But he wasn’t done with the military. In 1991, during the Yugoslavian Wars, he left to fight like many Mrkopalj men. He said he spent one ten-day stint on the front. His platoon patrolled a border in Lika. The Serbs eventually figured out their patrol pattern and snipers shot six of his friends.
Robert and his peers recovered all the dead but one. Two months after the battle, the Serbian and Croatian soldiers arranged a body exchange.
“We carry that body for five kilometers to the military tent,” Robert said, rubbing his hair. “At first, it doesn’t change me very much because I don’t understand what is happening. In that moment of war, you don’t realize a lot. But some months later, the dreams start and they don’t stop.”
Robert didn’t know what to do with himself after the war, so he decided to dedicate his life to his band. “When I was very young, I didn’t see myself,” he said. “I only know that I need to drink, to eat something, and have one pair of jeans for the year. And when I have kriza, crisis, I have a woman. At that time, women were only numbers to me.”
His life on the road with the band was pretty wild, until he met Goranka while he was moonlighting at Helena’s family pizzeria. Goranka was young and gorgeous, and she wasn’t easy like the other girls. They’d been married nearly sixteen years, and he considered himself a settled-down family man now. That sideways finger of his ensured that he’d never play professionally again.
“I still can’t believe that surgeon sewed it on wrong,” I said, touching it.
Stefanija spoke up. “You should see the arm of my brother,” she said. He’d broken his elbow in such a way that it too required reattachment. To this day, his arm jutted away from his body, also sideways.
“Same surgeon,” she said.
“Remind me never to go to the Rijeka hospital,” I said.
I asked if he planned to stay sober when he was finished with his round of antibiotics. When Robert was on a bender, we’d hear Goranka yelling at him downstairs. Their unhappiness seemed to rise up right through the floors, and I told him it seemed that his family wished he would stop drinking for good.
“Who?” he asked.
“Um, well, your wife and kids would probably like it,” I said, caught off guard. “And your sisters are always giving you a hard time.”
“Go fuck them. They’re stupid,” Robert said of the sisters who’d supported him for a year.
“You just drink a lot, Robert,” I persisted. I sensed I was crossing a line, but I couldn’t help myself. “It doesn’t make any sense to me.”
Robert pointedly stirred the cup of tea in front of him. “I don’t like it so much,” he said.
Then he shrugged, owning up a little. “You haven’t control of yourself. The last part of drinking time? That is the best part. I just want to have more drink and more drink. But then I am depressed the next day when I can’t remember how I get home.”
I assessed Robert with the Croatian stare. During his Blue Period, he’d even cut his giant explosion of hair. It was short and tame, reduced by at least 65 percent, as if he didn’t want all that hair in the way between his brain and the world around him.
“Robert, is there anything you would have done differently in your life?” I asked.
He squinted through the gingham curtains of Stari Baća. Jakov Fak whizzed by on training skates, lean as a greyhound.
Robert lit a cigarette and pushed away from the table. “I wouldn’t have smoked at all,” he said. “I hate it. I smoke two packs a day since my mother died.”
I sat there, astonished once again by the Brown Bear. Our friend Robert was an alcoholic, an army deserter, a rocker who’d quit the band—and his only regret was smoking.
Stefanija looked at me as he walked away, equally amazed. I rounded up our cups to put behind the bar, which stunk of old wine and stale beer.
“There is still a child in me. A boy,” Robert called from the kitchen. “I hope that the boy will grow up before I die.”
I walked home, thinking of Robert. I’d chased him down and examined him, maybe seeking some clarity about my own alcoholic parent. Shoot, Robert was probably my mother’s second cousin, once removed. Or first cousin, twice removed. I’d ask Jim later.
Anyway, I’d harassed him enough. Robert’s burdens weren’t my own and maybe I’d been wrong in asking him to share them. Although that story about deserting the army to catch an Iron Maiden show was totally righteous.
Robert was who he was, and it had nothing to do with me. I was never going to understand him, and I needed to stop standing outside of our friendship until I did, as I’d stood outside of Mrkopalj at first. As perhaps I’d stood outside my own life and family, waiting to master it all before I could actually sit back and enjoy. I was beginning to suspect that nothing would ever fit my tidy mold of how things should be. Mrkopalj was teaching me to appreciate the whole lovely mess anyway.
As I rounded the bend into the driveway of 12 Novi Varoš, Lepi drove up in a tractor to deliver the wood cut by Robert’s Dream Team. “I am a very beautiful man,” he reminded me.
An enormous mountain of drvo, or wood, soon dominated the side yard in front of Viktor and Manda’s place. Sam scrambled on top of it and busted out the Little Guys. At last, a galactic fort to protect Novi Varoš from Count Dooku’s men.
Robert came home, and when he and Jim had finished unloading the firewood with Lepi, they headed down to Stari Baća to meet Pasha and Stefanija to celebrate. According to Jim, Robert was supposed to work that night, but he sat at the bar silently instead, serving no one. Finally, Jim started taking drink orders. He tidied up, with Stefanija directing him how to do this task or another.
Bit by bit over the next hour, Jim put Robert’s bar back together until it was clean and tidy again. He took care of things, the way he always did for his family, joining the ranks of neighbors in Mrkopalj who helped Robert keep his world together until he could do so for himself.
Robert watched, watery-eyed, coughing all over everyone. Eventually, after depositing great chunks of what appeared to be lung tissue all over the counter, he got up.
He tossed the Stari Baća keys to Jim, declaring the words that my husband has recalled in glory maybe one hundred times since: “I am sick. Now I go home. Drink what you want. Lock up around midnight.”
I can hardly imagine what this must have felt like for my husband that night. All I know is what he told me, which was this: The moment Robert threw him the keys to the bar was perhaps the greatest of his whole life.
I did not take it personally that he neglected to qualify this statement with “besides when I married you” or “except when our babies were born.”
chapter thirty
In the morning, the bells of Our Lady of Seven Sorrows rang as usual. Cesar yapped somewhere between dark and dawn—I didn’t know exactly when because Cesar’s barking was always lodged in my subconscious whether he was actually barking or not. Every day, Pavice and Josip let their turkeys out of the tiny cage wedged between Cesar’s perky villa and Pavice’s summer kitchen. Though I often plotted the death of Cesar, I could always count on the pleasant guttural clucking of turkeys to calm me down.
“That’s nice of Pavice and Josip,” Zadie said one morning. “They let those turkeys out every day to practice flying.”
But I noticed the day after Jim’s barroom triumph that the clucking was gone. Cesar barked without interruption. With no turkeys, I was worried what I might do about the dog. After dinner, I poured my tea and went outside.
“Gdje je pura?” I asked Pavice, who was perched on a lawn chair, shredding ripa, or turnips, to pickle. Inside the house, Josip milked the cows.
Where are the turkeys?
Pavice dragged a finger across her neck.
“Frigidaire!” she yelled.
I sat down next to her on a log stump.
“You killed the turkeys?”
She rubbed her chest with sticky hands. “Nom nom nom!” she said, laughing.
“
Why didn’t you kill Cesar instead?” I asked.
“Neh, Cesar,” she corrected me, ticking one finger back and forth. “Pura.”
I put my head in my hands.
Ana Fak crossed the street and sat with us and smoked. Zadie bopped over. Pavice pinched Zadie’s cheeks, and Ana petted her hair. Sam rode by on his bike and asked Pavice if she had any kolaći.
“Neh!” Pavice answered. No powdered-sugar dough balls today! Sam rode off and parked at the woodpile, where Robert and Jim sat staring at it.
Since Lepi had delivered it, Robert’s firewood remained untouched. It had been days now. Sometimes I’d see Mario standing over it, shaking his head. Seeing good wood exposed to the elements drove him nuts. Maybe Robert thought that if he ignored the woodpile long enough, Mario would get worried and stack it himself. Mario walked and fed Robert’s dog, repaired Robert’s house, and hauled Robert’s junk to the smećer. But he would not stack Robert’s wood. When it came to wood, Robert was on his own.
I walked over to the men.
“Maybe we can stack this now,” Jim was suggesting.
Robert looked at Jim, slack-jawed. I got the feeling this was one of Robert’s less productive nonconformist moments. He stood arms akimbo as he considered the enormity of the woodpile—125 trees’ worth, the size of three cars.
No, Robert would stack wood when he thought it was wood-stacking time. I could almost hear him thinking it. Jim could, too. He rose and put his hands on his hips just like Robert. Robert sucked his teeth, and so did Jim. Then Robert sat down in the lawn chair again, looking bushed from all the thinking. Jim did the same. They both crossed their legs and waited. I fetched them beer. I returned to my old women. We all sat and waited.
Robert watched the sun go down from his roost. Then, when it was fully dark, he called to his children, who emerged from the second floor wearing work gloves as if they’d been waiting there all along. Jim called Sam and Zadie.
I came over to observe. Mario crossed the street and we stood together. Jim and Robert directed the troops as they all stacked firewood against the base of the house. Every so often, I’d grab a few pieces and at least pretended to help, but Mario, whose wood had been stacked for weeks, never did.
The night deepened. Chimneys belched smoke. Mrkopalj smelled like one big campground. I experienced great satisfaction watching the pile of wood turn into tidy rows. They even stacked around a first-floor window in a perfect square, to allow in light. With Jim’s help, Robert’s house had joined the orderliness of fall at last. His family and his customers would huddle around crackling fires in a darker season. We’d already started our own stove in the dorm, its pulse of heat a beacon of the essential abundance of Mrkopalj.
“Your family is best at helping with wood,” Robert announced in a husky voice. I think Robert stole a glance at Mario, who stood with his hands in his fleece pockets.
The main activity the next day was admiring Robert’s tidy new wood stack. Jim and I sat on the yard swing for a very long time, soaking it in, this signal that winter was nearly upon us. As we rocked, I noticed two skinny legs poking out from the canopy of Željko and Anđelka’s apple trees. It was Viktor, picking apples. I hadn’t seen the ladder that supported him.
I looked at Jim. “Do you think this is when people make rakija?”
“I don’t know,” Jim said. “I’ve seen an awful lot of people hauling apples.”
“And you never see anyone putting away apples in the cellar, like they do those big bags of potatoes,” I said. “The apples just disappear. Into a still, I bet.”
We’d asked all summer for someone to show us how to make rakija, but the mere mention of bootleg liquor turned people curiously mute, as if they’d never heard of this staple of the Mrkopalj diet that was more vital than water. They’d share their most intimate secrets with me. But I got nowhere with a rakija recipe.
Viktor stepped down from the tree as Željko pulled in to the driveway. Jim and I stopped rocking, hoping to remain undetected. Željko disappeared indoors, then returned to set up big brown glass jugs along the picnic table. Viktor fetched some plastic tubing from the cellar.
Jim and I crept up to the dorm and called Stefanija to see if she might help us get to the bottom of this rakija business. By the time we were back downstairs again, spying around the corner, all the machinery was gone. Viktor and Željko sat at the bare picnic table, serenely sharing a drink of wine. When Stefanija showed up, we joined them.
“So,” I began, “what are you guys gonna do with all those apples?”
A low laugh rumbled from deep inside Željko’s chest. He fished a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his work shirt. He shook one out and lit up, exhaling smoke and squinting at us.
“I don’t know,” mused Viktor, swirling his wine. “Maybe we will give away to other people.”
“Are you making apple pies?” Jim asked.
“Apple cake?” I asked.
“Ha!” Željko laughed.
“Apple juice?” Jim fired.
“Yes, yes,” Viktor said. “Sure.”
Željko took a languorous draw on his cigarette. Viktor leaned his face against his hand.
“Apple muffins,” I suggested. “Nom nom nom.”
“We hear that you are sad Pavice’s turkeys died,” said Viktor.
“Pavice killed all her turkeys,” I corrected.
“Yes, Jennifer. She put them all in the refrigerator to eat,” said Anđelka, emerging from the house with wineglasses.
“Pavice and Josip are the top meat eaters in Mrkopalj,” added Viktor.
“You’re trying to distract us,” I said. “I’m here about the apples.”
“Vinegar,” said Željko. “We are making vinegar from apples. For salad.”
I looked at them both, hands on my hips. “Vinegar.”
The two men chuckled. “Wine?” Željko asked, holding up a bottle of red.
Anđelka looked innocent. I’d shared enough rakija with her to know that she either had a direct supply or was going into debt buying in bulk.
“Some people make rakija out of apples, but I don’t,” Viktor said sweetly.
“Do you know anyone who does?” Jim asked.
Željko began humming under his breath. Viktor shrugged.
“If someone were to make rakija out of apples, how would they do it?” I asked.
“Well,” Viktor began, “you’d put apples in a large box and crush them and put in some stuff and then you’d cook it and then you’d get rakija.”
“Have you cooked yours yet?” Jim asked.
“Where do you store it?” I asked.
“Some people make rakija from figs, too,” Viktor said to Željko.
“Da, da,” said Željko, nodding.
“But I haven’t cooked it myself,” Viktor said.
“Nor have I.” Željko shrugged.
Anđelka nodded, hands clasped together as if in prayer.
Željko backed him up. “Maybe someone makes rakija in Mrkopalj, but we don’t know this,” he said. “We don’t have grapes, so we don’t make wine either.”
I looked over at the giant grape arbor. I looked back at them. Anđelka looked up at the sky, as if finding something very fascinating up there.
“The grapes are just for decoration,” Željko indicated, stubbing out his smoke.
“Stefanija, can you find me someone who makes rakija?” I asked, exasperated.
“I don’t know of anyone,” she said.
“That’s a load of shit,” Jim said, laughing.
Stefanija avoided my eyes, suddenly absorbed with her nail polish.
When my people left Mrkopalj a hundred years ago, they’d dodged its sorrows. But they’d also lost their right to the recipe. When it came to making rakija, not even Stefanija could help me.
With rakija, I was on my own.
chapter thirty-one
I might not have been getting that rakija recipe, but Stefanija’s grandmother Ana finally invited me o
ver to her house. Stefanija had long insisted that the old woman would be able to tell me everything I needed to know about Mrkopalj once and for all, and though I couldn’t guess what that meant, I was eager to find out.
Jim and I left the kids with Robert’s girls and walked down Novi Varoš to a familiar place with a channel-glass door we’d seen many times on our walk to Tuk. Outside the house, I saw another entirely novel method for holding up the outdoor woodpile: a washing machine propping up the whole stack, a surreal setup that once prompted Marijan the tenor to describe Stefanija’s grandmother as the Croatian Marcel Duchamp.
“Come in! Come in!” Stefanija said as she rose from the kitchen table and introduced us to Ana Tomić: stout in a brown housedress, with short-clipped hair and a face creased by sun and time.
The kitchen was small, dominated by a wooden table and chairs on a worn linoleum floor. For decoration a crucifix draped in rosaries hung near a picture of Jesus with a lamb. Baka Ana, or Grandma Ana, offered us the contents of her refrigerator: salty Mrkopalj prosciutto and the remains of an old ice cream cake. A stocky drill sergeant, Baka Ana spoke in a continuous demanding bark punctuated by bursts of cackling laughter that showed a mouth full of gums. She manhandled us into chairs and directed us to eat.
“Eat, or she won’t stop telling you to do it,” Stefanija said, lighting up a cigarette.
We ate.
Baka Ana asked me what I wanted to know about old Mrkopalj. I told her that I’d learned a lot already, especially from Viktor and Manda.
“I was born 23 July, 1928,” she said. “Viktor is 1928 also. I went to school with him.”
“I’ll bet he was trouble,” I said, smiling.
“Ya! Ya! Ya!” she jabbed a thick finger at me. “He wasn’t a very good student. Do you want some juice?”
“Neh,” I said.
“Kavu?” she asked. Coffee?
“No, thank you,” Jim said.
Baka Ana looked at us, puzzled.
“Your granddaughter is our favorite person in Mrkopalj,” I told her.
“Dobro!” she cried, smiling big at Stefanija. “Ha ha ha!”
Running Away to Home Page 30
