Mother Tongue

by Tania Romanov

  Katarina cleaned up and put flowers on the graves of her parents and of Martin’s parents. It was only when they stood over the smaller stones that Zora realized how little she knew of the boys: just the two names: Vjekoslav, meaning glorious through the ages, and Dragutin, the dear one. She knew they had died during the First World War, but no one ever talked about them; perhaps it just hurt too much. Even this time, Katarina said little.

  “Mama, how did the boys die?” Zora finally asked near the end of the visit while Katarina just stood and prayed, silently.

  “They died of influenza,” Katarina said simply, with almost no emotion. “Or so they told me . . .”

  “We were in those terrible camps, just before the end of the war. It was such an awful time, so much pain, so much evil . . .” She turned away even as she answered. Zora suspected her mother was crying, but Katarina would never let her daughter see that deep sorrow.

  The way she spoke let Zora know they would not be talking about her mother's time in exile, about what had happened when she and the children had been deported during the First World War. Katarina was different in the cemetery, withdrawn, almost a stranger. She retreated to a place that didn’t include anyone else, and it was clear she wanted to be alone. This, from a woman who normally surrounded herself with children, who reveled in their company, who, by choice, was almost never alone. Who told stories, and who wanted Zora to know about the past. Clearly, this was not a past that she was willing to share. It was a Katarina that Zora hardly recognized.

  So Zora explored the town on her own during her mother’s visits in the cemetery. She walked to the water and took her shoes off, waded in. She wished she had thought to bring a bathing suit. There were fishermen about, and a few children running and swimming. But it was pretty quiet. It was pleasant enough, but she couldn’t imagine living there. She would quickly miss the vibrance of her city, the cafés, and the young men.

  On their last night in Istria, when Zora and Katarina were alone in the room where they shared a bed, Katarina talked about the importance of having all her daughters speak her language. Zora wondered if that was easier to talk about than all the rest of it: the pain she felt about her boys; having to leave her homeland; and part of the family in Vojvodina, still at some risk of being taken over by the Hungarians. It seemed odd, how tied both her parents were to language. She had never felt much concern about the issue; Serbo-Croatian was just the language spoken everywhere she had ever lived, and she didn’t give it all that much thought.

  “Biti če mi lakše, I will rest easier, when Yugoslavia regains all the lands that were taken away after the first war and during the second war. I won’t have to worry about my grandchildren having to speak some foreigner’s language,” Katarina said.

  “What about religion, Mama? Is that as important to you as language?”

  “The Communists have taken religion away, and there are many who are upset about that. But you know, Zora, it's not important to me,” confessed Katarina. “Our ancestors were part of the Orthodox church in Montenegro, and in Istria, at some point long before my birth, we became Catholic. Now our religion is supposed to be Communism. I don’t really think any of it matters. We know in our souls how to be good people. That is all that is important, in the end. It will be less about who won which war and more about how much love we shared. I want you to remember that, Zora. Teach your children that all war is evil. Only love matters.”

  “You are right, Mama,” agreed Zora. She had really never heard her mother be so reflective, and wasn’t sure how to respond.

  “But promise me, duše, that you’ll work as hard as I did to make sure your children speak our language so we will always be linked together. It’s the one thing that has tied us to our people for all these hundreds of years.”

  “Of course, Mama. Why wouldn’t my children speak our language? Now that the war is over, we’re all one country again. Besides, I have to get married before I think about what language my children speak,” said Zora, dozing off.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Losing Katarina

  Zora felt her mother's energy flag on the way home to Zagreb. She assumed it was just the exhaustion of the trip, and the deeply emotional time she had spent in her hometown, with her family, and the memory of all her loved ones in the cemetery. It would be better, she thought, when they were all together again.

  Upon their return, Katarina updated Martin on all the changes. He was sorry to hear about the feud with his relatives, and that it had spread to include Bogdan and Roža. How tragic that they were fighting over houses and land, when he had given up everything and made a new start. He now realized he could never go back, even if the Italians left. It was a bitter taste, the residue of that eviction and displacement. Now, it would just be too painful to return.

  Katarina's energy, meanwhile, didn't revive, and a visit to the doctor confirmed the worst—the cancer had spread throughout her body.

  She told Zora first, since they had just spent those special days together. Zora suspected, then, that Katarina had known what would happen, and that it had pushed her to make that last trip home. Suddenly many things about the trip made more sense. She was grateful to have shared that special time with her mother and that she saw the land that had been so dear to both her parents, the place where she herself had been born.

  A few months later Katarina died at home, surrounded by the family she had protected and sacrificed so much for.

  To the last Katarina never complained. She just kept telling them how happy they had all made her. She said over and over again, “Vi ste moja sreča I radost. You are my joy and good fortune.”

  Katarina never saw Istria returned to Yugoslavia, but she saw enough when she visited to believe that it would happen in the near future. That was good enough for her; it reassured her in her final weeks. Katarina also knew, deep inside, that her husband needed to stay with his girls now that she was leaving them.

  Istria was the land of her birth, but Yugoslavia as a whole was the homeland of her daughters. Martin was safe and at home.

  PART II

  Zora

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  A best friend's wedding

  For a year after her mother’s death, Zora missed her all the time. She was the oldest one living at home. Ljuba was continuing her studies. Milena and her husband Dule lived nearby, in his mother’s apartment. Martin had retired, but he just didn’t have the same spirit after Katarina died. He stayed healthy and spent his time in the café with his friends. He no longer cared much what he ate even though Zora tried hard to cook his favorite foods the way her mother had.

  Zora loved her work at the telephone exchange. She was soon the lead person on the Zagreb-to-Belgrade link and felt personally responsible for keeping that voice traffic flowing. Yugoslavia was growing stronger, and it was important for Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, to stay linked to the capital of the Republic in Serbia.

  Zora was grateful that they had lived in Petrovaradin, in a Serbian speaking area, all those years of her childhood, because her knowledge of the Cyrillic alphabet gave her an edge up on the telegram communications that alerted them to issues that might arise. The language of the Republic was Serbo-Croatian, and both the Croatian, or Latin-based alphabet, and the Serbian, Cyrillic alphabet, were broadly used. But there was no doubt that the Serbs were in charge, and they insisted on Cyrillic. They wanted to maintain a strong relationship with Russia, or rather the Soviet Union, and having the same alphabet and a Slavic language helped.

  Zora also knew that the management in Belgrade was very comfortable talking to her and considered her very competent. Her bosses didn’t spend time wondering whose side her family had supported in the war, or whether Zora’s relatives still resented the fact that the capital of the country was in Serbia. Zora sounded like one of them, and they assumed that she was reliable.

  She really hadn’t given the issue of language, or what flavor of Serbo-Croatian she spoke, all that much th
ought in the past. But now, as she saw how she was benefiting from sounding Serbian, every once in a while she had the vague idea of asking her father about it. She just wasn’t sure why her family had let her grow up speaking Serbian when they spoke Croatian. She guessed that as long as it was a Slavic variant, they wouldn’t care. Or maybe they liked that link to their past in Montenegro. In any case, she had started school in Serbia, and she sounded like her schoolmates by the time they had moved away. With Croatia joining the Nazis during World War II, it was a minor form of protest for her to not change her spoken expression to sound like them.

  Her parents, she knew, had always been obsessed with speaking “their” language, rather than Italian or Hungarian, but she and her sisters avoided the subject as much as possible. They spoke Hungarian because they had lived near that country, in Vojvodina, with many Hungarian neighbors. They didn’t hate Italians or the Italian language like their parents did. And it wasn’t a subject they wanted to argue about. They didn’t miss Istria because they had never lived there. They didn’t want to live in a backwater next to Italy. They were young and liked being in the heart of the city of Zagreb, which was really recovering quickly from the war. Everyone around them had always spoken Serbo-Croatian, so it didn’t feel like a threatened language to them.

  There was even a saying Zora had learned while going to school in Serbia: “Govori po Srpski da te ceo svet razume.” It meant “Speak Serbian so the whole world understands you.” She didn’t know where it came from, and it could even be that her teacher meant it seriously, but she and her friends always thought it was funny. They had studied enough geography and history to know how little Serbia was and how few people in the world understood their language. But they also knew how proud Serbian people were. So Zora would use this one phrase ironically, as a way to bring things back to reality when her friends let themselves get too arrogant about something.

  But life for Zora was about so much more than language and politics. Right now her best friend Draga was getting married and had invited Zora to be her kuma. The kuma and kum were the bridesmaid and best man, but it was also a commitment to be godparents to the children from the marriage.

  Draga was marrying Josip, a young man from Belgrade. They had been seeing each other since before the war, when Draga’s family had also lived in Serbia. Draga’s father moved the family back to Croatia when things got dicey between the two countries, worried that his Croatian roots would make it harder to keep a job in Serbia.

  Draga and Josip had maintained their relationship, aided by the fact that she could talk to him on the long distance connections. Josip worked at a small electrical equipment company in Belgrade that was owned by some White Russians—as refugees from the Communist revolution of 1917 were called—who had lived there all their lives. Zora had met Josip when he visited and enjoyed the time they all spent together. But she had some concerns.

  “Oh, Draga.” Zora said while trying on the outfit she would wear for the wedding. They were at the home of a neighboring woman who had sewn Draga’s own beautiful pale pink wool suit. Zora had wanted to sew her own, but Draga convinced her that this would be more special. Of course she knew Zora would pick beige, so she had selected the rich plum fabric herself. “I am so excited about you and Josip, but you're moving so far away. And aren't you worried that he works for those Russians?”

  “Oh, Zora, mila, dear, I will miss you when I move. But since we work for the phone company, you and I will be able to talk to each other, and you can come visit us. And no, I'm not worried about the Russians. Josip has told me all about them. They are good people; they're just like us.”

  The seamstress had left the room to alter a seam, and Zora continued. “I don't know. My father is concerned about the Soviet Union, about how their influence is spreading.”

  “I understand. But these people aren't like that, you know,” said Draga. She and Josip had talked a lot about the people he worked with. Draga had met them, and thought they were interesting—and handsome. She couldn’t wait to introduce them to her best friend. “Their families fled the Communists years ago. They all grew up here and would never go back. You know Josip has asked Tolya, the younger brother, to be his kum. They grew up near each other and were in technical school together. He’s very special. You'll see—you'll get to meet him when he comes for the wedding.”

  The seamstress came back in; the altered suit fit perfectly, and Draga was thrilled she had picked the warm-toned fabric. Zora looked beautiful in it.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Meeting Tolya

  Draga and Josip’s wedding in 1946 was small and intimate. The timing, at the end of summer, was perfect, for Zagreb was at its best. It was warm, and the days were long.

  The traditional and elaborate ceremony was performed in the Orthodox Cathedral, unknown to Zora before that time. The priest wore a long gold robe and had a beard; deacons swung incense holders, and a choir sang in the back of the church. Draga had converted to the Orthodox religion of Josip’s family. None of the young people felt strongly about religion, and Draga easily agreed to the conversion since Josip’s grandparents were religious.

  At the celebratory dinner after the wedding everyone toasted: “Živeli! Cheers!” and sipped rakija until they could barely stand, and then they all danced the traditional Kolo circle dances.

  Draga and Josip had other dinners with the family and a few close friends. Of course Zora and Tolya, the younger partner in the electrical firm, were included in all the events. Since Draga and Josip wanted time to themselves as well, Zora and Tolya inevitably ended up spending a lot of time together. In addition to eating and dancing, they talked.

  Zora learned that Tolya had trained as an engineer, and that, like Josip’s, his education was interrupted by the war. They had both served briefly in the Yugoslav cavalry, but as the Germans defeated Yugoslavia in a matter of days, they didn’t see much action.

  Zora had never even met a Russian before. She quickly concluded, however, that he didn’t seem foreign to her at all. Besides, he was tall, dark-haired and handsome. And he had a gentle smile and beautiful brown eyes—eyes that couldn’t stop looking at her.

  At twenty-nine, Tolya was five years older than she was, and had grown up in Serbia because his family fled the Bolshevik revolution when he was an infant. He and Zora had a lot in common. Both had been forced to flee their country of birth because their people lost a war. Both grew up never knowing the place their parents had lived in for centuries but still held dear. Both loved the country they had grown up in, considered themselves natives, and had no desire to ever leave. Both had jobs they liked, which were challenging and had good potential.

  Tolya’s family, like Zora's, had moved several times within Yugoslavia as his father looked for work. Now, with his father dead and his brothers married, Tolya lived with his mother in the heart of Belgrade, not far from Zora’s sister, Jana.

  Zora and Tolya also both had families obsessed with “their” language. Tolya’s father had died before the Second World War, but his mother insisted on maintaining the language, religion and tradition of her Russian Cossack ancestors. Tolya spoke Russian fluently. He had gone to a Russian boarding school that the Yugoslav government set up for the immigrants under the assumption that they would eventually return to Russia when the Communists were defeated.

  Instead, the Communists had not only retained control over Russia, they had taken over Yugoslavia. The émigré Russian community was devastated. They hated Communists almost as much, if not more, than everyone had hated the Germans.

  Tolya had no more interest in going back home to Russia to live than Zora did in making her home in Istria. As far as he was concerned, Yugoslavia was his country, and he was building a good life there. There was a lot of structural reconstruction after the war ended, and for a time Tolya had worked around Tuzla, in Bosnia, laying electrical wires. He always spoke fondly about life in Tuzla and of his friends there—the Musulmani—as the Russians called
Moslems. Eventually he had moved back to Belgrade to work with his brothers, and their electrical workshop in Belgrade was thriving and growing.

  Since Tolya had come all the way from Belgrade for the wedding, he stayed almost a week, exploring Zagreb. By the time the wedding festivities were over, Zora and Tolya were interested in getting to know each other much better. Zora brought Tolya home to meet her father and Ljuba.

  Martin remained skeptical about getting close to a Russian, but Ljuba couldn’t stop talking about him. “Oh, my God,” she said, over dinner a few days after he left. “He’s so tall and handsome! Zora, why do you always get the tall, handsome ones? Or are you going to tell me ‘he’s just a friend?’”

  “I’m not sure, Ljuba,” said Zora. “This one could be something more. But he lives in Serbia. I haven’t been back there since we moved here almost ten years ago.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Well, for a start, we’re going to talk on the phone a lot,” she said with a fond smile on her face. “They have a line in their workshop, and of course I have access to the country’s long distance network!”

  “I imagine you are already making your coworkers blush with your conversations,” said Ljuba.

  It was Zora who blushed as she looked at her father. “Well, not exactly.”

  “But duše, he’s Russian,” complained Martin. “I really liked that Croatian young man you were seeing last year.”

  “Oh, that wasn’t serious, Tata! Besides, does it really matter where his family comes from?”

  “Well, you don’t speak Russian, for one thing.”

  “But he speaks Serbian, Tata. I have no trouble communicating with him.”

  “Didn’t you say he speaks Russian with his family?” asked her father.