Who By Water

by Victoria Raschke

  “You’ve got the longest legs. Hush.” She closed the door before he could protest.

  Vesna gracefully shimmied into the center of the rear seat. Jo climbed in beside her and everyone else wedged in. Lucky it was only about ten minutes to Žale. The group of friends rode in silence. Jo looked out the window watching the familiar landmarks of Ljubljana moving past the car window like a succession of tableaux as she tried to take stock of all the pieces she had gathered, hoping to put them together and see how they fit. Maybe she would make one of those mystery walls with photos and strings when she got back. The problem was, the string connected to her was still dangling. What did Gustaf mean when he said she was a door?

  Damijan interrupted the quiet inside the car. “Why are Maja’s ashes being interred at Žale? I thought you said her parents were from Maribor or something?” He looked back at Jo.

  “They live there now, but Maja’s mother’s family is from Ljubljana and they have a plot here.”

  Damijan nodded and they each went back to looking out a window.

  She dreaded being in Žale. She had seen the sprawling cemetery complex with its grand entrance gate and chapels as Ljubljana’s City of the Dead. She braced herself. There was sure to be an unholy racket of clamoring voices wanting to get a word in edgewise with her.

  Gregor pulled into a parking spot and put on the hand brake. They sat for a second before opening doors and unfolding themselves from the car. Gregor popped the trunk again to retrieve the wreath and they walked, still quiet, to the entrance of the cemetery complex.

  A glass-fronted message board near the old church had a list of the day’s interments and locations. Gregor glanced at it and led the way through the grand monumental gate. The white marble glowed warmly in the early afternoon light. Jo wondered if Plečnik, the architect, had been going for the look of bleached bone.

  Walking under the gate, she was braced for an onslaught that didn’t come. They walked on. Maja’s family plot was in an older part of the cemetery. As they joined the gathering mourners, Jo was startled by the utter silence. Were there no dead in the very place built for them? Was it all for the living? Maybe all the ritual and monuments and flowers and lanterns at the neatly tended graves were no more than a way for the living to give some import and meaning to the deaths of those they loved. The idea struck her as touching and strangely funny at the same time. She felt a case of church giggles coming on, and she looked down at the path in front of her.

  The opening bars of “Time Bomb” played in her mind. Maja must be there, but she couldn’t see her. A whisper in her ear confirmed it.

  “Wow, boss lady, this is the first place I’ve seen in Ljubljana with no dead people except me.”

  Jo smiled to herself and resumed her count of the blades of grass at the edge of the pavement. When she got control of her emotions she looked up again and observed the two distinct groups of mourners. One group, obviously Maja’s friends, sported hair in the various shades of plumage usually seen in tropical birds, and more tattoos and piercings than a convention of bikers. The other group, obviously family, was a mix: older women wearing lace-up shoes, younger women in Italian fashions, and men of all ages in suits that either itched uncomfortably or served as extensions of their own constructed personalities. Jo’s group was kind of in the middle, neither family nor peer group.

  Maja’s parents approached Jo and her father extended his hand. “You are Ms. Wiley?” His English was rusty.

  “Dober dan, Gospod Demšar, Gospa Demšar. Pokličite mi “Jo,” prosim.” He visibly relaxed.

  She had met Mrs. Demšar just once, when she’d come to the shop to discuss a gathering for Maja. She wasn’t much older than Jo, but she was drawn and gray with grief.

  “Thank you for coming.” Mrs. Demšar looked into all of their faces in turn.

  Gregor nodded as did the others. Nobody was happy to be there, but they would do what should be done.

  Maja hadn’t been religious, as far as Jo knew, and there was no reason to think her parents were either, so it was not surprising that there was no priest or minister to oversee the interment. Mrs. Demšar’s brother, another Leo, spoke a few words about Maja’s life and how we all return to the earth. Her mother dropped a handful of dirt onto the small wooden box nestled into the ground holding the ashes of her daughter’s body, and she broke down. Mr. Demšar pulled her close to him as she shook with strangled sobs.

  The air behind Jo was cold and dense. Maja was still there, but didn’t say a word.

  As quickly as they had gathered there, it was done. Gregor laid his wreath near the open earth and one of Maja’s friends set down a solar-powered lamp covered in the signatures of her friends in silver magic marker. The mourners made their way to the entrance and dispersed, walking to their cars or toward the bus stop.

  Maja’s father stopped Jo. “Should we come early tomorrow to help?”

  She shook her head. “We have everything in hand. Please don’t worry about any of that.” He turned to rejoin his wife, and she stopped him. “Mr. Demšar. I am so very sorry for your loss. Maja is…Maja was a good person. Far too young for us to be here today for this.”

  He nodded at her and walked away.

  There were so many things she wanted to tell him: that Maja was okay. That she was there, that she had seen her parents’ pain. That there is something beyond this life.

  But she’d tried that with Matjaž, and she had a pretty good idea how it would be received here. A week ago she would have received it the same way. There wasn’t much comfort in her new knowledge if she couldn’t use it to actually comfort anyone else. There seemed to be precious little comfort about anything.

  The friends rode back to French Revolution Square in a different kind of silence.

  Frédéric made a pot of Irish breakfast tea and heated up the milk in the ibrik Jo had used that morning for coffee. Jo scanned the prep list for tomorrow’s event while donning her apron, crossing the ties behind her back and wrapping them around to tie in a lopsided bow under her breasts. She pulled the baskets of apples out of the reach-in and lined them up on the counter. She would tackle the chutney while Frédéric baked a few Pullman loaves for the tea sandwiches. Once the chutney was going she’d make some brownies and shortbread for sweet.

  Maja’s mother had asked them to make Maja’s favorite, potica, a walnut-filled bready cake. The centerpiece of the Slovenian kitchen, potica had been commemorated on stamps, but it wasn’t one of Jo’s specialties and there wasn’t enough room in their tiny kitchen to roll out the whisper-thin, table-sized dough. Vesna’s mother had offered to make potica and bring it that afternoon.

  Mrs. Kos was a formidable presence. She was in her late sixties, but she showed no sign of it. She looked fifty, tops, and could run circles around people a quarter of her age. She had an acid tongue that could cut to the quick if you met her disapproval. But her people were her people, and the category included those her children cared for. Maja was hers because she’d been Vesna’s friend. Jo could imagine Mrs. Kos in her kitchen surrounded by a faint cloud of flour as she bent over her cloth-covered dining table, scowling an errant tear in the paper thin dough back together and making sure that Maja’s mother’s wish would be fulfilled.

  Jo’s reverie was broken by a knock: Mrs. Kos herself was at the shop door. Out of habit Jo patted her apron and walked to the front to let her in. Mrs. Kos was carrying the biggest potica Jo had ever seen. They could have fed half of Ljubljana with it. It was nestled on a huge wooden serving platter and covered with tea towels. Jo took the platter from Mrs. Kos and set it on the nearest table to the door. Mrs. Kos hugged her and air-kissed both sides of her face, then stepped back and looked at Jo with narrowed eyes.

  “You are different. It suits you.” Mrs. Kos laid her hand on the side of Jo’s face. It was an unexpectedly tender gesture.

  Jo didn’t want to ask what she sa
w that was different. Who knew what Mrs. Kos’s take was on the family business? Instead, she asked her if she’d like a cup of tea.

  “Of course. Is Frédéric here?”

  “He’s in the kitchen making bread for tomorrow.”

  Mrs. Kos brushed by her and strode to the kitchen. Frédéric received the same warm hug and air-kisses, plus an added tsking for not coming to see her more often. Jo figured that meant Mrs. Kos saw just about enough of her. Fred poured tea for all of them and they sat down together long enough to finish their cups.

  “Jo, would you like me to come early tomorrow to cut the potica?” Mrs. Kos set her cup gently back on its mismatched saucer.

  “I think we can handle it. Vesna and Damijan will both be here. Tina is coming to help with dishes, even though she really didn’t know Maja.”

  “Who is this Tina person?”

  “New dishwasher.” Frédéric swirled the last of his tea in his cup waiting for the inevitable reply.

  “Another new one? What happened to Aljo?”

  “He lasted almost a month.” Jo smiled into her teacup. Long-time staffers joked that being dishwater at Renegade Tea was akin to being the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts. They’d gotten used to a parade of dishwashers young, old, and in-between, each taking a stab at keeping the wares clean. Mrs. Kos seemed to regard this cycle as a shortcoming, but Jo did not misplace the dishwashers or run them off intentionally. She and Fred had a running bet on the longevity of their pearl divers and she was in the lead for the year. She’d bet short on Tina; she was a slip of a thing and apparently hated punk music. Fred went long, hedging on the common knowledge that it’s always the quiet ones.

  Mrs. Kos tsked them both again. “You two. It’s bad for business to have such turnover.”

  Jo let it lie.

  They finished their tea and Mrs. Kos left with more air kisses and noises about letting them get back to their work. Jo loved her like a bonus mom, but like a mom, Mrs. Kos could push exactly the right button when she wanted to.

  Fred’s timer for the bread buzzed.

  The night was clear and over the city a low moon hung in a blue velvet sky nearly devoid of stars. Jo, smelling of vinegar and cinnamon from the chutney, stood outside the train station waiting for the GoOpti shuttle to deliver her aunt. When all this was over, if there was an over, she wanted to go out to Gregor’s house in the country and lay in the back yard to watch for meteors. For years, she and Gregor had done that, sober or not; mostly sober in recent years.

  They tried to solve the political problems of the world and answer the great cosmic questions as they lay out in the field behind his house on an old quilt or in sleeping bags, as the temperature allowed. She craved the perspective of floating on the sphere of the earth, staring out into the endlessness of space. Gregor said it made him appreciate gravity. She wanted to break loose of it and disappear into that milky river of stars away from everything that had happened. Even her imagination provided no escape now. She could see the six crimson tethers which bound her to the earth no matter how high she floated against the tension. Faron. Gregor. Vesna. Jackie. Rok. And? She wanted to pull that imaginary thread into her hand to see if there was a name on it. Instead, she stood at the station, staring into the bus lot, watching a yellow sign for pomarančni sok and “to-go coffee” flicker across the street.

  The shuttle pulled up and disgorged a mix of tourists and returning locals. She could sort them as easily as if they’d been wearing badges. No Jackie. A man with two purple suitcases smiled at her. Definitely tourist. Slovenians rarely smiled at strangers in that face-cracking way that went all the up to the eyes.

  She pulled her phone out of her pocket and tapped the email icon. There were two messages. Spam and a message from Jackie. There were storms off the coast and her flight out of Dulles had been canceled. She hoped to be there the next day but it didn’t look good.

  Well, shit. She really should check her email more often.

  Chapter 22

  Leo sat in the chair next to his bed trying to read. His eyes moved across the words on the page, but his mind didn’t follow. His thoughts were not in a place he was comfortable with. He should have stayed in Ljubljana, but he wanted to put some distance between himself and Jo. His niece had offered him her couch, but he’d felt the need to hide from her as well. Vesna could see his struggle in the colors that swam around him. She would know he was losing.

  In his youth, before he had met Berta, Leo had planned to join the church. It was what his father had wanted. A son late in life, his father said, could serve as tribute for the God who protected the family in its work with demons and witches and the undefeated pagan gods. Leo believed that, too. He’d seen the damage and the carnage. He hadn’t yet realized how much of it was unnecessary.

  Then there was Berta. Interest in the history of witch trials in rural Slovenia brought them both to the same book in the National and University Library. Berta was studying the persecution of women as witches. Leo had been tracing his family’s legacy and growing increasingly disgusted by what he found in the records. A woman who was a better midwife or whose cows produced richer butter than her neighbors’ was tortured, sometimes for days, and then burned. His ancestors had been responsible for fanning the flames of moral panics, hence for the deaths of hundreds of people, including children.

  He turned away from his family and his faith. He turned instead to Berta. Marveling at her powers of reason, he embraced and adopted her scientific explanations for the seemingly supernatural. He knew there was more beyond the things her research had uncovered, but he wanted to believe that he could forget those things. He wanted to believe in the possibility he could have a life with her, a life that didn’t involve the stench of demon or the fear of what he couldn’t see in the darkness.

  He’d returned to his family only to bury his father. He had stood at the graveside and with every shovel of dirt that rang against the coffin, he imagined his past being covered over. He’d held Berta’s hand and walked away through the gates of the Ribnica cemetery and into his future.

  He looked out of the window of his cell. The most decadent feature of his quarters at the monastery, it had been the picture window of a sitting room before this outbuilding was divided into sleeping rooms. He watched the sun set beyond the mountains. The valley faded quickly from gloaming to darkness. Luka was coming up the path from the main house, his hands full.

  There were two sharp raps against the door.

  He crossed the room to answer. Luka stood on the threshold with a bottle of slivovec and a basket.

  “Teja is worried about you and said I should bring you dinner and some company.” Luka laughed. “I think she just wants to be alone this night to talk about me on the phone to her sister.”

  “There isn’t anywhere to eat in here. Let’s sit in the garden.” Leo took his phone off the small table and slipped it into his front pocket. “It’s nice that’s it so warm.”

  He and Luka settled in at the wooden table and chairs tucked in a small walled garden the house he shared with a ragtag group of mystics, ascetics, and eccentrics. True monastery life had not been for him. Too much of his work had to be kept hidden. This loose commune of outsiders made a family of sorts that was more suited to both his personality and his unconventional life.

  Luka poured slivovec into two heavy tumblers he produced from the basket. They toasted each other and downed the first glass. Leo poured the second round while Luka laid out a board of pršut, homemade butter, and Teja’s hearty bread, still slightly warm from the oven.

  “You seem far away, friend. More so than usual.” Luka tapped his tumbler against Gregor’s. “A burden shared is a burden halved.”

  Leo turned the small glass in his hand and watched the little lights strung along the fence reflect in the slivovec. “It isn’t a burden you’d want.”

  “Pe
rhaps not, but who chooses a burden?”

  Leo took a deep breath. Luka could not offer absolution, but he wasn’t a man to judge. “I’ve had cause lately to doubt the choices I’ve made.”

  “That is not such a strange burden. That is the stuff of life.” Luka tore off a piece of bread and slicked it with the soft butter.

  Leo chuckled.

  “Has an event or a person brought on this doubt?” Luka handed him the buttered bread.

  “I wonder sometimes if you can read minds.”

  “Only faces. You have the look of a man in love. Given your choices, as you say…” His voice trailed off as he finished his second shot of slivovec.

  Leo nursed his shot. His gut told him he needed to stay alert. “It isn’t an easy thing to hold.”

  “You still have choices.”

  Chapter 23

  She had walked out as far as the train station. Might as well keep walking, she decided. She was heading in the direction of Tomaž and Katarina’s house in Zelena Jama. Leo would be angry, but how could he expect her to sit on her hands? She didn’t need Leo to be her babysitter, and she certainly didn’t need Neighbor Gustaf taking on that role. She continued her walk, considering the possibilities she might face. If Tomaž and Katarina were out, she just could peek in the windows. If Tomaž was home, it was unlikely he’d be alone. The four people who lived with him would provide a buffer.

  She would have to come up with a reason for being there, though. Something to say to Tomaž or whoever answered the door.

  The front gate was unlocked and she picked her way through the dark yard to the front door. It really didn’t look like anyone was home but she knocked anyway. She heard a thud from inside and tried to see through the rectangle of glass in the door. Tomaž’s face appeared briefly in the window before he opened the door.

  “Jo. What a surprise to see you.” He stood there in his stocking feet and shifted his eyes from her face to her feet to the door jamb.