How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone by Sasa Stanisic & Anthea Bell

Author:Sasa Stanisic & Anthea Bell [Sasa Stanisic & Anthea Bell]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction:Historical
ISBN: 9780802144225
Publisher: Grove Press
Published: 2009-05-03T07:00:00+00:00

2. Traditionally the name of Pharaoh's devout wife who rescued Moses from the Nile.

My father asks if I knew that more people are killed by coconuts than sharks every year. Coconuts are murderers, he says.

I decide to have dreamed everything.

With love, from

Aleksandar

Aleksandar, I really, reallywant to send you this package

I packed it up myself—for you. Karl and Friedrich and Clara and Tito. The whole bunch of them are in it. Do you remember? You liked Karl. And I really, really want to send you Slavko's Party book. His speeches on special occasions. His articles. What picturesque handwriting your grandpa had! Capital letters twining like tendrils! No one writes by hand anymore. I'm sure you type everything too. It's not right! How do you find out who you're dealing with through a machine? I mean, do you want to kiss only a girl's lipstick and not the girl? I really do want to send you some newspaper articles about Grandpa! You used to sit on his lap and do crossword puzzles with him! Oh, Slavko and his crossword puzzles! What else? You really must have the photos of Vladimir Ilyitch and the photos of Tito! What have I got here? “The Mission of Revolutionary Youth”? Yes, wonderful! You're the youth in the title! Oh, your Grandpa's handwriting in those crossword puzzles! Tito's uniform, and we thought we had it so good then, sheep that we were! I only couldn't stand all the fuss they made. I didn't marry my Slavko for his minutes of Party meetings and his reports. Politics and kissing don't go together! What am I supposed to do now with workers' songs and Clara Zetkin postage stamps and leaflets explaining how people have to act when Tito comes to town? Point One: we're to decorate our front gardens and put out as many green plants as possible! Everything except the green plants—for instance underpants, bedclothes, etc.—is to be taken out of the front gardens! Did you ever hear of such a thing? Then there's Point Four, that's a good one too: everyone must bring at least one flower to throw into the street three hundred feet in front of the first car in Tito's column. Whatever happens, nothing must be thrown at Comrade Tito's own car. I could never be doing with any of that, Aleksandar, but I expect you still have ambitions of that kind. You and Slavko may never have got beyond the chapter on goods and commodities in Das Kapital without nodding off, but you could quote whole passages by heart. And you wore your blue cap and red cravat of your own free will even when it wasn't a festival day. Even when wearing the Pioneer uniform wasn't a duty anymore, hands clasped behind your back the way your grandpa always clasped his. At the end-of-year celebrations in Class Four you carried the flag. Half the school marched behind you and the Red Flag. Your ears were glowing with happiness and excitement. The flag was huge.

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