Under an Amber Sky

by Rose Alexander

  So it was that one blustery day, fluffy cumulus clouds sailing across an acid-blue sky, Sophie met Darko in Kotor and scampered along behind him as he whisked her around a series of tiny, cramped offices in the town hall, each and every one crammed full of box files – on shelves, in towering piles on desks, or precarious stacks on the floor. Here were no protective screens, queues, or customer services ticketed systems. They just walked right in to every cubbyhole of those they needed to speak to. It was like stepping back in time fifty years or more.

  In one office, an elderly woman sat at a desk, hand addressing envelopes at a rate of about one every ten minutes. Sophie hoped the communications they contained were not urgent. At every stop Darko would engage in ten to twenty minutes of conversation and then translate it to her in a few sparse words: ‘yes, you can access this account online,’ or ‘no, you must pay the tax once a year in the payment booth downstairs.’ Sophie’s frustration at not being able to understand a word reached boiling point. Total Serbian simply wasn’t the answer.

  ‘What can I do, Petar?’ she asked, on the way home. The morning had exhausted her, and seeing his taxi waiting for business outside the old town’s main gate had seemed a good reason not to take the bus.

  ‘I need to learn Montenegrin. Serbian. Whatever you want to call it. I need to be able to communicate. I still can’t even ask Sandra how she is, or tell her I want a loaf of bread and some cheese. Sign language is great, but there are limits to what it can achieve!’

  Smiling, Petar glanced at her through his rear-view mirror. ‘They could always do with someone to help out at Prcanj school. You could read with the children, support their learning.’

  Sophie thought about this for a moment. ‘I don’t know, Petar. How would I get there, with no car?’

  Petar chuckled. ‘That is not problem. School is almost next door.’ Like many Montenegrins speaking English, he often forgot to include ‘the’ or ‘a’. One piece of knowledge that Sophie had managed to assimilate was that the Montenegrin language did not contain the definite or indefinite article.

  Thinking now of the school, Sophie realized that she had clocked the children ambling along the road outside the house every afternoon, dangling rucksacks and coats, but hadn’t given a thought to where the school was. She understood now that it must be the long low building three or four doors along from her house, set well back from the road and hidden behind a tall hedge.

  ‘Oh. Well, that does make it easy. But how would it help me to learn, if I’m teaching the kids English?’

  ‘You could get one of the teachers to give you Montenegrin lessons in return,’ replied Petar, still smiling. ‘Simple, no?’

  Sophie nodded. Not working, not getting out and about enough, was making her slow. Petar’s idea was a good one.

  Next morning, she went to check out the school. She sat on the low sea wall and watched as swarms of children emerged, dressed in PE kits, piling out of the front gate to stand waiting on the roadside in noisy, boisterous groups of the kind Sophie had been so used to in her old, teaching life.

  A small Fiat seven-seater pulled up outside. There was a scramble to squeeze aboard, with far more pupils than it seemed there could possibly be places for shoe-horning themselves in. The vehicle sped off. It was followed by another car into which the remaining children disappeared. Sophie couldn’t help but smile. It was a far cry from the minibuses with fully fitted seat belts of the UK. She thought back to her job, her career, which she had worked so hard at, to which she had devoted so much time. She could hardly remember it now.

  Her fisherman turned up as she was still lost in her memories, and struck up another of his voluble and lengthy conversations. Helplessness suffused Sophie as she listened, trying hard to nod, smile, raise her eyebrows questioningly, or tut in disbelief at the right moments. It was the spur she needed to finally propel her through the front door of the school.

  Half an hour later, it was all sorted. She would go in two afternoons a week to help the pupils with English, and in return the head would give her one two-hour language lesson on a Wednesday afternoon.

  ‘Hvala,’ she said, blushing at her terrible pronunciation, as she left.

  ‘Thank you, too!’ cried the head at her retreating figure. ‘We are lucky to have you.’

  The idea of the school being fortunate on her account was a novel and not unpleasant one. Sophie walked the short distance home with a spring in her step. She found that the internet was now up and running, installed with super-fast efficiency by the local phone company, overseen by Anna, and not a beer bottle or rakija chaser anywhere in sight.

  Sophie settled down in front of her laptop. Anna was right; life without the internet really was impossible. And now they had it, she could begin her own research on the topic that was constantly buzzing around her mind: Mamula island. But her first attempts were unsuccessful, throwing up little of any interest in English apart from a short Wikipedia entry.

  The pages and pages of site names in Montenegrin were overwhelming and, ultimately, unhelpful. The few she clicked upon and selected passages from to put through Google translate were all irrelevant and unconnected to events of World War Two. Eventually, overtaken by despair and frustration, she gave up. Without command of the language, which would take untold years to acquire at the rate she was going, doing her own research was nigh on impossible.

  The thing that was easier, now she had email on tap, was contacting Darko. She had soon made an arrangement to meet up to read the next letter. Anna looked at her questioningly as she was getting ready.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Just out for a bit.’ Sophie checked her bag for her keys. She was always mislaying them. Tomasz had found them last time, albeit where he had put them, in an empty flowerpot that for some inexplicable reason was in one of the kitchen cupboards.

  ‘Why do you look so shifty?’ Anna wasn’t so easily put off.

  ‘Shifty? Nothing shifty about it, just making sure I’ve got everything.’ The next letter was there in her bag, tucked safely into the zip pocket.

  Anna gave a knowing smile. ‘Give my love to Darko – and thank him again for the lift,’ she said breezily, blowing Sophie a kiss.

  ‘Bye, Gophie,’ shouted Tomasz, who was sitting at the table eating ice cream.

  Sophie smiled. ‘Bye, darling,’ she called back, at the same time as thinking, damn Anna! She could always see straight through her. At the same time, she felt remorseful as she walked out of the door. She had briefly explained to Anna about the letters but hidden her obsession with them.

  She couldn’t explain exactly how she felt about them, or why her feelings were as strong as they were. It was something about not wanting to share Mira’s story, mingled with her concern that she was already invading Mira’s privacy. It was like reading someone’s diary and though she somehow felt that she herself had permission to do this, she wasn’t sure that she had the right to allow too many others into Mira’s intensely personal world. But she was conscious that her lack of explanation left the door wide open for Anna to make up her own narrative about why she was so avidly meeting Darko.

  Darko had had a haircut and a shave, and his coal-black curls and Shoreditch beard were no more. It made his eyes seem deeper and darker than ever, and revealed the elegant slant of his cheekbones. Sophie could see why Anna had declaimed that he was attractive. She wondered why he hadn’t yet managed to find someone else after the girlfriend who’d bailed out to the bright lights of Croatia. It seemed inexplicable.

  She watched him pick up the letter and listened as he began to read in his familiar, regular tone.

  ‘My very dearest Dragan,

  ‘It is the end of July, and everything is dry and brown, the grasses underfoot brittle from lack of rain and the relentless burning of the summer sun. I am fed up of this stifling heat, of the stupor it induces in me, of my swollen ankles and swollen belly. I am fed up of being without you, and yet e
ven as I write that, I know how selfish I am being. I am in my own home, sleeping (although I don’t, much) in my own comfortable bed, eating good food, benefitting – if you can call it that – from countless people’s kind concerns and ministrations to my welfare. Whereas you … I imagine you are living from day to day, always thinking that each one might be your last. I want to take that burden from you but I can’t.’

  ‘Is she being a bit indiscreet to mention these things?’ interrupted Sophie, puzzled. The previous letter had been so restrained, but here Mira was writing openly about the danger that surrounded the island.

  Darko shrugged and sighed. ‘I really don’t know. Maybe by this time she’s given up hope that he’s getting the letters and writing them is more about expressing her own fears than communicating with him.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ mused Sophie, absorbing Darko’s words. ‘How frustrating that we can’t find out, that there’s so much we don’t know and possibly never will.’

  ‘Let’s just keep going,’ said Darko, optimistically. ‘You never know what we’ll discover,’ he added, beginning to read again.

  ‘Mama and I walked up to Gornji Stoliv on Sunday.’

  ‘Where’s that?’ asked Sophie, wanting to be clear on all the details in the letters. ‘Is it the village just along the waterfront from my house?’

  ‘Gornji means “upper”,’ explained Darko. ‘So it is the Stoliv high up on the mountains, as opposed to Donji, or lower, Stoliv, the village on the waterfront. The houses remain but I think maybe only two or three people still live there. There’s no road even now, just a path through the woods, and it’s a steep hike. Mira must have been fit despite the pregnancy.

  ‘We went to church and also took food – cheese pastries, eggs, some dried meat and fish, and homemade bread – to old man Stojic. He’s too infirm these days to get to the shops; even if he still had his donkey to carry his purchases, he wouldn’t be able to make it down, let alone back up again. He seemed in good spirits, though. I don’t think he minds not being able to leave – I think he looks on what is happening in the world far down below and wishes no part of it. Even from such a height above the bay, we could hear the cries of “Viva Duce” as the Italian soldiers paraded along the waterfront.’

  ‘She’s not holding anything back, is she?’ said Sophie, at this last line. ‘I’d be a bit worried about an unwelcome visit from those Blackshirts if I were her. But how kind of her and her mother-in-law to go all that way to take food.’

  Darko smiled. ‘People looked after each other in those days.

  ‘The baby grows stronger by the day, kicking all the time. I’m wondering if we are expecting a gymnast. She (I’m going with Grandma Ilic’s prediction of a girl) is so active. The favourite time for acrobatics is about four o’clock in the morning. Because of that, I am up earlier than you would believe – you always used to joke about my capacity to sleep in but when you return you will find me utterly transformed. I’m no longer a night owl, but a lark.

  ‘Dragan, I don’t know if you are receiving my letters. If you are not, all that I am telling you about the baby is pointless.’

  ‘So you are right and we have found out more,’ Sophie whispered, taking in the information. ‘She doesn’t know if anything is getting through to him.’

  Darko sighed. ‘I had a feeling that was probably the case. So I think she has cast aside tact right now and is just writing what she feels, straight from the heart.’

  Mira’s next words confirmed this.

  ‘I have given up expecting news from you. No one has heard anything from anyone. It is too dangerous for anyone to try to get near. Last week, a fisherman from Rose fell asleep in his boat and drifted close to the rocky shore of the island. He was shot at and though not badly injured, was so terrified that he could not sail his ship and ended up swept by the currents all the way to Bigova.

  ‘Sometimes I think of putting a message in a bottle and launching it into the sea off Lustica, in the hope it might be washed up on the island’s shores. But it’s too risky – for me to go there or for you to receive it. The only hope I have left is of keeping our baby safe and healthy as a gift for you on your return.

  ‘With all our love,

  Mira and Baby

  ‘PS: I’m using the immortelle as instructed by Grandma Ilic. My belly seems enormous but no sign of stretch marks yet!’

  ‘You know what I really want to do,’ mused Sophie, once Darko had handed her back the letter. ‘Go to Mamula island, see the place where Dragan was held. It’s so hard to find out anything about it, but maybe being there – I’d feel what happened. The guidebook says you can’t, though. Get there, that is.’

  ‘Many of the guidebooks to Montenegro were written by people I think have never been here,’ replied Darko, waving his hand dismissively. ‘Or they are very out of date. You can get a boat there, of course, but it’s still cold out on the water. I recommend you wait until the weather is warmer and then I’ll arrange it for you. I know people with boats.’

  ‘Of course you do.’ Sophie smiled. She was beginning to believe there was nothing that Darko couldn’t sort.

  ***

  Whilst waiting to visit Mamula, the latest letter galvanized Sophie to organize an afternoon walk to Gornji Stoliv with Anna and Tomasz. Frank, who’d been hanging around the house a lot more since Anna’s arrival, said he wanted to come too. A rough, hand-painted sign on the wall of a building in lower Stoliv pointed the way.

  Almost immediately after taking it, they passed the cemetery. The many graves were almost all well tended and stocked with flowers and plants. It seemed that the dead did not get neglected here.

  Sophie thought about Matt’s ashes and how she’d been unable to take them after the service at the crematorium. It had been too macabre, the idea of carrying around the carbonated remains of her husband, and she had no idea where to spread them. Somewhere special to Matt? His most loved place had been their home and that she’d had to sell so they couldn’t go there.

  She hadn’t managed to come up with any alternatives, so she’d acquiesced to Matt’s mum’s proposal that she take them and keep them until such time as Sophie came to a decision. Sophie suspected that she never would. Apart from anything else, she didn’t believe the whole ritual had any meaning. The ashes weren’t Matt and that was that. And spreading them anywhere would truly signify the end, of everything they had ever been, of all that they had had.

  The ashes remained with his parents.

  After the cemetery, the path continued upwards, quickly changing from cobbles to a simple track through the long grass. Olive and chestnut trees grew thickly all around and every now and again came the sound of distant cowbells, competing with the lively birdsong that filled the treetops.

  A braying noise alerted them to the fact that there was someone following in their footsteps, and soon an old man in a sky-blue shirt was beside them on the path. To Tomasz’s intense delight, he was leading a white donkey loaded with baskets that hung from an old-fashioned leather contraption across the beast’s back. The man stopped to allow stroking and petting and even offered Tomasz a ride to the top but, when Frank translated this invitation for Anna, she threw her hands up in horror. Too dangerous was the verdict – and indeed it was unclear exactly what Tomasz would sit on and hold on to – so they let the man get on his way and proceeded upwards at their own leisurely pace.

  At times, the track became almost indiscernible but whenever they were unsure of which way to go they would come across a stone marked with an arrow showing the direction and the distance still to travel. How like this path is my grief, reflected Sophie, stopping to catch her breath on a particularly steep incline. The ‘almost lost’ feeling she constantly grappled with, combined with the knowledge that every turn, either mental or literal, might reveal a new, unfamiliar, and frightening landscape. But then, the revelation, more often than not, that it didn’t. It just showed her country she already knew well
, that she thought she had already covered and passed through and left behind – but then realized she had not. She was beginning to feel that it would always be this way.

  Finally, after a long and strenuous climb, they reached the village. The few houses were strung along paths as thin as shoestrings and most seemed to be in the process of sliding down the precipitous hillside. Everything had an appearance of picturesque decrepitude, offset by the sublime views: the sweep of the bay like a giant’s teardrop, a few columns of smoke rising lazily above it like peace pipes in the desert.

  The high mountains stood proud in their full summer mantle of green, and clear blue sky shone as if newly polished. Brightly coloured tenders from a massive cruise ship plied to and fro, darting across the surface of the water like demented dragonflies. In the still silence that hung all around them, Sophie fancied that she could hear the faint cries of ‘Viva il Duce’ rising up from the waterfront just as Mira had done over seventy years ago. The sound echoed through the decades and lingered, tainting the quietude with the memory of evil.

  Proceeding along the ruined path, its stones haphazard and uneven after years of disuse, Sophie startled a great, thick, black slowworm, sending it slithering at lightning speed into its lair. On the steps of the church of St Elijah, where Mira had worshipped with her mother-in-law, a herd of cheerful and curious goats was gathered, making Tomasz jump out of his skin then burst into that strange childish mixture of laughing and crying that could only be comforted by lavish cuddles from Anna and the bribe of a piece of chocolate.

  Winding back on another path between the few houses set back from the cliff edge, Sophie pondered how they were constructed from stones similar in size – and presumably weight – to the ones in her house. How on earth they had been hauled all the way up here, by whom and when, she couldn’t imagine.

  She was also astonished to see electricity cables and lights on in a couple of the dwellings. Darko had been right; some people obviously did still live here. It seemed unimaginable. But confirmation was provided when they came upon the old man they had met on the path earlier. Despite his obviously advanced years, he and a teenage boy were hard at work re-laying the boundary wall of one of the less dilapidated houses. Presumably the materials they were using were the ones transported by the donkey, which was now tethered and grazing peacefully under a wild pomegranate tree. The scene seemed to belong to another age and time, remote from the busy-ness of the world far down below.