Chest

It was the day before yesterday, on St. Stephen’s Day. I got up early, still dark, dawn just breaking. Stars spilled across the sky like a necklace. Then I remembered it was also my father’s slava. I had long given up on “those old customs,” as my wife would say. It’s not that I’ve lost my faith God forbid but times have changed. That day I was heading to Gruža, to my grandfather’s village, Beluće, beneath Mount Rudnik. A German was coming to see the house I had put up for sale. Why keep it? Grandma, grandpa, mother, father long gone. Why let the house rot away? I hadn’t even hammered a nail in years, and it’s far from Belgrade. Around noon I arrived. The German was already waiting Pale, freckled, something odd about him not quite human-looking, yellowish But he liked everything! The rough road, the crooked fence, even the sparrows chirping in the gutter didn’t bother him. He kept rambling about water, rose hips, and fresh air, all while waving money in front of my face. We passed the old storage shed, Grandpa’s scythe was still hanging under the eaves, with a whetstone stuck in an ox horn. I stumbled on something and nearly broke my leg. It was grandma’s yoke. Ah, if you only knew how many times she carried water from the Ćelovača spring with it enough, if poured from the sky, to drown half the village. “One hundred ducats each!” I thought, as I turned the key in the lock. The latch creaked, the door shrieked. Something stirred inside me just for a moment. I shook it off and invited the buyer in. He entered the first room, babbling nonsense, hardly speaking, moaning like a fool. Then I saw it a small chest in the middle of the room. I swear I’d never noticed it before. It seemed to whisper to me: open it. To give him a gift, not to listen to him! When, I saw a mailbox. It was standing in the middle of the house. Oh my, I’ve never seen it before! I feel like someone is whispering, to open it. I approached slowly, as if I were on fire, and lifted the lid. When there, everything. Imalin, needle, military thread, pieces of soil, small lumps, gelers, letters, a carved cross, two epaulettes, along with the order. And a photograph. A young man, I see a soldier. He looks at me, brother, as if he is breathing. I looked back. When, something is written. “My dear son, guard the hearth, the icon of the Slava, the threshing floor, the stubble field, all our fields, the threshing floor, the yard, the orchards, the fields, the well, the house.” “Sweet home that I left…” Last post – island Vido. Through tears I recalled my grandfather’s story, a long-hidden one from myself. I remembered that he was an orphan, that he didn’t even remember his father. Alone, in the storm, the wind, the wilderness… When someone says, “I’m buying a house.” The soul awakens. Oh, thank you, God! I closed the box and said: “It can’t.” The thresholds sang, the beams sang. Somewhere the Swabian disappeared, like the devil before the cross. I went to untie my grandfather’s hair. Marko S. Marković, village of Ljuljaci, Gruža