This journey to the second floor was the shift of generations. Here Robert’s fancy had taken over—this was where he’d put his mark upon his ancestral home. Exterior cement steps ascended the side of the house, lined with a rusting iron handrail of odd sunburst shapes that left one’s hand smelling tart and metallic. Once on top of these steps, a visitor might choose the door on the left leading to the construction site. I’ve mentioned that the second-floor apartment was hermetically sealed within the larger outer shell of the house, as if the smaller box of the renovated apartment fit inside the larger and older version, an odd buffer of dead space all around it. Outside the kitchen window was, a few inches away, another kitchen window, the original one. Before one entered the apartment, there was another, much larger buffer that had been made into a vestibule in which to remove shoes and coats, or place an umbrella. Except that this vestibule was very long, the full length of the house, and packed with firewood at the barn end. From that vestibule one could enter the developing apartment through French doors framed by the original barn wood from the old days. This wood was thick and dark and weathered, and it was one of the best features of the house.
But Robert did not think so. During the last week of July, he recruited Jim to help plaster the entire length of it.
The afternoon was warm. Robert’s sister-in-law, a lovely blonde with a darkness about her eyes that could probably be attributed to her job as a cancer-ward nurse, stopped by for a visit as Robert explained the job to Jim. Snijezana introduced herself as the mother of Petra the Olympian, noting that her name was one of the most difficult in Mrkopalj—snee-YAY-zhuh-nuh—so she advised us to call her by its rough English translation of “Snow Girl.” Snow Girl stared in horror when she realized that Robert intended to plaster the barn wood.
“I do not like this!” she gasped. “You are covering up the spirit of the old house! You are ruining it!”
But Robert would not be swayed. This would be a plaster wall, decorated with odd antiques he found in the barn, rather than the antique itself. He shrugged at Snow Girl, cigarette dangling from his lips, and smeared the first wipe of thick plaster over the weathered wood. Then he took a deep drink of the halp-halp.
Jim agonized. Should he respect the wood or respect Robert’s wishes?
“Jim work,” Robert encouraged him. “You are architect for wood.”
Jim dug into the bucket and reluctantly applied a thick white coat in a smooth stroke. Robert objected. He reached over and roughed up the plaster with his own trowel.
“Artistic!” Robert roared. He flopped an arm over Jim’s shoulders. “Two artistic men!”
Jim would apply his plaster smoothly, and Robert would whip it up like cake frosting, using anything he could to add texture. He ran outside and snapped a pine bough off a tree and mopped it across the plaster. He pressed a pair of old scissors into it and left them there. He applied a metal clothes hanger that wasn’t quite flat so it stuck out a little bit. He wrote in the plaster. He pressed his hands into it. Robert, the Brown Bear, did everything but roll his back against the wall to leave his scent on it.
All the while, Jim worked furiously to contribute some sort of smooth continuity to this work that would partially bear his name. In fact, Robert wrote out the date, and the words Jim Work into the plaster, which had extended to the ceiling of the kids’ bedroom inside the doorway.
Snow Girl, all depressed now, went inside to drink coffee with Goranka. Mario came over to see what was going on. He pointed to Jim’s smooth layers. “Da,” Mario said. Then he pointed to Robert, who was now pressing a handful of nails into the wall, and shook his head. “Neh.”
It seemed that Mario, as Robert’s generous and sober first neighbor, had done his best through the years to smooth the rough edges of Robert’s life. I noticed that he and Jasminka took the girls on outings, and especially doted on Roberta. Mario helped coach their biathlon team. It was Mario who had built the new pine stairway to the third floor; the old one had included a step so high that I pulled a hamstring on it twice. If it weren’t for Mario, I didn’t know what would happen to Robert’s family.
Soon, Mario was looking out for my family too. The kids in Mrkopalj ran in packs, and when Robert was at Stari Baća and Goranka was working at her part-time job in the Rijeka highway tollbooth, the girls were relatively unsupervised. A few nights after the plastering incident, a gang of teenagers gathered in front of Robert’s house. The older boys were yelling up to our third-floor dorm, just goofing off, but I could hear something about Americans, then they were screaming Sam’s name.
“What’s going on?” I yelled down to Ivana, who was trying to shush them.
“Never mind!” called Ivana. “They are crazy!”
“They’re just being kids,” Jim said, looking up from his book.
Then I looked over and saw Mario step out of his house. He slowly walked down the steps and approached the road, watching the kids with his arms crossed. He didn’t have to say a word: The kids quieted, then dispersed. He looked up at me and nodded, then went back inside.
Robert might be our guide. But Mario was the leader. Through him and Jasminka, Jim and I began to understand the true, and possibly fading, soul of Mrkopalj.
chapter twelve
The week before Robert ruined his foyer, Ivana approached Jim and me as we sat on the yard swing. She stood on one thin leg, her wild blond hair captured in a ponytail.
“Mario, he say we go to mountain for wood, and then to eat.”
We had no idea what this meant. Ivana struggled with English, and though we pressed her for details in Croglish, the questions were like arrows shot into the sky. What exactly would we be doing? When would we be doing it? And why with wood? Were we going mountain climbing? Should I get my boots? Should we pack a bag? Soon, Ivana left us, bored and uncomfortable with being grilled like that, even if she liked her interrogators fairly well.
We, too, dropped the subject. If Mario was involved we had nothing to worry about. We didn’t hear about the matter again until Robert brought it up a week later, as Jim and I were drinking afternoon coffee at Stari Baća.
“Mario, he say we go now on tractor. To cut the grass. Then we eat with the fire. All of the families. All of the children. At four o’clock, or five, or half-past eight.”
Jim and I debated this as we walked home. Did Mario need help baling hay? We’d seen farmers hauling bales all week. Or did he just want to show us how he mowed his lawn? I had yet to see a lawn mower. We had just been to Delnice running errands and saw an entire city crew mowing an acre-wide median using only weed-eaters.
And now the kids were invited, too. Which meant what? How far into the mountains were we going? Was it safe? Someone had seen wolves crossing the road near Sunger at eleven in the morning—those were bold wolves. On a recent walk up the mountain, Bobi had pointed out a viper the size of a human arm coiled on a rock. Zadie yelled, “Snake! Mom, snake! It’s a snake! Bobi found a snake!” and Sam lunged in for a closer look, but this easygoing Mrkopalj creature remained coiled, its docile gaze flat and uninterested. Still, it was a viper, and technically it could have killed us. So what sort of precautions should we take for this trip?
We decided once again to drop the matter until somebody started a car.
And then, at around 4:30, someone did start a car. We were instructed to follow Robert and Goranka’s Renault Kangoo. Bobi was closed into the back, which we figured was adequate protection against wolves and vipers. We drove for fifteen minutes on a mountain road, and then for five more on a cinder trail through deep woods into a breezy clearing of grasses, daisies, wild mint, and mustard plant.
In the middle of the clearing, Mario worked a slingblade back and forth, felling tall swaths with each motion. Jasminka emerged from a little shack at the far end of the field and hurried over to greet us. She swept her arm in a grand manner. “The ranch!”
Back home I’d daydreamed of a country cabin—a retreat from the world’s worries. I was
always thwarted by overcomplicating the idea. A cabin must have heated floors! Guest bedrooms! A hot tub! An appliance garage to store the blender for the nightly margaritas we shall enjoy when, at last, we can live the simple life!
But Mario and Jasminka had the right idea with this hand-built shelter just one step above a kid’s clubhouse. It was perfect: shaped like a Little League dugout with a corrugated tin roof covered by plywood and tarpaper, sprouting a crooked tin chimney and a mishmash of shutters. Goranka unloaded grocery bags of chips and meat and beer into the tiny kitchenette/living room with a wood-burning stove and an old couch. A thin wall delineated the bedroom.
“Jennifer!” called Jasminka. She handed me a Dixie cup of rakija, and poured one for Goranka. “Živjeli!” We shot it quickly and Jasminka discreetly put the bottle away.
She led me to a patch of groundcover. Zadie, Sam, and the girls followed.
“The blueberries!” Jasminka announced. This must have been where she’d picked that first crystal bowlful for us. The kids and I harvested midnight-blue berries. They were tart and juicy and stained our hands. We’d eat them the minute we broke their tiny stems off.
I looked around as the kids foraged. Mario, built like Grizzly Adams, cut grass in wide sweeps. With each rotation of his torso, he cleared four or five feet of ground within a half-inch of the earth.
I walked over and asked to try. Though Mario didn’t speak English, and my Croatian remained terrible, he and I always seemed to understand each other. He squinted and muttered something in Croatian. I’m guessing it was: “This is a very bad idea.”
Reluctantly, he handed over the slingblade. I placed one hand on the end of the wooden handle, feeling its smoothness, then placed the other on the handle that protruded from the middle of the tool. I swung. The grass, rather than falling as it had under the sure hand of Mario, simply bent to move out of my way. I swung again. Same thing.
Mario stood back and watched, trying not to smile.
“Am I doing this right?” I asked him. “Dobro?”
He shook his head. “Neh.” Then he swept a hand firmly over his upturned palm. He spoke a rare word of English: “Clean.”
I tried again, swinging the blade harder and grazing the top of my tennis shoe.
Jasminka hurried over.
“Maybe you rake,” she suggested.
Back home, old oak trees line our street, and most of them seem to deposit their leaves into my yard. I’ve raked. Oh, how I’ve raked. Mario headed to another section of the field to continue his work while the American clown busted out her lone applicable skill. I raked Mario’s shorn grass into giant, neat piles around the cabin.
Within a few minutes, Mario stalked over.
“Neh!” He shook his head. “Neh! Neh!”
He said a lot of things to me in Croatian about my performance, none of them good, and gently took my rake. He pointed me toward the campfire that Robert and Jasminka were building. I walked away, feeling bad.
Jasminka directed me to find stones for a fire ring. I reached down to grab one and now Jasminka let loose a steady stream of Croatian. “Not too big!” she admonished.
My confidence was shaken. What size stones? Did it matter if they had moss on them? Was it okay to dig out a stone that was stuck into the ground? Or would that just create a divot for someone to trip over later?
I had to rectify my earlier failure. This was a matter of pride now.
I walked back to Mario.
“Tell me what I did wrong,” I said. He looked up at me, confused. I took the rake. I held it up. “Teach me what you want me to do.”
Jasminka yelled over to him and Mario nodded. He showed me that this type of raking wasn’t piling, it was spreading out. He motioned to the sky. “Sun. Dry.”
It was all I needed. I finished the raking, spreading out the grass so that it would dry in the sun, recovering my dignity just in time for dinner.
Goranka set another massive Mrkopalj picnic table. Jasminka tended the bonfire as the kids gathered around. Mario whittled sticks into skewers, onto which we stuck six-inch slabs of country bacon called slanina that fanned out in the fire. The kids roasted hot dogs. When someone’s meat finished cooking, they’d carry it to a cutting board laid out on the picnic table next to a giant hunting knife that all but Zadie and Roberta used to slice their own. Sam’s chest puffed out a little as Mario handed him the knife with gravity. I glanced over at Jim with the parental “Do you think this is okay?” look. He shrugged. I shrugged too. Sam cut his own meat.
We ate with our hands.
Jasminka brought out thick-sliced zucchini, laid it on a grill grate over the fire, and sprinkled it with coarse sea salt. This we also ate with our hands.
The kids wandered off to pick strawberries for dessert before the sun set. The grown-ups sat around the picnic table. Eventually, Jasminka lit a kerosene lamp. No one said much.
We did as Mrkopalj did, and as we had learned to do in the dorm: We basked in the extravagance of simplicity and the kindness of our first neighbors.
We followed the Kangoo back home, sleepy and content. Sam sniffed a little as I knelt at his mattress to kiss him good night.
“What’s the matter, buddy?” I asked, running a hand over his forehead.
“Well, I miss Grandma and Grandpa. I miss my puppy,” he began. “And there aren’t any boys here to play with.”
“Are you lonely?” I said. “You seem to get along with the girls really well.”
“I just miss home,” he said, eyes heavy and wet.
“Whenever we are together, Sam, that’s what home is,” I said. “We are home.”
I pressed my cheek against his.
“Love you, Mom,” he murmured. Within minutes, he was asleep.
Sam had always been this way: beset by hard and fast emotions, then, just like that, over it. Boys were easy.
“You know,” Jim said when we sat at the kitchen table sharing a beer, “it’s okay that the rooms downstairs aren’t going to be finished.”
“I think you’re right,” I said. “This is the best spot in the house.”
We cataloged the pleasures of our dorm. At all hours, rain or shine, we threw open the windows to the magnificent mountain air. At night, the moon rose over the rooftops of Novi Varoš. There was very little space, but it lived bigger than it was. We all had our own private corner. Zadie snuggled into the children’s bed in the room I used as an office. I could see her from the futon, and she slept without moving, exhausted from roving mountain and meadow and running from the drool-soaked jaws of Bobi. Sam commandeered his mattress on the floor near the wood-burning stove, dreaming of home from the largest personal space in the whole joint.
I’d tied up pretty white bunches of yarrow in a window to dry, along with a bowl of yellow gospina trava blossoms, which I’d looked up with Jasminka in her herb book and discovered was Saint John’s wort. When the flowers dried, I broke them up into small pieces and put them in an empty olive jar that Jim had saved for me, and I drank tea made with them after dinner each night.
I’d pour my tea into a chipped cup and settle in to the wooden rocker beneath the open window to read my Croatian history book and breathe in that perfect air, sometimes with Jim, sometimes alone.
Jim preferred the bench in the front yard at night. He’d stare up at the great black vat of stars, sipping a gemišt. Sometimes, he’d head down to Stari Baća to socialize with someone outside his family, just for a change of pace. Both of us were preparing in our own way for a night of sleep in the futon that was as hard as an examining table, with pillows like bags of corn pellets, as the college kids in cars without mufflers raced along Novi Varoš all night.
Sure, we still had complaints. The futon, yeah. The fact that the rank bathroom had a canted roofline that Jim repeatedly smacked his head on. The door on the bathroom also did not latch, and since it was situated directly across from our rolling-door entry, anyone who dared use the toilet did so with the expectation that they�
��d be in full view of any visitor. The concern about this constipated my husband and me for the entire summer.
Everything about the dorm was spare or makeshift, and learning to live this way was strangely satisfying. The wooden table with four chairs was just big enough. The vintage television was rigged (probably by Karla) for great reception and satellite cable. The Internet was lightning-fast (also Karla). The dorm-sized fridge ensured that we never bought more than we needed. The handle on the stove was broken, so we had to jigger it open with the nubs of plastic that remained, which required a special move like a secret handshake. Jim had to figure out a workaround for its lack of wire racks, and laughed out loud with pleasure the day he discovered that a silver platter in the back of the cupboard doubled perfectly as an oven rack.
At first, Jim was flustered by the minimal kitchenette—odd silverware, a dull kitchen knife so old its wooden handle felt shaggy, one decent bread knife. Three or four pans. A solid stainless-steel boiling pot we’d borrowed from the Stari Baća kitchen. A džezva, good for two Nescafés. More saucers than cups. Had we asked Robert and Goranka to outfit us more completely, they would have done so without hesitation. But we didn’t. We made one trip to a kitchen store in Rijeka—Jim couldn’t bear to be surrounded by so many fresh potatoes without the ability to slice them with a mandoline—but in general we made do.
Yes, we’d gotten pretty cozy in the dorm. Our Victorian house in Des Moines was a needy old girl. No weekend away would go unpunished without days jammed with chores just to keep her moderately clean and functional. Having just a little bit of stuff, and a little bit of space, felt like a luxury in comparison.
“You know,” Jim said, passing me the Ožujsko, “you hated cleaning back home. But here, I think you actually like it.”
I thought about that for a moment. “Yes, I like cleaning. It clears my head. But I like cleaning when it takes approximately fifteen minutes. Anything more is excessive.”
Running Away to Home Page 14