“I never seen this kind of pattern,” her father said. “I know every sweater you’ve knitted, but I never seen one like this.”
Although she did not lift her eyes from the red yarn that ran though her needles, Aunt Ljuba knew that her father was lying on his back and that he had placed his right arm under his head so he could more easily examine the boards of the ceiling.
“So you’re an expert on patterns now,” Aunt Ljuba taunted him. “I thought you didn’t care about them.”
“I know more about patterns than I do about grandmas,” he tried to joke, sitting up in bed. And then he got up. She felt the chill of his shadow passing over her head, though the sun did not enter the room because of the rich greenery of the vines. But this lasted only for a moment, because Grandpa Mone went to the doorway. Like a ghost. His gray head passed right under the flowerpots of blossoming violets, lined up in the recess of the wall directly across her window.
Maria lives right above Aunt Ljuba’s room. The tiny, rosy Maria. So sweet, so delicate. And her husband, Captain Bodo. A while ago, as he came down the stairs, Mr. Bodo was trying to sing the melody he started singing earlier in the morning, the very moment he woke up. In fact, his tiny, rosy Maria claims that Mr. Bodo starts his morning concert even before he opens his eyes. “As if the melodies spend the night on the tip of his tongue. And as soon as he opens his mouth, they fly out like birds,” Maria says, but Aunt Ljuba can’t figure out whether she is complaining or wants to emphasize the vitality and joie de vivre of her husband.
Incidentally, Mr. Bodo’s singing is a special type, one that might easily be called unusual. He sort of whistles through his teeth, and the melody barely escapes his protruding but somewhat pursed lips, which quiver when the sound is released. It also seems that Mr. Bodo cannot imagine singing without including at least some element of the features of the more tranquil instruments, such as the flute.
Today, when he entered the porch, Mr. Bodo smiled politely at Aunt Ljuba. “Good morning, Miss Ljuba,” Mr. Bodo said, saluting military style. Whenever he went to the well to wash, Mr. Bodo would descend the stairs bareheaded, in the same manner he saluted.
Aunt Ljuba turned her head toward him, oddly situated on her long neck, and ignored her knitting for a moment, moving her eyes to the other window, from which she could easily follow the way the Captain removed his shirt and placed it on a broken branch. Then he buried the fingers of one hand into his chest hairs, and with his other carefully lowered the rope and its bucket into the well.
Then her father approached the well, carrying a sickle. He probably wants to sharpen it on the sandstone, thought Aunt Ljuba. He’s getting the vineyard ready. He’ll cut down the brush. He’ll scare off the green lizards.
Aunt Ljuba heard the door squeak above her head, and she knew it was Maria. She stopped for several moments at the balcony door, as if indecisive, then walked out onto it in her slippers, and all was quiet again. She must be leaning on the iron railing, thought Aunt Ljuba, and she could clearly see in her mind how the mild rays of the early sun coated Maria’s soft skin. As she stands in that manner, not yet fully awake and smiling, her eyes must wander curiously along the street that runs from the fountain to the Stone Bridge. Beyond the river are the barracks and the exercise fields, and further on the barren and gray hills that melt away in the haze. Along 23rd Infantry Regiment Street, or more precisely, along the cobblestone street that runs between the two rows of brightly painted houses, the shoes of the glossy horses are already clattering. Aunt Ljuba stops knitting again. She listens to the din that barely reached her room a while ago, which now suddenly fills the space around her. She immediately imagines the large, trimmed tails swaying, a lot like paint brushes, and she runs to the window that faces the street and looks for a long time at the playful, muscular beasts.
Captain Bodo quickly buttoned his uniform shirt, then returned to the porch across from Aunt Ljuba’s window, where he patiently waited for Maria to bring his hat.
Every morning, when the scampering horses reached 23rd Infantry Regiment Street, Aunt Ljuba’s heart filled with sadness. Who knows why, but it was exactly then that she remembered all the fiancés that left her for the barracks, riding away from her life.
Dear God! How time flies. She’d knit two parts. Then she’d knit two more. Then she’d knit the sleeves, sew them, and – see, it’s already dark, then it’s dawn. Sometimes it seemed to her that centuries flew by.
Aunt Ljuba’s first fiancé was Sergeant Rade. Then there was the post office clerk Vlada Savich. Vlada Savich asked for the house as a dowry for marrying Aunt Ljuba. Of course, in addition to the house he asked for some cash.
And Sergeant Rade was even less modest. What did he ask for?
He wanted a lot, but he got nothing. That was why Rade broke the engagement with Aunt Ljuba, deserted her, and overnight became engaged to little Zinka, the girl from the officers’ canteen. Aunt Ljuba said, “Good for him! He took one who serves breakfast to just about half the mess hall.”
Aunt Ljuba remembered the morning Rade announced he was leaving. “He came down the stairs so confused that I understood immediately.” She later related the event in an attempt to find comedy in the thing that actually caused the most pain. “God, he looked like such a nitwit as he balanced on the toes of his left foot. He leaned back and forth, twisting on that foot of his. It was like he was putting out a cigarette with the toes of his polished shoe. That’s the way it seemed, and he was afraid to look me in the eyes.”
“Are you leaving because of the dowry or because of me?” Aunt Ljuba asked.
“We discussed it yesterday,” Rade managed to answer, letting her know that the discussion was over unless she had a new proposal, but that he really expected them just to say good-bye.
“And no doubt he expected me to give in to his blackmail. Well, don’t go on hoping for that, I thought, and I waited for him to look at me. But he didn’t look at me, and he didn’t ask me anything either. He was so confused.”
Aunt Ljuba stood in the doorway all that time. She was used to having Sergeant Rade kiss her on the cheek before he left for his regular morning exercises. She’d lift her face, and he’d kiss her. That morning she stood at the door without doing anything. But deep inside she wished that Sergeant Rade would still kiss her, though he was leaving for good. Maybe she’d be able to handle this first separation more easily that way.
When Vlada Savich the post office clerk jilted her, he left only his business card. Aunt Ljuba’s father, Grandpa Mone, at first wanted to collect rent from him, by court order if necessary (Vlada Savich, like Sergeant Rade, had been their tenant); and he wanted to do so only because Vlada Savich had left in the middle of the month, without giving notice, and he hadn’t paid for the month in advance. But Aunt Ljuba did not permit any court action. She told her father that fondness couldn’t be bought. But she also said that she had no intention of charging for her illusions. Lord, she said this to everybody so reasonably that her father didn’t try to contradict her.
Right after Vlada Savich left, Aunt Ljuba asked Grandpa Mone to buy her a knitting machine. She candidly declared that only getting into serious business would save us from the troubles that life wanted to dish out, and that he, as a father, had to help her realize her intentions.
To be sure, after they bought the machine things became easier. She made money. She became independent. Also, now people entered her life in a different manner. She accepted them without being intimidated, and she judged them on the same terms they judged her.
For example, Lieutenant Haralampie. Lieutenant Haralampie was kicked out of Aunt Ljuba’s house and heart when she showed him the gate after hearing he regularly visited the Kurbevi’s brothel, located at the curve of the City Clock Tower. Lieutenant Haralampie later referred to his honor as an officer and the fact that he had visited the aforementioned bar only once.
“It’s not a bar, it’s a whorehouse!” Aunt Ljuba insisted.
“It’s a bar, sweetheart. On my word as an officer!” Lieutenant Haralampie claimed unconvincingly, knowing that he couldn’t overturn Aunt Ljuba’s judgment.
Of all her separations, she really remembered only one. It was when Yug left. Yug played in the “23rd Infantry Regiment Orchestra.” He played the flute. He had very beautiful hands, with long, pampered fingers. And whiskers like the wings of a swallow. He spoke in a whisper. Aunt Ljuba truly died when Yug whispered to her.
Yug left on a Monday, along with the “23rd Infantry Orchestra.” He left without asking her to go with him. Actually, he wrote her beautiful letters in his ornate handwriting. He hinted at some imminent changes that would surely place him in a position to more freely plan his future and that of Aunt Ljuba, he apologized for his being unsettled, and often his letters were full of heavy self-recriminations that Aunt Ljuba could never really understand.
But once, perhaps in a moment of resolve, or perhaps in a moment of despair, Aunt Ljuba answered that his letters lacked compassion, that they unnecessarily complicated their relationship, and that the self-torture led nowhere. Then she wrote that people require clear and precise language, even in matters of love, that love does not obligate one to self-examination and self-accusation, and that she considered her insistence on this kind of relationship a small sacrifice to ask of him.
Then Aunt Ljuba waited for an answer. She remembered well that she wrote the letter on Friday, the seventh of September, and that Yug must have read it on Sunday. So, according to her calculation, the answer, if Yug answered at all, would arrive on Tuesday or Wednesday, certainly no later than Thursday. When Friday, the fourteenth of September, passed with no answer, Aunt Ljuba went out onto the street three times (she never did this before). Once she even asked the postman what the chances were that a letter could be lost. “None!” Cane Tref mercilessly declared, burying all her hopes.
the art is inside
