Sometimes, you can have a real conversation with him. But that's only when he feels like it. Most of the time, he simply nods his head when you say something, acts like he has registered its meaning, and proceeds to repeat the key word from your sentence.
"Gricko, are you leaving soon?"
"Leaving," he says, head nodding. "Leaving." But that doesn't mean he's leaving.
"Gricko, are you trying to go eat?"
"Eat, eat." Head nodding. But that doesn't mean he's hungry.
"Gricko, what are you doing today?"
"Gricko, Serbian name." He takes a drag from his cigarette, hardly taking his eyes off the screen of his Apple laptop. "Gricko." But that doesn't mean he's really listening to you.
I wonder if he ever really knows what's going on, or if he just pretends that he doesn't know what's going on ... when he doesn't feel like talking to you.
"Gricko" is pronounced greets-go. In the Balkans, it refers to someone who snacks a lot. The name was given to him by Mladen's neighbors, well before I arrived at the Three Black Catz.
My first day at the hostel, the two of us went to see the Partizan football game with Johannes and Anna, an Austrian and German who departed back in the days before I realized what the Three Black Catz would become for Gricko, myself, and the other members of my new family: The Black Hole. He immediately confirmed the stereotype of the Japanese tourist.
"Give me your camera," he said, sounding like Mr. Miagi, once I took it out to snap some photos of the game. And then he began snapping pictures of me in the stands, all the while looking like a kid in a candy store. For him and every other Japanese tourist I have met, a camera is like a lollipop in that candy store.
I knew then -- by the childlike smile on his face as he snapped those photos -- that Gricko was going to be a character.
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"Gricko is so strange," says Mladen's neighbor Nena, who hangs out at the Three Black Catz full time, either in her bathrobe or in her I-am-ready-to-go-to-the-Roxbury get up. "He is not someone; he is something. I love Gricko. He is soooo funny."
That explained why, when the four of us got back from the game, and Nena saw him, she immediately grabbed his head and buried it between her breasts, all the time cooing at her wild-maned toy and purring his name over and over again: "Gricko! Grickooooo!"
I knew then that Gricko was going to be a real character.
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I don't even know what Gricko's real name is. He wrote it down as "Genna," but when I started to call him that after a few days of going with his "Serbian name," he said, "Genna is not my name."
"Then what is your name?" I asked, amazed that I still didn't know after almost two weeks of sleeping in the same room as the guy.
"Name, name, yes." And he keeps smoking his cigarette, not looking up from the screen. Dragana calls him "Suzuki," but Suzuki isn't his name, either. While he is in Serbia, Gricko is Gricko.
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The dude is like our family mascot, or the family dog. Everyone loves the dog; everyone talks to the dog with a smile on their face.
He is quite possibly the strangest -- and most definitely the funniest -- person I have ever met. Like a Japanese Pigneri, Gricko amuses (exponentially) simply by existing. He doesn't even have to make an effort. Inhaling and exhaling is enough for me to lose myself in a fit of laughter whenever I am with him.
I mean, just look at his hair. Are you beginning to get the picture?
God knows Grickok -- in pure Japanese style -- is always getting a picture.
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Some people just have a .... vibe. An energy. An aura.
Gricko is one of those people.
Like the Black Hole he lives in, Gricko sucks everyone and everything into his realm. It doesn't matter if someone can't even speak to him, if they know only Serbian, or bits and pieces of English that don't mesh with the bits and pieces of English that he knows. Everyone that meets Gricko becomes Gricko's boy.
Take the other night, for example. The four kids in our family -- Carmel, Nadine, Gricko and I -- all went to a bar called Anna & 4 Pistolja. But soon, our Japanese brother disappeared. And he didn't come back for a long time.
"Where the hell is Gricko?" I asked my sisters after he had been missing for a good half hour. "Is he still here??"
That was his cue; Gricko returned almost as soon as the words left my lips. But he had some new ... friends.
The sight was classic Gricko. Three Serbian dudes, none of whom had probably ever even met an Asian person, come rolling up to our small group, arms draped around their new friend.
"Grickoooooooooo!!" they all were yelling over and over, stumbling drunk and laughing hysterically at their new boy. "WE LOVE GRICKO!!"
"Oh my God," I said to the others. "Look who it is."
They were obsessed with him. He was like a toy. Or a mascot. Or a dog.
Or a Japanese Pigneri.
Like Pigneri, people understand -- implicitly -- the brilliance of what Gricko represents. Pigneri is Pigneri; he's larger than life; he's a concept, an idea. Gricko, too, is Gricko; larger than life; a concept, an idea.
And that's why, just as everyone loves Pigneri, everyone loves Gricko.
The Japanese member of my new family illustrates better than anyone just how hard it is to escape from the Black Hole. He came with the intention of being here four days. That was 17 days ago.
As long as he stays, it makes me feel okay about staying so long. As far as I'm concerned, the kid is like Yahweh: He Is Who Is. He is without beginning and without end. He's Gricko.
So when he threatens to leave, the whole foundation of the Three Black Catz begins to crack, and I feel my own shelf life in Belgrade nearing an end.
"Gricko!" I began yelling at him last night, as his latest threat to leave "tomorrow" for Sofia began to really seem serious for once. "It's fine! You're staying, okay? You got it, Gricko, it's okay. You'll just stay, and it will be cool, and then you go to Sofia the next day."
"Sofia, yes. Sofia." Key words again. Gricko didn't feel like debating.
"But you just got here!" I lied.
"I be here seventeen days," he answered.
Gricko. I will miss him.
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