We picked through the knee-high grass. Nailed under an eave on a heavy wooden beam was a rusted metal number that read 48. And next to it another number was nailed up, the same one we’d seen in the Book of Names: 262.
As Skender had instructed, we walked behind this first house. Indeed, a second stood almost flush against it, camouflaged by a riot of weedy overgrowth. This, Skender had indicated, was the house of my great-grandfather’s family.
“Is born, Valentin Radošević,” Robert presented with a flourish.
The old wooden house stood in shadow and sagged against the weight of time. The front appeared to be living quarters, and the back a typical Mrkopalj house barn. A rickety chimney rose from orange terra-cotta shingles, slowly disintegrating against wind and weather. I could almost see Valentin Radošević gazing out the broken six-paned windows, his dream of faraway places eventually leading to me.
I walked toward the place: this physical incarnation of the old family I had crossed an ocean to meet. My steps were tentative in the scrub and brush shrouding it. Carefully I toed closer, as if charging forward might wake the dead. I woke them anyway. When I peeked past the tattered roll-down shades I saw life—many lives—stirring in the shadows.
Though rotted and caved in over time, each room was still strangely intact. Plaster chunks had fallen from the ceiling as if there’d been an explosion inside. An air of hasty abandonment permeated the house, a feeling of action and of flight. No one had bothered to tidy the bed before walking out for the last time, leaving only a slightly rumpled blanket and a faintly dented pillow.
Jim and I barely spoke as we drifted from window to window. Surprisingly, neither did Robert. Undulating walls shed blue toile and hand-painted pink flowered wallpaper. Lace curtains still billowed in the breeze. Against these feminine touches were sudden stabs of violence: a tall dresser—drawers open and doors askew—run through with a long, sharp stick like a javelin. Great tufts of gray-brown fibrous stuffing erupting from a couch, as if an animal with sharp claws had been digging inside of it.
Heavy work shirts and jackets hung on a row of hooks, like a line of ghostly farmhands in rigid formation. On the wall was a picture of Jesus and the disciples—a smaller version of one I’d seen in the Owl’s residence. A light fixture sagged from the broken ceiling. Tiny white porcelain doves dangled from its pull string, spinning slow rotations in the slight cross-draft, turning and twisting in a constant state of movement, never really going anywhere.
My eyes followed along one wall and met those of a woman staring back at me. In her hands she held a bouquet of peonies and roses. An elegant eyebrow arched under the wave of dark hair across her high forehead. Though only a framed portrait in a thick net of cobwebs, her eyes peered out from beyond, dark and alive.
I stepped away from the window. Without a doubt, I felt a presence in this house. It didn’t take much imagination to see women and men in housedresses and overalls moving through the rooms as they had a century ago. I glanced at Jim, who was shooting photos through broken windows. I sensed his unease by instinct—when Jim wasn’t sure of something in Mrkopalj, he reached for the camera.
I walked to the pasture where the barn was collapsing. The doors to the haymow swayed open like old teeth. A chicken clucked in the next yard.
Robert came up behind me. “Long ago, is first neighbors of this house,” he said, indicating the tidy property next door, a small homestead with well-kept outbuildings and terra-cotta roof tile. The difference between the land of this family and the abandoned property of House No. 262 was vast. “Name of man is Dražen Horaček.”
I’d also noticed this place on my walks to Tuk. The man Robert called Dražen was among the hardworking contingency of Mrkopalj. In church, I’d seen him with a big family that included his elderly mother. He was a farmer and a carpenter like Mario. I rarely saw him in a bar.
A noisy bird chattered at me from Dražen’s apple trees. Robert and I walked back to where Jim was photographing the kitchen. A beat-up collection of chairs surrounded a simple square table covered by a pink poppy tablecloth. An old-fashioned scale topped the cupboard that shared a wall with a carpenter’s bench. I wondered if Valentin’s father had built the kitchen table on that workbench. Wondered if his sisters weighed out sheep’s-milk cheese to sell on that scale.
Robert walked over to talk with another neighbor, who reported that there were five owners of this property, spread all over Croatia. The family hadn’t known how to divide it and so it sat useless in a village where land was the only commodity.
I’d seen similarly abandoned houses around Mrkopalj. Dishes still stacked in collapsing cupboards, rusty razors on sinks, wooden cabinets sinking slowly through softening floors. Houses were passed down through the generations, but the work was in the city. Those who couldn’t afford to stay left the houses to decay, and they slowly transformed from homes into archeological digs.
I pressed my hand flat against the side of the wooden house, asking Time to play back the reel of Valentin’s departure as he walked down Novi Varoš. Did he look back? Did he understand that he was leaving forever? Perhaps his mother had waved from the doorstep. Maybe Jelena was there, too, tall as a windmill, wondering if she’d ever see her “friend” again. It must have been excruciating for all of them. It had been excruciating for us, and our journey was finite. I couldn’t know his path. But I knew where he’d ended up, and I now knew where he’d started from.
chapter fourteen
Robert and Jim stood at a distance as I paid my respects to Valentin Radošević.
“Let’s find Jelena’s house,” I said when I finally joined them.
We piled back into the Peugeot and Jim retraced the path we’d driven an hour before, past Stari Baća, past Skender’s place. We came to a brand-new house still under construction, a spare square of bricks awaiting a final coat of plaster and paint.
“My friend lives here,” Robert realized. He called to ask what the old address had been before the house had been demolished to make way for a new one. The friend said it would remain as it had always been—House No. 40.
Jelena Iskra’s home was gone. Leveled.
“Let’s have a look around anyway,” Jim suggested.
We crossed the mud and dirt of the construction site. The new house promised to be a handsome country cottage. Jelena’s home may have been destroyed, but this land was once again a useful thing. Though I mourned the loss of a tangible clue to my great-grandmother’s life, it was certainly Mrkopalj’s gain not to have another abandoned place.
In the backyard grew a thick and twisted apple tree, so old it had probably stood watch as Jelena packed her bags for America. I moved under it and looked out over the moor at which Jelena had probably gazed a thousand times. It was a relatively plain view in a village that specialized in showstoppers. Just a few bumps in a carpet of grass, breaking into a field, then mountains. But it was her view. I took it in for a long time.
How had Valentin and Jelena told their parents they were leaving? How had their parents taken it? Petar and Katarina Radošević. Josip and Marija Iskra. I said the names aloud. Both had made just as great a sacrifice as my great-grandparents. They’d taught their children strength, then sent them on their way. The selflessness of parenthood overwhelmed me.
I imagined the day I would tell Sam and Zadie good-bye. Maybe they’d be packing for college. Maybe they’d be piling into a beater car headed for the big city, just to live the life for a while. I could only hope my kids would leap so energetically into the future. It hadn’t been silly to bring them all this way. And it was okay that they were uncomfortable sometimes, or didn’t get what they wanted, or lived in conditions that weren’t perfect. They were learning, as I was learning, and together we were fine examples for each other. Who knew how long our togetherness would last. Children were born to leave. Parents were born to make sure they were prepared when they did.
Jim kicked through demolition rubble. He reached down and held something up: an old kitche
n tile, white with blue daisies painted on. He brought it to me.
“This is crazed,” he said, pointing to the minuscule cracks in the glaze. He handed it to me. “This is old. There’s concrete on the back. I would bet a lot of money that it’s original.”
I held up the tile, examined it, then turned to look at my husband. “You’re a good man, Jim Hoff,” I said.
“Until I stay at Stari Baća too long,” Jim said. “Then you’ll think I suck again.”
“So don’t stay at Stari Baća too long,” I said. “Problem solved. Do I have to do all the thinking in this family?”
Jim rolled his eyes, and we headed back to the rubble to find more tiles. I looked out at the moor and thought of Jelena Iskra, marveling at the bravery of my great-grandmother.
As we walked off the lot, I noticed something I hadn’t seen on my way in. Behind the new house, atop the rubble of Jelena Iskra’s family home, a fountain of wildflowers sprouted with abandon.
That night, Jim and I wandered downstairs to ask Robert if we could take the girls for pizza in Delnice. He was well into the halp-halp, lounging in the rooms on the second floor that, though it was nearing the end of July, were still not even close to finished.
Mario was over. They were parsing our discoveries, and Jim ran upstairs to grab the camera and show them the pictures we’d taken.
“Jennifer is new Mrkopaljci!” Robert toasted me.
I felt proud amid the playful cheer from the room. I hadn’t really done much to deserve it, but it felt good anyway.
“I can’t believe Valentin’s family was living seven houses away from yours,” I said to Robert. “That’s just nuts.”
“I count each house!” Robert said. “Say-van houses! Is very specifical number.”
“It’s a lucky number,” Jim noted.
“You are sad today that house of Jelena is no more,” Robert said. He translated this to Mario, who nodded gravely and patted my leg.
Jim sat down and scrolled through the shots on the camera. Mario pointed out an image of the woodworking bench in Valentin’s old house. “Is Hobelbank,” he said. “German word.”
We theorized in Croglish about who might have lived there before and how they’d left. How weird that it appeared so hastily abandoned. And were Robert and I really cousins? Whoa.
Cuculić dropped in, listened to the talk for a few minutes, and noted that his mother had twenty-one brothers and sisters. “Maybe we are cousins,” he told me. “Anything is possible in Mrkopalj.”
I told him I was pretty sure this could not be true.
Cuculić pointed his chin toward Mario. “Mario’s mother is the cousin of my mother,” he said, shoving his hands into his khaki pockets. “Mario and I could be—”
At this, Mario cut him off. “Neh!” Mario said firmly and loudly, hands jerking out flat in front of him. “Ništa!”
Everybody laughed. Jim volunteered that he very well could be Cuculić’s cousin, too. Cuculić slapped the air in front of him, emitting a disgusted “Eh!” at all of us.
I was starting to get the picture that Cuculić was universally picked on. I marveled at a realization: I felt for the guy. I was curious about him. He was like the troubled cousin who always hangs back at holidays, looking uncomfortable, trying to act natural.
I surveyed the room of people I hadn’t known a month before laughing and speaking in animated tones about the search for my ancestors in their village. I think everyone had wondered if our digging around Mrkopalj was sincere, if the Americans really cared. When both of us were excited nearly to tears about Valentin’s and Jelena’s houses, it seemed to stir something in our Mrkopalj friends. They were excited with us.
The enthusiasm continued. Mario told Jasminka and his mother, Ana Fak, that I’d been sad about Jelena’s house. Jasminka and Ana wanted to give me something that my great-grandmother might have given me, had I known her.
On a Friday night in late July, they taught me about the herbs and ćaj of Mrkopalj. The flowers and leaves of the village were often augmented with dried herbs sold in the village ljekarna, or pharmacy, a homeopathic version of the drugstores back in the States. I’d gone to the ljekarna in Delnice for anxiety constipation brought on by the broken door handle in the dorm bathroom, and they gave me something like a bale of hay in pellet form. It worked pretty well.
Ana Fak and I walked through the meadow flowers. I’d liked Ana since the first morning I choked down mealy Turkish coffee at her family’s picnic table. Ana moved slowly, even when approached by something wild and unruly, like Thor, to whom she simply reached a hand downward, calming him instantly. Ana Fak was big-boned but soft, with a low, raspy voice and smooth, tan skin. Like me, she was chilly at all times. I could feel a cool breeze in the desert, and wore a scarf year-round. So did Ana. I’d see her puttering in the yard in a navy-blue quilted vest even as the last days of July ticked off the calendar. I admired such boldfaced declarations of iciness.
Plus, she smelled like my grandma Kate. I took it as a sign from Grandma Kate herself that Ana began, early on, to put her hands on me when we’d greet each other. I’d stop on my morning walk to tell her dobro jutro, and she’d squeeze my arm or firmly pat my cheek, laugh her deep chortle, and talk to me slowly and loudly in Croatian.
Ana and I walked through the tall grass, swaddled in sweaters against the seventy-degree weather, the fields flaunting a palette of purple, gold, and green. The forested mounds of Mrkopalj’s mountains rose from the plains as Ana guided me to wild thyme or thistle or mint, leading my hand to each plant, showing me how it felt and how to pluck a flower or a leaf. I tried to take notes, but the Croatian plant names were unspellably complicated. I would retain none of it except her touch and her kindness, which were healing in their own right.
Though one plant did require my full attention. I asked about a bristly green monster whose leaves caused terrible itching for hours. I pantomimed the desperate scratching of skin. She leveled her gaze at me, this silly lost American who didn’t even know her bazga from her loginja. A rumbly laugh rose from her chest.
“Kopriva?” Ana wondered aloud. She scanned the field, then drifted to a patch of pointy, serrated leaves that just looked mean. I nodded and she named it again: “Kopriva.”
“Whatever it is, I don’t like it,” I grumbled. “Neh kopriva.”
Ana patted my back and we walked on. She began picking long stalks of yarrow, and we worked until we had a fat bouquet studded with its tiny white flowers. When Ana felt we’d gathered enough, we gravitated back to Jasminka, who waited at the picnic table, surrounded by tins and jars, a Croatian-English dictionary, and a hardbound herbal-medicine book: Domaće Ljekovito Bilje. Ana left us because I pulled out my camera, and Ana Fak deserted every situation in which a camera was involved.
Free of housework for the day, Jasminka looked about twenty years younger than the first time I’d seen her. In her hardworking home, Jasminka’s idea of downtime was washing the family vehicles.
“You look so pretty sitting there.” I smiled, easing down next to her.
She patted her chin-length brown hair. “Is new color,” she said.
When we first arrived in Mrkopalj, Jasminka could speak little of the English she’d learned in school decades ago. But the language came back to her as we spent more time together, and we could almost talk in complete sentences now, between my Croatian and her English.
She told me that she and Mario had known each other all their lives, then one day skiing on Čelimbaša with friends, it was as if they were seeing each other for the very first time. “Electricity!” Jasminka winked at me.
Of course this was how love happened in a small village. I smiled at the idea of it. I wondered if it had happened this way for Valentin and Jelena. That magical moment, when someone went from being just another kid at school to someone who inspired a great current through your heart. Jasminka’s son Stjepan was experiencing that with Stefanija’s sister, Marija. They’d known each other since chi
ldhood, and then suddenly, “electricity,” and they were cooing in front of the fireplace at Stari Baća.
I pointed at a jar of brown mucky syrup. I hoped I would not be asked to drink it.
“Is crnogorica,” Jasminka explained. In spring, she cooked tender sprigs of spruce or juniper with honey and lemon, which helped with a cough or the flu. She handed me the jar. “You will need in winter.”
Jasminka paged through her book, translating the names of the flowers Ana and I had seen in the meadow. Jasminka patted my bouquet of stolisnik or yarrow. It eased period cramps. Ana Fak wanted to make sure I had plenty stolisnik.
Jasminka held up a wad of metvica, or dried mint. Also good for digestion and cramps, and as an antiseptic. Mint tea would wake me up when I was tired at my desk, she said. Leaves of borovnica, or blueberry, would raise immunity. I should take a bath in dried vrkuta—lady’s mantle—when I suffered pretty much any feminine complaint. Majćina dušica, or wild thyme (“Only wild, not in store,” said Jasminka), helped a nonproductive cough. She pointed to a picture of slakovina and I recognized the invasive binding vine from my gardens back home: morning glory.
“Wraps around,” Jasminka described, making the motion with two hands.
“Yes!” I said. “Chokes!”
“Is good for fever,” she said.
Jasminka filled a tin with herbs, mixing a blend of the yarrow, Saint John’s wort, and mint. “Tea for you,” she said, pushing it toward me.
Ana Fak brought out povitica, a nut-roll pastry, fresh from the oven. Sister Paula made povitica for holidays when I was a kid. But Sister Paula’s dry, bland mound of flour tasted nothing like the moist, nutty goodness that Ana Fak placed before me.
“I know this food!” I said excitedly to Jasminka and Ana. “I remember this!”
“Is taking three hours to make,” Jasminka said. “Mix, roll, rise. Mix, roll, rise. Even chopping the nuts!”
“Can you teach me?” I asked Ana. “Please?”
Ana Fak looked with sympathy at me, the returning daughter of Mrkopalj who’d been taught nothing useful in her life. She spoke to Jasminka.
Running Away to Home Page 16