Stories from Around the World: “A Chronicle of Hovering” and “Death in Las Vegas”

Abstract

Stories from Around the World: “A Chronicle of Hovering” and “Death in Las Vegas” Vladimir Pištalo Translated by Nada Petković “A Chronicle of Hovering” On the cusp of the twentieth century, terror swept my grandmother off her feet when she realized none of her kinfolk was there to meet her at the New York port. The nine-year-old girl found herself alone in the gigantic New World. On Ellis Island, she was discovered by one Đuro Basara, who took her home to the mining town of Export in Pennsylvania. She was still hovering in fear, so Đuro Basara took her hand and pulled her through the air like a balloon. She needed ample time to set down on the new continent. This quiet girl later married one of Đuro’s relatives and gave birth to my mother. While my grandmother remained forever fearful of life, my mother was a stubborn child. At parties, this stubborn child would suddenly jump up and shout, “Mitar is screwing around with Mileva!” The women in Export hated her, but the girl who eventually became my mother did not think well of her neighbors, either. “All whores!” she would say. My mother tried to stop immorality in the small mining town. She even spied on her own father and reported everything to her mother. When he found out, the scar on his forehead deepened and turned red. The old miner grabbed a wine barrel, pushed it up the hill near their house, nailed my mother inside, then pushed it down the slope. While my mother was rolling in a barrel in Export, in nearby Wilmerding, the boy who eventually became my father was selling Pittsburgh Press newspapers. In Wilmerding, the river was polluted with sulfur, and the small town was covered with black dust from the steel mills. My father later admitted that he hated selling newspapers. [End Page 179] “The newspaper cost two cents. If somebody happened to give me ten cents and tell me to keep the change, I would immediately count out four papers and throw them in the river.” While the First World War was raging in Europe, there were a lot of orphans among our immigrants in America. My father’s family was aware they were not American. They referred to Anglo-Saxons as “biscuiteers” (keksars) because they ate biscuits, which to us were not real food. My father was ten when he lost his father. His mother did not speak English, and she wore traditional folk clothing. Her son, though, was never ashamed of her. He held her hand proudly when he took her for a walk. She passed away when he was only fourteen. When, at eighteen, my father refused to continue school and instead married a sixteen-year-old, he broke his adoptive father, brother Tima’s, heart. Out of his small inheritance, he bought a Studebaker and started teaching my mother how to drive. Like in a slapstick comedy, that ended when she plowed the car through the window of the barbershop. Soon after that, the young couple moved to Chicago. During my childhood, a street was a street and not one’s perception of a street. I carried an umbrella, not because I thought it was raining but because it did rain. Now we think that reality is all in people’s minds. But the neighborhoods we lived in were very real. On one side, we bordered the Irish, and on the other, the Italian neighborhood. One could easily get into a fight there. In my neighborhood, though, there were no gangs. Mothers congregated on the street. Old bachelors stopped children to ask if they knew about Pupin and Tesla and pestered them with questions about school. We came to Chicago in the late 1920s, and my father got a job with the railroad. At that time, to have a job at all was a big deal. My father could have paid off the house if he were some other man. However, instead of planning and saving, he grew a moustache, flashed his beautiful teeth and played the tamburica. They called him the Sheik, after Rudolph Valentino. Someone once said that most South...