Kin

by Miljenko Jergovic

  They left the country by way of Budapest, but then they had to separate. Petar went to Canada, where he got work at Ottawa’s Apiculture Institute, while Miloš traveled to New Zealand. For years he worked as a freelance video artist, and performer, and in 1999 became a professor at the government film school. They never visited Belgrade, as far as anyone knows. Several publishers supposedly, and Vladislav Bajac of Geopoetika certainly, inquired about the History of South Slavic Beekeeping and Honey Production Across the Centuries. Bajac even telephoned Miloš Zlatković, who in a curt and not especially cordial way told Bajac that he was not interested in having the book published, that he did not believe that “anyone back there was engaged in beekeeping anymore,” and that he had heard the bees in the Balkans had died out at the beginning of the nineties.

  Jela Zlatković died in a Belgrade home for the elderly at the end of August 1995. In the final months she found it hard to move. The cartilage of her knees and hips was gone, bone grated painfully against bone, so the greater part of the day she spent in a wheelchair. The attendants would wheel her down the green linoleum-tiled hall and place her in front of the television in the living room, and she would sit with the remote control on her lap, changing channels occasionally, searching, but there were fewer and fewer Chetniks on the screen. In the middle of July, during the worst of the heat, when there was no air conditioning, on a foreign channel she came upon a column of tattered women, children, and old people as they made their way somewhere, men in torn military uniforms and covered in sweat. The screen was snowy, the picture sometimes disappeared, and there was no sound, only the same picture reappearing: a slowly moving column of ragged, filthy people covered in sweat, kerchiefed women with their heads down, as if the glare in their eyes might blind them. She did not know who these people were or where they were going. The next day she was again flipping through and again they appeared on a foreign channel. Except there were more women, fewer old people, the young boys in the torn military uniforms had disappeared, there were no boys anymore, and they all looked much more exhausted than the day before. She did not know who they were. She called a nurse: Kosara, dear, where are all those people off to? Kosara didn’t know, but she was left gaping as the picture went white again, the sound grew louder, and the screen disappeared into snow. This went on for days before Mother Jela discovered that they were Muslims from Srebrenica. Turks, said Kosara gloomily, and paid no more attention. Yes, right, Turks, mother Jela tried to accept it, but suddenly something seemed wrong to her. For days she had been watching those women, she thought she had seen them several times, that she had met some of them, watching like that, on a strange foreign TV channel, and she could not just say Turks. It had been different when the impassioned Serbian nation was defending itself from the hills around Sarajevo, threatened from the minarets and the red roofs, for then there had been no people. Mother Jela had not seen them while she was searching for her son Sava. But now, there, she was seeing people. And she had been watching them on those July days, while everything around baked in the summer heat, stinking of ammonia and human insides, of old age and death, while everyone but she lay down and slept, hidden in their rooms, waiting for a breath of wind, the salvation of the first autumn rain. They did not care, nor did they see the long column making its way today, on that foreign channel, but Mother Jela watched them, making out the faces until the picture went snowy, trying to recognize someone she had seen before. A woman leading a seven-year-old boy by the hand – the same age as her grandson Moris, Đorđije’s son, who would be starting school in the fall, and then she wondered where, good Lord, would that boy be going to school, the one who had been hanging on his mother’s arm for days – she saw her and her son and the next day would search for them. She saw an old man, perhaps older than she was, thin as a stalk, like the typhus patient in that film, and remembered him, thinking perhaps they had met somewhere before. It was true that Želeće was far from Srebrenica, so very far, and she wasn’t sure whether anyone from Žepče or Maglaj had ever gone to Srebrenica, and why anyone would, she had no idea, but then she remembered Mr. Rejc, who had kept his bees on their meadow, and she remembered that Mr. Rejc had been a rail man but not like her Dušan, no, he’d been an official at the headquarters, a railroad sage, and he had inspected all the tracks to see the damage and determine how fast the trains could go on which tracks, and she thought that he, Mr. Rejc, should be asked whether it was possible to get to Srebrenica by train and whether Srebrenica had a railway station. But then she remembered she had not seen him for a long time, not since that other war, sixty years and more had passed, and he was most likely no longer alive. But then the picture on the screen became suddenly clear. It was no longer a foreign station but Radio and Television Serbia, and people were no longer walking but sitting in a tractor trailer. It was Saturday evening, August 5, and Mother Jela suddenly perked up, raised herself from the wheelchair and said – Turks. They’re not Turks; they’re Serbs, Kosara said, just as gloomily. The TV-viewing room slowly filled with people and soon there would be no free seats. In their wheelchairs, hobbling on walkers with IVs hanging from them, with and without crutches, holding one another by the arm, those who were still in their right minds came to watch the exodus of Serbs from Croatia. Turks, Mother Jela said once more, as if to make sure. They’re not Turks; they’re Serbs, people croaked near her. Leave the woman alone, Kosara warned them. Serbs, Mother Jela said. Yes, Serbs, Kosara said, sighing, and stood beside her, as if she were her bodyguard. So it is, said Mother Jela. Yes, said Kosara. The heat had subsided somewhat. It was no longer as it had been while the women, children, and old men from Srebrenica were passing across the snowy screen. It was possible to breathe. Someone cursed. The smell of cigarette smoke was palpable. Though smoking was prohibited, one of the doctors had lit up. His eyes were filled with tears. He was from Zadar, Kosara told her. His people were in the column. Mother Jela looked at the doctor. The smoke stung her eyes. Are you looking for your son? someone asked. For Mother Jela was again shoving her nose into the screen. He’s not there, she said. It had been a long time since she’d thought about Sava, not since the summer heat had come. My Sava disappeared at the end of that other war, she said. But no one could hear her. They were shouting, cursing, sobbing in front of the TV, as the column neared the border. There were destroyed houses all around, burnt-out car bodies, tank barriers, and tangled balls of barbed wire. One winter night, Mother Jela whispered, one cold winter night she would unravel every ball of barbed wire and knit her sons’ winter sweaters. She would knit her dead sons sweaters of barbed wire one cold night. And all of it had long since been in vain. Her son Sava would not be there, he would never come back, and both columns would soon disappear from the TV screen.

  Jela Zlatković, Chetnik mother, died on August 30, 1995, while sitting before a TV that showed the dancing stars of Grand Production, with the remote control resting in her lap. Nurse Kosara tried to check her pulse while a young woman with large, plastic breasts in a leather miniskirt sang the old hit by Snežana Savić: Three kisses is what I want, not one, not two, I’ll not take less, for three’s the best for happiness, three kisses is what I want…

  We have narrated this lengthy tale of Dušan Zlatković’s, to whom Franjo Rejc for years paid pollen rent, and of his sons and his widow Jela, even though it has no connection to the gray notebook, the zobnica, the rusted lighter, the pencil, or the two pieces of red wax for sealing envelopes found thirty years after the move, in the cellar of the house on Sepetarevac. But this story, too, is linked to the bee journal, and to all the other, mostly lost journals kept by Franjo Rejc in his lifetime. In some of the honey jars, where the bees’ understanding of Želeće and of the events that took place on the meadows near the home of Dušan Zlatković were archived, but which we consumed after Franjo’s death because there was no one left to decipher the bees’ language and read their bee history, there must have been stories told, even if only in signs and bee allusions, of
the births of Dušan and Jela’s sons. From them perhaps one might divine a certain hidden history of our century.

  * * *

  —

  For 1935, remarks on no. 4

  The queen moves slowly. The bees are unusually sensitive, react even to breath. Otherwise the nest is well ordered, with broods in all stages.

  Ilidža, 1936, no. 4

  Swarm extremely animated in early spring. Queen disappeared at the end of April, joined to no. 5 on May 12, 1936. Gradually extracting no. 4 (this line, the transcriber notes, is written more forcefully and underlined).

  19 V 36. Survey. There are twelve frames. Saw the queen. Eggs hatching well. She’s moving a bit more slowly. Saw the drone brood. Two frames in all. Adequate honey and pollen. Healthy odor. Entire swarm rather weak. Nest is at center of hive; added one frame. Unnecessary to check again before June 14.

  24 V 36. Added one frame with a sealed worker bee brood taken from no. 3.

  2 VI 36. Thirteen frames. Three frames have empty spaces. Found the queen at the back of frame 4. Entire frame laid heavily with eggs. Laying is proper. The queen moves very slowly; her abdomen has turned rather dark. She’s old. On further analysis located fairly mature brood. Since there is no drone comb, the bees have spread out their work and moved out the drone brood. In frame 10, counting in back I found two not-yet-closed queen cells next to mature brood. Removed one empty frame. No need for further checks before 20 VI 36, thanks to quiet swarming.

  * * *

  —

  Franjo stands above a frame filled with bees holding his breath. They are sensitive to breath. They grow troubled, begin to bustle like people on Baščaršija cobblestones, treading one after another, while on both sides of the street Oriental shops open up after the midday heat. The marketplace is lively, but he does not feel comfortable there. He’d prefer to be home with his bees. All is well among them, even on the days when they sting, even then they’re better than the Oriental bustle, better than the world of people, whose curiosity and sincerity are smothering. These people see him as a foreigner, just as they see his sons as foreigners, and will see the children of his children, and their grandchildren and great-grandchildren, waiting patiently for the day when they’ll all pack up and leave Sarajevo and Bosnia, just as their great-great-grandfathers had arrived with a bag in each hand, thereby keeping the balance above the abyss of foreignness. Nor do they ever ask where we would go with those two bags, where our true homeland might be. Because for them, as they simper and bow from the doors of their shops, the kuferaš homeland is wherever there are crosses. There’s a wide world to pick from, so go right ahead!

  Franjo had lived along the tracks in many Bosnian towns or kasabas, as the locals call them. From the first in Travnik to the last, God willing, in Sarajevo, he had crossed central Bosnia backwards and forwards, traveling often by train and sensing each of the rails under the jurisdiction of the Bosnia and Herzegovina Railway Headquarters. He felt at home in a train, on open track, at a station, on a main line or a sidetrack. That was his homeland – he passed through the car freely, along the corridor through the sleeping compartments, and through narrow passages between the wooden benches on trains that ran on narrow-gauge lines; he had conversations with people, paid no attention to how he pronounced the words, writing down their names and addresses in his notebook at full speed, his hand steady, his handwriting ever clear and strong; though he had never worked in a train, had never been a conductor or an engineer, and had never served as chief of a special line, his steps were steady, as if the floor were not swaying beneath his feet, like an old sailor on a stormy sea, and wherever he was, on a train, at a station, or in a waiting room, or if he was pumping a handcar like a gymnast, up-down, up-down, up-down, on some abandoned track in eastern Bosnia, Franjo Rejc was in his element. The moment he came down onto the platform and took those ten steps to the road, to the civilian world, again he found himself in a foreign land. An eternal kuferaš, an outsider, an alien born in Travnik as an alien, who would die an alien, it was not clear where yet, for to stop being an alien he would have to go to wherever they sent him, to Slovenia, Croatia, Germany, for he spoke German too, along with both his mother tongues, and there he would have to be a greater Slovene than the Slovenes, a harsher Croat than the harshest of Croats, to live at last in his own land, his own bread and blood, and not like this, troubled, alone, without air. For years he felt he did not have enough air, that the people in the marketplace were strangling him and pressing in on him from all around. Then Doctor Rittig had said it was asthma, cardiac asthma, and he felt lighter. For a brief while it felt better, for he believed he had finally discovered what was smothering him and that it had nothing to do with his foreignness…But soon it all started again. He was choking because there were fingers pressing against his chest – an unsightly little secret police inspector had climbed onto a metal safe in his dream and leaped onto his chest, a dream that repeated for years. He was choking because of Mladen’s death. He was choking because choking had become his way of life. A crab backed away, a snake slithered between the stones, a whale emerged to take a breath, but he choked and could not remember that it had ever been any different.

  Franjo hadn’t been able to breathe since 1945.

  He breathed as if onto bees that were sensitive to breath.

  He breathed as if to avoid upsetting his bees.

  He breathed as if with each breath he inhaled hundreds of stingers into his throat and air passage. Hundreds of bee deaths for one beekeeper’s pain, for a strangulation that would last for years.

  He asked Doctor Rittig if he ought to engage in beekeeping, if honey might be good for his illness. Physical activity was important! Rittig said. But without getting agitated of course, and it seems to me, he told Franjo, that you must remain calm among bees. Of course, Franjo said, bees don’t tolerate nervousness. Bees despise agitated people. A bee never will sting a calm person. If that is the case, said the doctor, then beekeeping is very good for you. I must tell you we know nothing regarding honey’s medicinal benefits. We do know that honey is not harmful to a person, as is, for instance, white sugar.

  Doctor Rittig was a puzzling man. When Vjekoslav Luburić arrived in Sarajevo toward the end of the war, Doctor Rittig was among the first arrested. It was rumored around the market squares that he was a Mason. He was held for a week, interrogated in the house of horror on Skenderija, which Luburić had acquired the day he entered the city. He selected it, they say, because of the Masonic symbol imprinted on the façade so that he might finish off the Antichrist in his chambers. Few believed the doctor would ever see the light of day again. Cries were audible from the house on Skenderija, Luburić’s executioners having opened the windows, perhaps to air out their torture chambers or, more likely, to spread terror throughout the city and with it the story of the Independent State of Croatia’s survival, of its tormentors and its martyrs. In this Luburić, who was also called General Drinjanin, was very successful.

  Doctor Rittig emerged unscathed from the house on Skenderija. He did not look as if he had been tortured, nor had he lost weight. His face was a little pale, which was not at all strange since he hadn’t seen the sun in a long time. Whether anyone asked him how he had fared at Luburić’s is of course not known. But knowing the inhabitants of Sarajevo, they didn’t ask but rather pretended that nothing had happened. If some crackpot had asked him, Rittig would not have answered. He had been silent about even smaller matters. He merely smiled and shared simple medical advice with his patients without even examining them and making a diagnosis. Don’t get stressed. Drink plenty of water, it’s good for you, water is the healthiest drink there is. Be careful what you wear on your feet, a hat and shawl are not too important. Some illnesses come from your feet getting wet. Give up smoking, just think what your lungs look like after so many years of smoking – like a chimney pipe! Walk as much and as often as you can. Walking is healthy. Drink onl
y in moderation. Trust in God, but go to the doctor when something hurts; God did not invent medicine for no reason. Take shelter from the heat, it’s not good when the sun beats down on your head. Pregnancy is not an illness, and you shouldn’t behave as if you were sick when you’re pregnant. Washing your hands is more important than washing your feet, but if you’ve already washed your hands, you might as well wash your feet, at least for the sake of stretching…

  This was how Doctor Rittig talked after getting out of Luburić’s torture chamber.

  When the Partisans arrived, they made him director of the hospital for a short time. That’s not for me, he told them. I’m a born senior medicus. They checked on the meaning of medicus and before long Rittig was back at his old position in one of the most remote buildings of Koševo Hospital, located amid the stench of the hospital kitchens and laundry facilities. The patients would see the well-known pulmonary cardiologist about not being able to breathe. They would stretch out their chests and open their mouths like fish but still could get no air. Rittig was their last hope.

  He never married, living a bachelor’s life on Tito Street, in a large, gloomy apartment. After the war his niece Abela came to live with him, a taciturn, slender girl who played the violin and was studying to become a music teacher. Why she came from Zagreb to study music in Sarajevo, when she had passed her entrance exams in Zagreb, is not clear. She must have taken refuge, just as her uncle had taken refuge in Sarajevo. He never mentioned his native Zagreb, nor did he call himself a Croat. About this, as about erotic matters, the doctor was equally without passion. Whenever a conversation turned to nationality, Rittig would take part reluctantly or, in the middle of the conversation, take out a newspaper or a book and immerse himself in it, raising up around him the same Rittig wall that had forever remained impenetrable. He would just smile mournfully, as if slightly embarrassed, and soon drift off into sleep. Are you a German? someone would ask him. Yes, I speak German well. But you’re not a German. I thought you were because you have a German last name. You are right, my last name is German. See how words can deceive you.