When he died, their father had two requests. But my aunty could not wait to close his eyes.
“He was always cheating on your poor grandmother, he has no right to ask anything of us.” She nodded towards my mother who quickly took his hidden stash of bank notes from underneath his pillow before other mourners arrived.
“What did he want you to do?” I asked.
“You’re too young to understand,” was my mother’s reply.
When I reached adulthood, I went back
to my Grandfather’s village and there suddenly I understood…
The inspiration one always finds in art and love…
Time stopped here
The few houses next to
an ancient limestone quarry
the cobblestones
and market square
with folk craft stores
and fresh fruit and vegetables
all produced by a few families
on the top of the hill
their majestic catholic church
its wooden floors
certified with age.
The Turks attacked
but people remembered them
as they burnt the previous village
they left back in Croatia
so they welcomed them this time
and the domes were erected
on their beloved church.
They would do anything
just to survive.
The Austrian kings
didn’t bother them
their quarry was used
to build the Hapsburg palace
and they let them be
tax free.
The Germans passed through
during the big wars
and the village welcomed them
as foreign lodgers
who would soon move on.
They killed a few men
and took their women.
It was the price to pay
to keep the village safe.
The Russians came after
and never really left.
They killed more men
and took more women
leaving behind unwanted offspring
and many haunted memories.
Then peace came
but was it really peace?
My grandfather was a train master
seeing all the horrors of the war
passing through his train station.
Soldiers, Jews and prisoners,
thirsty and starved and bayonetted to death
and he could do nothing
but stand there,
whistle and wave them off,
something that haunted him
to the end of his days.
The last train came in the 1968
with some party officials
all the way from Moscow
to make him their representative.
He stopped his clock then
and waited. His communist superiors
had forgotten them again.
The village was too tired and old
for propaganda
and people lived their lives
like before.
Nothing changed
in the village again
except one angry
Gypsy woman
climbed up the belfry
of their beloved church
and set fire
to the ropes that held
the bells in place,
you may ask why.
Her name was Valeria
most of her family were
imprisoned, and died in camps
a long time back.
Her husband and his brothers
still roamed the countryside
with their fiddle and their cymbal
playing every wedding
or funeral
but one day she left them go
and stayed behind
settling in next to the quarry
in the abandoned cottage
keeping to herself
out of the village folk ways
and their suspicious,
unwelcoming eyes.
My grandfather used to take
long walks troubled by war memories
and his wife’s long sickness
that took over her body
and mind.
It was all those soldiers raping her
he thought, and she knew
but nothing was said.
Sometimes he painted little watercolours
of nearby woods.
Valeria spotted him there once
and dropped her basket full of berries
examining every inch of him,
his white moustache
and his satchel with the strap
crossing his chest
where he kept his brushes and his paints
he looked up
and his eyes caught hers
she felt her face flush
they both had been
in their late fifties
back then.
He must have recognised her
she thought
but she never seen him before.
Valeria held her breath
when she approached,
attracted by the vivid colours
on his easel,
“I can mix the colours for you
out of this,” she pointed at the berries
‘just like gypsies do.’
“Thank you, dearie.
You are a vision come true.
I’ve never seen a lovelier woman.”
He nodded his head
and smiled wildly.
Valeria stood still for a moment
and suddenly she was gone.
He picked up her basket
and decided to follow her
but when he approached her cottage
Valeria had stung him with chestnuts
and curses so he left,
leaving the berries and the painting
on her doorstep.
“Valeria was a beautiful girl,
when gypsies stopped by
for the first time.“
The old men
remarked
with a wink
when he mentioned
his encounter
the next day
in the village pub.
Most of the young men
didn’t believe it
having never seen her young.
Over the years
everyone was accustomed
to seeing her grimace,
her sneer
and hearing her curse
before being pelted with rocks.
And the villagers payed her back
with the same hand.
She had made herself
an easy target of contempt
by being so contemptible.
For years they exchanged love letters
leaving them in the hollow of a tree
on the clearing they first met.
She kept mixing up colours of him
and he supplied her with the small gifts
of his watercolours.
Once they met secretly
under the ancient church
on the moonless night
and he took her to his train station
she found it dull and grey
so he painted the inside of it
in the bright colour
and hanged the portrait of Valeria there
to everyone’s dismay.
Valeria heard about it
and came unnoticed,
mingling about the gossiping,
unimpressed villagers.
She had seen her beloved painter,
now the important trainmaster,
issuing the ticket
for the mayor’s wife
clasping her hands
in his,
ever the flirt
oblivious to the effect
he was having on her.
He seen her blush
if only for a moment,
in her mind she wondered
what those big hands
of his
could do.
Valeria heard him
collecting the coins
with his regular:
“Thank you, dearie.
You are a vision come true.
I’ve never seen
a lovelier woman
than you.“
It was that night
she climbed up
the church tower
the villagers could never
forgive her
for cutting down
their beloved church bell
in a rage
she left the village
and her little cottage
straight after that
never to be seen again.
She never heard
what the train master
said to his wife that night.
“Maybe I was selfish,”
he tried to explain,
“There is a special connection
I have found
late in life
in that free-spirited gypsy,
somehow she made me understood
my mere playing with paints
could become more,
my new focus in life
being able to create
and make something
beautiful
at will.”
His sad sick wife sighed,
as he kissed her hand
as in forgiveness,
“You are my wife
I always take care of you
with my every breath.
She was a woman
who challenged me
with her every breath
and changed me forever
in the process.”
She never heard what he said
to the village folks
the next morning when they came
to tear the painting down
from the train station wall.
“I didn’t want to offend any of you,
neither Valeria or my wife.
This painting I needed to make
of Valeria
for her,
for you,
and for my wife too
it belongs to all of you
if you destroy it
I leave this village too…”
“Why her?
Why did you waste
your talent
your time
on her?”
People shouted out.
“Aren’t there
more respectable
more important
ladies in town?”
The Mayor’s wife asked.
“I had to,“
My grandfather said,
“I am inspired by her.
I love her.”
And there it was.
As easy as that.
My grandfather felt
a load lifted from him
the moment
he uttered the words,
that instant
he could breathe again.
Life was easy after all,
or was it?
The painting of Valeria
remained
on the train station wall.
Even the angriest of them all
could not argue
with the power of love.
Beata Stasak is an Art and Eastern European Languages Teacher from Eastern Europe with upgraded teaching degrees in Early Childhood and Education Support Education. She teaches in the South Perth Metropolitan area.
After further study in Counselling for Drug and Alcohol Addiction, she has used her skills in Perth Counselling Services. Beata has been a farm caretaker on the organic olive farm in the South Perth Metropolitan area for the past twenty years.Beata is a migrant from post-communist Eastern Europe, who settled in Perth, Western Australia in 1994. She came with her husband and children to meet her father, who she never knew. He was a dissident and refugee from Czechoslovakia, after his country was taken over by Russian communists after the unsuccessful uprising against the communists in 1968.
Aloka 