“David, wake up, the Germans are crossing the Danube.”
Yanko wouldn’t let me sleep in the comfortable armchair in Uncle Boshko’s atelier. Uncle Matija, Lazar, and Marin were there too. We were all here last night. The same rakija is here. Maybe that’s why I was so sleepy. Maxim was talking about the Balkan wars.
“Uncle Matija, do you think this local conflict, between neighbors here, is special? Do you think that Serbs and Croats are something special? Like a young pair when they fall in love and think that their love is bigger than anyone else’s. They see other people holding hands while walking, but everything looks dull compared to their own. It’s the same with war. Everyone has had it, and everyone has fought with their neighbors. Where do you want me to start, from which side of the world? We can start from the East. There’s Japan. Around them, there’s China and the two Koreas, and they’ve fought with all of them. On the other side, across the Pacific, are the United States, a few thousand kilometers away, but that didn’t stop them from fighting with them too. Then you have the first countries to the west: North and South Korea. Their only neighbors are China and Japan, and they fought with both, then split and fought among themselves. Then there’s China, which fought with Japan, Korea, Mongolia, India, and Taiwan. Further west is India, which fought with Pakistan, then Iran and Iraq, Iraq and Kuwait.”
I told Maxim it would’ve been better if he had gone through the Soviet Union; we would have reached Hungary much faster.
“Wait, David. Then Turkey, which fought with Greece and Bulgaria on one side, and on the other side with Armenians and Kurds. I don’t know how many wars I’ve forgotten or missed. Do you want us to start from the western side? From the United States? Just…”
“We don’t need to, kid…”
“Everyone fights with their neighbors, that’s how it is for us too, nothing special. How could we fight with Portugal or South Africa, how would we manage that?”
Whenever Maxim presented his perspective, big question marks appeared above Lazar, Marin, and Matija’s heads. Then, since they were sitting close to each other, the hooks from the question marks would get tangled, and they couldn’t easily control their heads, so they would shift and make small grimaces due to the effort to separate from the other question marks and return their heads to a natural position. Matija would swear now, but he held back because we installed Skype on his computer last week. Ian quietly commented to me that Maxim was wasting his breath because, at Uncle Matija’s, it’s not EPROM1, once something is written into his memory, it stays there, no changes afterward.
Uncle Boshko knew the whole conversation was futile and wanted to change the subject.
“There’s a new pub nearby with good music.”
Maxim knew the owner from school.
“Yes, Little Sava opened it. They have a nice yard.”
Uncle Boshko always had a favorite cafe where he would drink coffee every day, but lately, none had been close enough. Now a pub had opened that fit his taste, and you could see on his face that he was happy about it.
Maxim returned to his story:
“And in the end, it’s the same for everyone. The question is, where are the people? They should still be here, but they’re underground. And how do you justify that? Then they convince mothers and relatives that they are heroes, that the cause they died for was sacred, that our leaders are saints because they had such a sacred idea, while their leaders are devils, and we had to fight against them.”
I tried to fall asleep again.
When I got home, I found Mirna’s question on my computer:
“Did you go to Banja Luka by bus or with Uncle Dane?”
“We went with Uncle Dane and his colleague Branko. In the end, we didn’t go along the Sava through BrÄŤko and Ĺ amac, where we usually go. They drove us over the hills to GradaÄŤac. They had been in an inn there in the late eighties, and a pretty waitress worked there. We sat there hoping to see her. No luck, a young girl with nice eyes was working.”
“Are they prettier than mine?”
“Mirna, there are no prettier eyes than yours.”
“Just checking.”
We stayed on chat for a long time. I wasn’t in a hurry to sleep; I had already slept at Uncle Boshko’s earlier. After so many chats and nice words exchanged with Mirna this year I started to think about her again. I told that to Max earlier today.
“Your nights would be so hot, Davy.”
I kind imagined it that way. Then he added after five seconds.
“And days would be so cold.”
1 EPROM is a read-only memory whose contents can be erased and reprogrammed.
