Mother Tongue

by Tania Romanov

  The problem, I finally understood, was that this description of the small road with the church at the top and the sea below fit almost every road of this town on its small hill.

  “Do you have their address?” Harold asked. “Did you correspond?”

  “Correspond?” she said, looking at me.

  Harold rephrased his question. “Did you write each other?”

  He had to do that more and more with Zora. Even though she understood English quite well, some expressions escaped her. And her comprehension had recently started slipping.

  “Oh, you know, I don't write letters. And my family is worse.” Zora turned to me, and switched languages, as she often did. “Kaži mu, tell him, that there were no addresses. It was a small town. You just used people’s names.”

  “So you know their name?” Harold asked.

  “Of course I know their name! It's my uncle’s family we're talking about.” She slapped him gently, and she laughed. “Could you forget your uncle's name?”

  “Sometimes I wonder,” he said, a bit obscurely. I could tell he was starting to question what Zora really did remember. “I guess I'm just nervous wandering around a foreign country, near a war zone, not speaking the language.”

  “But this isn't a foreign country, Harold. This is my country.”

  That simple statement said so much. I wondered then what Mama was really looking for in coming here right now. My father’s death had hit her extremely hard, and she hadn’t been able to recover back at home. Here she seemed renewed. Was she reexamining her life in America? Did this explain her re-energized demeanor?

  She was in a place she had left as an infant and visited only once again in her youth, but for Mama this clearly didn’t feel foreign. They all spoke her language; their dialect was one that lived deep in her memory. The waters of the Adriatic sparkled around us, the harbor below was still full of fishing boats, and the coffee came black and thick in small ceramic cups.

  But no matter how familiar it all seemed to her, we were hopelessly lost. No matter what she was seeking, we weren’t finding it.

  “Let's drive down to where the shops are, at the bottom of the hill, where we came in,” I finally said, frustrated. “There was a café there, and some men were sitting outside.”

  We drove to the center of town. It was nearly deserted, with only a few people near the shops. A young woman stood outside the door of the café and pushed her baby carriage back and forth. An older woman emerged with a cake box and they walked away together. Suddenly I saw the post office.

  “They probably have a phone book in there, and we can try searching in it,” I suggested.

  The post office was open, but, like everything else, seemed almost abandoned. Finally a young woman appeared at the counter.

  “Can I help you?” she asked in Serbo-Croatian. Zora had spoken it with me all my life, insisting that her language was my birthright. She said we spoke po našemu. It meant in our way. In our language.

  “We're looking for my mother's uncle, who lives here,” I replied, po našemu. “Do you have a phone book?”

  “Certainly.” She understood me without a problem. “It's a bit old. We haven't had a new one since the war started. Has he lived here long?”

  “Over eighty years,” replied Zora, laughing. “Bogdan wouldn't move from here if you put a gun to his head.” It wasn't perhaps the best figure of speech, given how her own father had left, but it got the point across.

  There was no Bogdan Rojnič listed for Medulin. We also found no listing for Matte, Bogdan's son.

  “I am sure we got letters from them,” said Zora. “But that was before we left Yugoslavia.”

  “Ah . . . Did you live here, as well?” the young woman asked.

  “Oh, I was born right here, in Medulin. My father was Martin Marinovič; my mother was Katarina Rojnič before she married. Bogdan was her brother. Their families lived here for centuries. But I left when I was very young,” Mama continued, turning back to us. “I can't imagine what happened to Bogdan.”

  “Do you have a mailman who might know the local families?” I asked. “Maybe someone older?”

  “There is an older mailman, but he has gone for lunch. He will be back around three.”

  “Thank you,” I said, relieved at this new possibility. “We'll come back.”

  We walked over to the café, got some coffee and some torte. The local cakes were very familiar to all of us, as Mama had baked them all my life. As we sat down the young woman suddenly came out from the post office, looked around, and then approached the outside table where we were sitting.

  “Izvinite, molim vas. I’m so sorry,” she said, flustered. “I just remembered. He won't be back this afternoon. He finished his rounds early and has gone fishing for the weekend. You can talk to him next week.”

  Her words were devastating. Next week we would be on a ferry to Venice. It looked like our chance of finding what we came for—Mama's family home and her relatives—was evaporating.

  It had seemed so achievable, this plan to stop in a town just across the water from Venice and find Mama’s home. Now we just sat and stared at each other.

  “Tell us what you remember,” Harold finally said to Zora. He wanted to learn as much as possible about this quiet spot where her story began, and about those who stayed when her family was forced to leave. Maybe it would lead us somewhere.

  I looked at Mama, trying to imagine her thoughts, barely knowing my own.

  “Ne razumem ništa. I don’t understand anything. In my mind it was all so clear,” Zora finally said. “When I was a girl, my mother talked about Istria all the time. About how hard it was for her to have to leave. About their life here.”

  “A lot like you talked about my childhood with me when I was younger, right, Mama?”

  “That’s right, Tania.”

  “It’s the reason I can remember life in Trieste, from when I was a baby. You talked about it so often,” I said, referring to my own young childhood. Because of my Mama’s stories, I knew what it was like to have vivid memories of a time when I was very young.

  “Yes, that’s right, Tania. And of course you found Campo when you went back. I was sure I would find my Mama’s home, too.” She and I talked, po našemu, in our language, while I translated for Harold. It was a familiar mode; we could have been back in Zora’s kitchen in San Francisco.

  “I remember being in her kitchen so clearly,” Zora continued. “She would cook dinner, I did my schoolwork and helped my sisters with theirs.”

  “Mama talked about the time when I was born,” Zora was in full storytelling mode. “About living across the street from Roža and Bogdan. About your grandfather, Deda Marinovič, fishing. About purple grapes and ripe figs. She was convinced that the days were clearer, that nature was celebrating the end of war. That life was getting better. But it wasn’t to be, you know.” Zora’s voice drifted off as she visualized a past she only knew through her mother’s voice. She could hear it as if Katarina was with us in that moment, in Medulin, talking to her. Po našemu.

  For Katarina had always told stories to her daughters when they were young, painting a picture of life right there, in Istria. Zora heard about a woman in love with her husband, her children, and with her beautiful homeland. But there was always a hidden tension to the stories, for Zora knew how they ended, and that nothing was as simple as Katarina’s telling made it sound. For Zora, her mother’s stories—with Venetian ships, wars, an ogre called Mussolini, and threats of exile—were riveting, and she never grew tired of listening, especially her favorite story: the one about her. The one about the baby that couldn’t wait.

  “Our lives changed when you were born,” Katarina would tell little Zora. These stories often started with the words: “Sve se opet promjenilo. Nothing was ever the same again.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The baby who wouldn't wait

  “Ova ne čeka. This one won't wait,” were the words that always got Zora listening, because t
hat story was about her.

  It was the summer of 1922, the grapes were still green, the figs just ripening, and the fish were hiding farther out at sea than usual as Katarina struggled with the approaching birth of her seventh child. The First World War was over, and new babies had already come tumbling into their world. Four girls filled the house with noise; the two lost boys were still missed.

  In their small town of Medulin they perched on a hill overlooking the Adriatic, a sea she would never tire of watching, even when the Bura winds howled over it toward Italy. Katerina knew the massive stones used to build their houses would keep them warm and safe from the fiercest storms.

  Prokleti Italiani, she thought. It was the damned Italians, not the winds, threatening them now. Just a few years ago it had been the Hungarians, and before that the Austrians. It was always someone. Endless wars. Perhaps the beauty of their homeland was so irresistible the fighting over its control would never end.

  This baby, the seventh she would bear, wasn't due until August, but Katarina had known she wouldn't wait. She always knew when they would be girls, and it was no different with this one.

  “Ova neče dugo čekati, Martin,” she had said to her husband as he was getting ready to go out to sea a few days earlier. “This one won’t wait much longer.”

  “Luckily Roža can help when you need it,” he replied. They were at home, across the road from Katarina's childhood house, where her brother Bogdan lived with his wife Roža and their young son. Martin was happy that Roža was a good midwife. She had taken care of Katarina through Slavića’s traumatic birth after the war’s end. He knew she would take care of Katarina now, while he was gone. “I really have to go out for a few days on this ship, you know.”

  “Yes, I know, but I still worry about you going out, Martin.” Every time he left she felt uneasy. “It's not over yet, is it?”

  “Not really. And no ships will protect us . . .” Martin caught himself. He didn’t need to talk about it just now. “I’ll be back soon, duša, my soul. Everything will be all right.”

  Martin knew it wasn’t looking good. World War I was long over, yet the spoils were still being fought over, and their home was in the middle of it all. But he didn’t want to worry Katarina just now. She had been slowly getting over her personal tragedies from that last war, going forward day by day, remembering anew how wonderful their life here had always been. He couldn’t bear to have her frightened again. There would be time to talk about it when he returned. He had some plans to work out in the meantime.

  Katarina was right. The baby really couldn't wait to get out. A few days after Martin left she sat in Roža’s kitchen, looking out the window at her own home. Martin was still out to sea; Bogdan was at work. Babies and children ran around outside in the open courtyard, near the vegetable garden. She could hear the pig grunting and the chickens pecking in their enclosure. The jezva, the old copper Turkish coffee pot, was on the wood stove, still hot from the midday meal. Aromas of strong coffee mingled with ripe fruit smells. A bee buzzed in through the open door, mistaking the flowers in the old clay jug for the ones growing outside.

  Katarina had grown up in this kitchen; she still knew it better than Roža did. How many generations of women had cooked Turkish coffee the same way on that same stove? How many had waited here for their babies, imagining the lives to come? She was just slipping into a gentle reverie as Roža bustled back in from picking tomatoes.

  That was when she felt the first pains. She gripped the table before her, its wood polished by her own mother’s hands, its edges rounded from years of use. The olive tree out in back, the one that had replaced the one this table was crafted from, was already ancient in its own right. It felt good to hold on to something she had known since childhood, to ground herself as this new baby pushed her way into the world.

  July 21 it was, the heart of that warm summer of 1922. Roža got her across the road to her own bed, the one she shared with her beloved Martin. The place where she had given birth so many times already, and where he himself had been born.

  The new one was born a few hours later, before her father came back from his voyage. Of course it was a girl, and she literally burst into the world, as if she knew her parents were counting on her to bring in a new dawn.

  “Pa koliko je ljepa. My, she's so beautiful,” breathed Martin a few days later, when he saw her.

  “You think they are all beautiful,” Katarina said, happy he was home. Back with her. Safe.

  “That's because they are all beautiful.”

  My beautiful wife and my beautiful babies, he thought. I should feel like the luckiest man in the whole universe!

  If only it was that simple.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Surviving the First War

  Martin often looked back on his life and remembered what came before the birth of his seventh child. His mind coursed back over the years, and all the challenges they had lived through. But there was one story he never shared. It was the story of a time just after the First World War, when there had been only four children, and of Katarina coming back from her forced exile during that war.

  Thirty-five at the war's onset in 1914, Martin was too old to fight, and in any case, his maritime building expertise was vital to the war effort. He was conscripted to work at the military shipyard in the nearby city of Pula, where the Austro-Hungarian Empire had its naval shipyards. The very existence of that naval center made it dangerous for families to stay in the area, especially after Italy joined the war on the side of the British. The enemy was suddenly next door.

  Their Austrian rulers were now surrounded by enemies, and worried about potential traitors within. They decided to deport wives and families. But they needed the shipyard workers to stay loyal, so they told Martin and his colleagues that their families were being evacuated for their own safety rather than as security against their potential treason. No one was given a choice; they were simply told to bring one suitcase each and be at the train station in the morning.

  So the women and children had been sent negde daleko—somewhere far away—supposedly somewhere safe. The men knew their families had been moved east, into what was then Hungary, but there had been virtually no contact since their evacuation in 1915. Martin grew ever more desperate as time passed without word from Katarina, but there was nothing he could do but wait.

  When the war finally ended three years later Martin and his colleagues returned to their empty homes and started rebuilding their lives, waiting for their families to return. A single letter reached Martin’s brother-in-law, Bogdan, telling him that the women were on their way. At last.

  But the Katarina who had left—a strong, vibrant woman with two sons and two daughters—was not the same woman who returned. A radically altered Katarina—a woman with only two children, their daughters Mara and Rožića—got off the train.

  Martin couldn’t sort through his emotions: relief at his wife’s arrival, shock at everything else. Katarina had changed frighteningly while in exile. Her hair was still nearly black, but her eyes didn't have the sparkle Martin had fallen in love with as a young man. Her face was lined, and she walked like some of the soldiers he had seen upon their return from battle—bent over, huddled into herself, looking around furtively. Even the girls—who had still been babies on their departure—re-entered his life as quiet, oddly adult-like children trailing behind their mother.

  Martin reached out his powerful arms and held Katarina gently. He knelt to encircle the girls. Tears poured down Katarina’s face as she told him that the two boys got sick and were taken away. She was told they had caught the flu.

  “Nisu se vratili, duše. Nema ih. They didn’t return, dear. They are gone.”

  Their sons had been taken away to a quarantine center with hundreds of others and had not come home. Katarina never saw her boys again. The authorities didn’t even pretend to understand her language. She was simply told that they had died and were buried. She and the girls were not allowed anywhere ne
ar the quarantine areas for fear of the infection spreading. At that time, Katarina didn’t know that the flu epidemic raged across the continent in 1918 and killed nearly fifty million people—more than even the war. She only knew her sons were gone, and that many women lost children. It was almost always, it seemed to her, the boys.

  And then the Hungarian military was routed, evacuating and abandoning territory, left with but a small fraction of their earlier lands. It was a chaotic time. The soldiers rampaged and destroyed randomly, rather than leave anything for the enemy, and the women and children always felt afraid and helpless. The conditions were worse than even during the war, but Katarina didn’t want to leave, convinced her boys were still there, somewhere. She never believed they had died. In the end, though, attacked by the fleeing troops, fearing for her very life, she had no choice but to run.

  Katarina was afraid the nightmares would never end, but then she found just enough strength to gather her girls and forget everything else. She locked it all deep in a person who no longer existed, focused on making it home and nothing more.

  Martin could barely take it all in. He had lost his sons, and now he felt there was a risk of losing his wife as well. She seemed on the verge of losing her mind. He had to be strong for all of them so they could rebuild their lives in this beautiful spot that he knew so well.

  Katarina and Martin’s families had lived in Medulin, just across the Adriatic Sea from Venice, for centuries. Originally their pradjedi, their ancestors, had come from the coast of Montenegro, in the southern Balkans, near Albania and Serbia.

  “The Marinovič clan were always shipbuilders,” Martin would say when it was his turn to tell the children stories. He talked of the Venetians sending big ships south, after their population was wiped out by the plagues of the Middle Ages. He himself had grown up on stories about those ships, of how they were seaworthy, large and beautiful. The people were told of a fertile land that would be welcoming. Venice promised jobs rebuilding the shipyard in Pula, and guaranteed that they could speak their own language.