What I am, Mike Skinner? I mean, I have been periodically considering a mid-life crisis of late, and this bank is telling me insufficient funds for a blade for my landlord’s KING JIG SAW?!! “Shel-leee.” Two hours, a pelinkovac, a lemonade, and a cup of coffee later (no business goes down in the balkans without that cup of coffee), we’ve cleared the mixup and I’ve got enough cash in my pocket for five jig saw blades (and, as it turns out, a big round watermelon - I think the US is the only place in the world where watermelons are not spheres but elipses - well, whatever a 3D elipse is called.) Anyway. I bike down to where Davor told me I could find Jigsaw blades, and the store is empty. Open, but empty, a fan blowing nothing, a collection of fake wood laminates stacked on a desk, an open Serbian newspaper. I look at the store hours. Radno Vreme. And then I see a husky guy joggin across the street towards what is obviously his store. No need for words. I lay down the two parts of the broken blades and he pulls out a stack of BOSCH jigsaw blades, looking for the closest match. He finds it. “Pet,” I tell him, and hold up my five fingers. And, as always, the usual Serbian response to anything I say to anyone: “Docklay?” or something like that. I guessed early on that it meant “Where are you from?” I break out my recently improved Serbian with a proud flourish. I even learned how to say it Vranje (Serbian redneck) style, “Ja sam Americanetz, ali zi vim u Vranje.” (I am an American, but I live in Vranje. Pronounced with a yay and the end so Serbs know I have learned my Serbian on a farm in the South. I figure it is a nice balance to the fact that I speak French like an African.) He laughs, and wraps the five blades in a little plastic bag. I continue, “Gornia Charshia” (The Roma/ Gyspy neighborhood). He hands me the bag and comes to a decision. “Coffee.” It’s a statement, and have lived here long enough that when you are buying something and tell the person you are American and he says “Coffee,” he is not trying to sell you coffee, or making some statement about the US addiction to caffeine: he is offering you a cup. Of course. “Mozhe” (please)
So, he leads me back across the street towards a hairdresser. Of course. When a jigsaw man is buying you coffee, he does it in a hairdresser. The 3 meter window is covered in an enormous shot of a busty woman, and someone has very neatly graffitied her right breast so that it looks like a designer tattoo. Kudoes for the restraint and style of that graffitist. But she is out of coffee, so he runs to the market to buy some, and me and the woman who runs the hairdresser begin to struggle through a conversation. “I am an Americian but I live in Vranje. In the Roma/Gypsy neighborhood.” “Why” “I am… my woman… Arbeiten (I think that’s German for work)… Organization not… Govlabim. Govermadimo. Governatoria. Whatever.” She responds “Humanitarian Worker.” Sounds good, so I say “Da.” She is fanning her belly with the shirt that she is wearing. The jigsaw guy returns. He has found coffee, and beer (of course). It is 1PM, I have been sweating in a gym and then the sunny backyard that has become my studio, have not showered, and this woman keeps hugging herself and showing me her cleavage (which I studiously avoid), so I gratefully accept the beer, and the girl dissapears into the back to make us some coffee. Jigsaw guy has more english. He imports his tools from Greece. He served in the army for four months while the American were bombing Vranje. I probably thought Serbs were horrible from American TV, but Serbs are good, no? “We machine-gunned Kosovo and bombed them until George Bush decided to be a father to the Moslems. But he didn’t do it for the Moslems; he did it for the money. America goes in, they take money out, and then they will leave the Moslems without help. Do you like Serbian girls? They have good bodies, yes? ” The girl sits down. “And she, she has a nice face, too, yes?” She laughs and tells him to fuck off, and then pulls on his ear really hard and points out that a potential customer is standing confused outside his shop. Jigsaw man scurries off, and she turns back to me. She begins to speak and I have no idea what she is saying. She repeats one phrase, so I guess she is asking me either what work I do or where I am from. “New york.” She is an enthusiastic, spluttering laugher. “Artist?” No progress. “Designer?” No better. “Computers?” She just keeps saying that phrase, so I finally call Davor and ask him what it means. “It means ‘do you understand?’” I turn to her and say ‘Ne.” Awkward silence. Avoid looking at the proferred cleavage. Wishing that guy would return. “Broter? Sestre?” Hey, I know this. Easy! “Da, da, da. One broter one sestra.” “How old?” I know this too! I can even answer in Serbian. “My brother… 28 years” She understands, “and my sister… uh…” Crap. This is harder than I had intended. Well, I had come to a decision awhile ago regarding this. Just cause she is dead doesn’t mean she isn’t my sister. “My sister…” I have very few words at my disposal. I can conjugate “to be,” count from 1 to 1000, tell them that my dog’s name is Nikki but he is not my dog, and I can say fuck off. I figure out what to say: “My sister… is not.” Her face drops. It worked. “26 years. But… is not.” “Dead?” she asks, in English. “She is dead?” “Da.” I break into that ridiculous frozen smile I get when thrust into this sort of situation, like a totally fake and enormous and hammy grin, and both of my arms flap out exxagerated as I point to her like Vanna White revealing letters, “And you?”