He would quite definitely have started a new family and a new chain of family businesses if his wife hadn’t hung herself two years after their marriage. What for? They’d found more than comfort and hope in one another; their happiness had been almost tangible; besides, that wasn’t a time for suicide but rather for picking up the pieces of broken lives. But it’s a mistake to always expect people to act logically.
That event gave Grandfather his memory back. Straight after the funeral, he packed all he could into two suitcases and travelled to Zagreb. He searched in vain for his father, mother and sister, or at least some trace of them. But he was able to find his son, with the help of the moustachioed fellow, who in the meantime had earned more little stars and consequently a more fitting house–a donation from well-to-do Jews. Now, as a sign of gratitude, our street was named after the Jewish Communist Moše Pijade. Moreover, thanks again to Comrade Mustachio, Grandfather managed to get permission to move into the vacated house. The building in Kačićeva Street wasn’t available, however, because the fire brigade had set up station there. He was allowed to use two attic rooms of the house; the rest was shared by two families who had fled from the Kozara hills in Bosnia.
Although written in this time of cohabitation, the notebook didn’t say a word more about conditions there. But Father filled in the gaps for me. The main problem, among many, was the bathroom, and in particular the toilet. There were a large number of residents already, and to make matters worse they arranged an informal roster to keep the toilet constantly engaged. This was just one part of their pact against my father and grandfather, whom they openly despised for being tainted with capitalism and urban decadence. They tormented them with loud songs from their home region and heavy smells from the kitchen. This olfactory and acoustic barrage was discharged up the stairs by opening their doors wide, and every now and again a stink bomb was thrown in through the attic window. They egged on their children to imitate Grandfather’s gait, which was contorted from his time in the concentration camp, or to fart loudly, which made them all laugh hilariously. Particularly because Grandfather was easy prey. They knew he would make a little scene as soon as they provoked him: he would roll his eyes, gnash his teeth like an animal and flail his fists in the air, though he wasn’t at all dangerous. Any little thing could irritate him. Then he would pace up and down in the attic for a long time, unable to restrain himself, shouting profanities and biting his arm in frustration.
A part-invalid with a very shady past, the German, as he was dubbed, was unable to find a job. But the gold from his suitcase helped him launch back into business, and into gambling and boozing as well. This bore strange fruit. He would acquire a rare, expensive piece of equipment with the intention of reselling it, which usually didn’t work. He sought long and hard for someone to buy a pre-war British radio, for example, only to exchange it for three telephones. These, in turn, went to pay off a gambling debt. The culmination was the machine for producing ice-cream cones, which he’d bought off a bankrupt pastry-cook for a very favourable price. Of course, he didn’t know how to assemble the thing, let alone get it going. It outlived him, still dismantled, up in the attic.
Luck did smile at him from time to time, though. He would immediately invest any gains in opulent meals and unlimited quantities of wine. This regularly resulted in cycles of drunkenness, lamenting, lifeless staring at the ceiling, and promises that it wouldn’t happen again. No one knows why–whether perhaps it was the return of repressed horrors from the concentration camp, but he came up with the idea of spending some of his earnings on hunting gear. The only photograph I have of him, the only one he left for posterity, shows him in that uniform with a green velvet hat, brilliantly polished knee-high boots, a bulging cartridge belt and a rifle over his shoulder. He’d actually never been hunting before buying the stuff, nor did he for several years afterwards. He showed off in the gear in vain, dreaming of a mountain of feathered and furry delicacies. One day he finally joined a hunting party and went out for some kill. When he took aim at a flock of wild pigeons, the cartridge exploded in the barrel and blew his face off.
Thanks to his connections, Father managed to have one family evicted and then the other. Finally he bought the house from the government. But now it was too big for the two of us alone, and too rich in ghosts.
* * *
Sorrow began to accumulate in me at a very early stage. I didn’t call it that straight away, and even later I only used that word as a blanket term for things whose exact reason and origin I couldn’t discern. When there was pressure from the outside I found the strength to resist; but in periods of peace, when the latest breaches had been stopped, I was plunged into an unjustified mood of dejection and listlessness, which revealed the extent of my weakness.
Money, together with the absence of my father, was the central theme in our house for as long as I can remember. Both issues lay at the root of every conversation although we were at pains not to mention them; perhaps for that reason they guided our every step like a hidden magnetic pole. Mother would never borrow money even when there was someone she could have borrowed from. She was a staunch proponent of belt-tightening and making-do. We repaired cracked glass with adhesive tape and pretended that the loss of the picture on the TV screen didn’t bother us. The TV was reduced to a radio, but so what? Mother did the laundry by hand for months until we’d saved up enough for the repair man to come. I learnt to deal with the plumbing and electric wiring without any instruction, which I definitely should have been proud of. Yet I came to hate that house with which we lived in symbiosis. We were vitally addicted to it, and it mirrored our inner states and limitations, never hesitating to show its disdain for all our efforts to retard its ageing. As restless as it was thankless, it added fresh cracks to the collection on the walls, rescrawled its mouldy graffiti in corners only just repainted, left rust on metal, and heralded each spring with clogged drains, peeling woodwork and a leaking roof. Selfish and ungrateful like a pre-pubescent child, it demanded constant attention to restrain even just the outward signs of decay and made us pay dearly for any neglect. And outside there was always something crying out to be pruned, cut, dug, heaped up or incinerated, and at the very least there was sweeping. Together with the everyday martyrdom of dishes and laundry, shopping and garbage, that cycle of Tantalian torment, neatly tailored to human size, demanded to be borne until it had consumed every last ounce of joie de vivre.
As more and more tasks fell into my responsibility, my desire for revenge also grew: to leave the house to the mercy of the elements, weeds and pests. I rejoiced at the thought of camping amid the ruins. And the more sickly Mother became and the less she was able to look after things herself, the harder she took their imperfection. Her illness, combined with life’s tragic twists and turns, seemed to mellow her and she lost her imperious ways; I tried all the more to gratify her and anticipate her remarks, aware of how much it pained her to be losing control of things. In her bedridden last months I also read a mournful rebuke in her eyes for things she couldn’t see from her bed, like the matted cobwebs up on the first floor and all that happened in my life outside the house.
Not that I grew up in great poverty. True, of all the literature I devoured I was most inspired by descriptions of fantastic feasts and the names of exotic dishes I could only imagine, but I had almost everything the other kids my age had. The only difference was that I didn’t have them at the same time, and that delay often hurt, but I learnt to live with it. My clothes, although seldom new, were always neat, and every year there was just enough to spare for me to go on summer holiday. Mother didn’t consider renouncing hers to be a sacrifice at all; she’d seen more than enough of the world.
My first proper sexual experience was at the seaside during my studies. There had been inconclusive attempts prior to that, more because it was something others had long boasted about, than due to any true desire on my part. Nor is it really correct to call them attempts because the initiative came exclusively from the other side; but the girls whose curiosity I evidently aroused gave up on me one after another as soon as they saw beneath the surface. Later, too, I never got anywhere near flirting, although I was strongly attracted to women. One could say painfully attracted: I craved for their feminine curves, their softness and warmth; but I never made any moves.
