About the surname to today's day I'm still not sure whether it was for real or was it a špicnamet.
Two brothers, third house in šreh from us, towards the park. The older, Gradivoj, was my year perhaps, or next year, while the younger, Ivan, was two years behind him. We played a lot as kids, they were often in my yard or I in theirs. They had the first television set in our neighborhood, I guess as early as 1963 or even maybe the previous year, and I remember that I watched the „Mirror of citizen Obedient“ with Mija Aleksić, and that I considered it a miracle unseen before.
They had some niece from Belgrade, smallish and bright blonde. Not that there weren't any blondes in our end, it's that this one was some kind of vila (fairy) in my eyes. No, that wasn't the time when I started being stoked on blondes, it's just that I still somehow remember those two or three times when I saw her.
Apart from parents, the grandparents too lived with them. The grandfather was a sack of flies, old mocker. During the war he somehow ended up in the US navy and learned the barber trade (v. july 1967.). Only once he was invited to cut my hair. Suffered from the same downside as did čika Draga, he knew the trade but quite briefly. While the latter knew how to make two styles (more or less the same), the old man knew one, american navy official. Not even my dad liked that, and didn't call him the second time.
Gradivoj took after his mother - curly haired, chubby and always like sweaty, reminded me often of Oliver Hardy. At least married a nice girl, while he lasted. Ivan was some engineer, don't know what kind, and grew into a tall slim guy, the only one who took after grandmother. They both died between 2001 and 2015, by which time all the others were already dead too. I have no idea whether they left any children, as I haven't seen much of either of them since our move from the street.
Their mother was also full of herself (in line with husband and his father; the mother-in-law was slim). She was the (head?) nurse at the hospital, and while dad was under suspicion of having contracted tuberculosis, she came regularly to give him streptomycin injections, which I vividly remember.
Their dad, on the other hand, has always been a director somewhere. Smallish but wider, thin haired and... well, there's a word „dežmekast“ in serbian, which brings his image every time when I start guessing its meaning. And he was a local legend too, mostly of tavern type, of the kind which begin „and this guy, how much could he eat, ...“. One of those merits being written down here.
Some time by the end of 1946 or one of the following years, he had to go to Belgrade to, as a director of an agricultural unit, submit his annual report to the ministry. It was screwy, there were still many opponents of the regime everywhere, sabotages were frequent, and it was often very easy for any failure in recovery and building to be named one, and the alleged saboteur would risk a longish incarceration or who knows what. So, with ass chewing pants, he went there and passed with flying colors. Relieved, he went on to treat himself, and so loony with responsibility and relaxation, in a tavern he ordered „25 wires“, i.e. skewers. Not 25 ćevapčići, of which ten was a regular dish and 25 would be for two very hungry persons, nope, 25 ražnjići (ražanj being the spit, and ražnjić its diminutive, i.e. skewer). A single meal dish is 3 or 4 wires, maybe five if they're wooden and shorter. The waiter came back to recheck the order, and as jumpy as he was, he fired a „are you deaf, how many times do I have to say 25 wires? I said 25 wires and I mean 25 wires!“. The floor manager did the same, not believing his ears, and got the same treatment, he just pushed his own phrase over and over, not hearing himself.
And the 25 skewers arrive. The waiters took shelter around the corners and peeked out to see what will happen now. Of course, once he saw the heap in front of himself, his ears finally let in what he said five times. Now, it is what it is and here it is. Not beyond his ability to pay, it's more a matter of honor, he wouldn't confess that he, the big director, fucked up in distress. So he leaned on it. As per the legend, he ate only half of the twentyfourth wire, and one piece of the last one, just to do them some justice. Paid and left... and what now? That's about kilo and a half of just meat, regardless of the size of belly he cultivated then, these take time to digest. So walk. To Kalemegdan, then to Slavija, then to Skadarlija, then take a break. Sat somewhere, downed two steins of beer, then two or three more rounds of walk.
In the evening he reappeared in the same tavern and just said „ten with onion“. The guys, as if they saw a ghost. The dinner was on the house.
He caught a šinobus, then still the brand new miracle of technology, later in the evening, to Fabrika station. By the time he came home, he was able to breathe normally.
6-I-2024 - 22-XII-2023