march 1985.
The lot where we should build the house was lying unused, we only had the frame of the foundation, and my parents suggested that we could use it as a garden. The soil is perfect. So last year and this they planted a lot of stuff, tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes, onions, green peas, even two rows of poppy.
The neighborhood was largely unbuilt - the empty lot behind is presently belonging to P., a musician. Well, a gypsy band tambour player, playing at weddings and taverns. At this time he had just a foundation, and it was straight and flat, varyingly. Where it was straight, it wasn't flat, where it was flat it wasn't straight.
Over the next couple of years he'd put up some walls and the concrete ceiling, not even using proper mortar but the Čurda soil, which does contain a lot of sand, just like our neighbor on the left would do later. The guy on the left was a brother of a guy who was teaching PE at MPSŠC. Neither one finished their houses, they both sold - this guy to another gypsy, whom I knew from the army reserve, he was our med guy - to apply bandage and splinters and generally just do first aid; his twin brother has built a somewhat larger house somewhere to the right, in the yet nonexistent street, next toward the horizon. The musician sold to his cousin (or sister), i.e. Juliška and her husband. He was a džambas (gypsy horsetrader), though not a real one. There was one family of real džambasi, who even had a dug-in tank with the water for the horses (with a whole mess of various junk in the yard, to which Go said "look how rich these are, how many things they have"). This guy would buy second hand mercedeses, fix them (not personally, his garage doesn't even resemble a workshop) and sell. He died sometime in nineties. Juliška is some kind of sister to this med guy (Aleksa) - directly or by uncle. I've left a pass at the corner of our yard, the fence doesn't quite reach the corner, so they can visit each other.
Her house is still a risk. In the beginning the roof of the rear terrace was a concrete slab, leaning on pillars with arches between, but it seems it wasn't firmly attached to the house, so at some point it just fell. Knowing how much time she spends sitting there, it's like a gonk, she's lucky to have been away at the time. The neighbors say it made quite a noise.
Go is standing at about the center of the future house. Behind her there will be anteroom, bathroom, kitchen, and a small passthrough pantry with exit into garage, which would cover the space from the car's rear wheels to eight meters to the right. It was all still undefined yet, I think I made the first inner layout drawings only in the fall.
The future street was just contours. The heap of blocks is Faik's house, some assembly required. The little house behind belonged to his neighbor, who will live in it until they finish the big one behind it, and will then tear down this little one.
The škodilak still ran fine, even though it was already eight years old. The story about changing the car every five years was already mostly forgotten. Moreover, this was the last new car in the family - all cars after this were second-hand (or, in politically rectified language, "pre-owned"). Building the house will literally ruin the car, as I hauled the material with it, never quite having enough money for transportation. It already brought those planks two years ago, and much more awaits in near future.
True, it was eventually sold to another majstor from nearby street, some time around 1991, who then drove it until the end of the nineties. But he had a better car majstor. Dad got beholden to some Saša, whom he dug out from who knows where (city cleaning and garbage, that's where), and it fell to me to keep ringing him, when dad became somewhat (selectively) deaf. The only thing you could bet on about him was that he will never ever complete a sentence. He'd always leave it at half and insert the next one in the middle, without ever returning to finish the first one, or that second, or any. He'd often fix the same thing two or three times.
Mentions: Aleksa Pajkov, Čurda, Faik Rizvani, gonk, Gorana Sredljević (Go), Juliška, majstor, MPSŠC, škodilak, in serbian