Unasked, V. said he would bring some family pics to the table for the next meeting. It came as something of a surprise, as we had spent a good part of our meetings to date disagreeing on one thing and another, Balkan & Serbian history most of all.
In earlier years V. had had a number of Croat & Muslim friends. All honour to them and their ways, V. granted. It was simply that these peoples ought to concede that they were in fact Serbs in origin; Serbs who over the generations had received Catholicism, or Islam, or whatever other identity markers; (ie. Bulgars, Macedonians, Western Romanians, &etc.).
A good deal of history had been read by the man. Ancient documents would be brought one evening too, V. promised. There were a number in his archive, it seemed.
The photo album and a plastic bag of loose other pics duly arrived, as promised. There were the usual B&Ws from the early sixties schooldays, family gatherings and outings to the waterside. Even in the childhood pics the young boy’s handsome features surprised. In those from his 20s V.’s cool visage was often positively film star level. It was very difficult to credit the connection between the younger and older man who sat at the café table, incessantly jiggling his leg.
Understandably, girls regularly appeared, usually in groups with other lads in the party; tourists from both the interior and distant countries among them. The lads of the Montenegrin coast had long capitalised on visiting sun-lovers.
Relations with one of the locals who later went on to marry a respected lawyer had developed to a certain, limited point, underlined V. In some other circumstances this girl might have been the one, possibly, or at least a proper conquest. There was no boasting in V.‘s report. All seemed well managed fun in the underlying conservatism of the ‘60s & ‘70s.
Half-way through the display, V. came to a passport sized B&W of a plain young woman in a bob with a rather fixed, almost stern look, like from the folk of the earlier generations. The girl’s name, like many others, of both family and friends, was not given. It was unclear how long the pair, V. and this woman, had been an item. Some while it seemed.
Come the day, V. received from the girl the kind of speech that often got a young pair over the line for marriage.
The two of them had been sitting in a group with others their own age. After a time, at some point, the unnamed girl came across and plopped herself on V.’s knees.
Telling of it, to this day, something like forty years later, V. seemed surprised at the action. Clearly he had not expected either the frank display, nor what followed.
“You know, V., you and I should get together properly,” the girl abruptly began. “We are made for each other. We should marry.”
The precise words had slipped. Naturally, V. had only paraphrased the speech of forty years before. But the staccato he produced in the telling sounded authentic.
The woman had spoken truthfully. From the beginning the pair had gotten on exceptionally well; and continued in that vein. Intelligent, capable and of good character, V. also considered the girl pretty, when in the thumbnail the façade for the camera gave little evidence. During that period V. spent most of his days and nights at her flat. There was nothing lacking there for a perfect partner, it seemed clear to V. back then and so many decades later too.
The young V. however was taken aback at the time. The serious step of marriage seemed never to have entered his head, whether with this woman, or any other. At home he lived with his parents in a small flat. His work at one or another of the local ministries was always casual. Attempts at permanency had always failed because of competitors with connections.
V. was a fisherman, lazy, a reader. Social gathering at the cafes were important to him. He drank little and did not smoke, but the independent life suited him. How would they cope in the flat with his parents and sister, who had already married and had a child?
However, the afternoon of the unnamed girl’s speech the pair agreed they would consider the question again the following day. At such-and-such place, such-and-such time.
V. never fronted. It was the end of the matter; the relationship. Beyond that day of the declaration, the pair almost never spoke again. Sightings of the girl thereafter took place in passing. They both still lived in the same town, the woman some little distance from the centre, as it was only on the odd occasion she appeared. In latter years, once or twice V. saw she had put on a lot of weight.
It was unfortunate enough. More, however, soon came from the same plastic bag onto the café table-top.
For this sweetheart, V. did not seem to grieve too much, like some others did who lost their main chance in marriage. An observer seeing the man’s current comings and goings in his shorts, his unbuttoned shirt and flip flops, might conclude he had gotten his just deserts. It seemed a fair chance the nameless girl would have made an excellent helper in V.’s mother’s last years; an excellent partner in life. V. might agree with such judgement, without feeling the loss so deeply himself.
The other thumbnail portrait produced from the plastic bag, slightly larger in this case, and older, immediately signalled a tragic fate.
It was odd how V. was surprised at the intuition. Grbljanin Milan, an old, former sailor, had joined us at table. Milan too leapt ahead with guesses that proved near enough to the mark, as far as V. knew.
A woman in perhaps her late 30s appeared in a scarf and floral dress, staring out as if in some strange mugshot, with a kind of telling animal wariness.
Poremečena psikićki, explained V, which in the Serbo-Croat carried more direct, literal force. Disturbed psychically.
The woman turned out to have been V’s maternal aunt, who like almost all others in the collection remained nameless. All these years and decades later V. still did not know her name, this hidden aunt.
Both V’s mother and grandmother always kept the same picture close-by. Copies had evidently been made. By her bedside in the latter’s case, and beside the photos of her mother & father former.
When V. was in the second year of middle school, fifteen years old, he asked at his grandmother’s house in Serbia after the woman in the photograph. V. had spent a good deal of time with his Serbian grandmother, where a strong bond developed. When the musical interest took hold in the ‘70s, V.’s old Baba had rocked to the tunes of Bijelo Dugme & Jimmy Hendrix. A peasant Serb of that era jiving to Jimmy was certainly a first. This was no put-on, according to V, who mimicked the old girl’s swinging elbows.
To the question of the identity of the woman in the curled B&W photograph that stood propped by grandma’s bed, there came for answer first welling, and then running tears, which alarmed the grandchild, making him avert his gaze.
Later an enquiry of his mother only received the brush-off that it was some woman of the village back in Serbia. Patently dubious, though the son failed to pursue the matter.
V. did not present as a shy, retiring type. During the breakup of the Yugoslav federation he had become a sniper high up in the hills above his coastal town. Ready, but not ever needing to fire a shot at any intruder. Invariably, V. spoke loudly and boldly. A strong-minded and decisive man.
Yet on the matter of the mystery involving this nameless woman in the treasured photograph, nothing more was pursued.
A sharp and astute observer V, yet somehow drawing a blank here. In present adult years the same as schooldays.
An obvious black sheep of the family had been for whatever reason cast out. The particular whys and wherefores were hardly significant. The range was not wide: either there had been a shameful union, or illegitimate child, perhaps; otherwise some psychic disturbance. Nema treče, the Serbs would say. Not likely a third possibility.
V. seemed flustered at Grbljanin Milan, the former sailor’s, blurting.
“I know what happened to her,” Milan began. “All families had them. All communities.”
The curled old photograph spoke volumes; immediately. The article was difficult to hold in hand and peer at too deeply.
A woman abandoned by all and sundry; nearest and dearest, mother, brothers & sisters.
Two abandoned women prominent in V’s personal history. Bringing the cases to the café table may have helped V. confront the long buried past. Toward the end of the evening V. may have said he had never previously shown anyone the photographs or talked about that particular past.
As the years unfolded, at first around the time the poor misfortunate Aunt passed away, the sad fact of her case began to emerge. Initially V. overheard the talk of the elders. V’s father, his uncles by marriage and others of the family circle had rounded on the sisters. How had they allowed this to happen? Why hadn’t they said? There would have been help provided the woman. It was terrible to have left her to suffer alone.
Soon about to turn seventy, V. was planning to ask his remaining maternal aunt the details on the other. The remainder had all passed on. What had happened? Why had this woman been cast out? What was her name?
The maternal aunt up in Velika Plana, outside Belgrade in Serbia was in her early 80s now, clear of mind. In the autumn V. would go up. Hopefully the woman would be forthcoming.
Montenegro
