Kin

by Miljenko Jergovic

  L. accompanied him to the station and was the last to see Mladen alive. The last of those close to him. After that some letters would continue to arrive – letters Olga later destroyed (only Mladen’s letters to Nevenka survived) – as would some postcards – also destroyed, and then came the end.

  Mladen died between two of Nano’s postcards. He was no longer sending them from Bijeljina but from Osijek, where he was transferred for a short time. Judging by the address, he had been placed in someone’s private apartment. Actually the addresses are strangely different. The first postcard is signed “Second Lieutenant Rudolf Stubler, I Division,” housed at Crkvena 26/I, whereas the second one reads, Cvjetkova 26/basement. Whether these are two different addresses or the same one written in two different ways is hard to know.

  On the first, written in black ink, the date is 21 IX 1943:

  * * *

  —

  Dear Nena, I haven’t written to you in a long time. I miss you and home. How are you? Are you going to school and studying hard? I know you’ve always been a good girl. I feel fine here, but I would still rather be digging up potatoes than be here. The weather has been nice and sunny these last days. People were swimming in the Drava. But just now as I am writing to you, it’s grown overcast, there was a flash of lightning and a strong wind has picked up. It’s going to rain. The fall is coming, and Mladen is in the war. I’ve been to see Željko and he’s come to see me. Now he too is leaving Borovo. Perhaps for Rajlovac. Give my best to your father and mother.

  With love and kisses,

  Your Nano

  Six days later, another postcard, written in pencil, the text faded after seventy years, on August 3, 2013, the invisible graphite dust lingers on my fingertips.

  * * *

  —

  Dear Nena, here I am writing from Mladen’s grave. I am sad and sorry. I swallow my tears. He won’t play or sing or visit us anymore. He is dead. Aunt Olga was here a little before me. I’m so sorry we missed each other. Now I’m here waiting alone for the train. How are you? Did you recieve my card? Write me and make a little drawing. Is Javorka at Ilidža? How are your father and mother? Has the piglet grown? Are you eating the rabbits? Warm greetings to you and your parents, Your Nano

  Andrijevci 27 IX 1943

  * * *

  —

  Mladen was killed and buried between Tuesday the twenty-first and Monday the twenty-seventh. Regarding the date of his death there is no one left to ask anymore. Until not long ago I thought he had died in October. Did L. ever go to the grave in Andrijevci? Probably not. The love of a Serbian girl from Sarajevo and a German soldier, which ended with his death in the last days of summer or the first days of fall 1943 could be an interesting story for a film. Or a novel. But this happened in reality, and nothing about the two of them can be invented. L. was the only love of my eldest uncle, and if things had worked out differently, if the path of one bullet in Slavonia, near the village of Andrijevci, had been different, they would probably have married. Or not…

  After the war L.J. studied philology in Belgrade. She worked as a teacher in Sarajevo’s middle schools. At the beginning of the sixties she went to Canada, intending to stay, but several years later she came back. She was a secretary in the editorial office of a literary magazine. And then again a teacher, of Serbo-Croatian in a high school. She never married. Some suspected that L. J. was attracted to women. Tall, redheaded, without even a single gray hair, an eternal Claudia Cardinale, she did have a masculine way of moving. In her youth, they said, it was not so. But as she matured, it was as if the masculine side in her became more prominent. She remained strong in her body and face, which had no wrinkles, eternally youthful. As if the aging of her movements transformed her gender.

  She would smile at me as if to say everything would be fine.

  She left Sarajevo on the bus convoy in June 1992 that transported the Jews out of Sarajevo, along with those who would declare themselves Jews until they got to a place where bombs were not falling. Nothing more was heard about her afterward. She was seventy at the time, though she looked twenty years younger. On her departure, her hair still set fire to the woods at the base of Mount Igman. If she is alive, she is over ninety. But I believe she is no more. In a phone conversation last fall, Javorka suddenly asked me about her, about where I thought she might be. I think she died, I said. I did not want to tell you, Javorka said, but I dreamed she was dead.

  * * *

  —

  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.

  * * *

  —

  There is no information in the bee log regarding an examination of brood number 2 on 20 VI 36, but there is no doubt that it took place, that the quiet swarming was successfully and securely carried out, and that a new life cycle was initiated. The bee world, in contrast to the human one, is not preoccupied with individual deaths. The bees each have a soul, which lives and dies. Bees demonstrate love and hate, but mostly they are indifferent, like people, traveling from one end of the horizon to the other. If there is bee writing, then bees too create travelogues. People grow enraged many times; bees do so just once, and for that one rage, they pay with their lives. The death of one bee means nothing to other bees. That is the difference between bees and humans.

  * * *

  —

  When he understood that he could not save the queen from the plague-infected brood, Franjo Rejc folded his hands and crushed the queen mother, but she did not sting him. She could not sting him, for she had not the least bit of anger in her. Or was it that the queen does not have a stinger? Who would know better? It is impossible to establish where he acquired the feedbag, for that happened before the plague. The plague wiped all bee memory clean. The plague alters the memories of the beekeeper.

  After the war, Mladen’s wartime comrades – who went into war in German uniforms and came out of it in Partisan ones – said Mladen had thrown himself behind a haystack while the two of them had ducked behind a little wall. He was left alone when they fell into the ambush, and he was trying to run to them. The one shot fired hit him in the neck. That was what they said. They didn’t know who had fired the shot. It wouldn’t have changed anything if they did.

  Parker 51

  Franjo Rejc’s acquaintance with Colonel Carl Schmitt, namesake of the German jurist and theoretician, began by chance at the end of August 1943. The colonel grew ill and collapsed at the door of Franjo’s office. Franjo caught sight of the upturned face of a German officer foaming at the mouth, eyes rolling back into his head, and he jumped up from his desk, knelt down beside the unconscious man, and in one sure motion pried open his jaw and pulled his tongue out, which had fallen back into his throat. If it had not been for Franjo Rejc and for the knowledge he had gained as a soldier in the Bosnian regiment of the Royal and Imperial Habsburg Army regarding what to do in the case of a seizure, Carl Schmitt would have died.

  When they had taken the colonel away in the ambulance, Franjo continued the letter he had begun earlier:

  * * *

  —

  Dear Andrija,

  A man just collapsed before my eyes. A tall German officer lost consciousness, foaming at the mouth. An epileptic seizure. I got his tongue out, turned him on his side, just as it’s written in the manual. We were all unsettled. I won’t tell Olga what happened. She would immediately think of Mladen. What would happen to him if the colonels around him all collapsed.

 
We’re all fine. Javorka is growing. She started walking but not talking yet. She only says Mama, Papa, Tante Jika. We can’t go to Ilidža. For going one needs to get special permission, explain the reason for traveling. What’s the reason for traveling from Sarajevo to Ilidža? In my case it’s the bees. In Olga’s it’s green lettuce, fruit, strawberries. How does one make that into words that will be understandable at the police checkpoints? A more difficult task than it seems at first glance. If I knew how, I’d be a writer rather than a rail man.

  How is Lola? How’s Branka? Željko sends postcards regularly. He says maybe soon he’ll be transferred to Rajlovac. Olga was happy, but I told her you need a special pass to get to Rajlovac too, so it’s the same to us if he’s in Borovo or Rajlovac. It’s as if we’re in prison.

  I’ve been trying for days to catch you by phone. I’ve been calling in the late afternoon. They say the line has been cut. Let’s hope for better times.

  Best regards to all, Lola, Branka, Mina, Franica!

  Your friend and brother-in-law,

  Franjo

  * * *

  —

  This had taken place on Friday.

  On Monday at about eight o’clock, Colonel Carl Schmitt returned to headquarters in a black Mercedes-Benz, cradling a small package wrapped in blue packing paper. He asked for a tall, slender Herr with a gray suit. Although the majority of those who worked there, or passed through headquarters on a daily basis, wore gray suits, and after two years of war it would have been suspicious for someone not to be slender, they somehow knew that the SS colonel was looking for Franjo Rejc.

  When Carl Schmitt entered his office, Franjo was in pain. In late summer and at the end of winter Franjo would suffer attacks from a chronic illness. Every year a painful fistula would form near his tailbone, which would bother him as he sat down and stood up, and, once it was well developed, would need to be drained by a surgeon. Franjo would suffer from this affliction for his entire life.

  Because of his pain, he did not stand up when SS Colonel Carl Schmitt came into his room. He offered his hand, and the guest could have easily mistaken the grimace on Franjo’s face for contempt.

  Schmitt was surprised when he heard him speak.

  You’re German?

  No, Franjo answered curtly.

  He did not explain what his heritage was or why he spoke German so well, which the colonel might have also found suspicious.

  When the slender Herr in the gray suit did not get up from his chair to greet him and answered his question dryly, like a military prisoner saluting an enemy officer, Carl Schmitt offered the package in the blue packing paper without a word and left the office, closing the door behind him.

  They had not shaken hands on taking leave and this troubled Franjo.

  He opened up the paper without tearing it and took out a bottle of French cognac with a note attached. Translated from the German, it read:

  * * *

  —

  Dear Sir,

  The Engineer Carl Schmitt, Schutzstaffel Colonel, is obliged to express his thanks for saving his life.

  * * *

  —

  That was it. No signature.

  He put the bottle into his briefcase, while the note, after an hour’s search, was found by Olga in the lapel pocket of his jacket.

  * * *

  —

  The Ustaše police arrived on Friday in the early morning. They banged the butts of their rifles on the door of the fifth-floor apartment. As they led Franjo away, the creaks and groans of the parquet floors in the other apartments were audible, along with the clicking of the peep hole covers and the clinks of the door locks.

  Olga was scared to death. She sat on the top step in her nightgown, struggling to light a cigarette as she trembled.

  What happened? asked Mrs. Doležal.

  I don’t know. He must have been shooting his mouth off somewhere, she said.

  They interrogated Franjo at the Ustaše police station but did not tell him what he was being charged with. He did not dare ask. First name, last name, father’s name, mother’s name? Place of birth, place of residency, faith, nationality? (He lied and said he was a Croat.) Where had he been on such and such a day at such and such a time? He said he did not know. The inspector repeated the question. He said he did not remember. The inspector got up from his chair and repeated the question. Franjo said that on such and such a day at such and such a time he was at work at the railway headquarters. Why didn’t you say that immediately? Why did you lie?

  He spent the night in a cell with twenty other men. They slept on the cold cement floor. Franjo did not close his eyes until morning. He sat in the corner, right next to the container for shit, where there was more space, and he reflected on his crime. And as soon as he came back to himself, he thought of Mladen. He would call on his son, the German soldier. He was the proof of his loyalty. Before the dawn sun had warmed the prison gates and the morning roll call became audible, Franjo had brought to mind every occasion when he had said something about Adolf Hitler. Besides what he might have said at the pub, playing cards, or at a beekeepers’ meeting, he could not for the life of him remember anything that would have made him appear suspicious before the Ustaše. It tormented him. It would have been easier if he could remember something, some sort of evil deed, that might have landed him in this place.

  That night and the next day Franjo Rejc was dying of fright over what he had said about Hitler, and about God, in whom he did not believe, promising himself that if he managed to come through this in one piece, he would keep quiet about politics to the end of his life.

  Olga was running around town, trying to find out what had happened to her husband. She left Javorka with Mrs. Doležal, while for Dragan she left a note on the table with instructions about what he should do when he got back from town. If she wasn’t there by the next morning, he was to run however he could to Opapa’s and Omama’s in Ilidža. He should leave the key with Mrs. Doležal. She would know what to do with Javorka and with the key. He just needed to run and not ask any questions about his parents.

  Dragan read the note early in the afternoon. It was maybe half past one. Outside it was a sunny day. Voices could be heard through the skylight. Colonel Bilić’s wife was explaining to someone how to wash the windows. The sound of a truck was audible from the river bank. The air was filled with the scent of blueberries and rotting apples. It was the end of August 1943.

  Several times Dragan asked Olga what she was thinking when she wrote that he should run to Ilidža if she was not there by the next morning. He asked her ten years after the end of the war and then again in Drvenik, on the terrace of their house by the sea, at the beginning of August 1976. She answered him that she didn’t know why she had written that, it was wartime, people disappeared in the war.

  In the late afternoon two Germans in civilian clothes came for Franjo. They drove him from the prison in a black police car without windows in the back. They headed toward Marijin Dvor. They did not speak. He did not ask anything. He tried to listen in on what they were whispering but could not make it out.

  In the improvized prison cell in the basement of one of those tenement buildings in Marijin Dvor, the air was cold and damp. The cell had no windows and no light. Only through the peephole in the nailed up door, a tiny hole of a half centimeter, did a sharp, thin ray of light penetrate, travel diagonally across the interior, and stop on the wall. A round point of light, which did not grow wider or illuminate anything. It seemed to Franjo that light would cut through his palm if he raised it up.

  Several hours or several minutes later, the door opened. He felt a sharp pain in his eyes. The light was painful and when he tried to close them, it was as if his pupils had been filled with atropine. Someone took hold of him under his arms and led him into the corridor.

  Mr. Rejc, did you write that German officers are epileptic?r />
  No, he answered. And then he remembered that he had. He wrote it in his letter to Andrija Ćurlin, but how did they know that?

  I did, he said, correcting himself.

  Wipe his eyes, said the voice. He still won’t be able to see. And only then did he feel the tears come out.

  He was in the dark, he said, as if justifying himself.

  Everything is fine, said the voice.

  Then Franjo saw a young German officer, barely older than Mladen, in a black uniform, with the symbols of the SS.

  And so, you wrote that German officers are epileptic. Why did you write that? Do you consider German officers to be epileptics?

  No, but one colonel experienced an epileptic siezure in front of the door to my office. I had to help him. This moved me, and in the midst of the impression, I wrote it in the letter to my brother-in-law.

  Meaning German officers are epileptics?

  No, just that the colonel probably suffers from epilepsy. It’s a disease like any other.

  Are you a doctor?

  (This scared him. He felt the adrenaline rushing through his veins…)

  I am a railway worker.

  And as a railway worker, you diagnosed epilepsy?

  Yes, as I learned in the service.

  Which service?

  Austro-Hungarian.

  What unit?

  Bosnian regiment, first brigade…

  That’s enough. And so you claim that German colonels are epileptics? Crazies and epileptics?

  No, but that colonel suffers from epilepsy.