It’s the beginning of summer, 1978. Grown-ups tell us we are the lucky generation, we should be disgusted by revenge and butchery, we should break the cycle. And they teach us: When they throw stones at you, throw bread to them.Good old Communism, we agree after a huddle in front of the building,to answer stones with bread − the finest social system in the world. We had never read the Bible. It was not available to us, and besides, word got around that it was boring, and Marietta, who would know, confirmed it. “An old book for old people,” she said. Her father was an army man, but her mother was from Pula, in the Republic of Croatia, and kept a Bible hidden under Marietta’s winter clothes.
It’s the beginning of summer and only the most experienced guerrillas, like me, hide from the gendarmes in the smelly alley next to the burek shop. We press up against the piss-stained wall, keep quiet and breathe into our cupped hands; in the heat, the smell of ground meat and onions hangs thickly around us, a smell that keeps our enemies at bay. Grown-ups we don’t like, grown-ups like Marietta’s father, try to convince us that the shop owner fills his burek pies with ground-up cats.
No, we don’t saygendarme like they do in France, we pronounce theg like thedg infridge. Guerillas and gendarmes. We all call the game “cops and robbers” in front of the grown-ups. They ask us if it’s where we hang out with friends or somewhere else that we heard people singing rabble-rousing World War II Chetnik songs. My grandmother asks me this, she’s who I’m most scared of, and that’s why I hide the wordgendarme from her, it sounds likeChetnik to me. I don’t know what songs she means − I listen to Boney M and practice dance moves with three of my girlfriends.Ra-Ra-Raspuchin, lava-rava-wash-machine is how we sing it all wrong.
I am in love with one of the gendarmes. I want it to be him who finds me in the eternal gloom of the alley by the burek shop. If he finds me, if he approaches me from behind, so I have to turn around suddenly to face him, I’ll kiss him on the lips. Who cares that I’m so skinny and have a bad haircut? I know how to kiss; my pillow can vouch for it. I use everything I have: my lips, teeth, tongue, hands, hips and breath − and when imagining myself in the act, my whole body trembles from the force of imagination.
It’s June, school’s just broken up, and the dirt is already cracked from the heat, resembling chunks of aged cheese from the farmers’ market. We tasted this dirt, literally. As little kids, when we were hungry, we tried chewing the dry earth that looked like cheese to us, we all did, and now we laugh about it. In the early afternoon, the smell of dirt mingles with the smell of rubbish from the plastic bags tossed near the building entrances, with the smell of petrol from overheated cars, along with the smell of musty pink and white oleander blossoms. That’s when we go inside for lunch. Things simmer down in the evenings, even the oleander has a delicate smell then, and we tell each other the fragrance is a trick − the white flower is probably poisonous. But we still lick the blossoms, and we lick the leaves, defying destiny under the heavens chock-full of big, fat stars, which watch us from above, follow us, are astonished by us and love us, as do our mothers watching from their balconies across the neighbourhood.
Well, other mothers, anyway. My mother is ill, she’s in the hospital. I’m the only one of my friends in this situation. Enisa told me this makes me unusual, but it actually means I always feel sick to my stomach, and maybe a little ashamed. I like it better when my mother’s home, even if I hear her moaning and throwing up, because she’s a fountain of life in my little family. Without her help, my hair doesn’t look like it’s been intentionally cut in a punk hairstyle, it just looks mangy. Mum’s hands are a greenish yellow, and so are her feet, which I am not supposed to see, but I always look at them before she slides them into her slippers because she wants to sit, she tells us, and not lie down while Dad and I are in her room. She wears a lot of make-up and she wears a wig when she expects us to visit. All around her are lavender-coloured bottles of Yardley deodorant, which she sprays on herself and her squeaky hospital mattress to try to cover up the complex stench of her illness.
“It’
