We are at Milica’s apartment. She is looking for a travel bag in the pantry (my brother used my bag to bring the winter stores. He broke the glass jars and destroyed the bag), while her sister Anna hands me an umbrella because it started to rain meanwhile.
Finally, Milica brings the bag, places it on the floor, opens and shows how spacey it is although it does not look like that from the outside. I use an umbrella to inspect inside the bag while slightly standing on tiptoes. I put on a serious face expression, like I am inspecting something of great importance. Without any words I am asking a question. “Is this bag good enough for my stuff?” Milica is confused by my stagecraft for a few seconds and then she figures out what is going on. She snatches the umbrella from me, and chases me around the apartment. I am using the round about living room-hall-kitchen-living room to escape her initial rage. In the end, I can’t run away while laughing and she throws me down on the corner sofa. She strangles me. I think my face is red. Soon, she decides that the punishment is fair enough and stops. Anna is amused by this situation.
Twenty minutes later I was walking down the street with an empty bag. My classes start on Monday. I will leave today. I think we will see each other in a month. Before I left, I gave her a book I found interesting. It is printed in New York, two hundred copies. The writer’s name tells he is of Italian origin. He describes some flow people. I will wait for Milica to read the book, then we can comment it. I got the book from Uncle Boshko and I read it this summer during work hours. Uncle Boshko got it from an American named Larry who stopped by to his atelier. During the first two years of studies, I did not read anything. Whenever I could focus and read, I studied. Last summer, Milica took me to the park and read Hucksly to me. It was kind of weird. I guess she had to do something funny to bring me back into that world. Today she insisted that book should go back to me when she reads it because it is a gift from Uncle Boshko.
“Milica, it is a flow, it should go from one to another.”
“But if it stays with me, I will not give it to anyone else.”
“That is fine, you have always been special.”
“Is that a compliment or offense?”
“It can be whatever you want.”
“It seems that Uncle Boshko appreciates you. This book is rare.”
“Not necessarily. If we think of it like that, it turns out that I appreciate you.”
She was ready for one more running and strangling, but she gave up in the last moment it seems.
I have fits of laughter while I walk. My uncle told me about the joke from their dressing room, from the time when he was training football, fifteen years ago. They would tell it before every game. Whenever I imagine someone telling it, I can’t control the laughter. Passersby may think I am strange. It is vulgar so I can’t write it.
At home, Uncle Vladimir came to say goodbye and to drop me off at the station. I was packing my stuff while Mom was packing the food.
Uncle grabbed the exam script that was made by Yanko and Elena. She underlined all the important stuff in the book, then he typed it and printed.
“David, is this the whole exam?”
“Yes, it is.”
“It is quite tiny, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“And here there are the exam questions?”
“Yes.”
“Did you learn this?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I passed all the exams needed for the fourth year in June. I don’t rush now.”
“You learned so much in June.”
“Not very much. Half of the exams is enough to get me in the fourth year.”
“Half of the exams you say… It was not like that in my time. An eight-hundred-page book, that’s the first part of the exam. The professor says, ‘Page 515, talk.’ And then he asks you randomly from the entire book, and you don’t have exam questions, no way. And then I sit in his office for four hours until we go through all the chapters. So I take the book to Vlašić to the trench and study there all day for three weeks. In the trench you have nothing to do so you study sixteen hours a day.”
Then he theatrically sniffs the cheese pie.
“I was hungry while studying. Food in the trench, “a boat sails on the plate, catching cabbage leaves,” as Ćopić1 used to say. I don’t know if anyone reads that anymore. And about these new generations, I really don’t know where this is heading.”
Dad immediately accepted the story. About how people used to read more and about how everything was much harder back then, but more was achieved.
Uncle has known Mom and Dad for almost thirty years. For him, they were like an open book or more accurately, like an accordion with buttons. He knew exactly which button to press to get the tone he wants to hear, as if he was controlling them with voice commands. This morning, he wanted to listen to them lamenting over the moral decline of society and expressing anxiety about the world where the upcoming generation takes over the roles.
When I think about it better, he didn’t want to listen to it, but wanted me to listen, and it was visible on his face that he was enjoying it.
While we were driving to the station, he asked me if I was returning to Banja Luka after the studies are over.
“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.”
“Maybe I’ll need a programmer.”
“Let me know if you need one. Why don’t you program?”
“I can’t manage everything.”
“What are you doing now?”
“Currently adjusting electricity meters so they don’t count kilowatts.”
“And how’s that going?”
“Great, but this project where I will invite you is better.”
“Why don’t you invite those who studied eight hundred pages?”
“They’ve exhausted themselves too much. I need someone as empty-headed as you. With a lot of energy.“
“I’ll first finish school. Call Marko if you need something immediately and if he can work remotely. Now I can give you ten hours a week, but I think I have better clients than you.”
He laughed. Says there are no better ones. He sounded confident. He turned up Never mind on the CD and drove quickly to the station.
When I said goodbye and turned around, he kicked me, pushed me two or three meters.
“Come on, Vanja, are you normal?”
“All right, all right.”
1Popular Serbian writer
