Uncle Ljubisa
(Za cika Ljubisu)
Even in the zenith of the Balkan summer -- which can be cruelly scorching and overheated in an obstinately sustained way, perhaps not something most people would associate with the Balkan climate -- he wears thick woolen socks over regular cotton socks. He's almost never without a long knitted sleeveless cardigan when he's inside the house -- the kind which is made in remote villages in the mountains, now considered traditional handicraft and often sold as souvenirs. (The one I bought years ago on the streets of Belgrade from a peasant woman who had laid her goods on a long piece of cardboard, hangs unused in my closet -- while I wore it now and then the first few years, lately there has been no occasion for it: it is either too hot or too cold).
Uncle Ljubisa -- where "uncle" doesn't refer to a family relation but is an honorific commonly used for an older male figure: a neighbour, a family friend, even a stranger in the street -- is a little above 80 and is my father's next-door neighbour. When I asked him this summer if he wasn't a little hot with the woolen socks and cardigan, his right thin moustache twitched upward playfully, there was a momentary sparkle in his eye and he reassured me that in his prime he was a strapping man, who never needed a coat; but lately he'd been having circulation problems. Reasonably agile for his age, he walks with a cane and only recently stopped driving. (His yellow Beetle is now permanently parked in the tiny parking lot in front of the apartment building, vaguely rusting at the seams and edges of the metal pieces, washed by every rain and bleached by the sun. It looks so much like our old yellow Beetle -- the first family car I remember, bought on my second birthday, and used for the following 20-odd years, in which we went to all those family trips -- that I instinctively move towards it every time we leave the building and need to go somewhere in my father's new red Opel, his second car after the Beetle).
There is something firm and steadfast about Uncle Ljubisa. He knows where to go for the best vegetables, or eggs, or potatoes; he cooks; he follows all the current political happenings and has an opinion on them; every summer he goes to his native village in southern Serbia, where he lives a true country life. Despite this firmness and organization, the consequence, perhaps, of his former profession -- he was a police officer while he was still part of the working world -- there is also something soft about him. Widower for over 30 years and left in charge of two daughters, he needed both: a certain no-nonsense firmness, an unquestionable conviction that the three of them can make it, but also a gentleness, an acquired lightness of being as a replacement for a soft woman's touch with the girls and around the house.
One early afternoon my father and I ring his doorbell for a small visit. It takes a little while before he opens the door, a dishcloth in hand. "Oh, it's you two," he says, visibly brightened, opens the door wider and ushers us in through the hallway into his kitchen. There's a small trickle of water on the floor by an empty, switched-off fridge that he's been cleaning -- an old one he is going to get rid of. The smell of a hot humid day thickened by the steam rising from a medium-sized pot on the stove pervades the room. He lifts the lid to show us -- he's cooking beans. The pot is blue with white polka dots -- the kind every kitchen had when I was a kid, in different sizes.
Then Uncle Ljubisa wipes the plastic tablecloth, sets down his crystal brandy bottle and two shot glasses, and asks me what I would like to drink. I say I wouldn't mind a shot of what they're having (I know it must be first-rate home-made plum brandy from his village). His moustache gives a quick twitch of approval: he was hoping for that answer. He sets another glass, pours out the brandy, then walks over to the new, bulky fridge humming in the corner, and takes a tomato. He slices it carefully onto a plate, sprinkles it with salt, and puts it before us with three forks: "We can't drink without a little bit of salad," he says. We wait for him to take up his glass and when he does, he tilts it slightly and lets a few drops fall on the floor. "For the dead," he comments although there is no need to. And then we drink, pick at the salted tomato slices, and talk about refrigerators, heat, and politics.
Meanwhile, death is lingering on in this house. It's mostly contained to the room with the closed door next to the kitchen, which used to be his daughters' room -- but it sometimes seeps out and lurks from this or that corner. Especially when everyone falls silent.
Uncle Ljubisa's younger daughter Mirjana died earlier in the year, from cancer. Then his older daughter Vesna died too, also from cancer, just a couple of months later. He had taken care of them as much as he could while they were bed-ridden, and now he is an old man, left alone.
It's time for us to leave. I hug him tightly for a second and feel his eyes filling up but he shakes it off (postpones it, rather) and sees us to the door. My father arranges the time with him when my brother and he will come to take the old fridge down to the curb. Someone will surely need it. A couple of small practical matters (the width of the door frame, the best place to leave the fridge on the curb) and we are now standing on the landing, saying goodbye (although we're really just going next door). I remark that he isn't wearing his thick woolen cardigan today. "No, not today," says Uncle Ljubisa. "Today I am busy."
Even in the zenith of the Balkan summer -- which can be cruelly scorching and overheated in an obstinately sustained way, perhaps not something most people would associate with the Balkan climate -- he wears thick woolen socks over regular cotton socks. He's almost never without a long knitted sleeveless cardigan when he's inside the house -- the kind which is made in remote villages in the mountains, now considered traditional handicraft and often sold as souvenirs. (The one I bought years ago on the streets of Belgrade from a peasant woman who had laid her goods on a long piece of cardboard, hangs unused in my closet -- while I wore it now and then the first few years, lately there has been no occasion for it: it is either too hot or too cold).
Uncle Ljubisa -- where "uncle" doesn't refer to a family relation but is an honorific commonly used for an older male figure: a neighbour, a family friend, even a stranger in the street -- is a little above 80 and is my father's next-door neighbour. When I asked him this summer if he wasn't a little hot with the woolen socks and cardigan, his right thin moustache twitched upward playfully, there was a momentary sparkle in his eye and he reassured me that in his prime he was a strapping man, who never needed a coat; but lately he'd been having circulation problems. Reasonably agile for his age, he walks with a cane and only recently stopped driving. (His yellow Beetle is now permanently parked in the tiny parking lot in front of the apartment building, vaguely rusting at the seams and edges of the metal pieces, washed by every rain and bleached by the sun. It looks so much like our old yellow Beetle -- the first family car I remember, bought on my second birthday, and used for the following 20-odd years, in which we went to all those family trips -- that I instinctively move towards it every time we leave the building and need to go somewhere in my father's new red Opel, his second car after the Beetle).
There is something firm and steadfast about Uncle Ljubisa. He knows where to go for the best vegetables, or eggs, or potatoes; he cooks; he follows all the current political happenings and has an opinion on them; every summer he goes to his native village in southern Serbia, where he lives a true country life. Despite this firmness and organization, the consequence, perhaps, of his former profession -- he was a police officer while he was still part of the working world -- there is also something soft about him. Widower for over 30 years and left in charge of two daughters, he needed both: a certain no-nonsense firmness, an unquestionable conviction that the three of them can make it, but also a gentleness, an acquired lightness of being as a replacement for a soft woman's touch with the girls and around the house.
One early afternoon my father and I ring his doorbell for a small visit. It takes a little while before he opens the door, a dishcloth in hand. "Oh, it's you two," he says, visibly brightened, opens the door wider and ushers us in through the hallway into his kitchen. There's a small trickle of water on the floor by an empty, switched-off fridge that he's been cleaning -- an old one he is going to get rid of. The smell of a hot humid day thickened by the steam rising from a medium-sized pot on the stove pervades the room. He lifts the lid to show us -- he's cooking beans. The pot is blue with white polka dots -- the kind every kitchen had when I was a kid, in different sizes.
Then Uncle Ljubisa wipes the plastic tablecloth, sets down his crystal brandy bottle and two shot glasses, and asks me what I would like to drink. I say I wouldn't mind a shot of what they're having (I know it must be first-rate home-made plum brandy from his village). His moustache gives a quick twitch of approval: he was hoping for that answer. He sets another glass, pours out the brandy, then walks over to the new, bulky fridge humming in the corner, and takes a tomato. He slices it carefully onto a plate, sprinkles it with salt, and puts it before us with three forks: "We can't drink without a little bit of salad," he says. We wait for him to take up his glass and when he does, he tilts it slightly and lets a few drops fall on the floor. "For the dead," he comments although there is no need to. And then we drink, pick at the salted tomato slices, and talk about refrigerators, heat, and politics.
Meanwhile, death is lingering on in this house. It's mostly contained to the room with the closed door next to the kitchen, which used to be his daughters' room -- but it sometimes seeps out and lurks from this or that corner. Especially when everyone falls silent.
Uncle Ljubisa's younger daughter Mirjana died earlier in the year, from cancer. Then his older daughter Vesna died too, also from cancer, just a couple of months later. He had taken care of them as much as he could while they were bed-ridden, and now he is an old man, left alone.
It's time for us to leave. I hug him tightly for a second and feel his eyes filling up but he shakes it off (postpones it, rather) and sees us to the door. My father arranges the time with him when my brother and he will come to take the old fridge down to the curb. Someone will surely need it. A couple of small practical matters (the width of the door frame, the best place to leave the fridge on the curb) and we are now standing on the landing, saying goodbye (although we're really just going next door). I remark that he isn't wearing his thick woolen cardigan today. "No, not today," says Uncle Ljubisa. "Today I am busy."
The so-called "Sirogojno" cardigan -- traditionally made in the Serbian village Sirogojno
posted by Tijana | 1:52 AM
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