1 : We got up at dawn, not paying attention to the yolky sun, loaded our

navy-blue Austin with suitcases and headed off to the coast. We

stopped only once, on the verge of Sarajevo, so I could pee. During the
entire trip I kept singing communist songs about grieving mothers that
wander around graves, looking for their fallen sons; songs of a
revolution raging ahead like a locomotive; songs about miners burying
their dead comrades. By the time we reached the coast, I had almost
lost my voice.

2 : We waited for the ferry on a long stone pier, which burnt my feet as
soon as I took off my sandals. The air was sultry and saturated with sea
ozone, exhaust and the scent of coconut sunscreen spreading from a
group of already sun-roasted German tourists who were posing for
pictures at the end of the pier.
First we noticed a thin sock of smoke along the string of the horizon,
and then we saw the ship coming closer and closer. It was tilted
sideways, like in a child's drawing. I was wearing a huge straw hat with
stickers of all the seven dwarfs. It cast a freckled shadow on my face. To
see adults, I had to raise my head; otherwise, I would only see their
knotted knees, stains of sweat appearing on their shirts and folds of
flab on their thighs. One of the Germans, an older, bony man, kneeled
and puked over the edge of the pier. The puke splashed on the surface
and then flew into different directions, like children playing hide and
seek. A school of aluminium fish gathered beneath the maroon and
ochre isle of vomit throbbing on the waves and stared nibbling on it
with great delight.
3: The ferry was ramshackle, with peeling steel stairs and rusty
handrails that could cut your fingers. The staircase went upwards like a
twisted towel. Welcome, said the bearded man wearing a T-shirt with
the picture of a ship floating on the waves, with serpentine smoke and
a smiley sun with two dots for eyes rising above it. We sat on the upper
deck and the ferry set sail, moving across the obedient waves, panting
and burping. We were passing small islands lined up as car wreck and I
kept asking my parents: Is this Mljet? to which they would reply: No.
The wind struck us from behind one of those petrified, fire-shaven
islands. It snatched my straw hat and flung it into the gentle waves. I
watched the hat drifting away, with my hair pressed to my skull, and
realised I would never see it again. I wished to go back in time and hold
on to my hat before a sudden tug of wind hit our faces again. The ferry
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went full steam ahead, far away from the hat, which became a distant
yellowish stain on the snot-green sea. I cried myself to sleep. When I
woke up, the ferry had docked and we had reached Mljet.
4: Uncle Julijus impressed a strong, moist kiss into my cheek,
the corner of his mouth touching that of mine and leaving a
drop of saliva behind. His lips were as soft as slugs, seemingly
without anything to support them from behind. While we were
departing from the dock, he informed us he had forgotten his
denture at home and grinned at me as proof, displaying his
pink gums with cinnabar scars.
He was redolent of pine cologne, but a whif of decay sneaked
out of his insides and penetrated the cologne cloud. I heard
some munching as well. I buried my face into my mothers
skirt. Lets go home, please! I exclaimed.

5: We were walking up a steep, worn-out, cobbled path that was

radiating heat. Uncle Julijuss sandals clattered in a soothing rhythm
and I felt sleepy. A dense, leafless, grey thicket stretched along the way.
According to Uncle Julijus, once upon a time there were so many vipers
on Mljet that people didnt take off their rubber boots, not even at
home, and that snakes used to bite as much as mosquitoes.
Back then, everybody knew how to cut of the bitten part of
their flesh so that the venom wouldnt manage to spread.
Serpents guzzled fowls and dogs. Once, the smell of milk
appealed to a snake so it curled up on a sleeping baby. And
then somebody heard about the mongoose and its appetite for
snakes, so they sent some guy to Africa. He brought back a
litter of mongooses and released them on the island. There
were so many serpents that the mongooses thought they were
in Heaven. You could walk for kilometres and only hear the
hissing of snakes, the squeaking of mongooses and rattling in
the bushes. Then, the mongooses wiped out all the serpents
and bred so much that the island became too small for them.
First, chicks started disappearing, and then cats as well;
rumours about rabid mongooses appeared, and some even
talked about monstrous mongooses as results of incestuous
mating in this paradise. Now theyre trying to figure out how to
get rid of them. Thats life, he said, a revolution of
misfortunes. Its nothing but a relentless series of troubles.
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After he said that, he pulled a tiny grey stone out of his left
sandal and kept showing it to us as if it were irrefutable
evidence.
6: He opened up the gate and we went through a small, neat
garden with firm tomato stems lined up like guards along the
way. His wife (he pointed his finger at her) was standing in front of the
house, her face like a loaf of bread with a tubby potato in the middle,
her arms akimbo, calves covered in bruises and blood vessels on the
verge of bursting, her joints swollen. She was barefoot, her crooked
toes diverging as if in disgust at one another. She grabbed my entire
face, pushed it upwards and pressed her lips onto mine, leaving a
dense layer of saliva I hastily wiped off with my shoulder. Her name was
aunt Ljudmila.
7: Dragging a bag full of plastic beach toys and following my
lively parents, I clambered up the sharp-edged exterior
concrete staircase with lined-up pots of flowers as uninterested
as servants holding candles.
Dragging a bag full of plastic beach toys and following my
lively parents, I clambered up the sharp-edged exterior
concrete staircase. The flowers in the pots lined up along the
railing resembled uninterested servants holding candles.

8: The room smelled like lavender, mosquito repellent and clean,

freshly ironed bed linen. A picture of a curvy island taken from an
airplane (the lower right corner read Mljet) was hanging on the right
wall and a black-and-white picture of Tito smiling was on the wall
across. The floor under the window was dotted with mosquitoes and
here and there a blue-bottle fly or bee still stiff with shock. As I
approached them, the draught I produced carried them away from me,
as if they were retreating out of fear of another surprise.
9: I was lying in my bed, listening to the puffed-up curtain flap and
staring at the picture of Mljet. At the top of the picture you could see
two round lakes touching and there was a small island within one of
them.
10: I woke up in the night and heard the chirrup of the crickets,
which seemed to represent the vroom of the island engine.
Everybody was sitting outside, at the table under the vine
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twisted around a grid. A long-neck jug full of black wine was

standing in the middle of the table, like an axis. Uncle Julijus
was talking and the others were laughing. He would bulge his
eyes, lean forward, stretch out his fist, then open it and point
his finger somewhere between my mother and his wife, and
afterwards hed clench his fist again, only to have the index
finger reappear and knock on the table, as if he were sending a
message via telegraph. Then, uncle Julijus would grow silent,
return to his starting position and observe the others laughing.

11: Uncle Julijus was telling us: We brought beekeeping to

Bosnia. Before the Ukrainians arrived, the indigenous people
kept bees in hives made of mud and straw, and they would kill
them with sulphur so as to get hold of their honey. You know,
my father had 50 hives three years after arriving in Bosnia. He
had been quite ill before he died. On the day of his death he
insisted he be carried to the bees, and so they carried him. He
sat in front of the hives for a few hours and cried a river. Then,
they carried him back to bed, where he died half an hour later.
What did he die from? asked aunt Ljudmila.
Dysentery. People died from it all the time back then. They
would just shit themselves to death one day.
12: I went downstairs and announced I was thirsty. Aunt
Ljudmila went to the dark corner to my right and turned on a
blinding light. There was a concrete cube with a large wooden
lid. She lifted the lid, picked up a small tin pot and shoved her
hand into the cube. I approached the cistern (because thats
what it was) and peeked over the edge. I saw a white slug as
big as dads thumb on the wall across. I didnt exactly know
whether he was moving upwards or if he was paralyzed/stif
with fear. The dew on his back was sparkling; he looked like a
ripped-out tongue. I looked at aunt Ljudmila, but she didnt
seem to have noticed anything. She handed me the pot, but I
shook my head and refused to drink that water, which, among
other things, looked turbid.
Then they brought me a slice of fresh watermelon, and I was
chewing it sleepily. Just look at yourself! said uncle Julijus.
You dont want to drink water! And what would you do if you
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were insanely thirsty and had only one thing on your mind:
water, water! but there is no water. How old are you?
Nine, said my mother.

13: Uncle Julijus told us that, while he was a camp near

Arkhangelsk, Stalin and his assembly passed a law which
dictated you would have to spend six months to three years in
a camp if you were repeatedly late to school or missed classes
for a few days without an excuse. So, in 1943 the camp
suddenly swelled with children slightly older than me twelve
and fifteen years of age. They werent able to find their way in
the camp, so the criminals picked the better-looking ones, took
them to their rooms, fed them, and, as you know (no, I didnt
know that), molested them shamelessly. And thats the fate of
those children. They were dropping like flies, because it was so
cold and they had lost all warm clothing. They didnt know how
to protect themselves or the scarce food and water they were
allotted. Only those who had protectors could survive. There
was a boy named Vanjka: tall, slim, about 12 years of age, blueeyed and blond. He survived by stealing from those weaker
than him, yielding to diferent protectors and bribing the
guards. One day I think hed had some vodka with the
criminals he started yelling: Thank you, Voa, for my happy
childhood! At the top of his lungs: Thank you, Stalin, for my
happy childhood!, and then they beat him with rifles and
dragged him away.
14: Dont torment the child with such stories. He will never be
able to sleep again.
Let him hear. He should know.
15: Afterwards, uncle Julijus was transferred to another camp,
and then another, and after God knows how much time passed
and how many camps hed been in, he ended up in Siberia. One
spring, his job was to dig graves in the thawing ground, drag
the dead over on a large wagon and stuf them into the grave
afterwards. Fifty per grave was the prescribed amount.
Sometimes he would have to climb on a pile of corpses and
stomp on them to make room for as many as possible, so he
could meet the requirements. He wore large boots. One day,
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they told him there was a dead man in a solitary confinement

cell, so he dragged the wagon over there, loaded it with the
corpse, and when he started pushing, the corpse cried: Let me
die! Let me die! I was so frightened I almost fell on the
ground, but he just kept shouting: Let me die! I dont want to
live! I pushed the wagon behind the shack and leaned so I
could see him. He was a bag of bones, toothless and missing
one ear, but he had intensely blue eyes. Vanjka! He looked so
much older, dear God! I gave him a piece of bread what he told
me then.

16: They took him away and beat him for days, and they did all
sorts of things to him. Then he was transferred to another
camp, but he constantly encountered problems there as well,
because he had a big mouth despite being completely sane. He
knew how to take things from the weaker, and there were still
men that liked him. He gained some respect when he killed a
marked man, some Jew, after losing a card game. He kept
killing afterwards. He did horrible, horrible things and learned
how to survive, but he never knew how to keep his mouth shut.
Eventually they sent him away to an island where they dropped
of the lowest of the low. The closest guard was at the islands
shore, about 50 kilometres from the camp. They let those in the
camp plunder and slay each other like mad dogs. The guards
would come once a month, leave food, count the corpses and
graves, and return to their barracks at the shore. Then, one day
Vanjka and two other prisoners killed some other prisoners,
took their food and clothes and started walking towards the
shore. Winter was very, very cold pines were cracking like
matches so they thought they would be able to cross the
frozen gorge on foot if they managed to avoid the guards. But
then they got lost and they were left without food, so Vanjka
and one of the prisoners locked eyes in agreement to kill the
third guy. So they killed him, ate his flesh, and walked, and
walked, and walked. Afterwards, Vanjka killed the other
prisoner and ate him. Thats where the guards had
bloodhounds track him down and captured him, so he ended up
in solitary confinement, and he doesnt even know how much
time he spent there. All he knows is that he wanted to die, he
banged his head against the walls and tried to choke himself
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with his own tongue. He refused eating, but they forcibly fed
him, only to keep him alive and sufering. Let me die! he
cried and cried.

17: Uncle Julijus had grown silent, and nobody dared to say
anything. But I asked: And, what happened to him then? He
was killed, uncle replied, waving as if he were telling me to
get out of his sight.

18: I woke up and, at first, I didnt know where I was or who I

was, but then I saw the picture of Mljet and recognised it. I
stepped out of my nonbeing and into the newly emerging day.
It was blindingly bright and I could hear the sounds of the
distant beach: the waves whispering shyly, music echoing from
who knows where, boat engines humming, children shouting
and paddles clapping in syncopation. Bees were levitating
above the staircase flowers and I cautiously squeezed past
them. Breakfast was on the table the vine cast a freckled
shade upon: smouldering scrambled eggs, a cup a stream of
vapour was rising from and seven slices of bread on a steel
tray, leaning on each other like toppled dominoes. Nobody was
around, there were only shadows stretched across the stone
pavement in the yard. I sat down and stirred my white cofee. A
dead bee was caught in the whirl, swirling around on her back,
gradually slowing down until it hesitatingly came to a stop.
After breakfast we would head to the beach along a dusty path
which resembled a long den in the bushes.
I would carry my blue-and-white nivea blowball. Sometimes I
would accidentally drop it and it would bounce in front of us in
slow motion. I would listen to the rustle in the thicket maybe
its a snake? And when the sound intensified, I would imagine a
mongoose strangling a snake, the whole bloody battle, the
snake entangled with the mongoose thats trying to bite of its
head, just like I had seen on Survival. I would wait for my
parents, seeing as I didnt exactly know what a fierce
mongoose would want to do to a curious boy perhaps it would
want to bite of his head too?
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20: We would arrive at the gravel beach not far from the dam dividing
the two lakes. They would sit me down on the laid out towel for a while
before letting me swim. To our left there was usually an old man,
somewhat wrinkled, with a spy novel across his face, his white hairs
standing upright, his belly slightly moving up and down together with
the bluebottle fly on the edge of his bellybutton. To our right, there
would be two symmetrical old men wearing straw hats and baggy
shorts, playing chess in dead silence, with their saggy chests over the
board. There would be three children a little bit farther away. Theyd sit
on a towel around a woman, probably their mother, who would give out
tomatoes and slices of bread with a layer of yellow spread. The children
would simultaneously bite into their bread and tomatoes, and then
theyd eat in silence. Tomato drool would run down their chins, but the
children seemed indifferent; when they were done, their mother would
wipe their lips with a stained rag.
21: When my parents would finally let me swim, Id waddle across the
scorching hot pebbles and wade into the shallows. Id see jellyfish
floating next to me. The rocks at the bottom were covered with
slippery, slimy lichen. Id hesitantly jump into the water and the frost
shock would make me feel every inch of my body Id be completely
aware that my skin was the thin line dividing the world and me. Then
Id stand straight, the trembling surface of the lake reaching my
nipples, and Id wave to my parents. They would yell: Only five more
minutes!

22: Sometimes Id look through the clear water and see fish
gliding across the bottom. Once I saw a school of fish with
silver bellies and noses as pointy as needles, which made them
resemble tiny swordfish. They were swimming as one, and then
they stopped in front of me. A hundred bulging eyes were
staring at me, stif with fear. At that moment, I blinked and the
fish were gone.

23: We were walking up the path during sunset. A bronze shade

would cover everything, and here and there a golden sunray
would pierce the ground like a spear, breaking through the
thickets and olives. Crickets were chirruping and the smell of
8 | Page

pine needles was intensified by the warmth of the ground. I

went under the shade of the tall pines, and the sudden change
of temperature made me realise how hot my shoulders were. I
firmly pressed a thumb into my shoulder and a pale spot
showed as I raised it, which gradually shrunk until it was
completely swallowed by the red.
24: A man was keeping his German shepherd on a leash
wrapped around his hand for the most part. The dog was trying
to tackle a mongoose squeezed up against the remains of a low
stone wall. The dogs jaw kept missing the mongooses muzzle
at a hairs breadth as the owner was firmly pulling the leash.
The mongooses fur stood upright as it grinned to show its
teeth, acting tough, but nevertheless, I knew it was scared out
of its mind. There was a gleam of red in its eyes, resembling
that which a camera flash produces in peoples eyes. I could
see the drool dropping from the pinkish-brown gums of this
bloodthirsty dog that kept growling and barking. Then, the man
let up a little and, for a moment, you could hear hissing,
squeaking and screeching.
He pulled the leash back again, and the mongoose remained on
its back, grinning pointlessly, spreading its paws to signalise
that it is harmless now, its eyes bulging and pupils reaching
the iris rims in fright. It was left with a gaping hole in its chest
as if the dog had bitten of a part of it and I could see its
heart, which looked like a tiny tomato. The pulsing resembled
hiccupping and it kept gradually slowing down, the pauses
between beats becoming ever longer, until it eventually came
to a stop.

25: We were walking in the twilight, my sandals were full of

pine needles and every now and then Id have to stop to take
them out. A thousand fireflies were floating above the shrubs,
flashing, as if they were concealed fairy photographers taking
pictures of us. Are you hungry? mum asked.

26: We would sit under the canopies and bring a round jar of
clear, bronze-coloured honey and a plate full of small pickles.
Uncle Julijus would dip a pickle into the honey and a few bees
9 | Page

would detach from the jar, hovering above the table. I would
dip a finger into the jar and attempt to fling it towards my
mouth before the thin thread of honey stretched onto my bare
thighs, but it just didnt seem to work out.
Uncle Julijus would sometimes take me to the apiary around
lunchtime. Hed look like a bride, as he would put on a white
overcoat and a straw hat with a veil that reached his chest. He
would set a torn rag on fire and order me to hold it, so as to
chase bees away. Hed tell me not to talk, move or blink. Id
peek from behind his back, holding the smouldering rag. He
would lift the lid of the hive cautiously, as if he was afraid that
hed awaken the island, and the buzz would rise and hover
above us like a cloud of dust. Hed scrape the beeswax of the
frames, take them out and show them to me one by one. Id
catch sight of a fidgeting swarm of bees. They work all the
time, he would whisper, they never stop. I would be afraid
of getting stung by the bees, although he had told me they
wouldnt attack me if I pretended not to exist. The fear would
_____ in me, and the more I thought of it, the more unbearable
the discomfort would become. Eventually, I would give up, run
to the house and sit on top of the staircase. From there, I would
watch the calm and well-thought-out motion of uncles
dexterous hands in the distance. Id watch him as if he were
projected on a canvas of beehives and olive trees. Then, hed
turn towards me and I could discern an unusual, tranquil smile
behind the veil.

27: Mom and dad were sitting on the stern of the boat, dipping
their feet into the lukewarm water at the bottom. Uncle Julijus
was paddling, and I was sitting on the bow, my legs waggling
overboard. A slight wave would raise the surface and my feet
would immerse into the cold mint-green water. We were gliding
across the lake towards the island, the paddles splashing and
screeching in adagio. An austere grey building with small
indented windows and a row of knobbly olives in front could be
seen. Uncle Julijus turned the bow towards the tiny, deserted
pier. I slipped while stepping out of the ark, but uncle Julijus
grabbed my hand, so for a moment I was hanging over the
pulsating lake and the bloated loaf of bread and the woman
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smiling heartily while sitting on a piece of newspaper that was

glued to the surface like an icy panel.

28: These lakes, said uncle Julijus, were a haven for pirates
in the 16th century. Here, they would store loot, keep hostages,
and, if these werent ransomed, theyd be killed and tortured in
this building. They say this place is still haunted by the ghosts
of three children who were ripped apart with hooks because
their parents didnt want to ransom them. Afterwards, this
place became a monastery and some believed that the nuns
residing here were actually witches. Then, the building was
transformed into a German prison. And now, mind you, it is a
hotel, but tourists barely ever stay there.

29: We entered the shady, resonant stone lobby. Nobody was at

the reception desk, but above the key shelf there was a picture
of Tito smiling. Then, we proceeded through a long tunnel and
a low door, so that everybody but me had to duck, and we
found ourselves in a windowless room (This used to be the
monastery housekeepers cell, whispered uncle Julijus), after
which we stepped into the dining room (they had to bend their
knees and duck again, as if making a bow) with long wooden
tables and plates and cutlery aligned in parallel rows on top of
them. Thats where we sat and waited for the waiter. On the
wall behind uncle Julijuss head there was a caramel-coloured
lizard as long as a new pencil. He was staring at us with his
marble eye, presumably perplexed, and then he briskly ran up
towards the concealed window.
30: Heres what uncle Julijus told us:
When I was a young student in Moscow, sometime in the
1930s, I saw the oldest man in the world. It was in biology
class. In the glorious auditorium, there were hundreds of rows
and thousands of students. They brought in the old man, and
as he could not walk, two friends were carrying him and he was
gripping them around their shoulders. His legs were hanging
between the two of them and he was bent as a baby. They told
us he was 158 years old and that he came from somewhere in
the Caucasus region. They laid him down sideways and he
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started wailing like a baby, so they gave him a stufed toy, I

think it was a cat, but Im not sure, because I was sitting in the
top row. It felt as if I were looking through a reverse spyglass.
The professor told us he only ate porridge and couldnt stand
having his favourite toy taken away. He also said that the old
man slept all the time, and that he didnt know his name or
remember anything. He could only utter a few words, such as
water or poop. Thats when I realised life was but a circle
you go back exactly to the starting point, even after having
lived for 158 years. Its like when a dog chases its own tail, its
all futile. You live and live, and in the end youre like this kid
(he pointed at me), you know nothing and remember nothing.
You could simply stop living now, son. You could disappear right
now.

31: When I woke up, after a night of uneasy dreams, the

suitcases were agape and my parents were filling them with
wrinkly laundry and shirts. Uncle Julijus came up to our room,
carrying a jar of honey as big as my head, and gave it to dad.
He glanced at the picture of Mljet and placed a finger on one
spot in the upper right corner, near the twin lakes that looked
like two bulging eyes. This is precisely where we are, he said.

32: The sun had not risen from behind the hills yet, so there
were no shadows and everything looked muffled, as if covered
with fine gauze. We were walking across a narrow street; the
asphalt was cool and moist. We crossed paths with a man
carrying a cluster of dead fish that were hanging by their bright
red gills on hooks. He said: Good morning! and smiled.
We were waiting at the pier. The ramshackle ferry, with paint
peeling of and Pirate written on the bow in fading letters,
was dragging itself towards the shore, coughing. A man with an
anchor tattoo on his right arm was standing on the stern. He
had a torn plaid black-and-red shirt, black football shorts and
swollen, dirty bare feet. He was looking straight ahead, at the
ferry embarking into the port. The ferry gradually slowed down
to the point of floating hesitatingly, and then it let down its
entrance door like a castle bridge, with a loud bang. That was
not the ferry we had arrived on, but that same man in the T12 | P a g e

shirt showing a tilted boat repeated: Welcome! and smiled,

as if he had recognised us.
We passed the same islands. Now they looked like pufed-up,
mouldy loaves of bread the giant ferry had tossed behind. On
one of the islands we saw a tribe of goats. They were looking at
us in slight wondering, but then, one by one they lost interest
and went back to grazing. A man with a camera, probably a
German tourist, photographed the goats and then handed the
camera to his freckled, blue-eyed son. The boy turned the lens
towards the sun, and the father jokingly reprehended him,
turning both him and the camera towards us, while we were
smiling helplessly.

33: It took us only four hours to get home from the sea, and I
slept through the whole trip, unaware of the heat, until we
reached Sarajevo. When we got home, followed by the orange
blot of the setting sun, we found wrinkled plants and wilted
flowers. Everything withered, seeing as the neighbour who was
supposed to water the plants died from a heart attack. The cat,
which no one had fed for almost two weeks, was all haggard
and nearly rabid from hunger. I kept calling for her, but she
wasnt approaching me; she was simply staring at me with eyes
full of incurable/irreversible hatred.

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