Koločep
Natali nudged the tender into a gap in the rocks on the seaward side of the ferry quay.
Boy, there were a lot of boats in the harbour today, most likely because it was the weekend, and she’d almost given up before she’d noticed this spot.
But Obi needed her walk, and she’d told the others she would do it while Ana took Lloyd to swim in the famous Blue Cave on the other side of the island while there weren’t too many tourists about.
Good luck with that one, given how rammed Donje ?elo was.
A squat red-roofed villa dominated the nearby shore, and she wondered for a moment if she’d moored in a private area, but neither of the women sunbathing on the concrete platform in front of the house so much as noticed her.
She looped the rope around an outcrop, then, tucking Obi under her arm, scrambled over the uneven surface and onto the quay.
“Well, if it isn’t Natali and Obi.” Baka. But what was she doing here, sitting on the same bench, wearing her usual sun hat and floral dress? Where was her son?
“Hello Baka.” There must be something else she could say, especially as Obi was straining in her arms to reach her new friend. The answer was obvious. “H-how is your son’s visit?”
Baka smiled up at her. “He will come today. The six o’clock ferry.”
No! He hadn’t let her down again, surely?
Yet here she was, almost half an hour early, waiting for his boat.
Natali had a sudden image of Baka sitting here every day since last Monday waiting for him, and the thought made her angry and sad all at the same time.
But it wasn’t her business to comment. Not even if she could work out what to say.
“I’ve made soparnik for supper,” Baka continued. “You can’t get good food like that in America. In his letters he said it was all hamburgers.”
“Does he write t-to you often?”
“My, you’re better at conversation this week.”
“I’m t-trying.”
“You’re doing very well. Now, come and sit next to me for a while. If you have time, of course.”
Natali sat down, and a delighted Obi, freed from her arms, leapt at Baka, jumping up to lick her face.
“Oh, I am sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s a long time since I’ve been kissed so enthusiastically.”
“Your other s-son. Does he not visit? You said he lives in Split.”
“Yes, he visits when time allows, but running a restaurant means he is so busy. Especially in the summer. Mateo is a dutiful boy, steady like his father was, but not affectionate like my Valentin. He will hug me, while Mateo makes sure my cupboards are well stocked. They show their love in different ways. What about your family, Natali?”
What about it? What could she say? Perhaps Baka would not like her if she admitted she and her mother weren’t close, especially because it was probably her fault.
She’d been such a disappointment to her, and she probably should never have been born.
After all, she’d been told so many times she’d ruined her mother’s life.
But having been asked about her family, Natali could not exactly lie.
“You do have family?” Baka asked gently.
“Yes, I have Obi. That’s where her name comes from: obitelj.”
“No mother, no father?”
“My father was a tourist from Sweden. My m-mother…” Natali frowned. “We are n-not … that is to say…”
“Sometimes family relationships are not easy,” Baka said.
“My granddaughters, I gave them everything, but now they are teenagers they do not visit me. I expect I am too old, too boring. And Valentin, well, he is so far away. But I have good friends around me and after all, Natali, we can choose our friends, can’t we? ”
Natali nodded. She wasn’t very good at friends either, although Auntie Stela’s daughter was just two years older than her and had always been kind.
Obi was friend and family, but now she was wondering if that was enough.
After Thursday night she would go to the ends of the earth for Lloyd, but was that friendship?
Could it be, when they were so very different in every way?
And Ana, much as she admired her and was coming to like her, when all was said and done, Ana was her employer, not her friend.
Were friends important? Baka obviously thought so.
Baka was looking at her curiously but Natali really didn’t want any more questions she’d struggle to answer, so she said, “Tell me about your friends, Baka.”
“The friends I had when I was your age? Well, let me see. Things were very different on the island then. We were poor. No tourists, just fishing, and some of the men going to work on the port at Gru? or at sea. We didn’t worry much about school, either.
The priest held classes in the church so we learnt to read and write, but not much else.
But reading … I loved to read, Natali, but there were so few books. I wish we’d had your library.
“Then we had a new priest, a younger one, and he had a wonderful book of fairy stories and he let me borrow it. Oh, the world it opened up…! Dragons, witches, underwater kingdoms. Yes, that was my favourite. Fisherman Plunk. Do you know it?”
Baka really was rambling on. Maybe she was nervous about her son arriving on the ferry. Or not arriving. Maybe it was just because she was old. But Natali felt comfortable sitting next to her and for once she was in no hurry. Especially as Obi had settled with her head on Baka’s lap.
“I don’t know the story,” she told her. “What’s it about?”
“Eventually I came to realise it’s about the power of women.
But that’s getting ahead of myself. Like all fairy tales it happened a long time ago, but I like to think, not very far from here.
There was a fisherman called Plunk, and he was a very disgruntled sort of fellow, fed up with his simple life and greedy for great riches.
So he decided he would not fish for three days to conjure up a spell.
“Well, it worked, and on the third day, the Sea King’s daughter, the Dawn Maiden, rose from the waters in her silver boat and granted him a wish. He told her he had no joy in his world, and she promised that when he went home he would find all he needed.
“When Plunk got back to his shack he found a poor orphan girl waiting for him, and she offered to be his wife. At first he was not sure, because he’d been expecting gold, but he did not want to turn away his luck so he agreed.
And do you know what? This girl was a marvellous storyteller, and every night her tales took him to places he could never imagine and filled him with joy. ”
Baka paused. “You see, Natali, it is also a story about stories, and those are very special, don’t you think?”
“I’m n-not much of a reader.”
Baka rested her hand briefly on Natali’s arm.
“Then you should be, because as well as joy, you can find comfort and love within the pages of a book. Friendship too. Anyway, back to Plunk and his wife. As time went on, they had a child, Winpiece, and the stories got even better, but Plunk was still waiting for his gold, and in the end became angry with his wife and made her go out and search for the Sea King’s castle and the Dawn Maiden so he could ask her what had happened to it. ”
“What a horrible bully!”
Baka nodded. “Exactly that. Well, the poor girl fell asleep on the beach, so exhausted was she by her searching, and when she woke Winpiece was gone. Her grief was a terrible thing. It struck her dumb, and she went home and remained silent.
“So things were even worse for that miserable old fool Plunk, but again he tried his spell of not fishing, and the Dawn Maiden rose from the sea and granted him one more wish, so he asked her to show him the way to the Sea King’s castle.
The next new moon, he followed her instructions, through all the trials and tribulations that keep mere mortals out, and reached it.
“Well, of course it was a wonderful place, and filled Plunk with so much delight that he became as though he was quite young again, laughing and turning cartwheels, which pleased the Sea King, who made him a sort of court jester. And, laughing loudest at his antics was a little baby, who Plunk recognised as Winpiece, his very own son.”
Natali was so entranced by the story that the blast of the ferry made her jump.
Baka laughed. “Well, my dear, if you want to find out the ending, you’ll have to read it.
I am sure it’s in one of those library books of yours.
Anyway, you will appreciate the marvellous descriptions of the Sea King’s castle all the more in the hands of a skilled storyteller. ”
Natali stood, lifting Obi down from Baka’s lap. “Thank you,” she beamed. “I’ll ask Lloyd. I really want to know.”
Baka stood a little stiffly, and leant on her stick. “Now, I must meet the boat.”
“Of course you must,” said Natali. “This is a very important day.”
But would it be? Natali was curious to see what this errant son was like, assuming he did actually turn up this time, so when she had walked a little way along the steeply sloping path to the upper part of the village, she stopped in the shade of an overhanging oleander and watched.
Just a few people got off the ferry, battling through the throng of tourists and day trippers waiting to get on.
And as the crowd cleared, she saw Baka, standing quite alone.
Natali’s throat was thick with tears. Should she go to her?
What was her son playing at, stringing his mother along like this?
She was sure his sensible brother in Split would have something to say about it.
But as she watched, one of the men loading newly arrived crates of beer onto a trailer stopped and spoke to Baka, clamping a hand on her shoulder.
“It’s OK, Obi,” she said. “Baka has her friends around her, and I mean, it’s not as if we belong here.” Giving a very gentle tug on the dog’s lead, she carried on up the hill.
* * *
While Ana was cooking supper and Lloyd was talking to Ruth, Natali crept into the cabin where the books were kept.
She gazed around at the neat stacks of boxes, each one carefully labelled.
Even if she found the right one, would she be allowed to take it?
Of course she would have to ask Lloyd first.
Along one side of the bed were the books for small children in Croatian, but although the shiny covers were beautiful she couldn’t find any fairy tales.
They were mainly modern stories about animals.
And families. Families, of course. She remembered that now – one of the reasons she hadn’t liked reading at school.
Obviously, the German and Italian books were no good to her, although perhaps some of the English ones might be. But the fairy tales were from her own country. Would they have been translated? She opened a box marked “young adult fantasy” and peeped inside.
The cover of the paperback on top looked amazing: a young woman dressed completely in black rode a purple dragon through a sky the colour of the sea on the calmest day.
Who was this girl? What a life she must have!
Natali couldn’t remember books looking so exciting.
It wasn’t what she was searching for, but when she flipped it over she was staggered to find that the heroine had been born with only one arm so had been rejected by her family.
How cool was that? Well, not for the girl, obviously, but the fact that the story was about a less than perfect person…
“Looking for something to read?” Natali jumped at the sound of Lloyd’s voice. “It’s fine, you know. You can. Just as long as you tell me which books you take.”
“I was really looking for a fairy tale about a fisherman someone started to tell me, but … but … I would like to try this, if I can.” Why on earth had she said that?
She didn’t want to start it and let Lloyd down by not finishing.
“It’s so long though, since I’ve read a whole book…
” Like, ever. She wasn’t clever enough for books, surely?
But both Ana and Lloyd had said she wasn’t stupid, and even though the idea was taking some getting used to, she really wanted to believe it.
Perhaps finishing a book – a book in English, at that – would prove it one way or the other.
“Why not just give it a go? If it’s not for you then you can pick something else. And if you come across words you don’t understand, just ask me. Or maybe you can read English better than you feel you can speak it?”
Natali nodded, gazing at the book and gripping it more tightly.
“I do understand,” Lloyd continued. “Talking in a foreign language needs a lot of confidence. I find it tough speaking Croatian, but I’m old enough and ugly enough not to care what anyone thinks.”
She looked up at him. “How do you get like that?”
He frowned. “I guess … it comes with age. But when I say ‘anyone’, what I mean is strangers, people I don’t know that well.
I think we always mind what people we care about think.
” Natali was shocked to see so much pain in his eyes.
He cleared his throat. “What was the fairy tale you were looking for? Perhaps I can help.”
“It was about a fisherman called Plunk who was greedy and mean to his wife.”
“I don’t know it, but I’ll see if I can track it down, if you like.”
“Yes, please.”
“OK, but right now I could murder a beer, and supper smells amazing. Let’s go up.”