Kin

by Miljenko Jergovic

  On Friday, April 23, 1943, Mladen sent Nevenka a postcard. It is standard, thick, rose-colored military paper. In the upper right corner is the word Feldpost, or field post, and on the left, under the first and last name of the sender, in small letters: “Bezeichnung des Truppenteils verboten. Als Dienstgrad nur Soldat, Getreiter, Leutnant usw. angeben” (Unit name forbidden. Indicate as rank only soldier, enlisted, lieutenant, etc.). The card has three stamps on it: one with a German military eagle, one with the postmark date, and a third with the name Ilidža and the receipt date. The latter is May 4, 1943. The postcard had taken ten days to get from Stockerau to Sarajevo.

  On the back of the card he wrote:

  * * *

  —

  Dear Nevenka,

  Thank you for your last letter. I have a lot of work to do and don’t have time to write. Yesterday I got up at three in the morning and marched all day, with guard duty lasting until eleven at night. And this morning we were up again at five. Today is Good Friday, but we have duty as on any other day. On Sunday I’ll visit Aunt Dora. Last Sunday I was in a castle where the emperor used to live. Now we sing this:

  Der Spiess, der hat ein dickes Buch

  Und drinnen slecht…

  * * *

  —

  Ask Nano to translate it for you. Happy Easter to you and your mother and father!

  With much love,

  Mladen

  * * *

  —

  At the time, Mladen had been in Stockerau for more than half a year. Training was nearing its end, but it was not yet known where his unit would be sent. It was unclear whether Germans from outside Germany, those who did not have citizenship in the German Reich, still needed to serve in their own homelands. Franjo was nervous; he listened to Radio London in secret, exchanging information with Ivica Lisac, who would hear a lot from the German officers. They came to have their photographs taken to send back home, and they would tell him things were not good. The eastern front would have to be reinforced since for months it had been moving westward. The news that Stalingrad had fallen and an entire German army had been taken prisoner reached Ivica Lisac’s photography studio in all its dramatic detail, worse than what Radio London had reported. The English were not exaggerating. The Red Army was advancing across Russia’s endless expanse as if no one could stop it…

  Franjo did not want his son to stop the Red Army.

  He did not want anyone to stop the Red Army, for it could not be worse than what it was battling against. There was nothing worse than Hitler. Franjo had known this from the start. Hitler was waging war against the Red Army, against America and England, against the West and the East, but also against his neighbor from the ground floor, the Jewish woman who had been picked up and who had called out in the night for her neighbors to save her. Hitler was waging a war on Franjo’s conscience.

  This was why he did not want his son to stop the Red Army.

  Olga did not want to see her son hurt, that was why she resisted the idea that at the first opportunity Mladen might desert. Deserters were punished by death. She was sure that it would be easier to stay alive by reporting to Stockerau and shooting at paper Russians and Partisans than to fight against fascism in the woods of Bosnia.

  Olga was deathly afraid of the Ustaše, which was why she could not bring herself to have an abortion in the fall of 1941, even though she did not want to have another child. A wartime child. Archbishop Ivan “the Evangelist” Šarić preached that any wayward woman who got rid of unborn fruit would end up in hell. He was an ugly old man who wrote bad poetry and translated the Bible. She could not have cared less what he said, though she believed in God and went to church. She could not have cared less about his hell, but she was afraid of the Ustaše. The Ustaše punished abortion by death. That was why she gave birth to a girl on May 10, 1942, and, according to Mladen’s wishes, they named her Javorka. The Catholic priests did not want to christen her with that name; they said the name was Serbian. Franjo did not give in. Let her name be Serbian! Are Serbs human beings? he asked a young man in a black robe. He blushed and said: We are all God’s children! Then he added: But the child cannot be christened with that name. And so she was registered as Regina Javorka.

  My mother was born of the fear her mother had of the Ustaše. Had she not been afraid, she would have aborted the child, as she had already done once before, in summer 1940. If Nona had not been afraid of the Ustaše, the hand that writes these lines would have been a mere cosmic conjecture. Should I be thankful to the Ustaše that I was born? I asked myself this in Zagreb in the summer of 2013, on the seventieth anniversary of Mladen’s death, at a time of quiet and implicit gratitude for all that the Ustaše did for Croatia. I am not thankful to those who gave me life. Just as I am not thankful to those who welcomed me with such kindness to Zagreb in spring 1993 after I had escaped from Sarajevo. How could anyone be grateful to the Ustaše and not turn into a piece of shit?

  My mother was born with her mother’s fear, but Mladen was happy to have a younger sister. He mentions her in every letter and postcard, asking all the family members at Ilidža about her, whether they had seen her, how much she had grown, whether she was crawling. Nevenka would answer him, a precocious girl who knew and understood everything at the age of eight, even about the encamped German division there on the meadow in front of the house, in the direction of the future Butmir Airport, and the German major who slept in Karlo Stubler’s house – something the old man was never happy about, though he spoke politely with his countryman – and the celebration on the tenth of April, when she too would give a presentation at a school assembly, and her little cousin Javorka, Mladen’s sister, and his worry about the little girl he was thinking of far away in Stockerau, where German soldiers were being trained in preparation for the decisive battle for a free Europe, which would begin in the woods near Vienna, where Mladen and his comrades were shooting at paper Russians and Partisans as they jumped out from behind the bushes. From Nevenka’s perspective, from her childish motherliness, everything was exciting and promising, as well as a lot to worry about, and she was ready to accept it. Correspondence with Mladen was a game to her, and all remained a game until the next death.

  She wrote Mladen for the first time on Wednesday, February 9, 1943. She trembled with excitement and fear, it may have been the first letter she had written in her life. She wrote it on commercial paper in red ink. She wrote the first letter of Mladen’s name in lower case, then corrected it to upper case. Someone was obviously overseeing her while she was writing. Probably Nano.

  * * *

  —

  Dear Mladen!

  Thank you for writing. I’m happy to know that you are well. Forgive me for not writing sooner. Are you eating Bosnian polenta there? Well, I learned to eat it too and Mara is already eating it a little bit. But just so you know, Mladen, we eat cakes and cookies whenever we have birthdays. Now Nano is teaching me how to write Gothic letters. When I learn how I’ll write to Auntie Dora, and when you talk to her next time please tell her I said hello. For Christmas I got a dough maker and platter, a Petrica Kerempuh book from Dragan, and Letters from My Windmill, and a book for paints and crayons, two notebooks for writing and one for arithmetic, an eraser, a compass, two pencil sharpeners.

  Hugs and kisses from your Nevenka Novak

  * * *

  —

  Nevenka rewrote this letter in a clean copy, correcting the errors, and sent it on its way, but it never arrived. The next letter is dated Thursday, March 11, 1943. She wrote it in pencil so she could erase her mistakes. It is difficult to read after seventy years’ worth of the graphite flaking away from the smooth commercial paper. The sign of the military censor is easily visible, and the number 184415. A censor number was not usually found on letters.

  * * *

  —

  Dear Mladen!

  Please answer my letter right awa
y. To say whether you’ve received and understood everything. Nano is teaching me to write Gothic script. When I’ve learned, I’ll write to Auntie Dora. When you see her, please tell her hello. For Christmas I got the book Letters from My Windmill, a coloring book, and a Petrica Kerempuh book, a dough maker, and a platter. Just so you know Mladen, we eat cakes and cookies whenever it’s our birthday. When I write you funny things, do you laugh?

  With love and kisses, your Nevenka Novak

  * * *

  —

  For the most part this letter is a copied version of the earlier one. Either the young girl didn’t know what to write to her elder relative, or her Christmas presents were extremely important to her. She doesn’t mention polenta anymore, but the Christmas cakes haven’t gone very far from her head. The month is March, the Sarajevo winter is moving to its end, it is still at its coldest at the southern exits from the city, at the base of Mount Igman. The wind sweeps across the Butmir meadows, gathering up the sharp fine snow and slapping one in the face. 1943 was the first winter of real and widespread hunger, when the war was truly felt in the stomach. There was nothing but polenta and potatoes and the promise that there would be cakes and pastries for one’s birthday.

  The bees were quiet in the apiary. One did not dare disturb them lest they think spring had arrived. Franjo had left them enough honey for the winter, and Opapa made the rounds to check on them and make sure everything was in order and no one had broken in.

  Army detachments would pass through Kasindol from time to time. They no longer marched as they had in the summer and spring, but walked normally, making their way on foot like the rest of us, their heads close to their shoulders. With time, in fear and trembling before death, the human body turns into a tortoise shell. The head retracts into it, disappearing; only the eyes stare out in all directions, on the look out for some armed avenger, a Partisan, who might jump out from the snow nearby and start shooting. Soldiers are afraid, and that fear soon becomes their strongest and perhaps their only conviction. What Nevenka was learning in school about military sacrifice for our beautiful homeland, about bravery and patriotism, all this was false. All that was left in the soldiers was fear.

  Besides, they were not Croatian soldiers anymore. They had practically all disappeared from Kasindol. Since the beginning of the war until that winter, the Home Guard had passed by, marching, once or twice. The rest were all Germans. In trucks, in armored vehicles, the officers in black limousines, the infantry perfectly organized up in two long lines stretching out like a caterpillar. The German foot soldiers would pass by quietly, without a single word, their eyes fixed before them, until they grew aware of the world around them, and of their fear, and then they’d start to look around, their heads sinking between their shoulders, disappearing into the tortoise shell. This happened early in 1943, as the news of the catastrophe at Stalingrad spread.

  At night, during Catholic and Muslim feast days, the Ustaše patrols would come around. Three or four drunk and disheveled young men would break into the garden, treading on the onion beds, shoot rounds into the sky, and blaspheme God in a loud voice. Somewhere below, in the dark, against the white walls of the Baškarad and Pavlović houses, shadows of people were cast, men, women, and children, and then, as if in a scene from Turkish shadow theater, the person observing could no longer tell whether there had been anything there at all. The drunk Ustaše youngsters, who had just returned from eastern Bosnia, from the bloodbath in which people had suffered and died, in which they had butchered and been butchered, but among whom a strict military discipline prevailed, now gave in to release as they tramped across the onion and lettuce beds, and in their drunkenness did not see the play of shadows on the white walls of the Pavlović and Baškarad houses. When they tramped around in the courtyards of the Serbian houses, of which there were three at the top of Kasindol, and pounded on the wooden doors with the butts of their rifles, shouting in the name of the Poglavnik and Croatia, no one answered from inside. There was no one, not in the first house, or the second, or the third, and Đulaga, Ismet, and Jozo Posušak couldn’t believe that the Vlach was not home at that hour of the night, and it was precisely at night that they had set out to butcher him, for it was his brothers who had butchered all the Croats around Rogatica, Prača, and Ustiprača, those who hadn’t run away, including a three-month-old baby boy in a crib and his mother, and a blind hajji who was a hundred years old and hadn’t done anything to anyone. And instead of waiting politely, which they would have done had they had any honor or respect, had their cross and their christening been worth anything, so they could answer for the child slaughtered in its crib, and the slaughtered mother, and the blind hajji Abdulrahim, also slaughtered, they had disappeared in the night! Đulaga and Ismet were not pleased, nor was Jozo Posušak, and they let their anger fly into the sky with bursts of fire, and then they headed for the Swabian’s house, where the Vlach was hiding, everyone in Ilidža knew it, to call him out and interrogate him regarding the butchered Croatian child in its crib, the child’s butchered mother, the butchered hajji, and all of butchered Croatia. Fuck him a hundred times over, would he have let his Germany get butchered? That’s what they would ask him, Đulaga, Ismet, and Jozo Posušak, three sworn Ustaše and Croatian heroes, who would even ask the good Lord himself the same question, with a round in the face, if he were against Croatia.

  Đulaga shook the door with the butt of his rifle, the same door that fifty years later the Chetnik Lugonja shook with the butt of his rifle. His gaze frozen, Karlo Stubler opened the door as if in a dream and spoke to Đulaga. Just as Nevenka opened the door fifty years later, as if in a dream, and spoke to Lugonja, though her gaze was not frozen. She was not afraid, for she had lived through this once, twice, five times before, though then she had been eight years old and now she was fifty-eight. She asked Lugonja, What do you want? I came to butcher you, Lugonja told her. What is it you’re doing to the Serbs in Sarajevo? Who is doing that, Nevenka asked, me? Your people, Lugonja said. Where is your son, Nevenka? He went away, he wouldn’t wait for you. Go back home, Lugonja, get some sleep. And what could Lugonja do but go away. Just as fifty years earlier Đulaga, Ismet, and Jozo Posušak had left their work unfinished, though they knew that the Swabian’s house was full of Vlachs. They didn’t know what to do when a person looked them so coldly in the eye.

  It was easier in the spring, when the German troops were on their way east, toward Albania, Macedonia, and Greece, and they had pitched their tents on the Butmir meadow, while their commander asked politely to be allowed to stay in the house. Opapa said yes – what else could he have done? – and it seemed it was easier for him to turn away Đulaga, Ismet, and Jozo Posušak from his house than to take in German officers. It did not matter that Opapa was against Hitler. The officers were not representatives of Hitler to him; he knew all too well how they had become what they were and how they had ended up in Bosnia. He knew they were in the same misery as his grandson. He did not like taking in such people because of his neighbors. Everyone knew in those days and weeks that a German officer was staying at the Stublers. And for Opapa it was important and always would be important what the neighbors on Kasindol thought. At any rate, it was more important than what some Đulaga, Ismet, and Jozo Posušak might think, or what his German compatriots might think. Opapa’s life was such, by chance, destiny, and his will, that all that was left to him besides his flesh and blood was his neighbors on Kasindol. They were his people, his home, and his homeland, his entire Blut und Boden, for everything else had been split and dispersed, and by then, in spring 1943, there was no more Bosowicz, where he’d been born and where his people had lived for three hundred years. For him there were no Germans, there was no Germany, no railroad, no railroad coworkers; all this had disappeared and was in the process of disappearing, while those people, whose shadows flashed at night across the white walls of the Baškarad and Pavlović houses, really did exist. And he could not think about what they were
thinking when a high-ranking German officer stayed at his house.

  He confided once in his son-in-law Vilko, Rika’s husband, How can you even think that, Opapa? They’re happy and have the peace of God, because the moment the Germans set up camp in Butmir, the Usataše will disappear from Kasindol. But this did not calm him. Something here did not sit well with him, like a perfectly made key that did not fit the lock. Just as how he did not dare to think about Mladen, he could not stop thinking about this. Whenever he thought about his grandson, now in Stockerau training to become a German soldier, Karlo Stubler would rush to some other thought. From the start he had known about Olga’s argument with Franjo about what should be done. About whether Mladen should report for the German conscription summons, or hide in the attic as a deserter, risking court-martial, or join the Partisans in the woods. Franjo was for having Mladen go to the Partisans. It was dangerous and risky, but it looked likely that in the end they would win. He said as much in June 1942, when things did not look at all hopeful to either of them. And it was true that Olga once said that those who took women from their homes in the middle of the night just because they were Jewish could not win. God would not allow such people to win. If they did, she said, it would be as if there was no God. She still believed then. But even so she was for Mladen’s reporting for duty with the German army. The Germans were not the same as the Croats, nor were they the same as the Ustaše. They were a serious army, kept track of the lives of their soldiers, and the most important thing was that Mladen survive the war. This was what she said, and this was why Mladen answered the call.