Category Archives: Coming of Age / Bildungsroman

A Lucid Nightmare

19 Tuesday Feb 2013

Posted by in Coming of Age / Bildungsroman, Magical Realism, Photography

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In my dream, it was always the four us, my parents, grandmother and I. We were moving from one country to another, leaving everything familiar behind. I was changing schools, uniforms, friends, languages. In the beginning of the dream, I was growing roots, towards its middle I learned that when the roots are cut – it hurts. So I stopped growing roots. I started behaving  like a stranger who’s only temporarily there, in my own dreaming. Towards the end of the dream, I had became a perpetual stranger, a recidivist foreigner, an all time nomad;  a wanderer, a traveler, someone who’s just around for a short while, and not even that long.

I met some people, in that dream, they asked: how long are you staying?  They knew we would part sooner or later, we knew it too. I knew all of it was temporary – the dream, my home, my friends, the languages that took me so long to learn, I knew that I would leave it all behind, soon.

I woke up in Florence one morning and looked at Ponte Vecchio through my bedroom’s window. I was in time to grab my morning espresso and rush across the bridge towards the Market of the Piglet and and the building where my language school was.

Florence is the city best situated for the heartbroken and for those fatally ill of general nostalgia. There is something in that city that predisposes you to sigh into the breeze above Arno. The city is so beautiful, so marvelous – that many faint, some suffer from ephemeral heart conditions and some are struck by the city’s charm to the point of developing temporal insanity. It’s called The Syndrome of Florence.

If you are profoundly sad or dreamy for a prolonged period of time, Florence is the place to be. Rome, with its bright colors, open squares and flashy fountains would only drain you, the sad you, the dreamy you. Naples would cry so hard, that you would end up comforting the good old romantic. Florence is the city for you, the noble lady would pick up your dark mood, but it would be beyond her poise to acknowledge it with anything more than a merely noticeable nod. A noble lady of that age – albeit you wouldn’t dare asking the lady about it – would certainly know what a heartache is, even if a general one. She would understand your mourning over the country you lost, the dream that you couldn’t wake up from and your language that went extinct. Maybe the city would hint on the stories it knew – of the mistress of a king who was the love of his life – albeit he never made her the Queen, of  secretive mystics and painters who drank heavily, of alchemists ever seeking the elixir, of shrewd merchants  and  entertaining con-artists, of street musicians and fishermen who knew many tales and of market sellers who knew it all… For suffering and wisdom are universal, the pain is equal, it does not discriminate, it goes after each and every one of us all the same, since ever and until our very end.

Rome’s exuberance would tire you if you are sad, or dreamy, Naples’ sun shines too bright when your thoughts are dark or foggy; the noble Florence with its cobbled alleys – for cobble isn’t the same everywhere – the posh sound ch which its dwellers pronounce as if whistling –  they say it’s done so to diverse from the rest (an alien, they say,  will out himself by merely pronouncing the ordinary k instead), the pizza crust with its particular Florentine taste, clubs underground of which tourists are unaware and drag queens in Via Nazionale, friendly drag queens who will tell you Florentine secrets at the local hairdresser’s – that’s what you need when you are waking up from a nightmare, or still feel ephemerally dreamy.

In my class all were foreigners, like I was, and even the teacher was from somewhere else – she felt equally alien as we did, albeit Florence is the best city to be an alien, given that you have to be one. The talk of the city is that some were born in Florence, of parents who were also born in the city – but those people you will never meet; they must have their own hidden ways for transportation, their own schools and their own hairdressers, because your path will never cross any of theirs. All the people you will meet will be aliens, like yourself. Some would have come for a month, some – for two; many would stay just couple of weeks, or even less – and only few will stay for as long as nine months.

To get to my country, you need to wake up from dreaming, leave Florence behind, head south – all the way down, to the ancient city of Bari, you need to embark on the ship and cross the Adriatic Sea. The journey lasts one night, in the morning you shall awake in the Black Mountains. The climate is very different here, albeit it is Mediterranean too. As soon as you step down from the ship in the port of the city of Bar, what you will feel is that the time passes slower.

In Florence, the time runs, together with its hurrying tourists, in Naples – the time gets drunk on the abundant sunlight, and it sings the songs of the sea and romantic love; in the Black Mountains the time has nowhere special to go, and it slows down to the point where it feels as if it almost stopped. The magnificent olive trees, spellbound long ago, don’t go anywhere – they are always there, and it seems that even the people who live in houses made of stone, under the olive trees – never hurry, and maybe even never move.

Nobody is an alien here, all were born here, of parents who were born here as well. The rocks of the Black Mountains haven’t heard neither of mistresses to the kings, nor of street musicians and broken hearts. The rocks have other stories to tell, of battles and knights, dreams of victories and nightmares of betrayals, those stories I was told when I arrived from Florence, having realized that I wasn’t dreaming.

L.R.S.

due thank to Daily Prompt: Nightmares for inspiration

Church of St. George, Podgorica, Montenegro

Church of St. George, Podgorica, Montenegro

9/11 In My Personal History

11 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by in Coming of Age / Bildungsroman

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picture taken in 2011

I lit a candle this morning and i prayed to God, silently, for heroes, for America, for all of us.

On this day in 2001 i had just returned from China, was watching a movie and getting ready to hit off to the gym… when they started broadcasting the tragedy.

I was taken aback.  My mother said: oh, this must be a movie!

I knew it, somewhere deep down, i felt that spasm in my stomach which told me that, sadly, this is for real.

Let me tell you what America means to me – beyond being a country where many people i love – live.

For an European intellectual – and an American intellectual as well, it’s rather customary to express certain cynicism when it comes to politics, especially to the politics of the only remaining super power (us having grown up under the threat of the other.)

As a linguist and as a writer – i use words as my primary tool of expression, as that very bridge through which i communicate with the world.

English language, which i started learning quite late in life, opened my mind for patterns of thought which were unknown to me in the culture into which i was born –  and which i haven’t known in the cultures where we lived, which languages i learned.

It’s the language – its richness, its warmth and its genuine, innate positivity that opened up my heart in the beginning.

I wanted to learn more about the people who spoke that language.

As my own country, former Yugoslavia, started to fall apart, my own identity did too; it turned out i belonged to a people, Yugoslavs,  who instantly went extinct , i remained without a citizenship, without cultural identity and even my mother tongue was not called the same any more.

As the remnants of former Yugoslavia were buried deeper and deeper, with them went down the communist system of values into which we were raised.

I turned to my Jewish roots to find meaning and personal salvation. It’s there that i understood what essential role US had played in the Jewish battle for survival.

I had studied literature under different system, so it’s later on in life that i came to  Kerouac, Carver and Ginsberg – and they have moved my world and shifted my perception.

The movies, the music – the more i learned about the culture, the more i loved its people and identified with them.

Whichever interest i’ve developed – Kabbalah, Tarot, and even Chinese Philosophy – it turned out that i was looking in the direction of US – first Kabbalah Center, outside Jerusalem,  opened in US and my teacher was there; people who wrote books on Tarot, from whom i learned – were there too, and even intellectuals from whom i was learning Chinese thought – were in US as well.

During the Balkan wars, my father being a dissident, we sought refuge in Montenegro, where his side of family originates from; during 1990ies  every single thinking Montenegrin understood that we have to regain state independence in order to reclaim our history that once was honorable – and in order to break out of the predominant back then Balkan hate for no reason.

In 2006, after years of struggle , Montenegro is free and independent – for which , i dare to say, political support of US administration, and thus, American people – was one of the main factors that made it come true.

Thus, on this day, eleven years ago, it was not some country overseas that was attacked. It was me and my own life that was attacked.

In my personal history, i had died once, when Yugoslavia died – was it a fake construct all together, did it turn out for the best at the end of things – i wouldn’t know, but i was too young then to have any relevant influence and for my voice to be heard.

Two decades later, the world has changed, my own life changed and grew in a direction of which i never guessed, i didn’t plan on becoming who i am today, it happened… But, big part of it, big part of who i personally am is forever intertwined with American people.

So, i stand with you today and always with my soul and with my life and i say, in one voice with you: ALWAYS REMEMBER. NEVER FORGET.

Lena Ruth Stefanovic

note: this essay was written last year, on the same day… dates were changed accordingly, but nothing changed in my heart, nothing ever will.

Death by Chocolate

23 Thursday Aug 2012

Posted by in Coming of Age / Bildungsroman

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Being sworn to secrecy means that my memoir has to be postponed for quite some time; hopefully, somewhere in my eighties i’ll be able to add names and places to some amazing stories…

I don’t care about retelling events which shaped the history – many witnessed them and most wrote about it, rightly or not; but there are small things, some amazing details i’d love to write down, yet can’t – at least for now.

I was both blessed and cursed to witness an amazing time – and as a minor figure, not being in the center of the events, yet still being present – i had the possibility to observe things which normally are hidden from the view of general public.

That being said, i need to add that i loved my job and highly respected the people i worked for; in the times i worked for the government – it had another dimension too, we were fighting for our country’s independence and for renewal of our identity, language and culture.

I quit my job three years ago, after our main goals were achieved – Montenegro regained its statehood and Euro-Atlantic integrations were set as the priority of our foreign policy – all i and everyone mine ever wanted  for our country.

Of course, there is plenty of work to be done still, many internal changes and reforms are due, but the most important is done.

Somewhere around that time – i had received recognition for my writing and was offered the status of state endorsed writer – that meant  i’d be covered health and pension funds, if i became a pro writer, not accepting any other work engagements.

Together with my former superior whom i hold in highest possible respect and with my family, we decided it’s for the best because diplomacy is not a job, it is a way of living and one can’t possibly be a diplomat in career and a surrealist; i know many were serving and writing – but history proves that inevitably one of the two suffered; either they didn’t conduct the foreign policies of their countries properly- or their writing became mediocre – hence i choose writing.

I must say that none of the two – if done properly – are neither easy nor fun, at least most of the times, i’ll go further to say that probably these are among most difficult vocations one can choose, especially during times of changes and – especially if one sticks to certain ethics and morals; truth to be told – most writers and diplomats still do.

Anyhow, all of the above is merely an intro into the current essay – see, a blogger i love following had asked me to share some recipes from Montenegrin cuisine.

The thing is that Montenegrin recipes are tricky – they seem simple, but the secret is in the ingredients which sadly are not available abroad…

Common entrée would be a piece of  Njegushi cheese stored in oil – let alone that goats and cows are fed freely on the nearest valley on herbs and grass typical of this region, the cheese is later smoked at home and Njegushi is unique for its blend of sea-air with the air from the mountains, two climates intersecting in that very spot give the food a taste that’s impossible to second.

After the cheese is imbued with this unique aroma – it’s stored in olive oil and that’s a story unto itself, because the oil is hand made by monks in the monasteries on the coast; at the end you get a a small piece of cheese that’s threaded with history of this magical kingdom of Black Mountains, served merely to accompany the story of Petrovic Njegos dynasty and their tribe of Njegusi, where most important Montenegrin rulers were born; the monks, while making the oil – read prayers and these prayers give you the strength of a tiny rebellious nation, which resisted its numerous oppressors for centuries and was never enslaved.

The main dish served would be carp baked with dried plums – the carp  being from Skadar Lake and of endemic species,  unique due to its development in biological and geographical isolation…

With it Montengrins drink their favorite brandy – Prvijenac which again is made by unique technologies, in limited quantities, is pricey and comes  in numbered  bottles, like a part of a collection – which basically it is.

There is that joke – the proverbial Russian, American and Montenegrin argued whose beverage is the best and , as expected, without having agreed –

had decided  to conduct an experiment; a group of mice would be treated to Whiskey, Vodka and Prvijenac respectively and the effects would be observed and recorded.

The mouse who had Whiskey started walking around nonchalantly, with a seductive aura of a western-movie actor, he demanded his own Colt to protect the mice maidens and after a while rode into the sunset.

The mouse who had Vodka started quoting Russian Classics and despairing over the current state of the world’s affairs, lady mice were admiring him while silently wiping off  tears  with tiny handkerchiefs and praying that this hero wins the duel against the usual bad guy.

The mouse who drank of Montenegrin Prvijenac just stood there… Of course, Russian guy and American guy started mocking their friend of how useless his beverage was, but Montenegrin laughed and said:  hold on…

After some time, the mouse high on Prvijenac stood on his back paws and yelled out in a human voice which carried menace of vengeance high and low: Women, back to the hole, you have no business here! Where is the bloody cat?! I’ll do it away with my bare hands! ‘Nuff of this oppression! Come out, you villain, fight as a man!

You get an idea…

For my mother’s birthday last Sunday i ended up making international dishes, after all, one can’t live on a diet consisting of history and myths alone, so eggplant&parmigiano, fish and veggies au gratin and Chinese ‘marble eggs’ were served  :

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And as per the Carp with dried plums: i was interpreting at the time at an official dinner which our first guy hosted for a foreign counterpart of his; now the high state official in question is known for his charisma which is surpassed by few- among those few who do surpass him in charm and popularity being – his own spouse,  a  classy, powerful lady with great public standing of her own. (Think of our counterpart of Bill and Hillary Clinton.)

So, as the casual conversation after the row of successful meetings goes on, the majordomo in elegant moves escorts in the waiters who are serving the national dish – carp with dried plums; the 1st guy uses the opportunity to say more about this delicacy to his guests and starts explaining the somewhat complicated technology of its preparation… The first lady, as she is snacking on the above mentioned delicious carp, in low yet chilling voice adds in our language: ‘Funny, darling, at home you don’t know how to cut a piece of bread, yet here you turn out to be a connoisseur …”

(For the record, the couple is known for keeping it down to earth and living like ordinary people, without bodyguards, servants and so on, which, of course,  makes them even more respectable – and popular with the people.)

Montenegrins at the table start laughing histerically, while the 1st guys looks at me and, smilingly, asks: It’s not that you are going to translate this?

Of course i did.

The White Plague and Raise of the Fallen Woman

15 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by in Coming of Age / Bildungsroman

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source: wiki, non-free use rationale

My maternal grandfather was a partisan, he died in battle on Syrmian Front, leaving behind his twenty eight years old widow and their two daughters, both toddlers at the time.
Having won the National Liberation War – in Yugoslavia the WWII turned out to be both antifascist movement and proletarian revolution – the partisans who survived overtook the power and relocated from their respective villages to the capital, Belgrade.
Yet there, more dangerous enemy expected them – the ambushing force of Heroin, the white plague, which took advantage of uninformed concealment to attack their children in the urban jungle.
Why and how exactly a society built on communist values had developed a bizarre fascination with nihilistic heroin culture – is everyone’s guess.
Who knows, maybe adopting that skinny, hung over look with vampire-like pale skin and dark circles under eyes was just a teenage way to rebel against the parental aesthetic values – those of a healthy, sturdy and sun-tanned villagers.
And like in Alan Ginsberg’s poem, we saw:
“… the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night…”
For that heroin chick look wasn’t stimulated, the white plague was ravening the society.
I believe that with time heroin had become some kind of illusionary opt-out of the predominant semi-urban culture, stuck half way between the village and the city – the escape from folk music and small-town mentality which could not grow roots in the city.
The thing is that there wasn’t much alternative – God was in exile and Western culture mostly didn’t sit well with the ruling ideology.
The socialist youth grew increasingly disinterested in partisan movies and in socialist-realism all together with it’s proletarian appeal and support of Party’s aims, yet more proactive protests seemed to be in vain…
In 1968 students’ protests erupted in Belgrade, the police beat them and banned all public gatherings. Students then occupied the Faculty of Philosophy, were holding debates and speeches on the social justice.
President Tito had applied one of his sly tactics to gradually stop the protests – seemingly he gave in saying that “students are right” during a televised speech, yet in the following years he sacked the leaders of the protests from universities and party posts. The borders were opened and many had left the country then – the most creative ones, like Marina Abramovic and also, both the most educated and the hardest working ones had sought better future abroad. Those who stayed, unless with time they too succumbed to the ruling hypocrisy, tried to find the middle way in arts and there heroin was laying in wait.
You would have learned that cult musicians, whose eyes gazed at you unblinkingly from the posters glued to the wall in your room, were on dope and you would think to yourself that it must be a really cool thing to do.
Of course, in the ivory tower of my Prague’s home, heroin will remain out of reach – and thanks goodness for that; yet, i could read on it and that’s exactly what i did.
Christiane F. – the teen heroin addicted prostitute from the book “We Children from Bahnhof Zoo”, living in a dreary West Berlin’s neighborhood and hanging out at a rail station – shall become my unlikely teen idol.
Truth to be told, she was merely one of the many “fallen women” characters for whom i would develop quite an odd admiration at young age. Anna Karenina and her French counterpart – Madam Bovary, living with their dull husbands in petit bourgeoisie surroundings did not appeal to me, albeit i strongly empathized with them; i wasn’t drawn to tragic Marguerite Gautier, the lady of the Camellias, albeit i did feel sorry for her being a child of Alexandre Dumas who couldn’t come up with some better ending. It was Abbé Prévost’s adventurous gold-digger Manon Leascaut followed by tauntingly beautiful, endlessly neurotic and self-destructive Dostoyevski’s famm fatale- Nasstasya Filippovna, who oddly struck a chord with me. The latter shall remain the book-love of my teeange life, interrupted only by a brief book-romance with Vladimir Kunin’s “Interdevochka” – the hard currency hooker, Tanya.
Did author, whose Jewish surname was Feinberg before he changed it to Kunin, named his heroine after Pushkin’s noble Tatyana, showing tongue in cheek to Soviets who claimed there wasn’t prostitution in their homeland – is everyone’s guess as well.
Anyhow, all of those ‘gals got harshly dealt with by authors who created them – brought to sudden death, or a slow one, or committing suicide – their ‘fathers’ didn’t know what else to do with their renegade daughters, as much as they seemed to both love and hate them.
It’s only much later that reincarnated fallen woman will make it – as a geisha – and she will recall it in her fictional memoirs; it would take a Mandarin-speaking American Jew, Arthur Golden, ten years of rewriting the novel to finally redeem her poor old soul by the end of twentieth century. And albeit wrapped in satin kimono once first geisha of Japan, Mineko Iwasaki, would sue Golden for the breach of trust and denounce his depiction of geiko community – the book nerds of the world will feel so relieved by the raise of a fallen woman that the novel will be on New York Times best – seller list for two years and the film version will win three Academy Awards.

to be continued 

Copyright © L.R.S., All Rights Reserved

Poster Copyright Notice: source – wiki, non-free use rationale

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Memories of things that once were

19 Thursday Apr 2012

Posted by in Coming of Age / Bildungsroman

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for Jim Maher and Lisa Frideborg Lloyd

We are threaded of memories of things that once were. It is this unique blueprint, inherited from our parents, which became more and more elaborate as we were growing up and becoming individuals – on different sides of the planet, in very different surroundings.
Jim grew up in Australia, Lisa came to age in Sweden, i was born to a country that meanwhile died. You would say, these people are threaded from different substance and their blueprints are too diverse for their memories to ever resonate with each other…
Yet nothing can be further from truth.
You see, there is that layer of archetypal remembrance where all the unique blueprints merge into one big echo of the universal human experience.
And, thus, albeit Jim and Lisa and myself grew up in different parts of the world, we came to age together and that’s the memories we share.
Here is Jim’s story:
“This is the kind of story that when I read I don’t want to finish. Nostalgia set in early while reading it, my mum used to wash her hair in the remainders of Dad’s home made beer, he had a big cauldron in the back shed that was always brewing with egg shells as well as other things floating along with the other ingredients that did not sink on the top of the liquid which was bubbling over the wood fire stove he had made. It was against the law in this country to make your own beer back then or any kind of alcohol),so we had to keep quiet and say nothing about it, mum did not drink it though she said it was the best shampoo, and dad always made sure there was plenty for her! Anyway those days are long gone, my dad died when I was 28 (1985) and mum died in the year 2000.
Thanks for those memories today Lena, I had really forgotten about my mum washing her hair with dad’s homemade beer.
Your story was like going to the fortune teller you wrote about and taking a trip ‘back’ in time (….”she could read the past too”) …to where I once lived. For myself as well… full of what was once for me just common… (long before ‘new age’ was even a phrase or a used terminology let alone a buzz or marketing word) more like just a way of life or practice amongst our elders…
Today your story of The Fortune Teller both bought a happy tear to my eye and also took me back in time for a while.
I want to thank both you and your story for being able to do that Lena.”

And here is Lisa’s: “Very enjoyable read. Made me feel nostalgic and want to visit… possibly because it reminded me of my own coffee grounds-reading grandmother… who, as it happens, was also fabulous at embroidery! Oh, how I wish I had learned more from her! Maybe one day I’ll be blessed with grandchildren… and maybe one of them will be a seer too…”

I am certain the children will indeed see and that they will take the things they’ve seen with them, to the better future.

Illustration: By Paolo Martinello , Universal Fantasy Tarot, published by Lo Scarabeo 2006 © Copyright Lo Scarabeo, All Rights Reserved

The Fortune Teller

17 Tuesday Apr 2012

Posted by in Coming of Age / Bildungsroman

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the artwork is in public domain
Mine was predestined, you see. Summer school break lasted three moths; in early June grandmother Embroideress and i would board the train to the old country, carrying the provisions in wicker food baskets. The journey across former Austro-Hungarian Empire would take two days and we would have at least two main meals and five or six snacks until we would reach its once North-West border and the former Duchy where she was from.
Preparing the baskets beforehand was time consuming and would take considerable amount of logistics – breaded chicken, meatballs stuffed with eggs, sourdough bouls, fluffy crescents and wafer cake cut into bite size pieces would be wrapped in foil and placed in the basket alongside plaid cloths, plastic glasses and sour apple juice in thick green bottles; these elaborated movable feasts were the highlight of the journey.
I would be mostly reading and napping until the train reached Hungarian border and busy customs officers rushed through the compartments greeting travelers Jó napot kívánok while quickly scanning their passports; soon after that, the bulging train would depart making plethora of noises – roaring, squealing and honking- as if it was kvetching about the heavy burden that had befallen it…

And then the prairie would open – the fertile rolling lowland of Pannonian Plain with its forest ridges and endless dithering wheat fields, carried by the wind like sea waves.
There used to be a sea here once upon a time and poets still lamented of being like lost sailors trapped in the corn fields and what a disgrace it was to lose not a ship, but the whole sea.
In the villages, the main street in which houses were leaning against each other, connected by a thick greasepaint line at the bottom – would inevitably be named after Marshall Tito. The grandmother’s house stood just across the street from the tall white church with belfry – the pigeons’ dwelling on the top;
every time the bells rung, calling the believers to pray, a flock of flustered pigeons would get on the run, waiving their wings hastily.
You first needed to unlock the wooden gate with a horseshoe nailed on it for luck and protection and then turn right to the big house, which main room was the spacious kitchen occupying the mezzanine.
On the first floor were the bedrooms with tall iron beds covered by duvets stuffed with goose feathers and big pillows sewn from damask silk, during the night, feathers would stick out from the covers and pillows and would pinch and tickle the sleeper’s bear skin inducing them with vivid dreams.
The books were everywhere, all kinds of books – encyclopedias, collected works of classical writers, cook books, monographs, history books – arranged on shelves, coffee tables, bedside stands and even on the floor; it’s here where the books were kept, as the family moved across the globe.
The heavy wooden chest kept starched tablecloths, embroidered linen and vintage handkerchiefs, all carefully ironed, folded and arranged so that their edges would form a straight line, with lavender pouches spread randomly between them.
The whitewashed walls were decorated with hunting tapestries, windows covered with crocheted curtains, dozens of porcelain dolls were sitting on velvet chairs and the whole atmosphere was that of an antique shop, it felt as if the time had stopped there.
Drinking water was brought from the nearby well in painted tin cans and in the backyard was a tiny basin that harvested rainwater used for laundry and bathing.
Grandmother despised industrial soaps and washing liquids and made what we needed on her own – the soap was made of wood ashes, the hair washed with yolk and brandy and the skin treated with lotion made of egg-shells and lemon.
The food was made from scratch and cooked on a wood stove, the baths were taken in a barrel and the books read under the flickering light of kerosene oil lamps.
Soon after our arrival, cousins and neighbors would start arriving, carrying the gifts – eggs that were freshly laid, milk that was still warm from milking, apples just picked from the orchard and manually ground coffee that smelled divinely.
The water would be measured carefully with small coffee cup, poured to cezve – copper pot with a long wooden handle – and placed on the stove.
Then the hostess would inquire about sugar preferences – most took it with one dessert spoon of sugar, that was considered medium, few would like their sweeter or – without any sugar, those had to be made separately. After the sugared water would boil, cezve was removed from the stove and some of the water, approximately half of the small ceramic cup, set aside for later use. Then coffee would be added – two level dessert spoon per cup – and cezve would be brought back to stove; after the thick liquid would boil once again and would start to raise, the coffee was ready – it only needed to be poured over with that remaining water, which made the residue fall into its place… and that you needed so you could actually read the cups.
The coffee was enjoyed slowly, sipped on, well water was poured into crystal glasses and and some honey or home made jam was served in small plates and on crocheted doilies.
The community’s news would be exchanged – who was getting married, who had a baby and who was no longer with us; there were always weddings and funerals to attend and presents or words of condolence were carefully chosen in advance.
After the last sip, when only the thick residue remained on the bottom, the coffee cup would be shaken several times and turned over the saucer; it would sit like that for at least ten minutes so the residue would form the figures and dry.
And then the magic would began.
Grandmother Embrodieress was held in high respect for her reading skills, it’s only years later that i would understand she was clairvoyant.
She could tell the past and future too and her readings were amazingly accurate. She never went to great lengths to explain herself – who thought her to do so, did she think it morally right, was she entitled to this knowledge… she saw things and she told them as she saw them, that was it.
There were neither preset meanings nor rules of reading – and ‘reading’ is not the word we use in our language, for us it is “seeing”, because that’s what she was doing, she was… Scrying.
Toddlers were given sips of coffee from their grandmother’s saucers, you would become a formed coffee-drinker with set preferences by the age of twelve. When a girl was capable of making a decent coffee herself, she was said to be ready for marriage – usually aged fifteen or sixteen, albeit normally they waited until eighteen and meanwhile panned out their coffee cooking skills.
I knew love spells could be made by adding a drop of menstrual blood to the coffee, and illnesses could be cured and evil eye casted, but i never saw my grandmother doing anything like that.
She would gaze at the coffee residue and she would say things – and hers were pretty succinct instructions on what’s preferably done and what isn’t, and she saw things unexpected, that she had no way of knowing.
I have no idea how they figured out who could be the next talent – but while not all girls were passed the coffee cups to read, i was.
Out of grandmother’s Embrodieress two daughters, three granddaughters and numerous cousins and nieces, it seemed i was the only one who could see stuff, albeit myself i didn’t know how.
I would be passed a coffee cup, i’d start scrying, soon figures made of residue would start talking to me and telling me their stories – it was rather simple, you see.
And soon it would turn out that my readings were accurate too.
Copyright©20012 Lena Ruth Stefanovic, All Rights Reserved

The Daughter of the Childless One

16 Monday Apr 2012

Posted by in Coming of Age / Bildungsroman

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Vaclav Jansa's Powder Gate


Disclaimer: All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

I was always alone, albeit i couldn’t know back then that the date of my birth, summed up and reduced to a single digit, equals to the position nine in procession of the Tarot Trumps, Major Arcanum, that held by the Hermit.
And it’s only in the first year of philology studies, that i’ll learn from etymological dictionary “Jak se bude jmenovat”, paní doktorky Miloslavy Knappové that my name could mean ‘a tower’… Could mean, because it was one of those shortened names that meant nothing per se.
My grandmother’s name was Embroiderers and she came from the people who were flag-bearers in the battles – her late husband did, that is. It’s only later on that i will learn the name she was given was some kind of code meant to protect her; from whom or what – i didn’t know. My mother’s name is Dawn and father’s – Dear one. His favorite sister was Darling and my mother’s sister was Firch Tree. Both of my cousins were named Hope, while father’s mother and father respectively were Dew and Rejoicing. My Basenji companion’s name was Bongor, his pedigree said, and albeit i didn’t know what it means – it did sound royal. Yet, my own name meant nothing. I could chose the root – Greek for ‘torch’- ἐλένη or ‘moon’- Σελήνη, or Aramaic Maghdela, place on the Sea of Galilee and literally-a tower. I preffered the latter because it suited me better.
I was quite tall, the tallest girl in class, i had my father’s black hair and very dark brown eyes, yet my mother’s pale white skin and gloomy facial expression – which made me look pretty much like a ghost… and that’s exactly how i felt, most of the time.
You see, Slav ideal of beauty is blond, glowing, with blue eyes, pink cheeks and it is bubbling, chatty and a coquette. I was none of those things.
No wonder i was drawn to the Powder Tower, i would spend hours observing it and i presumed that, could she speak, this born Goth would confine in me that she felt the same among those light-headed buildings surrounding her.
I didn’t know back then that the Powder Tower was a Gate to the city, the Gate where the Royal Mile – the traditional route of Czech kings – used to start; but i would soon learn there is a powder, albeit of another kind, that will come to my teenage salvation.
Czech would sometimes refer to make-up as to zázračná chemie, magic chemistry, and magic it was.
Soon i would become a skilled magician – i was mastering numerous alchemical processes and i presume even John Dee would approve my diligence and dedication.
The magical fields in which i excelled were many.
By Albification adepts would make the matter in the alchemical work become white – that i had mastered by the age of thirteen, having learned how to bleach my black hair in a way that it looks naturally blond. Of course, i hadn’t succeeded at first and had burned my hair badly during first couple of experiments but, with true apprentice’s spirit, i endured until the end… Until once at the Czech- German border the custom’s officer almost didn’t let me out of the country because i didn’t look anything like my picture in the passport.
Alchemical Coction – the cooking or heating of a substance at a moderate heat for an extended period – was a crucial skill to master; hair rollers were heated before they could produce that big hair so popular during 80ies; face was ‘steamed’ so the skin pores would be clean; hands and feet would be first kept immersed in hot water, so they could be adequately treated.
Coloration-tinging a substance by adding coloured tincture, ‘dessication’ –
removal of all the moisture in a substance, ‘foliation’ which made
the substance puff up in layers – all of these were necessary to achieve the wanted ‘Rarefaction’, which made the substance thin and airy.
Back then the only thing i wanted was to merge in somehow, so not to stand apart all of the time; if only i had known that at the end, result of this pseudo-alchemical process would be all that vitriol…

With time, loneliness became my modus vivendi. No siblings, no close friends – we were moving from country to country every couple of years, no extended family. There were other kids in the neighborhood – i had noticed them around, but some of them spoke Czechs and others – French, i didn’t speak any of the two.
There were some interesting serials and sitcoms on tv – or so they seemed, but i couldn’t understand a word of it.
So i resorted to books, it’s about that time that i started reading manically.

If, once upon a time, you were participating in Coronation procession of a Czech king, taking the traditional route – your next stop, after the Powder Gate, would be Municipal House or Obecni Dum.
To walk behind the king in the procession you had to be either a high-ranking clerical dignitary or a leading provincial aristocrat, if you were local – or a noted nobleman if you came from abroad.
So, while chances to show off in the procession were slim (albeit, if you lived in city’s center, you could always cheer the king from your own window), to become the next person to take up the royal throne and thus walk at the head of the procession – well, that was almost impossible, especially if you were… a woman.
Back in the day, there were salic and semi-salic laws of succession.
According to semi-salic law, the first-born person descending from the older line had the absolute preference and the male members had the preference to the females – women could start to rule only if there was no eligible male member. Like Maria Theresa, the only female ruler of the Habsburg dominions, did. Some would say her rule did prove that women were better kept off the throne as Maria Theresa Walburga Amalia Christina, the sovereign of Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Bohemia, Mantua, Milan, Lodomeria and Galicia, the Austrian Netherlands and Parma – happened to be the last ruler of the mighty House of Hubsburg.
Her father, Charles VI, in 1713 managed to get the great European powers to agree on Pragmatica Sanctio – the edict ensuring that the throne of the Archduchy of Austria could be inherited by a daughter, and died in 1740 with no male heirs.
During her forty years of reign, Maria Theresa promoted financial and educational reforms, commerce and agriculture, had reorganised Austria’s military, and at the same time had sixteen children by her cheating husband. Go figure.

And while Maria Theresa did have it tough, Salic law excluded women so they could not seize the throne even if they were the only living representatives of the existing dynasty under the sun.
And while i was not a princess, i did feel on my own skin some kind of Salic law’s evil replica.
You see, for Montenegrins, the daughters didn’t really count either – they couldn’t be listed on the family’s genealogical tree.
Thus if some – in the eyes of others – poor man was cursed to have only female off-springs he was considered childless. Even nowadays, second decade into the rushing 21st century, some elderly Montenegrin, a father of six, would claim he has a single child – his only son. The five daughters don’t count, you see.
Couple of years ago, in a bank, one of those pushy middle-aged women that you hate standing with in a line, regardless my obvious unwillingness, did manage to chat me up. I was standing in the long bank’s line in front of her, and while i was immersed into the book i was reading – she was trying hard to start a conversation; she was coughing meaningfully, and had pushed me and then apologized couple of times – stuff those obnoxious persons do when they are bored and on a lookout for a new victim. Local sub-genre of yenta or something. I try to avoid them by all means, because their only goal is to collect more material for gossiping with their equally obnoxious friends. She didn’t know me – i am often a target because they hadn’t seen me before in our small city and they are dying to know all about me. This is Montenegro, a country of 650.000 inhabitants, where at least half of the people are related to you (the other half for sure knows someone who knows someone whom you know or work with), so you can’t just tell them to bugger off. I did my best to ignore her, as from previous experiences i knew what was to follow, yet there is a line in our society that you don’t cross, unless you are ready to give up on your own reputation and, more so, make your family ‘lose face’.
Because that’s what would mean her eventual spreading of the word that ‘daughter of such and such was so rude, that she wouldn’t even speak to a poor old lady like herself – and that’s only because she, the daughter, grew up abroad and was never thought proper manners… but then, how could she possibly be – after all, her mother is a foreigner… poor father of hers, why did he merit such a miserable destiny?!’
And the latter would be said with a tongue in cheek, because Montenegrin yentas never forgive their compatriots who intermarried – you see, everyone has a daughter or a niece who never married only because those foreign sluts seduced decent Montenegrin men… (It’s not that their daughters and nieces were ugly and mean after them, so noone wanted them for their life.)
So, to avoid all of it inevitably reaching one’s family – one would give in and the interrogation would begin: “Whose are you?” That’s the way to play ‘Montenegrin geography’, the fastest bet for the yenta to locate you in the multiplicity of her inner maps.
I avoid direct answer, i don’t need this. “Where do you work” is the usual second question – that’s directed to eventual gain from the new acquaintanceship; you see, except the unmarried daughter, they usually have another one that desperately needs a job – who knows, maybe you are the godsent who will provide it, nevertheless the chances are the daughter is uneducated and lazy too (i mean, who has the time to study or work, when there is so much gossiping to do!)
I make myself clear that i am not the godsent in question. On question where i live, i answer very vaguely, something like “here and there” and when she asks whether i am married and have children i smile, look her straight into the eyes and say nothing. She is confused, i am not supposed to behave like that. That’s so rude! And she can’t even complain to her friends how absolutely rude i was because she hasn’t learned my name! I see it written on her face, that defeat, but she doesn’t surrender yet and repeats the question. At this point, still smiling, i answer the Jewish way, with a question:”Why are you asking?” Now i am afraid she is going to have a heart attack. “What do i mean by that?!” She doesn’t say it loudly, but again, it’s all over her face! She’s entitled to know! It’s her birthright after all! It’s her birthright to push her nose in thy neighbor business! And while i fully realize that it is indeed some sick way to care about others – which is, the evil sister of the proverbial love for thy neighbor, i am so tired of it all, so tired that i just turn my back on her without saying anything.
You see, i’ve been intimidated that way all my life and i grew very tired of it.
At that very moment the bank clerk calls my name and as i step forward, towards the counter, i feel the tapping on my shoulder. I know it’s the old witch, she had overheard my surname and had located me on the maps in her head; i have no intention of turning back, but she taps me even stronger as she yells out triumphantly:” i know who you are! You are the daughter of the childless one!” I’ve heard it before and i would have still ignored her, but she is now hitting me on the back and screaming:”We are realated!” The other people in the bank are staring at us. I face her and say calmly:”I don’t know you, leave me alone.” By that time a younger woman had joined her, i presume it’s her daughter as they are very much alike; the girl is blushing, she is embarrassed by the yenta’s behavior and apologizes to me. Meanwhile, Yenta herself is smiling proudly as if she just climbed to the top of the Mountain Everest, and in her small mind she probably did. You see, she outed me. I was misbehaving by not answering her questions and now that she outed my shame she could rest on the laurels of her hard won victory.
That’s the punishment bitches like me deserve for such a rude behavior towards poor old ladies who were just trying to be nice! Who was i to ignore her? A nobody! The daughter of the childless one! She obviously was from my father’s tribe – or was married into it, as she had known instantly who i was! What a shame! Seven centuries long line of “loza”, succession, going extinct because my father intermarried! It’s as if with his family background he couldn’t find a nice Montenegrin girl!
Now i must digress. Nowadays, it’s minority of Montenegrins – the same like the Orhtodox minority of religious Jews – who look exclusively for their own.
Back in the day, Montenegrins lived high in the mountains and Jews – in ghettos, so it’s not that there was much choice anyway and it’s not that either of the two people was considered a desirable marriage material for other than their own. It’s with time that both Jews and Montenegrins became desirable husbands, and for similar reasons, chances were they were handsome, chances were they would make it, chances were they’ll provide for their families and chances were they would be loyal to them until death sets them apart. Or so the word was.
So, the competition grew harsher and harsher as the choices grew larger – and who likes that? Certainly not the mother who has daughters to marry, preferably into the tribe.
I get it, i do, but – again – i am just very tired of it all.
While this thoughts run through my head, the girl elbows her mother who still doesn’t get it and asks her soto voce “What? What is it now?!”
The girl breaths in deeply and apologizes for her mother’s behavior. Now the mother looks confused and addressing the daughter says: “i didn’t say anything bad to her, her father is a nice man, we are all sorry he is childless…”
The line had stopped moving long ago, the silence in the bank is tensed and heavy. I slowly turn around. But, lo and behold, it’s not over yet.
Just seconds before i returned to my initial position – with my back to the yenta and this embarrassing situation, her daughter seizes me up quickly and asks:” You are pregnant, right?”
A year or so before that i had quit smoking after almost quarter a century, and, as a result, went from my usual size 10 to unacceptable for Montenegro size 14. The descendants of warriors tribes from the mountains, where there was never corn, fed scarcely on meat and some grass growing around their homes for centuries – they are genetically slim, you see.
I sigh heavily and say: No, i am not pregnant.
At this point my eyes meet the bank clerk’s. Her’s are filled with tears – she too has overheard the conversation. She shakes her head, as if telling me: don’t pay attention, it doesn’t matter. I know her, the clerk, she too is from my father’s tribe – more so – from the same fraternity which makes us some kind of extended cousins. She is a real lady, middle aged, yet very well kept, very stylish and very nice. Everyone who has errands to run in the bank tries to get to her counter – she works the fastest and is most kind of all. She understands, her destiny is even worse than mine – you see, her parents divorced, when she was still a toddler, some half a century ago when no-one divorced… that, in her words, made her almost a bastard. And she has two daughters of her own now and in Montenegro it’s still not easy to marry with such a family history. That she didn’t say, but i know it, you see, we all know everything. Her both daughters are beautiful after her and educated too, i just hope they will marry somewhere far away from this cursed mountains.
I see a colleague of hers standing up from the next counter and rushing out, her palm is covering her eyes so the clients wouldn’t see she is crying too… Albeit everyone knows she is and everyone, also, knows why.
There are many patterns of speech in our language that can, when needed, indicate that you are close with or related to some important person, without your explicitly saying so – in a society which primary modus vivendi is nepotism, the skillfulness in using those implications on a regular basis can not be stressed enough; especially if you are not close with or related to any important people who would care about your affairs.
Such was the case of one of the drivers with the State Protocol, where i worked. His situation was really bad, as he was approaching retirement and he still didn’t have a place of his own, his family still lived in a rented apartment. That’s after decades of driving around the hottest of the shots. I could not imagine to which extent his family despised him, he would say, because he wasn’t capable of getting them a place to live. What else needed to be said? But he would continue his eternal rant.
Not everyone would get a flat during their working years, there were dozens of rules who has the priority and yet, somehow, it was those with the connections that got them…

Or so he wanted me to see it. This guy was not one of them, of the lucky ones, and as his retirement was approaching – that was the deadline, after which the chances to get a home were none, he resorted to one of the oldest social tricks in existence – he started calling all the important people by their first names only.
Behind their back, of course. There were many newbies in the business, like myself, who, he thought, knew nothing and one could have gotten lucky and some old trick might have worked.
Like, he would mention five high ranking politicians by their first names only – that would indicate the closeness; then he would proceed to complaining of not having gotten the apartment; he would add also that it’s only his inborn shyness that prevented him from jumping on the numerous occasions to get one. Or even two.
That i still had a low, beginner’s rank in the Protocol – that he knew, what he didn’t know and was dying to learn was weather i am screwing someone important.
You see, i grew up to be somewhat pretty. He knew my father had retired long time ago and he knew i didn’t have any brothers. On the top of it, i was suspiciously single while over thirty – so, with no family so to say, how possibly could i get a job with Protocol, unless… You know what i mean.
Right, i graduated with honors, had masters and spoke five languages, but still… You know, it’s not that you get to work with the State Protocol just like that.
For sure i was screwing someone important he thought and that’s where his hopes were – after thousandth time that he drained me with his unbelievably sad, yet “true” story of the apartment, i could say to my hypothetical VIP lover that, for example, that night i wouldn’t make it out with him because i was too tired. Or too sad. Or something. Then the imaginary VIP lover of mine, who woudn’t get what he wanted, would get all concerned why i was so tired. Or sad. And then, maybe, being the nice girl that i was, i would tell him how sorry i felt for the “homeless” driver and how i couldn’t possibly engage into some decadent flesh-enjoying while such nice people suffered. In driver’s wildest dreams i would probably deny the VIP lover any favors of the kind – until that poor’s man situation wasn’t solved and both his (lover’s) and my consciousness was clear.
And he was right that i was a nice girl, but i wasn’t stupid. And there was no VIP lover, i had worked my ass off to get where i was. And i knew the driver was a crook, and i knew he made money on fake petrol invoices and forged hotel bills, everyone knew. Also, everyone knew he had built himself a house in a nice area and rented it, his living in a rented apartment was a game, to get an apartment which he didn’t have the right to. You see, people from remote areas had priority because they didn’t have where to live – the driver was from the city and had his father’s house too. But, he wanted more, so he tried to get ahead and over-ran his colleagues with big families and no roof above their heads. He even sued couple of them, with no result though. His own children were grown up and lived separately, that took off the points he needed so badly for the apartment. And also, as it’s already being said, everyone knows everything here, and more or less everyone hated him. But in Montenegro you don’t say these things openly – you see, if you have a conflict with someone, even if they are not related to or close with anyone important, they still belong to a tribe, some tribe, and then you are at war with the whole tribe. Who needs that? So, all the newbies, me included, were listening to his rants, without ever saying a word, but without a slightest intention to help him in any way.
I went even further, i didn’t allow him to address those important people by their first names – after all, it was forbidden by the rules of service. Not that anyone really obliged to it, but indeed it was a rule and that was my little revenge on him for all his venting i had to listen day after day. He would say a nickname, and i would just stare at him and repeatedly ask whom he had in mind until he said the VIP’s full name, surname, rank and academic title too. That was driving him crazy, as those were too long to remember. But i made him to.
One of the chiefs there had particularly long name which everyone abbreviated. And he was an Ambassador too, which meant His Excellency had to be added before it. In addition to the very long name, the surname was rare and even harder to remember.
Thus it was a particular pleasure for me – when the chauffeur from hell was appointed to drive the Ambassador – to make him address His Excellency as it was protocolary due. But he couldn’t, i saw it that he can’t remember even His Excellency’s first name. He was stuck. I threatened i’ll send him to disciplinary commission if he referred to this high state official by nickname, while on duty and without Excellency’s explicit permission. His face turned purple as he was seizing me up with his tiny, watery eyes – as if to decide whether in fact i would send him to disciplinary commission. You see, i was in my right to do so – at least on paper. He needed to call the head of driving center, his immediate superior, an elderly, respected policeman and report that he was assigned to … the person whose name he had forgotten. And i was standing there, above his head and i had threatening look on my face that said i was not kidding. So, he had dialed the number of his immediate superior and, while looking at me triumphantly and breathing out the sigh of relief – which clearly said he thought of a solution to this protocolary Gordian knot – he yelled into the receiver:”I am appointed to the childless one!”
You see, His Excellency didn’t have any children of his own, not even daughters. The bank clerk who rushed out from the counter next to my extended cousin’s following the incident with the yenta; the sophisticated, beautiful lady who had covered her eyes with her palm so no one would see her tears – that woman was this very Excellency’s spouse of thirty years.

When occasion presented itself, i had asked my father who could be that obnoxious woman, that yenta from the bank. And albeit i hadn’t learned her name, it took my father less than a minute to locate the yenta on the Montenegrin map of who is who inside his head.
By that time i knew my father so well that you could say i was reading his mind. By that time i knew my compatriots’ way of thinking so well, that you could say i could read their minds. And i was an empath too, since birth, so probably i was indeed reading a little.
After i had told him the story of the yenta from the bank, my father gave me one of those looks. Those looks would last only few moments, but with my father’s life experience and, more so, with the work experience he had accumulated as a high ranking intelligence officer – that’s all he needed to answer the questions which had to be answered before the judgement was pronounced.
Routinely, he would check in his mind whether the testimony was credible – whether the witness was sober, sane and emotionally stable. It seemed he checked all three quickly, because he diverted his gaze elsewhere, i knew he decided for himself that i was quite capable of making a sound judgement of a situation.
The next group of questions in his head needed to answer my motivation – and that’s where i knew he would be on a shaky ground. Now he was thinking to himself why i was bringing this up in the first place. Mine being hurt was not an answer. You see, feelings didn’t really count either – that was, like, a daughter’s thing to have. There must be something else, some better reason than that, maybe the yenta was an agent provocateur, sent on a mission by some foreign enemy of our state… And those were many. He is tad paranoid, my father, you see – and – he sort of dismisses that he has a daughter, because he didn’t raise me as one; for all he knew, he had raised me as a son.
Then he would quickly calculate the probability of yenta’s being a foe’s intelligence officer; then he would remember i quit working for protocol long time ago and that the cold war officially was over. Then, a sad shadow would nest on his face, but only briefly, as he would remember that despite all, i was nothing but a girl.
See, my father is a Gemini too, like myself, and his mind too runs, as they say, over hundred miles per hour, albeit – when it’s about me – mostly in the wrong direction.
He cuts short my thoughts with an outburst of laughter.”Oh, i know who that was” – he had located the yenta, and he continues -“that lowlife!” He waves his hand, dismissing the incident as unimportant.
Right, it was obvious that the bank yenta didn’t have class.
But, she was still a member of the tribe into which he was born and which he had betrayed twofold – he had intermarried and he failed to produce sons.
That did matter, and he knew that i knew, and i knew he was trying to comfort me in the only way he knew – by laughing it off – and we both knew that himself he was inconsolable.
Copyright©20012 Lena Ruth Stefanovic, All Rights Reserved

http://www.praguecityline.com/royal-route

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vaclav_Jansa_-_Prasna_brana,_Mocker.JPG
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Theresa
http://www.levity.com/alchemy/alch-pro.html
http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/documents/Montenegro/Montenegro.htm

Lucia and the Doggie’s Heaven

29 Thursday Mar 2012

Posted by in Coming of Age / Bildungsroman

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Depiction of a soul being carried to heaven by...

Depiction of a soul being carried to heaven by two angels. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My friends Stankovics are blessed with six and a half years old daughter and a son, still a toddler.

Lucia has started school last year, she is a bright, healthy, beautiful, happy and creative child – one of those kids where i on occasions wish i had one of my own.

So, today we ran errands with her mom Marina and afterwords went to pick up Lucia from school and her little brother from kindergarten.

Before that we had one of those prolonged existential conversations, like two women who are really close can have and it’s a phenomena unto itself, i’d say.

Women have their own way of going on about things – and it’s a combo of deep empathy,  psychoanalysis, self- help and a good part of irony, filled with digressions on bad hair days and new books – all of it placed in a global context where one’s personal situation is viewed as a part of a bigger picture and its inseparable constitute… or something like that, if you know what i mean.

Like, we’d start from shaken economy, than discuss how it influences fashion – as it always does – then continue to the impact it all has on our respective lives and the other way around – what we can do from our respective micro-cosmoses to improve the world around us … and our own selves.

And these can get quite exhausting, as they are not easy little talks; when two or more women talk in Balkans – it’s way more like an intensive of Enlightenment, which deep down those conversations truly are.

And then you have a lot of your own suppressed stuff coming out – when you open up to a friend – see, for some reason, we don’t go to therapists here, that’s the role your good friends have in your life, they go with you through your garbage and help you sort it out the best they can.

So, at the moment we went to pick up the kids we were both pretty worn down from the ‘intensive’ we held beforehand… and then the smiling little angels appeared and even i, who don’t really have the maternal instinct and never heard the infamous biological clock ticking – even i was overwhelmed with such joy upon seeing them that all the challenges we discussed earlier seemed totally irrelevant and unimportant.

People who see auras say children have that yellow color in theirs… i don’t see it but i feel such joy and happiness around them that it’s close to impossible to convey it verbally; they simply make me absolutely relaxed and happily excited about everything – like they are.

On our way back, in the car, Lucia starts speaking of a friend’s dog and how she loves him, i nod in comprehension and listen to her with genuine interest, adding that i had a dog and can relate. Now, Lucia knows i live with a cat, so she gets curious where the doggy went.

I explain that the dog had very long life in dog years and that she had passed away.

And then she asks: “But where did she go after she passed away?”

I answer: “To the Heaven for doggies and kitties.”

“What’s Heaven?” Lucia asks.

At this point her mom gives me that look where i get it they haven’t discussed these subjects before.

The situation is tricky. The child will remember what you tell them – and you really need be careful, but then you have to keep in mind their parents’ believes too, so not to cause some kind of conflict.

Marina nods, she trusts i can do it the right way. Now this is a big one!

I say: it’s a place where we all go after we die.

She asks: what’s death?

I breath in deeply and answer: it’s what happens after the soul leaves the body.

“Aha”, she continues, showing growing interest in the conversation.

“What’s soul?”

I say:”see, four of us are in the car now, we are driving home…” Lucia nods with understanding.

I continue:” So, the body to the soul is what this car is to us – a vehicle. At some point of time, this car will get old and weary and we will replace it; the same with the soul – when it has done its homework here, it will go on, leaving the body behind.”

“Aha.” She has this serious expression, you can read on her face she is doing some serious thinking. After a while, follows another question:

“What’s that place like, the Heaven?”

“Well, we don’t know much about it – except that it’s really good there and that everyone is happy”, i reply.

Lucia insists that i tell her more of that place, i tell her it doesn’t really matter – what matters is the life we have now and the way we live it.

More thought through questions follow and, after having received answers she found satisfying, Lucia concludes: “I get it – i will live a long life and i will do many things while here, then after having done the homework my body will rest here and my immortal soul will go to an even better place… Yay!”

Marina and i look into each other’s eyes, as she is holding the wheel, she shows me thumb up while i breath the sigh of relief.

Prague, a coming of age story

04 Sunday Mar 2012

Posted by in Coming of Age / Bildungsroman

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I would wake up to the repetitive, dull noise of tennis balls bouncing off the paved court in the immediate vicinity – it was placed just across the narrow chestnut alley from our house. It is the only noise i can recall in the Prague’s residential area where we lived, the cars had no business in our one-way street and the whole neighborhood had an aura of a creepily silence.

The lack of noise matched the reserved and distant attitude of the people i’d occasionally meet in the street – albeit they were few;  this was a residential area,  historical villas were placed in a resigned distance from each other, like estranged spouses – still vaguely familiar, as the houses were built in the same period and quite alike – yet by choice alien to each other.

I never knew who lived in other houses with flamboyantly decorated facades, residents would come and go by their big black cars and only by small silk flags with golden fringes i could guess which country they came from – so far – while looking through the rounded window of my room – i had recognized  French tricolor and red Turkish flag with its white crescent moon and a star.

I’ve seen many Turkish flags – in centuries long, fierce battles with Turks,  the highlander warrior tribes –  ancestors from father’s side of the family –  had seized numerous Ottoman army flags and had brought them to the capital of the small country high in mountain wreaths of Balkan Peninsula, the former Kingdom of Montenegro.  I counted them, in the museum which used to be the court of our only king – Nikola, they were forty four, forty four torn and soaked in blood flags seized in battles  which small nation had won against the big and evil empire which wanted to enslave us, or so i was thought.

French weren’t friends of the teeny mountainous kingdom either  – albeit it was complicated to understand why; it had something to do with their keeping our king imprisoned and our subsequent lost of state independence, but that’s all i could understand from my father’s conversations with his friends from the old country.

They would sit around the massive table from black wood in the dining room, only men, usually five or six of them – most of them tall  like giants from the perspective of my own 5 feet height, most of them dark haired, black eyed with closely clipped, outlining the upper lip mustache.

Women had no business sitting at the table, their duty was only to fetch the food and serve it as unobtrusively as possible – the men would thank them discreetly while avoiding the eye contact and direct addressing.

I would peek at them hidden behind the doorframe of the anteroom and eavesdrop to the conversations which i understood only partially, it was not the language my father spoke to me – it had sounds i couldn’t pronounce and words of which i didn’t know the meaning.

The wives of the tall men with pencil mustache would also occasionally gather at our home, usually during the day; they would lounge in the salon with rounded windows loosely covered by knitted curtains and the sunlight would make its way through the threaded wholes as they sat in the padded chairs with wooden scroll feet immersed into the thick oriental rug –  the sunlight would caress silken wallpaper with miniature pink flowers behind them.

The ladies were highly maintained, which i would later notice to be the usual result of husbands’ high income, lack of interest in domestic affairs and wive’s abundant free time and lack of intellectual curiosity; their skins were spotless, hairs big and shiny, nails meticulously manicured; they wore silken underskirts with embroidered hems which would show beneath custom tailored dresses, they smelled divinely of French perfumes and scented creams and usually discussed fur coats and jewelry with precious stones. From what my mother was tellin in low voice to her mother, i knew it that she was unnerved by these conversations and that she was bored with these women, yet it seemed she owed it to my father to sit there, smile often and keep the conversation going.

But my world was in the kitchen, where my grandmother was, that was the only place in the house and in the entire world where i felt warm and safe.

My maternal grandmother lived with us, albeit in her own world – the house was divided by invisible borders and everyone knew where their place was; my father almost never went  to the spacious kitchen and small room attached to it where grandmother lived; she in her turn hardly ever ventured further then her room and the kitchen.

The house once belonged to a wealthy Jewish family and the rooms where grandmother lived once belonged to the servants; from the kitchen there was a door leading to the the backyard and that constituted her kingdom, reigned over with sovereignty.

My father had no business in her part of the house – the food and beverages were brought to him, he never really enjoyed food and little that he ate was served to him by my mother.

He had a schedule which he followed religiously – tea and toasted bread were waiting for him as he would finish his morning toilette; then he would leave the house – and the relieve felt among the female part of the household was almost sizable. Father would come back only in the afternoon to have his lunch, both grandmother and i carefully avoided being around then; afterwords he would retire to the bedroom which they shared with my mother – his working cabinet was connected to it and we wouldn’t see or hear him until the late evening – the time for his dinner.

I hardly ever went to master bedroom and the working cabinet, i had my meals in the kitchen, with the grandmother and tried by all means to stay out of my parents sight.

I wasn’t allowed to bring in friends – and i didn’t really have any, the only children i knew were the classmates from the Embassy school i attended; occasionally i would be invited to someone’s birthday, but wouldn’t be allowed to go, my own birthday was in the summer when everyone was on holidays.

I rarely watched television because it was in foreign to me language – and i spoke two and a half; one with my parents at home, another at school and there was a third language which my grandmother spoke to me, i understood it but i spoke to her in the language my parents thought me.

I believed it was a secret language my grandmother had invented just for the two of us, it seemed that my mother, when addressed in that language, did not understand it; that language had very funny words like gogol mogol – that’s what the egg yolk whipped with sugar, the omnipotent cough remedy, was called; and the clothes that needed to be fixed were brought to a schneider, the shoes – to a schuster and my favorite pastry had its own, tricky to pronounce, secret name – hamentashen.

As i was growing up in that villa, an only child, raised by grandmother dressed in long flowy robes, her head covered,  my only companion was a rare African breed of hunting dog, a Basenji named Bongor, who did not bark and who silently intertwined his destiny with mine.

I did not know back then that my father’s family in the old country disapproved his marriage to a woman who wasn’t of their own kind and who turned out to be incapable of having sons, so important for them and their family line; i could not know back then that i was unloved.

Copyright©2012 Lena Ruth Stefanovic, All Rights Reserved