After Ivan died Rosina placed his favourite pair of slippers inside their glass entry door. Any stranger looking in would assume there was still a man in the house.
Alone in the house they’d built fifty years ago at Queenscliff, overlooking the beach, Rosina waited for Ivan to come home, put his feet into them and care for her as he had always done.
She picked at a thread on the sleeve of her cardigan. It began to unwind until it caught on a knot. She stared out the window at the units below now blocking their view of the beach. The sound of the crashing waves breaking on the sand was still vivid behind those buildings.
“The waves here are too big, too strong,” he’d said, shaking his head. “In Omis we hardly had any waves. Maybe just some leedley ones.” She loved the way he said little.
A leedley wave tickled her bare toes and she danced around him and laughed. She wants him to hold her, shelter her from the wind. There are tears in her eyes. It’s the cold wind that makes her eyes water.
He stopped walking, faced the ocean and saw ships on the horizon coming into Sydney Harbour. There are always ships on the horizon. “I can remember seeing a warship coming into the Adriatic. It was my father’s ship,” he told her. “We were all excited because he was coming back from the war.”
Which war? She could picture him, picture the whole family – all eleven children and Ivan the youngest, a toddler. Perhaps his sister held his hand as he stood facing the sea, looking towards the horizon.
The vision faded then. This was not something she knew, but a picture she’d built up over the years of his family in Yugoslavia. She was raised in Sydney by two aunts who weren’t even real aunts. Another knot was encountered. Her memory was getting itself all tangled up again mixing things she imagined with things that really happened; wars she’d learned about in history books, wars she’d heard about from Ivan and a war she’d experienced, nursing soldiers at the Coast Hospital. Ivan knew about wars.
Right now the wind is creeping under the front door and she’s cold. She turns on the heater and buttons up her cardigan, then finds herself back in bed again, under the blanket. She cannot remember going to bed.
On her bedside table there’s a photo of Ivan, in uniform. He was in the Royal Yugoslav Navy when he was twenty. That was in 1933, before the war, before King Alexander was killed.
She tugs at the knot and it begins to unravel.
The waves are booming in her head now and she yells over the noise. She knows he’s homesick when he looks out over the ocean like that.
“Why did you come to Australia then?” she asked.
“Things were bad in Yugoslavia,” he told her as he faced the ocean. “This was near the beginning of the war. Things that happened, they were bad. We didn’t know the war was coming – nobody said it. It wasn’t official, but the tension was there for a long time. And when they killed Alexander I came out of the Navy. We thought there might be some revolution. Communism was coming but it was very much secret. You didn’t show it. If someone just wore a red tie … police would come. ‘Why are you wearing a red tie?’ It gives the idea that you might be a communist. Then there was Hitler. He was ruthless – but really, we did like the German people. Germany was bankrupt after the first war. There was shocking poverty in Europe. People were hungry. I don’t think you people in Australia understand.”
***
Jane, Rosina’s home “angel”, let herself in the front door and stepped over the brown slippers that she wasn’t allowed to move.
The living room was stifling and she turned off the heater which was too close to the curtains before going into Rosina’s bedroom. The poor dear usually had no idea who Jane was and often became distressed to see a stranger in her house, but this morning she was smiling and holding a framed photograph of her deceased husband.
“He was in the Navy, you know,” she said, putting the photo back on the bedside table next to the clock, “in Yugoslavia, before the second World War. His father was in the first World War. Goodness, is that the time? I’ve slept in, haven’t I? Where are my teeth?”
Jane smiled at the frail old lady in the tattered green cardigan who was grinning at her with a mouth full of teeth. “You’ve got them in your mouth.”
They both laughed, then Rosina stopped suddenly and looked puzzled.
“You’re a new girl aren’t you?” she asked. “I didn’t like that other one – the one that was here yesterday.”
Jane helped her shower and dress. Rosina insisted on wearing that ragged old cardigan over her tracksuit top, and she tugged at the loose strands of wool, while waiting for her breakfast at the dinette table. Her family had obviously called by the previous evening and fed her some chicken soup and stocked the fridge with milk, eggs and bread.
After placing scrambled eggs and toast on the table, Jane began tidying the house. “I’m going to move this heater,” she said, placing it in the centre of the living room, and running the cord under the rug, so no one could trip over it. “I’m a bit worried you might forget to turn it off and it could start a fire if it’s too close to the curtains.”
“I’m always careful of electrical things,” Rosina assured her.
“I know dear, but all the same, it’s best to be safe.”
“That’s what the sand is for, on Ivan’s table,” Rosina wagged her finger at a large sand-filled vase on a fragile pedestal table near the kitchen door. “Ivan put it there in case there was a fire.”
Jane was no expert, but this table looked like a rather fine piece of furniture. Its top was badly scratched by the base of the vase.
“He made that table for me before we were married,” said Rosina. “You see the inlay work? He was very good at it. Do you know, there was an exhibition of his work at Anthony Hordens.”
Jane took the vase off the table and placed it on the floor. She polished the table top.
“It’s a picture of Omis, where Ivan was born.” Rosina told her. “You can see the hills and the sea, and the river. His family lived up on those hills overlooking the Adriatic.”
It looks a bit like Queenscliff.” Jane covered it with a doily before putting the vase back.
***
Rosina bought fish and chips from a shop in Chatswood on her way home from work at Pepes, the shirt makers. When Ivan served her he added a few extra chips to the bag. He was keen on her, she knew that.
“Would you like to go to a dance, tonight?” he asked.
“I’m going to night school.”
“Will you come with me to the beach then?” he asked.
“I have to study,” she explained, “I can’t go out with you until after I do my nurses’ entrance exam.
One day he ambushed her outside Pepes.
“Where do you live?” He fell into step beside her.
Rosina blushed. She was confused by his attention. No one had ever taken much notice of her before. If he knew where she lived he might come calling for her. What would he think of her aunts? “I’m sorry,” she said. “You can’t come home with me.” And she ran away from him.
At home, the red-headed aunt she called Miss Winton was waiting. She was dressed like a man.
“Where have you been?” Miss Winton didn’t look at Rosina. She was rolling a cigarette and her breath smelled of alcohol.
The aunt she called “mother” was in the bath.
“I had to walk because I missed the bus,” Rosina explained.
“You’re always missing that bus,” said Miss Winton. “You’re too late now to do any messages, so there’s nothing for your tea.”
Steam billowed into the hall under the bathroom door. “Come and wash my back,” the mother aunt’s sing-song voice called from the bathroom.
Rosina escaped to her room when Miss Winton answered the mother aunt’s call.
***
Jane saw Rosina had finished her breakfast. “You must have been hungry.” She washed up the empty plate.
“Sometimes, yes.” Rosina said. “They often sent me to bed without any dinner.”
“What? I thought your family came last night. Didn’t you have some chicken soup?”
“Yes,” Rosina brushed some crumbs from her cardigan. “I had soup last night. It was Miss Winton who sent me to bed without dinner, but I was never hungry as Ivan. There was so much poverty he said. That’s why he came to Australia.”
Jane nodded.
“I was a bitch.” Rosina giggled. “But he kept pestering me to go to the beach, and after a while I said yes.”
“That’s when he first took you to Manly?” Jane had heard this story before. She put the kettle on.
“Yes. Oh, it was different then. Not many flats and only a few houses on the headland, because no one built up here during the war. They were afraid of the Japs. Ivan stood on the beach and looked up here and said, ‘One day Rosina, I’ll build a house up on that headland,’ because it reminded him of Omis.”
“Was that when he asked you to marry him?”
“No, that was much later. I wasn’t going to do anything silly. I wanted to be a nurse.”
***
At the Coast Hospital Rosina worked on the infectious diseases ward. The patients in her care had chicken pox and German measles.
It was heaven to have a room of her own – and hot water, and hot meals. She earned eight shillings a week, out of which she paid five shillings to her aunts and bought her own uniforms.
Her boyfriend, Ivan, had joined the Australian Army. He wrote to her from training camps in Wagga and Dubbo. Sometimes he went AWOL to see her. She was happy to see him but pretended to be cranky, because he might get into trouble.
This letter from Ivan was postmarked Sydney, which puzzled Rosina until she opened it. She ran her eyes down the page picking out key words from the worse than usual handwriting:
… bad news … in Concord Hospital … unloading army goods at the wharf … dropped on my foot … very painful.
She folded the letter and wiped her eyes.
“What’s the matter Rosie?” asked the Sister.
“It’s Ivan, he’s injured. He’s in Concord Hospital. I have to see him.”
This Sister was like a mother to Rosina. She lent her the bus fare and offered to cover for her on the ward.
At Concord, Rosina studied the wounded foot with an expert eye. It was badly infected and very swollen. He was feverish. She’d never seen gangrene before but …
She visited him on every day off for the next few months and his foot would not heal.
“They say they might have to amputate.” Ivan looked frightened.
Then she remembered her aunts used to put bluestone on the blisters and sores she got on her feet, and so she smuggled some bluestone into Ivan’s ward on her next visit.
It worked. A week later he walked out of hospital on both feet but the army still considered he was unfit for duty.
***
Jane put a cup of weak black tea in front of Rosina and checked that everything was tidy in the house.
“I’ll go now,” she said, “and I’ll be back tomorrow morning. Maisie from next door will be calling in this evening. Will you be right until then?”
“Of course dear. Thank you very much.” Rosina took a sip of her tea.
Jane stepped over Ivan’s slippers and closed the door behind her.
***
When she meets Ivan at the door of the nurses’ unit at the Coast Hospital, his pockets are bulging.
“What on earth have you got in them?” she asks, as he hurries her to the bus stop outside the hospital.
“Leedley bits of wood,” he says. He pulls one from his pocket. “See the grain here, it’s got small ripples in it, like the Adriatic.” He gives it to her to hold, and reaches into his pocket for more bits of wood. “This one has strong lines in it, and looks lumpy like the rocks on the hills near our home, and this one is dark, like the forests where I hunted for birds with my dog, and this one is smooth and shiny like the Cetina, which flows through Omis, and this one is yellow like the sand on the beaches.”
“What are you going to do with them?” asks Rosina.
“It’s a surprise,” he says.
He takes her to his room above the fish shop. What would her aunts say if they knew where she was? She doesn’t care. They had approved when she showed them the photograph of him holding a violin. They had assumed he was an accomplished musician. It wasn’t his violin, he confesses to her, but his friend’s – the friend who had the camera who took the photo.
It’s untidy in his room. There are bits of wood and wood shavings on the floor, and she has to resist the temptation to tidy it. There’s a peculiar odour. “What’s that smell?”
“That’s the animal glue on the burner.” He points to a blackened tin sitting on a gas ring in the corner. “It’s solid now, but when I heat it, the glue gets soft and runny, so I can use it to stick the pieces into my leedley table here.” He whips a cloth off the table like a magician, and empties his pockets onto the floor.
Rosina sits on the bed.
“Now this,” he says, “looks terrible. But when I finish it will look good. Now it looks like all the bits are different. Like nothing belongs and nothing fits. But all the leedley pieces, I can make them fit. They’ll make a picture of Omis, and it will be one smooth piece of wood.”
She watches as he works like a surgeon, with tiny tools, cutting and shaving the pieces, measuring them and placing them carefully into the carved out sections of the table top.
The picture grows out of the wood as they talk. He tells her about his crowded home in Omis and she tells him about her lonely childhood with her aunts.
“You know, we’re both hungry,” he says. “You’re hungry for love, and me, well, I’m just plain hungry. We can feed each other.”
(Based on taped recorded interviews with Ivan and Rosina, 1989.)
(c) Pippa Kay 2004.