All Aunt Ljuba’s Engagements

/, Literature, Blesok no. 35/All Aunt Ljuba’s Engagements

All Aunt Ljuba’s Engagements

So she stopped going out. She even stopped grieving for Yug. She sat and knitted her woolen sweaters, oblivious to how fast the weeks, even years, passed. She finally discovered, quite by accident, and almost surprised herself at this discovery, that the days of being overwhelmed by thoughts of some young man, met by chance on the street or on the promenade, were long gone. She discovered that she was much more interested in memories than in life, and she knew immediately that this was something to be concerned about.
This awareness, which helped her evaluate her situation more realistically, was perhaps one reason why Aunt Ljuba gave in to her father’s insistence that she look for her life’s companion among the people of our street. As a matter of fact, she was not very sure how this thought took over. One thing was certain: her father, from the very beginning, cunningly and steadfastly managed to involve himself in her dilemmas and in her fate. He incessantly complained about his own loneliness, and he never forgot her bad luck, which was for him a new drop of bile in his bitter cup.
And it all began very obscurely. It started on Sundays, after the liturgy, seeing how his peers would visit four or five houses before they went home from church. They would visit their daughters or sons, bringing buns and lollipops for their grandchildren. “And I, what is my fate?” he would moan. “Anastasija, your sister, went to Strumica. Your brother remained in Skopje. Galaba married somebody in Novo Selo. And where will I go if you too go off somewhere? Your mother and I will have to move immediately. Under the crosses of St. Petka.”
Even before he was specific about his intentions for her, her father invited Koljo Nikodinovski to the house. He had asked him to take a look at the knitting machine and, if possible, to give his opinion concerning a loose screw on its handle.
Koljo Nikodinovski had recently returned from Skopje. He had attended some kind of mechanics’ course, and now, before his exams, he had returned home, proud and spruced up, smooth even under his skin, and very talkative. Of course, he apologized for not bringing his tools. (Oh, he would have had his tools, but in this instance he had no idea how much he was supposed to help. Still, he advised Grandpa Mone to talk directly to the representative of the company. He thought he could easily get him the address. “Companies care about their reputations!” Koljo Nikodinovski said all of this with great authority and expertise.)
“Did you see him? A spruced-up screwdriver,” Aunt Ljuba coldly judged him when he left, but a bitter tone of envy was evident in her words.
“He’s just like you: stubborn, irreconcilable. He immediately starts sniffing around what he should just grab,” her father countered, justifying his choice, but at the same time admiring the incisive way she quickly judged people.
“I feel wretched,” Aunt Ljuba bristled. “Don’t make me cry, please. Everything should be done in proportion. And you need a little tact to do what you have in mind!”
“Yesterday he was nobody, but tomorrow…”
“It’s too soon to talk about tomorrow, and, sorry to say, he still reeks of what he was yesterday,” Aunt Ljuba interrupted again, thinking of the pans of burek Koljo used to deliver to the barracks every day. “He’s just a little spruced-up monkey. And I don’t think he’ll ever amount to more than he’s always been.”
“Whatever I’ve got becomes twice as much with him,” her father insisted.
“Keep your calculations for the market. They give me heartburn. An awl. That’s what he is. An awl for mending shoes.”
My God, Aunt Ljuba said this just three weeks before they were engaged. In fact, at the moment of her betrothal to Koljo, she still felt that her sarcastic words echoed in the room, and that not enough hours or days had passed for what had been said to die out or at least turn into a mere memory, something else that we can, if we want, push away from ourselves in disdain.
Aunt Ljuba’s engagement went unnoticed. It was not really an event at all, nothing to be commemorated as a particularly important occurrence. It was just a contract that was supposed to form the basis for the marital happiness of Aunt Ljuba and Koljo Nikodinovski.
Koljo Nikodinovski came directly from Skopje for the engagement, on the 3:15 train. He said he was coming right from the train. But that he just stopped off at home to see the Old Man. (I couldn’t bring him here with me. I think you understand me, he’s utterly frail. I think the most awful thing is when life starts to squeeze you from the feet up. Paralysis can throw you into terrible feebleness. I told him: Fight, Old Bone! Don’t give up! With your toes, with your toenails if necessary, fight. And he goes silent. Sighs).
After he sat down, Koljo took a blue envelope from his inner pocket and carefully placed it on the table. Drumming on it with his finger, smiling, with inexplicable assurance in his voice, he suddenly declared that he would no longer drag greasy burek pans through outlying streets and around the barracks with their barbed wire fences. He was a driver already. He needed only to buy a car. And he had some brochures with him. But he had left them home.
Aunt Ljuba stopped knitting, turned to him, and looked at him intently. Her neck became even thinner and longer. Aunt Ljuba’s gaze froze on Koljo’s eyes.
“And how do you intend to do that?” Aunt Ljuba asked.
“I didn’t study in order to go on making burek,” Koljo said, absorbing her gaze. Then he pointed to the blue envelope. “I didn’t work in vain for this piece of paper.”
“So you suddenly want to mingle with real people, huh?” Aunt Ljuba smiled. “You hear that, Mone?” She always addressed her father by name. “Koljo wants to give up his burek pans. And how are you thinking of doing this?” Aunt Ljuba continued her rigorous interrogation.
“I thought we’d talk about that together,” Koljo said.
“See, he wants to talk.” She turned to her father and started getting up from the knitting machine. Except that Koljo Nikodinovski didn’t realize how long it would take for her to get out from the layers of the sweater that fell on her knees.
“Say no more,” she said and went to the cupboard. The glasses and bottles clattered as she arranged them on the nickel-plated tray. “It’s all clear. How much do you need to buy this car?” she asked without turning toward him.
“Just a little,” Koljo blurted out. “And it’ll be paid back in a year. I figured it out. In just one year the investment will pay off.” His determination again put a gleam in his eyes.
“Couldn’t you start with a carriage? Every career starts from the bottom,” her father said, joining the discussion. He was either really afraid that Aunt Ljuba would agree to Koljo’s request, or he just wanted to delay his daughter’s hasty decision.
“And who’s crazy enough to wrack his brains in school in order to ride a carriage afterwards? And what business can be done with a carriage? Our merchants don’t ride on wooden wheels anymore. What kind of business would somebody have driving a carriage? I thought all this out while I was studying. It’s out of the question.”
My God, how logical this damn fool was! So exact that nobody had the power to oppose him. Even Aunt Ljuba said nothing as she served him.
They toasted. The brandy was very strong. It burned through their veins.
And the next day workmen came. They started knocking down the wall and building a huge gate. Nobody knew what for. Until one morning Koljo came down the hill in a black Ford, a square box so shiny that the whole street seemed to be reflected in it.
At dusk, Aunt Ljuba appeared under the vines in a long violet dress, tight to her waist with rich pleats above her shiny shoes. She climbed onto the front seat and adjusted her hat, Koljo slammed the door, started the engine, and with a clamor they drove onto the street, then down to the river and the gardens. By evening the engagement of Aunt Ljuba and Koljo Nikodinovski was no longer a secret for any of the inhabitants of 23rd Infantry Regiment Street.
Lost in her memories, Aunt Ljuba did not even notice Maria coming down from the floor above. But suddenly she saw the private holding the horse by its reins as Captain Bodo climbed into the saddle. Then the captain adjusted the cap he took from Maria’s tiny pink hands, took the reins, and sat quite securely on the restless back of the white horse. With his right hand he patted its long white neck. The horse stopped gamboling and started rhythmically dancing on the cobblestones; and the captain held his head high. He did not even look at Maria; he was completely immersed in this play of strength and manhood, all converted into a desire and attempt to tame this friskiness, to subdue it. With merely half an ear he heard the clomping of the private’s horse, which followed his as they went down to the barracks.
Maria went back under the trellis. She wanted to pluck the grapes that had lavishly spread along the vines this year, but she changed her mind and sat at the low tripod squeezing her fists between her knees, white from being bent. For several minutes she listened intently to the rhythm of the knitting machine, and she could imagine the metal teeth leading the thread from one loop to another and how one half of the sweater was growing. For a moment she felt Sofia’s muzzle on her forearm, and then she saw the animal’s tongue licking the white spot under her neck. Maria let the cat stretch out on her lap, and she ran her fingers down its soft fur.
“Hey!” Aunt Ljuba’s father called from the porch. Aunt Ljuba just had to lift her eyes to see him. Actually, she’d forgotten about him. Or she was too absorbed with Maria. Maria on the balcony. Maria on the stairs. Maria pressed against the white horse. She was fairly sure that she must be a good lover. She noticed that whenever she would see Mr. Bodo off, she touched her rosy hand to the bulging veins of the white horse, below the saddle, on its flanks. And the white horse, feeling this caress, merely twitched its ears as though they were a pair of scissors. Aunt Ljuba couldn’t really explain how her father had suddenly appeared in the doorway with the same sickle he had sharpened a while ago. As if he had an axe in his hand. And the sickle was indeed an axe, as he used it to separate roosters from their crested heads with a single blow. “Hey!” her father called again. “I thought we’d pick some grapes.”
“Put down that sickle,” Aunt Ljuba yelled. “At least put it down while you’re prancing around the house.”
“Why should I put it down? And what makes you think you should be giving me orders?” he burst in at once. “You think I should kowtow to those I’ve raised, those I’ve stood on their feet?”
Aunt Ljuba got out from under the machine and came to the doorway. She was wearing her long blue dress with its fish-like design, fish in some vague, light-gray shade, sort of dark silver.
“So why are you telling me that you’re going for grapes?” Aunt Ljuba asked quite calmly.
“I said, we can go together, if it’s possible.”
“Tomorrow’s Friday. A bunch of peasants are coming for their sweaters.”
“Oh yeah,” her father said, suddenly agreeable and restrained. “I completely forgot that tomorrow’s a market day.”
“Lots of people go to vineyards alone. When did you start being different from others?” Aunt Ljuba said.
Maria placed the cat on the ground as if she were putting down a full jug that she didn’t want to spill, and then she got up, swaying on her hips. When she came to the overhang of the summer kitchen, she reached for some dried fruit from the counter, picking through them a long time before taking a bite. They should really be soaked first; that way the taste of apricots comes alive on the palate. Maria remembered when she climbed up the branches of the apricot tree they were harvesting at the vineyard in Sujtlak.
“You’ll get all scratched up,” Aunt Ljuba called, sitting at the boundary marker.
Maria laughed as she tried to get to the ripe fruits. But she didn’t try too hard. In all that striving and climbing the branches, the desire to play and frolic was greater than the need to pick fruit.
Watching her eating the dried fruit, Aunt Ljuba also remembered the picking of apricots. In her demeanor was a lot of feigned naivete. She remembered her conclusion then. And now, unfortunately, she knew she wasn’t wrong in her judgment. She was too sweet not to be desirable, Aunt Ljuba thought at the very moment Maria appeared in the doorway.
“Take me too, I haven’t been to the vineyard for quite a while,” she said to Grandpa Mone. Grandpa Mone stared at her for a long time, who knows why, and promised her nothing when he left for higher ground.

Translated by: Elizabeta Bakovska

2018-08-21T17:23:26+00:00 April 1st, 2004|Categories: Prose, Literature, Blesok no. 35|0 Comments