Читать книгу A Land Without Sin - Paula Huston - Страница 8

Weirdly enough, Stefan was not the first of my relatives to disappear. And in neither previous case was the outcome good. For a long time I assumed that my family was just unlucky, that we walked around under a curse, like the Kennedys, another tragic Catholic clan, if not nearly so rich and famous. My pregnant grandmother, for example, went missing a week before her thirty-second birthday. She’d gone to visit a friend in another village, which required a strenuous walk through a gloomy forest—this was Croatia in the early thirties, and being the peasant she was, she would have been walking—and just by chance or maybe through divine intervention (what Stefan would say), she had left my dad at home with my grandfather that morning. Bruno was eight. The Serbian king over Croatia had been assassinated six days before, allegedly by the Croatian Ustaše, hardcore nationalist militants who were willing to wreak any amount of havoc for the sake of independence, and in the usual Balkan way, the reaction was immediate and murderous.

Apparently, she walked straight into a village marked for retaliation. Nobody knows for sure what happened, just that the twenty-five or so people in town that day, mostly the usual collection of old men, women, and children, were marched deeper into the mountains and shot at the edge of a gorge. My grandfather never got over it. Neither did Bruno, who knows, if ever a man did, how to hate with a passion.

Though all I have to go on is Bruno’s version of the story, Milo, my grandfather, did a good job of raising his motherless son. Several years later, when Germany invaded and the Nazis struck their famous bargain with the founder of the Ustaše and then-ruler of newly independent Croatia, Milo did what he needed to do, choosing to help run a camp for kids to keep young Bruno by his side rather than volunteering for the front lines as he so mightily desired.

When the war ended in 1945, Milo and Bruno, with the help of some friendly Franciscans in Rome, escaped the general massacre at the hands of Tito’s “godless Communist Partisans,” as my mother so affectionately refers to them, and wound up at St. Silvan’s in Chicago. There, they found a community of true believers. Not, I have to say, in God—though of course they didn’t not believe in him—but rather in the superiority of the Croatian culture, which, at least in a certain percentage of Croats, is marked by its intense and self-sacrificial loyalty to the Catholic Church. Milo ate it up. Bruno, with his immense capacity for hate, loathed everything about it. Both of them got jobs in the steel mills, wherein they found a lot of second-generation Croatian immigrants, virtually all of them as starry-eyed as Milo about the beauty, truth, and goodness of the “old country,” which none of them would ever see again.

Milo told Bruno to find a wife. St. Silvan’s had plenty of candidates. So he married Hana, daughter of one of those immigrants, in 1954. Stefan was born a year later. I showed up in 1959. And that, despite Hana’s absolute devotion to the Church (which meant no artificial birth control), was all they wrote in terms of kids.

Here’s what I remember. Stefan, who looks exactly like me only taller, skinnier, and with big horn-rimmed glasses, is eight. I am a self-satisfied four. We are marching in the Velika Gospa procession in honor, as the priest keeps reminding us, of “Our Lady,” as we do every year in August, as Croatians have done since who knows when. Despite the fact that Stefan and I live in America and have always lived in America, he is dressed like a nineteenth-century peasant boy, and I am wearing a traditional old-country village costume, which at this age looks mighty cute on me: big, poofy white sleeves, a long white skirt, a multicolored apron, a funny little embroidered headdress, all assembled by that eminently loyal Croat, Hana. Afterward, we’ll glut ourselves on barbecued lamb, mostaccioli, rizot, sarma, strudels, povitica, fritula, the whole while being serenaded by an endless string of old men playing the tamburitza. I know these guys, if vaguely, from all the time I’ve spent in the local tamburitza bar with my tata and my djed, Bruno and Milo.

They take me to the bar with them at the end of their long work weeks because I tend to ham it up in front of an audience, plus I like to sing and dance. They lift me to the shiny top of the bar counter. My shoes are shiny too—Hana polishes them as if they were the nonexistent family silver—and I like to fling myself around in time to the peppy folk dance music, all of which seems to please the heavy-lidded men. Most of them look like my tata and my djed: serious, even tragic, with their high cheekbones and abundant hair combed straight back, and their eyes that tell you almost nothing, except when they weep, which they often do while they are drinking their šljivovica, their powerful plum brandy. Hoping to cheer them up, I sing a bird-like, four-year-old’s version of the Croatian national anthem, “Our Beautiful Homeland,” and, with a tremendous snuffling and clearing of throats, they all join in.

I love these sad-eyed men, their cigarettes and their šljivovica and their impassive, male faces. I love their smells, which are exactly like the male smells of my tata and my djed, and I feel safe and whole with them. But where is Stefan? Why isn’t Stefan ever along? Even at four, I know they have rejected him, Bruno and Milo. They have cast him out of the family, or would if only Hana let them.

Here’s what else I remember. I am seven and my brother is eleven and we are taking a bus by ourselves to some place in the city I’ve never been, which is really most of Chicago since our family rarely strays from the neighborhood around St. Silvan’s. It’s late in the day and we are both wearing our gray and blue Catholic school uniforms. Stefan seems nervous, probably because I’m along. For several years now, ever since he got his paper route, he’s been making private excursions to who knows where, and I’ve been bugging him for quite some time to take me too so I don’t have to rattle around the house alone with Hana. Which is what happens on most weekdays after school since Tata and Djed only take me to the bar on Friday nights and Saturday afternoons. Hana, who is always messing with my hair and giving me lectures about being more ladylike, drives me nuts, so I’m in constant trouble with her these days, a thorn in her otherwise impervious flesh, which makes Bruno appreciate me all the more.

Stefan has finally succumbed to my pleadings, no doubt with trepidation; if anything happens to me while we’re out and about, he knows what our father will do. Hana thinks I’m spoiled (of course I am), but my beef with her is nothing like Stefan’s with his tata. Bruno can barely stand to look at him, except when he’s got an excuse to take off his belt. Stefan has learned to stay out of his way, which means out of Milo’s way too. The two of them are like peas in a pod, Milo simply a smaller, older, and somehow more ominous version of Bruno, though with a lot less English at his disposal. I, who am still so full of charm, so childishly untroubled by any notion of justice, remain perfectly at ease with all three of them.

But more than anything, I love being alone with Stefan, whom I call “Brat,” which means brother in Croatian, a term I think completely hilarious. I give him a complacent glance and pipe, “Brat, where are we going?”

Sunk in his own worried thoughts, he’s been staring out the bus window, but now he looks down at me in his kindly, abstracted way. No matter how hard I push him, no matter how I swashbuckle around the house when Bruno and Milo are there to watch my back, Stefan loves me like nobody else does or ever will. Even at seven, I recognize this. He sees something in me that’s not simply funny or cute or entertaining, but instead hidden and valuable and mysterious, something that even now, at thirty-four, I’ve never yet had a single glimpse of no matter how hard I’ve hunted.

He slings an arm around my narrow little shoulders. “I’m taking you to the art museum,” he says. We spend the next two hours in the Art Institute’s photography collection, and when we emerge into a chill wind off the lake, I am in a state. I have never seen anything so glorious, not in church, not in the interminable Croatian festivals we go to, not in books. Riding the buses home in the dark, suddenly understanding what a price Stefan’s going to pay for this adventure of ours, still and all, I am happy. Silent, entranced with what I’ve seen, I cling to my brother’s hand.

Here’s what I remember. It’s my birthday, I am eight, and for once, everybody seems relaxed. I have agreed without a battle to wear the frilly dress that Hana sewed for me, have even allowed her to put ribbons in my hair. Bruno and Milo are smoking celebratory cigars, a practice normally forbidden within the confines of my mother’s domain. Stefan’s hanging around in the background, looking bashfully pleased with himself. I open my gifts—a light-up Virgin Mary from that eminently predictable Catholic amongst us, a chocolate bar from my silent grandfather, a little green jackknife with a satisfyingly sharp blade from my abnormally boisterous tata. Then Stefan’s, which to my joyous surprise turns out to be a camera, my very first, a Brownie 127 bought with his hard-earned paper route money.

Here’s what else I remember. Milo, my taciturn djed with the give-away-nothing eyes, becoming fixated overnight on fourteen-year-old Stefan. Suddenly wanting to talk with my brat, the same sweet and skinny boy he’s always been, though much taller now, taller even than Bruno. My grandfather standing guard on the porch until my brother appears at the end of the block in his too-short Catholic school uniform, then shepherding him into his room and closing the door behind them, shutting me out entirely. I resent this, but not as much as Bruno does when he finally figures out what’s going on. It’s not just that he’s been replaced as the long-time apple of his tata’s eye. It’s a whole lot more than this, though I can’t figure out what. Silent Milo wants to talk, the silence of years is sloughing off like dead skin, and Bruno is half-frantic about . . . what? What is driving him so crazy all of a sudden?

And why has Milo zeroed in on Stefan this way? Is it because he’s become, at fourteen, the star pupil at St. Silvan’s? Or that he’s rapidly morphing into a long-legged young man with hints of incipient handsomeness about him, who clearly has a future? Whatever’s going on, Milo is determined to harness something in Stefan for his own purposes. And weirdly enough, Hana, normally so suspicious, so resentful of being left out of things, is fine with this. She’s immensely proud of her boy, who is not only the valedictorian of our school but also head altar server. It’s only Bruno who can’t handle the new family dynamic. Only Bruno, and of course, sweet little me.

I try to worm my way in, but Stefan’s having none of it. For the first time in his life, the family patriarch is taking him seriously. And after years of brutal rejection, he’s totally vulnerable, swept entirely off his feet by the attention. I lurk sullenly around, trying to make him feel guilty, and when that doesn’t work, I wait till he’s off delivering papers, then sneak into his room with my Brownie. What’s Djed been giving him? Because I’ve seen Brat carrying things when he leaves my grandfather’s room.

Nothing is hidden very well. Stefan is too trusting for that. I find a faded watch cap, a small bag of medals that look to me like something you’d buy in the St. Silvan’s Catholic gift shop, a red-and-white checkered scarf. I find some old papers, written in Croatian, which I can’t read, and a handful of black-and-white photos, one of which may actually be of my dead grandmother. I study this for a while. She’s pretty, I decide, though definitely looks exhausted. And then I find the box. It’s under Stefan’s bed, pushed to the back corner, up against the wall. It’s scuffed and stained, and at first I think it’s an old cigar box except there’s a lock on it with no attached key. I hold it sideways next to my ear and shake it. Something—it sounds heavy—shifts inside. I pick at the lock with my fingernail. Nothing. I find all of this highly irritating, Brat hiding something important from me, so I set the box in the middle of the bed, hold up my Brownie, and snap a photo. I snap photos of everything, and to make sure Stefan knows I’m onto him, leave all of it spread out across the bedspread, then flounce out of the room, slamming the door behind me. There.

This is what I remember. Out of the blue, Milo vanishing. One afternoon closeted in the bedroom with Stefan, the next, gone without a trace. Bruno going berserk, brandishing a pistol I’ve never seen before—even at ten, this concerns me—vowing vengeance against the kopiles, whoever they may be, who’ve kidnapped his dad. Hana, on the other hand, noticing out loud that Milo has not been himself these days (look at all the hours he’s been spending with Stefan, though she doesn’t say a word about this to the cops and neither do the rest of us, nor do we mention the murderous kopile theory). She surmises that perhaps he’s just getting old-people crazy and has wandered off and will show up soon.

Neither of these conjectures strike anywhere near the truth, which is that Milo is hanging in a tree in a big park on the other side of town. Eventually, he is discovered by some hapless homeless guy. His death is ruled a suicide. Though of course, confides one of the detectives to Bruno with the rest of us standing, wide-eyed, behind him in the living room, you never know for sure.

“My brother’s a police captain in Iowa,” says the detective, “and he thinks at least 60 percent of all suicides are actually murders in disguise.”

Bruno makes a strangled sound—of course, his father did not kill himself; of course he was murdered—but remains mute. Why? I’ve wondered this for years. All that foamy-lipped rage, bottled up tight in front of the cops, then spewed out so viciously on the three of us—day after endless day of fountaining bile—that for the first time I am sure Hana will finally leave him. Which, being the exemplary Catholic she is, she won’t even consider.

And Stefan? What you would expect. His grades go to hell, he can’t eat, can’t sleep, walks around like a zombie. Later I’ll see the same look on kids’ faces in war zones, the look of being pushed too far, of being shocked out of their real selves with nobody around to help them figure out what happened. This is what’s happening to Stefan, because Hana and Bruno, neither of whom believe in psychology, much less in something so completely nonproductive as clinical depression, are worthless at this point. As for me, as long as I stay angry enough at Djed for killing himself, I don’t have to feel sad.

In another year—by now it is 1970—Stefan is well over six feet tall with hair the same color and length as mine. His horn-rims have given way to hip-looking gold granny glasses, and he is about an inch away from getting booted out of St. Silvan’s. Bruno gets livid just looking at him, has endless theories about drug-dealing, needle-sharing, war-protesting faggotry. I’m only eleven, but even to someone as clueless as me this sounds like an exaggeration. Not that I come to his defense. Most of Stefan’s time, as far as I can tell, is spent lounging in the park with a couple of bell-bottomed, dope-smoking losers from the public high school down the road, neither of whom wants a kid sister around. So the day Bruno uncovers a stash of pot in Stefan’s room and officially throws him out, I am momentarily, perversely glad. I haven’t had a brother since Milo died, not really, and whose fault it that? Not mine, that’s for sure.

The next day, before Bruno gets home from work, Stefan makes a quick, quiet visit to the house. I am brooding in my room with music blaring and do not hear him enter. But then there is a knock at my door, and when I shut off the radio and open it, my brat is standing there with a brown paper shopping bag in his arms, looking uncomfortable and ashamed, as though he might be trying and failing to come up with an explanation I can understand. I stare back at him defiantly, daring him to try and make me feel better.

Finally, as though giving up the ill-advised effort at reconciliation, he shrugs. “My clothes,” he says, “and some other stuff I’m going to need.” And then, watching my face, which must have revealed right then what I was desperately trying to hide, he sets the bag carefully on the floor and takes me into his arms. Instantly, the waterworks come on, a flood of them down the front of his old green T-shirt. “Oh, Eva,” he murmurs into my hair, “don’t worry about me, okay? It’s not as bad as you think. Okay?” And after I finish with the snorting and the gulping and the pathetic little moans of sorrow and despair, he adds, “Be strong, little sister. And get the hell out of here as soon as you can.”

Afterward, I take myself and my grief-swollen eyes into his abandoned bedroom and make my search. He’s taken some of his underwear, a couple of shirts, some jeans, his tennis shoes. A few books are missing from the shelf. On the bedspread is a neat stack of Milo’s crap: the red-and-white checkered scarf, the cluster of old papers in Croatian, the watch cap, the bag of cheap religious medals. The black-and-white photos, including the one of my massacred grandmother.

When I peer under the bed, I see that the locked box is gone.

Much as I hate to admit it, Robert was probably right about me. There’s a coldness inside that can scare people—men—while attracting them in ways that must feel vaguely uncomfortable to them, no doubt what eventually kills each of these relationships. I’m not the kind of woman who’s going to cling. They don’t have to worry about being guilt-tripped or grasped at with desperate female fingers should they decide to head on down the road. I got cured of all that when I was eleven. You can only feel devastated for so long—especially when you are a kid, especially when you are that self-centered—and then you start to harden up.

Bruno was actually my biggest help here. On the rare occasions he mentioned his exiled son, it was with loud, scornful assertions that Stefan was fine, no doubt making more money as a drug dealer than he himself was making at the steel plant, no doubt living it up and laughing through his cocaine-stuffed nose at the rest of us. Sometimes, when I was at my most self-pitying, I almost believed him. Mostly, though, I simply adopted what looked to me like strength, working furiously to make my tata’s legendary toughness my own.

As for Stefan, I thought about him almost every day for months and months, and then, finally, hardly at all. As though he’d died and been buried after a big Croatian funeral Mass—the kind of no-holds-barred ethnic mourning-fest St. Silvan’s had refused to put on for Djed—and now it was time to get over it.