Summer of The Dancing Bear

by Bianca Lakoseljac

  “Brought you home, on her shoulder, like a sack of potatoes,” her mother said, forcing a chuckle. “She’s waiting out in the yard to see that you’re all right.”

  Roza?

  “I was surprised, too. She hasn’t been here since the funeral.”

  Funeral?

  “Well, Grandma’s funeral, you know, long time ago,” her mother said. “What a night. What panic! After the storm I came here to see that you were home. But you weren’t.”

  Kata stared at her mother standing in the doorway. You were enchanted? Long time ago?

  “What was that? You said something?” her mother asked.

  “No,” Kata answered and stared steadily at her mother’s face. You’ve aged – fine wrinkles rising when you speak, when you pucker up your rosy lips, rising like tadpoles with wiggling tails. She felt a rhyme beginning to gel, making her nauseated, as if she would tumble into a dark pit.

  Roza pushed her way through the door, rushed toward the bed and dropped a palm on Kata’s forehead. “Burning up!” She scowled, as if it was somebody’s fault. Snatching the faded kerchief off her own head, she dunked it into the glass of water on the night table and with the water dripping from the cloth, slapped it on Kata’s forehead.

  “Heading out? In the marsh? Where to?” Roza scolded. She glanced about, bewildered. “Got to go. Bake a chicken for my Alex. Good thing I went to check on him, bring him breakfast. Alex’s son, his boy. Fishing in the marsh, he was. Yeah! Otherwise, we could’ve pulled a dead body out of that marsh, ha, Olga?” She snorted and stormed from the room.

  Kata listened to her mother’s name. Was it the way Roza said it? As if she’d heard it for the first time.

  Her mother waved goodbye and said to Kata: “That poor woman. After all these years still thinks her son’s alive. Changes her story as time passes, as if he’s growing up.” She paused, then added: “Her son would’ve been what … about five or six years old now?”

  Kata heard Maja chime a cheery “hello” to Roza. She stepped into the room and ran to her friend. Kata sat up in bed and took the wet kerchief off her forehead. Some vague memory slid by like a minnow. It was at Vila’s Circle. The women, with veiled faces, their eyes behind a shroud of Zephyrus’ wind, Maja’s eyes …

  “You were there,” Kata whispered.

  Maja leaned over and hugged her friend: “You still have a fever.” She passed her fingertips lightly along the swelling on Kata’s forehead. “Pretty big bump.”

  Her mother brought a bowl of fragrant soup and placed it on the night table, followed by a glass of water along with tea and some cookies. For a moment Kata felt as young and cared for as when she was a child and Grandma fussed over her.

  Her mother lifted the bedspread and rubbed her hand over Kata’s calf: “These polka dots on your legs will fade in time, not to worry. Got to eat, though. Doctor said you’ve lost a lot of blood. Lucky you were hoisted on those roots, or that goddamn vermin would’ve …”

  She stopped mid-sentence and looked at Kata, worriedly. Then she sat on the bed and fed the soup to her, and Kata let her – all the while knowing she was capable of feeding herself.

  “You were there,” Kata said after her mother had left the room. “At Vila’s Circle.”

  “Go to sleep. I’ll come back later, when you’re better,” Maja said and got up to leave.

  “Don’t go,” Kata said, grabbing Maja’s hand. “You were there, at Vila’s Circle.”

  “Stop that,” Maja said, pulling her hand away. “You’re scaring me. The forest is not there any more where you and your grandma used to go. It burned down. Don’t you remember? After your grandma died. Just a patch left now.”

  “I hid my flute there. Last time I went there with my grandma. Remember?”

  “That’s what you told me. It was a bad flute. It’s just as well it was burned.”

  “I found it. Under the altar. Where I hid it. And it wasn’t a bad flute. It lost its magic, that’s all.”

  “Then where is it? Let me see it. Show it to me.”

  Kata patted her chest and peeked under the bed sheet. But she now had her nightgown on, and the clothes she had worn to the marsh were nowhere. Somebody must’ve found it. Roza? Her mother?.

  “That forest burned down,” Maja said frowning. “And there is no such a thing as Vila’s Circle. Never was. Just a bunch of stones. So people made up stories. And now there is not even that. Just a highway running through it.”

  And she stood up and left the room.

  “But you were there,” Kata said as the door shut. “If you would just try, try to remember.”

  Her mother came in and placed another wet kerchief on Kata’s forehead.

  “What were you doing there in the swamp? You’ve been gone since yesterday. Never mind. You rest now.” She began tidying up the room. “And in such a thunderstorm. As if the earth was cracking.” She picked a bundle of wet clothes off the floor. “An old hut caught fire out by the bridge. Struck by lightning, they say. Went up in flames like a pile of matches.”

  The glass insert in the door clinked as her mother stepped out of the room. It reminded Kata of something, but she couldn’t remember what. She picked up the glass of water next to her bed. That reminded her of something too, as if she’d forgotten to do a chore, to go somewhere. For a moment she felt panic, then gave in to an overwhelming need to close her eyes and sink into gargantuan bales of hay rolling in gentle wind.

  Chapter XXVII

  The List Of Puzzling Questions

  After a night of rain, the clammy tang of wet cinders was not unpleasant. It was an ordinary scene, as if someone simply had a bonfire. It didn’t seem that anyone bothered to clean up the site. Besides, there wasn’t much to clean up. Strangely, the locust grove, only steps from the hut, was not even singed.

  Kris must’ve escaped. Someone must have saved him. He couldn’t have died here. There would be some evidence. But there was none. No one mentioned anything. Not even Papa Novak. He was the one who first saw the fire and ran for help. By the time the villagers arrived, there was nothing more than a pile of coals.

  Where could Kris be? How can I find him? I need to know the truth and he’s the only one who can help. Kata stepped carefully around the mound of ashes and charred lumber. Mother said nothing about Kris, yesterday. Only that the hut had burned down. Did Mother know that Kris was in it?

  Kata sat on a nearby log. Veiled by an expansive carpet of dew all was washed clean: the locust woods behind her, the cornfield on one side, and a field of purple clover on the other. Soft sunlight flooded the area. A golden glow suffused a pile of wet cinders and Kata saw sunlight winking. She stepped onto the mound and with her foot shoved aside the ashes over the sparkle.

  “Slivovica. Holy water, by gosh,” she exclaimed, then cupped a palm across her mouth to stop more of Kris’ words from escaping.

  She picked up the empty bottle and wiped it clean in a patch of clover. It was just an ordinary green bottle but she knew she’d keep it. She returned to the rubbish pile and spread the debris around with the tip of her running shoe. A rigid, cylindrical object turned underfoot. She bent and pulled it out. It was just a wooden stick. She was about to toss it into the pile. But a closer look revealed a number of holes, evenly spaced, gaping through the grey mud.

  ****

  Standing by the well her grandfather built, Kata submerged the stick in a pail of water. Air bubbles escaped as she rubbed off the grime. It was a flute. She shook it dry and examined it. The squiggly engraving at its base was slightly charred but still recognizable. Could it be the same one? No. Impossible. But how did it get there? Then she realized that it must’ve been Kris’s flute.

  Some day, Kata, you will find answers to your questions, not all, but some. Every once in a while an answer will come to you when you least expect it, Grandma had told her.

  Was this one of those times? While she’d been looking for solutions, she’d found only bewilderment. Was this what Grandma calle
d “creative chaos,” when everything was so perplexing and many ideas crowded one’s thoughts? And didn’t she tell Kata that often something clear emerged from this pandemonium? After a dark night, comes the morning light.

  Kata slipped the flute into her bodice and walked carefully to Grandma’s room, mindful not to dislodge the intricate puzzle of her thoughts. She opened the top dresser drawer. Without looking inside, she hid the flute where the old one used to be, behind the white parchment paper covering the pink cookie heart. Next to it was her green notebook containing the list of questions she stopped keeping after Grandma died. She opened the back cover and read the last note she’d written:

  I will never write another question because there is no point. Nothing ever came of it, and nothing will. The list has too many questions and no answers. For example: God. Are You there, up in the sky? If You are, You are not listening.

  She grabbed the pages by the top corner, ready to tear them out. She paused to listen. Was it the squeaking gate she heard? Or a screeching peacock from one of her dreams? She closed her eyes to better recall the scene – peacock fans spreading out against the lushness of the tall grass and enormous roses reaching to the sky. She peeked through the iridescent plumes into the turquoise eyespots of the long peacock train, and the roses behind it parted. She stood in the infinite green expanse. This was her own place, she knew, a collage of her own thoughts spanning from the beginning of her world to the present and somehow into the beyond. The beyond was littered with questions. She opened her eyes and looked down at the open notebook.

  List of Puzzling Questions Without Answers:

  Why do bullies want to fight?

  Why is Miladin’s father so mean?

  Why couldn’t Apollo foresee Hyacinthus’s future?

  Why did Nazis kill thousands of schoolchildren in Kragujevac?

  Why did Grandpa Mihailo allow himself to be killed?

  Why does my father not look at me?

  Why was Zephyrus so jealous that he killed Hyacinthus?

  Why do my parents fight?

  Why do people accuse gypsies of stealing babies?

  Why does Zeus always have to get his own way?

  Why do people have bad dreams?

  Why could no woman resist Zeus?

  Why didn’t Lorca want to tell me his name?

  Who gave me the cookie-heart necklace?

  Why do people have to die?

  Why did Angela drown in the well?

  Who stole Angela’s baby?

  Why does God let bad things happen?

  Who stole Angela’s baby?

  Why does my mother get so angry?

  Who stole Angela’s baby?

  Why did my grandma have to die so soon?

  Her eyes rested on the last item. The notion that perhaps God didn’t exist crept into her mind and shadowed all else. Otherwise, why would He allow Angela’s baby to be stolen? Or killed? Or Angela to drown? And now, why did her own father, Kris, have to be condemned? To be suspected of fathering Angela’s baby? Of killing it? And to vanish so Kata would never find him again? And to hurt Jasmine so badly, as if a worm had hollowed out her insides? And why do the gypsies have to leave, refusing to let her go with them?

  She felt that tomorrow and every day after, she would have nothing to look forward to, nowhere to go, and no one to talk to. The caravan was leaving at dawn. The decision seemed sudden. Did they discover something? No one mentioned Kris. As if he’d never existed. They simply said it was time for them to leave. Lorca had to be at the University of Madrid for his first teaching contract and needed time to prepare. A course on Garcia Lorca’s poetry. She might never again see Lorca, or Jasmine, or Goya, or any of the women, men and children who welcomed her into their camp night after night, some of whom she felt closer to than her own family. She would gladly have joined them. But they told her she must remain among her people. They insisted that some day she would understand. They told her to treasure God’s love in her heart, and everything would unfold as it should.

  And Lorca? He said he didn’t want to ruin her life. She knew that all he had to do was ask and she’d marry him on the spot. But he believed she was too young and needed to choose her own path in life. She couldn’t even tell him how she felt. He’d only offer his usual teacherly advice. Why did he treat her as if she were a child?

  “Goya believes he has an old soul,” Jasmine had said the night before, when they were saying their goodbyes. “Perhaps it’s because he’s to be our next chief. Our tribal head is usually chosen later in life, after having attained wisdom. But with Lorca, we’ve always known he’d be the one.”

  “Sometimes, when I think of Lorca,” Kata confided, “I imagine an ancient spirit, wise and all-knowing. I’d devote my whole life to him, just to be in his presence. Yet, when I am near him, anything I do is somehow imperfect, not as it should be.”

  “He wants you to grow up among your people,” Jasmine had said. “He knows you wouldn’t be happy just being somebody’s wife. You need to find your calling. You’re only fourteen.”

  “So were you and Goya when you married. And my grandma was only fifteen.”

  Jasmine’s words had echoed Papa Novak’s. Kata was becoming annoyed by these voices from her past. She preferred to replay the last few moments with Lorca. If only she could stop time and simply live in that bubble with him.

  “The caravan leaves at dawn, Kata. We don’t say long farewells. Until I see you again …” Lorca’s voice flowed through her thoughts. His dark green eyes were on hers. He’d bowed, as if he were Hamlet. Then he’d smiled, with just a twitch of mischief deepening the dimples in his cheeks, the gleam of moonlight in his eyes.

  “In four years you will be a young woman,” he’d said. She wondered what that meant. Should she allow herself to hope? Interpret his words as encouraging?

  Kata had absorbed his presence and would keep it with her forever, she knew. But she also knew she was seeing Lorca perhaps for the last time. And for the very first time she realized what Grandma meant when she had said: “When Mihailo left me he broke my heart.” She remembered one of Grandma’s last words: “I might be going to him soon, Kata. I might be seeing your grandpa Mihailo. I’ve been talking to him.” Kata let her tears flow, without wiping them or her runny nose and without pushing aside the damp lock of hair drooping over her forehead.

  Drawn back to the list in her hands, clumped eyelashes blurring her vision, she read the first question and on down the list, feeling as if the pages of a mysterious book written in a foreign language were finally being translated. It was as if she could hear meanings, as if she could hear the earth and the sky, the birds, the trees and Zephyrus’ wind; and through the receding fog could glimpse the answers. The sun rises every day, the sun rises every day, Grandma’s voice whispered. Kata picked up a green pen, and carefully wrote: Will my Lorca ever return?

  Chapter XXVIII

  A Flash Of Lightning

  The cherry tree branches lashed against Grandma’s bedroom window. Kata jumped out of bed and stepped out into the darkness just before dawn, wind gripping the faded summer dress she’d forgotten to remove the night before, her sweaty body turning chill. She crossed the verandah and stood on the steps that were flanked by two cypresses twisting in the wind. Above her, churning purple clouds were as low as the tree crowns.

  This is the torment of madness – the words imprinted in her mind – as Van Gogh’s Cypresses came to life all about her. The heavy leaves writhe like flames, their movement countered by the reverse spirals of windswept bushes and clouds. She knew by heart the inscription for this painting, telling of the dark curving brushstrokes that revealed the rhythms of the painter’s turmoil, his search for physical release from mental torment.

  “The inscription is untrue,” she muttered. She saw no evidence of madness in his canvas. Just the power of the colour and the curve and the unrelenting movement in the hidden truth of his world, propelling her to seek the truth in her own – the trut
h about Angela’s baby. I must know it. I must. She calmly received Angela’s anguish within herself. The need to run through the narrow escape in the painting, far beyond the turbulence around her, supplanted all else.

  But as she looked up into the sky, her escape vanished in the whipping wind. Lightning flashed in the distance. She ran, her bare feet pounding the worn path. Raindrops grazed her burning cheeks, washing her feverish body, pummelling the sticky dust.

  Forks of lightning … thunderous rumbling … the marsh was calling …

  The stench of decomposing carp floated on the damp wind. An old man stood at the edge of the marsh. He lunged at Lorca, hands around his neck, shaking him, choking him. Lorca was calm, face serene, despite the handcuffs on his wrists. One policeman tried to wrest the old man’s hands from Lorca’s neck. Another yanked on the old man’s arm and pulled him away.

  “You killed my granddaughter, didn’t you? Admit it! Admit it! Right here and now!” A crooked cane hanging on his arm, the old man shook his knotted hands, and pointed his trembling finger.

  “I’ll break your neck, you godforsaken filth! You an’ your pralo, here …” The old man growled like a caged animal, trying to free himself from the policeman’s grip. He pointed at Stefan.

  “Farmer Vila’s grandson. I should’ve done away with you long ago. When my sweet Angela first set her eyes on you with your gypsy blood, I knew there was trouble. Disgraced my daughter, my innocent swallow! You filthy pricks. Got her pregnant. Did you take turns raping her? She wouldn’t admit, but I knew! Betrayed her father. Me! Betrayed me! Policeman! Policeman! Let go of me. Put your goddamn cuffs on the guilty. He’s a gypsy too. Just as guilty as the other.”