How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone

Missing someone, they say, is self-centered. I self-center you more than ever.

I'm against endings. I'm against things being over. Being finished should be stopped! I am Comrade-in-Chief of going on. I support furthermore and etcetera!

If I were a magician who could make things possible, I'd have lemonade always tasting as it did on the evening Francesco explained how right it was for the Italian moon to be a feminine moon. If I were a magician who could make things possible, we'd be able to understand all languages every evening between eight and nine. If I were a magician who could make things possible, all dams would keep their promises. If I were a magician who could make things possible, we'd be really brave.

...there's not enough of anything to go around except people and death.

The water can't turn back and choose another bed, just as promises now cannot be kept. No drowned man comes up again asking for a towel, no love is found again, no tobacconist fails to be born in the first place, no bullet shoots out of a neck and back into the gun, the dam will hold or will not hold.

I know the word "incompetent" from my father. He uses it when there's something political on TV, or when he and Uncle Miki are quarreling about something political they've seen on TV. Incompetence means doing something even though you haven't the faintest idea how to--like governing Yugoslavia, for instance.

The French always make our sort happy because, like us, they know how to love, they're just as good at playing the accordion, and they've made a real art of their inability to bake proper bread.

If only I were a magician who could make things possible. I'd give objects the gift of defiance: banisters, gramaphones, guns, the napes of necks, braided hair.

A good story, you'd have said, is like our river Drina: never calm, it doesn't trickle along, it is rough and broad, tributaries flow in to enrich it, it rises above its banks, it bubbles and roars, here and there it flows into shallows but then it comes to rapids again, preludes to the depths where there's no splashing. But one thing neither the Drina nor the stories can do: there's no going back for any of them. The water can't turn back and choose another bed, just as promises now can't be kept. No drowned man comes up again asking for a towel, no love is found again, no tobacconist fails to be born in the first place, no bullet shoots out of a neck and back into the gun, the dam will hold or will not hold. The Drina has no delta.

...someone ought to invent a tool, a kind of plane to shave the lies away from stories and deception away from memories. I'm a collector of shavings.

The dead are lonelier than the living ever can be. They can't hear each other through coffins and the earth....When I die I'd like to be buried in a mass grave. In a mass grave I wouldn't be afraid of the dark, and I'd be lonely only because my grandson will be missing me, the way I miss Grandpa Slavko now.

Na manhã do dia em cuja noite acabou morrendo, vovô Slavko esculpiu uma varinha de condão para mim usando um galho de árvore e disse: tanto no chapéu quanto na varinha existe um poder mágico, se tu usares o chapéu e carregares a varinha, vais te tornar o mais poderoso mágico de capacidades entre os países que não fazem parte do bloco. Poderás revolucionar muitas coisas, na medida em que isso estiver em conformidade com as ideias de Tito e concordar com os estatutos da Aliança dos Comunistas da Iugoslávia. Eu duvidava da magia, mas não duvidava do meu avô. A graça mais valiosa é a inventividade, a maior riqueza é a fantasia. Guarda isso, Aleksandar, disse vovô com seriedade, enquanto botava o chapéu em mim, guarda isso e imagina um mundo mais bonito. Ele me entregou a varinha. Eu não duvidava de mais nada.

If mankind were on the brink of annihilation and had to rely on homemade dishes, the people of Fürstenfelde would all survive, and you'd be surprised, but you wouldn't be surprised for very long because we'd survive you.

A painter must never be satisfied with what he sees—painting reality means surrendering to it,

someone ought to invent a tool, a kind of plane to shave the lies away from stories and deception away from memories. I’m a collector of shavings.

Grandpa, I haven't remembered all your stories, but I've written a few of my own adn as soon as the rain stops I'll read them to you. I got the idea from Nena Fatima, I got Grandpa Rafik's voice, I got the veins on your son's upper arms, he's painting coconuts now, I got my mother's melencholy. But still I don't have all the things i'd need to tell my story as one of us: I don't have the courage of the river Drina, or the voice of the hawk, or the rock hard backbone of our mountains, or Walrus's infalibility, or the enthusiasum of the man who misses, honorably. And I don't have Armin the stationmaster, Cika Hasan and Cika Sead in their eternal argument, Kiko's leg, Edin who forgets he's imitating a wolf and takes fright at the sound of his own voice, Cauliflower, the names of trees, a stomache for schnapps, the goals scored in the school yard. But most of all I miss the truth, the truth in which we are no longer listeners or storytellers, but we give and forgive.

If I were a magician who could make things possible, then pictures could talk while we painted them. If I were a magaician who could make things possible, then houses could keep their promises. And they would have to promise not to lose their roofs or go up in flames. If I were a magician who could make things possible, the scars made in them by bullet holes would close up again over the years.