by Douglas Messerli
Saša Stanišić How the
Soldier Repairs the Gramophone (New York: Grove Press, 2008)
Throughout this
first section, as in many such childhood accounts, the mix of what remains of
peasant culture with the popular culture of Western Europe and the United
States (Carl Lewis, Ernest Hemingway, and Madonna are invoked as commonly as
Lenin, Das Kapital and Marx), creates
a humorous and often disquieting satire that cannot help but enchant.
At the time of
these early events, the years from 1990-1992, Višegrad was nearly 64% Muslim
and 32% Serb; today the town is almost entirely Serbian. Anyone picking up
Stanišić’s book, accordingly, should have been prepared for the inevitable
shift from comedy to something darkly tragic. Yet, in part because of
presenting this information through his young narrator’s point of view, we
witness the arriving soldiers less as the deadly murderers of ethnic cleansing
than as often ineffectual brutes of war. Aleksandr with his family, hiding in
their midst a young Muslin girl, Asija, camp out with neighbors in their
basement as soldiers of both sides come and go, tearing apart the magical world
they had all once known. Ultimately, Aleksandr, his parents and others of his
family members escape to Germany, where they face new prejudices but, at least,
potentially more stable lives.
Unfortunately, as
Aleksandr thrives in his new home, growing outwardly into a young man speaking
fluent German whose parents eventually emigrate to Florida, his internal
behavior as a slightly coy, cocky maker of lists and Comrade in Chief of the
unfinished only slightly shifts. What we found appealing at the beginning of
the book, accordingly, seems slightly embarrassing and, at times, shockingly
immature late in this novel, particularly when the young adult returns for a
visit to his former hometown.
It is hard to
know, particularly since the narrator is so obviously close to the author’s own
persona, whether Stanišić is suggesting that such horrific war-time experiences
have psychologically damaged Aleksandr, have turned him into a kind of
soccer-loving boy-man, or whether he is oblivious to his character’s
no-longer-charming immaturity. It may represent a kind of catharsis to call
random telephone numbers in Sarjevo, leaving a series of cryptic queries and
messages about the young girl he seeks, Asija, but it also suggests that the
character—still a major list maker and self-enchanted wizard—may need some
medical help.
In a sense, of
course, there is no way that the author or his narrator can truly reflect the
horrific events that Bosnia and Herzegovina have undergone. Aleksandar knows
that the dead were so numerous that at times it blocked up the river Drina, but
he has not experienced it himself, and the world to which he returns is both
bleak and modestly spiffed-up. Although there is still strong evidence of the
destruction of nearly every building of his town, the village has attempted
to become part of Westernized Europe.
Zoran, the son of the Walrus, for example, has taken over an entire floor of a
building, decorating it with modern appliances. The older remaining population,
like Alexsandr’s former teacher, suffer from Alzheimer’s disease or, as in the
case of his own grandmother, the forgetfulness of old age. Indeed, through
different methods, nearly all those who remain have had to forget. And, like
the fog which so deeply settles upon the Bosnian countryside that all traffic
is brought to a standstill, Alexsandr’s attempt to return to this world through
his memories and imagination is doomed, ending in a confusing cul-de-sac. For
all his lists, all of his childlike memories, he is no longer part of that
world. As Zoran moodily describes the situation:
Aleks! Just look around you! Do you know anyone here? You don’t even
know me! You’re a stranger, Aleksandr! Zoran stares at me at close
quarters. You’d better be glad of it.
Reencountering his Uncle Miki, Aleksandr is confronted by a
man, we suddenly recall, who has remained as a Serbian soldier—clearly one of
that town’s ethnic cleansers. Even Aleksandr must finally admit that his lists
are of no worth, that remembering cannot save anyone from the past.
Perhaps
Aleksandr’s manically absurd humor is the only way to deal with that dreadful
and repeating history. The long description of a soccer game played by opposing
forces in the brief cease-fire is certainly one of the most rewarding stories
of this book of stories-within-stories. Long time friends, now dreadful
enemies, Kiko (for the Bosnians) and Milan Jevrić, better known as Mickey Mouse
(for the Serbians) battle to win the game and, as the cease-fire comes to an end, fight for their very lives. While
outwardly they seem only to be “playing” their favorite sport, the game itself
becomes a mirror of their fears and hates. As the ball goes into the woods,
strong soldiers such as Meho—forced to retrieve it among the hundreds of
landmines buried about—shit their pants, break into tears, and ultimately go
crazy before they are shot to death. It does not fit our easy notions of
war—our feelings of absolute moral outrage—to speak of a battle between life
and death in terms of a pitiful sporting event. Yet it is hard to doubt that
such an event might have or even actually happened in a world so completely and
absurdly split apart.
In the end, we
must recognize that both the author-narrator—despite our justifiable discomfort
with his often coy and too clever childlike actions—weighed down with the two
million dying voices of his homeland also must break, must metaphorically come
apart:
The
echo comes back, I have to sit down, I’ve eaten and drunk in-
credible amounts, twice, I can’t take any more, I let myself drop, I
lie
there among the sweet humming of a rain of voices. Where? Howl
two
million voices at once. I feel sick. I can’t cope anymore, above me
the
clouds, five or perhaps six feet above me. The rain fills my mouth,
voices like flies in my hear.
Yes, I say, I’m here now.
With the completion of this fiction it is clear Alexsandr
and his creator have grown into men, the latter an individual so gifted that we
can only look forward to his future creations.
Los Angeles,
August 9, 2008
Reprinted from The
Brooklyn Rail (October 2008).
