All at once, Stipe felt like a new person. He himself was horrified at how he could change in just one second. It was as if godfather Božović had spoken the magic words, lifted the slab, and Lazarus had zipped out from beneath it and gone on living as if nothing had happened.
‘Is that the only issue? Are you telling me the truth or making something up now to console me?’
‘What do you mean “the only issue”? My dear fellow, you’re not of this world – it’s a problem, a big problem! Bigger than your infatuated head!’
‘I mean, is that all that bothers them? Would Kata love me if I was of the same religion?’ Stipe’s voice revealed an animation stemming from the hope that godfather Božović’s story about religion was true. Božović looked at him bewildered and wisely refrained from an answer.
‘If that’s how it is, you can book a time at the church straight away for them to baptise me! Why not today? Pay the priest as much as he asks for, here’s my pay! Pinch me, I still can’t believe it! Afterwards we’ll go out drinking all night, on me! And now go, hurry, tell them you’re to be my best man! Say whatever you have to so they’ll accept!
‘And I thought I was your fairy godfather! Do you really want me to be your best man?’
‘Yes, of course! Who else? But don’t ask me things like that now – hurry up so I can become Orthodox as soon as possible!’
‘Hang on, I still have to ask you what you want to be called. “Stefan” is their form of Stipe.’
‘Whatever! All I care about is that Kata loves me. What does a name matter? I didn’t choose my name when I was born either, or my religion. A church is a church and God is God, that’s for sure. But my Kata: I know I’ll never meet anyone like her again. If I let her go, what point will there be in living?’
* * *
They lived in a respectable neighbourhood, in a beautiful home with a view of the sea. That view was the one thing which stayed the same in Ekaterini and Stipe’s life after they met. It was that view, in fact, which wedded them from day to day, and from hour to hour, anew. Both of them were equally imbued with that view; it was the only thing to which they belonged forever, and they never felt it to be a burden but rather a normal, natural wellspring of calm and beauty.
Grandfather was in love, and grandmother happy. It was impossible not to love such a man. Everyone did: the sesame-roll seller, the innkeeper and the owner of the ice-cream parlour – the whole street. Stipe was loved at work, too, and people would adore him in unfamiliar parts of the city whenever he went there. But Ekaterini’s love spread throughout their house with its huge rooms, Persian rugs, antiques, carved furniture, crystalware, beautiful dresses and more pairs of shoes than she could ever have worn in a lifetime. It filled the entire space that Stipe called life. Ekaterini wasn’t the cook-and-housewife type of woman, but she too would be charmed when they had guests and Stipe started to sing the melancholic patriotic song Tamo daleko, gde cveta limun žut (Far Away, Where the Yellow Lemon Trees Bloom). She didn’t understand the words at first, but she liked what she felt when Stipe closed his eyes and sang this song piano, with heart-warming devotion. Neither of them thought about the way a person can sometimes foretell their destiny in a song. He loved that whole song and didn’t separate out the words about far away, the sea, Corfu and everything which was part of that melancholy song and its tragic background. He loved to sing it, just like he loved Ekaterini, that song of a woman, because that was just how he experienced love – he adored that blend of letters, music, quivering in the stomach, excited sweating, and a yearning so universal it could have been anyone’s.
Little Lucija, their first-born, was four when the Second World War broke out. Her sister Ljubica was two. They hid down in the cellar and waited. It had been announced that the Italians were going to shell the city. They took it in turns to sit at a hole in the wall because that was the only place where they could look out into the street. Stipe sat in the corner, despondent and downtrodden. He couldn’t come to terms with this rupture, this plunge from a song into the threatening rumble of war with its cries of fear and panic. Ekaterini trembled and held little Ljubica tight. She called Lucija to come and sit with them, but to no avail: the little girl wanted to inspect the street to see if she could run down to the shop and get some of the sweets she craved for before someone yelled, ‘Quick, everyone down to the cellar!’ Finally she got up her courage and ran out, leaving her mother’s howl and her father’s even louder glare behind her. She ran for the shop, gripping the coin in her little hand, managed to persuade the shopkeeper not to leave before selling her the sweets, and was able to dash back out into the street. She quickly opened the paper bag and stuck a lolly in her mouth. Then it began.
Lucija never forgot how her heels seemed to pummel her shoulders. She also swore that if she ever heard sirens again she’d rather die than have to put up with that sound. She remembered that back then, as a child, she’d said ‘I’ll kill myself ’. Ljubica doesn’t change this version of events and just repeats what her mother and sister later told her. Ekaterini thought: ‘Another war?! Are we going to get through this one alive?’ Immersed in himself, Stipe had only one thing in mind – returning to his country, which was now at war. He simply had to! Whatever it took, and whatever was in store for him there. Every explosion made his country more and more his.
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