Saša Stanišic

How long a heart attack takes over a hundred metres, how much a spider’s life weighs, why my sad man writes to the cruel river, and what magic the Comrade-in-Chief of all that’s unfinished can work.

Grandpa Slavko measured my head with Granny’s washing line, I got a magic hat, a pointy magic hat made of cardboard, and Grandpa Slavko said: I’m really still too young for this sort of thing, and you’re already too old.

So I got a magic hat with yellow and blue shooting stars on it, trailing yellow and blue tails, and I cut out a little crescent moon to go with them and two triangular rockets. Gagarin was flying one, Grandpa Slavko was flying the other.

Grandpa, I can’t go out in this hat! I should hope not!

On the morning of the day when he was to die in the evening, Grandpa Slavko made me a magic wand from a stick and said: there’s magic in that hat and wand. If you wear the hat and wave the wand you’ll be the most powerful magician in the non-aligned states. You’ll be able to revolutionise all sorts of things, just as long as they’re in line with Tito’s ideas and the Statues of the Communist League of Yugoslavia.

I doubted the magic, but I never doubted my grandpa. The most valuable gift of all is invention, imagination is your greatest wealth. Remember that, Aleksander, said Grandpa very gravely as he put the hat on my head, you remember that and imagine the world better than it is. He handed me the magic wand, and I doubted nothing any more.

It’s usual for people to think sadly of the dead now and then. In our family that happens when Sunday, rain, coffee and Granny Katarina all come together at the same time. Granny sips from her favourite cup, the white one with the cracked handle, she cries and remembers all the dead and the good things they did before dying got in the way. Our family and friends are at Granny’s today because we’re remembering Grandpa Slavko who’s been dead for two days, dead for now anyway, just until I can find my magic wand and my hat again.

…

I don’t know how long I stood, deep in thought, beside Grandpa’s coffin. I don’t know when I freed myself from my father’s heavy hands and ran around the grave with the smell of summer rain rising from it. Or when I put on my hat with its blue and yellow stars turning round the crescent moon, although on the day of the evening when he died a death that proved stronger than any magic, Grandpa had told me that stars didn’t turn around moons, moons turned around stars. How long did I point my wand at the five-pointed star at the head end of the coffin; how often did I hit out when people tried to carry me away? What curses did I utter, how much did I cry? And will I ever forgive Carl Lewis for using up all of my magic power on his world record, leaving none for Grandpa? All of it went during those 9.86 seconds on 25 August 1991, the day before the day before the evening when someone on the megdan might not have heard a mother whispering to her son: you had a loving grandpa, and he will never come back. But his love for us is never-ending, his love will never be gone. Aleksander, you have a never-ending grandpa now.

We made a promise about stories, Mama, the son said, nodding, and closed his eyes as if he were working magic without his hat and magic wand, a very simple promise: never to stop telling them.