Mighty Oak Felled (July26)

 

 

Our big Croat-Russian Ivo might be down for the count. Ran into his nephew collecting belongings for the run to the hospital. Couple nights before uncle had fallen in the hallway of his house and not wearing his emergency buzzer wasn't found until morning. Broken hip. Three years ago he had broken the other. Since the return, four visits had been made to the house without sighting the old man. On the last we had spoken through the curtained living-room window and then screen-door, both having left old Ivan invisible... Who are you? What do you want? Idi u picku materinu! Go to the cunt of your mother!... Six year absence, Ivo struggled to identify the voice. After all the home invasions of the last number of years in Melbourne, the elderly were understandably wary. Surprising tears for the old man. Perhaps it was an echo of mother's fondness for firm, honourable Ivo. One of the earliest memories was his carting concrete paving blocks he had made around at his place over for the Montenegrin widow. Around the side mother wanted them, Ivo wheeling his barrow as directed. At his house beside the milk-bar we were petted by Rose, Ivo's Bulgar partner. An architect who designed the house, Rose was treated shabbily by the lanky Croat; and told as much by the widow. A postcard was sent from Singapore; Ivica returned to mind often. Over a number of years in his back sunroom fine, unsugared moonshine brought tales from earlier days. The station-master father in the Croatian capital misted the eyes of the old storyteller. During WWII Ivo's father, a communist sympathiser, needed to keep his nose clean. One day young Ivica returning from mass told of Cardinal Stepinac's blessing of the Ustashi troops that were preparing for engagement. At one of our houses, where in the early-60s the newly arrived migrants were tightly packed—like in a piggery, Ivo described it—Ivan earned a punch on the nose from a Croat boarder, who didn't like his countryman's politics. Ivo was proud of his putative Russian ancestry. A gravely wounded soldier in the war against Napoleon had managed to reach Zagreb, where he founded the Kombol line.