Free Little Bastards in Springtime by Katja Rudolph Page B

djedica spoke Italian and tried to teach me, but I was a bad student. His family moved from Italy to Istria afterWorld War One, when Italy took it over. They were winemakers and bought a small vineyard that overlooked the Adriatic. The family did not turn fascistic when Mussolini’s army invaded during World War Two. But after the war, they still had to flee back to Italy because the Croats chased them out. They couldn’t prove their patriotism. Even a partisan hero for a son didn’t help.”
    “They had to leave the vines?”
    “Yes. Picked up and left it all. But Haris—Horatio is what his mother called him—he didn’t leave with them. He knew he was a true Yugoslavian, a fierce fighter for our nation. He wasn’t going to be chased anywhere by anyone. So that’s why he came here, to Sarajevo. We came together.”
    I know the story. He was a city engineer, just like her. Baka gets up and goes to the kitchen. I listen to her rummaging. A shell lands somewhere north of here with a deep thudding sound. The vase on the windowsill shivers, then jumps sideways a fraction of an inch. Baka comes back with bags of chips and cookies, all opened for some other card game or visit, then carefully rolled up and sealed with a neat row of paper clips. But still everything’s stale. Baka doesn’t notice. Her taste buds disappeared in the forest during the war. Anything with fat, sugar, salt in it tastes good to her, even if it’s a hundred years old. She grabs fistfuls of chips, shoves them into her mouth. She munches, while studying her cards, glaring up at me occasionally to see what she can read on my face.
    “We floated down the Krka River in a small boat, we camped in Dalmatia,” she says. “Swam in clear pools. Picnicked on the shore with bottles of delicious wine. Splashed in the clear water, looking for shells. During the days we dove into waterfalls, lay on rocks in the hot sun, hiked hand in hand along the magnificentcoast. He was courting me, you see, your djedica. He paid so much attention to me, it was a dream. I knew life would be wonderful after the war, Tito building our great country up from the ashes, a handsome, dashing man to love me, a beautiful city to call our own. But it was better than wonderful, it was heaven. Studying all day long, evenings with friends, drinking and discussing the future late into the night. And to think my parents were going to force me to marry an ugly old man in the village before the war. And have his ten ugly babies.”
    She tells stories to distract me, but I win three hands in a row. Baka finds a box of chocolates and opens it slowly in front of my nose. Each chocolate is white with age. Baka says there’s nothing wrong with them, just fat or sugar, the best parts, coming to the surface, so we eat every one of them with tea while the building rumbles and shivers around us.
    “Istrian olives. Istrian oysters. Ancient coastal towns, clusters of red roofs on white buildings, small, shapely ports, schools of fishing boats. Grilled fish and truffles. Sunsets like the light of God’s eyes.” And Baka doesn’t believe in God. “Your djedica, he had the vitality and devilish wit of a prince.” And Baka doesn’t believe in princes.
    I never knew the man. He died of cancer in 1981, a month before I was born.
    There is a rattle of gunfire not too far away, but I can’t tell which neighbourhood. A deep rumble of shells landing farther away vibrates in my chest, and my teeth buzz like I’m getting my hair clipped. Baka cocks her head, listens, then barks, “Airport.”
    “The man I loved so much now dead and gone,” she says. “And the other man I loved, too, dead and gone. But I don’t complain. 1941 to ‘81. Forty years of pure happiness and good,hard, productive work. No one imagined that at my birth, in our poor village hut, just a ragged peasant girl.” And Baka puts her hand on her chest and sings a bit of a song, like she sometimes feels like doing. “
Arise ye