Baba Mara

their personal possessions. They worked for a gazda who had some
hundred acres of best land and whose principle was that if his laborers
could not save enough to make their home in his service, they were
good only for getting the boot. When their savings were sufficient to
break from him, they bought a piece of land in what was to become
their household in Turiya. For a long time afterwards they ate from one
plate during all their meals, which was their individual custom they
established in memory of the hard times.
...Their two sons, so different by character and paths of their lives...
Stevan so drawn into himself, of fragile health...Did he have to die ?
If Dr Gentz had only come in time from visits he had paid to the rich
families in the city...Ah, she had told that obstinate child not to ‘make
the Jesus’ in the snow, that silly game of lying prostrate in the snow
with hands and legs stretched. Galloping consumption hit him with
fever, convulsive coughing, blood spitting, swelling of the breathing
parts, suppuration...Oh, how the child had suffered, that tiny nine-
year old just-open bud of a rose. Only Dr Gentz could have saved his
life if only he had got in time to incise his throat and let the fresh air
in...Gone, forever gone to play among angels...
All her motherly love soon gushed towards Milovan who was of
adamant health though of an elfin build at the time. In contrast to Ste-
van’s fair complexion and blue eyes, he was of a brass tone and his eyes
had the quality of burning coal. Thank God, his health was a branch
from Lazar’s tree and he was himself only in the company of others...
As teen age was laying its grip on him his body stature did not make
much of a progress. How she prayed God not to leave him so physically
obscure and made him drink a mixture of fresh eggs and sugar. And
how it worked, oddly enough, only at the time of his coming of age and
endowed his shapely but tough body a middle stature. Milovan grew
up to be the talk of the village and neighboring town girls all the way
up to the city of Novi Sad. Then the world war broke for the second
time in Lazar’s and her life and another round of living at the brink of
nonsense ensued.
... The only child that remained was arrested by the Nazi stooges...
extradited toprisons in Hungary then discarded into the hell of the
Dachau concentration camp...she prayed to God every day to keep
him alive and well...Oh, how strange that Milovan did survive that
slaughterhouse beset by typhoid, starvation, torrents of lice and hu-
miliation...And that Russian soldier...not a man, he was still a boy. He
remained hiding from the Nazis in our home. They looked after him
the way one would do with one’s own son. So many beautiful songs he
could sing...such a lovely, sad but heart-warming voice...Oh, yes, she
remembered that night when his friends had come. It was late Janu-
ary... January 15. of 1944 it was, yes, a week before St Sava’s holiday.
The chill of the night was biting at the bones and icicles must have
hung from the disk of the full Moon. In they broke bringing along a
freezing greeting of the night and a splash of loud laughter. Word went
around the village that the Ally forces were giving a good many spank
to Hitler all over Europe. The merry company had a friend wounded
in the leg who would never part from his little accordion. How instant-
ly the scene of painful expectancy and anxious silence changed into
one of roaring joy, radiance and hope !... Soon, they danced to the
giggles and gigs of the accordion bellows amid a whirlpool of brandy
smell and cigarette fumes. Ivan, their protégé, had never been happier
before during his sojourn at their home. As suddenly as they popped
in, those Russians made their leave. Dreary quiet again laid its firm
grip on the lonely couple. This time Ivan left...left forever. No news
have come from him ever since. An icon of St Pantheleimon that he
had painted from memory was the only physical trace he left behind.
Strange enough that his family venerated the same saint...
... Then the happiest news was brought by the barber’s son who had
spent some time with Milovan at the death camp.
‘He’s alive and well, Mother, don’t worry’ was the first thing he
said. She felt a mountain of pain and anguish falling off her heart. Her
prayers had been answered by God’s mercy. Life was making its new
beginning...
Baba Mara drifted in and out of the hot afternoon doze. It was too
hot even for flies or other insects and an almost unearthly quiet hang
in the boiling air. Suddenly, a tiny squeal came from the door that led
into the street and stood squeezed between the gate and the recess
ending with the sealed door. Baba Mara startled and wondered who
could be paying such a furtive visit at that time.
‘Mara...Mara..’, a weak strumming voice called that seemed to
come from other worlds.
‘Oh, there she is again...’, Baba Mara thought recognizing the voice
of her neighbor Millitsa, an aging womanthat eas gradually losing a
firm grip on this world.
‘Come in, Millitsa. Don’t be afraid of the dog!’, said Baba Mara as
she was walking with her heavy swaddle towards the visitor.
Militsa had an ashen but miraculously wrinkle-free face of mystics
and those tormented by questions too difficult to be answered in this
life. The sparkle of light blue eyes was slightly dimmed by fretful trav-
els of her soul.
‘Let’s go There, Mara...!’, she uttered in a trembling voice words
that often came out of her absent mind. She never came closer to the
concept of ‘there’ and seemed frustrated and frightened if someone
asked her to explain what she meant exactly.
‘You want to come in?’, Baba Mara asked although she knew the
answer would be negative.
‘No...no, Mara, let’s go There, now...!’, Militsa whispered while fire
burned in her eyes reflecting the inner torments of consciousness.
Baba-Mara was not always in a mood to listen to the plights of her
free-roving soul and often felt a strong desire to give her a verbal so-
bering slap in the face.
‘Look, you sobbing old creature! I’m NOT going anywhere from
here! I like what I have and where I am now. Now, stop sniveling and
think about this life here, about your daughter and her troubles, about
the living people who love you...Now, there, come in’, said Baba-Mara
endeavoring to disguise her annoyance while acting out an angry
person.
‘Oh, you too don’t understand me...No one seems to care. One
day you will all be there anyway...’, complained Militsa refusing the
invitation to enter the home. She frequented a few neighbors’ homes,
hovering to and fro like a butterfly rather than visiting them. She could
not bring herself to sit down and relax. The elderly people said she was
not breathing in air anymore but hell-fire instead.
There were times, however, when Baba-Mara earnestly attended to
Militsa’s loud inklings and frets and saw in her a like soul or someone
who had covered a longer way on that most intriguing journey of all,
the journey of the soul. She too had got to know the hints of the world
beyond and it was the most discussed and desired subject at night
gatherings, nothing short of a socializing norm. Meeting friends was,
in reality, only a décor for the central message that was to follow, which
invariably had to do with ghosts, witches, personal experiences of ‘the
strange’ and an entire inventory of concepts or events that somehow
did not fit into the ‘normal’ reality. The reason Militsa came so often
was in her intuitive grasp of the sympathy and understanding Mara
had, although she was mostly reluctant to show them.
‘All right, then, off I go... See you There...’, Militsa whispered out
taking her leave.
‘May someone else go with you, I won’t ‘, said Baba-Mara shaking
her head vehemently, standing akimbo and looking ready to defend the
territory of her earthly hopes. Lazar walked out of the cave-like shade
of the house and looked up in the heated transparent pond of the sky.
Not a single cloud could come into being and no shrouds of vapor could
conspire against the infernal fire in the distant pockets of the sky. An-
other day of frying in the merciless oven of Heaven was coming to its
better, late afternoon part. Baba-Mara glanced at Lazar and she seemed
to guess exactly what was on his mind. He must have thought if people
were to blame somehow for that punishment from Heaven. Then...
what does a day in real hell look like if this were only a God’s earthly
warning? With such thoughts and guesswork besetting her mind she
waddled towards the artesian well to get some water to the chickens and
drown her doubts in the intoxicating potion of endless work.
Grandma’s brother-in-law Miladin often came after lunchtime to
the grandparent’s home announcing his arrival by an asthmatic voice
that seemed to come from a new coffee mill. He was black all through,
outside or inside. His suit turned into a working set had a gloss and
colour of the best coal and the smell of thick lubricants used for dousing
the wheelwork at the grain mill where he worked. He too was lubri-
cated all over, forever, and no amount of scorching water was capable
of washing the tarry fat off his skin. He looked like a raven salvaged
from drowning in a barrel of oil and only the balls of his eyes beamed
whiteness and infused light into his figure. He often used to take my
brother Lazar and me to the electric grain mill to show us ‘the huge
wheel’. Lazar in particular was obsessed by the biggest among wheels in
the mill and often made drawings of it and designed his own gadgetry.
Miladin’s smell was identical to that of the wheelwork and it tickled
a pleasant response within senses and encapsulated an entire story of
honest drudgery amid for us mysterious clang and movement of shafts,
spokes or bars.
The funny part of Miladin’s visit was that he and grandma could
never get on well like oil and water. They talked about everyday topics
and their discussion progressively gained steam. Some lubricant seemed
to be missing in the machinery of their socializing and the bearings
of emotional movement quickly reached annealing points. They burst
into a short horrendous shower of swearing and offending that was
little short of punching in a ring. As quickly as the torrent of emotion
reached the flooding limit as quickly did it regress to a speechless point
at which Miladin usually left without greeting from either side.