Free Mama Leone by Miljenko Jergovic

exitus , and Dr. Smajlovi ć looked at his watch, took out his fountain pen, andentered the exact time of death in Nano’s hospital notes. Even though they straight-out forget it, don’t have to tell anyone, and nobody ever inquires about the hours and minutes in question, the exact time of death is very important to doctors. In a filing cabinet somewhere there’s a file with the time of death written down, just in case it becomes important one day as some details in life do. Auntie Doležal is of the view that one day God is going to assemble all souls and assign them grades. The time of death in one’s hospital notes is just waiting for that day, even though we live in communism and none of the doctors believes God exists. But like our own, this belief is a little shaky. So, who knows, maybe Nano will appear before God and maybe God’ll say so often you used to say I didn’t exist, and now you’re not in the least surprised to see me .
    Dad and Mom went outside. He took out a packet of cigarettes, and Mom said look how much snow there is already . The snow was as thick as the pillows in the rooms of gentle giants, falling without pause on Mom’s black jacket and Dad’s white doctor’s coat. By the time they’d each finished their cigarette their shoulders were covered in snow, and if a bird had chanced overhead, they would have looked as white as each other, my mom and dad, and the bird would’ve thought them two creatures of winter, in love.
    Mom said go, you’ll catch cold , and he said no ; I think in that instant he was ready to remain in the snow forever, just to hear her say that go, you’ll catch cold a few more times. A love sometimes returns like aword you believe to be true, then it flies away and never comes back; but in its wake it leaves a brilliant trail, which gives a winter morning a certain meaning, and so even after a farewell a little hope remains – let’s say the hope of stumbling upon the magic word, even if it comes after a death and the sacrifice of a Nano.
    A taxi arrived and Dad asked do you want to see him again? They went back inside, the taxi driver opened his newspaper and switched the meter on. Nano’s pillow was gone, Mom looked at him but didn’t cry, she just stood there silently, not moving, at a loss. She’d seen her uncle for the last time and knew that from now on she’d only be able to imagine his face or look at him in photographs. He was dead, and she’d seen him for the last time in her life. When she leaves this room, something in her will be forever, just as death is forever. My mom felt a little dead, something she’d later repeat quite often. There was no sadness in the story, just astonishment in the face of how little it takes for one to bid farewell to the world, just a single glance, how much one sees each day for the last time in one’s life, unaware, not thinking, goodbyes the furthest thing from one’s mind.
    Dad went up to Nano, placed his hand on his forehead, and said the last gentleman . Every summer he’d play Preference with Nano in the gardens in Ilidža, and Nano would tell him stories about Vienna and the beautiful Jewesses who in the fall of 1917, as the dual monarchy crumbled, would open their ladies’ umbrellas, their ankles so slender and angular, so fragile you had to approach them on tiptoes in casethey would break. Dad didn’t know anything about Vienna or Viennese women. He grew up in a harsh, hard world in which you had to guard your refinement and sensitivity, and for him Nano was someone from another world, one where things of beauty seemed inherent and certain, where now forgotten words still existed, a world where such things could be preserved. That morning my dad only managed to remember the word gentleman.
    So in the end I missed out on the wristwatch. Nano was buried the day after Christmas, Mom baked her cakes, and everything was