at least three times a week, and I often came to Zagreb, staying several days or more.
She was sleeping more than she used to. Sometimes she slept so soundly that she wasn’t even wakened by the phone ringing or my banging on the door. When she lay down she took the same pose as on her CAT scans, her head tilted a little forward. She lay there peacefully, relaxed, with a hint of a smile on her lips. Sitting in the armchair she would often dip into a brief, deep sleep as if slipping into a hot bath. I happened upon her when she was asleep, sitting in front of the blaring television, her head bare, duster in hand. Then she opened her eyes, slowly lifted the duster, a small brush on a long handle around which she’d wrapped a soft rag, and wiped the television screen clean of dust. Then, spotting a smudge on the floor, she got up and slowly, shuffling, she went to the bathroom, moistened the rag, wrapped it around the brush, went back and sat down in the armchair again, and from there she wiped up the smudge.
‘Buy me those sphincters, they are the best,’ she’d say.
‘You must mean Swiffers, Mother.’
‘Yes, we’re out of them.’
I had been bringing her those boxes with the magical soft cloths, which were ‘death to dust’ (Those cloths are death to dust!). Shuffling around the house, she wielded the light plastic handle with a Swiffer cloth wrapped around the rec tangular base, and with slow movements she wiped the dust off the walls, the furniture, the floor. The bright sun shone through the lowered blinds and splashed the floor with golden specks. She stood there in the middle of the room sprinkled with shafts of sunlight, her hair cropped close to her shapely head, her pale face with slightly slanted light-brown eyes and her lips surprisingly still full, awash in the sun as if it were an abundance of gold coins. A million particles of dust were afloat in the air around her, shimmering. She’d wave the handle through the air to chase them away, but the golden particles remained. And then she’d sit in the chair again and sink back into sleep. The golden dust swam around her. Sitting like that under an array of sun specks, surrendered to sleep, she looked like an ancient slumbering goddess.
Once, when she started awake, she said, groggily,
‘Do you know what my mother once told me?’
‘What?’
‘That when she was giving birth to me there were three women standing there by her bed. Two were dressed in white, and the third was in black.’
‘Do you suppose those were the Fates who determine your destiny?’ I asked, cautiously.
‘Nonsense,’ she said. ‘Most likely mother was suffering from the labour and hallucinated them. Two in white, one in black,’ she mumbled, and sank back to sleep.
During those fifteen days in March 2007, the sunrise was so lavish and bright that we had to lower the blinds every morning. The air had the smell of spring. My mother’s balcony was neglected; the soil in the flower boxes was dry.
‘We should buy some fresh loam and plant some flowers,’ I said.
‘We will be the first to have flowers in our building!’
‘Yes, the first.’
‘Yes, pelargoniums.’
Sparrows settled onto the balcony railing. That was a good sign; Mother was convinced that this year there wouldn’t be a swarm of starlings.
‘Those pests are gone,’ she said.
‘Which pests?’
‘You know, the darlings!’
‘Starlings are birds, darlings are your grandchildren.’
‘That’s what I said.’
‘What did you say?’
‘That the pests are gone.’
Then she added, with an air of mystery,
‘As they came, so they went away.’
Ask Me No Questions and I’ll Tell You No Lies
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