April Fool's Day: A Novel (P.S.)

242 Pages·2006·1.15 MB·English

by  Josip Novakovich

April Fool’s Day
A Novel
Josip Novakovich
For Eva and Joseph
Acknowledgments
Contents
1
Ivan Dolinar was born on the first of April in… 1
2
Adoring power, Ivan was ready to love the army, the… 6
3
Ivan wanted to express his admiration for the president.
Tito… 13
4
Taken aback by the cruelties of the adult world, Ivan… 16
5
When Ivan turned nineteen, he wanted to become a
doctor,… 25
6
Ivan enjoyed Aldo’s quirks and freedoms. Aldo wished
to have… 36
7
In the middle of the winter, Ivan preferred to stay… 43
8
Ivan and Aldo were sentenced to four years in the… 51
9
Ivan was freed from the prison colony a year later,… 57
10
Ivan liked to think of himself as a solitary man… 66
11
Ivan could have been satisfied with his lifestyle had he… 71
12
Ivan’s ailing mother moved to the coast, to a large… 77
13
One late Saturday afternoon, several years after he’d
nearly finished… 85
14
Incidents like Peter’s murder had become commonplace.
Soccer matches between… 98
15
Several months later, southeast of Slavonski Brod, in
northern Bosnia,… 113
16
Three months later, on a cobbled street in Osijek, Selma… 122
17
One evening there was a family gathering in Selma’s
mother’s… 129
18
After Ivan’s recovery, the marriage went on. At first
Selma… 134
19
Where could he find some extramarital sex? It was easy… 142
20
Tudjman had just died. The radio played the Dvorak Cello… 151
21
Upon getting up early in the morning, Selma went to… 157
22
Ivan had hoped the doctor would notice his shallow
breathing… 162
23
Before your death, you are supposed to see your life… 170
24
Ivan heard the Japanese clock hiss over and over again,… 175
25
The carriage squeaked and trembled on the uneven
approach to… 183
26
Ivan’s colleague from work, the jovial joker Paul,
staggered into… 187
27
When Ivan came to, he tasted soil in his nose… 190
28
Yearning for a draft of yeasty beer, Ivan aimed to… 199
29
He hadn’t seen his mother in a long time, and… 209
30
Now it was time to go home. Ivan expected that… 217
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Praise
Other Books by Josip Novakovich
Cover
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
1
Ivan falls in love with power as
soon as he learns how to crawl
I
van Dolinar was born on the
first of April in 1948. Since his parents did not want him to go
through life as a Fool’s Day joke, they registered his birthday as
the second of April, in the Nizograd Birth Registry in Croatia.
His surly father gave the baby the first name that popped into
his head—the most common name in the region and, for that
matter, Europe. Nobody else in the family tree, however, bore
that name, from what Milan could tell, and that was a further
advantage to choosing it, since he didn’t feel particularly grate-
ful to the tree.
That Milan Dolinar was surly was not personal but histori-
cal. On his wedding day, the sixth of April, 1941, Belgrade was
bombarded. The king, having signed the pact with Germany,
had already fled the country (taking along all the gold that
could fit on his plane and dropping some to enable the plane to
attain sufficient altitude to fly over the Bosnian mountains
toward Greece—to this day people look for the gold in Bosnia),
and a variety of armies, domestic and imported, began to crawl
through the country.
Ivan’s father was drafted into one of them. He distinguished
himself by courage on the battlefield and would have received the
highest honors had he not changed armies several times and
joined the winning side too late. He was not the sort of medal-
winner who hides in a bunker during battles, who is the loudest
once the battle is over, and who carries with him enough brandy
to give to his superiors. Ivan’s father rushed to the front lines and
threw hand grenades at the enemies from up close; he shot from
2 Josip Novakovich
his machine gun, shivering with joy when his bullets ripped a sol-
dier’s guts, blood spurting into mud in the heart’s rhythm.
One white wintry day, a green mufflerless truck dropped
Milan Dolinar off at home, maimed. Milan carried his severed
arm and leg in a potato sack, because he had heard that science
could put his limbs back on. After several weeks the ice thawed,
and the hand and the leg rotted, despite Milan’s keeping them in
the coldest corner of his basement. Yet he kept even the bones,
thinking that science would one day be able to restore his limbs.
He read all the medical books he could lay his hands—or, rather,
hand—on, and he claimed he knew more about illnesses than all
the doctors in the county combined. When he sat near the town
center kiosk, under chestnut trees, and smoked his pipe (which
was good for his sinuses in the wet climate), many people
stopped by and asked him how to treat their rheumatoid arthritis
and varicose veins. Sometimes lighting his pipe was the fee for the
advice. He was prophetic indeed about the beneficial influence of
red wine on the blood vessels and memory faculties, so every
afternoon his nose turned red, and he related his war reminis-
cences to random young listeners in horrifyingly vivid detail. And
when Ivan was born, his nose positively beamed. Several months
after Ivan’s birth, Milan Dolinar died in delirium tremens.
From early on, Ivan wanted to distinguish himself, as
though he knew that he suffered a handicap. He fell in love
with power as soon as he learned how to crawl. He screamed for
milk even when he didn’t want any, just so he could command
his mother’s attention. He was breast-fed for almost a year; he
wouldn’t have cow’s milk as long as he could sink his face into
his mother’s smooth bosom.
Then his mother, Branka Dolinar, gave birth to Bruno, the
son Ivan’s father had conceived before his death—red wine was
good even for that. Ivan was pushed away from his mother’s
soft breasts, although she did have two. No matter how much
he screamed, he got only cow’s milk. As for pacifiers, after the
war there weren’t any, and he had to make do with his little
fingers.