I Want to Know
There is no television set in our house. It’s not be cause we are poor and cannot afford one. It’s not that. – That’s what your dad and I once decided and –full stop! Schluss! – Mum said when I asked her for the umpteenth time why it was only us who didn’t have one. That Schluss is a foreign word, Mum uses it often when she talks to me and on some occasions that word sounds really great. I don’t find it cute when it comes to television. Mum keeps telling the story about some philosopher who said as early as the end of last century that television, just like a goat, was going to graze our minds away. Once I pictured a goat grazing the grass from the screen and it was funny. What the mind looks like, that I couldn’t imagine, but I can see that the situation is serious since my mum Senja is frowning. Senja shouldn’t frown because then one wrinkle cuts itself into her forehead and its trace is visible for a long time, even when Mum forgets why
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she was frowning in the first place. Senja is young and beautiful and she shouldn’t have wrinkles, but I should have a television – I’m such a creature. I don’t mind whether it would be small-, medium- or bigsized – the plasma kind. My parents have decided that I grow up without television, and I have therefore decided to have three children when the time comes and let each one of them have their own personal TV in their respective rooms. That would be three TV sets for three kids… but what if they were careless and left those TVs on?! Then I would have to rush into their rooms and turn them off, I would have to warn them, and they wouldn’t listen to me, I would have to scold them, but again they wouldn’t listen to me… And that would be tiresome; three rooms, three kids, three TVs… So I have given up thinking about that. Perhaps I should put off that decision.
You can assume right away that it’s similar with the mobile phone. I am the only child who finished the first grade of primary school without a mobile!
Again, not because we are poor, but because it’s my parents’ decision, though not a long-term one! There’s still some hope left there!
– When you turn ten, you’ll get a mobile phone! –Mum promised me.
Then they will let me spend a little more time at the computer, too!
You’re right if you thought that I’m not allowed to do that now! I’m not allowed at all, except on
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Saturdays, and only for an hour at that! Then I usu ally draw and paint in Photoshop. I like that, it’s very simple, trust me! With a single move I separate the earth from the sky, add a meadow, flowers, a huge tree and little clouds. Below the grass and the ground I even draw dens, that is, flats for moles and rabbits. Inside I put armchairs, tables, chairs, little beds. I draw them, too, rabbits and moles; I make sure to add eyeglasses to the drawings of the moles because they are weak-sighted, so I’m sorry for them. My mum Senja is always delighted, she is well versed in that subject, as she teaches Drawing and Painting in a design school. She is a strict teacher, but to me she always says: – Oh, how meticulous you are, Maša!
She likes the fact that I am meticulous and that I paint tidily, but that software is handy. With real col ours and paper I sometimes make a mess and have a hard time of it.
– Well, there’s the rub! – Mum tells me. – That’s the real thing, and not virtual! That’s what she says.
As for films, we watch them on the computer. It’s a real monster of a computer, as Mum says. A big screen and a good film. And, of course, sweets. When we watched The Lord of the Rings, we had a wonderful time. In that film, good finally defeated evil after serious trouble, but I stuffed myself with too many salty sticks dipped into Nutella. It made me sick, I think it was because of the Nutella and Mum then
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blamed herself for getting so carried away that she didn’t even notice how much I was indulging in it. She is anxious to be a super-mum and I am sometimes sorry because she can’t relax, so I tell her: – Let me be your mother for a while, and you be Maša!
She has accepted this game several times, being such a good and obedient Maša that she ruined everything. That woman really can’t relax!
Dad would, with time, certainly have given up a bit on those horrible decisions about a television, a mobile phone and the computer, but he is no longer with us in reality, which Mum keeps saying. And she doesn’t let anyone say my dad isn’t alive. Once she got down on her knees to spell it out for me.
That happened when I was still a pre-schooler. That day a fire-fighter paid us a visit. It was the dad of a boy named Ivan. He showed up clothed as a firefighter, took us out into the kindergarten yard and lit a fire in front of us. Then, with a long hose which he hauled out of a real fire engine, he put out the fire. Well, that dad went on playing with us by building little fires again, which we put out, and it was so fun. A few of us held the hose with the water because it was very heavy. Ivan was showing off all the time. He didn’t say anything, but I noticed him follow his dad with his eyes full of pride. And suddenly I remembered how Dad and I used to play. We were dandelion hunters. We found those flowers important
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and competed to be the first to spot a dandelion and pick it from the grass. I remembered he was no longer with us and that I had to pick dandelions by myself.
When Mum came to pick me up, she looked at the exhibition of our drawings, made after the game with Ivan’s dad. The fire which I drew was somehow wretched and makeshift, which is exactly what Mum told me. And I told her I’d remembered Dad and started crying. First I cried so she couldn’t see me, and then I cried hard, wiping my nose with my white scarf. Well, then she squatted in the middle of the pedestrian path. She always squats and looks me straight in the eye when there’s something important to tell me, but she doesn’t really need to do that because she is tiny and not of an impressive height. I think that quite soon I will have to squat when there’s something important to tell. That day, in that wind which was sweeping her fringe off her forehead, she squatted and said: – Maša, you’re a big girl and you ought to know! It isn’t Dad’s fault that he left us, it’s other people’s fault, those who were driving fast and caused that collision. He would never have left you, so you don’t leave him, either. Always remember him without tears, get it? He didn’t like to see you whimpering! All right?
Now you would think she would also say Schluss, but she doesn’t always say it!
She was biting her lip and clearing her throat a little, which made me feel a bit ill at ease with her squatting there on the path. I felt sorry for Mum then
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and didn’t want to make any more fuss. I saw that she herself had decided not to cry, and you should help people remain resolute because that’s a good trait. Since that fire-fighter day, I have never bothered her about Dad again. I didn’t even tell her that I sometimes fear forgetting what Dad looked like. Mum doesn’t want me fearing anything and I do my best, but sometimes to no effect.
What I am about to tell you isn’t a fairy tale be cause, even though my name was taken from a fairy tale, and it was no other but Dad who gave it to me, I don’t care much about them. In all fairy tales, as early as in the introduction, in the first few sentences, you learn that some prince or princess has no dad (less often) or mum (more often). And as if that wer en’t enough in itself, much more trouble is made to boot… Without fail there’s some horrible dragon or some evil person with superhuman powers and then, until a happy ending, you fret immensely. And just as you get so annoyed, there comes that blah-blahblah… and a happy ending!
I am going to tell you an utterly ordinary story which started the day Mum came up to me with an envelope in her hands and said: – Guess what this is! A school admission letter, beauty!
And all that afternoon she was cleaning the windows as if school were going to be in our house, so it was important for the house to be clean. And she was singing to some cranked-up music, she was singing
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all day long, along with that Cane from Partybreakers, this song of all: I want to know where this road is taking me and my life… And I thought, my road was taking me to school, which I wasn’t looking forward to much, and when it comes to music and singing, I fared well that day, it might as well have been Nikita! Nikita is a song by Elton John and it’s Mum’s favourite song, it’s even her ringtone.
That Nikita blows Mum’s mind! She doesn’t like it when I say that, that’s how rascals speak, she says, but how can I better explain how much she loves that song, which I can’t make head nor tail of?!
Well, that day I remember, because the story I am about to tell you commences on that day, and it’s a story about my friend Janko, who I met on the first school day, on the first day of the first grade, and that’s an important day which you all certainly remember.
It was only to me that Janko wanted to offer his hand and to stand in the queue. It’s that important queue when you enter the classroom for your first class and part with your parents. It’s that day when all mothers, all fathers and all grandmothers are excited and dressed up, when they wave to you as if you were parting for good, when their mobile phones ring like crazy, and they switch them off because it’s important not to miss a single moment of that solemn procession going into the classroom…
Another important piece of information: Janko doesn’t have a mobile phone, either!
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The Strict Teacher
Panic prevailed when the teacher said we were about to enter the classroom.
– Parents are allowed, too, but only as far as the door! I will leave the door open during the first class, so that we can all accommodate a bit – said the teach er, i.e. what I could make out of the teacher through all that crowd at that moment. And what I saw was a piece of a colourful shawl, a strand of black hair and her left shoulder. Above that, the white building shone in the sun and you could see a little patch of the sky and the top of a tall poplar tree behind the wall.
– Let’s go now! – commanded the left shoulder, the colourful shawl and the strand of black hair.
I was surrounded by a bunch of pink girls: in pink dresses, pink trainers, pink sweatshirts, with pink hair bands and pink rucksacks… each and every one of them a pink princess – and I didn’t like them at first sight. As if she knew, Mum only winked at me
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and gripped my hand more tightly. She had a red spot under her neck, my mum Senja, and it was a sure sign that she was excited. When she gets angry or scared, that spot shows up, miraculously, it draws and colours itself, but I couldn’t console her then because the bunch of kids started to file, two by two, and I had to let go of Mum’s hand. And then, oh dear, with much noise and commotion, the pink world around me stepped onto the stage, and I just turned to find a partner.
At that moment I spotted a tiny boy with a gin ger bush on his head and a face red as Mum’s spot! Salvation! I quickly grabbed his hand. Let him be as red as he wishes, at least he isn’t pink! In fact, when I took a closer look at him, there also appeared a little denim jacket, an entire universe of freckles on his nose and round glasses!
– You go with me! – I told him, and he didn’t say anything to me. He didn’t even look at me. But he didn’t withdraw his hand, either. We simply followed those pink little flowers. Then I saw his mother. She was smiling and walking alongside us, with her eyes fixed on me. She must like my new jumper, I thought, and really, it was wonderful! All hell broke loose when my grandmother Veva said the previous day that the child had to start the first grade in new attire, and the child in question was me, which further led to going to the shops, which further led to a new little jumper and white jeans!
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– You go with me! – I told him, and he didn’t say anything to me. He didn’t even look at me.
– You fared better than me! – my mum said when she saw those items and winked at me. –What I got from Grandma when I started the first grade was a stupid pink sweatshirt! And there was an even more stupid small metal plate, here at the front, a plate like on a patch, so all of that looked like a prisoner number!
She said the last bit while she was switching on the hair dryer to dry her hair, but grandma Veva wasn’t one to be put off, shouting loudly over the noise of the hair dryer instead.
– Ksenija, you’re so ungrateful! You’re setting a re ally nice example to the kid! If truth be told, it was a lovely little blouse from one modern boutique!
That was what she said looking at the bathroom door, my grandma Veva, whose real name is Vera for everybody else but me, and that lovely nickname dates back to my early childhood, when I was begin ning to talk, which was a long, long time ago…
– Yes, but pink! – I said in defence of Mum.
– Yes, but your Miss Mum used to like pink, and now she pretends not to – grandma Veva went on obstinately like some pouting girl. And then she added conciliatorily: – Or she wasn’t as clear as you. You know exactly how to shoot for what you want and what you don’t want… There, you wanted trousers, and I was more in favour of that dress…
– And socks and lacquered shoes! I bet! – Mum shouted from the bathroom and momentarily switched off the hair dryer.
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And then she laughed out loud.
Grandma Veva laughed, too, shaking her head reproachfully: – Your mother is in a panic, I know her! And she would pick a little fight now, but I simply won’t!
– And why is she in a panic? – I asked.
– Because you’re starting school! All parents are nervous when their child is starting school, as if that were something fateful, and it isn’t…
And just between you and me, grandma Veva was right. Panic is ridiculous… because the following morning in the pink world which was striding up the stairs in front of me, while I was clutching the hand of some boy and walking silently towards the classroom, everything looked normal, as if we were entering a large ship and waiting to set sail, but before that we needed to settle, take a shady place with a nice view, order a little juice and begin our journey. That’s what I thought. Of course, no waiter showed up, nor was there any juice or snacks, only the teacher, when she saw us to our desks, gave each child a little chocolate banana.
Maša is not afraid of anything – not the dark, not the storm, not a mouse or a snake. She has only one great fear, which she must not share with anyone, not even her mother. She is afraid that she will forget her father, who taught her to hunt for dandelions. Maša’s best friend is called Janko and he is her deskmate. He was a bit unusual at first. He was terribly angry and did not want to talk to anyone, not even Maša. With the help of her mum Senja, aunt Dragojla and a good teacher, Maša and Janko will overcome their fears and learn a lot about love and friendship.
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– It’s a welcome treat for your first day! Starting from tomorrow, you’ll only be eating during the break! – she pointed out with a smile, and I noticed she has black eyes and thick eyebrows and that she is as huge and old as my grandma Veva, hopefully she won’t hear me because she doesn’t like being old… And I took to my teacher straight away, even though on the very same evening Mum told everybody that the 9 788652 911028
