by Jane Brittan
‘I … I have been searching a long time for you, Sanda,’ he says.
I find my voice. ‘You live in France?’
He nods.
Peter says, ‘You’re in Bordeaux? Are you in the centre or outside? We know it quite well. We were there on our honeymoon.’
‘Yes. Yes. France is very beautiful.’
France. A letter with a French stamp on the kitchen table in London; she knew he was coming. She knew.
‘Do you live with anyone? Are you …?’ I falter here but I so want to know more about him.
He looks at Peter as he answers me, ‘Ah. You have many questions! I will tell you all about it. We have a long journey together.’
I bring out the photograph I found in the attic in London and put it on the table in front of him.
‘I brought this. I kept it with me.’
It’s scratched and creased from being stuffed in endless pockets and folded and unfolded. He picks it up, turns it in his hands and bows his head.
Again he says, ‘Yes … yes … A long time to search. My dear girls. I wanted to find you.’
‘And my mother? What happened to my …?’ and now I’m crying. Miserable little whimpers that cough themselves out of me. Natalija rubs my back.
‘She died,’ Branko says softly. ‘In the war.’
‘Oh God. Oh God!’ I suppose I’ve known it all along. Known it, but the words break me. They wash themselves through me, over my ribs and into my heart. And again that hatred wells up for the woman who called herself my mother for all those years, for the lies she told and the bitter secrets she kept.
Branko pats my hand. ‘Shall we go?’ he says.
‘To find your other daughter?’ says Peter. ‘Where will you start? We think she might have been taken to …’
‘I know where she is. I have found her. She is waiting to meet you, Sanda.’
‘Senka? You found her?’
‘Yes. She is safe. I have a house here. She is safe. She’s waiting to see you.’
‘Oh!’ I look back in excitement at Peter and Natalija.
Peter steps up. ‘That’s marvellous news! Listen, you can stay here tonight, if you like. Start out tomorrow?’
‘No. Please, I have a car. We need to go today. I have waited a long time to find my daughters. We go together.’
He takes my hand in his large paw.
Peter says, ‘I’ll come with you?’
Branko says, ‘Not necessary.’
‘But –,’ he says.
‘It’s OK, Peter,’ I say and smile. ‘I’ll call you when we get there. We’ll come and see you. With Senka? We can do that can’t we?’ I ask Branko.
‘Of course. Of course,’ he says.
‘Give me a minute,’ I say and I dash upstairs to Joe’s room. He’s sleeping. Very gently I brush the back of his hand, against the veins like sand under his skin. I breathe him in and I go.
Peter and Natalija are at the front door. Branko’s waiting by the car.
Peter scratches at his beard. ‘I’m coming with you.’
‘There’s no need.’
‘I feel responsible for you, Sanda, we both do. I can’t just let you go – I’ve only met Branko once.’
Natalija says, ‘He’s a good man, Peter. I had a long talk with him yesterday. All he wants is to make up for lost time. He’s told me where his house is, where Sanda’s sister’s waiting. He’s given me the address for heaven’s sake.’
He looks from her to me. ‘You sure you’re OK? You don’t want me to come?’
I hug them both. ‘I’m OK. I’m going to see my sister. This is my family!’
I go to leave but Peter holds me a little longer. ‘You’re sure?’ I see a shadow arc across his face. His eyes are wide. ‘You know where we are.’
‘Yes, yes. I’m sure. I’ll call you in a couple of hours I promise. Thank you so much for your help. I am so grateful to you,’ I say.
Branko comes over, glancing at his watch. ‘Come, Sanda, let’s go to see your sister.’
And he walks.
And I follow him.
Away from the inn.
To find my sister.
There is a driver in the car. Branko says something to him and then joins me on the back seat. The seats are cream leather and the windows are tinted. As we pull away, Branko pats my hand again and sits back contentedly. We drive on through the countryside, and I begin to relax a little. And ask some questions. He answers me in short sentences, while he looks ahead, every so often switching to talk to the driver.
‘Tell me about your home,’ I say. ‘Where you were brought up?’
‘A small village, east of here. My father had horses.’
‘Really? And you have brothers and sisters?’
‘I had four brothers. All dead now.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘And how long have you lived in France?’
‘Oh. Many years, it’s a very beautiful place.’
‘I’ve never been.’
‘Oh. Yes.’
‘I lived in London.’
‘Yes.’
He seems irritable. Preoccupied maybe. But I’m getting frustrated. I want answers. I want to understand this man. I try to tell him a little about me, about my life in England. I even tell him about Joe. I’m about to tell him about Senka and how I found out about her, when the driver slows and turns to ask a question.
Branko leans forward to answer, and when he does, I see at the base of his neck, just below the hairline, a tattoo: a black scorpion.
19
My stomach churns. I can hear my heart pulsing in my ears and throat. Why would my father who suffered so much at the hands of the Serbs in the war, have such a potent symbol of a Serbian militia group tattooed on his neck?
And I know all at once that everything is wrong.
Branko settles back in the seat and I say, ‘Where are we going exactly?’
‘To see your sister.’
‘Yes, but where is –?’
‘You will see,’ he smiles.
‘Where are we going? Where are you taking me?’
‘That’s enough now.’
There’s a sour taste in my mouth, and a tail of cold sweat creeps down my spine.
‘Who are you? Who the fuck are you?’
‘Quiet please.’
‘You’re not my father, you’re so not my father, you’re not Branko. Who are you?’
From the pocket of his coat, he draws a pistol and pushes it hard against my cheek. ‘Be. Quiet. Please. No. No I am not Branko. My name is Goran. That is all you need to know.’
I’m quiet. I am no one again. I am nobody. I have no name. I’ve put the people who helped me in danger and I’m no closer to finding my sister. Tears spill quietly into my hands while he growls into his phone.
Mountains loom in the distance: dark, lumpen masses pulling the sun down behind them as we drive on. I take a calculated risk that he isn’t going to shoot me just yet and say,
‘You won’t get away with this – you can’t. People know. They’ll know. They’ll guess what you’re doing. They’ll come for me.’
‘Maybe,’ he says, ‘but there won’t be any you to come for, my dear.’
‘My father … Where is …?’
‘You will see in good time.’
‘What are you going to do with me?’
Goran looks at me for a minute and blinks. He rubs his nose with the butt of the pistol. ‘Well, I’m going to take you to meet your dear sister like I told you.’
I’ve been a fool, a desperate, gullible child.
I try to console myself with the fact that Joe’s OK, that his mum will be on her way. He’ll go home, back to London to live a normal life, play in his band, go to school, get a girlfriend and forget about me. And a year down the line, no one will even remember who I was.
The car drives off the road down a dark tree-lined avenue. A deer starts in the headlights and jumps the fence at the side of the track. An old stone house
comes into view, the windows black and blind, only a single light coming from the front porch. The car stops and the driver gets out and opens my door. Goran’s still pointing the gun at me as I slide across the seat and out into the cold night air. There’s a crust of frost on the ground that crackles like glass under my feet. He ushers me up the steps to the door and pushes it open.
We’re standing in a vast hall under the gaze of at least forty pairs of eyes. Stags’ heads of different shapes and sizes watch us as we cross the floor. Opposite the door is a large staircase. Up we go: one, then two flights as it twists round away from the hall, the gun always at my back if I slow down. It’s stiflingly hot in the house and I’m roasting in my hat and coat.
It’s funny because I don’t feel scared any more. I just feel sort of resigned. I want an end to this mad journey now. But what I want more than ever is to understand who I am and where I come from. The fact that it’s probably going to get me killed is kind of on the back burner at the moment. And Joe kissed me, and it felt so good. That’s what I try to think about.
We’re on the second floor now and we both pause for breath. To my left, I see a long passage, carpeted in blue and red swirls, that yawns away towards a high arched window where it bellies out into a small landing lit by a crystal chandelier. Under this, I see two people deep in conversation. They hear us and look up but they make no move towards us. One is a man wearing a dark jumper and a shoulder holster; the other, tall and bony with bleached hair that fizzes in the light like nylon, is my ‘mother’ – Kristina.
Goran makes a sign to her and she nods sharply. We go on up another narrow flight on bare boards to the top of the house. A long, sloping corridor hung about with cobwebs stretches to the left of us. He switches on a dim bulb and I pick my way along past broken chairs and tea crates full of old china. At the end of the corridor, on the left, is a small door. There’s a key in the lock and he leans past me, turns it and throws open the door.
I peer in and around the room. As I do so, he shoves me inside, pulls the door shut and turns the key in the lock. The room is lit by another single low watt bulb. There’s an iron bedstead covered with a heap of blankets, a listing rocking chair and a cracked sink in the corner.
As his footsteps fall away, the heap of blankets moves and stirs and from underneath it, a figure crawls out trailing dust and fluff: my sister.
It’s unmistakeable. Like a bee sting, like soap in your eyes. It actually hurts to be close to her. She sloughs off the covers, gets down off the bed and stands to face me.
We stare at each other for a long time. I hold out my hand to her and she moves a little closer. I notice she walks with a kind of stoop as though she’s been carrying something heavy on one side forever. Her hair is a bit longer than mine and she’s very thin. She’s wearing a dirty nightdress that’s about ten sizes too big for her.
I whisper, ‘Senka?’
She comes towards me and holds out her hands. Her fingers when they touch me feel like plastic. I scan her face and mark every line: her nose, the curve of her brows and, of course, her eyes. My own face gazes back at me, my own eyes: one green, one blue. My sister. My family.
We nestle together on the bed under one of the dusty blankets and I try to engage her in conversation. All the while, from below, we can hear noises: bangs and clatters, like something being mended or broken.
Senka speaks in a hoarse whisper, and I have to lean in to hear her at times. It’s like she isn’t used to speaking or being listened to. She seems to find it difficult at first but with gentle encouragement, she manages to continue.
I find out she’s been in the orphanage at Zbrisć for most of her life; while I was going to school in London, she was caged in that awful place.
I ask her about school. She says she’s had only a little basic schooling from a local priest, no books or toys. She tells me she was ten when she was put to work in the kitchens, scrubbing floors, peeling endless blackened potatoes, and fetching and carrying for the staff.
I ask her how she came to be here, and with her eyes fixed on me, she tells me she’d heard of it before. All the kids at Zbrisć knew about the House. She echoes what the pig farmer told me:
‘This is where they send you if you are bad – you never come back.’
She tells me how, the night after we escaped, they brought her here. She shows me her arm. It’s covered in welts and bruises.
I ask her, ‘Did Goran do this to you?’
She shakes her head: ‘Kristina.’ My fake mother. I feel sick.
‘How did she know about the orphanage?’
‘They’re sisters,’ she says.
‘Who?’
‘Kristina and Madame Milanković.’
‘Christ.’
All those years.
Kristina must have been talking to Milanković about Senka, and I never knew a thing. I grip Senka’s hand and force myself to think it through. Why has Kristina brought us both here? Together? Why keep us apart all this time and then do this? None of it makes sense.
‘Senka, do you remember our mother?’ I say gently.
She remembers us being pulled away from our mother’s arms, bundled together onto a truck by a man, then later, in a car, a woman in the back seat catching hold of her with long hands around her middle. She remembers screaming and kicking to get away. She says that at one point she kicked at the woman so violently, there was blood on her face. She remembers the woman howling in pain, spitting blood, then hitting her hard over and over again.
So that’s how Kristina lost her front teeth.
She remembers the day I left the orphanage: summer, the grass wilting in the heat, a dead cat, a stew of blowflies, and the sound of her fists against a high window. She remembers looking down and my face over someone’s shoulder. She never forgot it.
She wants to know about me, so I tell her my story so far. She sits very close to me, and listens intently with her head on one side. Sometimes she brushes her hand against my cheek. I understand. I feel the same need to touch her, to make sure this is real. I tell her of our escape and how I’d seen her at the window that night.
‘You saved me,’ I say. ‘The dog? That was you, wasn’t it? How?’
She nods, and the ghost of a smile crosses her face and fades.
‘I saw you the first time you were brought to Zbrisć but they kept me away – put me to work in the boys’ quarters – they watched me closely,’ she says. ‘But that night there was chaos, noise, the dogs barking: they left the door unlocked … I looked out and saw you there. I didn’t think. I went quickly, took scissors from the kitchen, slipped through the coal door by the kitchen – no one saw me – and I stabbed it.’
‘You were brave.’
She smiles. ‘No.’
‘We should have taken you with us.’
‘I would have slowed you down. I’m not strong,’ she says.
‘I came back for you. I came back to find you,’ I say.
‘To find me,’ she whispers.
I’m just getting to the bit about the letter and the photograph from Branko when I hear footsteps in the corridor. We fall quiet as the key grinds in its lock.
Goran stands in the doorway. He’s changed from his business suit into overalls. He has on rubber boots and thick socks turned over them at the knee. At his neck he wears a woollen scarf tied in a kind of bow.
He takes out his gun and points it. ‘Come with me.’
Senka scrabbles to her feet and, with head bowed meekly, goes to him. I can see her shape through the formless shift she wears, the jut of her hips and her backbone like a chain.
I take my time. I shrug off my coat and put it around Senka. As I do so, she raises her eyes to me with a little smile of gratitude.
He watches us with a sneer. ‘Nice touch. But you won’t need it for long.’ He seems to find this very funny and chuckles to himself. ‘Out!’
‘Where are we going?’ I ask.
‘For a walk in the woods. Now be quiet
– do like your sister.’
‘If we’re going outside, she needs some shoes.’
‘What?’
‘She needs something on her feet!’
I think for a moment he’s going to hit me but instead he turns, rummages around in a tea chest, and brings out a pair of carpet slippers in a lurid shade of green. He throws them at her, and she ducks instinctively. It makes me think of Andjela. I want to go to her and hold her, to protect her from everything and everyone, but I wait. She picks up the slippers and puts them on. With a shy look at me, she follows Goran down the corridor and down the stairs to where God knows what awaits us.
20
Downstairs, in the hall, Kristina is waiting in a high-backed armchair, her hands folded in her lap, eyes closed. Goran nudges us towards her. Her eyes snap open.
‘So here you are.’ She speaks in Serbian. ‘Together. Just what you wanted.’ She looks at me. ‘And what do you think of your sister?’
I say nothing. But I glare straight at her. She’s wearing lipstick, and the red has leeched into the creases around her mouth. ‘You didn’t know your own flesh and blood was a filthy little peasant?’ My anger stops up my throat like gristle. I choke it down.
Senka looks up at her, then at me. ‘I … I …’ she stutters.
‘You –,’ Kristina picks at a back tooth, delicately, with her little finger held high, turns a lazy eye on Senka, ‘you don’t speak to me or look at me. Do you understand?’
‘Don’t talk to her like that,’ I say.
Kristina’s head jerks around: ‘How dare you? You thankless little bitch,’ she spits. ‘God, how did I put up with you all that time? All those years. The smell of you, your voice, your whining.’
‘My voice? You hardly spoke to me!’
‘Shut up. I took you. I paid for it. Every fucking day. You saw to that.’
‘Why then? Why did you do it?’
Here she smiles. ‘Why? That’s a good question. Why does anyone do anything? For money? For love?’
‘Love?’ I say. ‘You don’t know the meaning of the word.’
At that, she lurches up and slaps me hard across my face with the flat of her hand, then sits back down, smoothing her skirt. But I’m not afraid of her any more. The truth – hers and mine – has set me free and spinning. I feel powerful. For the first time in my life.
