Running Away to Home

by Jennifer Wilson

  “What would you do if you saw one now?” I asked.

  “Stand back,” Viktor offered. “Only he who doesn’t know the woods is scared.” Eighty-four pounds of twisted steel, that one.

  “Viktor, you’ve never been afraid in the woods? Come on,” I said, egging him on.

  “Nisam,” he said slowly, his Croatian stare boring holes into my skull.

  “Hey,” I said. I had a thought. “Do you think we could get a wolf to eat Cesar?”

  “Wolves like to kill dogs,” Viktor said helpfully.

  “Oh, Jennifer!” Anđelka laughed, clasping her hands together. “You just have to come back and visit us again.”

  “Anđelka, of course I’ll come back. I have unfinished business here,” I said, taking advantage of the convivial spirit. “Everybody knows I want to learn to make rakija.”

  “Yes, everybody knows!” said Stefanija. “And so nobody tells you!”

  I ignored her. “Anđelka, I was wondering what you and Viktor were doing the other day, with those jugs on the picnic table,” I began.

  Anđelka busied herself with coffee cups. Party over.

  “I thought maybe you were making rakija out here,” I said.

  “Vinegar of apple,” she answered.

  “Applesauce!” Željko hollered over his shoulder, heading inside.

  I turned to Stefanija. She shrugged and slipped her purse over her arm. “Perhaps they are making cider.”

  Viktor stood. “Or juice.”

  “Oftentimes in Mrkopalj we store water in jugs,” Stefanija suggested as she headed toward the road.

  Jim and I walked back to Robert’s yard.

  “Wow. I think you’re really breaking them down,” Jim said, draping an arm around my shoulder. “Nice work, Angela Lansbury.”

  chapter thirty-four

  Jim and Robert had argued about our going-away party in Mrkopalj. They’d decided on a date—October 3—and that we’d slaughter a sheep. But they differed on the vibe. Jim wanted something simple and communal. Robert wanted a formal, sit-down affair in Stari Baća. Against our better judgment, we’d let Robert have his way again, so I wasn’t looking forward to the party. Robert even told us we had to dress up.

  “It is what it is, Jen. Just roll with it,” Jim said as we drove to Tomo’s for breakfast the day of the party. Tomo was the architect for the sheep, and therefore had offered to have a pre-party at his house.

  At Tomo’s we ate grilled pork chops, calamari, onions, and zucchini that he’d roasted on the open fire below the spit in a giant stone fireplace he built himself. There was a bowl of olive oil with diced garlic and fresh parsley sprinkled in for dipping bread. Ashes floated through the air, and people lounged on a goldenrod-colored upholstered sectional sofa.

  Sam stood before the spit, fixated on the stomach of the sheep, which had been gutted, then knit together with its own fibia bones. He turned and retreated to Tomo’s weight room beyond the breezeway to punch a bag. He remained vegetarian for many months after.

  An unshaven and gaunt Cuculić stopped in to pick up the sheep’s head and guts so he could take them home and eat them.

  Robert lounged on the couch with his guitar. I’d been icy toward him since the night of the Mrkopalj festa. He could have put both our families in danger that night. But Robert always tried to repair the damage he did when he was drunk. That may have been why he was making such a big deal about the party.

  “Jenny,” he called to me. “You ask for to hear ‘Bijele Stijene.’ Favorite song that I write.”

  “I did,” I said.

  “Now is song,” he said.

  I was dreaming that

  I’m standing at the top of Bijele Stijene

  And looking somewhere in the distance

  Into the storm and sea.

  While the moon shone

  And gave nobody peace

  Like he’s torturing me

  And crushing my dreams.

  Am I running from the truth?

  Am I still too young?

  I don’t want to be a skeptic

  But where should I go now?

  Let them lie

  Go fuck them

  I am a man and I know that

  I just want some perspective

  But I don’t wanna change a thing.

  I like when they spit at me

  Because then I am myself

  Never mind because I am just

  Spinning in the circle

  Of an illusion.

  I will fight with myself

  With my own blood and sweat

  Even if I go somewhere

  Far more just, and better.

  Robert propped himself up on the couch and laid his guitar against his chest. Standing next to me, Zadie and Sam clapped their applause. Jim and I clapped for Robert, too. He was a train wreck. But he was our train wreck. As he smiled and lit a cigarette, ashes from the cookfire rained down on him.

  “Thanks, Robert,” I said. “I’m glad I finally got to hear it.”

  “Where you go today?” Robert asked as Jim and I gathered our things.

  “Jen’s got some things to do,” Jim said. “I’d like to walk Bobi one last time.”

  I had told Baka Ana I’d stop by before the party. She wanted to see the kids, and to show me her great barrel of fermenting sauerkraut. I did as she asked me—you really don’t argue with the Baka; once, I’d turned down a shot of rakija on my way home from the morning walk to Tuk, and she’d bodychecked me—and we surveyed her garden as the kids played in her field. She picked up a single cabbage, twice the size of her head, and held it up to me. Its giant leaves were entirely sturdy, perfect for the sarma that we had spent a few hours in the kitchen making the night before.

  “The best cabbage is from Mrkopalj!” she said. “It hardly needs any pepper or salt!”

  “What’s the secret of happiness?” I asked, fishing for something meaningful, half joking.

  Baka Ana cackled loud.

  “Use cow shit on your garden!”

  I laughed and sent the kids home to take a walk to the mountain with Jim and Bobi and the girls. Stefanija and I walked to Zora and Dražen’s place, pausing at the former Radošević family land, now occupied by the Horaček family garage. I promised I’d visit before we left the village so they could tell me the full story.

  Dražen came outside. He’d built his white and dark green stucco house with his own hands, he said. The latest addition was a smokehouse, where he would hang for forty days the hams he’d cut on pig slaughter Saturday in November. Mario built the smokehouse doors, Dražen pointed out, because Mario was better with doors, and everyone in Mrkopalj knew that.

  The Horaček kitchen was warm and cozy when Stefanija and I entered. Dražen’s kids gathered as we settled around the table. Dražen poured wine. Zora emerged from her bedroom in a housedress.

  “Moja ljepa!” she said, kissing my cheeks. “Are you ready to hear a story?”

  “I am,” I said, sitting down.

  Zora told me the long history between our families. Petar and Katarina Radošević had lived on the sliver of land between the Horaček garage and House No. 262. When their family left Mrkopalj, the property they left behind deteriorated. One house collapsed completely. Zora said that Katarina 2 and her sister had come to the Horaček home to warn them that they intended to sell the land, because they were very poor.

  “If we didn’t buy it, they were going to offer it to someone else,” Zora explained. That was in 1979. “I remember the day. I gave each of them eggs and one sausage. They were crying so. The money from us was the first thing they ever got out of that land.”

  To the Horaček family, purchasing the land meant they didn’t have to farm at the polje anymore, that they had more space at home to expand.

  “Our families are connected,” I said, smiling.

  “Yes,” Zora nodded, her thick glasses magnifying her blue eyes.

  I thought about House No. 262, how it had been ab
andoned, as if someone had left it in haste. Now it sat, unused and unloved, like a creepy relic. But next door, the real land of my ancestors was being used by one of the hardest-working families in Mrkopalj. It made me happy to know this.

  Dražen beckoned me outside to his tidy workshop. He smiled as he pointed to the old stone base of a new wall, the foundation of the Radošević family home he’d left intact, as a reminder. I reached out and touched the stone, connecting.

  “This land has more value than the house on it had,” said Dražen.

  When we went back inside to eat and drink at the kitchen table, Zora handed me a pair of red and purple socks. “I made these for you,” she said.

  “They’re perfect!” I said.

  “Benetton colors.” She winked. “If you visit again, I will show you how to knit. If I am alive.”

  I would never learn the full story of what happened to Valentin Radošević and Jelena Iskra in Mrkopalj. Somehow, I knew with absolute certainty that this wasn’t the point. The point was getting here. To Mrkopalj. To the old women. I had come to the village missing a grandmother who loved me, and now I had many. Valentin and Jelena, through Mrkopalj, had given me back my family. And it was a beautiful, all-encompassing thing.

  “Are you satisfied now?” Zora asked me, patting my back.

  “Yes,” I said. “I am satisfied.”

  chapter thirty-five

  While I was blow-drying Zadie’s long hair in the dorm before the going-away party, there was a tap at the rolling door. It was Ana Fak. I motioned her inside.

  Her eyes were teary as she pressed a gift bag into my hand. I wanted to talk to her, but we didn’t have an interpreter, so I led her to my computer. I opened a translation program and showed her that I could type things, and they would be instantly translated.

  “Dobro!” she said gently, smiling at me.

  I opened her gift. Inside was a medal depicting Our Lady of Seven Sorrows, her heart pierced with swords. I put it on.

  I looked up. “Are you coming to the party?” I typed my words into the computer. She read them and shook her head.

  She picked up a piece of paper and pen from my desk. She wrote:

  “You are my own dear family. The day that you leave I will be very sad. Please visit again.”

  “I will miss you, too,” I typed. “I wish we could talk. You remind me so much of my grandma Kate, whom I miss very, very much.”

  “The grandma who smoked?” she asked. The one who wore medals, like the one she had just given me?

  “Yes,” I nodded.

  “Happy travels, and much, much happiness,” she said, putting her warm hand on my arm one last time.

  It was the first of many good-byes. Jim was helping with last-minute preparations at Stari Baća. When we joined him, we were all taken aback.

  “What happened in here, Mom?” Sam asked.

  Zadie, disoriented, lifted her arms up for me to hold her.

  The room had been transformed. The tables were joined into one long harvest table set formally with white cloth, wineglasses, and flowers. Robert hurried from behind the bar to greet us. He was wearing a dinner jacket.

  “I want to go outside and play,” said Zadie. “I don’t want Robert to wear a suit.”

  Sam was slowly backing out the door with a look of horror on his face at the sight of formalwear Robert. I pushed Zadie toward him. “Keep an eye on your sister,” I said. “Stay close by.”

  Mile came in first. I fetched him a drink at the bar and we stood uncomfortably, not really sure what to say without the common goal of the Book of Names. Helena came in next, all dressed up and bearing a bottle of Chivas Regal and DVDs for the kids. Mile excused himself and returned later with a box of wrapped chocolates. I wasn’t the only one who had been surprised by the formality of the occasion.

  Others trickled in slowly. The summer girls delivered a steady stream of food to the table—wild boar goulash, potatoes, big lumps of Goranka’s gnocci, made with bread and green onions and chunks of ham. Giant plates of onions and tomatoes. A cold salad of vinegar, beans, and more onions. The roasted sheep.

  People sat, visiting politely. I fetched drinks at lightning speed, desperate to loosen up the place. Goranka set up the kids to eat in the back room. Ivana had been charged to babysit, and she carried Zadie around on her hip until they all had eaten and she herded them to the Starčević house, where Jim had arranged a full spread of junk food and movies, American style.

  Soon, the party was rolling. Pavice, Josip, Viktor, Manda, Anđelka, and Željko arrived together, looking reluctant and subdued in dinner jackets and sweaters. How I wished we were all wearing the same old coats and hats we wore in the backyards every day! Nikola Tesla and Cuculić came in. Cuculić’s wife, Dragica, had made the trip. She kissed me on both cheeks.

  “I make apple cake!” She held up a bag of groceries.

  Scruffy Tomo had even shaved. Baka Ana and Zora were escorted on the arm of Dražen. I seated them at the head of the table. Stefanija swooped down beside us.

  “This is probably the last party we’ll be invited to,” Zora said matter-of-factly, and to me, this felt like a great honor.

  “It’s a very nice party to be our last one,” Baka Ana assured me, reaching over to pat my hand. “Now open my present.”

  Inside her gift bag was a bottle of rakija so enormous that it could not be poured from. It had its own silver spigot.

  “She said this is only for you,” Stefanija said. “Not to share with Jim!”

  “I promise not to share,” I said, winking.

  Mario and Jasminka arrived. I positioned them at the other end of the table. They presented me with a frame of hand-pressed flowers from the polje.

  Pavice, not to be outdone, handed me a marigold-colored table scarf she had embroidered with brown snowflakes. Robert’s sister-in-law Snow Girl gave me a hand-carved polenta spoon made by another villager. Željko and Anđelka set upon the table a miniature of the sculpture by the Croatian artist Ivan Meštrović called The History of the Croats, one of the most important icons of Croatia, depicting a seated woman with the Glagolitic stone tablets upon her lap.

  “When you see that, you can only think about Croatia,” Željko said.

  Cuculić presented me with a wood sculpture of the Mrkopalj crest, also burned into wood, with the original Mrkopalj coat of arms on it. “From Queen Marija Terezija times, four hundred years ago,” he said, shoving his hands into his pockets. I kissed him on the cheek, which seemed to blow both of our minds.

  At Robert’s signal, we ate. At last, the party grew loud and happy, and I sat back in my chair next to Zora and Baka Ana and watched as these people who had been strangers to me just a few months ago broke bread like family.

  Robert demanded a toast. I began to sweat under my right armpit as I stood up. Helena rose to translate.

  “Thank you for allowing us to share this time with you,” I said. “Thank you for being patient with our photos. Thank you for being patient with our questions. And thank you mostly for sharing with us your history, which now, after a hundred years, is my own family’s history once again.”

  I thought it was a pretty good speech. I cried, and people clapped. But Stefanija leaned in to tell me that none of the translation made any sense. People were just clapping out of politeness. I sat down.

  Then Robert took the stage and kept it for the rest of the night. He toasted my Mrkopalj roots, toasted my family, which had livened up the village for the summer. As if on cue, a giant and burly man with a tiny jet-black mustache stepped forward. Robert said Zvonko ran the grocery store next to the Konzum, and his family had once lived in House No. 262. Zvonko then handed something to Robert before turning to give me a mighty hug that nearly crushed my sternum. With a flourish—I am certain he would have gotten a drumroll if drums had been available—Robert presented me with a rusted metal plate bearing the old house number: 262. Zvonko and Robert had sneaked down Novi Varoš in the middle of the night to remove
it from the house I had thought was Valentin’s, but was not Valentin’s.

  I turned it over in my hands. The plate was gouged with fresh scrapes across the old paint where Zvonko and Robert had labored to unscrew it under cover of darkness. My heart swelled in my chest and the tears welled up all over again. I gave Robert a hug. Maybe No. 262 was not my family’s house, but that didn’t diminish the magnitude of the gift. In Robert’s mind, it was my true home, and now that house was part of my family history, too. Robert tried to kiss my cheek, but I still got the European kiss backwards, and he ended up kissing my eyeball in front of all those people.

  Glasses were raised. The din of the room rose to a pleasant chaos. Jasminka and Snow Girl admired the house number as we huddled together at the end of the table, speaking Croglish and trying not to cry.

  Then the room quieted. I looked behind me, and Robert was signaling for silence again. I sat down, I think on Jasminka’s lap. Helena translated as Robert spoke.

  “And then there is Jeem,” Robert began. “Jeem, who come to this place to help his wife find her Croatian roots. Everyone in this room is Croatian but Jeem.”

  Jim shrunk back in his chair in mock temerity. Robert let silence hang in the air. People nodded. A few toasted this fact.

  “But it turns out, Jeem is the most Croatian of us all,” Robert said, his face turning pink and his eyes growing wet. “He has been a good friend to this village. A good friend to me. To Jeem, the lost son of Mrkopalj!”

  Stari Baća erupted in cheers, as it often did regarding all matters Jeem, its best new customer, astute town gossip, expatriate who quietly steered away from all talk of Croatian politics in favor of the Ožujsko-Karlovačko beer debate. My husband was presented with glasses and glasses of gemišt, the halp-halp he had embraced immediately and wholeheartedly—none of that fancy red wine for Jeem!

  If Jim were to stay, I thought as I propped my elbow on the table and dropped my cheek into my hand as my husband basked in this murky sun, he would likely be elected the next mayor of Mrkopalj.

  In Stari Baća, the light was dim but golden, the air hot and moist. Robert had picked up his guitar, and people got up from their chairs to gather around as he played the ballads of Croatia and John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” just for us.