The Eyes Have It

Oci moje drage

Sunse moje

Ogledalo moje

Hranitelju

Roditelju moj


         My dear eyes. Oci crnje, oci blaznje from the famous old Russian song. Dark (black) eyes; dearest eyes....
A Slavic endearment if not used otherwise.

         In many languages My sunshine was an endearment. English included. (In later years when the cursing had been adopted Bab was stung by it. All the world gives thanks to the sun, yet you curse it!) Sunse moje.


         Mirror (ogledalo) mine was always mystifying. She was seeing herself in her son was she? How was the child a mirror? A mirror’s reflection dazzled?


         Breadwinner in the sense of saviour; staff in old age perhaps. Hrana is food; hranitelju the provider. With pension and fair assets and savings she was hardly in need of that kind of sustenance.

 
         More mystifying again, most mystifying, was Roditelju moj, Parent mine! Howso a child become the parent? In what sense and by what process? Again, the safeguard in old age possibly.


         Often mother spoke in this archaic form that brought echoes of the ancients in Dickens, the fond quiet and smiling mothers and sometimes fathers. Uriah Heap's old mum by the fire with her motley rags pulled tight around her; Johnson's London and the Hebrides. That period.


         An old friend from schooldays, the oldest friend, was surprised recently to be told Bab had never once in all our time called her son by his name. Once or twice she might have been overheard talking to someone using the diminutive. Never to the son himself, diminutive or otherwise. Avoiding the Greek hex was one thought; the evil eye. The Montenegrins, at least those up in the higher hills, seem to have had something similar in their social psychology. 

         Blazene oci koje vide te was another kettle of fish. Bab smirked a bit relating that old usage. It was an example of ljeporecenje, sweet-talking. Most fortunate eyes that behold you approaches the sense. Indians on the equator used similarly extravagant ceremonials.

         Blazene oci…./Most fortunate and blessed…. We came upon the same in one of the videos or a book of epic poetry.


         Her dear eyes, Oci moje drage….


         It was only in the last years of her life that Bab started openly with these endearments. The last four or five years perhaps. Prior to that her love was offered without any words to the effect. In fact there was much badgering and criticism rather than sweet-talking of any kind. There was no revelation of course when the words began to arrive, no surprise at the deep feeling. It was the unusual terms that were striking, and more than a little mystifying.

         Bab's words could often strike and startle; her manner and force of utterance the same. There was an oddity in much of her language. She had been the chief teacher of the language for one thing, and the teacher always had more to impart. As we began to mine the story of her life, her hidden first half of life in the old country, more and more remarkable events and happenings came in new words and new constructions. There were new categories delivered, judgements and encapsulations that revealed a wondrous culture and social realm. Sometime thereafter the endearments followed.


         We took in a visiting German girl once who had been given our contact. She was the girlfriend of a Montenegrin who had emigrated and lived in Stuttgart; the pair involved in drugs at some level it turned out. It turned out the girl, Andrea, was looking for some kind of out from that life and that relationship. Subsequently she met a local chemist and after a whirlwind romance married, had a child and soon thereafter divorced. During the period of looking for work and drifting away from her former life the old boyfriend called a few times. Thirty years ago pre mobile technology it was the home landline for communication, and it was Babi who took the calls. Andrea was often out.

         The fellow was missing his girl. He appealed to Bab to look after her. We had never met the man nor had any association with him; the connection was through a third party who herself was little known to us. The chap in Stuttgart was missing Andrea greatly; she was lapsing in her contact.

         Bab reported the man’s words. This Montenegrin lad loved this girl more than anything he saw with his eyes. Volim je vise nego sve drugo sto ocima vidim.

         Bab herself was struck enough to report the phrase. It was a Montenegrin construction. Memorable. Bab had a store of her own expressions, but this was worth reporting.
 

        We had fought such battles together, campaigns one after the other in the new hard life after the death of the man, the husband and father. Her mother's passing left little trace; the mourning must have followed closely the earlier. But then her own father, the man dead in the lines of her sister's letter. Blue and red-fringed par avion on the kitchen table that had her reeling once more, a ruination of tears and heaving. Help was required for that. Together we managed. Endured what needed to be endured.

         Sta se mora nije ni tesko, Nor is the needed, the necessary hard.

         Tesko is heavy. A heavy burden. Made lighter and more manageable by necessity.

         We managed at the kitchen table. Managed as needed.

         The sister Bosa more beautiful than Doris Day was mourned by the eldest sister, the eldest of the family in the far distant foreign land unable to share the burden with her other siblings. In the vitrine she kept the picture of Bosa and her two young sons, so soon become orphans. Again echoes of Dickens and others.


         Ocni vide was another strange, surprising and striking construction: Sight of my eyes, a verbal phrase a grammarians might term it. It was understood and received this way.

         You are the sight of my eyes; rather than you make a sight for my eyes; ie. What a sight you are. If that was right. Strange and deeply affecting of course, though at the time it was always received casually.

         There was never any doubt about Bab's great feeling, the depth of her love. Speaking it never meant a great deal, at least while she was in life.

         When uncle Petar in the last years of life laid up in the front room of the house on the coast his moaning was audible through the upper storey. In the last year or two good days he rose for occasional ventures up on the higher hill where aunt Andje suspected he only lay up again in the hay of the animal hut up there. Once he was indeed found in the doorway of that hut arms behind his head looking out into the close wide clouds.

         Stirring from his slumber in the room, turning himself over, the man in his mid-eighties moaned again and again, Majko moja. Majko moja. Mother mine. Mother mine.

         Stari konj sjetio se majke / The old horse remembering his mother. For the one who had done his mother ill and remembers all her sacrifice only later.

         Up on the equator the Muslim supplication appeared an excellent form of obeisance to the elders. The Chinese worship did not seem to go far enough, at least in the form of the ritual. The prostrations of the Muslims seemed fitting for that.

         Bab had not expected to receive a return of her love and devotion. There was no guarantee; even in the former time in the village there was no surety on that matter. In the 70s she had had a garden shed built in the backyard where she began stockpiling provisions against the days ahead when she might be left alone in the new country, the children flown off to their own lives. Tins of sardines and tuna, packs of pasta and instant noodles; the other staples of washing powder, soaps and toilet paper.