Under an Amber Sky

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Under an Amber Sky Page 11

by Rose Alexander


  Darko stopped here, and looked at Sophie. ‘You know the canyon? You have been there yet?’

  ‘No,’ replied Sophie, feeling guilty about her months of inactivity, of going nowhere and doing nothing.

  Darko shrugged. ‘So, now spring is here, perhaps you will have more time to get around and see the rest of the country.’

  He was being kind to her; grief had made her lethargic, turned her into a dullard. It was time to change – and the advent of Anna would be the stimulus.

  ‘It is almost certain now that you are being held in Mamula, although precise information is impossible to get. We are not allowed anywhere near; boats are kept at bay by machine guns trained from the lookout posts all around the fortress, and access to the peninsula facing the island is forbidden. There is no way to reach you.

  ‘I want to tell you news that will cheer you, that may bring you solace and comfort in whatever conditions you are enduring. So I will tell you of our baby, who seems well, and is the weight of a turnip, according to the local busybodies – sorry, helpful advisers – of whom there seem to be countless multitudes now the news of my condition is out. I’m not sure what a turnip weighs – and anyway, do they mean a big one or a small one? It seems imprecise and arbitrary to me. Nonetheless, I shall call him or her turnip-baby from now on; although in a couple of weeks it will apparently be the size of a banana, at which point I will, of course, have to change its name to banana-baby.

  ‘I’m not sure I remember what size that is, though. It’s been a long time since we saw those yellow fruits in the bay. What food are you enjoying, my poor, darling Dragan? The Italians are renowned for their cuisine, are they not? So surely they are feeding you good, nutritious meals.’

  Darko grimaced as he read this. ‘Sadly, the truth is that the prisoners were given under ten grams of bread a day, sometimes supplemented by some horsemeat. They suffered a slow starvation; men on Mamula lost around twenty or more kilos. No one was able to make it up the stone stairways in the fortress once they had been there for a few months.’ His eyes dark with hatred, Darko seemed to be finding it hard to carry on. ‘So much for the great Italian food culture. On this occasion, they didn’t share.’

  ‘Two days ago, your mother and I, and Grandma Ilic from next door, went to collect the flowers of the curry plant to make immortelle.’

  Darko broke off reading again for another explanation. ‘Immortelle is an essential oil that is antibacterial and anti-inflammatory, and used in natural medicine for healing wounds and scars,’ he explained. ‘It’s very expensive, which is why it’s not more widely known compared to other essential oils.’

  Could it also mend the cicatrices of a broken heart? wondered Sophie, silently. But before she could ask where this elixir could be procured, Darko was reading again.

  ‘Grandmother was dressed, as she always is, all in black, even though she has been widowed for over thirty years now. What is it about her garb, her regal but austere bearing, that makes her husband seem so very, especially dead?’

  Sophie chuckled at this; it was a magnificent way to describe the redoubtable widows of the Balkans.

  ‘I can joke with you about this as I know you agree with me. And then my breath catches in my throat as I see, written in my own hand: “dead”. But you are not. You are alive; I know you are. You would not leave us – your baby and me.’

  Mira’s faith in her husband’s survival, his existence, was so strong that it made Sophie’s blood run cold in her veins. What if Mira were wrong, and he had already succumbed to the maltreatment the prisoners suffered on Mamula? Accepting that Matt was really dead had been the hardest thing she herself could possibly imagine having to do, and she had seen the evidence with her very own eyes. Sophie understood Mira’s need to believe that Dragan was alive, the necessity for her of holding that hope in her heart.

  ‘We travelled all the way to the banks of Lake Skadar by bus and then by horse and cart. The lake was unbelievably beautiful, shimmering under the blazing summer sun, carpeted with creamy water lilies and dotted with the curved fishing boats of the local fishermen. By the roadside, country women were selling the most enormous fish; every time a vehicle or cart came clattering by, they held them up for display, huge mouths and blank eyes wide open, scales glinting evilly. (That’s the mouths etc. of the fish, not the women, just in case you were unsure!)’

  Sophie was getting to love Mira’s sense of humour that, combined with her way with words, made her such an engaging and captivating correspondent.

  ‘It was almost like normal life. Though we saw many Italian soldiers along the way, they took no notice of us. If they expected us to salute them, they were disappointed because we did not. At first, I wondered if they dismissed us because we were all women and therefore not of interest, but then I thought of what we know of the round-up, how they spared no one, no matter their age or gender. Do they keep you separate from the women and children? Or do you hear the babies wailing and their mothers weeping? My blood runs cold when I imagine what you are all suffering, on that tiny island so near and yet so far from all you have been wrested from.

  ‘I must not dwell on it, I must not think the worst. Grandma Ilic insists that negative thinking can harm the baby. She exhorts me to massage my belly with the immortelle every night and every morning to prevent the pregnancy causing any stretch marks.

  ‘“You want to be beautiful for when your husband returns, do you not?” she demands, with such majesty in her tone it would be impossible to disagree. It seems the least of my worries at the present time but still – I suppose I should take care of myself and my body, for I hope there will be many more babies to come. I want a houseful of our children, Dragan, boys and girls, the walls ringing with their laughter and their cries from dawn to dusk. I have always wished for this but now, though I still have the same dreams, my only true desire is for you to return home, safe and well. I pray for that, day and night.

  ‘All our love and kisses,

  Mira and Turnip-baby’

  When Darko had finished reading, both he and Sophie sat in silence for a while.

  ‘The lack of news must have been awful,’ said Sophie, eventually. ‘The not knowing – so incredibly stressful.’

  Darko nodded. ‘We will have to see if one of the other letters brings us the answers. But I fear the worst for Dragan. I have been doing a bit of research and I found that, of the two-and-a-half thousand civilians who were taken to Mamula, only six hundred came back.’

  Sophie considered this for a few minutes. ‘So – about a one in four chance of making it.’

  ‘Something like that,’ Darko concurred.

  ‘Right.’

  Their food arrived and Sophie regarded it with hostility. She was ashamed to eat, as if Dragan still languished, famished, ravenous, whilst she feasted. Darko handed her the napkin-wrapped cutlery.

  ‘Eat, Sophie! Enjoy,’ he encouraged her. ‘We cannot change the past.’

  The food was delicious: fresh fish from the bay, accompanied by Sophie’s favourite side dish blitva, a sublime combination of garlic-infused Swiss chard and potatoes. Once they’d finished and the plates had been cleared away, Sophie was hit by a wave of exhaustion. She was so unused to going out, to social interaction, that she tired quickly.

  They laughed about the ‘going Dutch’ misunderstanding as they paid the bill and then, as they were getting up to go, Sophie remembered the dilemma of Anna and the van that was required to transport her from the airport. Petar’s taxi was far too small; otherwise she would have asked him. She mentioned it to Darko, on the off-chance that he might know someone who could help.

  ‘No problem,’ he answered immediately. ‘My parents have a small van for transporting their wine and produce. We can borrow that for the day.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Sophie, quickly. Flustered, she could feel her cheeks reddening. ‘I didn’t mean that – I’m sure you don’t have time to drive to Dubrovnik and back. I real
ly just wanted to know if you knew anywhere that did van hire.’

  Darko smiled: his kind, caring, considerate smile that reached his black eyes and lightened them temporarily. ‘It’s fine. Work is always quiet at this time of the year and I’ll enjoy a day out of the office before it starts to get busy with the tourist season. And anyway – I’d like to help.’

  ‘Well,’ gulped Sophie, taken aback once more by Darko’s generosity. ‘That’s great, thank you.’

  Should she really be unleashing the whirlwind that was Anna on dear, gentle Darko? She wasn’t sure if he deserved that. He was so understated, so considered. And yet, beneath the compassionate veneer that understood a pregnant woman’s longing for her husband, lay a quiet determination, a purposefulness. In fact, he was a lot like Matt.

  This thought lingered with her as she made her way home, catching the last bus along the lamplit bay road, the glowing necklace of Kotor’s lights behind her, the inky black cloth of the sea stretching away to her right.

  Chapter 13

  The hiatus of Anna’s imminent arrival precluded Sophie from doing anything more about the letters for a few days. Also, she needed time after each one to absorb its contents, to think about Mira. She downloaded a book onto her Kindle that documented the growth of a developing foetus from conception through to birth. If the baby weighed the same as a turnip, she must have been around seventeen weeks pregnant when she wrote the letter they had just read. And the month was June, which meant the baby must be due sometime in late November.

  Surely Mira would have found out Dragan’s whereabouts and situation by then? Sophie’s desire to know mingled with her fear of uncovering bad news.

  True to his word, Darko accompanied her to Dubrovnik airport, his parents’ van rattling around the bay from the Lustica peninsula, smelling of musty earth and red wine mingled with the pungent scent of the coriander from some previous journey that now littered the floor in the cargo area. Sophie hoped that Anna would appreciate a bed of herbs for her precious canvases.

  The flight didn’t land until the early afternoon so Darko suggested they drive the long way around rather than simply heading for Lepetane and taking the ferry the short distance across the mouth of the bay. Having already had to admit to her ignorance of the Tara river, Sophie quickly confessed that she hadn’t even been to the other side of the water yet, and so the decision was made.

  Traditionally the area inhabited by the richest Venetian merchants, the houses here were accordingly large and ornate, with carved balustrades and traceried windows. Darko took the slow waterfront road, giving Sophie plenty of time to absorb the vista of Gothic palaces and churches, many impeccably restored, stone the colour of sand cleaned and repointed to perfection. Other buildings were virtual ruins, hanging on to hillsides cleft apart by earthquakes and age, surrounded by wildly contortionist Judas trees and poplars, figs and vines, adventurous branches of which reached through cracks in walls and emerged from roofless upper storeys.

  In the many patches of wild ground between buildings, thickets of tall iris stood proud whilst torches of broom caught the sun. On the mountains to their right, spring stood at different stages: low down, the woodlands proudly presented their new growth in brightest green; at mid-level, blossom still peppered the tree branches; and high up, only the grass had so far managed to fend off winter’s darkness.

  They had plenty of time, so stopped off to see the Roman mosaics at Risan. In the middle of the master bedroom lay Hypnos, Greek god of sleep, depicted as a young winged boy reclining half-naked on a pillow. Sophie recollected her visits to Roman sites at home and thought how the civil servants and generals who were sent to represent the empire in Montenegro must have felt they had lucked out in contrast to those who ended up in chilly, hostile Britain, devoid of wine, olives, and the kind of weather that allowed people to lie around idly without many clothes on.

  After Risan, they quickly reached Herceg Novi, famed for being the sunniest town in the country and where spring was well underway. The town burgeoned with scented purple wisteria, and yellow roses frothed over buildings old and new.

  They stopped for lunch – and to read the next letter. Darko began:

  ‘Dearest, darling Dragan,’

  Sophie allowed herself to wallow in the familiar, dreamy sensation of being immersed in Mira’s world.

  ‘Now it is July, srpanj, harvest time. The intricate details of the far mountains are lost, made shapeless and vague by the heat haze, as if shrouded by the spiralling, driftless smoke of smouldering fires. In the fields all around, the farmers are bringing in the crops: the yellow wheat; the ripe, red tomatoes; and the leafy, green-topped sugar beets.

  ‘The only thing I want to gather is you.

  ‘The sky above is deepest blue, day after day. The water in the bay is warm as a bath and the village children swim constantly, running, screaming, shouting, and jumping. It’s almost possible to forget there is a war on, and that we are under occupation – for a few minutes at least. I sit in the garden, on the highest terrace under the shade of the pomegranate tree, and watch the clouds drift by so slowly. In every one I see your face: your laughing eyes, the creases in your cheeks that deepen when you smile. Will our child have such features? I believe so, for they will be in its genes.

  ‘Yesterday, the most wonderful thing happened to turnip/banana baby. He or she must have outgrown both of those monikers, because for the first time I felt our child move. People say it is like the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings but to me it felt more like a gentle scratching, as if to say, “I’m here, can you feel me? We’ll be meeting, soon.” And this morning, as I stood before my window in my thin nightgown, there was a stirring inside me, as if the baby had seen and felt the light beating through my skin and was stretching out with pleasure, the way a cat basks in the sun.’

  Sophie, listening, rubbed her hands across her eyes. Mira’s delight and wonder in her pregnancy, in the development of her growing child, was so intimate, so true. If she herself had conceived a child with Matt, she would be experiencing these sensations, feeling these feelings. But she hadn’t, and wasn’t, and now never would.

  ‘I have been trying and trying to find out more about Mamula and conditions there but information is pitifully scant. Looking out over the calm, clear waters of the bay, unruffled today by the slightest breeze, it seems impossible to imagine that anything could be happening to disturb the serenity. I can do nothing but pray for you, Dragan, and all those imprisoned with you. What will become of you all, we do not know. There are things I’ve heard that I cannot write, for reasons you will understand. But for now you must just know that we love you and honour your sacrifice, which you make on behalf of all of us.

  ‘With all our love,

  Mira and Baby

  ‘PS: Grandma Ilic has pronounced that the baby will be a girl. She says she is never wrong. If this is so, what shall we call her, our beautiful princess? I fancy Jelena, after my own grandmother. What do you think? Send me your thoughts on the wind, when next it blows, and I’ll be waiting to catch them.’

  The writing, though poetically beautiful as always, contained none of Mira’s cheeky humour. It was much more cautious, considered.

  ‘She’s being very circumspect about giving voice to her concerns now,’ commented Sophie, taking the letter from where Darko had laid it down on the table.

  ‘Something may have happened to warn her that it’s not safe to talk openly,’ agreed Darko. ‘And possibly there are rumours about the prison camp that mean people are becoming more aware of how bad things are – even if they daren’t air their unease in any but the safest of places, which wouldn’t be a letter.’

  Back in the van, leaving Herceg Novi behind, Sophie remembered something. ‘Do you know anything else about the girls from here, the ones who tried to break the mail blockade?’

  Darko frowned and shook his head. ‘Not much. Information is sparse, as Mira found.’

  He tur
ned off the main road. Sophie looked at him questioningly.

  ‘Back route. There’s a tiny border post here that’s always less busy than the main drag.’

  Sophie nodded, but that hadn’t been her enquiry. She wondered why such bravery as that displayed by the would-be postwomen had not been honoured, such efforts not rewarded by chapters in the history books.

  ‘It is on record that resistance never went away despite the cruelty and dreadful reprisals,’ continued Darko, as if answering her unasked question. ‘The Italians were not welcomed. Even the schoolchildren showed their patriotism, defying the occupiers by openly singing the national anthem, Hej Sloveni. And apparently one old man, when asked how much scrap iron he had gathered for Mother Italy, merely showed the rusted cleats of his shoes.’

  ‘I can’t imagine it,’ reflected Sophie, watching the tranquil countryside flash by, the neat houses in tidy gardens festooned with climbing plants and fruit trees. Everything was so ordered, nothing out of place. She pictured Italian Blackshirts patrolling the wide avenues, the hot sun glinting off their uniform buttons and buckles, guns always at the ready. Shivering despite the heat, it occurred to her that, much more recently, fear had once again stalked these serene and sleepy streets during the conflict of the 1990s. War was terrible, but surely civil war even worse, when those you thought were your friends became your enemies.

  The change in rhythm of the engine as the van slowed down jolted her back to the present. The solitary border guard took a cursory look at their papers and waved them through.

  ‘It’s always quicker here,’ said Darko, pleased with his circumvention of tiresome bureaucracy. ‘Best kept secret in Montenegro!’

  Sophie grinned. Another example of how much the British and the Montenegrins had in common, in this case the satisfying pleasure of having got one over on authority.

  At the airport, she went into the terminal to find Anna and Tomasz and, once the enthusiastic greetings were over, Tomasz satisfactorily equipped with a fresh nappy, and Anna’s copious amounts of luggage mustered, they headed out to the car park.

 

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