Višnja and Arpi have a secon common child now - Boba was born today.
That's all I know of that by calculating backwards. I don't remember a thing of it.
Then there was some celebration of baptism for both him and Silvija, some time before her 2nd birthday, but I frankly don't remember where nor when. They lived in the novogradnja near Dunavska, but the new parts of it. I remember because during that one visit (was it that we were helping them move in? did Arpi get the apartment from his job?) Go inadvertently cracked the best elevator joke: „look, they have a mirror here on every floor“. Sure, as it was inside the cabin.
And that was pretty much all the contact we had throughout the nineties.
Ah, yes, there was one more, when some aunt of Višnja's died and she inherited the furniture or at least helped sell it for someone else. We bought the whole set - considering that it's the rock solid set of local make, the few hinges and whatnot that may be not in best shape can easily be fixed, and the rest can be reupholstered, and it was cheap enough. We dumped it to oma's rezidencija, i.e. the two unused rooms with separate entrance, where we later also put the tub, sink and crapper, and took them only when it was their turn to be installed.
We were thin on the money, though, so we agreed to a staged payment, in three parts, and even that we borrowed from Arpi. We weren't late at all, but somewhere after the middle part, Arpi became unpleasand and kind of aggressive, as if we were already a few months overdue, obviously she sicced him on us. So we found the rest of the money somehow (tanti to a rescue again?) and never ever again had any money with them. Not much contact either, except at times in dad's vineyard. But that was later.
Or was it so much later? Hmmm... let it here, as I can't place it at any precision, it all happened between now and 1997, and lasted some 2-3 years. Namely, the gardens and vineyards where dad had one, were lined up in stripes, going from the river outwards. Actually, from the 2nd levee to the heaps of soil left when they were digging the nearby channel. Formally, the property rights ended some 100m before that, but seeing how this part was a dead end and inacessible, they all extended their lots as far as they could.
Of the inner gang, coming from town, the first one was the majstor from the brewery, and his brother, with whom dad often had some common work; next was the D.S. guy from Vranje - his son was a student of mine in MPSŠC; daughter got married to some Romanian guy and later divorced; then married again to some guy near our new house, and he died later; she worked as a horticulturista for city parks. Next was V.G., with whose son I was in the army - the guy who'd always get wounded; they have allegedly consumed the whole neighborhood, i.e. owe everybody and have nobody left to borrow from, which is a rumor I heard, years later, from Zeki, along with an unrelated story about cats and rats. Next was dad, then Petruţ from the other romanian village, who barely ever came and did even less with his vineyard, so it was a true jungle. We had a customer in that village, and when I asked Valerija about him, she just said „ah the inflation guy... look at him“. True, he was over 130kg. The next guy didn't leave a mark, don't remember who it was, and then the last one was D.T., a majstor from the oil industry, who'd weld a pressurized pipeline while the guys hold him into the pit upside down, by his feet.
Exactly the unremarkable guy's vineyard was what Višnja and Arpi bought. He already knew two of the guys - my dad through me, and D.T. from work - same company, if not same division. The money they sort of borrowed from oma, with the stipulation that she'd get a piece of land in the back to grow her wildflowers to make into wreaths and sell on the green market, mostly the tatarika and štatice lemonijum (which we pronounced shtatizzeh, knowing that it could be stetissy, stetichy, stettiss etc etc, so štatice it is, ciao, done). The deal was soon undone, who knows why, and they simply forbade her to come on their land. The money, then, they never paid back.
To calm oma, we set it with dad to give oma such a piece of land all the way back, in the unused part of the state land. Shee took the chance, and grew a lot of it, she's got that green thumb. I remember how I drove a rodeo over the grazing land, with trunk and backseat chock full of that limonija, smelling nice.
At some point some accusations were thrown around when dad and the first two guys were making quince brandy, and shared it according to each's contribution - someone had more fruit, but then dad's was the still and traditionally 10% of flour goes to the miller. It was all fine and dandy, except there were allegdely some quince from Višnja and Arpi's lot which weren't counted and they got nothing. Hard to prove either way, easy to cause bad blood... Seen this tactic several times. Later I also heard they sold the apartment and bought that house mostly because she was on speaking terms with practically nobody in the building. After just a few years.
Around 1996 or 98 the two decided that they aren't the garden types, so they sold it - to Čarga, who was with his second wife then. Not that he (and wife) lasted much longer; there's trace they were there in 2001. but not in 2005. Likewise, the sellers weren't too happy about selling, as all the money went to pay old debts. I somehow got an impression that one can't shit enough money to satisfy Višnja's consuming appetites, but I got that years later; at the time we didn't meet much, even there in the vineyards. I went there only when I was needed, so I wasn't kept updated.