13-VI-2015.
They called yesterday, Aleksandar died, funeral today.
We arrived and they were all already there - Žarko and his mom and grandmother and wife and sister, and Aleksandar's brother and sister (the chubby one) by uncle, and tetka Dara.
In Aleksandar we noticed, five years ago, that waxy-olive tan, the kind his father sported in his last years, and frankly so did Beštara. When it looks as if there was a good summer's tan which just started receding. But it was september then and it was normal to look like that, and now it turned out that he did well by pushing for five more years afterwards. Guess that's because it was thin, to differ from his father. Regardless, the result was the same, stroke.
We stayed outside the chapel, what business we atheists have to listen to the priest advertising his boss and saying nothing about the deceased. On the other hand, I know what the church thinks about atheists, and I feel uneasy about treading over what the sincere believers consider their holy ground. Therefore, two cigarettes outside while that lasted.
The brother-by-uncle is the same side of beef with a boxer's face as he always was, and all the talk from Aleksandar's mother that his wife is a cheap gold digger which will rob him and leave [him] is just talk, she's still there and not going anywhere. Same as we rememberher, a thin bird, fifty [kg] with bed and weren't she a long-haired blonde [she] would pass unnoticed. The mother, however, has gone quite off kilter. The arrangement is that the widow will share the ground floor with her and take care of her, while Žarko and his family keep their upstairs apartment.
tetka Dara had an eye surgery, the iris now being visibly larger, as in cheap SF movie effects, but she said she sees quite well now, and is still as witty and skilled as she always was, and she performed a circumspect maneuver to talk us into driving her home after the daća. Too bad, we just meant to offer her a lift.
Žarko was really the proper host, kept an eye on the organization, lest it falls short in any respect. What made it easier now is that there's a restaurant at the corner by the cemetery, where the daća are held. The grub was, of course, the same each time* - a čorba, fried hake fish, poppy rolls. After the daća we were invited to sit with them, but nope, we already told Lena we'll see her afterwards. So we left tetka Dara in one of those confused little streets, she toddled upstairs to her place and we negotiated our way out and drove towards Belgrade. Somewhere halfway between Alibunar and Pančevo the cops stopped us, to check our trunk, they check everyone's. We later heard there was a murder somewhere, the killers were running away, so check all. Though I don't quite understand what they thought may fit saxo's trunk, but there it was.
I didn't ride that stretch of the road in quite a long time, maybe by late sixties when that was the way to Romania, until the road straight to Vršac was built. Nothing much, though, except we saw oodles of new gastarbajter houses on the sides of main streets in villages on the way. We arrived at Lena's building around 18, waited one cigarette until she appeared, on her super bicycle. Went up with her, sat a while. Handed her a box of fresh mufljuzi (v. house dictionary) and the photo from the wedding five years ago, which they sent, it all gets delivered sooner or later.
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* it was still all new to us then, but... there'll be more of it, and each time the same. No problem, it's good.
Mentions: Aleksandar Zarin, čorba, daća, gastarbajter, house dictionary, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Milovan Sebešćen (Beštara), saxo, tetka Dara, Žarko Zarin, in serbian