Ekaterini

  At the second fitting session Mrs Bogdanović became aggressive or, to put it more elegantly, bellicose.

  ‘What the hell... Are you trying to make me look like an elephant? What do you mean “it won’t go any further”?! Listen here, you’re to downsize my bum like I said. Right?! Otherwise you’ll regret it! You know very well who my husband is, so you’d better get your act together!’

  Lucija and Ljubica were eavesdropping behind the door and giggling. Shrewish Mrs Bogdanović was a caricature of a conceited parvenue. And yet their mother’s patience and perseverance was even more ridiculous; if it had been one of her daughters, she’d long since have reached for the wooden spoon. Ekaterini was getting desperate now, as they could tell by the way she had repeated the same phrase at least six times: ‘I’m doing all I can, madam, it will turn out well. Just a little more patience, please.’ Each time she pronounced the word ‘patience’, Mrs Bogdanović would counter with an even nastier threat. This doesn’t bode well, the girls thought, and stopped their laughing. Their mother’s voice faded away, too. And then:

  ‘You know what, madam? You’re a wretched nit-picker!’

  Lucija and Ljubica were glued to the wall when Mrs Bogdanović almost tore the door off its hinges and shot out of the house like a bullet. ‘Unheeeeard of!’ reverberated in the air behind the now ex-client. When the girls entered the room, Ekaterini was sitting at the pattern-covered table smoking and crying. She was as white as the paper in front of her. The hand raising the cigarette to her mouth trembled, while the other nervously ran through her hair.

  ‘Woe is me, what have I said?!’

  ‘You called her a nit-picker,’ Lucija replied cautiously.

  ‘What does it mean? You saw how furious she got.’

  ‘But Mama, why do you use words if you don’t know what they mean?’

  ‘I’m asking you what it means!’

  Then everything unfolded with the same ballistic speed as Mrs Bogdanović. The admission and the beating. The wooden spoon came down on one head and then on the other. They raced around the table, screaming and shouting. After several attempts, Lucija managed to open the window and the sisters sprang out into the courtyard.

  ‘Is this why I pay for your education? For you to learn words like that? You insolent brats! To think you’d ruin your own mother! Get out of my sight!!’

  The effects of the baleful word, which turned out not to be quite so baleful, lasted until evening. Then Ekaterini began to seriously worry where her children were. ‘Damn those bolshie dames and their money, and curse that nit-picking, birdbrain of a woman for what she put me through! If only my girls are alive and well, everything else will work out like it has until now!’ she swore silently to herself, even though she was alone in the room. And as soon as she swore she’d glance at the icon of Saint Petka seeking forgiveness. She also thanked her when it turned out that the girls hadn’t moved from the courtyard. They had hidden from their mother’s rage behind the rubbish bins the whole time. So it was a good thing she didn’t swear aloud – you never know might be listening.

  ** *

  Ekaterini spent some of the most enjoyable days of her life with her friends Dana, Mirjana, Lela, Kaća, and some of their husbands. They played cards together regularly, at least once a month. They met in each other’s houses, including the little one near Slavija; where there would always be a green felt cloth on the table, several extra ashtrays so they wouldn’t need to interrupt the game to empty them, and little plastic cups for the coins; and where the light was always dimmed. Grandmother won easily almost every time. When she lost, she did it on purpose so as not to endanger these significant friendships. She had mastered bridge back in Madam Atina’s salon; where Madam had taught them this ‘ladies skill’ in the breaks, being sure that they’d need it sooner or later. ‘Sooner or later’ in Serbian, kad-tad, sounded like the clackety-clack a see-saw. She had long since begun to think in the new language.

  Ekaterini travelled a lot in those years. She got into a rhythm of visiting her sisters and brothers and their branching families. Lucija and Ljubica went along, too, and always had a great time despite the obsession of their Greek relatives with searching for ‘good matches’ for them. Ekaterini, her lady friends and some of their husbands travelled all of Yugoslavia several times, followed the trend of shopping in Trieste, took advantage of all the special package tours discovered by Lela’s husband, a prominent journalist, and got to see Hungary, Austria, Italy and Spain without it costing a fortune. But most of all she loved Rovinj; perhaps only Dubrovnik could compete with its wild amusements, secret visits to the nudist beach, foods she had never tried before, and wine she had never drunk before in such quantities. They always stayed in the same house, felt at home there, unwound and had the feeling that they could do whatever they wanted. And played cards with a passion.

  Only once did Ekaterini succumb to the idea of starting an international career. A relative in London promised her a salon of her own in return for just three months work. She fell for the dream of the promised land, even if it was only England and not America. A gale was waiting in the English Channel and she was sick all the way to Customs. She came back from Britain weary, with three suitcases of clothes, umbrellas, an electric blanket which lived longer than her – and crestfallen. Her relative’s plan, as it turned out, had been for Ekaterini to be her assistant on meagre pay, and her servant girl for free on top of that. How people become corrupted when they go abroad!

  So she continued working for private clients in Belgrade. When I went for walks around the city with her in later years as a frail old lady, she’d stop every little while, point at an old building and say, beaming with joy: ‘Here, I worked in this house too!’ Her reputation grew, her good name spread, and she had to turn down many a job offer. She worked flat out for selected clients. She earned good money, but what was even more important was that she managed to set up, nudge along and push through so many things to the hum of her Singer. It struck her in those carefree years that Serbian really is a very physical, even sensual language.

  It’s true what some people say that hardly anyone lived as well in those years as they did in socialist Yugoslavia. Of course, it depended on how a person used their wits and made good, that’s a granted. Our history has forever been a history of resourcefulness. There’s no such thing as a good regime. Or rather, a good regime is one where you can have a good life. Since private businesses weren’t officially permitted, Ekaterini paid no tax. There’s hardly anywhere in the world where you can keep all you earn for yourself, since governments always demand their due. The so-called developed countries live on the taxes of their citizens, or at least so they say. In Yugoslavia they said the country lived on labour alone. And perhaps there was nowhere in the world where people worked as much as here, especially when it was a matter of important and lucrative jobs such as hers – for private clients.

  A Duet

  All of Dušan and Stanica’s children took part in the collective effort to clear away the rubble in Belgrade. Unlike his brothers and sister, Luka didn’t toe the Party line, although at the time he felt he was the most ‘correct-line’ of them all and led the way in that, as in everything else. He was just about the closest thing there is to a ‘born leader’, but he also enjoyed solitude. He liked to be admired. Everywhere behind him he heard the whisper of girls chattering about the tanned, muscular young Montenegrin. Men adored him and he was their idol – they trusted him and followed him blindly. He loved fame but equally enjoyed the air, sailing on it in a glider, alone, so wonderfully alone, listening to the silence.

  Luka was given a shock-worker badge at the youth work drive to build the Šamac-Sarajevo railway line in 1947. But when Stanica was seeing him off she had run after the column of young people crying; she even threatened to kill herself and got down on her knees and begged him not to go. After that she went home, locked herself into the bathroom and crossed herself for a long time. Dušan said nothing. General Rad
ović, whose life Dušan had saved several times by tapping phone conversations and communicating to Radović’s unit where a trap had been set for them, managed to ‘mislay’ his file and stick it deep down in the drawer labelled ‘Stooges of the former regime’. Dušan became invisible. No one touched him, but he didn’t dare to look for work, and he rarely left the house.

  Partisan and Russian songs were sung at the work drive. But one night, inspired by the eyes of a certain Tanja, or the campfire, or perhaps the image of oranges from the garden of his childhood, which he wasn’t even aware he bore with him, Luka got up his courage and sang O sole mio. His comrades were fascinated and asked for more. So he sang Che bella vita. ‘Encore! We want more!’ The Party secretary sat and listened, quiet and unmoving. Not because of him, but simply carried away in song, Luka intoned Volga, Volga, mat’ rodnaya (Volga, Volga, Mother of Mine). Tanja started to cry. Her grandfather had brought that song from Russia, via Turkey, Greece and the Serbian provincial town of Kragujevac, all the way to Belgrade. Shortly after this performance, Luka was invited to join the choir of the Yugoslav People’s Army as a professional. He didn’t see Tanja again. They met by chance in Knez Mihailova Street some thirty years later and had coffee in Café Kolarac. ‘Those were times, my Luka, especially for me... I was forced to marry someone they chose. But you were so free – as free as a bird. At least that’s what I thought.’

  ‘I thought so, too,’ Luka replied.

  * * *

  When his cousin Savo died, something in Dušan changed fundamentally. He was transformed and suddenly found the strength to cast off the burden of year-long silence and get involved in social life. Savo died of a brain tumour, in excruciating pain, conscious until his final breath. ‘I couldn’t stand it any more, my Dušan!’ he lamented as he lay there like a worn-out rag in the army hospital. ‘I had to send so many comrades to forced labour in prison camps – the best comrades! And I went out of my way to warn them. ‘Keep away from Russia!’ I’d tell them. But they wouldn’t listen, and that was their doom.’

  Dušan went to see Savo in hospital every day and listened to the same old story, and only left again when Savo fell asleep. He considered it the very least he could do for the man who had saved his daughter, a besotted Russophile. He’d never be able to repay Savo for that day when he burst into their flat in Višnjić Street, shouting ‘Where is that stupid girl?!’, shut Dušan’s sixteen-year-old daughter into one of the rooms and gave her a good slapping. Then, drenched with sweat, he sat down at the kitchen table, took a piece of paper out of his pocket and said in a tired voice: ‘Look!’ Dušan stared at the letters making up the order that his daughter summarily be sent to Goli Otok. Savo took a swig of rakija, snatched the order out of Dušan’s hand, tore it up and threw the scraps into the stove. ‘We’ll talk when I calm down!’ he uttered as he closed the door behind him and saw himself out.

  Savo’s death took grandfather down to the neighbourhood association. Every day the local residents took turns at giving talks. No one laid down the topics – as we know, self-censorship is more effective than the strictest censor. It was just important that there be a talk. That year a generator in New York had short-circuited and blacked out the whole city. The power failure lasted only one day, but for Dušan, who agonised for days and nights to come up with a topic to speak about to the members of the neighbourhood association, that was a day more precious than a century. After grandfather held his lecture titled ‘The Lights Go out in America Too!’, things took a turn for the better. He found work as a night watchman at the Tanjug news agency and Luka no longer had to fetch food from the Red Cross. Stanica also felt better – she was finally able to go to the market. Not so much for food as for the colours and smells of those victuals, the collage of marketplace voices and the sorely wounded memories of life in Bar – memories whose wounds gradually healed until Stanica made a complete recovery. Only then did the memories become free of their existential role and depart into a quainter past where they belong.

  * * *

  Lucija’s generation never missed the dances in Kalemegdan Park. Rock and roll was the order of the day, and a guy was allowed to slap a girl who refused to dance with him. Lucija could go carefree to the dances. When she was with her Luka, the cool cat from Dorćol, no one dared to bother them except to humbly ask them if everything was OK and if they’d like a cold boza to drink. For all her vigilance, Ekaterini didn’t find out about this musical escapade of her daughter’s either until a year had passed; Lucija decided to tell her that she had got to know a young man in the Abrašević Choir who sang beautifully. Ekaterini listened patiently to the enthusiasm and thrill which spoke through her daughter, telling of a blend of Macedonian and Dalmatian songs, of a tenor and a soprano whose voices flowed together like in a fairy tale – as if they had always been searching and had now found each other; the rapture told of a striking young man with black, curly hair, and of the respect he enjoyed in the Dorćol neighbourhood and beyond, and that they could go wherever they wanted and even watch movies for free.

  ‘And his parents?’ came Ekaterini’s predictable question.

  ‘His dad used to be the postmaster in Bar!’

  ‘Used to be? Is he dead?’

  ‘No, no. He’s alive. I just don’t know exactly what he does now. They live close to Kalemegdan!’

  ‘We also live just five stops from Kalemegdan on the number two.’

  ‘You know what, Mama, your irony can be a pain sometimes!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You can poke fun as much as you like. But I love Luka and am probably going to marry him, whether you like it or not!’

  Ljubica was listening in on this conversation and asking herself what she felt. Envy? Happiness for her sister? Loneliness? Her own marriage prospects had last been on the agenda when she was fifteen; a ‘good match’ had turned up in Belgrade – a wealthy Greek businessman, a respectable widower of fifty-eight. She went along with things to the extent required so she could at least see him first. And when she set eyes on the squat old man, she was so horrified that she rushed out of the beautiful villa in the Vračar neighbourhood which he had bought for himself and his bride-to-be and didn’t show up for two days. When Ekaterini had survived the police hunt for her daughter and the tactless questions of the officers and finally saw Ljubica alive and well, she swore she’d never think of arranging a marriage for her daughters again. Of course, that didn’t prevent her in the slightest from interrogating the ‘ho-hum fiancés’ her daughters chose and scrutinising their family tree down to the finest root hairs.

  ‘But, Mama!’

  ‘What do you mean “but Mama”? That is what mothers are for!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘So daughters don’t make the same mistakes as their mothers.’

  Ekaterini was a professional dressmaker and didn’t speak Serbian with any great skill; she just focussed on her capital-M mistakes and corrected what was wrong. Knowledge gained through trial and error can come in handy some day. You never know.

  When the Palm Trees Sway their Branches

  Lucija and Luka loved each other most in the years when they enjoyed themselves as members of a professional choir, one of the two best in the world, and travelled all of Yugoslavia and Europe. They dressed exquisitely, were always in company and had a great time. In fact, those years were spent mainly singing and laughing. They’d bring back something for Ekaterini from each of their trips, declaring it ‘the most valuable thing in that country’: Czech crystalware, a Russian fur hat, a German watch. Ekaterini’s love of fine craftsmanship remained untouched by the experiences of war and strained peace.

  ‘I still like Czechoslovakia most of all!’ she cried, genuinely enchanted. These crystal glasses are going straight in the glass case for everyone to see!’

  ‘You should just know that they give wine a special taste,’ her future son-in-law quipped, true to his motto that you should never let a chance for a joke go by. ‘It’s better that y
ou drink out of them.’

  ‘No need! I’ve got glasses for drinking. These are for looking at. Besides, everyone knows I don’t drink.’

  In the years of Yugoslav unity, as they were called in retrospect, people often travelled to the Adriatic. They called it ‘our sea’ or ‘our coast’. No one could say which village, island, town or bay was more beautiful, more unique, or more ‘theirs’ than anyone else’s. It was basically the same with Lucija’s photos. Still, the one I love the most shows mother leaning up against a boat called ‘Gaucho’. The photo is black and white and therefore hasn’t lost its crispness. As if it was taken yesterday.

  ‘And where is this?’ I ask her from time to time, trying to get her to recall something which almost no one registered back then.’

  ‘Oh, somewhere on our coast. How should I know?’

  Close-fitting clothes and rounded bodies were in fashion at that time. Today, in the age of heroin chic, you’d probably say they were fat. The photos show Lucija wearing short skirts which revealed the grace of her body, her slender waist, sculpted hips and beautiful legs, which were surpassed perhaps only by her face with the horn-rims popular at the time and her hair tied up into a bun. Most of the photos show her and Luka walking arm in arm, with him in a white shirt, slacks with a crisply ironed crease, and shoes of the finest leather. She wore elegant buckskin slip-ons even during the day, she recalls in the rare moments she agrees to return to her youth.

  The sighs of admiration which accompanied them as they strutted the streets of Belgrade were also very much an expression of wonder: ‘Where did they get that? You can tell it’s not from Trieste!’ Shopping in Greece was incomparably more pleasant precisely because people from Yugoslavia didn’t flock there to shop. Plus everything was available. When Lucija’s relatives set eyes on their future son-in-law – this tall, tanned young man with curly black hair and a tufty moustache – heard the smattering of Greek which Luka’s ear for languages had picked up in passing and assured themselves that he ‘knows how to enjoy life’, they finally gave up their matchmaking efforts. They took him to their heart forever and, it would be fair to say, breathed a sigh of relief.