The Exemplars

In Melbourne we had used a range of saws to cut down two stands of Canadian sycamores that were creating havoc with the sewers at Bab’s house. In the last two years plumbers and drainers had needed to be called out three times to bore through roots in the lines with their augers. Serious expense. In the six years of absence the trees had shot up eight or ten metres, the boles unable to be handled by either Arthur’s little Woodpecker or Robbie’s range of saws. Finally a Viet with a powerful blade of 600mm needed to be engaged to cut down the base of the trunks. Now on Orthodox Christmas news that cousin Ljube—sestra od Strica, sister from (paternal) Uncle—has had a leg amputated. For many years Ljube had suffered from diabetes, but the latter worsening of her condition had not been reported. Her sons did not convey the latest news; it was conveyed by another relative from further around the coast. Like the best Montenegrin exemplars, Ljube had almost never mentioned her illness. Such mentions never helped in Ljube’s book and consequently her hardship was easy to forget. (In her years of battling her husband’s problem with alcohol Ljube had never admitted her troubles to anyone, not even her sister—indeed denied to all and sundry that her husband was an alcoholic. Ne pije on; he does not drink, she would defiantly retort at any suggestion to the contrary.) Eldest son Velo has inherited his mother’s illness and her doughty spirit too; struggled like his mother to reduce his weight and like his father eliminate his alcohol. (Cigarettes he was able to eliminate after reading Carr’s book.) In the former military hospital at Meljine there would have been heavy sedation and the surgeons wielding a saw with fine-toothed blades; a preliminary shearing of flesh before the bone could be severed. At almost eighty the operation had been risky, the elder daughter-in-law subsequently reported, and it was the femur that had been cut at the mid-point. In military field hospitals they cut limbs with more rustic saws and routinely without anaesthetic. (Ljube had early childhood memories of the last phases of WWII in our hills.) The eldest now of our branch of the family Ljube Vidova, the one in closest touch with the ancestors. During the last visit to Montenegro at a wake Ljube’s grand-daughter had her Baba’s particular gait and posture pointed out for her. At any kind of sharp, earnest talk, any kind of somber occasion, Ljube would raise her head and peer down at her interlocutor from beneath her broad, angled forehead. A tall woman who made herself taller and more formidable at any challenge or hardship. The young lady, the only grand-daughter who was given her Baba’s name, would benefit from the example.