They were alone in the Italian drawing-room and as Natalie looked around at its familiar blue and yellow upholstered furniture and its sunny, lemon walls, she said with a note of wonder in her voice, ‘It’s strange, I’ve never thought of anywhere as home but this house and Belgrade, yet since I’ve been back I’ve realized that neither the house nor the city is truly my home and hasn’t been for years. My home is wherever Julian is.’
‘I’m sure Julian realized that a long time ago,’ Katerina said gently. ‘But you must tell him all the same. It will make him happy.’
In the incense-filled cathedral, as she sat with Max on one side of her and Natalie on the other, Katerina knew that her own happiness was absolute. At the altar Xan and Zorka, Stephen and Olga, stood hand-in-hand. Peter and three of his friends held golden nuptial crowns over their heads and as the service ran its long, solemn course, lit by hundreds of candles and underscored by the sublime singing of an all-male choir, Katerina knew it was the wedding her mother had so longed for, the wedding both she and Natalie had denied her.
With her hand in Max’s she looked across to where her mother was sitting and saw the tears glistening on her cheeks. There was a suspicious gleam of tears in Cissie’s eyes too. The yellow feather on Natalie’s hat partially obscured Vitza from her vision but she had a shrewd suspicion that even Vitza, resplendent in royal purple, was dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief.
‘I never thought I’d see the day when I became father-in-law to Natalie’s daughter,’ Max said in an undertone to her as a little later they followed the two happy couples down the aisle and out into brilliant sunlight. ‘Thank goodness she isn’t as volatile and hotheaded as her mother.’
‘I think you may be wrong there,’ Katerina said in amusement, looking across to where Xan and Zorka were gazing rapturously into each other’s eyes. ‘But if you are, I don’t think Xan is going to mind.’
Xan had managed to procure a small fleet of army cars to take them back to the konak and as Max helped Katerina into the nearest one he said dryly, ‘Something else I never expected was to be on the receiving-end of communist largesse. Did you know Tito has sent half a dozen crates of champagne for the wedding breakfast?’
‘Just be grateful he didn’t insist on being a wedding guest!’ A faint shadow darkened her eyes. ‘Do you think Mama was wise in insisting that we celebrate with a family ball? She so wants it to be like the old days, yet in the old days the guest list was always over two hundred and tonight there will only be thirty or so of us. I’m afraid the ballroom is going to seem very empty and that she’s going to be disappointed.’
‘Nonsense,’ he squeezed his huge frame into the seat beside her. ‘Tonight’s celebration is going to be in the very best zadruga tradition. A gathering of extended family, with second cousins and stepcousins married to each other and no-one able to tell where one particular side of the family ends and the other begins.’ His heavy featured face creased in a fond smile of remembrance. ‘Do you remember the ball in 1914? You didn’t want to dance with me and when you did, you didn’t pay me the slightest attention.’
‘I shall tonight,’ she said, lovingly slipping her hand into his. ‘I shall dance with you all night long.’
All through the last occupation of the city the German military had used the ballroom for receptions and high-ranking soirées and it showed very little signs of neglect or decay. Laza and a team of helpers had polished the giant mirrors until they glittered and armfuls of Zita’s favourite roses filled the gold-coffered alcoves in vase after vase.
Katerina stood inside the open double doors, gazing around the vast, marble-floored room, knowing that her mother had been right in wanting to evoke old memories and to intertwine them with the memories of her grandchildren’s wedding day.
The gypsy band had just finished playing a wedding kolo and Natalie was still in Julian’s arms, laughing breathlessly up at him. In her shot-silk, emerald green ballgown she looked far too young to be Stephen and Zorka’s mother. Her eyes were dancing with happiness, her hair piled high in a riot of glossy-dark waves and curls, decorated by a full-blown, lush white rose.
Her father, who had joined in the dance for the last few steps, was smiling lovingly down at her mother. Cissie was standing with her Yugoslav husband, her arm resting lightly in his. Vitza was sipping at a glass of Marshal Tito’s champagne, her elderly husband sitting on a gilt-edged chair by her side.
As the band began to play again she saw Peter approach one of Olga’s girl friends and ask her to dance with him and maternal hope burned in her heart. Perhaps another romance was blossoming; perhaps Peter would soon be married as well.
The lilting strains of ‘The Blue Danube’filled the ballroom and both Olga and Zorka, ravishing in their sumptuous, hand-sewn wedding gowns, stepped out on to the marble floor with their husbands.
Tears burned at the back of Katerina’s eyes. Though there were no tiaras in the room, no royal princes and princesses, the scene was far more wonderful than it had been in the dim and distant summer of 1914. Nearly every couple now waltzing together were deeply in love. Her mother and father. Cissie and her husband. Vitza and her husband. Olga and Stephen. Xan and Zorka. Natalie and Julian. And the only couple dancing who were not in love, Peter and his partner, looked as if they were on the brink of being so.
From behind her a deep voice said, ‘I know you complain that I dance like a hippopotamus, but if I promise to try very hard not to tread on your toes, will you have this waltz with me?’
She turned towards the bear of a man she loved with all her heart; the man who was her fortress and her peace. ‘Yes, Max,’ she said, slipping into the circle of his arms as the lyrical notes of Strauss’s magical, incomparable masterpiece lapped around them. ‘Of course I will dance with you. Only you. For ever.’
THE END
Copyright
First published in 1992 by Transworld
This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world
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Copyright © Margaret Pemberton, 1992
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Zadruga Page 50
