“You saw my hell only from the outside, I didn’t pull you in.”
“Maybe you should have.”
“Maybe I should have. But I didn’t even know it was there. Look, to avoid confusion, let me say that I sent it to you because I wanted you to know. Even if knowing this makes no difference now. So you could finally hear what is perhaps the closest thing to the truth about me. And maybe you’ll think a little better of me. Or worse—whatever. Simple.”
“No, not simple. You know I shut that book a long time ago, and it wasn’t easy for me to reopen it now, no matter what you thought. How long were we together? Was it really a year? How is that, for fuck’s sake, even possible? How is it that something like that marks you forever? I needed to pull myself out of it…”
“Well, fine, that doesn’t matter anymore.”
“No, it does matter. You’re here now because you’re probably lost, because you don’t know what else to do, so you’re reaching for something you imagine still exists. And I can’t do that, see?”
“I am lost here, but that is no different from any place I have been my whole life long. I’ve always been lost. With you, being lost was bearable.”
“Oh, please. No, no. That’s how it goes. There’s no going back, Matija…”
“Okay. No way back.”
“I’m…”
“Fine. I get it. I really do.”
“Okay. Good. I’m glad we understand each other.”
“Me too.”
“Terrific. And what will you do now?”
“Don’t ask things you don’t want to know the answers to.”
“But I want to hear.”
“The only thing that people like me can do. Forget and wait and forget and wait. Damned scandalous in our times.”
“Wait for what? Forget what?”
“Forget all those deaths. And everything that was forgotten, once and for all. And the new things that will be forgotten, you among them, you most of all. Because one thing is certain—what has been forgotten will come back of its own accord. There’s no other way.”
“If you say so. I know that look and your lively drivel. You jerk.”
“You’re Bleeding Heart, and I’m Jerk. But I am here absolutely of my own volition, not because I’m lost and being guided from some unknown place, like most of my life. And maybe you’ll come back to me, too.”
“Well, let’s say that does happen. In and of itself, without my knowledge and without intervention. In a hundred years’ time. What, in the meanwhile?”
“Not much, in the meanwhile. There’s a river I need to visit. And a forest. And a few graves, one of them a child’s. And many people dear to my heart. Do you think they’ve forgotten me?”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kristian Novak is a Croatian writer, linguist, and university professor. His novel Dark Mother Earth was awarded the Tportal Prize for Croatian Novel of the Year and was named one of the ten best Croatian novels in the last fifty years by Večernji list. The novel was successfully adapted for the stage, and a film adaptation is in the works. Novak is also the author of The Hanged and Gypsy, Yet So Beautiful, which was the recipient of the Gjalski Prize. Dark Mother Earth is his English-language debut.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Ellen Elias-Bursac has been translating novels and nonfiction by Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian writers for thirty years. She is the recipient of the 2006 ALTA National Translation Award, an American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages Award, and the Mary Zirin Prize for her book Translating Evidence and Interpreting Testimony at a War Crimes Tribunaclass="underline" Working in a Tug-of-War. A contributing editor to the online literary journal Asymptote, Elias-Bursac spent more than six years at the ex-Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague as a translator/reviser in the English Translation Unit. Her translation of Daša Drndić’s novel Trieste was short-listed for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2013.
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2013 by Kristian Novak
Translation copyright © 2020 by Ellen Elias-Bursac
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Previously published as Črna mati zemla by Algoritam in Croatia in 2013. Translated from Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursac. First published in English by Amazon Crossing in 2020.
Published by Amazon Crossing, Seattle
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Amazon Crossing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542016100 (hardcover)
ISBN-10: 154201610X (hardcover)
ISBN-13: 9781542093569 (paperback)
ISBN-10: 1542093562 (paperback)
Cover design by Kimberly Glyder
First edition