The boy is very clever for his age and has a rich vocabulary, but his emotions are completely childlike and along with his undoubted intelligence they’re an explosive little cocktail. That’s what comrade Mutevelić told Mom, and amazingly that’s what she told me, word for word, probably because she’d just read something in her book You and Your Child about the value of periodically shocking me with psychoanalytic findings or what grown-ups think of me. I’m not that smart, it’s just they expect me to be dumb. . Who expects that of you?. . The teacher and comrade Mutevelić. They asked me whether Videk is happy someone sewed him a shirt. You only ask that kind of thing when you want to make someone look like a retard. . Why did you write that everyone forges their own good fortune and others’ misfortune?. . I didn’t write that, I wrote that Great-grandpa was a blacksmith and everyone around him misfortunate. That’s what I wrote, I didn’t write anything about anyone else because I didn’t have time and because I don’t know anything about any other blacksmiths. . Do you really have to write down what you hear at home? You could make something up. . You mean, I could lie about something?. . Not lie, make up. . And what in your opinion is the difference between making up and lying?. . Liars lie and writers make things up. . So who writes and talks about stuff that really happened then?. . For chrissakes, I don’t know, historians probably, but that’s not the point right now, try outdoing yourself and biting your tongue every now and then.
That’s how my first encounter with a psychologist played out: A very unpleasant experience and one I’d very much like to avoid in the future, although my reputation in class skyrocketed afterward because everyone figured that comrade Mutevelić was there because of me and figured it was because I was either really crazy or really smart, but no one was able to solve that particular dilemma, apart from Šandor, the class bonehead, who was repeating the grade and gave me a hiding every day after Mutevelić’s visit, presumably having decided that crazy or smart, I deserved a thrashing either way.
Given that the Old Devil and the family fear of rakia and alcoholism was at the root of everything, I decided to carefully monitor my family’s relationship to alcohol, make a few notes from time to time, it being obvious that inebriety was key and that I had to act with caution in the face of their fears. As soon as Grandma or Grandpa got scared about something, I’d get bawled out for not sharing their fears. Then I’d have to be scared of all the things I wasn’t scared of, and given I couldn’t stop being scared of the stuff I really was scared of myself, I had to carry around my own fears and their fears besides, which, I’m sure you’ll agree, is a rather unpleasant state of affairs when you’re five, seven, or however many years old.
I noticed that our pantry was full of alcohoclass="underline" homemade slivovitz and grappa; dozens of bottles of brandy and cognac; two liters of whiskey; vodka, gin; bottles of white, red, and rosé wine; menthol and chocolate liqueurs; Macedonian mastic and Greek metaxa. . The bottles were neatly arranged and unopened, apart from the grappa and the whiskey, at the ready for when guests came. The bottles belonged to long-forgotten wakes and birthday parties, or were New Year’s presents from the time before I was born. When someone dies, the neighborhood comes to say how sorry they are and people bring bottles of alcohol, which then get stored in the pantry forever. Everyone knows we’re pretty much a nondrinking household, but tradition is tradition, and people cling to funeral rites most faithfully of all because even if they make no sense they’re still not for messing with because death is a time when the living have to be good to each other, and you’re best when you do something of no use to anyone, which makes it all the more moving.
The menthol and chocolate liqueurs were presents for Mom when she was really young and before I was even born. On one of the bottles there was a tempera heart and arrow with Mom’s name and the name of some guy in it. This is a happy memory for her, which I don’t get at all. How can a bottle of liqueur be a happy memory when she’s terrified of alcohol? Do you think that heart is the happy memory? Nice: a memory written on a bottle full of fear.
If someone in our house dies, or someone else falls in love with Mom, there won’t be any room in our pantry for anything but bottles of alcohol, and soon there’ll be so many we’ll have to keep them under the bed or in the coat cupboard. It’s all because of the Old Devil. He’s the ghost in the pantry and it’s no matter he died in 1943 and everyone’s always thought he was buried forever in Zenica Cemetery. But he wasn’t going to be banished from the pantry until someone else turned to the drink. Me, for example! What if I became an alcoholic? I asked Grandma. At six years old? She was shocked. Not right now, a bit later. . How much later? Oh, to hell with you, become whatever you like, just wait ’til I’m dead. . I didn’t say I will become an alcoholic, but what if I did?. . And why, pray tell, would you be an alcoholic?. . Well, how about so someone empties all those bottles from out of the pantry.
That weekend my uncle from Zenica came and took all our alcohol away. He parked his Volvo station wagon in front of the house and spent an hour loading it with bottles. Everyone was in a crappy mood, Mom and Grandma most of all, so I wasn’t allowed to ask anything, not even what he was going to do with all those bottles of brandy, cognac, vodka, and wine, and the menthol and chocolate liqueurs. He took Mom’s happy memory away too, her heart and the guy’s name written inside it. Grandma wiped the shelves down and covered them with bright paper. There, now there’s much more room for ajvar and paprikas, she said, but I was sorry about the bottles. Maybe because I felt that one day I really could’ve drunk them all up, and maybe I was sorry because the ghost of Blacksmith Joža the Slovenian — my great-grandpa, the Old Devil — had been so violently tossed from our pantry.
This year we’re going to put a rum pot on, Grandma solemnly announced and put an enormous five-liter ceramic pot on the table. It had funny Gothic letters on it, words written above drawings of pears, apples, cherries, figs, and grapes that weren’t yellow or red but green like grass or the cover on our couch. Rum pot is fruit for wintery days, that’s what they told me, and I’ll only get to eat it if I’m good and I display maturity in all possible situations. I don’t have the foggiest idea what maturity in all possible situations is supposed to mean, but I solemnly promised that I’d give it my all because I was really into this rum-pot thing because you made it with rum, and rum is alcohol, and that seems to have slipped Mom’s and Grandma’s mind. Or something else was going down; I didn’t know what, but I’d find out in the fall, at the beginning of November when the rum pot was opened.
At the end of May, right around my birthday, Grandma filled the pot with rum and tossed half a kilo of strawberries in. She spread her arms, said all done, and threw me out of the pantry. Fifteen days later we were in the pantry again, she opened the pot, tossed two handfuls of cherries in, spread her arms, and again said all done. She also said all done when the figs, apples, cantaloupes, watermelons, pears, and grapes were ripe and ready. If you really want to know, I think spreading her arms and saying all done were part of the recipe and that for the rum pot they’re just as important as the fruit and rum. I’m not sure if everyone can say those words and spread their arms in that particular way, but if your rum pot doesn’t work out, you can more or less be sure the recipe is lost for all time because I’ve obviously forgotten some tiny detail or secret ingredient, and by the time you read this my grandma will already be dead, so you won’t be able to ask her.