21
Dear Diary,
Prophecies. I’ve never believed too much in them, but Jakob has been very quiet the last few days, and all because a prophecy came to us unexpectedly.
In the meantime, we have been in our new house for a couple of weeks. I”m not used to being here, and the language doesn”t help. Jakob has nightmares at night. Sometimes, he wakes up screaming, drenched in sweat, despite the cold bedroom. When that happens, I hug him and hum a song to him as I would to a small child. Sometimes, I manage to get him back to sleep. But most nights, he gets up and makes himself some tea. Then he waits for daybreak, staring out the window, deep in thought.
The trip wasn’t easy, but now we’re here, in a beautiful house with a steep roof and wooden balconies that remind me of the tale of Hansel and Gretel. The house is old, gloomy, and damp, but it has a fresco of St. Cecilia playing the piano by the door. He’s the patron saint of musicians because, apparently, everyone in Jakob”s family is or was a pianist.
To get to Slovenia, we traveled on practically every train in Europe, or so it seemed to me. Charitable strangers helped us during our passage through France and Italy.
Now we’re in the village of Bled, where Jakob”s mother lives: a tiny spot in the mountains and famous for its lake. The house is set apart from the others, surrounded by a snowy forest and about ten minutes walk from the lake. I don”t even have a coat or shoes suitable for walking in the snow, so I have to wear those belonging to my mother-in-law, Ria, although they’re far too big for me.
As soon as we can, we’ll go to Ljubljana, where Jakob has a friend who has offered him a job in a carpentry shop. I”m not going to lie—Every day, I dream of having our own home, without a mother-in-law who looks down on me because I don”t know how to shovel snow, or make butter, or skim chickens for soup... or any of the things that all the women here are, apparently, born knowing. She doesn”t bother to teach me either: she clearly doesn”t agree with Jakob”s decision to marry a foreigner and bring her into their home. She would rather see me go back to where I came from.
The day we arrived, Jakob took me to see the lake. It was completely frozen and looked like a sheet of white marble. In the center is an island with a small chapel in the middle. The whiteness of the surroundings was so bright that it blinded me, especially after spending so much time in stinking, dark train carriages.
“Come, I want to show you something,” he said.
He grabbed a long branch and began to test out the thickness of the ice in front of him.
“Step where I step,” he instructed me, beginning to walk on the icy surface.
“What are you doing? Are you crazy? What if it cracks?”
“It won”t. Don”t you trust me?”
A strange question coming from someone for whom I’ve left everything and crossed half a continent.
I looked at a group of kids skating and saw that we weren’t the only crazy ones. Careful not to slip, I started to walk in Jakob”s footsteps, and we reached the island without incident. A steep and slippery staircase leading up to the church awaited us. Jakob was still limping, but he didn’t want me to help him.
“Look over there,” he said when we reached the last step. He pointed to a majestic building on the other side of the bank, perched on the rocky crag almost as if by magic.
“It’s called Bled Castle. A beautiful young widow used to live there. Her husband, the richest man in the town, was cruelly murdered. His body was found floating in the lake. The grief-stricken widow gathered all the gold and silver he had left her as an inheritance and had a beautiful bell cast in his honor. She then ordered it to be taken by boat to the chapel so that she could remember her deceased husband every time the bell rang. But, during the trip, a terrible storm sank the boat, and the bell was lost at the bottom of the lake. Now they say you can sometimes hear it ringing at night, especially when there’s a storm. After so many tragedies, the widow donated the rest of her possessions to the Church and retired to a convent in Rome. There, she lived out the rest of her days, and when she died, her story reached the ears of the pontiff. He cast a new bell and brought it to the island in memory of the unfortunate couple.
“Poor widow,” I murmured sadly. “Well, poor… both of them.”
“But they say that if you ring the bell and make a wish to the Lady of the Lake, it always comes true. So, her sacrifice served a purpose. Now she helps those in need.”
He took my hand and led me into the chapel, which was presided over by a resplendent altar of Our Lady.
“It”s very pretty,” I said. “But I”m not going to ask Our Lady for anything today. I need to think it over. You can do it if you want.”
He shook his head.
“I already asked her to come back alive from Spain, and not only did she grant it to me, but I also found you. She blessed me twice over. Now it’s my turn to give thanks, not to ask for favors.”
We left the chapel, still holding hands. I was happy to be there with him. I didn”t need anything else.
When we reached the shore again, we met an old woman dressed in black, wearing a headscarf. She greeted us, and Jakob introduced me as his wife.
“This is Aunt Miroslava,” he explained. “Well, she”s not really family, but we all call her aunt. She’s the granddaughter of one of the women who protected our island treasure when the French tried to steal it in the last century.”
The woman took my hand and traced the lines of my palm with a very serious expression on her face. Then she caressed my cheek and kissed me. She said something I didn”t understand, and Jakob didn”t translate it either. Then the woman left.
“What did she say?” I asked, full of curiosity.
“I’m not sure. Old wives” tales, probably. Nothing important.”
“Come on, Jakob, tell me what she said! Can she read hands?”
“Some people think so. Many go to see her when they have a dilemma, and she gives them advice. But she told me not to go to Spain, that it would bring me a thousand misfortunes. And you see? She was wrong.”
“How interesting. And what did she say about me?”
Jakob hesitated for a moment, but I pulled him by the arm, dancing around him.
“Come on, come on, tell me, Jakob!”
“Well, she said that you will have a son and that his name will be Martin. But that I...”
“You... what?”
He shook his head.
“Nothing.” He didn”t say anything else.
“I don”t believe it! You do know! I see it in your face.”
“I”ve already told you, it’s nonsense and superstition. She was wrong about me once, so it”s not worth believing in her doomsday predictions. Thinking about them so much might make them come true.”
That”s what he said, dear diary, but since then, he’s been behaving differently. I have to find Miroslava and ask her to explain the rest of her prophecy.