Running Away to Home Read online

“No siree,” I said.

  Cuculić vaporized from nowhere. He rocked back and forth on his heels, hands shoved in the pockets of his khakis. The neighbors mildly acknowledged him because their conversation had grown quite lively.

  “They are talking about our politics,” Cuculić said, nodding toward Mario, Jasminka, and Robert. “Our prime minister has stepped down. We do not know why this has happened.”

  My heart jumped. Historically unstable Croatia didn’t have a leader?

  Cuculić said that the day before we arrived, Ivo Sanader had suddenly resigned. But it appeared that the transition would be smooth and fairly quick. His successor, Jadranka Kosor, would be the first woman prime minister in Croatian history.

  Jim leveled a look at me. “Well that’s ironic,” he said. “Hillary Cleen-tone comes to town and the next thing you know there’s a woman prime minister.”

  “I swear I had nothing to do with it,” I said. But still I worried. “Is it bad that there’s no prime minister in the meantime?”

  “Might be bad,” Robert shrugged, raising an eyebrow. “Might be bad because now will be woman.”

  Robert laughed, baiting me. He threw a cookie to Thor.

  “What will you do today?” asked Cuculić. He had the best English in town.

  “Well, we thought we’d go to Delnice,” I said. “The consulate told us that when we arrived in Croatia, we had to register with the county police department.”

  Cuculić translated for Robert.

  Suddenly, Robert was a frenzy of motion. He stood up and patted himself down for cigarettes. He lit up energetically. He ran his hands through his nest of hair, then locked them behind his head. He spoke urgently to Cuculić and then turned to us.

  “You go to police, I must come!” he exclaimed. “I must explain for police you stay with me!”

  “What for?” Jim said. “It’s no big deal.”

  “Neh!” Robert said passionately. “Is complicated. I must come to Delnice.”

  “We have to get groceries, too,” Jim explained. “You don’t want to go shopping with us.”

  But Robert would not be deterred. I looked over at Mario and Jasminka, who seemed like the reasonable half of the first neighbor relationship. They watched Robert with amusement.

  “Robert say he come with you to police,” Cuculić repeated. “I will come, too.”

  “We can go to the police station alone,” I insisted. “We have visas. We’re not doing anything wrong. We’re doing what we’re supposed to do.”

  But nothing I said seemed to register among the din of negotiating men. It was as if my words didn’t materialize in the masculine soundscape. No one looked at me when I spoke. I don’t even remember what I said, really. That up there is just a guess.

  The men, however, listened to Jim. And Jim didn’t want them along.

  “I don’t want a big production,” he said. He was trying to be polite, but an edge had crept into his voice. “Is there some sort of danger involved that we need an escort?”

  Cuculić stepped forward, one hand extended. “Robert says you may have problems with the police, and he must explain about staying in his house.”

  “Why would we have problems?” Jim asked. “We paid a lot of money for visas. There should be no problem.”

  Cuculić shoved his hand back into his khakis. “And also, Robert must tell police that you are his cousins from America, so he does not pay tourist tax.”

  Jim and I sat there for a moment in stunned silence. So that’s what this was all about. Robert didn’t want to pay taxes on our rental price, which would cut into his profit, so he was going to claim us as relatives. An agenda. One that might get us in trouble with the police and that nullified getting the stupid visas in the first place.

  I tried to say this, but my words turned to meaningless fog. Cuculić went so far as to put a hand to his ear when I spoke. “I cannot understand what you are saying,” he said, squinting. “You must speak more slowly, clearly. Like Jim speaks. I understand Jim.”

  “Of course you do,” I muttered. Having a Y chromosome in Mrkopalj apparently made one deaf to the female voice.

  We thanked Mario and Jasminka and followed Robert and Cuculić across the street. Meanwhile, Jim agreed that Robert could come along.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” I asked under my breath.

  “Not at all,” Jim said.

  Neither of us could come up with a better solution, nor did we have the wherewithal or the language skills to argue further. Though it all seemed a little dodgy, Robert was our only real connection to the village. He was intent on doing this his way. Just as he’d been intent on renting us rooms even though he didn’t really have any and so kicked his daughters out of theirs to do so.

  I guess when you’re new to a strange place, and someone offers to help, you’re inclined to let them. At that point, just pouring a cup of coffee was mystifying. Jim and I allowed ourselves to be nannied along, even though our nanny was probably drunk. And in the end, it turned out fine. We registered with the police with little trouble, and even stopped for morning gelato on the way home.

  “The rules are different in Croatia,” Jim explained as he ordered for our two incredulous children. Eating ice cream before noon was awesome. “It’s harder to live here, so let’s have some fun to make it easier.”

  The kids were more pleased with those one-euro cones than they’d ever been with mountains of toys back home. Sam licked his delicately so that it lasted for the better part of an hour. Zadie doused her face in creamy chocolate goo immediately and with gusto. In fact, from that day on, Zadie’s face was usually covered in some form of chocolate.

  “I like it here,” she said.

  “Me, too,” Jim said.

  “It’s okay, I guess,” Sam said.

  I ordered an ice cream for myself, but I wasn’t as easy as those guys. I still had a case of the nerves. Letting go and rolling with it takes more effort than you’d think, when you’re a mom used to calling the shots.

  In the Peugeot, Robert rolled down the window and extended a beefy arm. He slapped the dash with his other hand. “Good car,” he said to Jim as we drove away.

  And then, randomly, he said: “Bon Jovi is also good.”

  In a loud and husky voice, Robert sang “Livin’ on a Prayer.”

  I had no idea why we aligned with Robert that day. We’d just met the neighbors: a perfectly nice, sober family with a very large house that surely had a few extra rooms to rent. But we were exhausted and disoriented and more than a little shell-shocked. It was 1846 all over again, and we were headed out for a little California vacation with the Donner Party.

  Robert was a mess. But we were just going to have to trust him.

  chapter six

  When we got back to Mrkopalj, we walked with Ivana, Karla, and Roberta up the mountain in their backyard. It was mostly grassy with a few shrubby trees and jutting boulders. Each of us perched on a stone, overlooking the village. Below, in the meadow, an old woman in a housedress, a calico apron, and a babushka gathered bright yellow flowers.

  “This is for tea,” explained Ivana. Of the three girls, she had the best English. “They are calling this gospina trava, this tea.”

  In Croatia, the girls said, tea was called ćaj, pronounced “chai.” Now, there was a word I could remember. Thank you, Starbucks.

  I walked down the mountain toward the woman picking ćaj. She carried a long stick, moving aside grass for the blossoms she plucked and popped into a bag. She looked up and smiled when I approached and extended a wrinkled hand to show how the yellow buds had stained her fingers purple. I picked a few flowers and dropped them into her sack. I examined my fingers. Yep, the yellow flower produced a purple stain. Wild.

  The kids ran down to watch an old man release sheep into the field to munch clover.

  Ivana, Karla, and Roberta narrated. Sheep are ovca. Mountain is brdo. The woman picking tea was Manda. The man with the sheep was Josip. Robert’s giant g
arden was filled with krompiri, or potatoes. Most people had a krompir patch the size of a supermarket and an additional vegetable garden close to the house.

  Jim and I walked to the shops across the street from Robert’s place to forage for supper. None of the three groceries was bigger than an American living room. Our favorite was Konzum, a Croatian chain with a butcher shop that sold sausages and mortadella and cheeses. The ladies wore red smocks trimmed in green and little red hats.

  We picked up sausage, cheese, and blueberries that grew wild in the mountains. When we checked out, we realized that the gardens of Mrkopalj certainly weren’t for show. Groceries were expensive, with the exception of domestic booze, which was cheap. Food cost as much as it did back home, though the village seemed quite poor.

  Back at Robert’s house, Zadie and Roberta were perched on the backyard picnic table holding hands and talking, each speaking her own language to the other. Sam had borrowed Karla’s bike and rode the length of the sidewalk, wobbly and unsure of himself.

  Jim and I stowed the groceries in the dorm and returned to the backyard, where Ivana hovered over the kids.

  “Should we go for a walk?” I asked her. “Can you show us where things are?”

  But Ivana misunderstood me. She headed inside then returned with paper and markers. She drew us a map of Mrkopalj instead.

  The two main roads of Mrkopalj joined at a T intersection. Robert’s street, Novi Varoš, ran roughly north and south from the T to the ski hill, Čelimbaša. It was Mrkopalj’s newest road, thus the name, which meant “New Way.” The main road ran west to east. To the west, it was called Muževski Kraj (“Man Street,” after the migrant men who once stayed in its boardinghouses during heavy seasonal forestry work). Traveling east, when the road T-boned with Novi Varoš, the name changed to Stari Kraj (“Old Street”), where Stari Baća and the church and the municipal building were located.

  Ivana explained the map as the kids roamed the yard and meadow. Every once in a while, they’d cross the field over to the škola (pronounced SHKO-la), or school, to climb the apple trees in its small courtyard, or pick wild strawberries.

  Sam and Zadie had never moved freely this way. Back home, they weren’t often out of our sight. It was, I realized, exhausting for all of us. I was pretty sure that my generation spent more face time with their kids than any other before us. The simple freedom made Sam and Zadie giddy. It left Jim and me standing around, wondering what to do.

  Jim and I rarely spent time alone without distraction and without the aid of a television. I actually felt awkward. I suppressed an urge to find something to busy myself. It was like learning to breathe in a different way. Imagine having all the uninterrupted time in the world. On one hand, it feels really liberating. On the other, it eliminates everything you’ve built around yourself that distracts you from, well, you. We just sat down on the yard swing and rocked in silence, getting used to things.

  That evening—the night everyone thought we were going to arrive—Robert’s wife, Goranka, made a traditional Mrkopalj picnic dinner as a welcome. Goranka had a gentle face and was built thick and pretty. She commandeered the kitchen on the first floor her family now shared as they, too, waited for Robert to finish our rooms.

  Karla and Ivana set the monolithic wooden table in Robert’s backyard. Jim and I noticed many of these picnic tables in the village. Giant in size, trestle in design, they still looked a little like the trees they once were, benches just long logs split in half, giant rough-hewn two-by-eights laid side by side for a tabletop. Painted forest green, weathered almost to softness, they blended into grass and trees and meadow and mountain. Simple, magnificent things.

  Because winter dominated so much of the year in Mrkopalj, summer was lived almost entirely outdoors. It was the eternal entertainment, reliable even during times of war or poverty or a simple lack of vacation days. The forest and field provided most everything, as it probably had during the time of Valentin and Jelena, and the people of the village simply set up their picnic tables and enjoyed the view. All backyards contained some variation of the basic Mrkopalj combo: giant stone fireplace, fruit trees, gardens, picnic table. Variations came in the details. Viney trellises shading concrete pads. Grape arbors. Chicken coops. Goats. Geraniums in window boxes. The yards of Mrkopalj were like tiny farms, beautiful in their utility, unobtrusive on the earth.

  Robert’s yard was the least-tended occupied plot on Novi Varoš. It contained a concrete slab, half of which was sloppily stacked with firewood. A clothesline trailed across the yard, irregularly clipped with clothespins drained of color by time and sun. The grass was long and patchy, the krompir garden ringed with weeds. A neighbor’s plum tree tilted into the yard.

  Robert pointed out the tiny concrete outbuilding that had been the family smokehouse when he was a boy and the Starčević family kept a few cattle in their yard.

  “Hey, Robert, what are these for?” I asked, standing near Bobi’s pen. Next to it was an old wooden door, above which were tacked several small wooden crosses.

  “For God to be with animals,” he began. The church blessed the farm animals of Mrkopalj every spring. These little talismans were distributed at the conclusion of mass, for people to hang over the barn door. There weren’t many families raising animals anymore, but most houses still had those crosses.

  Robert pulled the wooden door open to reveal an aboveground dirt-floor cellar.

  “Old barn,” Robert noted. “In old Mrkopalj, first floor of house: barn.”

  I’d seen renditions of the house barn in historic villages back home—occupants at one end, animals at the other. It saved work and heat in winter. This was a glimpse into the lives of Valentin and Jelena. Many Mrkopalj houses were built in this manner.

  In the backyard, our families gathered around the picnic table. The girls brought out a giant platter of potato halves. Mrkopalj was known for its potatoes, and this recipe was simple: cut them in half, sprinkle with sea salt, and rub the halves together until they foam. When they baked (for forty-five minutes, at 350 degrees), the foam from the rubbing created a smooth, crackly coating. Onto this you could pile the toppings that the girls placed around the table: raw bacon called spek, boiled eggs, uncured sausages, squeaky cow’s-milk cheese, sliced onions. Fluffy bread torn from the loaf pinched up any extra toppings that fell off when you took a bite.

  The potatoes, Robert said, were called pole, pronounced POLE-ay. But the whole gathering itself was also called a pole.

  “Robert, this cheese squeaks when you chew it,” said Jim gleefully. “It’s squeaky cheese, Jen. Just like in Wisconsin!”

  “What is skeeky cheese?” Robert asked.

  “Cheese that squeaks,” I said, mimicking the sound taking place in my mouth.

  Everyone around the table lit up.

  “Skeeky cheese is Mrkopalj special!” Robert said.

  “Skeeky,” Roberta said to Zadie, and the girls dissolved into giggles.

  My children examined the food and found it benign. Sam grabbed a potato and ate like a monkey working on a banana. Zadie, the dissector, had spent her entire culinary existence picking apart food. In Mrkopalj, there was no need. A boiled egg was a boiled egg, nothing hidden inside. A roasted potato held no mystery. She ate without direction from her parents, who’d issued stern warnings earlier.

  “Things will taste different than back home,” I’d said, sitting Sam and Zadie down on the hard red futon before dinner. “Try not to think of it as loving or hating anything. It’s all just something new to talk about. You’re travelers now.”

  “Also, never say ‘yuck’ at the table,” Jim added.

  “What do we say, then?” asked Sam. “Can we say ‘gross’?”

  “Or poopyhead?” Zadie asked.

  I shook my head. “You say thank you and try a bite. That’s good manners.”

  The picnic was eaten communally. Want a potato? Grab one. Curious about the rough sausage? Pop a piece in your mouth. Though forks and knives were presen
t, the food was best eaten by hand, without artifice.

  “Everything is domestic,” Robert pointed at us with his fork, chewing loosely on a boiled egg. “This is typical pole.”

  Jim and I brought some wine from the Konzum, and I drank a glass of red, which Robert noted with interest.

  “You drink red wine?” Robert cocked an eyebrow.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Is very interesting,” he said with a smirk.

  Goranka presented a box of white wine and a bottle of fizzy water. “You mix,” Robert said, pouring half wine, half water. “Halp-halp.”

  “What?” Jim asked.

  Robert indicated the wine box. “Halp wine in glass.” Then he pointed to the fizzy water. “Halp water. Halp-halp.”

  Jim loved gemišt (gem-EESHT), as the drink was more commonly known. Robert drank like a man filled with a great thirst.

  Two young men emerged from the unfinished second-floor rooms covered in construction dust. Robert introduced them as part of his work crew. The electrician also came down, a stocky older guy in gold-rimmed spectacles and blue tradesman’s jumpsuit. Robert introduced him as Nikola Tesla, after the Croatia-born ethnic Serb inventor whom you can thank every time you turn on a radio, a light, an electrical appliance, or use a TV remote. Mrkopalj’s Nikola Tesla had a little Sean Connery handsome about him. He slid onto the picnic bench, languidly propped his elbow on the table, slapped a hand against the side of his face, and rolled his eyes.

  Cuculić appeared from the ether and hovered, pecking at the food, matching Robert and Jim gemišt for gemišt. He noted that part of Robert’s potato garden was actually his, and he tensed as if electrocuted every time the kids accidentally kicked the soccer ball into it.

  “Oprez!” he’d yell. Careful!

  Cousins and friends drifted in and out. The younger ones knew English. Jim and I asked questions about the Gorski Kotar and gathered road-trip recommendations. They asked questions, too. What did Jim do for a living? Why was he not doing it? Jim’s position as a stay-at-home dad was the subject of curiosity.