Summer of The Dancing Bear

by Bianca Lakoseljac

  “I thought it would be here, under the cherry tree.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “I heard the thump! Just before I woke up. I saw a swallow. It fell off a cherry tree. It was awful! Awful! And now, if I close my eyes …” Kata closed her eyes. “Thump! Thump! Thump!” she yelled and stamped her feet.

  “You saw it fall? Just before you woke up? Are you playing games with me, child?”

  “No! No! Honest, Bako …”

  “Did you see it in a dream perhaps?”

  “It was so real! I got up and came to look. And then I couldn’t find it. And then I ran and ran … But … now, it’s here …” Kata felt hot tears welling.

  Grandma remained quiet, a look of dread fixed on her face.

  “I touched the feathers … I touched them! I can still feel them … tickling my fingertips. They’re tickling my fingertips …” Kata was stomping her feet and wringing her hands.

  Grandma embraced the frightened child: “Oh, dear, dear. It’s all right. It’ll be all right.”

  “You think I would kill a swallow, Bako?”

  “No, of course not. I just thought … how would you know to come and look for it? But now I think I understand.”

  “I know killing a swallow is a sin. Everyone knows that!” Kata said as she followed her grandma to the barn.

  Grandma leaned a tall ladder against the barn wall. Carefully placing her foot on the first rung, she shook the wooden structure with both hands to make sure it was stable, and began her climb to the swallows’ nests.

  “Can I, please, go instead of you?” Kata asked. The only climbing Grandma ever did was the five verandah steps, always holding her lower back.

  “Not this time, dear,” came the answer from above. “If you touch the nests, the birds would abandon them and their young.”

  Grandma reached the nests clinging to the rafters over the horse trough and looked into each. She carefully removed one and brought it down. “A couple of dead young,” she said and carried the nest to the fire pit in the barnyard, quick flames turning the dry little bundle into ashes.

  ****

  That morning at breakfast, Grandma made a solemn announcement: “Kata found a dead swallow in the flower garden. This is a bad omen. The second one. I don’t like the looks of this.”

  “I’m certain you’ll tell us all about the first one,” said Kata’s mother. Staring at her scrambled eggs, Kata knew her mother would pout her lips and flutter her eyelashes, while carelessly tossing her long hair.

  “Well, that’s a given, dear,” Grandma said. “Don’t you remember the gander attack? On this very child? If I hadn’t been close by, holding that shovel …” She heaved a sigh, then continued: “That gander’s been vicious this spring. Protective of its young like never before, frightened of something. If that’s not an omen, a warning of some kind, then I don’t know what is. They could cripple a small child with those large wings, or peck it to death.”

  “You’ve warned the whole village, I’m sure,” her mother said with a smirk.

  “Sure did. And people tell me their geese are nastier than ever, hissing and flapping their wings. It’s a warning, dear.”

  As if two bad omens were not enough, a few days later Grandma saw, perched in the pine grove that sheltered the farmhouse from the fields, an owl hooting in the middle of the day.

  “Everybody knows that sighting an owl in daylight forebodes death,” she announced. “Animals sense danger much better than people.”

  Three bad omens could not be dismissed, she concluded, and became gravely concerned about impending evil. It did not escape her observant eye that two out of the three seemed linked to her granddaughter.

  Her mother’s answer was simple: “The girl spends all her time in the flower garden, in the barnyard, or sitting up in the tree tops. So she notices more things than anyone. It’s natural.”

  And Kata’s father, who dismissed any talk of bad omens as old wives’ tales, simply put his hand out in a gesture that everyone understood to mean “stop talking.”

  Grandma ignored the disrespect and mocking. Her mother’s commands to “stop looking for bad omens; do not fill peoples’ lives with fear; leave remedies to the medical doctors” were not so hurtful compared to some others. Kata had a clear memory of one in particular.

  “Keep your witchcraft out of my house, woman,” an old man had growled. “An’ yourself. Out of my house.”

  “Let go your anger, Ivan,” Grandma pleaded.

  “I’m the master of this house, aren’t I? I decide what’s done aroun’ here.”

  “A child is a gift of God, Ivan.”

  “Don’ meddle in my family, woman.”

  “Embrace your family, Ivan. Your daughter and your grandchild.”

  “Don’ tell me what to do!”

  “Your own flesh and blood, Ivan. Accept the gifts of God with grace.”

  “Whad’ya know about grace, old woman, ‘bout God’s love an’ sweet Jesus? In the good ol’ days, you’d be burning at a stake. Out!”

  The old man stood and leaned on a cane that was slightly bowed and dotted with lumpy growths. He propped himself against the back of a chair and banged the stick on it and for one horrible moment Kata feared he would attack her grandmother. He continued hitting the chair and shouting, the din of it all thundering in her head. She closed her eyes and in her phantom vision saw his large ghostly frame looming over her, his white bones rattling like the skeleton that high school students shook to frighten first-graders.

  “You better do as Father says,” Angela’s brother scattered the apparition in Kata’s head, his voice the sound of something shattering, like a glass vase full of water that once slipped out of her hands and fell on a cement step. “Here, I’ll help you out.”

  “I don’t need your help, young man. About time you start using your own head, wouldn’t you say?” Grandma stepped over the threshold, her old hen gait now spry. “Remember what I said, Ivan. A gift of God.”

  As they walked along the crumbling plaster wall of the house, an elderly woman poked her head out of the side window: “Thank you for helping my daughter, and God bless you,” she said. Her face was a wilted version of Angela’s. Her large eyes were kind, as if she were a suffering saint icon framed by the weathered window.

  A few days later Angela had run over to Grandma’s house, holding the baby wrapped like a mummy against her shoulder.

  “Colic? All gone. Baby’s sleeping all night. It’s fennel tea from now on, and chamomile. Thank you.”

  “Give my regards to your dear mother,” Grandma said and slipped a few pouches of herbs into Angela’s hand.

  Others were equally grateful: “That spider bite? The swelling’s down.” “My cow’s giving more milk than ever. You’re a miracle worker.”

  Grandma could forecast the weather by “reading” the sky and smelling the air, and she could predict events by examining her own dreams or the dreams of others. Kata observed the preparation of every concoction, the incantation of every prayer, hoping to learn the craft some day.

  ****

  Faced with three bad omens, Grandma watched her granddaughter’s every move: she forbade her to go unaccompanied to the library, the village store, Miladin’s house, or even to her friend Maja, who lived closest to them.

  “It pretty much covers all the fun things,” Kata told Maja.

  And seven-year-old Maja’s advice? Kata mulled it over and over, but was still unable to make sense of it: “Maybe nobody’s going to die. Maybe your owl ate some coffee grinds.”

  “Coffee grinds?”

  “That’s right! From the garbage pile. Behind your barn.”

  Maja’s words had a calming quality Kata sought, along with some sense of impossibility, a missing link that could not be grasped.

  “That doesn’t matter,” Kata said. “Grandma knows best. An owl in the daytime? That’s a bad omen.”

  Chapter III

  Dispelling Bad Omens
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br />   As weeks passed, Grandma continued dispelling bad omens, while the whole village buzzed with the excitement of having a new bride.

  Although she was local, until a few months ago she was just Roza, the handsome, hard-working daughter of a farmer at the far side of the village. But now she was Kata’s neighbour. And once she was promoted to the status of a new bride, all eyes were upon her: Is she pregnant, yet? Is she a good cook? Does she keep a clean house? How is Alex treating her? Will he get used to having a woman in the house? Does he know how to be a husband?

  After all, he’d never had a guiding hand. His father had been killed in the first year of the war when Alex was only four. And his mother died when he was fifteen, so he took over the farm and, with Papa Novak’s guidance, had been running it for the past nine years. The pride of this village! Will she bear an heir? What an honour that would be.

  And Roza? Roza surpassed everyone’s expectations. She was all a wife could be: she cooked and she cleaned and baked bread in the old brick oven Alex’s father built in good times before the war; she carried large pails of water for the cattle; she fed the chickens and cleaned the pigsty; she milked the cows and made cheese curd that she sold at the market in Obrenovac every Saturday; she baled hay and piled it under a thatched shelter for winter feed. She hoed and planted the vegetable garden and was already sharing young spinach with her neighbours. Her bed sheets hanging on the line were so white the passing villagers stopped their horses and buggies just to admire. She even revived the old rose beds that were once her mother-in-law’s pride and joy. If only Alex’s parents could see their son now, the neighbours crowed. They would be proud.

  The villagers were certainly pleased with the newlyweds. That’s all anyone talked about. Even Papa Novak, who dispensed praise sparingly, boasted about them. Alex and Roza, Roza and Alex, twirled in Kata’s head. The importance of finding the right person to marry could not be underestimated. And very soon, Kata forgot all about the bad omens. All she thought about was whom she would some day marry.

  Would I have to do all those chores? She wondered. The first time she met Roza, really met Roza – outside of seeing her in a white veil and what appeared to be a very large white dress, she was chopping the head off a beautiful red-tailed cockerel. Kata had witnessed Grandma and Mother kill a chicken many times, but she somehow managed to close her eyes and count or chant aloud until it was all over. This time, there was nowhere to run. She stood, both hands holding the warm apple cake Grandma had sent to the newlyweds.

  Roza shoved the flapping bird on the chopping block. She held the chicken’s head with one hand, pressed her foot on the body, swung the axe with the other hand and thump. Roza straightened and – severed head in one hand, foot on the feathery body with a bloody wiggling neck – said cheerfully: “Kata, isn’t it? Spitting image of your mother. Grandma’s princess, aren’t you?”

  Roza lifted her foot off the headless chicken and it began flapping about, jumping in the air and falling down like a bouncing football. She tried to catch it. Eventually, the feathery body settled on a grassy patch, twitching to the chattering of curious robins that had quickly gathered around.

  Since then, Kata was hounded by the notion of having to be a bride some day and having to do all those chores if she wanted the villagers to like her. She made a mental list. She could do all of them except one: killing a chicken. Every way she imagined, it seemed dismal. She found herself awake at night, thinking of methods. She could place it on the chopping block, press her foot on the flapping wings, hold the chicken’s head with one hand and the axe in the other – and close her eyes.

  She now had her eyes closed and then thump. She opened her eyes. But instead of a chicken’s neck, she saw a stump of her own bloody arm with no hand, wiggling. She screamed until someone was shaking her shoulders.

  “Wake up, dear,” Grandma’s voice soothed. “You’re having a bad dream.”

  Kata now began thinking of all possible excuses for not killing a chicken. But they were hard to find. And then, unbidden, the answer came to her. Grandma had invited the priest to bless the house – this was a vital step in dispelling bad omens. To thank him, she had given him a chicken.

  “A well-fed one,” commented the priest’s helper who drove the horse and buggy and carried all the parcels of food the villagers gave to the church. “I’ll get it all plucked and ready for your wife, as soon as we get home.” He shoved the bird in a wicker basket and hoisted it on the back of the carriage.

  “I think we’ll keep that one,” the priest said. “It’s a young hen. Soon it’ll be laying eggs.”

  Relieved that her chicken’s life would be spared, Kata followed the priest into the house. Holding a bouquet of dry basil in his hand, he dunked it in the bowl of water provided by Grandma. He sprinkled each room, chanting in a drawn-out voice. Kata caught a few words, “Aaaall the saints … blesss this house … briiing prosperity …” while counting on her fingers how many roasted chickens could fit into the priest’s large belly. All the while the helper’s words, “I’ll get it ready for your wife,” swirled in her head.

  Now, she stood very close to the priest. “Your helper always kills chickens for your wife, Father?” she asked timidly, looking up at his puffy, red face, searching for the beady eyes buried in the small head that seemed wedged into his black robe.

  “Well, yes, Kata,” the priest answered with a grin that lifted one side of his cheek and exposed the pointy canine in his upper jaw. Then he smiled, and to her surprise revealed a row of white teeth, unlike many other villagers whose teeth were yellowed, brownish, or missing altogether. Still holding the dripping bouquet in his hand, he sprinkled a sign of the cross over her head. He then tapped the top of her head with the same wet herb: “Clever girl. Doing God’s work in this village. Reading to the elderly. We’re all very proud.”

  “Never? Your wife doesn’t have to kill chickens, ever?”

  “Not unless she wants to. And I’ve never heard her say …”

  With a cheerful, “Thank you, Father,” Kata ran off, back to her tree perch to mull over what she had just heard.

  I never have to kill chickens! Ever!

  ****

  The following Sunday, dressed in a pleated navy skirt and a white blouse, a huge white bow tied at the top of her head, Kata waited to be summoned by Grandma for the weekly visits with elderly friends and relatives. She usually read newspapers to ease the burden of those with failing vision. She rather enjoyed these readings that opened doors into an adult world that seemed, often, as bizarre as fairytales. While many of the words she read were unfamiliar to her, the discussions they incited offered her a glimpse into events beyond tiny Ratari that could seem enchanting or just plain frightful. On occasion she was allowed to take certain clippings home, and some of the more interesting ones she saved in a wicker trunk under Grandma’s bed.

  Grandma usually brought along small gifts: homemade cookies; a bowl of fruit from the orchard; or freshly roasted and ground Turkish coffee and a small bag of sugar cubes.

  “Let’s go, Kata. You can read to our Professor first. Then we’ll go on to the others.”

  Papa Novak was one of her favourite reading customers. As always, he welcomed them warmly, as if he’d been waiting for them all day. He recited his usual praises with as much enthusiasm as if it was her first visit. He stood with his right knee bent slightly forward, head held high, arms raised in wonder. He had this grand yet tragic look about him. With his bushy white hair in upright clumps, Kata thought he looked like Hamlet’s father, the ghost of a murdered king in a Shakespeare play she had seen at Belgrade Theatre with her class.

  “Look how you’ve grown up!” Papa Novak exclaimed, although only a week had passed since they’d last met. “You’ve been reading to us for about … two, three years now? Since you were about five years old. You are God’s little miracle. Going to be important. High in society when you grow up.”

  And then the question came, the one Kata had been
anticipating for a whole week.

  Papa Novak looked at her under his furrowed eyebrows and, as every other Sunday, inquired: “And what would you like to do when you grow up, young lady?”

  “I know what I am going to be!”

  “You do?”

  “Yes, I’ve decided.”

  “Tell us, then. We’re all ears!”

  She straightened up and raised her head as if about to recite a poem, and answered: “A priest’s wife.”

  He waited as if he had not heard the answer. Then he cocked his head to one side: “What did you say, Kata?”

  “A priest’s wife,” she repeated proudly. “I want to be a priest’s wife.”

  He paused, and laid down his newspaper. “Well, that’s an honourable … profession, now, isn’t it?” His large white moustache twisted in a grin. “And why do you want to be a priest’s wife, Kata?”

  “Because I wouldn’t have to kill chickens,” she blurted out. “His helper does that. I could never, ever do that because the dead chicken would look at me with its glassy eye. The glassy eye that doesn’t blink and doesn’t see anything!”

  “My little princess!” Papa Novak shook his head a few times. “You don’t have to marry a priest just for that. You’ll be living in a big city, and you’ll buy your chickens all clean and ready to cook. That’s what the city folk do.”

  “I don’t want to live in a big city. I like feeding the chickens and picking cherries with Grandma and riding my horse Kidran. Aunt Agata in Belgrade has none of that.”

  “Nothing wrong with marrying a handsome young man of the cloth, Professor.” Grandma cut in, the title high-pitched to make her point stand out. “They’re good to their wives. Since they can only marry once – that’s the rule of the church, as we all know. A good rule.”

  Papa Novak gave Grandma a perplexed look.

  “Didn’t you tell me, some time ago, you wanted to be a teacher, Kata?”