“It can’t turn inside out,” someone said.
“Not inside out, I mean around itself, because of the Mura and the Drava.” None of the adults understood what I meant, but my sister did and explained that it wasn’t possible. First of all, she said, both rivers actually flowed in the same direction, and, she added, Međimurje was not an island. Everybody turned back to the evening news, and for the next few years I thought islands in the Adriatic Sea might float away and spin around, and then woe to the tourists and the street vendors who sold water pistols and swimming goggles.
There were times when I didn’t understand what the grown-ups were saying at all, the sentences seemed to roll out one after the other without anything linking them together. Everybody ought to talk in a straight line, I thought, like when Granny tells stories. I could hardly wait to be older, when one morning I’d get up and the whole world would finally make sense.
6.
I grew up and forgot everything, so I often thought that children had no patience and couldn’t focus on anything that wasn’t entertaining, and that’s why we perceived them as self-centered. Now I remember everything. I know things aren’t like that at all. Their patience is hidden. Their devotion is boundless. In those days I thought almost exclusively about how I’d find my dad.
One Sunday I woke up early and spent the morning in a state of anxiety. When no one was watching, I snuck spoonfuls of vitamin C powder and Kraš Ekspres cocoa. At Mass, I counted everybody wearing coats, and everybody who had mustaches, to pass the time. At Sunday lunch, I could only eat a little soup, and that was enough to send me to the bathroom in a sweat. It was so painful that I promised God, there on the toilet seat, that I would never eat powdered beverages with a spoon again.
Later, at Dejan’s house, we had a contest to prove who could stare at the sun longer, and who could spin with our arms out without falling down. Then both of us felt sick so we plunked down on the steps and watched Dejan’s father disappear farther and farther under the hood of the neighbor’s Opel Kadett. He was burly and tall, with black hair and thick, fleshy fingers that looked like armrests. He spoke in such a deep voice that every other word was lost in an animal-like rumble.
“MNHMMNJcarburetorMMHNAOMNdamnitalltoMNOA. Come on, Stanko, crank up the motor.”
I was already feeling anxious, but Dejan was in no rush to talk with his dad. Jabbing around in his nose with his finger, he told me a story about how a man (“near Čakovec”) lost his son in a car crash, but then when the man got home, he saw his son sitting in the kitchen, smoking a cigarette. First he thought it was a ghost, but the body was real, just a little grimy from motor oil.
“So, what happened then?” I asked.
“His dad poured gas all over him and set him on fire.”
“Because he was scared?”
“Nope, because his son was smoking in the kitchen. And he was right. I’d have poured gas all over him myself and lit him on fire,” declared Dejan. Ever since being teased at school, he’d had this thing about over-the-top violence.
Dejan’s dad wiped his hands on a rag and came over. He pulled out a cigarette from the bottom of the pack, instead of the side with the filters, and lit it with dirty fingers.
“Hello, son, you come over to play a spell?”
I didn’t know what to say when grown-ups asked obvious questions. When a neighbor was starting their lawn mower, someone inevitably passed by with a friendly “My, my, mowing, are you?” The answer was always yes, with the obligatory addition of “a bit,” probably so the other fellow wouldn’t feel guilty about the amount of work to be done. The answer of the person passing by then had to include words of praise like “nice going” or “keep up the good work.”
“My, my, mowing, are you?”
“A bit, the grass is getting mighty tall.”
“Nice.”
Within fifteen minutes, the man who’d passed by would be revving up his mower, too. What would people say if he didn’t mow his own lawn? In the next quarter hour, three more mowers would start up around the neighborhood.
“Hello, son, you come over to play a spell?”
“I just stopped by.”
“Glad you’re here. Stay as long as you’ve a mind to, visit every day if you like.”
He was about to pass between us into the house, having nothing more to say, when Dejan finally piped up: “Dad, about criminals, if a person is a thief or steals a tractor, then the police come for ’em, right?”
“Yep, if they figure out somebody really stole something,” he said calmly, and I could tell he’d answered this question many times before.
“And then they lock him up?”
“Yep, in jail, till he gets better. But there’s no reason for you to be worried. You’re a couple of troublemakers, but I won’t be reporting you.” And the three of us laughed, one with the voice of an 18-wheeler, and two with sparrows caught in their throats.
“But what about if somebody, like, hasn’t stolen anything, but, say, wants to build himself a cottage because he’s got so much money, or he goes to Croatian Mass in Germany, or says something bad about Yugoslavia?”
Dejan’s father got all serious and crouched down.
“Why ask me that, boys?”
“Just because,” said Dejan, and his eyes slid inadvertently over to me, then quickly back to his dad.
Dejan’s dad looked up into the air as if considering what else he might put on the grill, then started to say something, then stopped.
“If the man’s got a good soul”—he looked at me, then paused, then spoke again—“well, he’s got nothing to be ’fraid of with the police. If he has money and wants to build himself a cottage, well, he ain’t stolen it from nobody… Somebody who goes to Mass, he ain’t stolen from nobody… But against your country, you ain’t supposed to say bad things, you know? Never ever. Your daddy…” He sighed and then went on more slowly and gently. “He was a good man, and the police’ve got no call to arrest him. We people here in Međimurje, we work hard, nose to the grindstone; we ain’t troublemakers, and we’re happy with our lot, see?” He looked toward the road, and I thought he wouldn’t be saying that if other grown-ups had been around. Men didn’t talk like that. They cussed the unions and the local government and talked about how the ref was a jerk and should go to hell.
He stroked me on the back of my head and, louder and sounding relieved, said: “Now, why’re you asking me silly stuff like that?”
Dejan had his answer at the ready. “Oh, no reason in particular, we just wanted to know what happens to people who say things against Yugoslavia. Not Međimurje people, but, y’know, the Slovenes from across the Mura, or folks from over in Zagorje. Or Hungarians and Italians.”
Dejan’s dad stood up and turned to go back to the red crocodile of a car and muttered: “First they’re taken to the police station in Čakovec, then maybe to jail in Lepoglava, or maybe to Goli Island. That’s where they send the ones who are enemies of the working people.”
As Dejan made his toy car pounce on the Parcheesi-piece enemies of the working people (and Goran Brezovec), I sat at his desk and pretended to inspect the countries on the globe. I didn’t have a tissue, and sniffling would have exposed the fact that I was crying, so I cried into my sleeve. Dejan, without looking away from the Parcheesi men he’d carefully lined up, declared: “Tomorrow we skip school. I’ll take the money out of Gramps’s wallet, and we’ll take the bus to Čakovec and go to the police station. By next Sunday, you and your dad and me and mine’ll be at the soccer game, drinking sodas and talking about how the ref is a jerk.”