Zhivko Chingo
The Big Water
Translated into English by Elizabeth Kolupacev Stewart
To my mother Verga
Deciding to tell you about Isaac, the son of Kejtin, has brought back to me such beautiful, delicate and unforgettable memories, such pure and bright moments I don’t think I’ll ever forget. I am so proud when I think of the son of Kejtin, proud as Jesus Christ himself. But I only want to relate to you those hours in the Home, just the cursed hours we passed until we reached the Senterlev mountain. That was a mysterious mountain, the Senterlev. They said that was the mountain the sun was born from; impossible, the mountain from which the sun is born. Does anyone know a similar place, such a mountain from which the sun is born? I do not believe, you know, that the Senterlev mountain was the only such mountain. There must have been some unspoken thing in that; but not even the Headmaster, our dear fatherly Headmaster, Ariton Jakovleski, knew it to be the truth. Whatever it was, one thing became certain — the road to the Senterlev mountain was horribly steep, like the road into hell. And all we had to do was go along the road — curse me — and now, I do not know from where I got all the strength, will power and courage for such a horrible, difficult road. At the beginning I will just say this: the passion for life and freedom was many times greater, a thousand times greater, a million times greater, an infinite amount greater. Curse me if it did not keep us going, kept us from being afraid of the dreadful punishments. Oh, eternal sweet dream. Curse me, it was the voice of the Big Water.
Partners in the assembly line, the dream of the Big Water
They paired me with him in line. Curse me, my friend from the assembly line. They charged me with him, they weighed me down with him. Each one of the exemplary friends was charged with such a bad boy in the assembly line. I said “exemplary”, curse me, because that is a word I hate for life. Exemplary comrade, exemplary pioneer, exemplary member of the Youth Communist organisation, exemplary citizen. Exemplary, I don’t know what else, curse me, exemplary asshole. But that was the assembly line, I swear.
It was Spring 1946, the first Spring after the war. It seems like it was 1,000 years ago. I only remember a little, it was bad weather. Snow. A gale. A big snow storm landed on the Earth and all of the trees that were in blossom were turned to ice. Turned white. And everything went silent all of a sudden, all of the precious and innumerable sounds of the Spring that had just come were gone; nothing remained of that beautiful, strong light. Ice. I remember it very well because I was wearing short Spring pants which were made of a patterned Italian rug. The snow was high, to the waist. Everything, everything was covered; blanketed.
We were a sad group of hungry and dirty children, homeless. Bad, dark little villains as the good teachers called us. Hunted down in plains, in gardens, in forests, in barns, from cliffs, in the big snow. Curse me, we would not give ourselves up. We probably did not realise that they wanted to take us to a Home, under a roof, to a bed, that they would give us hot drinks with a piece of bread and marmalade, that they wanted to do us a good turn, to provide us with every last one of those stinking things that are provided for in the assembly line. Subject to regulations, curse me. All of that was fine but we still wouldn’t give ourselves up. I tell you, all that Spring, we were hunted like little beasts by Red Cross units, teacher units and all kinds of hunters.
I must admit that I changed my mind quickly; after seven days. Curse me, I gave myself up. Okay, I said to myself, I don’t want to sadden the hearts of my uncle Ilko Kostadinovski and my dear aunt Kola Kostadinovska. Okay, I said to myself, I’d better get out of the empty bam, I’ve spent enough time with the mice. But when my dear uncle Ilo, my good uncle Ilo, saw me set off, on parting, when I put out my hand to shake his, I swear, he left his pitchfork, he had been dragging manure out of the stable, wiped his hands quickly on his knees and his shirt front, hugged me so hard I thought he would break my bones. He said:
“Leme, son! Leme my dear little nephew, I won’t say goodbye to you, I would not be Ilo Kostadinovski if I didn’t bring you back from that evil place.” He said it so loudly that even those who were down by the river could hear him; it was as though he wanted everyone to hear him. All of a sudden, my aunt ran towards us breathlessly, with my cousins, Stojna and Mara, my dear little cousins. But my uncle remained firm, at that moment he didn’t pay attention to anything, he kept hugging me closer (he must not have felt my pain) and closer, stronger and stronger, shouting at the top of his voice “Believe me, Leme, I will save you (dear God, the grey, snow-filled sky, cheerfully opening above our heads, there’s a ray of sun, and that small light, triumphant, shows us that it is Spring. Curse me, Spring). Believe me, Leme, my little nephew, I will save you.” (At that, you should have seen my aunt pricking up her ears! As though her bulging eyes were saying “What?! What?!”) “Nothing, Leme,” said my uncle softly, with tears glistening in his eyes, “Just let these hungry years pass,” he said. “You can see for yourself, Leme,” he said quietly “You can see how hard life is, it isn’t very good for anyone, son. What else can be done, you have to go to that dungeon.”
Curse me, that’s what he said “dungeon”. I couldn’t have known what that word meant then, I was simple and ignorant. At the age of twelve, I wrote my name “EM”, because I couldn’t bear to think about the letter “L” as it reminded me of something awful. I had only been to school for one year, and that was about all the knowledge I had in me. At that time, I knew very few words, I must admit, and those that I did know were terrible swear words which I can’t bring myself to write down, because I now know what they mean. When I think of the way I spoke then, curse me, I begin to sweat, I blush with shame. I swear, just at that tragic and sorrowful moment, leaving the dear manure heap, I saw a young, wild rooster with a peppery red comb, swoop like a beast onto a gentle, young hen which was gingerly poking around in the manure, and all of a sudden, without any shame, he wrapped the little hen under him, for just a second, in the wink of an eye, curse me, and it didn’t even make a sound! What a great thing, I thought, they are having it off, but those were not my words, I swear. It was my grandfather Kostadinovski who taught me those words, may he rest in peace. As a matter of fact, he would have said it if he were alive, if he were lying there, under the eaves, warming himself in the Spring sun, getting rid of the ice from his chest. Curse me, in that sort of moment, my grandfather would thaw out completely, he would turn into a blue shining drop. “Oho-ho,” he would say, waving his hands about so you would think he was about to take flight, “oho-ho, they are having it off, Leme.” I was a favourite of my grandfather’s and he was always teaching me little things. I know why the cats spend all day and night miaowing during Winter. I know about the dogs and the cows; I also know why my aunt sometimes would pat me on the head, give me a piece of bread with cheese just so that I would go outside; I also know how angry my uncle would get at my dawdling on the stairs, he couldn’t wait for me to leave the house. “I hope you choke on that bread. Go on, go!” my aunt would blurt in such moments. I swear, I know lots of things like that; things I now had to leave behind. I had to set off at once, I saw tears in my aunt’s eyes. That made me get out all the more quickly. Curse me, if I had to see that for a second longer, I thought I would die, that my heart would burst.
“Leme, goodbye, go in health, but don’t go talking about us, because it would be unfair; I have raised you like one of my own, you know. I cared for you like a little bird!”
“Oh,” I said sympathising, “Oh, dear aunt,” I wanted to say something else, but she started to cry even more forcefully, and finally I had to go. Curse me, how I wanted that moment to be prolonged, to look at that dear manure heap. I was most saddened by the gentle little chickens, I felt a terror when I realized, my God, we are parting, it’s over. I thought there wouldn’t be chickens anywhere else in the world, let alone such dear and kind chickens as these. But it would have been altogether insensitive on my part to delay, I didn’t want to sadden the hearts of my dear relatives any more. Curse me, that’s my nature, I don’t want to hang around for a minute longer than I’m supposed to. And those tears in the eyes of my aunt; I prefer laughter. Curse me, I used to be a giggler, I thought no-one could match me, I joke at everything around me! But most often, I was alone, without anyone in my life. Sometimes I think about how sweetly, how stupidly I used to laugh to myself, like some poor idiot. Curse me, I would be overcome by crazy laughter and couldn’t stop. I remember he would laugh like that too, my friend, the son of Kejtin, you will see, he would laugh his head off. Some people in the Home, and especially those on the staff who thought they knew everything, said he was a bit mad, that even he didn’t know what he was laughing about. Curse me, he did know what he was laughing about. He got the better of them all. At the end, we couldn’t bear those shit heads any more, but we did laugh. Only he could’ve thought of that thing with the tree, curse me. Oho-ho, how all of them were taken in, even the Headmaster Ariton Jakovleski. But where was I? Yes, the parting, good, those tears drowned me. I knew they were false, I knew they were impure, curse me, why would she cry when, as soon as I leave, she would attack my uncle for saying he would get me back. I swear, I saw the hostile look she gave him at that moment, if she could’ve, she would’ve impaled him on the pitch fork. Curse me, during those seven days, while I was hiding in the bam, there wasn’t a single place she didn’t send my poor uncle to look for me. I swear, they were looking under rocks and up trees. Oh God! And now, goodbye, maybe I’ll return one day to save my uncle. “Go Leme, go my dear boy,” said his unhappy face. But really, I couldn’t tear myself away from the warm, enchanting manure heap. Curse me, that was really muddying my mind, I kept thinking there was something unexpected, some sweet mystery hidden in that manure heap. Anyway, I’ll have to come back one day, I thought to myself, I swore to myself.