Quiet Flows the Una. Faruk Šehić

      No Resurrection, no Death

      Contempt wasn’t strong enough a word. The boy had done nothing to me, but I couldn’t stand him. His appearance was irritating – perhaps he was good at heart, but you couldn’t see it from the outside. That freak with the ungainly head too big for his body was one of the male scions of the Hodžić dynasty, which lived in the suburb of Žitarnica in a pedantically whitewashed house that radiated orderliness and a smell of modesty. Balloon-head Dino had a misshapen noggin like one of those plastic footballs you could buy for just a few coins at the Yugoplastika shop. That head was welded to a skinny torso with stalky little legs, and his arms were like insects’ feelers. Flawed as he was, he didn’t elicit any sympathy because of the malevolence you sometimes saw on his face. He didn’t partake of any children’s games and was quiet and withdrawn, probably because of the puritanical discipline instituted in their house by old Asim, the redeemer of pigeons, which he loved more than all other beings.

      Grandfather Asim was the silver-haired head of the family who went out into the glazed-cement courtyard every morning with handfuls of breadcrumbs for the pigeons. He always called out Vitiviti, vitiviti to attract them, and the pigeons flew down devotedly like celestial dogs from the clean roofs to land on his head, shoulders and the arms he held out horizontally as if he was their Jesus. Soon he would be completely covered in them and the sun’s light would refract on their neck feathers in a purple haze. When he walked, the pigeons didn’t flee before him but balanced with their wings outspread to accord him their esteem. Their elated cooing filled the air of Žitarnica beneath the rocky slope of Hum Hill, that sacred mount of our childhood topography. A public toilet was built into the rock wall. It was a concrete bunker overgrown with ivy, a green-brown living thing with ivy veins and capillaries, where bubbles of ammonia welled from the earth and piles of faeces grew between the luscious green leaves. All this could mean only one thing: that drunks and lovers met here – those oblivious to the divine smells of human waste. Rows of prefab garages for the residents of nearby flats stood in front of the toilet, and next to them there rose an angular substation tower.

      The old man’s everyday bird-feeding helped him gather currency for the interstellar fuel he would need to reach heaven and be among the houris – the celestial beauties. He was so old that his skin resembled pure, fine cotton, in places transparent and pink. And his body, which looked like it was about to overcome gravity at any moment, was evocative of a time when people mixed with the cherubim, and it was as light as a feather from an angel’s wing.

      One morning I came out of Grandma Delva’s house, sat on the steps and looked at the Mediterranean plants in flowerpots that she visited with ice-cold water at six o’clock every morning before the sun established its rule. The lemongrass gave off a strong scent, and beyond the concrete of the courtyard there grew long stalks similar to bamboo, which were hollow on the inside, but their green skin was strong and wouldn’t break when you pressed it.

      Through the wall of bamboo I saw Balloon-head moseying around the substation where there was a rusty barrel full to the brim with pondweed.

      Drawn by curiosity, I ran up to him. The creep had thrown in several kittens, which were slowly drowning in the murky green water. I felt a pressure in my head like a black rod, and I punched him in his weedy stomach and drove him away. I pulled the kittens out and laid them on the grass. They looked so skinny with their fur plastered, wet and gleaming, having been licked by tongues of death. I moved them closer to the dense grass at the wall of the substation, hoping their mother would find them and revive them with her warm breath. But there was only earth beneath my feet as I stood dumbfounded above their little bodies, which lay there half-dead, with their eyes wide open.

      I half-closed my eyes in despair and wanted to see old Asim, the redeemer of pigeons, revive the kittens, levitate to the top of Hum in rage and hurl bolts of lightning. He would howl old-Slavic prayers in a terrible voice and summon black crows from the clouds to punish all human evil. But that wouldn’t be enough to return the kittens from the dead. Here, whoever dies is dead forever. Kittens go to heaven too, with their fur a-bristle.

      Only old Asim refused to die, lying in his astronautically white room. In the hour of his death he became white as if covered by the first hoar frosts of winter. His pupils were snow-white heads of tailor’s pins. He changed into a cotton jellyfish beneath the sheet and whisked out the window, loosening and tightening his cape-like body several times as jellyfish do. Only briefly did he hang in the air above the tumult of the streets before disappearing, escorted by a flock of white doves – far away from clay and worms, far away from cats and people.