English translation by Pina Piccolo. From the book LA CENA: avanzi dell’ex-Jugoslavia (Italian trans. Alice Parmeggiani), Marotta&Cafiero 2021.
CHAPTER FOUR
Upon my return from the supermarket, I finally find out who our guests are going to be. “Your father’s colleagues, from the Refugee Center…” the old lady tells me. Then she shouts: “Olives!” No, they weren’t on the list. “Don’t go out again…” says the old man and, as if speaking to himself, adds: “May everything be like in Bosnia!” So, here we are without olives; for an aperitif he will cut up some sudžuka and dried beef, and add ajvar and pickled peppers. That notwithstanding I also catch my mother’s look: “Say whatever you want, but nothing is like it used to be! I know he got everything from the Algerian guy’s shop”. “Any type food is the way it is supposed to be only in the country where it traditionally comes from…” she once said. And the old man just kept quiet.
While I was studying, I phoned my boyfriend Mario twice. “Are you feeling better! And what about your family?” He sighed. “They didn’t argue today either, everyone is in their room watching their favorite TV program!” By a certain time, the smell of freshly baked apple pie overtook the stench of the Bosnian pot. At half past seven, the old woman is at the door: “The guests have arrived, let’s have dinner together!”.
At the table… A stocky man of indefinable age. Maybe because of his dark skin, smooth face and forehead, curly black hair? He says his name is Edmond, and that he comes from a South American country. There he worked mostly as a trade unionist. He’s been here in Italy a long time already, an asylum seeker. The guy introduced himself like this, no inquisitive questions from me. Two women – the older, advanced in years, with sunken cheeks, small, twinkling eyes, completely white-haired; the younger – a black woman, very young, slim, lively in her movements, a ringing voice. I shake their hands, the young one is named Rosmary, the other Vera. “You are much younger than my daughter!”, she said when I answered her question about my age. She added that she came to Italy from Bulgaria more than thirty years ago.
“An immigrant for love“, says Edmond, winking cheerfully. No, it didn’t escape my notice that Vera didn’t laugh at his joke. She just lowered her gaze.
They also talked about the work at the Center. Vera is very self-critical: “It seems that I can do only very little to help, and the problems keep on getting bigger …” Edmond consoled her: “But we also give beyond our limits…” Rosmary added: “I feel very bad when I see that there is no limit to the exploitation of foreigners, but it is much worse when a foreigner harms one of his own!” The old man didn’t speak up for a long time, but then he started talking: “Problems accumulate like garbage in the South. It’s not only our problem, it’s also the same for all the other services, like the firefighters, they are running out of supplies, personnel and water in their tanks. The laws too are a problem here, they are made by people who rejoice when Roma camps are razed to the ground…” At that point my mother shouted: “You barely touched your food…” Edmond was surprised: “Barely touched our food? I loosened my belt three holes! My old man, suddenly very cheerful, said: “Be careful not to lose your trousers on your way home!” Laughter, Cheers – everyone drinks wine, even the old woman. Everyone except me. I was happy – both of them were in a good mood too! Out of the blue, and totally unrelated to the atmosphere at the table, my father suddenly says: “Before, when I did physical labour, my arms, legs, and back hurt. … And now? Not only does my head hurt, but even my…” No, he didn’t finish his sentence and no one reacted. Did he speak too softly?
“You have to show up here when I bring out the dessert!” the old woman ordered me as I got up from the table explaining to the guests that I needed to prepare for an important exam. She said it cheerfully, with a smile. She was happy that this time my father hadn’t lit any cigarettes in the house, but in a disciplined way had stepped onto the terrace.
Music could also be heard coming out of the dining room. The old man had taken out his guitar! The last time he played it … Of course, was that time that Tiki had come back from the hospital. It was a song from Bosnia, about the joy of a man who suddenly understood what was important in life. In ours as well, the one we live – everywhere.
At that point I called Mario. “My parents, just or a change, are fighting!”, he said with sad irony. “And in your house – a song!” Indeed, someone was singing. Edmond? I pointed my phone towards the door.
Aprendimos a quererte desde la historica altura
donde el sol de tu bravura le puso cerco a la muerte…
Mario? How enthusiastic he became! “You have fantastic guests! Come on, position the microphone closer so I can hear better…!”
Sat wuguga sat ju benga sat si pata pat…Pata Pata!
Hihi ha mama, hi-a-ma sat si pa ..Pata Pata!
“Mario, guess who’s singing now?”
Gledam Banat, Srem i Bačku s Fruške gore
gledam tako, au duši lom – tu je nekad, kažu knjige,
bilo more, čekalo me pa susušilo…
“Your old man!”
Then – I got a little sleepy. Did I fall asleep?
I don’t know. A heavy thud woke me up, as if, for example, that bulky armchair in the living room had fallen to the ground. Then, some shouting. Shrill voices, women screaming. Something rattled: shattered glasses?
And what was the scene like there? A sequence from a movie drama, one that could only be recounted as a blow-by-blow account, in the present tense: Edmond – on the floor, like a log; motionless even as they touch him with the point of their shoe, my old man is massaging his chest; Vera – all ears: she is listening for the Brazilian’s heartbeat; the old woman – she who had been all sparkly in good spirits, now a statue in a corner of the room that. And what now? Rosmary is bent on breaking off the window latch that is stuck and won’t open. On the floor: a guitar, two bottles, shards of broken glasses. “Breathe!”, Vera says out loud. “Nitroglycerin is working! Good thing I knew what hit him… The ambulance will be here soon! Great, Rosmary – here’s some fresh air!”
Only then do I notice that my old man is paler than the handkerchief with which Vera is wiping Edmond’s forehead. Then the old woman comes to life again, here she is with a glass of whiskey. “Another shot!” says the old man. My mother’s hands are shaking – the stench of the alcohol spilled on the carpet is spreading. Vera drinks too, from the bottle! The ambulance siren is approaching When two strong nurses enter the house, Edmond, having regained his senses, is sitting on the floor. On our faces, smiles of relief. He rebels, he doesn’t want to be put on a stretcher, but the nurses are inflexible. While one measures his blood pressure, the other smells the air in the room. Here comes the doctor too. Slender, bearded, but plainly young. His gaze quickly fixates – first on my breasts, then on Edmond. Eh, I didn’t miss that gaze. As a matter of fact he is not the first to stare at me. I’m petite, but I stick out! (“The first thing I noticed were your eyes!” claims Mario. Liar, but he’s my Mario!)
“Is the gentleman drunk?” asks the doctor. “I don’t know, I don’t monitor my guests, neither for how much they eat or how much they drink…”, says the old man. The health workers look at each other. The doctor insists: “So, you don’t know how much he drank…” Shrugging, the old man says: “No, but I know I massaged Edmond’s chest!” The doctor shakes his head: “Mr. Edmundo did not have a cardiac arrest!”. The old man is now clearly nervous. This time, no recognition for the massage! “His name is Edmond…” says the old man, and one eye begins to twitch. “Is he a foreigner?” says the first nurse. “Yes, and so?” says the old man, and his eye twitches more and more. The nurse is confused: “But… Edmundo is not an Italian name”. The old man now shouts: “Edmond, his name is Edmond! What if his name was, for example… Rabindranath Tagore!” His colleague asks seriously: “Is he here too?” The old man, with the glass in his hand raised high, his bold gaze directed towards stars visible only to him, says: “A great Indian poet…” The doctor waves his hand: “Poets don’t matter right now, what’s most important is that Edmond come with us…” The old man doesn’t understand. “He is now completely recovered! Isn’t that so, Edmond?” The Brazilian nods, and says: “Of course, and then we haven’t even finished that discussion!” Edmond shouts from the stretcher: “Leave me alone, I feel perfectly fine… I want to go back to singing!” The nurses look at each other again. They’ve probably seen it all so far, but this? The doctor, throws a quick glance towards my breasts again, signals to the nurses, as if he were the caravan leader: “We’re leaving!” Strapped like a package, Edmond waves goodbye to us from the stretcher. As they go down the stairs, his voice echoes:
Aqui se queda la clara,
la entranãble trasparencia
de tu querida presencia,
comandante Che Guevara…
Why is life so hopelessly sad sometimes?” asks my father. But who does he ask? And he immediately replies to himself: “All it takes is for a grain of happiness to begin to sprout, and…”
He doesn’t complete his thought. More voices of protest are heard. Then, silence.
“My God…” sighs Rosmary. “Everything was just wonderful until that discussion!” Then she hugs my mother and blows kisses on her fingertips. “I have to go! It’s late…”
“Can you walk me to the subway?” Vera asks me.
CHAPTER FIVE
It was drizzling outside. We walked slowly, without exchanging a word. Meanwhile it started to rain harder and harder. When I finally caught up to her sheltering under a balcony, I saw that she had found cigarettes in her bag but not a lighter.
“Rosmary is right…” she said abruptly. “Everything was great at your table until that discussion started…”
“Discussion? about what?” I said without showing any sign of urgency.
“Wonderful company! And dinner too, of course. I ate like a miner! After talking about work, we moved on to jokes. Someone knocks on the door, Mujo’s son opens. The child runs to his father and tells him that there is a man who collects donations for the municipal swimming pool. There’s no problem, Mujo says to his son, bring that man a glass of water… Your father said this! Surely-you must have heard us, we even sang. What a voice Edmond has! Your father accompanied him on the guitar. Rosmary even danced. Yes, and we drank, I don’t know how much, but we drank. At a certain point…”
Rolling the unlit cigarette between her lips, she continued: “Yes, suddenly… He, Edmond! Wanted to hear your father talk about communism, about the Yugoslavia which no longer exists, the country of which the dreamers and fighters for a more just South America spoke well. Your father lit a cigarette and, after a couple of puffs, calmly said: “Should I tell you about communism? Dead and gone!” Edmond was surprised: “Dead and buried? But not at all! Communism is not dead, it keeps our hopes alive. The only hope, for all of us on this planet!” Until then I had only been listening. “Hope?” I said. “My experience, like that of so many Bulgarians, Poles, Hungarians, Czechs and Slovakians who have experienced the Soviet version of communism, is very painful and terrible. Then I talked about my father who wanted to emigrate to France when he was young. None of his attempts succeeded, and he ended up in prison; he was a chemical engineer but worked as a hospital janitor. And he even had to be grateful that nothing worse had happened to him!” “But was there truly nothing good?” That question from your father surprised me. Even more so when he said: “But didn’t young people in Bulgaria also have friendships, and loves, and happy days?” Ah, I know this phrase! Where did I read it? “Yes,” I said, “there were good things too. But I cannot forget that the police followed and spied on my father in a hundred ways, nor that my brother and I were unable to pursue the studies we wanted, he medicine, I architecture. True, it is not so terrible compared to what many other people have suffered, not to mention the gulags. My father told me: ‘As soon as you have a chance, flee from this country!’ So I did. My short period of study at the University of East Berlin ended with a hasty marriage to an Italian. We lived in Rome, until he left me… But that doesn’t matter! Edmond showed increasingly clear signs of impatience. “For the majority of South Americans,” he said, “communism is also the dream of eliminating social injustice. It could save Africa too. Rosmary, you tell them!” Confused, Rosmary replied: “What are you talking about! Who needs to save whom? Africa doesn’t need communism, but an awakening, to demonstrate to the oppressors of this world how powerful it really is!” And Edmond, disappointed exclaimed! “You too, Rosmary? And all of you?” He stood up and shouted: “But, what do you know about it?” This made me angry: “You mean we don’t even know how we lived? And you, Edmond, on the other hand, you who were not even a subject of that Eastern Europe surely do know? And, then you must know, that communism is… Dead!” ”You should have seen the way he looked at us. His eyes turned into bolts of ice! And his voice? Suddenly soft, subdued: “Dear Vera, the thing that you think is dead, for others instead continues to be a hope? Others have their truths too… Do you know how beautiful moonlight is?” Yes, he confused us with his sudden leap into something that seemed completely unrelated. So at this point we are speechless. And then, we stared at him, confused and bewildered. “In my youth, which you also speak of, I had a girlfriend… The beauty of the moonlight could not match hers! She had her ideals… She struggled for the rights of workers and peasants, against dictatorship and capitalism!” Here he stopped, breathing rapidly. If he hadn’t been so upset, I would have replied something to that sentence about the rights of workers and peasants and the fight against capitalism – with which they filled our ears in my country before. “And my girlfriend?” Edmond’s eyes grew ever moister. “She, was so young and wonderful… They threw her out the window, like an object, from the fourth floor!” Sitting down, panting, he threatened with his fist. Who was he threatening? In a distance known only to him? “Officially, dear ones, it was a suicide. Did the communists or the servants of the capitalists do it?” As if jolted by a spring, Edmond stood up again. “Let’s move on to happier things,” your father said. “What happier things? To another joke about Bosnia, where you immediately forgot how much you had created in communism? You simply spit on the plate you were eating on!” And he wriggled back and forth more and more, strangely. “All of you… You don’t know what capitalism is!” Edmond became more and more agitated, his face had turned ash grey. Waving his arms as if seeking support, he said in a low voice: “Let us dream!” Then he fell – you saw the rest…”
I remained silent, with the feeling that she might ask me what I thought of communism. I had guessed right! Even if only partially. She added: of the communism that we, Bulgarians, envied you for.
“We have never discussed this in our family!” I exclaimed. “And even if we had, that discussion wouldn’t have interested me or my brother! We live here in Italy, and I was even born here!” And if I had added: “His name is Tiki, he lives in Berlin…” I think I would have burst into tears, without being able to explain the reason for that weeping either to myself or to that woman who seemed utterly untouched by my torrent of words, or even to Mario, if he had been with me.
Sighing, she said: “My daughter isn’t interested in anything Bulgarian either, not even cooking, let alone a visit to my birthplace…”
I felt Vera’s hand on my shoulder. If she’s looking for something like forgiveness –that would be curious indeed! –there is no need for her to do it. Everything is okay – I didn’t burst into tears, she didn’t continue questioning me. Why didn’t I tell her that she is not the only mother who witnesses the most profound changes – those that occur in the family circle?
That thought… Where did it come from? What an evening, what a night! The rain was letting up, we headed towards the metro entrance.
“Thank you for the company…” she said as we parted.
I didn’t go home right away. What was I waiting for standing on the wet asphalt? Was I expecting that Saturday would already begin to unfurl before me like a story?
Born in Visoko, Bosnia, in 1956, Božidar Stanišic holds a degree in philosophy and worked as a teacher until 1992, when he fled the civil war that broke out in his country. He moved to Italy, where he still lives with his family. In 1993 he published I buchi neri di Sarajevo (MGS Press); in the following years he published three collections of poems Spring in Zugliano, Non-poems, Metamorphosis of Windows, then the collection of short stories entitled Three Short Stories. One of his pieces is featured in the anthology of Bosnian-Herzegovinian fiction of the 20th century Tales from Bosnia, edited by G. Scotti. He then resumed his prose production with Bon Voyage, The Winged Dog and other short stories. In 2011 he published the children’s book La cicala e la piccola formica, in 2012 Piccolo, rosso e altri racconti. He has various prose pieces and poems scattered in numerous Italian and foreign anthologies. Some of his short stories, essays and poems are translated into French, English, Slovenian, Albanian, Japanese and Chinese.
