Free The Ministry of Pain by Dubravka Ugrešić Page A

“Homesick for the South.” I only knew the title, because I’d never read it, but the title always sounded funny to me. More like an ad than a poem. Then one day I found a fax of it in the departmental reading room here. It was written by Konstantin Miladinov more than a hundred and fifty years ago, as you are well aware. Anyway, you know how our Dutch friends are always rambling on about their summer plans, their summer holidays, getting ready for them or just back from them or wondering where you’re going this year—well, this poem is like that. You’d think it was written by a Dutch rather than a Macedonian. I just had to translate it for my Mieke. So I start reciting it in Macedonian, and—Tito be my witness—my brain scans it without a glitch! I don’t want to bore you, but let me remind you how it starts in case you haven’t got the book handy .
    Darkness is everywhere, darkness enfolds me .
    The blackest of mists encircle the earth ….
    Well, this weather report goes on for a while, but then he makes his point, which really hit home.
    I cannot stand to live in this place;
    I cannot live amidst snow, hail and ice.
    Lord, give me wings, that I may die,
    That I may back to my homeland fly,
    That I may feast my eyes once more
    On sun-drenched Struga and Ohrid’s fair shore .
    And when I got to the end, when I got to the lines that go :
    There shall I pipe my heart’s last good-bye ,
    And when the sun sets, there shall I die .
    I burst into tears, for Christ’s sake. There I am, spouting Macedonian like a son of the soil—and bawling to beat the band. I thought I’d gone off the deep end. So anyway, I translate it for my Mieke, the tears still streaming down my cheeks, and you know what she says? Mooi ! Well, when I heard that Dutch mooi , I smacked her one hard, and then she fucking burst into tears. I could have kicked myself, of course. I don’t know what got into me. Something in that mooi made me crack. I don’t get it. The word does mean “beautiful,” after all. Maybe it was the grass. Maybe the grass had something tear-jerking about it .
    DARKO: MY MOTHER HOLDS HANDS WITH TITO
    This isn’t a memory of my own; it comes from my mother. Like all the kids in her school she belonged to the Pioneers, and once, because she was at the top of her class, she was chosen to attend Tito’s birthday celebration. It was the custom to send the best Pioneers to the celebration, Mother told us, and when the photographer came in to take the traditional “Tito and the Pioneers” picture, she rushed over to Tito and grabbed his hand. I’ve seen the picture. She is leaning against him, pressing her hand in his, and he has a Cuban cigar in his freehand. When the photography session was over, Tito tried to take his hand away, but Mother wouldn’t let him. She stuck to him like glue. He gave another tug, but her fingers had turned into live tongs. People started getting uneasy. One of the security guards had to come and unfasten her. She let out an unearthly howl .
    “I don’t know what got into me,” she told me “or where I got the strength.”
    I once saw Tito in the flesh. It was at the Zagreb Trade Fair. Mother and I happened to be in the crowd lining the street as he passed by with his entourage. He looked smaller than in the photographs and film clips. He looked old and feeble, like a mummy. And when a sunbeam suddenly lit up the top of his head, it jumped out at me, all speckled with liver spots and covered over with strands of dyed hair turned orange.
    “Come on,” my mother said, tugging me by the hand, and took me for ice cream. She ordered so many scoops I couldn’t eat a quarter of them. I don’t know what got into her.
    MARIO: TRAINS WITH NO TIMETABLES
    Looking back, I have the impression that everything in the former Yugoslavia had some connection to trains. String together all the significant and insignificant trains in our lives and you get a history of the country that is parallel