On the next-to-last day, Mom came to visit with the parish priest. He brought me a big bar of chocolate with puffed rice. At first we talked a little, awkwardly, and then Mom went off to look for a doctor, and the Father and I were left alone. At first I was a bit sheepish because I thought he’d come to tell me he’d noticed I was bored at Mass and knew I was counting people.
“How are you, Matija? Is your foot hurting you?”
“No it ain’t, Father.”
“I hear you’ll be coming home in two days. Are you glad?”
“I am glad, but…”
“The things you tell me are heard only by you, me, and God, our dear Father. I won’t tell anyone. I think you want to tell me what you were doing out there that night in the snow. Am I right?”
“Well, I don’t know as I’ll tell you that. I would like to ask you something, though. What’s it like while a person is dying?”
“Why? Did you feel you were close to dying?”
I didn’t say anything, and we sat in silence for a time.
“When we die, we join our Holy Father in heaven,” he finally said, plainly.
“Well, that part I know, my granny told me, but what’s it like there?”
“Well…” The priest drew in a breath and gave this some thought. “Imagine how things were when they were the very best, when you felt the safest, when all the people you love—your friends and everybody—were together. Can you remember that? Try to close your eyes and think.”
I squinted and couldn’t see any sort of clear picture, but a cozy warmth stirred in my belly. Like I was waving at people who weren’t worried and weren’t sitting at the kitchen table staring into space on a sunny day.
“I think I know. When you want something to never end.”
“Yes, exactly right. Happiness and satisfaction without end. That’s what it’s like when we are one with our Holy Father.”
The priest went on saying something else about invisible people who work for God, and how our parents and grannies and granddads when they die are always with us and looking after us, but I began thinking about something while he was talking.
“Father, where do the people go who killed somebody?”
“If they don’t repent, if they don’t seek God’s forgiveness, then to hell. Why?”
I burst into tears. When I was able to breathe again, I whispered: “Can you give me forgiveness? Forgiveness from God?”
“Why, son?”
“Because I killed my dad.”
He looked at me, shocked, but quickly recovered. “No, Matija, no. Who told you that?”
“Nobody, it’s just I know, ’cause I—”
“Matija, listen to me now…”
“I glared at him and thought I hated him when he wouldn’t say nothing about the treasure, and afterward I never saw him again!”
“Matija, your father was sick, and that’s why God took him. You had nothing to do with it. You have to be good now, do what your mother says, and believe that your dad and your Holy Father are looking after you, and they won’t let anything happen to you. You will do a lot of good in this world, and maybe some bad things, too. And when the time comes, Saint Peter puts all your bad and your good things on a scale, and when the good ones tip the scale, then the door of heaven will open, and you’ll be with your dad again, and with all the others, as a being of light.”
“But Father… will I know him when I get to heaven?”
“I’m sure of it. Your soul and your dad’s soul know each other from before. What do you remember first when you think about him?”
“I can’t see his face no more. But I think back to how we talked about the valley and about how we’d go searching for the hidden treasure.”
“Then that’s the way you’ll know each other. And he’s waiting for that. There are people who die a few times during their life. You’re one of them. But you should know that through God the resurrection also belongs to you. Don’t ever forget that. That’s why you can be without fear, because He will see to everything, but you must also do what you’re told.” And just as the priest was saying this, Mom came back into the room with a present wrapped in shiny paper.
We wished each other a merry Christmas and prayed, and after that Mom and the priest went home because the visiting hours were over.
Ever since then I’ve been on the lookout for people like myself, and I’ve written about their lives. I wanted to be part of their deaths and rebirths, I guess. And the whole time I was scared of what I’d see in them—people like myself. But I was even more afraid of my hatred and the vast power of killing. And I managed, somehow, to keep from hating anybody until the spring of 1991.
ANGER BOXES
1.
Over the next two and a half years, through the spring of 1991, the world changed completely. What sticks in my memory is the pervasive feeling of violence. The world is full of clocks and unspoken words, this I knew, but I’d begun to see how the things surrounding us acquire a sort of madness when we don’t keep close tabs on them. They exist in all these different forms, and only when we look directly at them do they assume a defined shape. They do this for our sake because they know that otherwise we wouldn’t know how to live. But this time the shift was something else. Nobody was watching us kids.
One spring day in 1990, I think it was a Sunday, there were national elections, and the Croatian Democratic Union Party won. The CDU opened a branch office in our village, and we were all proud that the party we thought of as ours had won in Zagreb, too. When the office was opened, only men were involved: a teacher, the doctor, the village head, Đura Brezovec—who now went to church with his wife every Sunday—Pišta, and several of the guest workers who had returned from Germany. Like my dad, they’d gone by bus to Germany to seek their fortunes. Since it was clear that even their children’s children weren’t going to find much fortune there, they’d come back to tell all the rest of us how we were supposed to live.
From the window of the fire station, we watched the dedication ceremony for the local party headquarters. They sang the Croatian anthem and placed their right hands over their hearts. I felt solemn in my chest because I heard they’d be making a new flag and a new country. I thought Croatia would become like Austria—Bad Radkersburg, for example. Only the returning guest workers knew all the words to the hymn, though, and I felt a little embarrassed for the rest of us. Then they sang to Mother Croatia, and the song said that all she had to do was call, and all the falcons would give their lives for her. They only knew the one stanza, so they sang it twice. Somebody began singing the opera aria “Arise, Arise,” but all they knew was the refrain, so they quickly stopped.
Almost all the village men were at the ceremony, except those who worked in Slovenia. They knew they’d be out of work once there was no more Yugoslavia. My uncle was one of them. Several people from the village had already been laid off and were going to be replaced by Slovenes, so they’d come back to farm and find a job somewhere on this side of the Mura.
Uncle said people should be voting for independent candidates.
“If’n you ask me, I am all for them independents. They’re independent, right? Their name even says so—independent.”
As far as I could tell, he was not only the strongest but also the smartest man in the world. I remember that the Slovenes and the Croats often scuffled at soccer games and on the road. They blustered, scoffed, and called each other dumbasses. This stopped when the village decided they’d invest in artificial fertilizer for the farmers. Paving roads and installing running water would be put off for another year. This suited people, because for years funds in Yugoslavia had been set aside for the Belgrade–Bar highway—which people weren’t happy about—and for building school auditoriums in Serbia or Macedonia, which drove folks mad.