by GlasOwl
VII
"Are you going to take Alenka away from Vukovar?"
The young man wearing rumpled army camouflage fatigues was tall, thin, and intensely earnest. A heavy thatch of chestnut hair hung over a narrow face that was drawn with exhaustion. Dark brown eyes gazed directly at Jeri, waiting for an answer.
Stepan Sipek had been sitting when Jeri and Kelly, hearing a murmur of voices from one of the front rooms, had come to investigate. Muted morning sunlight created warm shadows in a room where one wall was covered by a floor-to-ceiling bookcase. A baby grand piano stood slightly off center on a faded carpet of oriental design. Seeing Alenka with the young man, the way she leaned from the sofa toward the chair where he sat with his head thrown back and his eyes closed, Jeri easily guessed this must be Stepan. Impeccable manners won over weariness and he stood up when the two women entered, smiling politely as Alenka introduced him to Auntie Stella and Auntie Laura.
Then he asked his question with no preliminary small talk. "Are you going to take Alenka away from Vukovar?"
"Stepan! Of course not. They will not ask and I will not go. So. I don't want to hear any more of this." Alenka was pretending to be cross but at the same time her determination to stay was clearly real.
"You should go. My own parents have gone to Zagreb. More and more people are coming in from the country and they are telling terrible stories."
"So? You are still here. And what is a story? This is Vukovar."
Jeri and Kelly each took a chair, releasing Stepan from his obligation to remain standing if the women were. Gratefully, Stepan sat back down. Srijeda, under the piano, had lifted his head as Kelly and Jeri entered, but now, seeing that everyone was settling, the large dog let his head sink back to the floor and listened to the voices with closed eyes.
Stepan gazed across the room with its dark wood floor to Jeri. "I am part of the National Guard," he said, speaking a halting English. "You know of this?"
"Yes," Jeri nodded. "That's the name for the Croatian defense forces. Were you part of the federal army?"
"I was. So were some of the others in my unit. When Croatia declared independence, we came home. It took some time because we were stationed in Montenegro, of course."
Seeing Kelly's lack of understanding, Stepan expanded. "The army has been shifting people around for at least a year. They think we are so stupid that we don't notice. To the Krajina, they send officers and men who are born Serbs, like Ratko Mladic. To Bosnia-Herzegovina, they send Bosnian-born Serbs. But Croatians and Bosnian Muslims, us they send to Montenegro and Macedonia, as far away from home as possible. And they say that Croats make tricks. This Milosevic, he is the trickiest of all. He has been planning this war for a long time."
Stepan seemed to drift off to sleep. The three women were silent, each caught up in her own thoughts.
"I am sorry." Stepan opened his eyes. "Last night there were two trucks that came through our station that were full of wounded people. They say that there is much fighting now at Osijek and Vincovci."
Kelly looked at Jeri. "Didn't we drive past Vincovci on the way here?"
Jeri nodded, her mouth a thin, grim line.
"Why are they doing this?" Alenka asked the rhetorical question as if she thought there might be an answer. "With Slovenia, there was a little fighting, and then the honor was satisfied and then the Yugoslav army goes away. Why not here, too? Why won't the army go away?"
Stepan stared at her, as if wondering if she really wanted an answer. "Because they say this is Serbian land, and in Slovenia there were no Serbs," he said at last. He looked again at Jeri, as if making his argument through her to Alenka. "They brought the wounded through in trucks because the ambulances were being shelled. I saw an ambulance that came past, clearly marked with a red cross on white. It was like a salt shaker with all of the bullet holes in it. But most of the bullet holes were in the cross, like it had been used for target practice." He held up a hand to keep Alenka from interrupting. "And I have heard from more than one place that there are groups who are under the control of Zeljko Raznatovic --"
"Arkan" Jeri breathed.
Stepan nodded and continued, " -- who are going through the villages and making the worst of the terrible crimes. They use knives and axes to kill."
"Oh, Arkan!" Alenka cried. "He is this scarecrow everyone points at to scare each other. I am not leaving Vukovar. This is my home." She lapsed into her own language and Jeri stood up, motioning for Kelly to follow.
"This is between them," she said when they reached the kitchen. "It sounds like an argument that they've been having for a while."
In a few minutes, Alenka came to the kitchen. "I am sorry. We say these things to each other often these days. Stepan is tired. He is going home to sleep, but he will give me a ride to University first. Is there anything you need before I go? Auntie Stella, you have a key. And even if you go out and forget, you can always ring the bell for Marija or Ivo and they will let you in. Marija is always here."
They were quiet after Alenka left with Stepan. Jeri broke the silence.
"Maybe she's right," Jeri said. "Oh, all right, no 'maybe' about it. She's not a child and she's old enough to make her own decisions. She has been making them for a while now. But I can't just go away and leave her either."
The sight of Jeri unsure of her next move was both amusing and unnerving to Kelly. "Let's just give it a few days," she suggested. "I like staying here." And then, to change the subject, "Was that a picture of Rafi in the front room?"
"Where?"
They went back down the hall to the room and Kelly showed Jeri the picture she had seen on a small round table at one end of the sofa. It was a family portrait. The woman was dark-haired, an older version of the daughter they knew, zaftig and beautiful and holding a toddler on her lap. The little girl gazed up at her mother, reaching for her face with one chubby hand, while the older woman gazed at the camera with a slightly sad expression. Behind her, gazing down fondly, was a sandy-haired man, a solid man even if his glasses gave him a bookish air, wearing what was likely his Sunday suit. He had one hand on his wife's shoulder, the other on the shoulder of a boy of about twelve or maybe a little more.
"Yes, that's Rafi," Jeri said.
The young Rafi stood with his shoulders back, staring straight into the camera. He had dark hair and dark eyes, his mother's coloring and his father's spare frame. There was mischief in his look, but also an aspect that was very serious, as if even at this age something troubled his mind, something he was determined to face.
"I see it," Kelly said. "I see why you would be friends. You're both willing to put yourselves forward, to draw fire, so to speak."
Jeri continued to look at the picture, following her own thread of memories.
Kelly drifted over to the piano and ran her fingers lovingly over the smooth dark wood. She shuffled through the stack of music books and found several that were familiar despite being written in Croatian. She sat down and tested her skill and the piano's tuning. Her fingers were stiff, strangers to the exercise that once had been a daily routine.
"I didn't know you could play."
"I, too, have one or two skills that life out of a backpack doesn't give much opportunity for using. She smiled as she remembered a particularly tricky run of notes. "But it's been years since I had a chance to play. Not since I went away to college, really." She skipped further exercise and opened a music book. Tentatively, she began Beethoven's "Fur Elise." The piece was a bit of a cliché, but despite that, the gentle loveliness, haunting and delicate, carried her to a plane where the yearning for love was timelessly woven into the memory of love. Kelly revised her thought: perhaps the player might be a cliché, but the song was eternal.
There were no shells that night. Alenka came home late, after dark, but she was up early the next morning. Heedless of any conventions regarding privacy, and free of any worries that the sophisticated customs of modernity might be in progress, Alenka gave only the most perfunctory knock before entering her aunties' bedroom.
"Wake up you old sleepyheads," she cried. She bounced onto the foot of the bed, giving Jeri just a few seconds to avoid having her legs sat on. "I have a big day planned, and already it's late."
Kelly thought that was very likely a complete exaggeration but she had no objective way of telling. Heavy curtains covered the room's single window and the only light entering the room was the electric light from the hall. She peered over the edge of the down comforter to see Alenka sitting at the foot of the bed, beaming like a candidate for a Buddha. It was too much. The young woman's extraordinarily infectious good spirits were impossible to resist.
"I have asked Marija and she says that she will loan us their bicycles. I am taking you to see -- Vukovar." She sang out the name of the city, accenting all three syllables.
"Come on, you old sleepyhead," Kelly repeated, pulling off the pillow that Jeri was trying to keep over her head. "We are going to see Vu-Ko-Var!"
Alenka took them first to the back of the apartment building where Marija waited with three elderly workhorse bicycles. She also had a covered basket that she fastened securely to the bicycle that Jeri chose.
"It is just a little in case you become hungry," said the solid woman. She made it sound as though becoming hungry was some fault that foreigners had brought among the good people of Vukovar. And if this was the case, she had risen to the occasion because the basket was evidently very heavy.
Kelly had been in Croatia too long now to think that the day was anything but a dream snatched from the jaws of a crouching nightmare, but even so, it was memorable. Alenka led the way through a city that was only just beginning to wake up. Morning river mist had left the streets somewhat slick, but the late summer sun was quickly asserting a presence, dispelling the mists and drying the streets, as the three women pedaled along. Kelly noticed that while she had muscles grown strong from walking, they were not the same as those required for using a bicycle.
They rode past small parks landscaped to exquisite perfection with flowers tended so lovingly that they looked like the product of a master miniaturist painter. They rode through a modern business district and past department store windows full of elegantly dressed dummies affecting the postures of moneyed leisure, past cafes with people reading the newspapers before their workday started. They rode past massive baroque buildings that echoed the streets of Vienna, of Zagreb, signaling the once-upon-a-time presence of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
"Vukovar is the door to Slavonia," Alenka called back from her lead position. She made the guidebook phrase sound new as she spoke it with obvious pride. "Slavonia has fed Europe for centuries."
The sun had driven away the mist and a sky of autumn blue lent vibrance to all the other colors as the three women rode onto the grounds of the Eltz Castle. And from there, Kelly was given her first view of the Danube.
First there is the river. . .
If, as T.S. Eliot says, the river is a strong, brown god, then the Danube sits down at table among the elder gods of the planet, beside the Nile, the Indus and the Ganges, the Yangtze, the Tigris and Euphrates. The Danube begins in Germany's Black Forest and flows east over 1,700 miles before spilling into the Black Sea, and along the way it unites peoples and divides countries. Like all the great rivers, the Danube sang a song that lured the human race out of the forests and off the plains and down from the mountain caves to become civilized along its banks.
The song of the Danube had been heard at Vukovar long before history began.
"It is called the Dove of Vucedol," Alenka said proudly, indicating a picture of the oddly shaped bird that seemed to be just about everywhere. It might as well have been called the Dove of Vukovar. In this particular incarnation, it was on a poster on the castle grounds. "It is from the -- oh, how do you say --" she muttered something in Croatian.
"The Neolithic," Jeri translated, "the New Stone Age."
"Really!?" Kelly gave the figure renewed attention. She had overlooked the dove as some piece of graphic cleverness, but now she saw something more. She remembered reading about the little known cultures of ancient Eastern Europe. The Dove of Vucedol was an artifact from this era as well as this area, both of which lay outside the traditional timelines charting the course of civilization's rise. She wished she could remember more now that she was here. A scholar named Marija Gimbutas had collected and published a mass of evidence that suggested there might be other birthplaces of civilization than along the Tigris and Euphrates, but Kelly couldn't recall the theory with any exactitude. She'd skimmed the books and marveled at the pictures and then committed impressions rather than facts to memory.
Alenka was still talking. "Vucedol is a place where the archaeologists have found many old things and our dove is the most famous. If it were not for this stupid war we could ride there so quickly. It is a high place with a beautiful view. But we will stay here for this morning. Look, for our picnic I have brought wine from Vukovar's wineries. Our wine is quite famous. We are most civilized here."
It did seem most civilized to share wine in the mid-morning and then walk down to the paths along the Danube. Even the presence of armed Croatian Guardsmen did not diminish the pleasure of viewing the great river. The young men warned them to stay on the look out for Serbian gunboats, but they also clearly shared Alenka's pride in their city and were unwilling to forbid access to the visitors.
"The Vuko River bends near here," Alenka said. "That is where the name comes from: Vukovar, city on the Vuko River. In the Medieval Age, there was a fortress city but that was almost all destroyed when the Ottoman Turks left and there was a great battle, so that is why most of the old buildings are from the time when Vienna ruled."
Kelly gazed east across the wide river. She sensed Jeri behind her just as the taller woman placed her hands on Kelly's shoulders. Kelly leaned back and felt Jeri rest her chin on top of her head. The slow dignity of the great river was enchanting.
"I think that the river is a strong brown god," Kelly quoted Eliot softly.
She thought Jeri might not have heard and then Jeri replied from a few lines further in the poem. "The brown god is almost forgotten by the dwellers in cities--ever however implacable, keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder of what men choose to forget."
"Wow. I didn't remember that part."
"I wish I didn't know it. We're learning too much about what men choose to forget."
Never far from Kelly's awareness was how a short a time ago she had despaired of ever seeing Jeri again. She reached into her pocket and squeezed the plumb-sized crystal.
Alenka decided to remind them of time present. "I think we should go back for Marija's food. I am so hungry."
They strolled back to the castle grounds and unpacked the basket in the shade of several oaks. The conversation shifted from regional history to a more personal line. Alenka had taken several vacations to Slovenia and the Alps that ranged the border between Slovenia and Austria and Italy, but she had never been to Dubrovnik or the Dalmatian coast. Kelly and Jeri took turns describing the famous city on the Adriatic sea.
Marija had packed baked chicken along with homemade bread and a cucumber salad. There was also more of the region's wine.
Kelly took another piece of chicken and laughed. "I wish I was a food writer," she said to Jeri. "I'd make Marija famous throughout the world."
"We told the Serbian road block that we were newspaper writers," Jeri said in answer to Alenka's questioning look. It didn't seem likely that a paper would send in two reporters, so we made Kelly a food writer."
"Yes? But you cannot write until you have tasted the dessert." Alenka took a carefully wrapped box from the basket. When the cloth was removed, she presented an entire cake with thick, dark chocolate frosting.
"All right. Marija gets the Nobel Prize for cooking."
"There is such a thing? Oh, of course not, but you are right -- there should be."
They must have all drifted off in the laze of rich food, wine and mid-day warmth. The next thing Kelly was aware of was the thump of what she now recognized as shelling. The sounds were distant, like the thunder of a storm that might approach or might pass by. Jeri was sitting up and gazing into some middle distance -- listening, evaluating. Alenka was staring at the remnants of the picnic, her mouth set tight, her nostrils flared, a study of anger and sorrow.
The thumping stopped.
"I'm going to go ask the Guard if they know where that was," Jeri said, standing up.
Alenka nodded and handed the box to Jeri. Take this with you. Marija will be glad to know that they had some of her cake."
Jeri took the box and walked toward the river, her stride quick and long.
"She is quite beautiful," Alenka said.
"Yes. She is."
"Not just the way she looks, which is so very dramatic and strong, but -- oh, my English is not good enough for this -- it is how she intends, as if she were an arrow or a spear."
"Or a sword in honorable hands," Kelly agreed in a low voice.
"I am so glad you are both here." Alenka was still looking after Jeri. I feel how you are with each other and it is a good thing to be close to. And I am so lonely for Rafi. He does seem closer with Auntie Stella here. When he was still at home, he was sometimes like an uncle, and too grown up for a little sister, but then at other times, he was a comrade and it would be just the two of us. He changed though, after Mama died, and all the fun went out of him."
"I know how you feel," Kelly said. "I miss my brother, George. He was older, too, but he was always my best friend. But the rest of my family is well."
"Why do you miss your brother?"
"He died last year. He had AIDS."
They were quiet together. After a while, Alenka blew her nose. "I have a friend from many years. Andrija. I was the first person he told that he was gay. He says he is okay and takes the proper care, but I worry for him."
Jeri was coming back across the neatly trimmed green grass.
"Perhaps we should leave," she said when she reached her two companions. "The Guard says the fighting is near an area called Baranja, but they've also had word by radio that gunboats have been sighted on the Danube."
On the ride back to Pijacu Street, Alenka directed the trio to a busy sidewalk cafe. She wanted to introduce her American aunties to the young people gathered round a table. Kelly felt as if she had wandered back into her Ohio college student union as she glanced at all the youthful faces. They were a familiar group, just like her students had been, and she felt quite comfortable among them. They struggled with their English in deference to her.
It was enjoyable to see Alenka among her friends. Kelly was particularly interested when the young woman presented Andrija. He was a pleasant-looking youth, sandy brown hair and dark brown eyes, a bit shy as he stood and took her hand and then Jeri's. The slight pressure of his grip and extra warmth of his smile indicated that Alenka had already spoken of them. Alenka seemed slightly anxious as she introduced aunties and friends and then relaxed gradually as the conversation, awkward at first in the presence of strangers, resumed.
They spoke of the war of course.
"Where is George Bush?" asked a beefy young man as if Jeri and Kelly might be able to produce the American president. "Didn't anyone tell him that Croatia is on the way back to the United States from Iraq? We will make him president for life if he will come here with his army."
"Somebody told him that there is no oil in Croatia," answered an earnest young woman with dark hair.
"Why should America care when even Europe won't help us?" asked a young man with thick glasses. "Half of Europe thinks we are still Ustashas, worse than the Nazis, so we deserve whatever happens, and the other half thinks that we are just being the Balkans, doomed to act out ethnic hatreds for all eternity."
"You are too bitter, Petar," said Andrija. "Europe won"t let this go on much longer. When they find out what is happening they will force Milosevic to stop."
"When will that be? Before or after Vukovar is turned into rubble?"
"Petar! Don't be ridiculous. They're only trying to scare us. Why would they want to damage a city as beautiful as this?"
"If any of you had any sense you would leave while it was still possible," Petar grumbled.
"We will leave when you do, Petar," said Alenka happily. "We will be right behind you."
"You know I have to stay. I am in the Guard like Stepan."
"You use that for an excuse so no one will know your secret -- you love Vukovar just like the rest of us."
Petar grumbled something more, but a small smile played at the edge
of his exasperation.
The day had woven the three women into a comfortable cohesion. That evening, Kelly went to the front room and played the piano while Jeri found a book on the history of the Ottoman Empire and settled into one of the comfortable chairs. For a while she focused on reading, but then she gave herself over to the music and just drifted until the aroma of fresh coffee drew her toward the kitchen. Alenka had spread her books over the kitchen table and she was concentrating so hard, she didn't hear Jeri enter. Srijeda was under the table, his head propped on the rung of a chair, and he barely bothered to lift an eyelid at Jeri's appearance. Jeri helped herself to a cup of coffee, thought a moment and then poured another for Kelly. Alenka smiled and nodded to her but was instantly reabsorbed into her work.
Jeri walked back to the front room, bemused by the aura of domesticity. Kelly contributed by looking grateful for the coffee but not pausing in her piano playing.
The turning of a key in the lock brought Srijeda padding down the hall; by the time the door opened and Stepan entered, his tail was wagging furiously. Stepan was dressed again in his Guardsman clothes, but someone had washed them since he had last been there. The young man nodded to Jeri and Kelly and stood a few minutes listening to the music before joining Alenka in the kitchen.
Jeri picked up a thread among her tangled feelings and tried to follow it. On the one hand, she was rather taken with the homey scene. She could see how Alenka and Kelly slipped into it like fish into a pond. Thinking that, Jeri found a knot on the thread she was following: resentment. To her surprise, Jeri recognized that she resented Kelly and Alenka for their familiarity with this kind of life. If either one were asked, they'd probably say that they hadn't felt this way since whenever, while if Jeri was asked, she'd have to say she'd never felt this way.
Certainly not in South Boston. Her family hadn't been at the bottom, not by a long shot, but Jeri didn't remember that ease or peace was ever a resident of her household. Somebody was always yelling, either inside or outside, in the apartment halls or in the streets. Some of her first memories that didn't involve cockroaches were of being surrounded by angry people when her mother took her to the streets to demonstrate in Boston's busing wars. On the wrong side, of course.
Eamon O'Donnell wasn't precisely an alcoholic, and there was always enough money for food, but no one would ever call him a slouch in the drinking department. He had a heavy hand with discipline, all his children learned that, but he took no pleasure in it, and he never lifted a hand against his wife -- though if he had Jeri was sure that Katie would have belted him all the way to County Down. That was a favorite phrase for Katie O'Donnell: "Watch yourself or I'll belt you all the way to County Down."
Jeri could hear her mother's Boston accent echo in memory. Eamon had come from Ireland, but Katie was third generation American Irish. And she was more likely to join Eamon at the neighborhood pub than to try and talk him home. They got along well enough when they were out; it was when they came home that their faces grew tight and their voices angry.
"You could always set a dinner plate for anger at our table," Jeri had told Arkadia O"Malley.
"From the comfortable way that frown sits on your face, I'm not in the least surprised," the older woman answered.
Jeri had clung to her anger, a grinding emotion that honed away extraneous attitudes or interests. It was how she kept her focus, kept her guard on streets where a moment's inattention could cost a life or limb. It wasn't until she took track in high school that she found a way to outdistance her anger. She quit the cigarettes that had been part of her streetwise persona and found the sense of well-being that accompanies a body trained and exercised.
There had been moments of near-contentment in prison. To be so completely ruled by others had a sort of peace to it, but Jeri had resisted that peace with all her will. She kept her anger, muzzled and hidden, but she kept it. She trained. Focused. Learned whatever was available from whoever might teach: West Indian history, the Gaelic language, Pakistani geography. But when she was with Arkadia O'Malley, she learned to be almost content. She wanted to be the woman's lover, but Arkadia told her they had other things to be for one another. Jeri never got to said good-by. The authorities made it a condition of her release that she never contact any of her prison acquaintances. Her release came suddenly; after three years and no trial, one day, she woke up a prisoner and by noon she was eating lunch as a free woman. And by nightfall she had taken the first steps to becoming in fact what they had imprisoned her for in error.
The music Kelly was playing sounded familiar, but Jeri knew little about the classics. Kelly had told her that if she was able to play something then it was likely to be one of the better known pieces. This one had a light sound, not light as in trivial or frivolous but light as in the sun slipping through leaves and dancing in a shade. An odd thought, not her usual way of thinking, more like Kelly. Jeri looked over to see if Kelly was somehow sending thoughts along with the music, but she seemed to be completely engrossed in playing. Even so, Jeri suspected that the woman could follow her into her memories.
A wave of contentment flowed over her and Jeri leaned back in the chair, pleased to recognize the feeling and no longer resentful of the evening's domesticity. The light in the room from two shaded lamps was soft, glowing. Kelly glanced over and smiled and then was instantly absorbed back into the music. She peered at the open book, concentrating. Jeri could tell she was trying for something more than just getting the notes right, trying to find the meaning in the combination of sounds, the magic, reaching for the moment that the separate sounds flowed into a unity of form and feeling.
This was one of the moments a lover waited for: to catch the beloved unaware, to see while being oneself unseen. Like catching some moment of natural grace when the spirit of the other shows clear, timeless. Kelly had closed her eyes, the better to hear the music. Jeri felt it flow to her, accepting the cascade of sound as a gift. So too she drank in the look on Kelly's face, a look she usually saw from much closer, intent concentration, lips slightly parted in the light breaths of passion.
Kelly opened her eyes and looked directly at Jeri. A smile played at the corners of her mouth.
Damn, but the woman was something else! Could she really read Jeri's mind?
Kelly winked.
Jeri shook her head in admiration as Kelly began the series of notes that signaled an ending and finished with a flourish. The music disappeared into the silence.
"Would you like to stay here for a while?" Jeri asked.
Kelly considered and then nodded. "For a while."
"This isn't the safest place."
Kelly nodded again. "I know, but I bet nobody follows us here."
.............................................
Pijacu [piyatsu] market
T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets: "Dry Salvages"