Deer Wedding, The
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Deer Wedding, The - Penny Simpson
First impression: 2010
© Penny Simpson, 2010
This book is subject to copyright
and may not be reproduced by any means
except for review purposes
without the prior written consent of the publishers
Published with the financial support of the Welsh Books Council
Editor: Gwen Davies
Cover: Goldlion
ISBN: 978-0-956012500
E-ISBN: 978-1-84771-777-1
Printed on acid-free and partly-recycled paper.
Published by Alcemi and printed and bound in Wales by
Y Lolfa Cyf., Talybont, Ceredigion SY24 5HE
e-mail [email protected]
website www.alcemi.eu
tel +44 (0)1970 832 304
for my mother Audrey Ruth
"I believe that love and blistered hands will always build and not destroy."
Ivan Meštrović
"History it appeared could be like the delirium of a madman, at once meaningless and yet charged with a dreadful meaning."
Rebecca West
Chapter 1
a suitcase and an Eskimo kiss
Zagreb, May 1998
My father died before I was born, so hearing him speak shocks and intrigues me. Zdenka pushes her crazy curls back from her face and looks over. I didn’t know about it, Dagmar. Honestly, I didn’t know.
She puts her hand on my shoulder and gives me a little shake. Are you okay?
No, I want to reply, but I can’t. My father’s voice is a deep, rich voice, like a proper actor’s. He doesn’t sound anything like Uncle Darko. I’m listening to him confiding to tape his impressions of a man he interviewed for Hrvatski Tjednik, Croatian Weekly, the newspaper that used to employ him. My father says he’s met a man who paints dressed in a velvet coat, its lining decorated with little hammers and sickles. He’s excited by something he’s seen in his studio and then he mentions my mother’s name: Ana. He’s going to tell her what he’s discovered. The loud click of the tape recorder being switched off startles me back into the apartment room where we sit, surrounded by yellowed newspaper cuttings and dozens of cassettes in scratched plastic cases.
If only I’d checked first,
Zdenka says. How could I be so stupid? But I didn’t think for one minute we’d actually hear him.
I’ve got pins and needles from kneeling so long. I uncurl my legs and touch my toes. Zdenka strokes my back.
It’s not a problem, really it isn’t,
I try and reassure her.
I’m an idiot, aren’t I?
But of course.
We both laugh. Zdenka is, in fact, fiercely intelligent and fiercely determined that other people respect that, particularly the troglodyte males she’s surrounded by at university who can’t appreciate a woman who thinks for herself – especially not one who wears very high heels, even when travelling on her scooter. Zdenka is a force of nature; she is tall even without her beloved high heels; she’s argumentative, stroppy and prone to sarcasm but I love her more than I love anyone else. Maybe because my father killed himself before I was born? Or because my mother abandoned me? Except I’m not supposed to say she abandoned me, because the official line is Ana Petrić went back to her native Ljubljana to re-establish her career. It had been cut short when she was declared a non-person
. My mother occasionally makes her presence felt in my life, either on the end of the telephone, or via a package of Neu Style magazines, which she edits.
One day, I’m supposed to make the journey in the opposite direction of those out-of-date magazines. Many years ago, she claimed she would send for me when the time was right
– or, as Zdenka says – when she’s too old to screw around anymore
. Her comments don’t hurt me. My mother left Zagreb for Ljubljana shortly before my eighth birthday. The way Zdenka remembers it (and she’s six years older than me) she didn’t even manage to leave a birthday card behind. Until today, my father has also remained a non-person
in my life, except when I sneak a look at the few photographs Uncle Darko and Aunty Rozana have kept. I used to have to look at them secretly, because they were hidden away in the sideboard, under old prayer cards addressed to Our Lady.
I thought there would be more about Elenora in here,
Zdenka says, as she stacks up the cassettes. Maybe an interview with someone who used to work with her at the National, or a recording as Lady Macbeth, or Hedda Gabler. It’s amazing what survives, after all.
I’m not going to disagree. Who would think my father would ever come back into my life so dramatically? Zdenka has been distracted again, this time by an envelope of photographs. My father’s suitcase is proving a treasure trove for her, at least. It has sat on top of Uncle Darko’s wardrobe for nearly thirty years and Zdenka has been hassling him for months to let her open it. She was convinced she would find material for her thesis, because my father researched into the cultural history of Croatia as well as immersing himself in the politics of revolution. She’s writing her thesis on Elenora Milkovic´, a long-forgotten actress who once dominated the Croatian stage.
Dazed by what I’ve just heard on the tape, I don’t think I can continue in my role as assistant researcher. I get up to go and buy pastries from Pan-Pek when Zdenka calls me back: Hey, come and look at this, kiddo.
She hands over a rather battered postcard. It’s a picture of a fisherwoman painted in oils, but not just any old picture. It’s famous, because the original accompanied President Tudman on his historic journey on Vlak Slobode. The Freedom Train was the first train out of Zagreb to the coast after the war ended, and it was felt appropriate to transport A Portrait of Croatian Womanhood
alongside the President. The painting is by one of the country’s greatest artists, Antun Fisković, a native of Split where the train made one of its triumphant stops. From what I can recall from TV reports at the time, Fisković cried off with a bad cold and didn’t meet the President.
Zdenka smoothes out the postcard. I’ve got an idea,
she says, her brow wrinkled up with concentration. Let’s see.
She switches the tape recorder back on, fastforwards it and then stops at random. My father’s voice is heard again:
I watch him mix his colours on plain white plates and then carefully spread them over the canvas with the side of his brush, sometimes the tips of his fingers. Fisković works with a concentration you can’t break. He has not given up. He has an idea and a desire to realise it. He doesn’t settle for second best, or the first attempt. He paints the snow deer over and over again. There is always something new to work in to the frame. We can learn from this. Hope is an entity we can carry from place to place. It’s not reliant on an outside force. We in Maspok, the Croatian Spring, also stand on the brink of something new; we stand where Fisković stands each evening, in front of his easel, waiting for the moment to start painting. There can be no compromises with what has been…
I snap the tape off again. It feels too intimate, listening in like this, as if we’re sneaking up behind my father, alone in another room, talking to himself and confident he can’t be overheard. Zdenka isn’t disconcerted at all, but then she’s thinking about the woman pictured on the postcard. This is what we should be writing about, not discredited Party officials. This portrait of a Croatian fisherwoman has meant so much to so many people over the years, but who was she? There’s no record of her name, let alone where she came from, or what her life was like. It’s the same old story, isn’t it? Elenora was silenced too. I mean, I’ve got a few posters and some reviews, but what does that tell me about the woman herself?
Zdenka believes the historians of a newly independent Croatia are hopelessly inept at attributing any success for its creation to the actions and lives of women. She is single-handedly going to put that right with her thesis and more besides. Zdenka writes plays and newspaper articles, and she works as an interpreter for United Nations officials who are still arriving in Zagreb to oversee the transition from war to peace.
Maybe you can make it all up in a play instead?
I suggest.
My cousin wrinkles up her nose.
I want the details, Dagmar.
I know what she means. I want detail too, detail about Goran Petrić, my father. Who was he really and what was his life like? Uncle Darko and Aunty Rozana have occasionally tried explaining what happened all those years ago, but they usually end up reciting anecdotes that don’t say anything important. They remember the brutal outcome of the Maspok rising and my father being forced off Croatian Weekly to work as a boilerman in the office basement. And my mother Ana reduced to finding work as a cleaner using a false name, because her own had become a liability after her political talkshows on Radio Zagreb. My father died when he was twenty-four, just a year older than I am now. But what no one ever told me was how beautiful his voice was, nor how much he seems to have enjoyed life and its challenges. The man I’ve just heard sounds like someone I would like to meet in a bar in Opatovina. He would have views and ideas and we would share Lucky Strikes and Kiwi Cups and I wouldn’t feel stupid the way I do when I try and talk to other people, even Josip, my boyfriend.
You’re sure you’re okay?
Zdenka leans over and taps my nose with hers, an Eskimo kiss. Once, twice and three times for luck. She’s been doing that ever since I can remember. Zdenka taught me to read; later, during the worst days of the war, after Vukovar fell and the President faced calls for his resignation, she started reading out loud to me again. I prayed my mother would send for me and I would no longer be frightened by air raids, but it was Zdenka who ended up taking me to the peace vigils in Jelačić Square. We lit candles as thick as my arm, stamped with the red and white flag of an independent Croatia, and prayed and sang for an end to the bloody massacre that was tearing our world apart. My father should have lived to see such scenes. Had the news that my mother was to have a baby been an influence on him? Did he simply want to escape the responsibility of bringing a new life into a world he despised and that despised him in turn?
Sitting back on her heels (shiny black patent today), Zdenka smiles up at me. She knows best how to win my attention back. Guess what, kiddo? I’m in love.
My turn to wrinkle up my nose. Zdenka falls in and out of love as fast as a pair of dice spun between a gambler’s palms. Her new man is an Englishman called Anthony who works for the UN in logistics
. He rents an apartment off Gradec and owns no fewer than six Paul Smith shirts. Zdenka’s eyes shine at the revelation. I had to move fast,
she confides over a Pan-Pek special later. He’s so nice, not like the bloody troglodytes at all. I translated some papers for him and he took me out to lunch. I knew he was the one; in fact, I was so certain, I rang Mile up before we got eating and dumped him, just like that on my mobile!
Zdenka’s laugh is louder than loud. People tend to stop, stare and sigh at the too-tall woman with the too-loud laugh. Zdenka doesn’t fit very easily into the world we live in, but that seems to be the way of it with my family. Just look what happened to my father when he challenged the Belgrade communists’ stranglehold on his country. I grab Zdenka’s arm and hug her to me. Big, brave, brash Zdenka. After Ana left, I asked her if she would like to take on the job of being my mother. We conducted a proper interview, seated on the swings in the little park close to our apartment.
I’ll teach you to spit and beat the losers who want to put you down, and I’ll teach you to read and write and be a winner,
she promised. You’ll be Princess of the Playground.
And guess what? Cousin Zdenka has kept her word, even when everyone else around us stayed schtumm and fell back on useless platitudes and prayers – and more damned lies
. Zdenka has a big mouth and she paints it in the brightest red lipsticks. She is scared of only one thing: silence.
Chapter 2
kissing stone
Split, May 1932
Antun knew it would work, the minute he caught sight of the block of stone left outside in the courtyard. The sun picked out the sheen of the tiny seashells embedded in the soft cream stone. In his mind’s eye, he saw Milan’s torso emerge from its nubbly texture, as if he were a storybook’s genie softly shooting through a bottle’s stem. He crouched down in front of the block and ran his hands over its surface. He could sense by touch alone where his lover’s shoulders would break through. He let his hands rest. It was almost a shock to realise it was just stone that he was tracing with his excited fingers. Milan had come alive again as Antun imagined his carving’s potential. He looked anxiously around the courtyard, worried he might have been seen so obviously caressing a block of stone. But it was early and no one stirred. He studied the windows in the building opposite, many of them patched over with odd bits of fabric and sheets of cardboard. Several of the tiny windows under the uneven roof were missing frames, or they had been left hanging, their hinges long gone.
He straightened up and lit a cigarette. How to get hold of the stone with Fisković still angry at his sudden return to the workshop the other week? They’d had a huge argument about his leaving college and Fisković hadn’t come round yet, not even with Jakob’s attempts at intervention. You might well ask what does a merchant like me know about art? Well, I know this much: what you have is a gift, not just a means to trade.
Antun drew in the smoke from his cigarette deep down into his lungs. Jakob had urged him to return to his studies, conceding only that he should stay home for a few months if he really were that exhausted from his academic labours. But Antun was struggling with something he couldn’t really share with his patron, a devout Jew and married man. Quite simply, he couldn’t imagine his life without Milan’s noisy presence. The workshop in Split, the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, they were just flat backdrops to a life that had come to an abrupt halt when Milan had gone into hiding. He had no idea where he was exactly, but he could make an astute guess. Milan was probably already in Italy, training with Pavelić’s Ustaše. And if that were the case, what was the point of sitting in any more life drawing classes?
Antun threw his cigarette down and angrily ground it under his boot’s heel. Milan was a fool, but he was also beautiful. Antun had first caught sight of him after paying one dinar for a life drawing class off Ilica, a dismal experience otherwise because it wasn’t art that most of the other clientele were after. Antun had been mesmerised at that initial session, just like the voyeurs around him with their empty sketchbooks and blunt pencil stubs. Milan’s lean, muscular strength had transferred