Weeping was now to be heard from all the houses, and not just women’s voices – everyone was calling for help and repeating one and the same word: war. His mother died in the quiet of the house. The fishing net, still wet, hung out on the veranda in the same place as always. This was an ordinary day for it, strenuous like any other. The boat slept on the shore like a lazy, or rather a lifeless carp. You shouldn’t go out in a dead woman’s boat. Avoid misfortune when you can because it’s unlikely you’ll see it coming in life; mostly it sees us first, and you have to be lucky for the lively, ever-watchful, all-seeing eye of evil to overlook you. The boy stood on the shore, looking for the last time at the green islands in the dark water, and listening to the women calling out to each other. He leaned inadvertently against the boat. He never got into it and pushed off, but the boat remembers the imprint of the boy’s back with the shoulders of a man. Nothing happened, death is peaceful; one carp more, multiplied by centuries of offspring, swims the lake today.
* * *
The young man had to care for his two sisters. His wise male head told him it was better to sign on as general dogsbody at the little Virpazar post office and put up with being yelled at and slapped around by the perpetually drunk postman than to till the stone or, even worse, to go to war as tradition prescribed – it was what was expected of men, although he asked himself what people knew if they never moved from their stony wilds. Dušan cleaned the post office all day, the only respite being when he had to run errands or to get a bottle of grape brandy or a bidon of wine for his superior. But Dušan lost no time; he bought into the trade, so to speak, and learnt in secret because you can learn even from the biggest idiot; he bided his time, ready to make the right move when the chance came.
The village went mute like it did when the war broke out. Dušan became the head of the post office in the city of Bar, the third most important man after the mayor and the judge. He didn’t go back to the village any more, but Gluhi Do was all abuzz. It didn’t take him long to understand and accept his role in the everyday theatre of this still famous Mediterranean harbour where, as the story goes, Muslims, Catholics and Orthodox Christians lived in harmony. It was important to wish everyone the best for their respective religious holidays and to observe at least three codes of greeting in public. He learnt who to bow to, who to be resolute and intransigent with, and whom to ignore. He loaned money to the teacher and the doctor, not because he was confident they’d repay the debt – in contrast to some merchants, café owners and officers who gambled in every harbour – but because it was the done thing. You had to know what was right and who had what entitlements, and then you could find out everything in towns and villages regardless of how many houses had to be supplied with rumours. In this regard, a city is no different to the smallest village. Move just one stone, and the whole city will sway.
He married a girl fifteen years his junior after falling in love with her black locks. This captivating nuance of intense dark, which doesn’t change even though it follows the moods of the sun and spreads or hides its lustre if a cloud appears like a diving carp, reminds him of his mother’s hair and the body of the boat. It was love at first sight; I guess it’s always like that, even in the most complex love stories. Stanica bore him five children, of whom three boys and one girl survived childhood. She constantly emphasised that Russians had helped her all her life long, and a Russian doctor even delivered her babies. Her sons, as convention has it, only came home to eat. The little girl heard the word ‘Russians’ and marvelled at the sound. Stanica truly entered womanhood when she started giving orders. Shopkeepers were eager to oblige, and she bought more clothes and shoes than she was able to carry home. She had a servant girl, then another, and yet another. She found faults in each of them and there wasn’t one who didn’t also make eyes at her Dušan. Many years later, pottering around the kitchen of their now communalised flat and wearing one and the same old dressing gown, she’d sit down to get her breath and vent her feelings by telling the first neighbour who came along: ‘I’d give those maids a good kick in the bum with my patent leather shoes!’
They lived in a house, a villa actually, with a garden populated by lemon and orange trees and a fish pond made long ago, no one remembers when, by an Arab mason. Dušan would sweat profusely all year round, regardless of the weather, experiencing who knows what seasons and phases strictly within himself. He changed his shirt up to three times a day; they were faultlessly ironed and so dazzlingly white that they hurt your eyes and made them water. The children’s silk blouses were equally white. We’ve already mentioned the patent leather shoes, a natural part of the outfit. The boys played football in them in the gravel and sand down at the beach, wore them to school, to church, and when they went visiting. The little girl loved to climb up onto the shed at the back of the house and jump off with an open umbrella. She loved to fly, or fall, who knows why, but she always took care to land in the hay. Dušan was used to worrying; he had sweated ever since he heard that wailing, both when all was calm and when women, children and whole peoples were forced to flee – a flight into the unknown, with no knowing if they’d ever come down again, and where. His daughter’s umbrella or the exploding of an Italian shell equally demanded three shirts a day.
The eldest son, Luka, had a phenomenal memory for smells and colours – he was a very sensory person. He remembers the smell of the sea and the aromas of lemons, oranges, olive oil, grapes and the fritters the servant girl made for breakfast. He remembers the colour of the sea when the sun rises, when it’s at its zenith, when it’s setting and when it’s gone down, and the colours of the night in all the phases of the moon. He remembers voices, too, and is musical. He memorised by ear the names of all his friends and the important people of the town whom all six of them went to visit. He was inquisitive and mischievous. Luka remembers the name of the teacher who let him off lightly because he’d borrowed money from his father. Then the smell of the hot soup he spilled on a German soldier. The Jerry was riding a bicycle along the road at a steady pace and balancing a huge pot of soup on it. Luka never looked where he was going, or rather running. The intersection of the Jerry’s straight line and Luka’s jump from the bushes was purely coincidental. The enemy cursed and swore. Luka didn’t understand a thing other than that he’d better run for it. Too fast for anyone to catch, he hid among the rocks down by the sea. Friends found him there and told him that he was a hero and the talk of the town. When Dušan came out of German headquarters he was bathed in sweat.
Stanica remembers the sounds of shelling and machine-guns. And running to hide and her ‘heels hitting her in the bum’. Her brother Branko was a wealthy merchant. He lived in Dubrovnik but had at least one flat in Belgrade, at least one in Zagreb and who knows where else. He loved life and lavishly disbursed his wealth together with others, filling the time with joy and failing to notice the repressed images of evil. Luka learnt Italian from the occupation forces. That was a term the grown-ups used, and the children just took it on. But straight after exiting house and garden they rushed down to the guys at the cantina always hungry – that’s how they felt at the time – lured by the smell of fried eggs and pasta sauce. They were even given some to take home. ‘Shame on you for accepting food from the enemy!’ Stanica said. Dušan was silent and ruminated for as long as the war lasted. Everyone ate pasta.
Branko called Stanica to tell her that she and the family urgently needed to flee from Bar and offered them his flat in Belgrade, in prestigious Višnjić Street. Stanica hysterically demanded that they leave immediately. She kept telling everyone her nightmares and painting the blackest scenarios. Dušan continued his silence and ruminated so much that he felt his head would explode even more loudly than all the shells he had heard in the war. As a ‘man of confidence’ he was able to, and later required to, tap telephone conversations. The post office and telephone exchange were in his hands. He had close relatives who were with the Partisans, too. No one knows how many times grandfather Dušan saved their lives by warning them that an ambush had been laid in this place and that. Before telling them, he’d try to think up a subterfuge for the town commander. After the war, his relatives forgot him and he became a common collaborator, but that was much later. Now, when he heard the children making faces and saying ‘ma bene!’, he came up with the idea of getting himself a doctor’s certificate which would state that he urgently required a varicose vein operation. That was the only way of escaping the town, considering his deadly importance there, and moving his family to Belgrade. Who knows what went through his head when they took him out to be shot