Back to the Beginning
For Desanka Milošević
* * * * * * * * *
Cca. 1939, eastern Serbia, beyond the far slopes of the Mount Rtanj
For days now she has been floating about her daily chores as if on wings. Like the wings the girls from her class wore in the end-of-school performance photograph, where she stood in the back row, her long unruly hair let down (the only existing photograph of her with long hair). Because it has happened to her, love, and she has welcomed it with all the might of her 17 years, she knows -- although none of the family knows it yet -- she won't be marrying the aviator of stiff behavior and advanced years they have chosen for her. This secret knowledge is enough to put a bounce into her step, to give her that extra dram of strength when she is plowing, herding, or scrubbing... And then, there is so much more sweetness to daydream about, and grow wings for. If she closes her eyes, this pulsating sweetness wells from the minutest sources and floods every part of her (like dark blood gushing from a small puncture in the right place on the neck): the rakish angle of his hat, or the casual sling of his accordion.
He flies no planes, but he can work up a village gathering to a post-harvest frenzy with the accordion. She first laid eyes on him at one such party in her village, a dozen kilometers north of his village -- he clearly has a sizeable radius of activity. The next few times they met, they exchanged looks from a distance, then there were walks by the river, and finally practical talks in the less frequented alleys to avoid discovery. And now she is flying around her father's house and fields on the newly-grown wings, waiting for this self-chiseled slab of happiness to take effect, enduring the time left until then as she endured the iceberg-cold water from the courtyard water pump on her numb hands when she did the dishes in the winter.
When finally that day dawns, she is calm and scintillating at the same time; awake, and in a dream; of her body, and not. She goes about the day as if it were like any other day, she takes the time to listen to what people tell her to do -- the usual, necessary, unremarkable, pragmatic communication of a group of people bent on accomplishing their daily goals -- and responds in the appropriate and respectful manner. And all this time, she feels they are addressing somebody else, not her, and she is amused by this obvious error they are making, amused and ever-more certain that what she is about to do is exactly what she needs.
And then it is night. While the whole world is dimmed out of contour, she is sharper and more in focus with each minute, falling with certainty and precision into the new her, the one she has hand-picked, like a fully-blooming dandalion, whose white fluff she is about to blow with a kiss, for good luck.
The night air is thick and smells like tar, there is no movement except the soundless mime of the embroidered curtain swaying here and there with the occasional breeze breathing lightly through the window she left half-open. In a long soundproof moment she is aware of all the sounds inside her, all the tiny voices mounting into a booming chorus singing a single line in loops, This is the beginning This is the beginning This is the beginning... A rustling outside mutes the chorus inside and makes her sit up in bed attentively. Through the gauzy curtain she makes out a swift signal of blinking headlights up the road, and she is on her feet, working quickly and composedly. She pulls the big, white, starched sheet off the bed and lets it slide down from the window. Then she picks the already-prepared bare necessities (a few skirts, dresses, shirts, handkerchiefs) and throws them out of the window, onto the white sheet spread out on the ground by a dark figure underneath, like a square of meaning in pervading obscurity. She can sense him rather than see him in the darkness, and she imagines him with his tilted hat on. He pulls the corners of the sheet together and begins to tie them into a knot, while she closes the window, slips on her clothes, and gets ready for the transit through the kitchen, where her grandmother sleeps.
Like the fine threads of a dream, she treads softly on the floor with bare feet, her childish pink soles skilfully stepping around the creaky spots, not to awake the old woman breathing loudly on the low couch in the kitchen. She doesn't look in her direction (if she looks, she will realize she wants to say goodbye); with concentration and precision, like a mine-expert defusing a mine under a bridge, she is slowly progressing towards the main door. The exit. The entrance. The place to which she is carrying the sprouts of all she will cherish from this moment on. The entire lifetime which she wants to inhabit now, which she is creating with these kiss-light steps, from which there is no return to the house she is leaving. She knows it, she has measured it out, and she can take it, her own life.
At the door she puts on her socks and shoes, doesn't hesitate, steps across the threshold and into the promise of the night. From a distance ahead, another flash of the headlights shows her the way, where he is sitting in the jeep he has borrowed from his best friend, her bundle already neatly packed in the back. When she begins to run, she is not leaving: she is arriving, and it is the best feeling in the world, and This is the beginning This is the beginning This is the beginning...
* * * * * * * * *
Cca. 1939, eastern Serbia, beyond the far slopes of the Mount Rtanj
For days now she has been floating about her daily chores as if on wings. Like the wings the girls from her class wore in the end-of-school performance photograph, where she stood in the back row, her long unruly hair let down (the only existing photograph of her with long hair). Because it has happened to her, love, and she has welcomed it with all the might of her 17 years, she knows -- although none of the family knows it yet -- she won't be marrying the aviator of stiff behavior and advanced years they have chosen for her. This secret knowledge is enough to put a bounce into her step, to give her that extra dram of strength when she is plowing, herding, or scrubbing... And then, there is so much more sweetness to daydream about, and grow wings for. If she closes her eyes, this pulsating sweetness wells from the minutest sources and floods every part of her (like dark blood gushing from a small puncture in the right place on the neck): the rakish angle of his hat, or the casual sling of his accordion.
He flies no planes, but he can work up a village gathering to a post-harvest frenzy with the accordion. She first laid eyes on him at one such party in her village, a dozen kilometers north of his village -- he clearly has a sizeable radius of activity. The next few times they met, they exchanged looks from a distance, then there were walks by the river, and finally practical talks in the less frequented alleys to avoid discovery. And now she is flying around her father's house and fields on the newly-grown wings, waiting for this self-chiseled slab of happiness to take effect, enduring the time left until then as she endured the iceberg-cold water from the courtyard water pump on her numb hands when she did the dishes in the winter.
When finally that day dawns, she is calm and scintillating at the same time; awake, and in a dream; of her body, and not. She goes about the day as if it were like any other day, she takes the time to listen to what people tell her to do -- the usual, necessary, unremarkable, pragmatic communication of a group of people bent on accomplishing their daily goals -- and responds in the appropriate and respectful manner. And all this time, she feels they are addressing somebody else, not her, and she is amused by this obvious error they are making, amused and ever-more certain that what she is about to do is exactly what she needs.
And then it is night. While the whole world is dimmed out of contour, she is sharper and more in focus with each minute, falling with certainty and precision into the new her, the one she has hand-picked, like a fully-blooming dandalion, whose white fluff she is about to blow with a kiss, for good luck.
The night air is thick and smells like tar, there is no movement except the soundless mime of the embroidered curtain swaying here and there with the occasional breeze breathing lightly through the window she left half-open. In a long soundproof moment she is aware of all the sounds inside her, all the tiny voices mounting into a booming chorus singing a single line in loops, This is the beginning This is the beginning This is the beginning... A rustling outside mutes the chorus inside and makes her sit up in bed attentively. Through the gauzy curtain she makes out a swift signal of blinking headlights up the road, and she is on her feet, working quickly and composedly. She pulls the big, white, starched sheet off the bed and lets it slide down from the window. Then she picks the already-prepared bare necessities (a few skirts, dresses, shirts, handkerchiefs) and throws them out of the window, onto the white sheet spread out on the ground by a dark figure underneath, like a square of meaning in pervading obscurity. She can sense him rather than see him in the darkness, and she imagines him with his tilted hat on. He pulls the corners of the sheet together and begins to tie them into a knot, while she closes the window, slips on her clothes, and gets ready for the transit through the kitchen, where her grandmother sleeps.
Like the fine threads of a dream, she treads softly on the floor with bare feet, her childish pink soles skilfully stepping around the creaky spots, not to awake the old woman breathing loudly on the low couch in the kitchen. She doesn't look in her direction (if she looks, she will realize she wants to say goodbye); with concentration and precision, like a mine-expert defusing a mine under a bridge, she is slowly progressing towards the main door. The exit. The entrance. The place to which she is carrying the sprouts of all she will cherish from this moment on. The entire lifetime which she wants to inhabit now, which she is creating with these kiss-light steps, from which there is no return to the house she is leaving. She knows it, she has measured it out, and she can take it, her own life.
At the door she puts on her socks and shoes, doesn't hesitate, steps across the threshold and into the promise of the night. From a distance ahead, another flash of the headlights shows her the way, where he is sitting in the jeep he has borrowed from his best friend, her bundle already neatly packed in the back. When she begins to run, she is not leaving: she is arriving, and it is the best feeling in the world, and This is the beginning This is the beginning This is the beginning...
(Photos: courtesy of Srdjan)
posted by Tijana | 11:52 PM
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