Running Away to Home

by Jennifer Wilson

  Baka Ana got down to business. Now, what were my great-grandparents’ names? When had they left for America? Where had they lived?

  I told her that Robert had taken us to House No. 262 after we’d seen the Book of Names.

  Baka Ana cocked her head. She worked her jaw for a few seconds.

  “Uh-oh. Here it comes,” Stefanija said, taking a drag off her cigarette.

  Baka Ana said she knew the family in 262. And they weren’t Radošević. She directed Jim to go back to the dorm for the family tree he’d drawn. She told Stefanija to call her friend Zora Horaček.

  “Zora was your family’s first neighbor,” Baka Ana said. “And she also—” She stopped. Zora must be here for this, she said.

  What was going on here? What was the big mystery? Baka Ana sensed that something was wrong, and it was making me nervous.

  Jim left. Stefanija called. Zora was in church. Stefanija hung up. Baka Ana made Stefanija call again immediately, and this time leave a message to get here as soon as possible.

  Baka Ana told a story to pass the time until Zora came. She grew up in a house across the street from Stari Baća, and Mrkopalj was such a sheltered village that she didn’t even hear of a banana until she was eighteen. The first building on the land where Stari Baća stood was built in 1940, the swanky home of a rich woman who ran a high-end restaurant-bar. During World War II, when there was a fence around Mrkopalj, Italian soldiers turned it into a mess hall. Children brought them eggs in cups and the soldiers would exchange the eggs for soup.

  “We all speak Italian,” Baka Ana said. “Ciao, bella! We didn’t like Italians because they were fucking around with everyone. They liked the women.”

  “Ha! My grandpa Gino was Italian,” I said, teasing her.

  Baka Ana buried her head in her hands. “I’m embarrassed now.” She laughed.

  Stari Baća was later a kuglana, or bowling alley.

  She hefted her body from the table and went into her bedroom just beyond the kitchen. She returned with a tall bottle of rakija and held it up.

  “Rakija?” she asked us.

  “Da!” I said.

  “Dobro!” she said to me, and gave me a closed-mouthed smile so wide her eyes disappeared into her cheeks. Rakija sloshed over the rim of my shot glass.

  I asked her what she missed most about the old days.

  “Moj muz,” she said. My man. “He was afraid when he died that I would marry again. But I didn’t. I was faithful.”

  She missed their parties. Mrkopaljcis danced the polka, the waltz, the mazurka. I told her Grandpa Gino and Grandma Kate had thrown living-room polka parties with accordion players back in Des Moines. Baka Ana laughed and laughed. “You can’t take the Croatia out of a Croatian!” she said.

  Even more than the partying and the dancing, Baka Ana missed the special feeling on Christmas, in a poor village that saved up for holidays. Sausage called mešnjače on Christmas Eve. Sarma on Christmas Day. The only sweets they had was povitica.

  “Would you teach me to make sarma?” I asked. I loved cabbage rolls.

  “Da,” she said, quick and sharp.

  “Does it take a long time?” I asked.

  “Da!” she said. “Just cooking takes two hours.”

  “Wow,” I said. “At what temperature?”

  She waddled over to the stove. I hadn’t noticed there were two of them in the kitchen. She opened the older one. A fire burned inside.

  “You put in two sticks of wood, then burn down. You put in two more sticks of wood, then burn down. Put in two more sticks of wood, then cook for two hours.”

  “She cooks with a woodstove?” I looked at Stefanija.

  “She always uses the wood stove,” said Stefanija. “We buy her a new electric one and she won’t use it. She says it’s too expensive.”

  “When you cook with wood it is also warm,” Baka Ana said.

  “What do you do with the new oven?” I asked.

  “I store my bread in there.” She pulled out two loaves to show me.

  “Kind of like the washing machine holding up the woodpile?” I laughed.

  “Da! I wash by hand,” Baka Ana said, energetically mimicking the motion of the washboard. “Electricity is expensive!”

  She slammed the oven doors shut and labored back to her bedroom. She emerged with a plate of raw bacon, and unless Baka Ana had a refrigerator in there, which I doubt, she was keeping that bacon on her dresser.

  I looked at it.

  “Eat, Geri!” Baka Ana ordered, confusing my name. To Pavice I was Yenny. To Baka Ana I was the cousin on The Facts of Life.

  We heard a knock. It was Jim, back from fetching the family tree.

  “The kids are doing okay,” he noted. “They’re all just playing.”

  Baka Ana grabbed the paper and held it close to her face. I leaned in.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  And that’s when she told me: House No. 262 was not my ancestors’ house.

  Baka Ana shook her head once, vehemently. “It wasn’t your family in 262. Uh-uh. No-no,” she said. “Isn’t the right house. Uh-uh. Ni.”

  “So if 262 wasn’t Valentin’s house, where did he live?” I asked, desperate. Robert had told us that 262 was our family house! I’d spent whole days picking around that place, trying to commune with the dead. No wonder I’d just gotten static: I had the wrong number!

  Stefanija rose preemptively to call Zora’s family again, before my head exploded.

  “Zora will be here in a few minutes,” Stefanija assured us when she hung up. “Her granddaughter is walking her over now.”

  I asked Baka Ana if she knew anything about Jelena Iskra’s house, House No. 40, on the other side of town. Had the Book of Names gotten that right at least?

  Baka Ana shrugged. “Gypsies were living there,” she said. “A few of them weren’t. But mostly: Gypsies.”

  My eyes bugged. “Gypsies?”

  “It was state ground,” she explained.

  Was I descended from gypsies? That would explain a lot.

  Jim sketched out a map of Jelena’s side of town and circled House No. 40.

  “Was this the Iskra house?” Jim asked.

  Baka Ana held up the paper to her face. Yes it was, she replied.

  “So were they gypsies?” I asked.

  She traced the street with her finger, reciting family names under her breath. Then she pushed away the map.

  “Nah,” Baka Ana said. “Your family wasn’t one of the gypsy families.”

  I sat back in my chair, exhaling. She pointed at me. “Geri is sorry they weren’t gypsies.”

  “I’m a little sorry,” I said. “It might be cool to be a gypsy.”

  Baka Ana lowered her voice. If the Iskras had been gypsies in Mrkopalj, they wouldn’t have made it out. Around World War II, the soldiers killed them all.

  Baka Ana asked if I wanted a glass of red wine or a shot of rakija. I chose the hard stuff.

  “Look how good she drinks rakija!” she said to Stefanija. “Oh, she’s a good drinker!”

  “Živjeli,” we said to each other, then beat our chests in fiery pain. Baka Ana’s hootch was wicked. One of my arms went numb.

  “Want some water?” Baka Ana asked.

  “Nope,” I answered.

  “Dobro!” Baka Ana stood back a little. “Rakija gets a mother through the days.”

  “Good to know,” I said, nodding.

  She poured another, then browbeat us into eating more raw bacon.

  “Trichinosis be damned!” I toasted, and we all drank again.

  We heard another knock at the door, and Stefanija leapt from her chair to usher in Zora, who’d been delivered from church by her granddaughter.

  Zora Horaček was built similarly to Baka Ana, but her eyes were a gentle blue. She wore a delicate plastic hairband and spoke softly.

  The two women embraced and exchanged pleasantries.

  “Kako si ti, Ana?” Zora said.

  “Kaki,
Zora?”

  “Together, we have one hundred sixty years,” said Zora, putting an arm around her girlfriend.

  Zora Horaček lived in the house directly north of House No. 262, with her hardworking son Dražen and his family. Since Robert had told me of the Horaček family the first time I saw House No. 262, I’d come to know Dražen Horaček a bit better. He was a regular in Željko’s backyard and the only truly handsome man in Mrkopalj, with cobalt eyes in a face that had all its parts intact and harmoniously arranged, including straight and present teeth.

  Ana debriefed Zora on what I knew—and what I did not know—about my family. Then Zora recited the same history that the Katarinas had told me in Rijeka. She knew my family well because her family had bought my family’s land.

  “House 262?” I asked.

  No, she explained. “Your family house no longer stands.”

  Long ago, just north of 262, sat two houses just like it, one behind the other. As time reeled forward through each wave of immigration, my family members had moved in or out or on to the next life. Eventually, the houses sat abandoned, paint fading, ceilings caving in, after the Radošević family left Mrkopalj. Katarina 2 had sold that property to Zora’s family in the 1970s. Today, all that remained were traces of the foundation, which Dražen had let stand, as an homage to my family’s roots, the home of the Horaček’s long-gone first neighbors.

  “You’re kidding,” I said.

  Stefanija pointed over at Zora with her thumb. “She knows everything.”

  I settled into my chair. Jim draped his arm across my back. “Well, how ’bout that?” he asked, laughing. “Robert showed us the wrong house!”

  I just shook my head. “Well, I’m not sure what I think about that,” I said. “But I’m sure the rakija will bring some clarity.”

  “Zora and I will teach you sarma,” Baka Ana said, pouring me another drink. “And there is one original food from Mrkopalj we must also teach you. Polenta and cabbage!”

  Baka Ana rummaged in her room again, this time producing a little wooden masher. She and Zora announced together: “Kamusnicu!”

  Then they taught us a song, the main chorus of which was “Rakija, rakija, I love you so much.” We toasted to the mysteries of Mrkopalj.

  As Jim and I hobbled home, incredulous of all this news, disoriented by Mrkopalj as usual, Marijan pedaled by on his bicycle.

  “Drunkards!” he called over his shoulder, waving.

  chapter thirty-two

  We woke to the sound of shouts and loud clanking. I sat up and looked out the window. Under a clear blue sky, vendors set up tent kiosks all up and down Novi Varoš.

  It was the festival day of Our Lady of Seven Sorrows. All summer, the people of Mrkopalj bragged to us about their festa; it was the most important day on the village calendar. In all Gorski Kotar, they said, this church festival was the most popular, with a carnival and street food and more vendors than any shopping mall. We’d seen the festivals in Sunger and other villages. We didn’t really believe them. But now the day had come, and before 7:00 A.M., the village was transformed into a tent city. Hundreds of cars streamed up the road.

  Željko had told us that whoever made a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Seven Sorrows on festival day would be forgiven all their sins. Jim and I figured that since we were here for a fresh start, we might as well get a few stains off the soul, too. We dressed and waded through the stream of humanity, making our way toward the church.

  Just as our friends had told us, you really could get just about anything in those kiosks. Clothes, shoes, candy by the kilo, potato mashers, butter churns, horseshoes. Of course there were fake guns for the kids. We found a ski cap bearing the insignia of Slipknot, the hard-core metal band from Des Moines. Everything, all of a sudden, seemed connected to Mrkopalj.

  We walked the streets toward Stari Baća, where pockmarked toothless dudes ran a carnival in a vacant lot across the street. The kids headed directly for the one-gun shooting gallery run by a black-haired woman in similarly colored clothes with a fat stack of kuna bills in her hand. We added to it, and the kids shot the first fake gun of their lives. Zadie won a pair of puppy-dog earmuffs and Sam earned a Spiderman the size of an old-school G.I. Joe. Though Croatia may be a poorer country than the United States, their carnival prizes were way better.

  The main ride was the giant twirling swings. The balding carnie in a tracksuit running the thing played throbbing dance music, and when he shifted the motor into gear, blue smoke rose from it and he entirely spaced off in the haze as the children of Mrkopalj spun through the air around him. The kids took advantage of the lack of supervision and swung their legs back and forth, gaining momentum to push off the swings in front of them, then crashing into the chairs behind.

  Jim stood with his mouth agape, struck with the horror of a man who knows OSHA codes, while parents stood around laughing at the merriment. As Jim was about to lunge at the carnie and beg him to stop the ride and save the lives of Mrkopalj’s children, I pulled him away and we crossed the street to Stari Baća, where Robert and Goranka had set up a food stand. Robert stood wrapped in a blue apron, stirring a vat of kotlava—meat cutlets in tomato sauce—with a giant spoon. He seemed mellow, and as far as I knew, sober. I’d decided after meeting Baka Ana that I wasn’t going to mention the 262 mix-up to him. I’d probably hounded Robert enough.

  Jim, still mildly panicked about the swings, told Robert about it.

  “Of this ride, I know,” Robert said, nodding gravely.

  “You do?” Jim asked.

  “Last year, I drink very much. And me and my friends think is good idea to take this ride,” Robert said, stirring. “But is not good idea.”

  “What happened?” Jim asked.

  “I cannot say,” Robert answered, looking back to his vat of meat.

  “Oh, come on,” Jim goaded him. “You can tell us. We won’t tell anybody.”

  Robert fished in his apron for a pack of smokes. He tapped one out and lit up, inadvertently ashing into the kotlova.

  “Me and my friends, we get on this ride. We think we will show kids: This is how you ride! First, we ride good. We push our friends with feet. We fly very fast.”

  Robert paused, remembering.

  “Then, I don’t feel good. There is no way I can stop this ride,” he said. “I throw up. And throw up goes behind me. On my friends. On other people. So I say: Is not so good, this ride.”

  We walked on, toward the Church of Our Lady of Seven Sorrows, completing our pilgrimage. People spilled out onto the steps, heads down and hands clasped; the sanctuary was too full to hold everyone. The collection of voices of the Mrkopalj choir wafted over our heads like a blessing.

  “Mommy.” Zadie tugged on my sleeve. I picked her up and planted her on my hip. “I want sausage.”

  I leaned over to Jim. “The little carnivore requires meat,” I whispered.

  “Let’s go back to Stari Baća and have lunch,” he whispered back. “I want to make Robert tell me the swing story again.”

  The four of us pushed back through the crowd to the cool, dim sanctuary of Stari Baća. Jim ordered plates of ćevapćići and kotlava. Stefanija and Pasha were working behind the bar with a smattering of Goranka and Robert’s relatives. Cuculić and Nikola Tesla beckoned us over to a table, the same table I sat at when I ate in Stari Baća for the first time, almost exactly a year before.

  “Hello, Mizz Veelson!” Cuculić welcomed me. Nikola Tesla wiggled his eyebrows and danced in his chair for me. I had mentioned to the summer girls that I dug Nikola Tesla’s Sean Connery vibe, and now I suspected someone had told him.

  “Mom? Can we have some pop?” Sam asked.

  “No,” I told him. “Eat your lunch first.”

  “Oh, mah!” Cuculić said. Nikola Tesla hustled to the bar, still dancing, biting his lower lip, and fetched the kids two Fantas.

  Jim returned with our lunch. The kids wolfed down their food and headed to the pool table just a few steps away.

&nb
sp; Stefanija walked over and released the pool balls. “My baka says you must come over soon to make sarma,” she said. “But you must bring the children this time.”

  “I will,” I promised.

  “When we are in high school, we sit for hours with Stefanija’s baka,” Pasha called over. “She’s the best.”

  “That is because she loves you,” Stefanija murmured, brushing past him.

  Pasha said something low and quiet to her, and I wondered why they were no longer a couple. Like magnets, they were pulled together almost as if they couldn’t help themselves. But Stefanija dreamed of leaving Mrkopalj. It was taking her a while to finish school—the Croatian education system was complicated, of course, there seemed to be a pay scale based on previous classroom performance—and she had to take classes in small increments in order to afford it. She was sharp and perceptive and possessed an ambition we didn’t see in Mrkopalj. But studying didn’t come easy to her. She had to focus if she’d ever graduate and run a hotel, which was her dream. And to accomplish all this, I guessed, she would have to focus outside of Mrkopalj.

  Jim, Cuculić, and Nikola Tesla were talking like old chums.

  “Your children, they are very good,” Cuculić said.

  Nikola Tesla nodded. He never spoke English. Ever. But he understood it.

  “Thanks,” Jim said, watching Sam and Zadie. “They’ve become more valuable to us since they started earning money playing pool.”

  “Oh ho ho! This is a very American thing to say!” Cuculić said, laughing.

  Nikola Tesla nodded and headed to the bar. He returned with beers for all of us and another round of Fanta for the kids.

  “Hvala,” the kids intoned.

  Nikola Tesla grabbed his heart and danced over to me. He grabbed my notebook. “Zoran,” he wrote. He pointed to himself.

  “He is telling you that his name is Zoran,” Cuculić said in his same old habit of translating to me things that had already been translated.

  “Sarajevo, forty-eight,” Nikola Tesla continued.

  “He tells you that he is forty-eight years old,” Cuculić began.

  “Honey, I know.” I patted Cuculić’s hand.

  Nikola Tesla wrote the names of his children. Grown and gone away. He grabbed his heart again.