Brotherliness and Unity

At the farmer’s market people busily made their way through the crush. Branko always got lost in the crowded labyrinth of the sales booths at the market in his hometown and as usual he just drifted. It was the time of the potato crop and it smelled of soil.

‘Hello’ he yelled into his mobile phone and tried hard to cancel out the loud babble of voices that surrounded him. A soft voice tried to make itself heard, it was Anita, his friend Marian’s wife.

‘Branko, I have bad news. Marian … Marian died on Thursday. We all had hoped against hope … he didn’t give up fighting until the end. But … the tumour was too big.’
Branko mumbled something before he pressed the red button on the mobile. He stood rooted on the spot with people hurriedly passing by. People surged like a shoal, some bumping into him, but he just stood there, motionless like a statue.

‘I lost him … AGAIN,’ he thought ‘and this time he’s gone for good.’ Everything just moved on - people went by and did their shopping as if nothing had happened and time continued to go by, without regard for what had happened. There was nothing that could turn back the clock. Everything was on the move on the market. Just like on that day five years ago: Branko remembered that it had been summer, mid-August and the air had tasted sweet and sour of ripe tomatoes. Here in his homeland the tomatoes were so giant and succulent, that you could slice them like bread.

Sporadically, Branko had greeted people he knew; downtown they were getting fewer year by year. But in the suburb, where he came from and where he had built a huge house - the monument of his diligence and success - he was still well known: Branko, the Jugo-Shvabo . He was at home here, but he was not a local anymore. Here, among his people he could feel it physically, that living abroad has had shaped him like plasticine. He realised that he had taken on a foreign shape, readily identifiable. Thirty years of living abroad had made him walk differently from the others, dress differently from the others and even smell differently. He had to do only a little shopping and so he fed his eyes on the fresh produce the local soil had bred and enjoyed observing people’s appearances and behaviour. He took his time and folded his hands behind his back, so that there was no drive coming from the swinging arms, instead he strode like a visitor to a museum. He was unaware of the fact that at another time at another place - in the seaport of Rijeka - his father used to walk just in this way through the market, a solitary observer with his hands folded behind his back as if he wore an invisible straitjacket. Branko’s father was already dead. He had gone away to live on his own, leaving Branko’s mother alone with five kids when Branko was a little boy.

On that day at the farmer’s market five years ago, there was a stall, overloaded with red peppers, where Branko stopped. The peasant behind the stall was a crowd puller entertaining the crowds. Bantering with his customers he exposed his tooth spaces - here, tooth spaces smiled at you everywhere - and his rattling laughter seemed to be intoxicating, as the whole crowd was bursting with laughter. Everything was sound and movement; the peasant shouted out loud his special offers and busily filled peppers in rustling thin plastic bags. People jostled and there was a great tangle of talk. Branko stood quietly, solid as a rock and looked the peasant directly in the eyes. The peasant returned his look. Then the world turned quiet around him, everything halted, as if the Sleeping Beauty had just pricked her finger with the thorn of a rose and all life had fallen asleep. There were only the two men: the cheerful peasant and the solitary observer - wordlessly facing each other. Time stretched out until its utmost length and then the instant of recognition came as suddenly as the tears that watered the eyes of the two old friends. Marian. It was him. Branko remembered him well. It was thirty years ago.

He was teary-eyed from laughing at Marian’s never-ending series of jokes. And the louder he had laughed, the more Marian had played up, sputtering with wits. They were a perfect match: Marian the entertainer and Branko the barometer of public opinion. Everyone was fond of their company. It was the evening of their farewell - the two friends and other lads were off to the army, so they had gathered downtown to celebrate. The hotel hall was filled with young people: army aspirants of eighteen to nineteen, friends and girlfriends. Most of the girls were even younger, like Branko’s girlfriend Julijana, she was only fifteen. The noise of laughing, talking and the bass of the band quaked in wine-filled stomachs.

‘Who said that Branko doesn’t dance? I beg your pardon, that’s nonsense! This man –‘ Marian paused and ceremonially pointed his finger at Branko, ‘this man dances Argentinean Tango and juggles with jars filled to the rim with wine at the same time, for heaven’s sake!’

Screechy laughter. Branko was the keenest non-dancer of all. Never did he dance. On one occasion, after he had been violently pushed, he had tried. Within only two minutes he managed to step on Julijana’s feet fifteen times at the least, cumbersomely shifting his body weight from one foot to the other, looking like a sad bear or like someone who needs to pee urgently but has to wait in a long queue in front of the loo. Julijana was addicted to dance, but she was addicted to Branko, too. Teenage love is unconditional. So she was ready to wait for one year, until her lover would have finished military service and would be returning to her. But first it was time to serve, time to say goodbye to boyhood, cross the line and enter the world of real men. The only way to do that was going to the army. It was Marian, who was on Branko’s side when he was marching through dark forests the whole night through, heavily loaded with gear. Friendship between men who served together is also unconditional. Branko was Croatian and he tended to be a patriot. Marian had Serb origins. But that had never been a barrier between them. Brotherliness and unity: that was the political doctrine of the ruling Communist Party in Yugoslavia. Branko and Marian lived accordingly. They were best friends; they loved, respected and leaned on each other. So for them ‘brotherliness and unity’ was not a doctrine. For them it was heartfelt.

But being a real man also meant starting a family and taking on responsibility. Soon after they had returned from the army, Branko and Marian married and Branko took the chance to emigrate, went to Germany, got a job and settled there with his wife Julijana and their little daughter. So they lost track of each other. It took thirty years for them to meet again on the market of their hometown. Their children were grown-up; the building of their houses had been finished long ago; the Croatian Republic had been proclaimed; the Balkan War had come and gone; their hair had grown thin; on their foreheads the plough of time had left furrows and their hearts were insidiously afflicted with the weight of aging. And then the reunion hit them so forcefully, that thirty years of lifetime meant not more than the blink of an eye. Suddenly they were facing each other and had to make just one step ahead to hug each other. Branko opened his arms, doffed the invisible straitjacket and abandoned the feeling of estrangement. In that hug he felt close to his friend straight away and suddenly he felt native to his country again. There was no need of explaining, their tears of joy explained everything.

Branko became teary-eyed at the hot chilli in the goulash soup.
‘That goulash soup is good! Pretty hot - just right,’ Branko blinked rapidly and smacked his lips with satisfaction.
‘Yes, it’s the real stuff! I made the chilli myself, you know. The secret is that I don’t seed the peppers before I dry them. That’s why the chilli is so hot,’ said Marian, the host, who sat at the long dinner table opposite Branko, whom he had invited together with his wife, daughter as well as the whole neighbourhood to have a great meal on the occasion of the reunion with his old friend. The veranda was packed, the food was incessantly dished up and the dinner was a long haul. Marian could not remain seated, he kept jumping up like a rubber ball every time a funny thought occurred to him and that was frequently the case. Later on someone took an accordion and started to play. One by one they joined in singing the old folk songs that had been sung for generations. First they sang sad songs with lyrics about love and loss that made them shiver. But then they sang Bećarac which made them laugh and as soon as one verse ended, Marian jumped up intoning and inventing new rhyming lyrics:

‘I must tell you of my great despair’ he sang and the others repeated in chorus.
‘My tyre’s broken and I have no spare’ was Marian’s second verse and again the others repeated it laughing. Marian went on with many further verses. He was a real Bećar, and just like a Bećar he teased and mocked singing as the choir leader, inventing many funny verses which the others repeated, but their singing often broke by laughter. From that day on, Branko and Marian maintained their friendship, visited each other on many occasions, when Branko was in Croatia.
The day Branko received the message of his friend’s death – who was the contemporary witness of his youth and the proof that brotherliness and unity existed – Branko recollected all those things, their boyhood, their re-union, their friendship. Ever since that day Branko kept looking for a stall with red peppers and a peasant with tooth spaces every time he went to the farmer’s market in his hometown. Although he knew that the one he was looking for was dead, he still kept searching for him, opened his ears, but he could not hear that familiar rattling laughter. Ever since that day Branko walked through the market with his hands folded behind his back, feeling slightly strange among his fellow countrymen and feeling lost in the crowded labyrinth of the sales booths.