Mama Leone by Miljenko Jergovic Page A

like a Dalmatian.
    Grandpa was reading the paper, Grandma cleaning the fish. Dearie, listen to this , said Grandpa looking at Grandma through his glasses. In research undertaken in 1923, the noted scientist von Hentig concluded that earthquakes had an effect on the internal secretion of fish and their behavior, and that artificial convulsions could in no way explain the phenomenon. Animals obviously react to a unique geophysical phenomenon preceding the earthquake, one that culminates in the quake itself . He read really slowly, word by word, to make it sound more serious, but I knew Grandpa was just playing serious, only reading it out loud to get Grandma going, but not too much, just a little bit, just enough for her to start bickering. He’d always needle Grandma into a little bicker when he was in a good mood.
    She raised her eyebrows and curled her lips, as if surprised to hearabout the fish and the earthquakes, but she continued preparing the fish for lunch all the same. I knew she knew what he was up to, that he just wanted her to say fine Franjo, I’m preparing the fish, and you’re reading about earthquakes . Then he told her about the importance of knowing when there’s going to be an earthquake because you have to be prepared and that it would be good if she could check the internal secretion of those sardines she was fixing. That’s how it was supposed to go, but it doesn’t because Grandma just raises her eyebrows and acts all surprised.
    He keeps looking at her for a while, like a rascal; sometimes she says to him what are you giving me that rascal look for , and that always makes me laugh because my grandpa is seventy-five years old, and there’s no way he can look at her like a rascal, but ever since Grandma started calling it the rascal look I call it that too. Grandpa goes back to his paper, heaves a deep sigh, and forgets about the rascal look because his needling didn’t work out.
    It’s Fishermen’s Night on Saturday , I say. Grandpa doesn’t bat an eyelid, and Grandma keeps cleaning the fish. Are we going to celebrate? . . . We don’t have anything to celebrate, we’re not fishermen, but if it’s fish you’re after, you’ll be eating fish in about half an hour . . . But there’s free fish from the grill on Saturday . . . You were going to pay for these ones, right? . . . It’s not the same, those ones are from the skillet, on Saturday they’ll be from the grill . . . All right, you go celebrate . . . Can I stay until after dark? . . . We’ll see. If the other kids do, you will too .
    Grandpa read the paper through lunch; he’d grab a sardine with his fingers and eat it all in one go, from head to tail, the fish bones making a crunching sound between his teeth, they’re good for you, think of the calcium! He’d leave the tails to the side so he knew how many he’d eaten. Grandma looked at him unimpressed, and I thought about what would happen if I ate a whole sardine, just like that, without picking the bones out and said I was thinking of all the calcium. I swear that when I’m big I’m going to read the paper and eat sardines whole, and no one will be able to say or do a thing about it. I don’t care what I’m going to be when I grow up, I couldn’t care less if I’m going to be a pilot, a butcher, or a forestry expert like Uncle Postnikov, all I care about is that time goes by really fast so I can be like Grandpa and eat sardines head, bones and all, put my glasses on the end of my nose, and read the paper. That’s the important thing, to learn to read the paper, see what’s going on in the world, particularly on a day like today when it’s been really boring here and we ate sardines from the skillet, not from the grill. The world is so big that there are always people who weren’t bored, so the papers write about those people, and the people who are bored read the