Ekaterini. Marija Knezevic

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.

       So Bad to See You

      (Starting a new life)

       Here the Carpathians begin: a boundless place, for it spreads as far as the far-flung vineyards. They existed and will continue to exist long before and after all wars. Their form is elusive – every vineyard ends, or begins, at the point where the eyes weary and the sky takes over the last of the vines. Old folk are able to recognise that nuance of blue in the grapes which commingle with each other during the harvest. Only they can recognise the subtle differences in what they once called ‘the grapes from the end of the world’, while the landowners watch over every harvest hand, basket and grape. Although today, when farmers show others their properties, they have to admit: ‘Sure, it is great land, but just look at the sky!’ Gazing up at it, the poet Vasko Popa once wrote: ‘He had to die, they say. The stars were closer to him than people.’

      The next stage of grandfather Stipe’s career was here, in Vršac, near the Romanian border. The area had a living a mixture of languages, and after leaving Thessaloniki and the odyssey that ensued Ekaterini thought for a moment she had miraculously returned home. But the miracle ended as soon as she began learning Serbian. There was nothing for it, she had to get a grasp of the new language, if only because of the cooking. Pata’s Cookbook was her primer. Stipe carted home food just like he used to do in Thessaloniki, and thanks to his habit of buying wholesale, several Thessaloniki families – grandmother’s closest relatives – survived the four years of that war. During another turning point of history, they in turn would save Lucija and her family. Deeds like that are never forgotten. Yet generous people, those who give gladly, don’t do it so that their kindness will be reciprocated. At least those who give from the heart; that’s simply how they are – incorrigible. Other people are born of weak character; evildoers, petty thieves and great usurpers, and that’s normal for them, that’s just how they are. Once people used to call a spade a spade, but times change; now we have pop psychology shot through with detective-story elements. Food hasn’t changed so much. Housewives still consult the old cookbooks, and there’s no generation which hasn’t had to queue for food. A heavily laden dinner table is part of tradition; hunger is individual destiny.

      After his barren, stony childhood, Stipe bought food by the sackful from the start of his career till the end of his life. That godsend of a man hated no one and nothing – except hunger.

      ‘What this now, dear God? You crazy, husband? How I now make so much food?’ Ekaterini stumbled in her newly acquired language of the Serbs.

      ‘Oh, come on Kata.’

      Stipe swelled with pride as he watched the miller’s boy, white with flour, carrying sacks from the heavily laden cart into the little room proclaimed pantry. ‘I’ll help you, don’t fret.’

      ‘But how much people is coming? This all for one feast?’

      ‘Whoever comes along, dear wife, will be welcome and can eat and drink his fill!’

      Ekaterini felt that if she survived the preparations for St Nicholas Day she’d be entitled to beatification herself. ‘My husband is a bit crazy –,’ she grumbled in Greek, there’s a war going on, and he brings cartloads of food and drink to ply people with. And who’s going to prepare it all? Why do people eat so much? Did I get married just so as to cook?