~*~
"Cerka! Jasna! Sin! Marko! Danjela!"
~*~
I called for them. I wanted to make sure, to see if they were alive. But no one answered. They lay there dying, and I didn't go, I couldn't go. I knew what I would find. And I did not want to see my family dying.
I can't tell anyone what I did. But they all ask. They want to know what happened in that war. And I cannot tell them anything true. I can tell them little about the war itself, because I do not remember. I don't want to remember. It was too horrible, too much. And it almost destroyed me then. I can't let it get to me again. So I lie. I lie about my past, my family. I lie about it all. Because I can't let myself remember.
Carol, Kerry...they think I shared something with them. Even the bishop. He died thinking what I told him was true. He died thinking he had heard my confession. No one has heard it yet. I wish I still had no memory of it. But I thought of Danjela last night, and...I woke up sobbing, happy that Abby and I had retired to separate dwellings that night. I woke up to the sound of my wife screaming, and it's plagued me since then. Now I sit and hear the voice pleading....
~*~
"Luka! Luka! Pomagati! Luka!"
"Osnivac!" Jasna called me after Danjela did, and I could hear Marko's cries. Then those infant wails ceased, and I knew it was over for my sin. My son.
~*~
Sin in English is very different from sin in Croatian. But when I think of sin in either language, I think of the horrible thing I did to my son. I got them on the boat! I got too many of us on the boat! And when it tipped...I was left clinging to it while they fell down into the depths. The okean...ocean...is a darker place than we like to admit. It's cold and lonely. And I let them all stay. Jasna knew how to swim. She was scared though, moj princeza, and they were shooting all around us. If I had stopped the boat, we all would have been dead anyway. And then I would have to watch them die. I couldn't do that. They were my family, and I loved them. And so on I rowed.
I made them travel so far from home, I forced them to the border. We left from Pula, and we were going to try to sail to Italy. Across the Adriatic Sea. It was a good plan, but it would have been a better plan if they hadn't seen us leaving Vukovar. It was unsafe to leave, I knew that. But I thought it was worse to stay. There were soldiers and planes...all around us. I didn't want my children living in a war! It was too horrible. I suppose I got my wish, in an odd sort of kick you while you're down way. I'm learning these stupid American expressions now, it only takes a short while. To leave behind anything and everything you once were and become an American.
Join the melting pot, my friends. Room for everyone in America. Even murderers? Even fathers who leave their children, husbands who leave their wives, at the bottom of the ocean floor and sail away? I deserve to watch them die and live to tell, to replay the memory in my mind. Instead I am haunted by their cries, and not knowing if they were shot or found, or even managed to swim. I know Danjela. If she had to, she could leave Marko's body and take Jasna to safety. She would know he had no chance, that their only hope was to swim underwater together and try not to come up for air too often. That they could get to a safer country, and they would have each other. Sometimes I look at their pictures, my darling daughter and beloved wife, and I wonder if they are out there and I did not, in fact, leave them to die. But the thought is passing, especially in those times when I can really tell myself that this wasn't what happened in any way.
I have memories, false memories. Memories of finding Danjela and Jasna barely living and Marko dead in the remains of our apartment. Memories of them being taken from me by soldiers, of them being killed. I made these memories while I waited, while I decided where to go, while I finished a residency. I dreamt these memories, and they comforted me. I pushed the real memories away, but they were not gone, only hibernating. And now they have come back, they have all surfaced. And I must face what I have done. But I will never tell anyone. I will remain the mysterious Luka. Because mysterious is better than what I really am. Ubica.