12
The next morning, I found myself sitting on a dreadful green and white bus from the former Yugoslav days, accompanied by my helpful Austrian guide. Our destination was the civil registry office or, as Max called it, the Upravna Enota. My suitcase was still missing, and I was wearing the same clothes I had left Spain in. I sniffed my armpits discreetly, making sure that the smell wasn’t yet critical.
The bus dropped us off on a wide street next to a wall covered in graffiti and billboards.
“It”s an old tobacco factory,” Max explained, pointing to a relatively old building in front of us: “It”s been restored, and now you can come here to renew your passport, among other things.”
Max seemed to know the place well because he immediately found the right room. He then took a number from a machine on the wall and told me to sit down. When it was our turn, we entered a room with three windows, where we were assigned a female officer with blue-black hair and an unfriendly face. I looked longingly at her companion, who wore a green sweater and looked much friendlier, but I resigned myself and held out my passport to the clerk.
The conversation that followed was absolutely indecipherable to me. The clerk barked a couple of sentences in Slovenian. Max responded by showing her all my documents, pointing at me, and reciting my full name several times. The woman growled again; Max gesticulated, she grunted, and so on for a while. Finally, he stood up, looking upset, and signaled to me that we were leaving.
“What about the birth certificates?” I asked blankly.
Max shook his head and sighed.
“She says she can’t help us. I”m sorry, Vesna.”
We walked out of there with our heads down, shuffling our feet. We were almost at the door when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around to see the other employee, the woman in the green sweater. Pointing at me, she whispered something to Max and then jotted something down on a piece of graph paper.
Slovensko rodoslovno dru?tvo v ?kofji Loki[5]
Gospa Sever
Trgovina Meta
Then she smiled and wished me good luck in heavily accented Spanish:
“Suerte, chica[6]!”
I raised an eyebrow and waited for Max to translate the rest for me.
“How kind of her!” he exclaimed, putting the paper in his pocket. “She overheard our conversation, and she felt sorry for us. She suggested we should go to ?kofja Loka and ask for a Mrs. Sever, who works in a herbalist shop.”
“In search of who? Who’s Sophia Loka?”
“?kofja Loka,” Max corrected me as we came out of the building and looked for a gap in the traffic to cross the wide avenue. “It’s a small town half an hour away from Ljubljana. The woman said they will know about the Slovenian Genealogical Association.”
“Great,” I said, taking the crumpled map Max had given me the previous day out of my bag. “Are we going by train? Where’s the station?”
“That won”t be necessary.” He pointed to a place not far from where we were standing. “Wait for me at that coffee shop, and I”ll go home and get the car keys.”
“I don”t feel like drinking coffee. I”ll come with you,” I replied.
“Oh, no, it will be a pleasure to come pick you up.”
“We would save time if I came with you.”
“Thank you, but I prefer to go alone.” His fingers fiddled nervously with the strap of his bag. “If you don”t want coffee, wait for me on that bench. I won”t be long.”
I shrugged, not wanting to insist. I sat in the sun, and after a while, he came back for me, just as he had promised.
Max”s car, if it could be called a car at all, was a minuscule, rusty tin box. The paint might have been red forty years ago, but it was currently a dull pink, streaked with scratches and dents. The bumper and license plate were held in place with a string, and the taillights had been reduced to simple bulbs with no protective glass. On the trunk, there was a metal plate with the car manufacturer’s name, ‘YUGO,’ and a worn 1980 Moscow Olympics sticker. I blinked, wondering how it was physically possible for this machine to have made it all the way to Moscow at some point in its service life.
“Cool, huh?” said Max with exaggerated enthusiasm. It took two flicks of the hip and a special twist of his wrist to yank open the door and a good push to close it again.
“Well… it’s very… unique,” I answered, buckling my belt hastily: it had a section that had been sewn up at chest level, which didn”t give me much peace of mind.
“It’s a unique specimen indeed. Not many like this one can be found on the roads anymore. It was declared the worst car of the millennium by the prestigious magazine Cars and Motors, can you believe it? Of course, when I saw this one for sale, I had to snap it up right away!”
I nodded, humoring him, and we set off along the gray Celovska Avenue, heading northwest. As we drove away from the center of Ljubljana, the historic buildings were replaced by tall, grotesque apartment towers, remnants of the socialist era and the former Yugoslavia. I was sure that Max”s car would remember those times well.
Max took a cassette out of its case and inserted it into the portable radio. The speakers began to play an orchestral piece. Despite the lousy sound quality, Max hummed along contentedly and spent the trip tapping the steering wheel to the music.
“I hope you like Vivaldi,” he said with a mischievous smile. “Otherwise, you know what we do here with people who don”t understand good music.”
I grimaced but avoided giving him my actual opinion, just in case.
We left the city behind us and took a narrow road through green fields dotted with fragrant elderberry bushes in bloom. It was a journey of more than an hour, during which we were overtaken by several tractors and other agricultural machinery. Still, we arrived safe and sound at our destination: the picturesque town of ?kofja Loka.
“How long would it have taken with a normal car?” I asked cautiously, raising my voice to make myself heard over the clanking and rattling of his tin box on wheels.
“What do you mean,” Max replied with a frown, looking for a place to park. ?kofja Loka was a city by Slovenian standards, but to my eyes, it was little more than a charming village full of narrow streets and balconies overflowing with pelargoniums.
It didn”t take us long to find the store that the kindly registrar had told us about. It was a small herbalist”s shop with a rustic wooden sign. A middle-aged woman in an apron stood behind the counter. She greeted us with a melodious dober dan―good morning.
Max talked to the shopkeeper for a couple of minutes. Obviously, I understood absolutely nothing, but I sensed that she was willing to help us.
“She says her husband isn’t in right now, but as soon as he returns, he’ll check the association”s database to see if they know of any Br?ljan, and if so, where they live. She recommended that we go eat at the restaurant across the street while we wait for him.”
We took Mrs. Sever”s advice and headed for a simple, homey-looking restaurant. Max ordered two servings of ?truklji: spiral-boiled pasta rolls filled with walnuts and cottage cheese. Mine had a sweet breadcrumb and almond sauce, while Max”s were accompanied by steaming cubes of braised veal. It was the first time I had seen the same dish served in two versions, one sweet and one savory, and both were delicious. While we were eating, I received a call from the hostel, informing me that the airline had found my suitcase: the day had started badly, but it seemed to be coming together.
We washed down the meal with a sweet, golden wine from the Slovenian regions that bordered Italy and returned in a very good mood to the Herbalist Shop Meta, where Mr. Sever greeted us with his laptop open in front of him on the counter.
“Janez Sever,” he introduced himself and began to explain his findings to Max.
“Mr. Sever says that there is no Slovenian person, dead or alive, with the surname Br?ljan. At least, not in his records,” Max translated.
“But how is that possible if that was my father”s name?” I replied, puzzled. “He must have had cousins, uncles... something. Perhaps in Slovenia, surnames aren’t passed down from father to son?”
“Of course they are, just like everywhere else. Mr. Sever finds your case fascinating. He says that perhaps your father changed the phonetics or spelling of his last name when he moved abroad.”
“I don”t think so. He always insisted that his name was spelled correctly on all documents. When he arrived in Spain, they tried to change it to the easier pronunciation of Berslian, but he refused. Br?ljan is the original form. There is no other, as far as I know.”
Mrs. Sever joined the conversation and whispered a few words to her husband. He nodded, and Max turned to explain everything to me.
“She says she has an idea, but you may find it ridiculous.”
I grimaced. As if there was anything more ridiculous than crossing Europe to follow the instructions of a ghost.
“What’s it about?”
“Apparently, she knows someone who could find your father”s ancestors, if there are any left. His name is Drago Krivec, and he’s a diviner… a dowser.”
“A dowser?”
“Yes, you know, those people who look for water with rods. Apparently, this man has managed to find several missing people. He works in exchange for donations, but only for private clients. He refuses to collaborate with the police. But you”re not a cop, are you?”
A chuckle escaped me, and even more so when I noticed the tone of alarm in his voice.
“Relax. I”m just a humble secretary.” I wandered around the little shop, looking at the wooden shelves full of herbs and homemade soaps. “I guess I have nothing to lose by visiting this man. Where does he live?”
“Near the Arboretum Park, half an hour from Ljubljana,” Max replied, jotting down an address on the back of a flyer.
“Fantastic. We should go as soon as possible,” I said, taking a paper bag of herbs in one hand and sniffing it. It smelled of yarrow and other flowers I couldn”t identify. I turned to Max. “Ask them how much this is. I”ll take it.”
* * *
Max took me back to the hostel, and when I arrived, my suitcase was already waiting for me in the luggage closet. I never thought I’d be so happy to see a piece of luggage. I climbed the steps two at a time, eager to shower and take off the blouse I had been wearing for three days.
“A dowser, huh?” said a voice behind me. “I didn”t know you believed in witchcraft.”
“Mom.” I closed the bedroom door without turning around. “I don”t know if I believe in it, but I didn”t believe in ghosts either, and yet, here you are...” I spun around to face her.
“I”m only here because they forced me to be,” she pointed out, leaning back on the unmade bed without leaving a mark. “I”m not going to spend the rest of eternity in this filthy place, so I might as well tell you the whole story and see if the people upstairs let me in after that. Do you have a moment?”
“I”d like to go to bed early, but we can talk for a while if we have to.”
“Perfect,” she said with a satisfied smile. Where were we? Ah, yes, as I was telling you, I met Andreu on my wedding day...”