The Telling Time : A Historical Family Saga

by P. J. McKAY

  ‘It’s great news, isn’t it?’ I said tentatively. ‘A chance for us all to reconnect.’

  I was sure Mama would be thinking about Tata’s likely reaction. At the time I’d only been seven or eight, but I still remembered Tata’s scowl, his scathing words when Ivan had ignored Mama’s letters. Stuck in his Party ways, too good for the likes of us — his real family.

  ‘He’ll be here in a couple of weeks,’ said Mama, plucking a bunch of parsley from a jar on the window sill. ‘He’ll have to take us as he finds us. I imagine he’s been used to better.’

  Tata and Josip’s voices boomed from the hallway and Mama and I glanced over, her forehead creased with worry. They slouched into the kitchen like weary giants, still in their old fishing trousers and checkered shirts. It was obvious they were father and son, although Josip’s build was finer, more like Mama’s. Both had jet-black hair, closely cropped, and both had a dark mat of chest hair, although more recently Tata’s had sprouted tufts of white.

  Tata crossed behind me, greeting Mama with a pat on her bottom and a peck on her cheek. Lately he had seemed to tower over her. Josip made a beeline for the dining table. This wasn’t unusual, it was rare for him to pay either me or Mama attention. His chair scraped against the tiled floor and I heard the customary thump when he sat down. Through my childhood I’d looked up to Josip as my idol, but during my teenage years he’d become more of a disappointment. He was a solitary type, which frustrated me. I couldn’t understand how he could shun people — my friends were the only thing that kept me sane. Mama defended him. The world needs all types, she’d say, describing Josip as like her tata, a gentle soul with a quiet nature, nothing wrong with that. He was her precious son, and so of course she wouldn’t say a word against him. The way he repaid her affections made me fume, though.

  ‘Busy day?’ said Mama, glancing up at Tata.

  ‘Katastrofa! Nothing in the nets.’

  ‘Ah, well, you get those days. Tomorrow will be better.’

  I wondered how Tata could be so blind. I wanted to shout at him — Look at her face! — but Tata seemed more intent on pouring himself a glass of water from the jug beside the sink. How could he not notice the letter? When he sloped off through to the dining area, Mama raised her eyebrows, her expression saying it all. I shook my head. We often shared a secret joke about how useless men could be, how much they missed by not paying attention to details.

  ‘Where’s Mare?’ called out Josip.

  ‘Back soon,’ Mama said. ‘She’s stopping in to see her mama.’ She turned to me. ‘Set the table, please, Jela.’

  I wondered when Mama would break the news but it wasn’t for me to say. I went through to the dining area. Tata and Josip sat with glum faces, neither taking any notice of me. I gathered up the cutlery and mats from the old wooden sideboard and almost jumped when Josip spoke. ‘Days like this make me think we should run the business as a collective. Tito may have a point about pooling resources.’ He was leaning forward on his elbows, his hands either side of his face, a tactic I knew he was employing to avoid Tata’s eye.

  ‘Bah!’ Tata exploded. ‘Don’t be an arse! That’s their way of lining their coffers. Diluting ours. They want to see us struggle. Listen with your ears open, son.’

  ‘But we’re struggling anyway. Maybe it’s a way to get ahead?’ I wanted to cheer him on, it was so rare for Josip to share his opinions.

  ‘I’ll be damned if I’ll hand over what I’ve worked so hard for.’

  I reached around Josip, placing his mat and cutlery down. At school we’d learned about all the plans Marshal Tito had for our country. It annoyed me that Tata was always so negative.

  ‘What about Jadranka?’ I said, taking care to place Tata’s cutlery down quietly so as not to jangle his nerves. ‘That’s run as a collective, and you make me work there.’

  ‘If they pay fairly for our hard-earned fish, I don’t give a damn how they run it.’ Tata crashed his glass on the table, leaning back, his dark, muscly arms folded. ‘You need to get your head out of the clouds and away from your books, Gabrijela. The secret to getting ahead in this country is to work hard like the rest of us. The dreaming days are over.’

  My eyes smarted and I turned away, determined not to show him my tears. Why hadn’t I held my tongue? Mama was always telling me not to interrupt their important conversations. She said it was disrespectful, but I knew it was more about keeping the menfolk happy. Mama came through then with the letter and the look on her face said, Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

  ‘It came today,’ she said, handing it to Tata then backing away to stand beside me. She pulled me in close. I wasn’t sure if she wanted to reassure herself, or me. ‘Ivan’s coming to stay. The Party will be close to home for a while.’

  Tata’s jaw dropped. For a moment he seemed lost for words. ‘To what do we owe the honour?’ he said.

  Mama explained about the road project. Josip looked to be all ears. I held my breath.

  ‘But where will he sleep?’ asked Josip, which was typical. He could never see past himself.

  ‘Well, you and Mare could move in with her parents for a while,’ said Mama.

  Josip scrunched his nose and chewed at his fingers. I knew he and Mare felt comfortable here and he hated routines changing. My mind raced, thinking about the adjustments we would all have to make.

  ‘How long have we got?’ asked Josip.

  ‘A few weeks. Plenty of time.’

  Josip grumbled as though this was the most pressing problem.

  ‘What did I tell you, son,’ said Tata. ‘The Party’s itching to take us over. Your room’s just the first step.’

  Josip laughed then, and not for the first time I envied their relationship. Tata would never back down so quickly after cross words with me. He always made me work hard to regain his approval.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Ante,’ said Mama, crossing to stand beside Tata. She kneaded his shoulder. ‘Ivan is family.’ She didn’t look convinced, though.

  ‘When he wants to be,’ said Tata. ‘Means I’ll have to behave myself, won’t I?’

  I hoped Tata was serious, and that Uncle Ivan might be able to both soften Tata’s views and mend Mama’s heart — be the glue to help stick our family back together again. Even Josip might benefit from having a male around who was closer in age to himself. I dared to dream for myself too — that Uncle Ivan might convince Tata about the need for good teachers, and the role they could play in reshaping our country. I was desperate to open my mind to a world of possibilities again, to reignite ideas I had crushed for so long.

  Gabrijela, 1959

  Auckland, New Zealand

  FEBRUARY

  I never wanted to move to New Zealand. It wasn’t my choice.

  Even on the day of my departure from Korčula, with the ferry looming like a white ghost at the end of the Vela Luka pier, I still half expected Tata to say he’d changed his mind. At nineteen I had no real concept of what lay ahead. All I knew was that I was travelling across the world to New Zealand, sponsored by an old friend of Tata’s called Stipan Tomić. There I would live with Stipan and his wife, Marta, and housekeep for their grown-up son, Roko.

  The journey was long: Belgrade, Athens, Cairo, Bombay, Sydney. On the last leg, the flight to Auckland, my world morphed into a pressurised cabin filled with the nauseating stench of cigarette and cigar smoke, and the well-meaning concern of my fellow travellers. My stomach was a messy tangle of unanswered questions. Would Stipan be there to meet me? What story had Tata fed him?

  Through the shifting clouds I stared at the coastline far below; a long wriggling line filled with dense bush and cliffs, the sea lashing at the land. I thought it wild and rugged, hostile even, but I held onto the spectacular finish — the champagne spray of white foam — and flung another prayer skywards. When the plane bumped and thumped onto the tarmac at Whenuapai Airport, I felt a wash of disappointment. The terminal was tiny: a plain, flat, rectangular box parked at the edge of
what looked like an open field — nothing like those other exciting places, cities touched down in but not explored, like pages given a cursory glance.

  We filed down the steps from the plane to cross the tarmac. My first gulp of that foreign summer air and the strong blast of aircraft fuel nearly made me lose the contents of my stomach. It was the rush of heat after the cool of the cabin that surprised me — hot, fat air, expelled from the aircraft engines and woven through the humidity. The warm cross-breeze flicked at the hem of my full skirt, and I used my small suitcase like an anchor to flatten it. Somehow I managed to walk, clutching the case containing my paperwork and a few necessities for the flights: toiletries; a change of clothes; rosary beads; a book; my dragi’s vest; and a stick of cherry-red lipstick, the one my friend Antica had given me for luck.

  Closer to the building the air seemed to clear, with a waft of freshly cut grass. This, at least, was something I expected, as at school we had learnt about this country’s reliance on agriculture — even so, it was disorientating not being able to smell the tang of sea salt so familiar from home. I pushed on through doors held wide by an air hostess with her pert little hat. It was these minor victories that propelled me forward on that day, and in the months to come. Polako, polako as we say at home, one step in front of the other.

  The terminal was a hothouse. The man checking our paperwork had patches like valleys seeping from his armpits. ‘Welcome, Miss Surjan,’ he said, thumping his stamp down, the twang in his voice making my name sound all wrong. In the waiting area, a burly man waved, but I wasn’t sure if it was Stipan. This man looked more like a businessman in his pale grey jacket and matching felt hat.

  ‘Dobro došla, Gabrijela,’ he boomed, rushing forward to take my hand, his brown eyes twinkling.

  Up close he dwarfed me, a mountain of a man with comical ears jutting like flaps as though there to balance his hat. I expected his hand to feel rough, like Tata’s, but it was warm and smooth. I couldn’t manage a reply but my eyes watered at the sound of my language. In the strangest way I felt a sense of homecoming, a reassurance, just as I had when a kind Yugoslav man had taken me under his wing back in Greece to help me with the documentation. I had lost my language somewhere between Belgrade and Athens, having thought my grasp of English was better. When that same man waved goodbye and rushed for the departure doors in Sydney, I’d felt a keen sense of loss, a hollow pit in my stomach.

  Stipan dropped my hand and took another drag on what was left of his thin cigarette. He lumbered towards the baggage area, leaving me to tail him, just as my goats at home would do while scavenging the hills for green shoots.

  Outside the terminal, Stipan dumped my large suitcase and pointed to a pale blue car, its fat bottom encased by a shiny ring of metal hanging low to the ground.

  The glossy red seat was burning hot when I sat, my knees pressed together with my small case at my feet. I didn’t dare move and my head spun with waves of exhaustion. Stipan clambered into the driver’s seat, wrenching around to toss his hat onto the seat behind. Flecks of silver peppered his dark hair that was shaved close above his ears.

  Most of the trip was spent in silence. I stared out the window in disbelief at the variety of crops, light and dark green trees, and the rolling hills, burnished brown, that stretched as far as I could see on either side of the two-lane road. To me this country seemed ironed out, flattened, and in that moment, I would have given anything to see my homeland’s stark limestone mountains that rise from the sea like giant monoliths.

  ‘Home now,’ Stipan said, pulling into a driveway off a wide street lined with a collection of timber houses painted in mostly lollipop shades, nothing like our brick houses at home. He cut the engine. ‘Welcome to Ngaio Street.’

  Their house was dreary in comparison, the colour of gingerbread, with dark-brown window trims. Spanning the front though, underneath the windows, were wide gardens bursting with rows of bright, spiky flower heads, all the colours of the rainbow, flowers I had never seen before. A drystone wall divided the house from the street, meja we called them on Korčula, but here the wall looked odd, out of place.

  ‘Marta’s inside,’ Stipan said. ‘Go on now.’

  I hesitated, wanting to take in the place where I’d be living. It was as though I was carrying a boulder in my stomach; my tongue felt stuck to the roof of my mouth. From one of the front windows a lace curtain pulled back, and I worried again what Tata might have told them. How much they knew.

  ‘Go on,’ said Stipan, hauling my suitcase from the boot. He pointed at a pathway of jagged paving stones leading across the lawn. My legs felt wobbly and my feet disconnected from the ground. ‘Don’t keep Marta waiting.’

  A tall, reedy woman dressed in a boldly patterned, pink, floral dress with dazzling white shoes bustled out. Her short hair was styled off her face in soft curls, and I wondered how, at her age, it could still be so black. She towered over me, and when she took hold of my hand her greeting felt as thin as her stiletto heels. ‘Come,’ she said, motioning me inside and stepping into a narrow, dark hallway. ‘I’ll show you your room.’

  My new bedroom was small and plainly furnished but the curtains were a riot of colour, the same fabric as Marta’s dress. The bed, with its pale green eiderdown, the colour of sea-sickness, was pushed up against one wall; a low wooden dresser with a round bevelled mirror sat against the opposite wall.

  ‘We’ll have afternoon tea in the lounge,’ said Marta, peeling away from the door jamb. ‘Once you’re settled.’

  When Marta clipped off down the hallway, I collapsed onto the bed, wanting only to close my eyes, to block out this strange new world and this woman who was so unlike Mama.

  There was a nervous rap at the door followed by Stipan struggling in with my big suitcase.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, stopping short.

  I scrambled to stand, embarrassed he had seen me like that. It felt too intimate, although I had no idea of his expectations as to how I should behave.

  ‘Take your time,’ he said. ‘You’ll be tired, but best keep yourself going. We’ll be just across the hallway, in the lounge, but only when you’re ready.’

  His smile felt like a gift, a peace offering, as he eased out of my room and pulled the door shut. I cringed at my awkwardness, wishing I could transport myself back to the familiarity of home. But this was my new home. Stipan and Marta would give me my meals and a bed, and during the day I’d cook and clean for their son. They would pay me something called ‘pin money’ — not enough to send home, but enough for me to save.

  I reached for the smaller suitcase at the foot of my bed and flicked its hinges, determined to do one thing. Cradling my lipstick and leaning in close to the mirror, I focused on steadying my hand to apply a shot of boldness. I hardly recognised the pale face framed by limp black hair.

  The door across the hallway had been left ajar. I licked my lips, worrying that they looked too bright now. When I pushed at the door a smell of old blankets hit me first, and I blinked to adjust my eyes to the dim light. Marta and Stipan were sitting by the far window at a round table covered with a white lace cloth. I could barely breathe. That lace.

  Stipan scrambled to his feet and beckoned me over. A milky strip covered the carpet, running like a pathway from the door, behind the sofa and across to the table, with hundreds of tiny raised air-bubbles on its surface that popped and crackled as I walked. I had the strangest sensation that I was back at the sardine factory with all the other girls, trundling along conveyor belts to our final destination: marrying a Luka local, bearing his children, and doing his housework. It was my dragi, my love, who had presented me with a different future, one outside of Korčula.

  Not this one in New Zealand.

  ‘Sit down, Gabrijela,’ said Stipan, pulling out a wooden chair. Marta stared at me. Perhaps I looked different from the other young women here. I shifted on my seat, conscious of my own stale smell wafting upwards, and feeling shabby despite my painted lips. The table was set with pr
etty rose-patterned cups, saucers and side plates, bright as Marta’s dress, crockery that seemed far too fragile to use. Just behind Stipan’s chair was a tall stick topped with something like a fringed hat. It glowed with filtered light. At home we relied solely on oil lamps or the fire’s warm glow, but this had a cord snaking from its base towards the wall. This must be the electricity we’d been hearing so much about, the reason for all the poles outside with their looping lines.

  ‘Coffee?’ It sounded like an order. I blinked, lost for a moment, before realising Marta was speaking English.

  ‘Yes, please.’ I sounded like a stranger even to myself.

  Marta poured the coffee and pushed a small jug of milk towards me. I took my coffee black but still I hesitated, wondering if adding milk was common here. I scanned the table for something familiar, taking in the abundance and swallowing with relief when I saw our traditional pastry bows, croštule, piled high on a platter in the centre. The rest was a mystery: pale spongy circles topped with dollops of cream and cherry-red jam; a plate of golden pastry parcels stuffed with goodness knows what; perfect cubes of pink coated in white flecks; and a stack of neat rectangles, which I suspected must be sendvič, though they looked far too white and pretty to be made from bread.

  ‘Sandwich?’ Stipan passed the plate. ‘Go on, try them, Gabrijela. Fresh eggs from my own hens.’ We were back to Croatian and I felt a rush of warmth for him.

  ‘Enough about your chickens,’ said Marta, her voice stretched. She tapped my forearm and her eyebrow rose like an arch. ‘Did Ante say why we needed a housekeeper, Gabrijela?’

  ‘Tata said you needed help, that’s all.’ I ran my tongue over my lips. Was she implying I should know more? I glanced at Stipan sitting with both palms upwards. If he were a priest, let us pray would have followed.

  ‘Gabrijela,’ Stipan began then hesitated. ‘Our Roko’s had some bad luck.’