back
. On parting he'd leave them his address and telephone number, and a letter or phone call would follow, but friends would inevitably disappear, some because Deda didn't reply, others because they had gone forever and didn't need anyone reminding them of what they had lost or left behind. Six years later Ljubljana wasn't on the way to anywhere for anyone: those who had wanted to leave had left, those who had wanted to stay had stayed, and Deda was as distant to them as if he himself had gone to the ends of the earth. But he hadn't gone anywhere or stayed anywhere; he wasn't at home or abroad.