‘Whoops,’ she giggled. ‘Not to worry.’
Frank raised his eyebrows and smiled, shaking his head resignedly. ‘I think I better finish this off – save you from yerself.’ He drained the bottle of wine into his glass.
‘So?’ questioned Sophie. ‘You were telling me about your wife.’
‘She’s history now, Sophie. I had another girl in Belgrade – a Serbian girl. But it didn’t work out. I couldn’t keep her in the manner she wanted to become accustomed to.’ Frank sighed. ‘I loved her – thought I did, anyways – but it wasn’t nothing like you had with your old man. Nothing like that.’
Sophie reached across to Frank’s hand. She took it in hers. ‘She’s the loser, Frank,’ she slurred, her eyes misting with tears. ‘You’re a great bloke; don’t let anyone tell you different.’
‘You’re going to tell me you really love me next, ain’t you?’ Frank shrugged wryly.
‘It’s true, Frank. I really, really love you.’ Sophie was stroking his hand and now she picked it up to kiss it. ‘You saved my life. And my house. You found the letters.’
She laughed, and Frank laughed with her, whilst subtly extracting his hand from her grasp. Hazily, Sophie hoped that Frank wasn’t thinking she was coming on to him and then the fog of alcohol stopped her worrying about it. At the same time it occurred to her that it was at least two hours since she had thought of Matt.
She was busy absorbing that fact as Frank got up and put the kettle on.
‘Tea,’ he said, by way of explanation, filling the teapot with the broken spout that he’d dug out from the back of one of the cupboards a few days ago. ‘Best drink of the day. Apart from beer, that is. Wine. Rakija.’ He sat back down at the table, complete with pot, mugs, and milk.
‘So – it’s about time you told me all about you,’ he said, once the mugs were full. ‘Matt, these bloody letters you’re so fascinated by, why the bleedin’ hell you bought a ruin in a country no one’s ever heard of. You ain’t told me none of it yet.’
And so they sat and talked and drank tea until late into the night and when Sophie did eventually get to bed she felt drunker and happier than she had since Matt died. Criminal or no, Frank had proved her salvation, bringing her not only the letters but also company, hope, and a purpose.
Chapter 11
The wine bar Darko took her to was tucked down a blind alley in the heart of the old town. It was small and low-ceilinged, dimly lit and atmospheric, smelling of wood and beeswax candles. Sophie hoped Darko would be able to read the letter, with its tiny print and parts where the ink had been eroded by the passing years. She had it carefully stored in the zip pocket of her handbag, and could almost feel it there, burning through the soft navy leather, demanding to be read.
But despite the urgency in her heart, she was nervous of bringing the letter out and handing it over to Darko. What if the words inside were private? What if they were deathly dull and she’d wasted his time? And then the real reason for her doubts. What if the letters contained things that would simply be too hard to bear, that would bring back her own loss, her own desolation?
Darko’s voice broke into her thoughts, asking her if she was happy with a red wine he had selected. She nodded her agreement.
‘All the wines here are from Montenegro,’ he explained, proudly. ‘Sometimes they have had my wines from my parents’ small vineyard on the menu, but the last few years they have been exporting it all directly so there has been none left.’
‘Gosh,’ said Sophie. ‘It must be good stuff. I didn’t know your parents were winemakers.’ Why should she, she thought to herself as soon as the words were out. She hardly knew Darko.
He smiled. ‘Just small-scale. They have a vineyard on the hills above Lake Skadar, and some land on Lustica where they live and grow almost all their own food. The wine goes to a Qatari hotel group; the olives make oil that ships to Russia; the fresh fruit and veg they sell at the market in Kotor. And of course they have plenty of home-grown, organic produce for themselves.’ He looked momentarily envious. ‘It’s a good life.’
‘Sounds it,’ agreed Sophie. ‘It’s many people’s dream. There are countless programmes in the UK about people throwing it all in to run a smallholding in Shetland or an olive farm in Tuscany. Hard work, though,’ she added.
Darko shrugged. ‘I need a big family to help me take it all over when my parents are too old. My last girlfriend found life around here too quiet and went off to live in Split.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Sophie, not quite sure how to react. ‘She split to Split.’ The words were out before she’d thought them through. With horror, she understood their utter insensitivity.
‘Oh, Darko, I’m so sorry,’ she spluttered, ‘I really didn’t mean to be rude.’
But Darko was laughing, not appearing offended in the slightest. ‘Not at all, Sophie. It’s a very good joke.’
Sophie smiled wanly. ‘I’m sure you’ll be snapped up again soon,’ she reassured him. What else could she say? She didn’t have any advice to offer on a virtual stranger’s love life.
Darko tactfully used the arrival of the wine as a distraction. Once the glasses were poured, the tasting completed, and the wine pronounced satisfactory, he looked back up at her.
‘So – the letter? You did bring it?’
Trying to hide her sudden and inexplicable reluctance, Sophie reached into her bag. Carefully, she pulled the letter out from its hiding place.
‘It’s probably nothing interesting,’ she said, airily. ‘Just a shopping list or a load of mindless gossip. But still – it will be good to find out.’
Darko took the envelope reverently, holding it as gently as she had done, as if it were an egg and liable to crack if handled incorrectly.
‘Only one way to do that,’ he concurred. He pulled the flimsy paper out and studied it briefly before unfolding it and smoothing it out onto the table. He moved the candle closer to take advantage of its wavering light. Sophie watched as his eyes scanned across the paper, pausing occasionally to puzzle out a word where the ink had irrevocably faded, and then speeding up again.
‘This address here,’ he asked, pointing at the top of the letter. ‘It is your house, no? Number 135 Prcanj.’
Sophie stared at the writing and shook her head, wordlessly. She realized that she had no idea what the postal address of her house was; she’d had no cause to give it to anyone and hadn’t thought to ask. All the sale procedures and official documents used the town hall cadastre number, which was something completely different.
Darko seemed to read her mind. ‘We can check on your utility bills, or the estate agent will know. We will ask her. Meanwhile, let’s carry on.’
His eyes darted back and forth across the page. Reaching the end, he flicked the flimsy paper over and continued his rapid scanning.
‘From what I can make out, it is from a woman called Mira to her husband, Dragan.’ He turned the paper back to the beginning again and looked down at it, long and hard, before beginning anew.
‘I should warn you, Sophie, that, as I suspected, it tells of terrible happenings from the Second World War.’
Sophie shifted awkwardly on her chair. ‘Whatever the story is, I’d like to know.’
And so Darko began. ‘As you know, the letter is dated the Second of June, 1942. Here goes:
‘My dearest Dragan,
‘I returned from Abba and Mama’s house yesterday and am I still trying to come to terms with the reality of what has happened; that they have taken you and that I do not know exactly where you are or if they will ever let you go.’
Sophie could not help intervening already, only one sentence in.
‘So it is what you mentioned before – something to do with the Italians, and the Partisans?’ Her question flew out like a bullet.
Darko grimaced. ‘It seems that he was one of those rounded up by the Italians. You have to know a little of the history of the Italian occupation of Mo
ntenegro. The Germans put themselves in charge of other parts of the Balkans, but the Italians were given our country. In May 1941, King Victor Emmanuel came for a triumphal visit. The people of Podgorica were given fabric to make flags and banners; they were told to line the streets and cry ‘Evviva’ and make the fascist salute as the king and his entourage passed by. Few did as instructed. Resistance grew and insurrection threatened.’
Sophie thought of the terror that must have been in the people’s hearts, and the anger at their loss of liberty. She imagined Petar, her fisherman, and Darko, and wondered what they would have done. Though so gentle on the surface, she was sure that each and every one of them would fight to the death for their country. Presumably Mira’s Dragan had felt like that, too.
‘Then in July 1941, there was a rebellion,’ continued Darko. ‘Not just the Partisans, but ordinary men from all the villages, simple people with no experience of combat, took up rifles, pistols, pitchforks, and scythes. They routed garrisons, set fire to barracks, and cut down telephone and telegraph wires. These insurgents vowed to execute as many Blackshirts as possible and within a few weeks had liberated huge swathes of the country. But of course they couldn’t hold out once the Italian reinforcements arrived. A campaign of retribution followed. Though the people of Kotor and the bay managed to live freely for a few months, protected as they were by the natural barriers of sea and mountain, eventually all suspected of involvement in any kind of resistance were rounded up and interned. It seems that Dragan was one of them.’
Sophie shook her head in sorrow, already feeling the loss that the unknown woman Mira must have experienced.
Darko turned back to the letter.
‘I arrived back in Kotor on a perfect early summer’s day, the golden sun slanting its light through the tree branches all the way down from the mountains. The water in the bay sparkled as if brand new. Unfortunately, despite the beauty of the scenery, I did not travel well. The bus was crowded and hot and swung alarmingly from side to side on every bend of the road. I think the tyres on the left must have been severely deflated for the entire vehicle listed over in that direction, with the metal sides scraping along the road on the worst hairpins.
‘A fellow passenger gave me lemons to suck for the sickness, but the fact that this remedy proved ineffectual for me was only too obvious several times during the course of the journey. By the time we pulled up in Kotor, I felt faint, drained, and washed out. It was only the thought of seeing you, of being there when you returned from work, that gave me the energy to haul my belongings to the local bus stop and continue on around the bay.’
Darko paused for a moment, his eyes flickering on down the paper and then resting again on the place where he’d left off.
‘Your mother told me. She was outside the house, but she wasn’t sitting on the stone where we take our coffee in the morning, waiting for a passing neighbour to stop for a chat and while away the time.’
‘Oh!’ exclaimed Sophie, interrupting again. ‘It must be my house – it’s the only one I know in Prcanj that has a stone bench between the front doors.
Darko gave a nod of acknowledgement before carrying on reading.
‘Instead she was standing in the middle of the road, scanning the way ahead for the bus. That’s how I knew something was wrong, long moments before she uttered a single word. Her eyes were so red with crying, the lids so puffy, that she looked like a paper version of herself left out in the rain to swell and bloat.
‘When you see tragedy in every pore of someone’s skin, I know now that your heart stills momentarily and then begins to beat in double time. The look on her face told me that you were dead, that you had drowned in a storm or a terrible accident whilst crossing the bay to the house you were working on in Perast. Or that a tool had flown out of control and injured you, or perhaps that you had slipped from your ladder and fallen. These are the worries I often have for you, when you are a little later back than I expected, or I am feeling overanxious.’
‘I wonder what Dragan’s job was, then,’ mused Sophie, interrupting again. ‘A builder, perhaps?’
‘The description suggests something like that, doesn’t it?’ agreed Darko. ‘But I’m thinking possibly a stonemason – I don’t know why, but I’ve got a hunch it might be that.’
‘I wonder if we’ll find out,’ murmured Sophie, her forehead creased in puzzlement at the mystery. ‘I hope so.’
‘But then your mother told me the truth, and it was so much worse than I could ever have imagined that I sank to my knees, right there in the road, and felt that I would never get up. Mama took me by the hands and led me inside the house and there I wept, and she wept, and then we wept some more. She described what had happened, the soldiers sweeping through the towns and villages all around the bay, a planned and methodical attack, perfectly orchestrated.
‘The word is that they visited everywhere from Morinj to Stoliv, by way of Risan and Prcanj, shouting “Viva il Duce!” as their boots clattered on the stone and their weapons clanked by their sides. The cruelty that oozes from their every pore hangs in the air all around us still. I feel that I can smell their sweat and the fear they breed; it is palpable, following them in a miasmic cloud of evil.
‘Your mother said that they didn’t just take men, but grandmothers, women, and their infants. Anybody they suspected of being a Partisan, of opposing their occupation, or of being associated with I ha Partisan. If I had been here, they might have taken me, too. I don’t know whether it’s better that they didn’t or whether I wish they had. The only sense I can make of being separated from you is when I think of our baby. And at least you, too, have the thought of our child, that hope, to sustain you, wherever you are.’
‘So she was pregnant, poor girl – that’s why she was so sick on the bus.’ Sophie halted, unable to speak for a few moments as tears welled in her eyes.
Poor girl? Lucky girl, more like!
Sophie thought of her own baby, the baby that never was and never would be. She still wasn’t sure how she felt about it, whether she was glad not to be pregnant alone, or desolate at not carrying Matt’s child, which would have been something to remember him by, a part of him to have for always. Mira had been plunged into her situation in the midst of war and had no choice but to do the best she could.
‘They say you have been taken to Mamula island and so this is where I have addressed my letter. However bad I feel, it cannot be as terrible as what you are undergoing. How are they treating you? Surely they are humane; they are human beings, after all, those Italian soldiers. But then I remember the aftermath of the rebellion and my blood chills in my veins.
‘Think of me, and how much I love you, and our baby, who will love us both. Keep strong, my Dragan. We both need you back.
‘With all my love,
Mira’
Darko, now the letter had concluded, was silently staring at it, lost in thought.
‘I expect you would like a written translation,’ he said, when he sensed Sophie’s eyes upon him. ‘I’ll take a photo of it and then I can work on it when I get a chance – tomorrow or the day after – and email it to you.’
‘Thank you,’ murmured Sophie. ‘Thank you so much.’ She waited until he had photographed the letter then took it from him. She looked at it, wishing she could read it herself, could decode this language that was no less indecipherable now than when she had first arrived in the country.
‘You were right,’ she added thoughtfully, slipping the flimsy paper back into the envelope. ‘Right about what you said about Mamula the other day and about Dragan’s fate. But if he was rounded up, does that mean he was definitely a Partisan? And if so – were they punished, other than the punishment of being locked up?’
Darko coughed and fiddled with the candle on the table. ‘There are stories from Mamula of torture, yes. And anyone caught trying to escape was executed. But perhaps the worst suffering was caused by the terrible conditions, and by starvation. As I told
you before, the fortress was built during the Austro-Hungarian Empire but it was never used and it wasn’t intended for habitation. There was no running water, no sewerage, nothing. There was no furniture – people slept on the bare stones and in the winter it was freezing. Many of those who died did so from hunger and disease.’
Sophie shuddered. ‘I suppose those left behind had no idea how bad things were. Like poor Mira, trying to convince herself that he was being treated well.’
‘You’re right. I believe it was almost impossible to get information at the time. It wasn’t really until the Italians capitulated in 1943 that the real story of Mamula began to be told.’
‘Could that be why the letters are unopened? They never got to Dragan?’
‘I think so. I’ve done some digging around and found out that no communication was permitted with the prisoners held on Mamula. A group of brave young women in Herceg Novi ran an organization that tried to get letters and parcels across to the fortress. It was difficult, though, and they only succeeded with a very small amount of the correspondence they were given.
An Italian soldier who was a guard there was caught by the carabineers trying to take in a package for a prisoner. He was then himself sentenced to fifteen days’ imprisonment on the island. Later, after the capitulation, he deserted.’
Sophie turned the letter over and over in her hands, imagining the love with which it was written, the hope with which it would have been posted. The risks that may have been taken on its account.
‘So if these letters never reached Dragan,’ she mused, ‘it still doesn’t explain why Mira didn’t open them when she got them back, or why she even kept them.’
‘Why would you open a letter you had written yourself?’ questioned Darko, not expecting Sophie to answer but more as if to test the theory. ‘Maybe they were returned to her after the war, when everything was back to something approaching normal and they weren’t important any more.’
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