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189

Quiet Flows the Una

Although I know she’s dead,

that doesn’t disturb me at

all because I’m glad we’re

talking as we stroll through

the watery strata of sleep. It’s

as if we want to compensate

for all the words unspoken

during our lives, when I was a

boy and high-school student,

and Delva a vital sixty-year-

old with a white ‘Yugoslavia’

filter cigarette in the corner

of her mouth like one of the

Immortals. As soon as one

flagged, Grandma replaced

it with a fresh and rested

cigarette.

‘May thunder singe your

socks!’

‘Damn and deuce you!’

Ihearhercolourfulexpressions

that once resounded behind

the hedge, from the window

of the summer kitchen. Its

floor had an opening with

a wooden cover. When you

lifted it, cold and darkness

welled up from below. Rungs

met your feet when you went

down, blindly, into that cellar

with neatly stacked piles of

chopped firewood. It smelt

damp and musty – just like

I imagined it would in the

underground hideout of my

Partisan Grandfather and his

wife Delva, who came from

Mostar. I don’t know if this

will make sense, but there

was something very precise

and soothing to that smell:

if I breathed in deeply, I’d

be swept away to a dense

forest that smelt as if every

tree was the essence of their

underground world. The hard

hats of fungi that grewon trees

had the strongest smell, as did

the moist forks of branches.

The forest litter and humus

smelt of earthworms, whose