A SENTIMENTAL STORY
I had an amazing grandmother. Tashka.
She lived, according to her count, ninety-eight years, but,
according to ours, about one hundred and three. Her markers of time were
births, engagements, weddings, death, terror, and wars.
She was short, pale, with tender blue eyes that invited you
to approach and kiss her hand. Her voice was gentle, her speech deliberate,
thoughtful, purring, almost a whisper.
She became an orphan early. Her brother took care of her. But
when he was threatened by danger, and before escaping abroad, he married
her off at the age of sixteen, while she was still almost a child. I
remember the story about their first meeting, before her future husband
proposed. My grandmother, short as she was, had to stand on a chair and
look over a wall in order to see the face of her future husband (spouse
is her word). And he--"the spouse"--was tall, slim, and handsome.
She was married to this poor man because "he too was small in stature." But
he was not fortunate, and, a year later, he returned from the market with
"a bad heart," with stomach pains, and three days later developed a fever
and died, crushed with pain. My grandmother had no choice but to return to
her brother. To be precise, to his home, as he was already over the border.
His wife, my other grandmother, was left alone with four small children,
each reaching to the next one's ears. She was a resolute and courageous
woman, and she accepted my grandmother with an open heart. Some time later,
while at the bakery, my other grandmother found out that a well known
wealthy man, the merchant Vasile Mundzija, had returned from Korce because
of his eyes. She heard that his daughters had rejected him, God having
given him no son, and that he had asked his friends to find a woman to take
care of him. My grandmother Maca ran to him without returning home, found
him sitting in front of his door, and talked to him about my grandmother
Tashka. He knew nothing about either of them, but he decided to accept her,
seeing her as a gift from God, since she was willing to care for him for
life. After a year, he married her. He was already seventy, she merely
twenty-three. And she did look after him, as he himself said, with the
hands of an angel. My grandmother Tashka believed that protecting him and
keeping him going was a duty and a favor bestowed by God. And she
persevered in that manner.
After Vasile Mundzija died, his daughters came to divide the
inheritance, and they wanted to evict my grandmother from the house. But
his dying wish, stated as a curse and an oath before the Bishop, stopped
their hands.
She stayed in one part of the estate. In a small house in the
yard. One of four.
Soon wars started. Three of them. Along with my grandmother
Maca they decided that Tashka would sometimes live in her house, sometimes
with my folks—just to help, to be around.
She was a devout woman. Her silent piety existed only for her
and her grace from God, as she put it. She observed all fasts, every
Wednesday and Friday. She would stop every time she passed the gate of the
church, leave whatever she was carrying on the ground, rinse her face with
the water from the fountain, cross herself, and pray.
Early one evening, returning from our place, as she stood by
the fountain rinsing her face, several oxcarts, according to her,
approached from the front, loaded with cholera victims. The neighborhood
and the churchyard echoed with moaning and pain. The townspeople, oppressed
by war, closed their windows and gates. They opened their cellars. And
those who led the carts fled as far as they could.
My grandmother Tashka, it being her way, took this as a sign
from God, and she entered the yard instead of going home. She went from
sick person to sick person, lending some coolness to their lips and
foreheads. And so the French medical team found her. "They looked at me as
if I were not of this world," she said. They relieved her of her duty, but
she declared that she would stay. There were few of them, and for her
nothing could wait.
And she stayed there, in the hospital, until the end of the
war.
The French newspapers wrote about her, the French health
service talked about her, and, as a result, later, in the thirties, a
French high commission came to Prilep and before the icons of her house
awarded her the Legion of Honor. Such a sweet soul, more frightened than
proud of the honor, my grandmother Tashka placed the medal in her trunk,
along with the photographs, without saying a word about it to anyone. My
folks did not even know. Her trunk disclosed the information after her
death.
She was a wonderful story-teller. There was more in her
gentle, calm voice than just the words themselves. I lived from one of her
stories to the other. I could hardly wait for bedtime (she slept in my
room), so the stories could begin.
Of course, this was after she completed her ritual. Despite
all the hardship and poverty, she had a special bed in our house, with
sheets, pillow, and a bedspread, and it was all washed the next morning, to
be ready for the next night. She took time getting ready for bed, following
her ways. After everything was in order, she would lay her white towel over
the pillow and kneel in prayer.
I remember her prayers confusing me. She asked God to have
mercy on her, she had had enough suffering, and it was time that He reach
down his hand and take her.
So, all in white, she would lie on her mattress, by my bed,
and start her story about Kamberkadana. I don’t know where or from whom she
learned it, and she told it in installments, from one bedtime to the next.
I don’t remember the story any more, but I know that I used to be lifted
from my bed on the wings of her whisper and plunged into the kingdom of the
Kamberkadana. I was engulfed in both their suffering and their beauty.
Those people became my world.
I longed to listen, but I fell asleep quickly. However, I
didn’t feel sad, because I never knew where the story ended and where sleep
took over.
Years passed before I understood how she made her living. She
was an unrivaled expert in the art of dyes. She even collected the urine of
children. Wool would take on color from her hand, able to provide warmth as
long as it lasted.
She never complained about her life.
The last war came. I went underground. One night, at her
place, she mentioned that if I needed help I should not hesitate. And so it
happened.
Short, deliberate, glowing, gentle, considered a saint by the
people, she delivered many messages. And without knowing it, the poor
woman, weapons too. Nobody suspected her.
I am writing all this down, after the time of her sickbed, as
my payment to her. Especially in gratitude for my last night in her home.
As always, after she put everything in order, she knelt
before her icon to pray and repeated her wish that the Almighty take her.
"Enough suffering," she kept saying. "Have mercy, Lord." When she was
finished, she turned to me, and, illuminated by the flickering candle in
front of the icon, she said:
"He has mercy."
I followed the trail of war. I was not at her bedside at the
hour of her death.
But my second mother was. This is her account:
She sent for me in the evening, early evening, still
permeated with sun and Prilep heat, to go to her. She sent a neighbor
child. It was urgent: there was a reason. I came and found her in bed,
freshly bathed, but in her death clothes. She had arranged everything
around her.
She lay in bed without showing a sign that it was the end.
It stayed like that for more than an hour. It became even
hotter, steam rising from everywhere.
Then Grandma Tashka crossed herself. She looked into the yard
at the mulberry tree in front of the window and asked me to shut all the
windows. I looked at her with surprise.
"In this heat, Mom?" I said.
"It’s okay, Daughter. Let the angels wait in front of them
until the sun sets."
I shut them.
She crossed her hands on her chest, waiting until the shadow
of the mulberry tree's branches fell across them, bringing darkness to the
room, and then she said:
"Open them. Let them come in."
I opened the windows.
With the first breath of wind on her white face she departed.
For decades, I have been pondering. What was she thinking
about, my grandmother Tashka, in the centuries-long time between the
shutting and opening of the windows? About her life? Was she forgiving
someone? Was she grieving for her life? Did she wish for more?
She departed, according to my mother, with a smile. And a
look of forgiveness.
No doubt, to the kingdom of her Kamberkadana.
