Baba Mara

July Sun had another merciless bout of devouring anything damp and
wet under its domain from puddles mirroring the blue of the bottom-
less sky by the country roads to saps in slender annual plants. Only
trees, robust maze and sturdier species used to such excesses of Heav-
ens still defied the scorching and all-desiccating march of the Sun.
Large bodies of water, so abundant in the village by God’s mercy as
well as due to man’s entrepreneurship in case of the Great Canal, were
also unaffected by the long hot and dry season as had been the case for
centuries. If crops from the fertile plains failed, the paors used to say,
the crops from equally plentiful water will save the day. It was not only
food they hoped to mine from the stale ripe-olive depths of the Bel-
yanska Bara, the river of Krivaya or the Canal but breezes and breaths
of refreshing air floating on the hood of night they expected and almost
unfailingly got. That wondrous patch of the Earth, the life-begetting
plains of Voyvodina, had an unlimited potential to feed but one had
to pay for the opulence by undergoing its extremes of climatic temper.
The day was at its boiling peak when the whole of Creation retracts
into silence and motionlessness so that no additional sweating or warm-
ing would be added to the burden of the already existing one. Even the
birds that vociferously laud the gifts of a warm day chose to crouch the
day away in the semi-dark of mulberry crowns or dappled shades of
locust trees. No matter how strangulating the heat was it seemed to be
insufficient to drive home a kneeling figure clad in dark attires frayed
from sunshine and washing. It was my grandma Baba Mara intent
on weeding a patch of carnations, black-eyed Susans, purslanes and
other garden plants grown solely to add color, vividness and beauty to
the vegetable back garden. The garden was a spacious expanse of land
fenced off the rest of the household and grown with locust trees along
its rectangle-shaped boundaries. It was the time-tested practice that
fructified in wisdom of paors and guided the choice of locusts for the
roles of soil nourishers, standby logwood or providers of thin shade
that both guarded the plants from the harshest winds or sunbeams
and yet filtered just enough of them for a successful growth. As she was
worming her way and plucking handfuls of lush intruder plants, Baba
Mara swore in a loud uncontrolled voice at them as if quarreling with
the plants’ spirits.
‘Burdocks, wild carrots, mugworts, spurges, creepers...How come
you make such a quick comeback? You keep droppin’ down from the
sky at night for sure... For Mother’s sake, get away from this patch of
mine or I’ll send you packing to hell !’.
The ‘Mother’ referred to may have been a hybrid concept of mytho-
logical pagan goddess of vegetation and Christian motherhood.
Common people in Voyvodina, like their parent stock living in Serbia
southwards of the Danube river, had never given up this dual approach
to the matters behind the horizons of the visible. Although quite a reli-
gious person herself, Baba Mara could not get rid of those layers of the
nation’s tradition.
As for the garden patch it was a miniature Eden with abundance of
plant species which was the reason why pests had never been much of
a nuisance to paors in the pre-chemical era. Common sense, while not
yet impaired by drives for profit and media ads, had always intimated
to people a need for as many plants per patch of land as possible, or as
paors used to say, ‘The way God wanted the things to be’. Even after
the time the chemicals made their intrusion upon the land Baba Mara
never used any on the garden patch. Seeds were traditionally saved for
next season and there was a shelf in the pantry or ‘komora’ for all the
tiny bottles, glass jars, hollow gourds or tin boxes where they were kept
in winter time. Mice would often leave their droppings on the shelf
in protest from being unable to poke their tiny head wedges into the
well sealed containers. Seeds kept in plastic containers were rumored
to lose their viability.
Apart from all common kitchen standbys from aubergine to zuc-
cini Baba Mara tended after a variety of fruit-bearing bushes such as
gooseberry, currants or loganberries. It was my idea to talk them one
day even into preserving an elderberry bush that threatened to tear
down the rammed-earth wall between their household and the next
door neighbor’s. Granddad Lazar, whose influence on my interests
made him proud but never to the point of showing this, was the first
to catch up on that idea. Strangely enough, the bush soon grew into a
robust tree and learned to live along with the wall at peace.
There were several sorts of apple trees and a few old varieties of
pear trees, among them one that was called watermelon-pear. It bore
fig-sized fruits that had crimson sweet juicy flesh and was such a pro-
lific cropper that most of pears had to be stored into barrels for making
brandy. Quinces there were of several varieties and paors differentiated
between female and male ones. Every home used them for making de-
licious chutneys that were preserved in glass cellophane-covered jars
and usually kept atop old wooden wardrobes in warm bedrooms. In
spite of this quince chops seldom spoiled and were gladly greeted by all
as embellishment of often vitamin-poor winter diets. Then there were
plums and damsons, ringlov being among the most popular among
the latter fruits. No honey could compare to its sweetness and no drink
to its juiciness. Ringlov was relished by bipeds, quadrupeds, insects or
wild and household birds alike. As would be expected with its high
sugar content, its fruits were sacrificed mostly for fruit brandy that no
house was without. It was the custom in all Serbian homes to offer any
guests or comers a glass dishlet of slatko or sort of sweet fruit pickle,
a glass of water, while men were offered a glass of home-made brandy.
Many brandy lovers in Turiya had a scientific explanation for this prac-
tice. When one took a teaspoon of slatko, all the viruses from the body
dashed to cluster around it in the belly. Then quickly swallowing the
scorching liquid of brandy was the best way of getting rid of them and to
make sure this was done properly, at least three glasses had to be taken.
Now Baba Mara was on her way to pick up a pinch of dill and
fennel for her paorska chorba, which was a seasonal vegetable broth
that involved carrots, onions, potatoes, parsleys, peppers and tomatoes
as basic ingredients and a few plant species as condiment. Some hard
dough made of wheat flour and eggs was grated into it to add to its
peculiar taste while a pinch of poultry lard imparted a touch of both
more nutritious quality and refinement of the cook’s taste. Every single
ingredient of food, except salt and tropical spices, was the gift of their
own patch of land around home, the larger fields away from the village
and their sweat combined. They even had their own sugar supply as
part of payment in kind for the cooperative venture of growing sugar
beets with the sugar works in town.
Lunch time was nearing so she reckoned Lazar would soon come
back home from a nearby field they called ‘Over the Railroad’. They
grew maize on it and amid its shade cultivated yet another more spa-
cious garden for potatoes, carrots or other vegetables sold in bulk
on the greenmarket of the neighboring townlet of Srbobran. The old
couple seemed to disregard the blast furnace or deep freezer of heavens
in carrying out their daily chores for years strung out in a lengthy row.
The will to work was a well that sprang from inside their beings and
the outside circumstances only slightly altered its course and intensity.
Bula was fidgeting and fanning its sumptuous tail in the shade of
the artesian well enclosed in a square wooden box, which forebode the
comeback of someone dear to the home. Soon a farm wagon masked
in a load of green maize stubbles stopped in front of the gate and a
resonant voice pierced the noon quiet : ‘Mara, the gate!’
Baba Mara tucked the plants into one of a number of pockets of
her apron and covered a distance of some sixty yards from the garden
to the gate in an unalarmed waddle. After lifting a metal pin that se-
cured the gate in place she flung open its two wings that greeted this
temporary release with a long grinding sound. Jordan, the laziest of
horses north of the Danube, as some neighbors used to remark, gave
the wagon its final haul for the day with a strut and unhidden joy of
being back home.
‘You haven’t had much weeding to do, have you?’, was sort of a
greeting to her husband.
‘Well, with the land and sky so burning it’s a miracle the crops are
doing so damn well’, answered Lazar pulling at the rains to stop the
wagon.
He deftly shut the harness out and led the horse to the shade of
the stable then removed his weather-tanned and scorched hat to cool
his graying head. Attached to the stable which followed behind the
komora or pantry and the main body of the house in a row was an
improvised shed with a slanting roof that served as kitchen during