Battle Songs


 
 
 
 BATTLE SONGS
 
 
 Also by Daša Drndić 
 in english translation
 
 Trieste (2012)
 Leica Format (2015)
 Belladonna (2017)
 EEG (2019)
 Doppelgänger (2019)
 
 
 
 
 
 Copyright © 1998 by Daša Drndić
 Translation copyright © 2022 by Celia Hawkesworth 
 All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher
 Originally published in Croatian as Canzone di Guerra by Partizanska knjiga, Serbia, in 2019, and in English by Istros Books, London, in 2022
 This publication is made possible by the Croatian Ministry of Culture
 Manufactured in the United States of America 
 First published as a New Directions Paperbook Original (NDP1550) in 2023
 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
 Names: Drndić, Daša, 1946–2018, author. | Hawkesworth, Celia, 1942– translator.
 Title: Battle songs = (Canzone di guerra) / Daša Drndić ; translated from the Croatian by Celia Hawkesworth.
 Other titles: Canzone di guerra. English | Canzone di guerra
 Description: New York, NY : New Directions Publishing Corporation, [2023] | Originally published as Canzone Di Guerra by Partizanska Knjiga, Serbia, 2019.
 Identifiers: LCCN 2022050523 | ISBN 9780811234788 (paperback) | ISBN 9780811234795 (ebook) 
 Subjects: LCSH: Croats—Canada—Toronto—Fiction. | LCGFT: Novels. 
 Classification: LCC PG1619.14.R58 C3613 2023 | DDC 891.8/2354—dc23/eng/20221027 
 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022050523
 New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin 
 by New Directions Publishing Corporation
 80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011
 
 
 BATTLE SONGS
 
 
 LITTLE PIONEERS
 Jadranka said: Don’t go.
 Father said: You’re right to go.
 Nenad said: If only I could go.
 Jasna said to Sara: Your mama’s capable, you’ll be fine. Three years earlier (when we moved from Belgrade to Rijeka in Croatia), Jasna had said to Sara: Your mama’s hopeless, she’s never achieved anything.
 Laura asked: Will you write to me about how bad things are? (When I wrote that things were all right, Laura stopped talking to me.)
 My brother said: I’m going to America, that’s where I was born. (He didn’t go anywhere.)
 Only my sister Lena sighed: I’ll miss you. But she lived in Slovenia.
 I had applied for a small managerial post. I didn’t get it. The newspapers wished me a safe journey.
 I read Dovlatov.
 I read Krleža. 
 I read Brodsky.
 Dovlatov was big and strong. He downed two liters of vodka a day. He spent seventeen years in Petrograd writing, but no one published any of it. He went to America, became well known, and after twelve years, in 1990, he died. He was forty-nine. Before that his daughter had asked him: Are you happy now? He replied: No.
 After living in Rijeka for three years, Sara finally summoned the courage to ask for frankfurters using the Croatian and not the Serbian word. 
 Vesna told me that someone in a Croatian bank had said that she couldn’t understand Serbian at all.
 There’s little Lulu from Somalia. Her father speaks French, English and German, as does her mother. Her mother is not from Somalia but of half-Polish, half-Hungarian origin and was born in America. She asks Lulu from Somalia: Qu’est-ce qu’il y a dans ta soupe? Lulu says: Il y a des carottes, des pommes de terre, chicken and noodles and je veux un ice cream maintenant. She asks the waiter: A glass of vodka, please. Lulu’s not yet five. Everyone understands her.
 It’s a sunny winter’s day. The sky is electric blue as it can only be in Paris or on the Adriatic when there’s a north wind. Sara is saying goodbye to her girlfriends in the pizzeria under the building where we live. I walk and sing (to myself).
 Rijeka is divided by a railway line. In Rijeka trains pass slowly through the city. Trains completely block out the view of the sea. This makes the city seem smaller.
 There are several benches along the quay. They’re used by prostitutes and old people. The old people rest from standing, because the benches are opposite various administrative offices in which the old people spend time waiting in queues. The old people wear old clothes and worn-out shoes. Old people find it hard to get used to new clothes. The old men don’t shave every day. The old man beside me takes a bun out of his shopping bag and sucks it. The way my grandma Ana used to suck old toast because her teeth were no use anymore. There’s a carrot poking out of his bag.
 The sky is electric blue, says the old man.
 The prostitute is no more than nineteen. She’s got a small pale-yellow towel poking out of her bag. The prostitute is eating salami. It’s midday.
 My mama sent me this, says the prostitute.
 I’m sitting in the middle, between the old man and the prostitute, and I’m not eating anything.
 The shape of your face isn’t at all Serbian, my colleague R. V. in Belgrade had said. You’ll have to leave, she also said.
 In Rijeka everyone told me: Tone down that Serbian accent.
 Dovlatov wrote about Spivakov.
 As a Jew in the Soviet Union, Spivakov experienced a lot of unpleasantness. Even though he was called Spivakov and not Spivberg or Spivman. After all kinds of tribulations, the authorities permitted him to give a recital in the USA. When he arrived at Carnegie Hall, he found a crowd from the American League for the Defense of Jewish Rights. They were holding up placards reading: KGB agents — out! They were shouting: Fighting for the rights of Soviet Jews!
 When the concert began, Spivakov was bombarded with tins filled with red paint. Spivakov was completely red.
 That was a long time ago. It’s nothing like that now. Spivakov is world famous now. Among the most famous.
 My little pocket mirror doesn’t