TE17 Mysterious Montenegro

Olja Knežević

disease and run away? How did she even end up sharing a hospital room with old women, some of whom even get to go right home because they only have pneumonia? “Cancer, damn it, cancer,” I heard my father say to someone over the phone. And then: “I don’t know anymore what part of her isn’t affected.” And now here I am at the end of eighth grade. My father, having quit smoking in the meantime, is fit as a fiddle. He uses expensive lotions on his face and is about to have a son with another woman. Still young, with a black moustache—which he grew out to cover his soft upper lip and laugh lines so he’d look stern—he’s not sure how to behave, so he’s started acting the part of the gloomy Byronesque hero, brooding about life, and especially death, while my mother languishes; he tries to find some sense in it, but he’s only becoming more and more isolated in his personal fortress of knowledge—the philosophy department of the Nikšić Teacher Training College. Before Mom ended up in the hospital, Dad often brought students home with him; they sat in the living room and smoked freely, copied out underlined passages from Dad’s mimeographed handouts; Mom would offer them something to eat, but they only wanted coffee. They talked to me about music. “You’re fierce with that punk hairdo,” they told me, “you’re way above kids your age.” I took it to mean they thought I was at their level, and I beamed—how great was that?!

“A little Patti Smith,” said one student.

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