TE17 Mysterious Montenegro

Catherine the Great and the Small

Philosophy loverswererare, practically illegal. Communismwas the crown of all philosophies. And I wanted to be like someone called Patti Smith and live in the Chelsea Hotel in New York. Fierce indeed. My mother, who took me to parks and sneaked with me into other people’s gardens to steal bulbs, who taught me to draw all sorts of flowers and trees, would, all too soon, get so weak that her hand made jagged and broken lines on paper, she wasn’t even able to write down an ordinary list and wouldn’t live to the age when one learns to sit still and enjoy, half a day if need be, or a day or two even, sit there and enjoy gazing at the violets, for instance. My mother didn’t live to the age I am now, not even close, but already she was, as fate decreed, old enough to die. The illness advanced quickly, but Mom continued to wear makeup—a lot of it, like other young women did at the time. She wore a wig as if she were in a play, and she insisted on sitting with us, not lying down, when we came to visit, because she wanted to be closer to us, she said, she wanted to feel our energy, which she’d been a part of too until just recently, until she became weak and out of breath, as if she had climbed up to meet us from the depths of the earth, and then sat on the very edge of her own grave. Mommy , I wanted to tell her, nobody likes me, fix my hair. Look at it, it’s awful, all the old people in the neighborhood think I’m a boy: ‘Hey, son, would’ya go get me some smokes and a newspaper?’ ‘I’m a girl!’ I always correct them, but they just shrug. ‘I don’t have any coins. Keep the change.’ 59