by Glenn Meade
“You—you make it sound as if it’s a life full of terrible secrets.”
“I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t, Carla. But let me reassure you, I’m here to help you through it. I’ll be with you every step of the way.”
“Do I have any other option?”
“I guess not. But we’ll need to do this gradually, over days and weeks. To do otherwise would be like pulling a bandage off a burn victim. Do it quickly and you pull away the healing flesh.”
“How . . . how do we start?”
“With the truth. Let me get you something.”
Dr. Leon rose and crossed to the bookshelves. He removed a gray box file, opened it, and took out a burgundy, leather-bound journal.
Carla saw that it looked old and scuffed.
“What exactly do you know about your parents, Carla?”
“Not much. They died abroad when I was young. My grandparents brought me up.”
“Died where?”
“In Europe. Germany, Baize said. My grandfather was based there with the military.”
“Died how?”
“In an auto wreck. Baize said I was thrown through the windshield before the car went up in flames and my mom and dad died.”
“What happened to you?”
“I was badly concussed. That’s why I figured I could never remember much about my life back then.”
“Did you ever ask to see your parents’ graves?”
“Sure. But Baize said their remains were cremated.”
“Didn’t you ever ask Baize about your mom and dad? About what your life was like before you came to live with your grandparents?”
“All the time. My childhood is such a blank slate.”
“Tell me more about the recollections you have.”
“I have a vague feeling of living abroad. Of a warm, happy family life in a strange country that was different from America.”
“Nothing more specific than that?”
“Not really. The memories seem as wispy as smoke.”
“You said a warm, happy family life. Did you recall brothers, sisters?”
“It’s funny you should ask that. For a long time I carried an image around inside my head.”
“What sort of image?”
“Of my mother with a baby in her arms. I used to have a strange feeling I may have had a younger brother. But whenever I asked Baize, she dismissed it.”
“What else did Baize say?”
“Not a lot. She and my grandfather never liked talking about the past.”
“Why?”
“They’d always get really uptight if I mentioned my mom or dad. My father was their only child so I guess it was hard for them, losing him. I figured they didn’t like to resurrect memories.”
“So you stopped asking?”
“Pretty much. The subject almost became taboo.”
“Weren’t you curious?”
“Are you kidding? All the time. But it seemed easier not to upset them by asking about it.”
“Have you seen your parents in any photographs?”
“Just one, of my father and mother when they married.”
“But no others?”
“No. Baize said my mom and dad were moving home with all our belongings when the auto wreck happened. That our family albums were destroyed in the blaze. Can I tell you a secret?”
“Sure.”
“The older I got, I sort of wondered if there was more to my life back then than Baize was telling. That things were being kept from me. That maybe even there were scary reasons for Baize not talking about my parents.”
“Such as?”
“Did the accident really happen? Did one of them kill the other? Did they have a suicide pact?”
“Really?”
“I wondered if unpleasant stuff like that may have caused my grandparents to avoid the subject. So I finally stopped asking in case I got that kind of answer.”
“Did you ever feel as if you were missing a part of your past?”
“Doc, you’re starting to bring up a lot of questions that bothered me for a long time. Questions I used to ask myself as I grew up, but never got complete answers to. That troubled me back then. The way you’re talking now, they’re starting to trouble me again.”
“Baize had good reasons for not talking about your parents, Carla.”
“What reasons?”
“You were right, your parents didn’t die in an auto wreck.”
An openmouthed Carla stared back. “Then how did they die?”
The doctor returned to his chair and laid the journal on his lap, resting his palms on the leather cover.
“As a first step, I want you to read some of this.”
“What is it?”
“A diary. It’s also the key to your past, the prime reason for your nightmares. Everything you don’t know about yourself and who you really are is contained within these pages. I want you to read the first half.”
He placed it on the table in front of Carla. She stared at the diary with unease.
“I’ll read it alone?”
“No, I’ll stay with you, sitting quietly in the background.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s going to be a huge shock. You’ll feel emotionally affected as you read it. But it’s also going to explain the truth about you.”
“How—how long have I got?”
He smiled down at her gently.
“Take all the time you want—it doesn’t matter if you’re here all night. You’re my only patient left this afternoon. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Who wrote the journal?”
“Your mother wrote it, Carla. It belonged to her. You were clutching it when you were rescued, half dead from hypothermia one cold, snowy evening. The journal and a coin taped inside were the only things you had on you, apart from the ragged clothes you wore.”
“Rescued from what?”
“Everything you need to know is in the diary.” He momentarily put a finger to her temple. “It’s already locked away up there. You’re simply about to unlock it again. I’ll be right here if you feel upset or overwhelmed.”
Carla touched the journal. “When . . . when I read this will my bad memories come back?”
“I’m pretty sure of it. And the good ones, too.”
“All together or bit by bit?”
“There’s no normal in these matters, Carla.”
“Explain.”
“You may have to struggle to remember, or in some cases you may not. For some people their repressed memories may come over days and weeks. For others, it may happen more dramatically, as if a floodgate opens.”
Dr. Leon looked at her. “Or it can be a combination of both. But I ought to warn you that when powerful memories flood back, often the patient can feel overwhelmed.”
He tapped the journal. “Reading about what happened to you will certainly trigger your subconscious. So would visiting places where you suffered your worst traumas, or experienced your intense moments of happiness in your past.”
“Really?”
“Even seeing photographs from back then, or people you encountered, could have the same effect. The mind will start to connect the dots, to unravel the trauma.”
Cara stared at the journal again. An icy chill rippled along her spine. She felt suddenly afraid.
Dr. Leon must have sensed her fear because he said, “Above all, you have to think of today as a kind of liberation day.”
“Liberation day?”
“We’re finally setting the real Carla free.”
13
* * *
Carla picked up the diary.
She ran her fingers over the cover.
The leather felt scuffed in places. Something about the diary had a familiar feel to it. She opened the cover.
Taped inside the front cover was a clear plastic sleeve. Inside the sleeve was a tarnished silver dollar. She examined the coin. It was dated 1986.
On the front was La
dy Liberty, and on the back the eagle and thirteen five-pointed stars. Carla replaced the coin in the flap.
She estimated that the diary contents consisted of about a hundred pages, written by hand, in English, in neat and flowing handwriting. Written in blue ink mostly, but sometimes in black. Other entries were written with different shades of pencil.
My mother’s handwriting.
It felt strange to be holding the diary, and yet in another way it was comforting, like sitting in a familiar armchair. When she flicked to the back pages she saw pictures drawn inside the cover in crayon, as if by a child.
One was of a large building, guarded by stick-figure men with guns. It was all surrounded by a fuzzy-looking scrawl. Carla imagined the fuzz was meant to represent barbed wire.
Another drawing showed the side-by-side figures of a man and woman and two children, a boy and a girl. All had tears falling from their eyes.
Underneath each figure was written a name: Mama, Papa, Carla, Luka, in childish handwriting. Beside each was a small red heart drawn in crayon.
The drawing was signed: Luka.
She felt a shiver, as if someone had walked over her grave.
All of the pages seemed to have been written years before, for they bore the faintly yellow tint of age. She flicked through them.
The binding felt loose in places. Some of the entries were only a few lines; others several pages. The language appeared a touch stilted here and there, as if English wasn’t the writer’s mother tongue. But the entries were clearly written. Each entry bore a date. All of the dates were more than twenty years ago.
On the inside flap of the diary was inscribed in big block letters: THE DIARY OF LANA JORAN.
The first two pages were written in different-colored blue ink, and appeared to be a foreword of some kind, like it was added at a later stage. The two pages were stitched into place in the diary with coarse thread, instead of being stapled.
She looked over at Dr. Leon. He offered her a reassuring smile. “Okay so far?”
“I . . . I guess.”
Carla took a deep breath, felt a catch in her chest. She settled herself into the leather couch, turned to the foreword, and began to read.
THE DIARY OF LANA JORAN
My name is Lana Joran, and this is my story.
I and my husband and our two beloved children are going to die.
I feel certain of our deaths, just as I am certain that the world will be indifferent to our suffering.
And so I write these words not in the hope that they will save us, but that this record of our torment will survive. For if the world is made witness to the brutal slaughter of so many innocents, and if my story helps prevent the murder of even one human being, then my effort will be worthwhile.
First, let me say I have come to learn that history repeats itself.
Many years ago when the Nazi concentration camps were discovered and their ovens were still warm from the bones of millions of innocent dead, the world promised genocide would never happen again.
But that promise is forgotten.
For hundreds of thousands of families like mine are forced from our homes, herded into transports or on death marches, raped and tortured, shot and beaten to death in death camps. Men, women, children, infants, exterminated on the brutal whim of yet another tyrant who lusts after power.
Make no mistake: a holocaust is happening again. I have witnessed its terrible brutality—sights that no mother or father or their children should ever see. And all the while the world stands by and does nothing.
I am afraid of death. Even when death is all around you, when it is a constant companion, you still fear dying.
I am especially afraid for my children.
That the beautiful faces I put to bed at night, that I wake to in the morning, and whom I love and cherish more than anything, will be killed by evil tormentors and executioners who place no value on human life.
There have been times when I blamed God for our misfortune. When I begged his help, cried out for him in despair. And when no help came I cursed his name. But I have come to realize that God is not to blame.
I am reminded of the query made about man’s inhumanity to man in the concentration camps. The question was asked: “At Auschwitz, tell me, where was God?”
And the answer came: “Where was man?”
For it was men alone who did this evil. Not God or religion or men acting in the name of God or religion. But simply men. Men whose evil makes everyone suffer, regardless of their beliefs or race: Serb or Bosniak or Croat. Christian or Orthodox, Muslim or atheist.
There are some crimes that pass comprehension, that are beyond forgiveness or redemption. Crimes that go unpunished, and no lesson is learned from them.
All too often the men who commit these crimes are allowed to still walk among us, and to smear humankind with their evil. So I write this diary also in the hope that the men who persecuted my family will be apprehended.
That their sins will be shouted out to the world. For if they are not caught, if they are not punished, then there is no hope for any of us.
This, then, is my family’s story. The story of my husband David and me, and our daughter Carla and our son Luka.
And though it will be ended by hate, it began with love.
Please God, let my words be remembered when the names of towns and cities like Sarajevo, Vukovar, and Srebrenica are mentioned. When the death camps of Omarska and Manjača, and anywhere evil was done to innocents regardless of their creed or race, are recalled among the darkest pages of humanity.
If I can achieve that, if my words live on in others, and if justice is done, then perhaps I will not fear death.
For to live in the hearts of those we leave behind is not to die.
Carla paused as she finished reading the foreword. She felt something cold and foreboding seep through her, as if she were standing outside a door beyond which something terrible had happened.
Dr. Leon asked, “Still okay?”
“I . . . I think so. I . . . I did have a brother, Luka.”
“Yes. It’s all in the diary, Carla. Please read on.”
She began to read. The diary started with her mother describing her simple upbringing near Konjic, in the Bosnian region of Yugoslavia, midway between Mostar and Sarajevo. Then, her name was Lana Tanovic. An only child, her small-town lawyer father was a local civil prosecutor—they lived on a modest farm inherited from his parents—and her mother taught English at a nearby school. In their township, Orthodox Christian and Muslim lived side by side.
Her parents came from different backgrounds; her mother was a Christian Serb, her father a “Bosniak,” of Muslim origin. They were not overly religious, although they believed in God. But they did not bring their daughter up in a traditional religious fashion.
From an early age Lana’s mother taught her daughter English. By the time she was eighteen, Lana already spoke the language fluently and was accepted for college in Dubrovnik to study English.
Her dream was to be a writer, and to one day write a book that would change the world.
It was the same year Lana’s mother died of breast cancer. From then on, Lana would return home from college two weekends a month, and during holidays, to visit her prosecutor father.
To help supplement the small college allowance her father gave, she found part-time work as a waitress in a restaurant owned by a man named Mr. Banda.
And it was here she met Carla’s father, a young American artist.
She described in loving detail a trip they made to Mostar together, where David jumped from the bridge and carved their names on an olive tree. And how their love and affection for each other grew and was cemented by their wedding in the small church of St. Nicolas in Dubrovnik, and with the birth of her two children.
First came Marianna Carla—Marianna after her maternal grandmother, but everyone called her Carla. Her mother was overjoyed that her husband took easily to fatherhood, and they adored their daugh
ter.
They lived in an apartment above Mr. Banda’s restaurant, where her parents worked, her father painting in his spare time. When Carla’s mother graduated, she found extra work giving English lessons.
Six years later came Luka. Wonderful, playful little Luka arrived eleven weeks premature. It was a difficult Caesarean birth, for the umbilical cord had caught around Luka’s neck and almost starved him of oxygen. But frail Luka came crying into the word. His prematurity caused him to suffer badly from retinopathy, which left him blind in one eye.
The doctors didn’t think he would live, because he was so frail, but somehow he survived and thrived.
Carla’s mother described how as he grew older, Luka could never sleep without his “blankie” from his baby cot—a piece of blue cotton blanket, which he felt comforted by.
It was a happy time but their happiness would eventually be overshadowed by the siege of Dubrovnik by Serb forces in the first stages of the Balkan war. Her mother explained what happened, as Carla read on . . .
Carla is overjoyed to have a brother.
I have to make an effort to stop her from spoiling him. Luka is growing into a cheerful, playful little boy. His blind eye is milky white but it doesn’t deter him from doing anything and he follows his sister everywhere, clutching her sweater or the hem of her skirt.
Once he learns to speak, he constantly begs her, “No, no leave Luka! Stay with Luka, Carla.”
Luka has a giddy sense of humor, and knows he is the center of attention. When Carla asks him for a kiss, he gives a dimpled smile and runs away, giggling, puckering his angel lips, teasing her to chase him, and joking: “No, no kisses. No kisses for you today, Carla.”
And then, when Carla catches him, he relents: “Well . . . well maybe just one kiss if you are good,” and his giggling explodes as she scoops him up and plants kisses on his cheeks and neck.
Carla adores him. I have found everything I wished for: two beautiful children and a kind and understanding and loving husband.
What more could I ask for?
David’s parents write and telephone. They talk of us all meeting in Vienna, where his father is attending a military conference. Three months later it comes true. They are anxious to meet us and the children.