Читать книгу Ekaterini - Marija Knezevic - Страница 9

The Path from the Bare Karst to the Orange-Scented Garden

(Luka’s story)

If you have already come this far on our common journey through words, idle reader, as Cervantes used to say, listen now to this aside; it may assist you to more readily recognise the pointers and shortcuts via which, when words run out, you will more surely find your own way through the story.

A hundred years ago Dušan was born in a house of stone, which even today is still surrounded by jagged karst and the odd gnarled grapevine. The village of Gluhi Do is near Virpazar in Montenegro, on the shores of Lake Skadar. The whole area is one entity, river and stone bound tightly together, doubly connected by the story of wine. Even in America they say there’s no wine better than the one that comes from that parentage – that water and that limestone lineage unbroken from time immemorial. Poverty is also an inseparable part of the landscape. If mother didn’t catch a carp, out on the water sometimes all day long and calling out to her neighbours, there would be nothing to eat. Maybe tomorrow. The carp is a torpid fish, so much so that occasionally it sinks to the bottom and falls asleep. It doesn’t dream that it survived that day; it doesn’t dream anything; it lives as long as the silt protects it. Up above, in the late afternoon, the women pull up the nets. The children fetch water from the spring. They carry pails of water all day long. Sometimes they’d come across farmer Mikan who’d give them an apple. His brother sent money from America. They say Mikan could buy the whole world. ‘That must be right if he always has an apple with him,’ the boy thought.

The path was deserted during the day. Only children with their pails passed by, and perhaps Mikan and the occasional snake. At least that’s how it used to be. And then suddenly: nothing. The world stood still. The children with the pails had never known a break in this daily grind. They were a little surprised, and every day they hoped to meet someone, Mikan or a snake. Nothing, for a long time. The boy heard a wailing from his house. Although still far, he knew it was his house. The weight was heavy and there was simply no way for him to walk faster, for any reason. He trod open the little slat door and put down the water in front of the house. The women, now in black headscarves, were droning a lament, ‘Oh, you poor thing, so ill-fated, you martyr, how can you leave us like this, in misery?’ Then he heard his father’s name. Forgetting the pails, he ran to the shed to cry before anyone saw him. When he entered the house he was a man – the only male in the household. The women who had patted him on the head or called him a little devil for throwing mulberries at them that same morning now kissed his hand. It was as if he had forever left those pails of water behind him and entered a different world. A world of fast pictures. His father lay with arms crossed. The cemetery was at the top of the village. He saw smoke rising. Weeping was now to be heard from all the houses, and not just women’s voices – everyone was calling for help and repeating one and the same word: war. His mother died in the quiet of the house. The fishing net, still wet, hung out on the veranda in the same place as always. This was an ordinary day for it, strenuous like any other. The boat slept on the shore like a lazy, or rather a lifeless carp. You shouldn’t go out in a dead woman’s boat. Avoid misfortune when you can because it’s unlikely you’ll see it coming in life; mostly it sees us first, and you have to be lucky for the lively, ever-watchful, all-seeing eye of evil to overlook you. The boy stood on the shore, looking for the last time at the green islands in the dark water, and listening to the women calling out to each other. He leaned inadvertently against the boat. He never got into it and pushed off, but the boat remembers the imprint of the boy’s back with the shoulders of a man. Nothing happened, death is peaceful; one carp more, multiplied by centuries of offspring, swims the lake today.

* * *

The young man had to care for his two sisters. His wise male head told him it was better to sign on as general dogsbody at the little Virpazar post office and put up with being yelled at and slapped around by the perpetually drunk postman than to till the stone or, even worse, to go to war as tradition prescribed – it was what was expected of men, although he asked himself what people knew if they never moved from their stony wilds. Dušan cleaned the post office all day, the only respite being when he had to run errands or to get a bottle of grape brandy or a bidon of wine for his superior. But Dušan lost no time; he bought into the trade, so to speak, and learnt in secret because you can learn even from the biggest idiot; he bided his time, ready to make the right move when the chance came.

The village went mute like it did when the war broke out. Dušan became the head of the post office in the city of Bar, the third most important man after the mayor and the judge. He didn’t go back to the village any more, but Gluhi Do was all abuzz. It didn’t take him long to understand and accept his role in the everyday theatre of this still famous Mediterranean harbour where, as the story goes, Muslims, Catholics and Orthodox Christians lived in harmony. It was important to wish everyone the best for their respective religious holidays and to observe at least three codes of greeting in public. He learnt who to bow to, who to be resolute and intransigent with, and whom to ignore. He loaned money to the teacher and the doctor, not because he was confident they’d repay the debt – in contrast to some merchants, café owners and officers who gambled in every harbour – but because it was the done thing. You had to know what was right and who had what entitlements, and then you could find out everything in towns and villages regardless of how many houses had to be supplied with rumours. In this regard, a city is no different to the smallest village. Move just one stone, and the whole city will sway.

He married a girl fifteen years his junior after falling in love with her black locks. This captivating nuance of intense dark, which doesn’t change even though it follows the moods of the sun and spreads or hides its lustre if a cloud appears like a diving carp, reminds him of his mother’s hair and the body of the boat. It was love at first sight; I guess it’s always like that, even in the most complex love stories. Stanica bore him five children, of whom three boys and one girl survived childhood. She constantly emphasised that Russians had helped her all her life long, and a Russian doctor even delivered her babies. Her sons, as convention has it, only came home to eat. The little girl heard the word ‘Russians’ and marvelled at the sound. Stanica truly entered womanhood when she started giving orders. Shopkeepers were eager to oblige, and she bought more clothes and shoes than she was able to carry home. She had a servant girl, then another, and yet another. She found faults in each of them and there wasn’t one who didn’t also make eyes at her Dušan. Many years later, pottering around the kitchen of their now communalised flat and wearing one and the same old dressing gown, she’d sit down to get her breath and vent her feelings by telling the first neighbour who came along: ‘I’d give those maids a good kick in the bum with my patent leather shoes!’

They lived in a house, a villa actually, with a garden populated by lemon and orange trees and a fish pond made long ago, no one remembers when, by an Arab mason. Dušan would sweat profusely all year round, regardless of the weather, experiencing who knows what seasons and phases strictly within himself. He changed his shirt up to three times a day; they were faultlessly ironed and so dazzlingly white that they hurt your eyes and made them water. The children’s silk blouses were equally white. We’ve already mentioned the patent leather shoes, a natural part of the outfit. The boys played football in them in the gravel and sand down at the beach, wore them to school, to church, and when they went visiting. The little girl loved to climb up onto the shed at the back of the house and jump off with an open umbrella. She loved to fly, or fall, who knows why, but she always took care to land in the hay. Dušan was used to worrying; he had sweated ever since he heard that wailing, both when all was calm and when women, children and whole peoples were forced to flee – a flight into the unknown, with no knowing if they’d ever come down again, and where. His daughter’s umbrella or the exploding of an Italian shell equally demanded three shirts a day.

The eldest son, Luka, had a phenomenal memory for smells and colours – he was a very sensory person. He remembers the smell of the sea and the aromas of lemons, oranges, olive oil, grapes and the fritters the servant girl made for breakfast. He remembers the colour of the sea when the sun rises, when it’s at its zenith, when it’s setting and when it’s gone down, and the colours of the night in all the phases of the moon. He remembers voices, too, and is musical. He memorised by ear the names of all his friends and the important people of the town whom all six of them went to visit. He was inquisitive and mischievous. Luka remembers the name of the teacher who let him off lightly because he’d borrowed money from his father. Then the smell of the hot soup he spilled on a German soldier. The Jerry was riding a bicycle along the road at a steady pace and balancing a huge pot of soup on it. Luka never looked where he was going, or rather running. The intersection of the Jerry’s straight line and Luka’s jump from the bushes was purely coincidental. The enemy cursed and swore. Luka didn’t understand a thing other than that he’d better run for it. Too fast for anyone to catch, he hid among the rocks down by the sea. Friends found him there and told him that he was a hero and the talk of the town. When Dušan came out of German headquarters he was bathed in sweat.

Stanica remembers the sounds of shelling and machine-guns. And running to hide and her ‘heels hitting her in the bum’. Her brother Branko was a wealthy merchant. He lived in Dubrovnik but had at least one flat in Belgrade, at least one in Zagreb and who knows where else. He loved life and lavishly disbursed his wealth together with others, filling the time with joy and failing to notice the repressed images of evil. Luka learnt Italian from the occupation forces. That was a term the grown-ups used, and the children just took it on. But straight after exiting house and garden they rushed down to the guys at the cantina always hungry – that’s how they felt at the time – lured by the smell of fried eggs and pasta sauce. They were even given some to take home. ‘Shame on you for accepting food from the enemy!’ Stanica said. Dušan was silent and ruminated for as long as the war lasted. Everyone ate pasta.

Branko called Stanica to tell her that she and the family urgently needed to flee from Bar and offered them his flat in Belgrade, in prestigious Višnjić Street. Stanica hysterically demanded that they leave immediately. She kept telling everyone her nightmares and painting the blackest scenarios. Dušan continued his silence and ruminated so much that he felt his head would explode even more loudly than all the shells he had heard in the war. As a ‘man of confidence’ he was able to, and later required to, tap telephone conversations. The post office and telephone exchange were in his hands. He had close relatives who were with the Partisans, too. No one knows how many times grandfather Dušan saved their lives by warning them that an ambush had been laid in this place and that. Before telling them, he’d try to think up a subterfuge for the town commander. After the war, his relatives forgot him and he became a common collaborator, but that was much later. Now, when he heard the children making faces and saying ‘ma bene!’, he came up with the idea of getting himself a doctor’s certificate which would state that he urgently required a varicose vein operation. That was the only way of escaping the town, considering his deadly importance there, and moving his family to Belgrade. Who knows what went through his head when they took him out to be shot – three times! Later he’d blather on about it so much that we all took to our heels whenever we heard him say, ‘and when they came to get me...’ There were actually several versions of the story. The only thing they all had in common was that he went grey after surviving the first execution.

Luka remembers several episodes from their month on the run. For example, when a Messerschmitt strafed the train, and he was stunned to see a bullet from one of its machine-guns bore through the rail. Thuck! He marvelled at that metallic puncture sound. After the war he was one of the founders – actually builders – of the Lisičji Jarak airport; he became the best glider pilot there and soon a flying instructor. But all that was nothing, he said, compared with the mighty Messerschmitt. That powerful image of a rail bored through by a bullet led him on to several world records. He couldn’t stand still, he had to race ahead, be it in a glider, in thoughts or in dreams, at the same speed with which he fled from the scalded Jerry. He remembers a trip by train, a truck ride, and long stretches on foot. Once they arrived in a town where the aroma of freshly baked bread wafted over from a bakery. The whole family was hungry, but no one more so than Luka’s youngest brother, that eternal starveling. ‘Bred, gimme bred!’ he shouted when he smelt it. Dušan bought everyone a small loaf of bread. ‘Daddy, daddy!’ the little gobbler yelled with his mouth full, ‘D’zis mean we’re not “depraved” any more?’

He remembers the Russian liberators, weary after years of war, in ragged pants and each with a bottle in hand; and the stories of them swigging flasks of eau de Cologne, desperate for the alcohol, and smashing aeroplanes’ gyroscopes to drink all four corners of the world; and the German machine-gun nest on top of what is today the Faculty of Mathematics; and the Russians cut down by the dozen as they yelled ‘Chaaarge!’ and kept on attacking until one of them broke through and silenced the last sounds of the enemy with a hand grenade. Now Belgrade was liberated not just officially, but in practice as well.

Books and books could be written about all our memories. There are some who devotedly do that. I’d only add, although I don’t know why it’s important, that Luka not only remembered the smell of the sea, and of oranges and lemons, but also took it with him throughout his life in his stately nose, even in the years when he was up to all sorts of fun and tricks with the cool gang from the Dorćol neighbourhood, and despite the fact that he suffered from chronic sinusitis. His life’s journeys coloured in the map of the world, and that Mediterranean smell followed him wherever he went. It came from the blending of all the variations of blue and citrus, just that one smell. It outlasted the gunpowder and the odour of caviar at the reception with the Yugoslav president, Marshal Tito, who had decided to treat the ensemble as guests on equal terms with the other invited notables. Like the whole country and half the world, my father sang for Tito. The difference being that his choir performed professionally, while the others mainly sang and staged rustic circle dances without any great preparation, at least those who survived the smell of gunpowder and left Tito’s dungeons alive. And even when he went diving in the River Sava and the Danube, travelled the world, fell in love again and again, suffered or rejoiced, was lavishly paid or had to sell his clothes at the flea market to survive, all the time he was really sailing on the air and smelling that one smell – that scent of childhood, of orange and lemon groves near the sea.