Country of Red Azaleas

by Domnica Radulescu

  In his tiny furnished studio apartment in the livelier part of the Dorćol area adorned with Serbian traditional rugs and wall hangings, Mark Lundberg acted shy and reserved on the night of our first encounter. He showed me his collection of Serbian rock and pop albums among which was the popular Ekatarina Velika band and their famous Ljubav, Love, and asked me if I wanted him to play them for me. I hated all Serbian rock as I did most traditional Serbian music and asked him if he had any American music instead. He looked slightly taken aback, as he had thought his knowledge and appreciation of the music of my country was going to impress me. But he quickly recovered and pulled out from the collection stacked up on his desk several American CDs—Frank Sinatra, the Doors, Aerosmith, Dire Straits, the music Marija and I listened and danced to during our college years and in particular during our bald-headed fiercely countercultural period. “Take your pick,” he said regaining his full confidence, with a smile so alluring that it seemed to combine the best and sexiest of the Marlboro Man, Gary Cooper, and humanitarian principles all in one. I chose the Doors, and he asked me to dance holding out his hand as if we were at a grand ball. He was as smooth a dancer as I had ever imagined someone could be, swirling me around the tiny apartment this way and that way, one minute in a tight embrace the next in savvy swing turns, in perfect control and yet making me feel I was the one leading the dance. His apartment was small but we never bumped into furniture the way my parents always did whenever dancing to the sugary “Somewhere My Love.” We danced for what seemed like the whole night, in slow motion, in rapid steps and dizzying turns, his legs knowingly coming between mine for the quick turns, his hands warm and steady on my back. At some point our dance moves morphed into kissing, caressing, undressing, as if it were all part of the same ritual. First we were swinging, and next we were entangled in his bed feeling each other’s sweaty bodies, skin-to-skin, like it was the most normal thing in the world. I fell asleep thinking that I had finally had adult sex, all the rest had been just fooling around, even Milko. In Mark’s strong knowing arms, everything before seemed childish and inexperienced. This was the real thing, the American thing: rock music, freedom, humanitarianism, Jim Morrison’s lyrics, Mark’s savvy caresses, the smell of American cologne, all wrapped up in the spring breeze and night sounds that rushed into the room from my Serbian native city. I had entered a foreign country while still on native land. When I first came to consciousness in the morning, I had no idea where I was, and for a split second I wondered whose arm was folded delicately around my breasts. Mark kissed the nape of my neck and asked me what I wanted to have for breakfast. I felt mature and glamorous like an American movie star.

  During the following days the minute amount of national pride that must have resided lost and forgotten at the bottom of my psyche was awakened by Mark’s genuine interest in my native city. I played the tourist guide, showing him around quaint alleys unknown by regular tourists, old Orthodox churches with golden icons and infused with the smell of burning candles and incense, parks, ruins, the Danube, the Sava, the place where the Danube and the Sava mix with each other, old districts, new districts, he took it all in stride with curiosity and a winning smile. During those same days right at the beginning of the war in April, I continued to meet Marija in bars and at street corners, at her apartment or even at my parents’ apartment, feeling almost delinquent as if I was hiding something. Somehow I managed to meet Marija and Mark at different times of the day and fill every moment with either playing the tourist guide, American dancing and sex with Mark, or in political discussions, writing and distributing antiwar manifestos, and drinking in bars with Marija. My days seemed endless and demented, sexy, humanitarian, both painful and hopeful, large-winged above Belgrade. After Marija left for Sarajevo part of me turned numb, while another part of me was more alive than ever. I had been careful to keep Marija and Mark separate and distribute myself to each of them in what seemed like two different lives that barely brushed by each other and managed to keep them from ever crossing paths.

  From that single night when I met Mark in the Belgrade tavern, events crowded and rushed and tumbled their noisy clamor into my life with the speed of a derailing train. The war catapulted everything into a mad series of occurrences that ironically weren’t going to stop until I landed on American soil. It was as if I went to America to calm down and find peace, to rest and slow down the unstoppable rumble of happenings running me over in my native country. In the middle of that turbulent period of the beginning of the war there was one particular day that kept its clear and painful contours. It was the day when Marija and I said good-bye in her apartment, the same day that she was leaving for Sarajevo and I was moving in with Mark in Belgrade. It had all the weight and slowness of defining days that slice your life through the center and you have to leap across an abyss to be able to start the other half. It was a cruel spring day with blooming chestnut trees and forsythias and news of rampant killings of Bosnians by nationalist Serbs in Sarajevo. It was the day when Marija and I said good-bye on the threshold of her apartment with mascara running down our cheeks and agonizing fears weighing in our hearts. A slow, heavy-laden day carved with all the markings of grief, regrets, and apprehensions. It smelled raw and bloody, and the blooming trees appeared like a huge cosmic mistake. We sat in silence for a while at the table in Marija’s minuscule kitchen. There was a spring breeze coming through the window and an eerie light. The world seemed to quiver. The fragrances were painful. Although I hadn’t closed an eye all night, I felt light and luminous. I was wearing the blue silk dress I had worn the night I met Mark, and my grandmother’s turquoise necklace. Looking at Marija’s brooding eyes and exquisitely carved features I impulsively took off the necklace and handed it to her: “Marija, keep this, it would look beautiful on you. I want you to have it.” Then I took out the antique edition of Plato’s Dialogues that we had studied so often during our college years and handed it to her, too. “And this, I want you to have this, too,” I said feeling my eyes overflow with tears.

  “Why are you giving me all this?” Marija asked almost teasing me. “You are not dying or anything, you are just moving in with a goddamn American.”

  “I know, isn’t that sort of like dying?” I said.

  Something shifted and quivered again in the room, the city, the world.

  “You can have Milko, too,” I said wickedly and we both laughed hard, until our laughter turned to tears. We held hands for what seemed like a long time. I had a feeling of heartbreak, like literally something inside me was cracking in two.

  “What are you going to do in Sarajevo?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, what are you going to do in Belgrade? Maybe I’ll become a full-fledged journalist. Journalists are always needed in times of war, you know. Time to do something useful for once,” Marija said, brushing away the waves of dark hair falling on her forehead.

  “You already are a journalist, Marija, and a brilliant one. And you’ve always done useful things. They need you in Sarajevo. Who knows how long this war is going to last? Not long I hope. The UN, NATO, America, they’ve got to do something, they can’t just let civilians get shot like that every day by an army of nationalistic fascists,” I went on, feeling an uncontrolled agitation rise up inside me.

  “Yes, of course they can, my dear, America and NATO and the UN never intervene promptly when it comes to just saving human lives,” she said cynically. “Something else has to be at stake, some important resources like oil or nuclear power or huge international interests of power and money.” Then Marija shifted to the topic that must have been on her mind more than the war: “Do you think you’ll ever go to America with Mark?” I kept quiet and averted my eyes from Marija. I realized that not only was I thinking of it, but I was really wishing for it. What was there for me to do in Belgrade anyway but put myself in danger with revolutionary pacifist ideas preaching to a bunch of fanatic nationalists? “You know, this turquoise necklace doesn’t look as good on me as it looks on you, La
ra, with your blue eyes. It will clash with my green eyes,” Marija said suddenly, as if embarrassed about her question.

  “A string of twine would look good on you,” I said with conviction, “and blue and green do match, despite what is conventionally thought. Do the sky and the grass ever clash with each other?” I then told Marija that she, too, should try to get to Santa Barbara and work with Sally. As if acquiescing that indeed I was going to go to America with Mark. Marija straightened her back the way she did sometimes when something bothered her and said in an almost harsh tone: “When someone you love is in danger and in pain, that’s when you love them the most. There is no way I am staying far from my Sarajevo for any length of time.” I knew it all but somehow wanted to justify my own intentions of leaving the country by tempting Marija to do it, too. She assured me that I had her blessings to go to America, and that she hoped I would. We spoke such serious stuff, and also banalities and niceties, heavy painful things and frivolous girlish things, until a deep silence fell between us. We were dried up of words. Words were failing us. Words became irrelevant. We held hands again. We thought of the movie Casablanca that she and I had watched so many times. We didn’t say it, but I knew we thought of it together, because just when I was about to leave the room Marija asked: “What about us?” We held each other in the doorway for a long time. She asked me to write to her parents’ address, and then she asked me to take care of myself. I told her she was the one who needed to take care more than me because she was the one going into a war zone. War sounded almost childish, unreal, like we were just pretending and we could have said rain or snow instead of war. I ran down the stairs of the apartment building and I knew Marija stood in the doorway listening to my steps. I went out into the street and started running and crying. I felt Marija watching me from her window but did not look back at her. If I had looked back I would never have continued on to Mark’s place. I disappeared into the crowd and ran all the way to Mark’s apartment.

  After Marija and I parted I decided to patch the two parts of me into one whole unit and I threw myself into Mark’s arms and charms with a vengeance. Sometimes we talked and danced until late into the night in his apartment and fell asleep in our clothes like two roommates. At other times we made love in the morning before breakfast and just as the first night I always felt mature and sultry, glamorous and grown-up, ready to take on the world. Mark made me feel all those things. I couldn’t quite figure out whether it was because he was American and his ways were so different from any of the Serbian men I had been with, or whether it was because I was confused with the beginning of the war, missing Marija and eager to leave Belgrade and start something new far away from news of war and the atrociously nationalistic atmosphere. Late in the summer, with the war raging in Bosnia, horrifying news of snipers shooting from the hills surrounding Sarajevo and shell bombings all over my beloved childhood city, Mark and I had the life of a couple and were making marriage and immigration plans. I thought it was time to introduce him to my parents.

  On a sweltering late-August afternoon, Mark and I dressed up for dinner with my parents. Mark was genuinely nervous, as if worried about the “marriage proposal” he was going to present to my father. I laughed out loud hearing him talk like a fiancé in an old-fashioned movie and thought maybe he was joking. He wore a light-blue shirt and a red-and-yellow paisley silk tie and despite the heat, he even put on his best navy-blue blazer. I knew my mother would appreciate his elegance. She was always one to make snide remarks about the “ghastly” way my friends dressed, except for Marija, that is, whom she thought was a little too flamboyant but at least had a sense of style. Right before leaving the apartment, as I was trying to impress a semblance of smoothness to my unruly hair that was flying in all directions, knowing that it was going to be the first object of my mother’s criticism, Mark held me gently at arm’s length as if to steady me and looked me straight in the eyes. He produced a red velvet box from the top pocket of his navy-blue blazer and opened it to reveal a diamond mounted in a circle of pearls. “Lara, will you marry me?” he asked me in the most classic way. I thought it was the funniest thing in the world, almost unreal, like he was truly trying to imitate a hero in an American movie, so I burst out laughing. Besides, we had already been making marriage plans so the official proposal felt amusingly redundant. When his face became red with embarrassment and his eyes filled with sadness I regretted my callous laughter and realized he was as serious as anybody had ever been with me. I said: “Yes, of course, I’d love to marry you, Mark.” He gently placed the ring on my finger and it fit to perfection. Good sign, I thought, it must be a good match. He kissed me on the mouth and I couldn’t help thinking to myself with a mischievous smile that it was just like in the movies.

  The evening with my parents turned out to be a bottomless box of surprises. Mark used every single one of the Serbian words and idiomatic expressions he had acquired from his “learn Serbian in a month” audiotape. My parents couldn’t get enough of hearing him talk Serbian, my mother laughed and hugged him incessantly, while my father slapped him on the back with great affection and frequency, and then he tried out his English, mixing it with some French and German. I’m not sure how, but in the mixture of Slavic, Romance, and Germanic languages, exaggerated gestures, and body language, my parents and Mark managed to exchange a stunning amount of information and opinions, ranging from my childhood food aversions and school pranks to Yugoslavia under Tito. “It was good with Tito,” my father said in his barely understandable English. They talked about the growing Serbian nationalism, my father’s diplomatic missions in Greece, and went on to cover the majesty of the Parthenon, the corruption of Milosevic, and the new war, “this is bad war, more worse than ever before.” And the conversation naturally concluded with my mother’s reminiscing about scenes from Hollywood movies and, what else, Doctor Zhivago. “You know scene when Lara and Zhivago hidden in country house in winter, make love and poetry, so beautiful,” I heard my mother say to Mark. “Best film in the world, no?” Then she ran to the record player to play the song “Somewhere My Love.”

  Sometime during the evening my sister had burst in from one of her dance rehearsals, all flushed, in her workout tights, gauzy clothing and colorful ribbons covering her from head to toes and giggling like a teenager. Mark made his marriage proposal to my father in a ceremonious way in a perfect Serbian sentence he had learned by heart, and my father took out his best aged slivovitz of which they both had several shots. Mark asked my mother to dance to the Zhivago tune and swirled with her between our dining room table and the overabundant lacquered furniture with the grace and smoothness I had gotten to know so well throughout that long Belgrade summer. By the end of the evening I was in awe of my future husband, his incredible social skills and savvy, his charm that transcended language and culture barriers. And miracle of all miracles, he even managed to make me feel proud of my family. The cabbage and beef stew that my mother had prepared didn’t seem as bad as it used to, the dessert pudding for the first time seemed almost tasty, and my parents’ agitated and chaotic way of communicating and mixing languages, politics, cuisine, and issues of national identity seemed almost endearing. By the end of the evening, my mother followed me into the bathroom and radiating with joy told me I was a lucky girl, Mark was the ideal man and husband, “Take good care of him, will you!” She told me also to try to leave for America as soon as I could: “Things are only going to get worse by the minute in this damn country and in this city.” She had tears in her eyes and she hugged me with a warmth I hadn’t seen since I was a little girl. I hugged her back and the warmth of my mother’s embrace filled me with confidence. It took a sexy American to bring a new sense of harmony and understanding in my family.

  When we were about to leave my mother took Mark aside in the hallway and she whispered something in his ear. Mark blushed and smiled a big happy smile as if he had just hit the biggest jackpot of his life. He told my mother he was going to send her a new and better
-quality videotape of the Doctor Zhivago movie from America. He told my father he admired his courageous attitude of resistance toward the war and the growing nationalism, and also added that he was the happiest groom in the world. He told my sister he would send her the tape of the West Side Story movie with Natalie Wood. In a moment of dizziness, I stumbled over the threshold of the entrance to the apartment, wishing to find myself in the evening open air. But in the stairwell there was just the same heavy smell as always, of the neighbors cooking their Serbian evening meals, the heavy meats and cabbages, potatoes, sausage.

  Mark and I walked down the stairs holding hands, and I was overwhelmed by a profound feeling of loneliness. Memories of my childhood and teenage years swept through me. I saw myself running up the stairs back from school, breathless, eager to share with my father news of a new stupidity that the history teacher had uttered. I saw Marija and me running up those same stairs after school and my mother making us hot chocolate on a cold winter afternoon. And I clearly remembered the last time Marija and I visited my parents, only weeks earlier, the day before the war started, when we had gone down those same stairs together. Marija and I had held hands, just like Mark and I were now. I knew I was leaving to that coveted America for good, and everything around me suddenly seemed more precious and dear. The heavy smells and folkloric sounds suddenly felt familiar and cozy, part of who I was, whether I liked it or not. In the street Mark stopped under a streetlight and kissed me for a long time, slowly and methodically, almost as if we were going to part as well. The air was heavy with a metallic feel of war and separation. The large boulevards lined with chestnut and linden trees, and even the street with Communist buildings in the center where my parents lived, all shone. After the long kiss Mark whispered in my ear that he was kidnapping me to America and grinned mischievously. I said I was a willing hostage and we both laughed in the sweltering night. I felt a tinge of unease like a beautiful shoe that didn’t quite fit. But the ring fits perfectly, I reminded myself, trying to eliminate any trace of doubt in the warm glow of magical thinking. When I looked up at Mark as we walked late at night to his apartment in the fancy part of the Dorćol neighborhood, his handsome profile stunned me. He looked back at me and smiled his most winning smile. I had no reason to worry, I told myself. I was going to start a new and exciting life at the side of a brilliant sexy humanitarian American.