Rise Not Black Clouds

Originally written for a writing competition, this short story was published by G&T Stories in the anthology Pictures at an Exhibition. It was inspired by photographer Martin Martinchek.

When the spring of 1959 came to the slopes of the Julian Alps, the tremors of snow were replaced by a flow of newborn flowers. It was as if God had spread butter on the mountains, anointing them with the first sign of new life. This rebirth was welcome to the town of Kransjka. The winds that had carved through its streets had frozen curses spat from the farmers’ mouths before they hit the ground. Snow-blasted houses had blended in to the Alpine backdrop so well that, during storms, it was possible to walk right into a neighbor’s wall; there you left your imprint, a white ghost of yourself fixed in time until the snowmelt came. Houses on popular street corners had a dance of shapes pressed into them by the end of that winter.

Kranjska’s citizens had been suffocated by the snow amassed on them by the mountains. Starvation had transformed from a word of the old days to a specter that had passed through every farm and town house. But Lev Kovač needed no reminder of death; he had faced it every waking hour through the early winter whilst watching his beloved wife, Veronika shrivel and die. To Lev, the color that spring brought to the mountains was the bitter after-taste of Veronika’s jaundice; evidence that the cancer which had eaten her liver had presented to him every day during those dark months until her death at the beginning of January.

The grandmothers sliding towards mass on Sundays had muttered to each other, “Poor Lev. He’ll not survive without Veronika.”

“Damned shame,” said the husbands going to and from work, each wondering how the old man’s property might be divided up when he died.

Lev had not heard the musings of former acquaintances and new strangers. Their opinions would have been like whispering to a deaf man.

At Lev’s house the shingles curled and warped like carrion on a gnawed lamb. The firewood next to the front door showed little sign of reduction. As the weather improved Lev took to sitting on his front steps, one hand supported by his walking stick. The stick was knotted and tanned like a surviving pine. It had been his father’s, and had accompanied Anton Kovač on the mountain excursion during which he had been killed by an avalanche. When his father’s body had been excavated the stick had been clasped in his gelid hand. Lev’s mother, Mira had presented it to him, as if it were a sword returned from a fallen battlefield. On examining it, Lev could see slivers of thawing flesh stuck to the shaft. He had thrown it into a dark recess of their house. Lev had been twelve years old. When he had returned from service with the Partisans, missing his left leg below the knee, Lev had retrieved the stick and it had been his totem ever since. His main support was a crutch which his best friend, the carpenter Mirko Kopitar had crafted for him. But the crutch was not yet a decade old, and still had an oily newness compared to its ancient sibling.

Disability had not effected Lev’s life beyond a certain inconvenience. He was, in some ways, designed to be a one-legged man. His trade as a basket-weaver did not require the use of his legs. The farmland around Kranjska was flat, and the town’s roads well worn and level. His body suited the handicap well. A low-slung man, he had heavy shoulders and arms strengthened by his craft. His gait, after some practice, established itself as belonging to a man who could keep pace with Veronika to and from mass. Yet he missed walking in the mountains. He had learned the hard way that walking on the town’s roads, and hiking up the deceptive valleys required different tensions of locomotion. Veronika had pleaded with him not to submit to the returning call of the Julian Alps, but he had ignored her. He preferred to believe that he was used to artificial support. He had fallen, and fallen badly. His left hand, clinging to the crutch, had taken the weight of his body. His right middle finger, reflexed out at the wrong moment had snapped. Kranjska had no doctor then, so the finger had never been set. The top of it jutted out at such an angle that young children often cried on seeing it. For those who could not take their eyes away from it when meeting Lev for the first time, his crooked finger performed the task of diverting their gaze from his missing leg. For Lev it was a reminder to always listen to his wife’s advice.

Lev shaded his eyes from the midday sun, then ran his hand over ashen, stubbly hair and cursed God. This had become a popular pastime since Veronika’s death. Today he had finished the last bottle of slivovitz from Veronika’s family’s plum orchard. During her sickness she had made him promise not to drink the shining fire.

“Ljubi,” she had said, in-between fits of coughing, “it controls you too much. Promise me you will not drink? I need you to help me.” 

He had nodded as he clutched her hand. She in turn had clenched an oaken crucifix as if trying to squeeze the blessings of Jesus out of it. He had abstained until her death. But once a widower, he sank into the mauve memories, drinking part of Veronika with every sip, with every raised “nostravia” to the miniatures of Jesus and Mary above her hollow cot. When his final companion was gone, he had inverted the bottle over his desperate mouth until the last drop hung over him, refusing to give up its sanctuary. He had tilted his head until his fractured lips had burned; lips that had brushed Veronika’s cold, painted margins at her funeral. The bottle’s last pearl was her delayed kiss to him. It was wild and passionate, like the early years of their marriage, when the promise of children was strong and willing. Before the diagnosis of Veronika’s infertility. Before their love became the child they nurtured. Before cancer turned Veronika into a flaxen husk. The slivovitz’s parting kiss was as sweet as the first one Veronika had bestowed on him. Then it was gone. He had shaken the bottle rampantly. But whatever prayers he had left inside had evaporated. 

“Lev, are you all right?”

Lev looked up. His friend Mirko stood in front of him. Mirko’s hat, which could no longer support its own weight, sagged down as if it had been stormed upon. It shaded his forehead, but not enough to hide gleaming eyes set deep into their sockets.

Lev grunted and rummaged his unkept mustache. Veronika would have been horrified at how bad it had become. Mirko’s beard was typically immaculate. The boar-tusks he proudly maintained gave his gaunt face a more ferocious aspect than his character deserved. Mirko could never find clothes small enough to fit him. He looked like a walking scarecrow. But Lev’s life had once depended on the deceptive strength concealed inside this middle-aged sapling. 

Mirko sat next to him, but said nothing. Veronika’s death had also affected Mirko and his wife, Vanya. They had all been good friends. Now the square was shattered, and the remaining triangle was insufficient to support the weight of Lev’s despair. 

Finally Mirko said, “Do you remember that young medical student from Ljubljana who joined the Cankar Battalion in ’41 and died at Dražgoše? He thought he was indestructible and got himself killed on the first day?”

Lev nodded. “He was stupid; thought God would protect him.” Lev rubbed the stump where his leg had been amputated. Through the rustic weave it felt numb. The slivovitz was still working its magic. 

“Do you think you’re immortal too?” Mirko asked. “Because I don’t.”

Lev felt rage gush up through his dulled senses and thumped his stick on the wooden step. “Do you think I give a s**t about your opinion?”

Mirko appeared to have anticipated this question. “You should. Vanya and I care about you. Do you think I carried you ten miles to the Franja Hospital after you caught that damn bullet, so you could drink yourself to death?”

Lev shrugged, but inside a memory, unquenched by the slivovitz, rose to flush the anger down. The skirmish where Lev had been shot had been short and ugly. They had lost three men in ambushing a German patrol, and Lev’s shin bone had been shattered.  Mirko had carried him to the hidden Partisan hospital, where a Jewish doctor from Bled had performed the amputation. Lev had always said a blessing for Mirko at mass; thanked God for giving his friend the strength to save him. Now he was destroying that faith, drowning it with his sorrow. Veronika, who had wept joy when he had returned home, was dead. He had nothing left to do but fold himself up and forget.  

Lev looked away, reaching for the mountains. “You saved me for nothing.”

Mirko removed his hat and palmed his white, thick hair. “She would have been ashamed of you.”

Lev made to rise, but his hand slipped on the stick’s worn handle and he pitched forward.

“Damned drunk,” Mirko said. “She died yes, but you have not. You’re alive, if that’s what you want to call this. We remember her, and will do that even if you choose not to.” Mirko replaced his hat and got up. He started to leave, but stopped and turned around. “When you’ve sobered up, come over for dinner. Vanya wants to see you.” Mirko turned and walked away.

Lev’s nose, bulbous and mapped with lines of rosacea began to run. He fumbled for his crutch and, after kneeling to steady his swaying, got up and clodded through the open door into the entry hall. The beginning to Lev’s old life now exhibited a reflection of his new world. Boots lay sprawled on the floor, like forlorn dogs; each contributing to a reek of unwashed socks. The innocent walls had marks on them now, trails of disgrace in downward, arcing lines. He sat on the pine bench opposite the kitchen doorway. Extracting his foot from the old boot he put on a softer, indoor shoe and threw the boot to join its forsaken companions. 

Lev looked into the kitchen. Once Veronika’s pride and joy, it now resembled one of the town’s taverns after market day. Dirty plates, tankards and the collection of empty slivovitz bottles crowded most of the working spaces. He rose and went into the kitchen. He felt a shiver irritate his body. The fire in the oven, once permanently alight and pumping the smell of freshly baked bread around the house, beat no more. The cots that he and Veronika had slept in their whole married lives, lay along the rear wall. The two beds were aligned head to toe, since Veronika complained about how badly Lev snored after coming home from the tavern. Her bed was neatly made. The black and green shawl that Vanya had knitted for her lay folded on top of the pillows that had supported her frail body. Lev’s bed was distressed. 

Lev sat on one of the chairs that Mirko had made them as a wedding present. The seat, used to Lev’s sudden demands, complained only a little, emitting a small creak as he descended on it. Lev glared through the open door of the oven. Veronika had enjoyed baking bread, laughing when Lev juggled a newborn loaf before breaking it open to reveal the aromatic honeycombs inside. Lev would smear butter on a crust and savor the doughy mixture.

Lev slammed his fist on the table, making the empty bottles dance. One of them toppled and rolled. He watched as it ventured towards the table’s edge. He had never been able to get the damn table level. It had been one of the rare things that he and Veronika had argued about. 

He would point at the table and shout, “It’s fine ljubica!”

“It’s dipping in one corner, and you know it,” she would reply, wagging a finger at him.

Finally he had put offcuts under two of the legs, and they had agreed to disagree on the finer points of the table’s horizons. Now, as the empty bottle rolled away from him, he cursed the table for reminding him of his obstinance. The bottle slowed as it approached the edge, as if pondering whether this was a course of action it really wanted to take. Lev wondered if it might choose not to fall and shatter all over the floor. Perhaps it would take pity on a widower, a man who had treated the bottle kindly and tended from its mercies?

The bottle disappeared. There was a fraction of silence, as if the world had decided that turning was not as important as listening for one of its daughters being sacrificed. Then came the noise. But it was not the noise he was expecting. He heard a melodic chime like the stroke of a church bell, not the fracturing sound of future corns under his feet.

The bottle rolled into view. It heeled to the edge of Lev’s right foot, his only connection to the earth since 1944. Anger blossomed inside him. A deep anger, from further down in his soul than any anger he had ever experienced.

“You b*****d!” he roared, and stamped on the bottle.

Lev woke in his cot, a discontented fugue playing inside his head. He groaned and rolled over, crushing a collection of Peršeren’s poems. Cursing, he extracted the book - a gift from Veronika on his seventieth birthday - and smoothed the pages back into place. Sunlight leaned in through the window above him. He squinted outside and saw a snarled vision of Mount Triglav lacing a blue sky. It was late morning. Raising his head, he looked down and saw shattered glass littering the floor below him; dangerous, like a minefield. 

There was a knock at the front door. Lev’s subconscious, slow to couple itself to reality, asked a question his conscious did not want to hear. What sort of knock had sounded at his mother’s house when they had come to take her and his sister, Helena away for deportation? Was it the gentle rap? Nothing to worry about - just open and all will be well. Or the Gestapo thump? Simply a formality in advance of the door being kicked in by a jackboot.

Lev decided to ignore whoever it was. He turned over so that his back was to the window, let his head plough into the pillow and closed his eyes. 

Another knock. Impatient now, as if the knock’s owner was not used to being made to wait for unresponsive doors to be opened. Lev groaned again. There was only one man who believed he had the pious right to interfere in the lives of every person living in Kranjska.

“Alright,” Lev shouted. “I’m coming.” 

Lev heaved himself out of bed. He picked up his crutch from its normal resting place, propped near his feet. He remembered to put on his shoe before navigating the glass treachery on the floor. Stepping into the hallway he considered smartening himself, but concluded that God’s representative could bear the cost to Lev’s immortal soul. Lev opened the door. As expected, Father Anton Zupan stood outside. 

Zupan was a tall man in his early fifties. He appeared older, as if the cumulative effect of absolving sins in the confessional had prematurely creased his face. He had receding white hair which seemed unwilling to lie down - preferring to point to where its God resided. He wore round, metal-framed glasses which gave him an owlish look. Lev considered Zupan a snob, although Veronika had admired the priest. Zupan came from a rich family in Ljubljana - his father had been a banker and his mother a schoolteacher. Lev believed that Zupan was using Kranjska as a rung to some higher position in the Church. Zupan was dressed in a tailored suit which Lev guessed cost more than he himself made in a year. It was as if Zupan wanted to remind Lev that he was (at least financially) closer to God than Lev would ever be.

“Lev, might I come in?” 

Zupan had a clipped, city accent that grated as if bees had flown in and stung Lev’s eardrums.

“If you must,” Lev mumbled. “Best keep your shoes on though.”

Zupan inclined his head, then followed Lev to the kitchen. The crunching of broken glass was the only sound as Lev sat down and pointed the priest to one of the empty chairs. Zupan looked around. He shook his head then removed his hat, placed it on the table in front of him and sat down. Lev could smell the priest’s aftershave, an evergreen cologne reminiscent of spring in the pine forests. The aroma made Lev feel sick.

Zupan said, “Mirko asked me to look in on you.”

Ah ha, Lev thought. So Zupan was not here out of original concern for Lev’s wellbeing. He had been placed under an obligation to come.

“And? How do I look?” Lev asked.

Zupan held Lev’s gaze. “I have to say that you look terrible. I think your wife �"”

“Don’t mention my wife!” Lev shouted.

Zupan seemed unfazed. “Why not? She is, after all, the reason you are in this situation. You are grieving, it is a natural process. But Veronika would not have wanted you to…disappear.”

Lev snorted. “Veronika would not have wanted, or God does not want?”

Lev had always gone to mass, but had never had Veronika’s deep feeling for God. She had expected him to go to church, and the hearth philosopher in him had reasoned that believing in God was a better bet than not believing in him. When the shadows fell, you were no worse off having learned the rules even if it turned out that the game did not exist. 

Veronika had seen Zupan more frequently as her cancer had spread. Zupan had cemented her need to believe that there was more afterwards. Also he suspected Veronika had implored the priest to look after him once she died. In that part of the bargain, Zupan had failed them both.

Zupan picked at his fingernails. “Do you really care what God thinks?”

Lev slapped his palm on the table. “I know that he has cursed me. He cursed me in ’44 when I lost my leg. He cursed me again when Veronika could not have children. He sure damn cursed me when she died.”

Zupan sighed and looked at Lev. “God has not cursed you. You lost your leg in the war. War is a conflict that involves risks; you gambled and you lost something. Many people lost more. As for Veronika’s barrenness, what did you do to support her?”

Lev opened his mouth to retort, but Zupan silenced him by holding his hand up.

Zupan said, “You believe God has cursed you by taking Veronika away. But she was old, Lev. Her time had come, as will yours, mine and everyone’s. I am sorry she got sick and died, but God blessed her life as he has blessed yours. She took comfort in that, and you should too.”

Lev spat on the floor, his offering hit a piece of glass and emitted a viscous thunk. “Comfort? What am I supposed to do? Sit here every day waiting to die?”

Zupan waved his arm around. “It appears you are making a decent effort at precisely that. You have not been to church since the funeral. You have not worked. You have shunned your friends and taken solace in the destination of the cowardly.” He nodded towards the empty bottles on the table. “It makes me sad to see a man who is so respected in the community reduced to this. You are a war hero, one of Tito’s Partisans. People queue to buy you drinks. You have the respect and love, yes the love of the people of Kranjksa, of Slovenia, and of Yugoslavia. Have the courage to fight now, as you did back then.”

Lev stamped his foot. “Courage to fight? Don’t lecture me on fighting. Where were you when the Germans were rounding people up and sending them to their deaths? Suckling on your mother’s tit. Slurping that warm milk and dribbling it down your chin. Shitting your pants at the thought of some Stormtrooper sticking his knife into you!” 

Spittle flew from Lev’s lips, flecks of it landed so close to Zupan’s right hand that the priest snatched it off the table.

Zupan stood. Looking down at Lev he said, “God has not abandoned you, even though you think he has. That’s if you ever believed in him in the first place.” He picked up his hat, inspected it then put it on. “You know where I am if you need me. It’s the church. You can’t miss it. It’s the tall building with the bell that rings for every mass.” 

Lev watched Zupan stride out of the kitchen, the sound of crunching glass following him out. Damn but he needed a drink again. He shuffled over to the sink and looked underneath it. He had some money still. He could walk down to the tavern and buy a bottle of the local stuff, but it was never as good as the nectar from Veronika’s family’s farm. Something to do with the water, that mountain water which tasted like bathing in spring sunlight.

A sunbeam mined through the window over Lev’s cot. He saw something in the half-darkness on the shelf below the drying counter. Something shimmering with a blue tint. Lev’s lips crinkled, and he licked the cracks. Could it be? Was there a chance? He reached down and drew out a bottle as tenderly as if delivering his own incorporeal baby. It was slivovitz from Veronika’s family’s farm, still sealed and full of the promise of forgetting. He laughed, and raised the bottle into the ray of sunshine. It shone one of God’s thoughts.

“You see?” he said to the bottle. “Your priest doesn’t believe after all.”

The sound that woke Lev was terrible: thin, needling cries of despair. At first he thought he was dreaming because the noises seemed so intangible, so small and inside his head. Yet when he had regained something resembling consciousness, he realized they were in the outside world. He had passed out on the table, the half-drunk bottle of slivovitz in front of him. He poured another glass and drained it. Perhaps the drink would make the sounds go away. Then he could get back to the business of sluicing his memories.

More sounds; pitiful mewings coming through the open window above the kitchen sink. Cursing, he swept his crutch under his arm and went to the sink. “Shut the hell up!” he crackled through the window. 

The mewing ignored him. If anything the pleading gained in urgency. It seemed to come from everywhere, and nowhere. Cursing again, he gathered his stick and lurched outside. Here the noise was clearer, but its direction was still uncertain. Lev farted loudly, and when the emissions assaulted his nose he wrinkled his face. He had been living on cured meats and cold potatoes since Veronika’s death, and his internals had not welcomed the change from warm bread and thick stews. 

Mew. Mew-mew…mewww

“God damn you,” Lev shouted. He turned slowly to try and locate the source of the noise. He moved a little towards the kitchen window, and it seemed to get louder. Then he moved away towards the woodpile and it got louder again. Perhaps a team of cats were playing some dirty trick on him. 

Cats! He hated cats. There were hundreds of them in the village, drawn by the mice that plagued the wood mill. As the pines were brought down from the mountains, so the mice moved in to nest in the chippings. The town’s cats found good fare there. Most of town’s residents were happy to let them get on with the business of ridding the place of rodents. But Lev had never held with cats, they were too aloof. They reminded him of Zupan, with their noses stuck up in the air. God must have had a real laugh when he made cats. Now a dog, that was a man’s animal. But Veronika had been allergic to dogs, they brought her out in hives and made her sneeze and wheeze. So Lev could not get a dog to replace the son he could never have.

After some minutes of triangulation, Lev traced the clamor to a nook at the far end of the woodpile. An old blanket covered the younger logs. He peered beneath the layer and saw a litter of six kittens of varying shades of tabby. Their eyes were still closed. He guessed they were no more than a day old. He looked around, but there was no sign of the mother; off hunting perhaps? Away to gorge herself on tasty mice to make nourishing milk for her babies. How easy it had been for her, to have offspring to carry her line forward. A fleeting liaison with one of the yowling tomcats from the lumber yard, and God had blessed her.

Lev felt the battle rage return. It came leniently now its seal had been broken. His eyes narrowed. His hands squeezed his stick with a grip as tight as his father’s closing grasp. The veins on the side of his head bulged, pouring the slivovitz onto the despair living there…the bonfire of God’s curse.

Why? Why had God refused to grant him children? It was every man’s right, his destiny to leave something behind for the future to remember him through. The injustice of the kittens rammed like a molten poker into the raven void that the slivovitz had carved out of his sadness. Night exploded into the abyss, and he saw God’s heresy before him.

This was one of God’s blasphemies that he could fix; something that he could touch and see. Yanking the blanket off the kittens he threw it on the ground; he plucked the kittens one by one and dropped them onto it. When all six were there, piled over each other in a writhing mass of pity, their mewing now desperate, he pulled the edges of the blanket together. Placing his stick by the wood pile, he began to march. It was difficult. The bag unbalanced him. He hadn’t walked without the stick since the few times Veronika had been well enough for them to amble arm-in-arm around the town. Yet he managed it, since the scrunched weight of the kittens was so little. 

Close to Lev’s house the river Sava Dolinka flowed out of the mountains to the Adriatic. The meltwater nourishing its veins was high, fast and cold. When he reached the river bank, he located a rock small enough that he could pick it up, but big enough to perform its task. He sat beside the bank. He did not look inside the bag as he rolled the rock into it. His ears tuned out the frantic cries of the kittens.

I hear, but I do not listen, he thought. He smiled as he tied the top of the bag with a piece of twine he kept in his pocket for emergency basket repairs. Shuffling to the edge of the bank, he sat with his leg dangling and the pulsing bag next to him.

Lev looked up as he hoisted the squirming sack onto his lap.

“You see what you can do with your precious life?” he yelled to the muted clouds. He pushed the bag into the water. It sank rapidly. A few bubbles of air broke the surface after it had disappeared. As they popped he thought he heard the slightest hint of mewing escaping from them.

Lev returned home immediately, set on completing the task of drowning himself in the last river connecting him to his wife. Now that he had killed the kittens the silence was only broken by normal sounds: the echo of chopping from up the valley, and the rent of logs being sawed at the lumber yard. All the sounds he enjoyed, and none of the disturbances of recent hours.

He sat and reached for the bottle. Its top was perfectly aligned with the dead oven. His hand began to shake. He looked over at Veronika’s cot. The images of Jesus and Mary regarded him, their gaze inviting the silence of mourning. 

Lev recalled the first time he had seen Veronika. Her family had come down from Ćipernik to sell sheep and slivovitz on market day. Veronika had been fourteen, and it was her first descent to Kranjska. He remembered her hair the most: long and glowing, braided in an intricate design that her mother had spent the morning weaving. Veronika loved her hair braided, and so it had been on the day she died. Vanya often said how jealous she was of Veronika’s hair - the way it still shone even when it had turned white. It had a life to it, Vanya would say. Veronika would just smile, as if it were some family secret. 

Veronika would hate him for what he had done, for what he had become. He had destroyed God’s creations, butchered the innocent just to spite God for slighting him. He had been a good man, a good husband. Veronika had been the axis of his world. In the power he had manifested he saw his weakness. He was lost. In his ruin he had abandoned the very things that Veronika had loved him for: his compassion, his loyalty, his patriotism, his skill, his sense of humor. 

Nothing remained of Veronika except a grave - somewhere to lay flowers until he died. Then no-one would remember her. But he was not dead yet. He lived and did remember her. In that remembrance he knew she would condemn him for what he had done today.

He had drowned with those kittens. 

Lev picked up the bottle with the speed of the drunkard, held it over his head and inverted it. As the slivovitz washed over him, it hid the tears flowing from his eyes. For the first time since Veronika had whispered her last “Ljubi” to him and died with her eyes open, he wept like a man who did not care. 

Lev emerged from another rent torn in the frame of his being. But something was different this time, something…physical. There was a weight on his chest. Like a gasp of vertigo he thought for a moment that he was having a heart attack. But there was no pain, just a persistent pressure. Perhaps his crutch had fallen over on top of him? He raised his head softly, as he had learned to do over the winter when the slivovitz’s blacksmith was working. 

A pair of slitted eyes regarded him. The eyes belonged to a whiskered face, and the whiskered face belonged to a cat. 

The animal was sat, with forelegs folded in under itself, along his chest. The cat was small. It was mostly white, but had smudges of tabby on its flanks and head. Between its ears a strip of white ran, as if an artist had stroked a paintbrush right over the top of its head.

Lev didn’t move. He pondered the cat, guessing it had come through the open window. The cat stared back at him, impervious.

“Who are you?” Lev croaked. He realized immediately that asking a cat any question was a futile exercise. The cat started to purr, not loudly but enough that Lev knew it had registered his interest.

Lev’s physical needs took over. He shifted his bodyweight, hoping that the cat would move. It didn’t. He slid towards the edge of the bed, keeping his body horizontal. The cat stayed where it was and moved with him. Finally he had no choice but to sit up, bracing himself for a clawing. But the cat broke eye contact and jumped to the floor. Ignoring it, Lev retrieved his crutch and went to use the outside toilet which, he noted as he relieved himself, needed attention.

Returning to the kitchen, he found the cat sat on the hearth below the oven. It was surveying the glass shards scattered across the floor. As he came though the door, it lifted its head to him and meowed. 

“Piss off,” Lev grumbled, his head pounding. He found a jug with some water in and drank it. Somewhere around was a broom. He could use it to shoo the cat out, then brush up the broken glass. He searched, found the broom in a nook between Veronika’s bed and the oven. He aimed it at the cat, who deftly avoided the swipe and jumped up onto Veronika’s bed. Aghast at the creatures gall, Lev was preparing to swot it when the cat turned on its back and presented its belly.

Sweat broke out on Lev’s brow; a sullen, ten percent proof sweat. The cat was female. Her teats were swollen and oozing milk. She began grooming herself.

There was no doubt in Lev’s mind that this was the kitten’s mother. She had come here to taunt him, or been sent by God to remind him of his sin. The cat looked up at him, and made a chirping sound. Lev wondered if cats had been using this impersonation to lure birds to their doom since prehistoric times. He sniffed and realized he reeked of slivovitz. He also needed to change his trousers, but that operation required unpinning the left trouser leg and could wait. He excavated his least soiled shirt and changed.

Lev decided to ignore the cat, expecting that it would go away. Five days later he concluded she would not. Worse than that she had, in some fashion he had yet to comprehend, influenced him to clean up the kitchen, wash, trim his matted whiskers, groom his mustache and nominally tidy the house. He had resisted the urge to feed her for the first three days, restricting himself to supplying fresh water. He had supposed she was feeding from the lumber yard menu, but when her ribs started to show he gave her a few scraps. She accepted these with the haughty indifference that was one of the reasons he hated cats in the first place.

Mirko and Vanya came to visit a week after the cat - whom Lev had taken to calling Mačka - had moved in. The front door was open, so they walked in unannounced. They discovered a kitchen that, if not quite how Veronika had left it, was at least adequate for receiving guests. 

Lev looked up as Mirko and Vanya walked in. They looked surprised to find Lev weaving a basket at the kitchen table, but amazed to discover the cat sat on his bed watching him work.

“Hello,” Lev said and nodded towards the cat. “That’s Mačka.” 

Lev was so matter-of-fact that Mirko was (unusually) lost for words. Vanya walked over and sat next to Mačka. 

Vanya Kopitar was not a handsome woman, and was often mistaken for Mirko’s sister. They were not, in fact, related as far as they knew. They had met at a dance the year before Lev and Veronika’s introduction, and both couples had married the same year. Vanya’s face was creased and weathered, like old leather. She had the characteristic sad eyes of Slavic women; eyes that had captured generations of men with their appearance of being on the verge of tears. She wore the traditional avba head-scarf, to hide the thinning patches in her hair. Lev knew that beneath her long skirt travelled her prized possessions, a pair of fake American canvas shoes which she had bought in Ljubljana. Lev had applied his mending skills to them several times, but suspected that their moment in the sun must come soon.

Vanya offered her hand to Mačka. The cat sniffed it before butting it with her head. Mačka accepted the subsequent petting with grace and dignity. 

“How delightful,” Vanya said, her old voice seeming young again. “Where did she come from?”

Lev did not reply. He had made three baskets in the last few days. Nothing as fine as he had made before Veronika’s death, but good enough to sell for some supplies. He had hoped Mirko would visit, so had bought Turkish coffee. He poured water from the kettle kept hot by the burning oven into a jar and added the coffee. The bitter-sweet aroma swept through the kitchen. Mačka lifted her head, sniffed the air and chirped approvingly.

There was silence as Lev made the coffee. Lev did not feel uncomfortable. He had deep friendships here. Something needed to be said, but the time needed to be right. Finally Lev offered Vanya her cup, which she accepted sitting on the bed. He placed the other two cups on the table. Sitting opposite Mirko, Lev stirred the viscous liquid then looked at his friend.

“I want to apologize…” Lev began.

“No, no,” Mirko held up his hand. “Really my friend, it’s not�"”

“Yes, it is,” Lev said.

“Mirko, let him speak,” Vanya said. Mačka had moved on to her lap and curled into a knot for further pampering.

Lev nodded to Vanya. He took a sip of coffee. “I owe you my life. How you had the strength to carry me to Franja I will never understand. It was insulting of me to say it was all for nothing. I’m sorry.”

Lev rose and Mirko did likewise, moving to stand in front of Lev. They embraced, and Mačka emitted a meow. Lev turned to see Mačka regarding him Her face was as readable as the granite cliffs of Mount Triglav. 

Three weeks after Mačka’s arrival, Lev decided to see Father Zupan. He wore his wedding jacket. It was a russet, corduroy garment of fine quality, but over the years it had diverted from its maker’s original design. Veronika had patched the elbows, and the pockets had been re-sewn. Lev had forgotten that the shoulder seam had split during Veronika’s sickness. She had offered to repair it, but he had not wanted to tax her failing strength so had promised to ask Vanya to fix it. This he had not done. Now he walked through the streets of Kranjska with the seem ruptured like a ripe fruit. Lev minded little. He was focused on the point of the visit, not the accoutrements embellishing it.

Kranjska’s church was whitewashed building somewhat grander than the town deserved. It had been built at the turn of the century, when Kranjska had established itself as a major market town. Once the sandpaper of communism had smoothed over the excessive profits, Kranjska became a more modest trading centre. Yet the church was a source of pride to the community; one of a handful of stone buildings in a town where wood was the common construction medium. 

The last time Lev had taken the route from his house had been to bury Veonika. Accompanied only by his memories, he re-traced those steps in the late-spring morning. People seemed surprised to see him, as if he should have passed away during the winter and what they saw now was some apparition. But he greeted them with a strong “Good day,” as was polite when meeting anyone, friend or stranger. Lev bought flowers from Nadja, a rotund and motherly florist, who kept a stall near the church. She greeted Lev warmly, for she was a customer of his and regarded his baskets as the only ones fit to display her flowers. He tried to pay for a bunch of radiant, alpine daisies but she pushed the coins away with a snort. She needed five new baskets for the summer. Lev promised her two within a week and the rest by the end of the month. Nadja nodded and waved him in the church’s direction.

Lev went first to Veronika’s grave. He stood in front of the plot, looking at the modest wooden cross that marked her resting place. Mirko had fashioned it as a temporary marker, until Lev could have a headstone carved. Lev placed the flowers at the base of the cross, performed the genuflection and closed his eyes. I miss you, ljubica, he thought. Please forgive me for what I did. I will try and make amends as best I can. It was enough, for now. He planned to come here every Sunday after mass to tell her of Mačka and their life together. How the cat would sit on his chest as he read Peršeren’s poetry to her. How she would settle in his workshop and watch him twisting branches together. How she slept under his blanket - curled into the crook of his knee, giving and taking warmth.

Lev approached the open church door, casting an appreciative eye over the generous metal studs pressed into the wood. He dropped some coins into the charity box on the wall, dipped his fingers into the pocket-sized font below it, crossed himself and stepped inside. The interior air was chilly and made the skin on the back of his neck prickle. He removed his hat. Inside the church walls gleamed and exuded the sticky smell of fresh paint. The women who tended the church had been at work. An oil drum - its upper half dribbled ivory - had been rolled off to one side. Lev reflected that the paint might refresh the faded colors of the walls and ceiling, but the new smell could not disguise the aged odors of dust and damp. 

Father Zupan was sitting on a bench at the front of the church reading a book. Lev coughed and Zupan jerked. The priest closed the book smartly with a snap, stood and turned around.

“I’m sorry Father, I did not mean to startle you,” Lev said.

Zupan bent and tucked the book under his jacket, which lay nearby on the bench. “Not at all Lev. Come in.”

Lev walked down to join the priest.

“Please, sit down.” Zupan indicated the end of the bench on the other side of the isle. 

Lev considered sitting next to the priest’s jacket, so he could knock it off and see what covert literature Zupan had concealed. But it would not have been what Veronika would have wanted. 

Zupan waited for Lev to settle, then sat down. “So, what is it that brings you to church?”

Lev fidgeted. It was his turn to examine his fingernails, and he found them not as comely as the priest’s. He looked up and said, “Two things, Father. Firstly I want to apologize.”

The corners of Zupan’s mouth rose slightly. “To whom? To me, or to God.”

“To you. I have already apologized to God, since I’m sure you will agree he does not only live here.”

Zupan inclined his head. “Go on.”

Lev rubbed his stump. “I want to say I’m sorry for the things I said to you when you visited me. I was drunk, but that is no excuse of course. I took the coward’s way out, not the way of the Partisan.”

Zupan nodded and folded his hands in his lap. “So you have repented?”

“Yes, I have,” Lev replied, bowing his head.

“Then I forgive you.” Zupan reached over, placed his hand on Lev’s head then removed it. When Lev looked up, Zupan continued, “You said there were two things?”

Lev broke eye contact, then caught himself and looked back. “I did something Veronika would have been ashamed of. I need a way to redeem myself.”

Zupan nodded towards the Confessional Booth. “Do you wish to confess?” 

Lev shook his head. “I would make my peace with God in my own way first.”

“As you wish,” Zupan said. “As to penance, I believe there is a way for you to contribute something to the community.”

Lev leaned forward, yearning to hear how he could absolve himself for the kitten’s death. “Please, tell me. I’ll do whatever you ask.”

Zupan said, “The Gorenjska orphanage is to open its doors further to disabled and disadvantaged children. They will need more support and strong role-models to guide them. I believe that the example of one of Yugoslavia’s Partisan heroes would be a good influence on the children.”

Lev felt the burden of guilt begin to lift. Helping the region’s needy children was a solution he had never thought of. Though them he would find a way to pass on what he had learned. They were not his children, but he would make sure that they grew up to respect the world and its creatures. 

Zupan, presumably seeing the acceptance in Lev’s face, extended his hand. Lev slid to the edge of the bench, put all his weight on his hands, gripped the sides of the bench and lowered himself so that he was sat on the floor. Then he shifted and bent to kiss Zupan’s outstretched hand. With tears in his eyes, he looked up at the priest. “I’ll not fail you, Father.”

Zupan smiled, patted Lev on the shoulder then helped him stand. “Veronika would have been proud of you. Now go. Walk to the orphanage and ask for the Matron, Svetlana. Tell her I sent you, and she will put you to good use. I trust you can spare the time? I understand you are working again.”

Lev nodded. “I’ll keep working, but I need little money to live. I can afford to spend time with the children. Perhaps someone or two of them may show an aptitude for basket weaving. I can train them and they can help me at my workshop.”

Zupan nodded. “An excellent idea, and one I’m sure Svetlana will agree with. Now God be with you.” Zupan made as if to accompany Lev back to the church’s door.

“No there is no need. I can see myself out. But…”

Zupan arched an eyebrow. “There is something more?”

Lev coughed and looked at his feet. “I have no right to ask, and you may tell me to go to hell,” Lev paused and crossed himself. “It’s just, that book you were reading when I came in. Can I ask…“

Zupan’s guffaw echoed around the church. He bent and reached under his jacket, pulled out the book and handed it to Lev. Its cover had been camouflaged with plain, tan wrapping paper. Lev opened the cover. Inside the front cover, hand-written in flourishing Cyrillic letters, read Foundation by Isaac Asimov. 

“History?” Lev asked.

“Science fiction,” Zupan replied.

“Ah. Russian?”

Zupan smiled lopsidedly. “American.”

Lev stared at him with his mouth open.

Zupan took the book from Lev’s willing fingers. “A weakness of mine from my childhood. Not exactly scripture, but nothing too spiritually dangerous as far as the Church is concerned.”

Lev shook the priest’s hand and left. As he stepped back into the light of day he thought, We all have our infidelities. Mine was with devil’s tears, yours is with decadence. 

After visiting the orphanage and talking with Matron Svetlana, who was a surprisingly slim woman in her late thirties - not at all what Lev had imagined a Matron would be like - he walked home. On the way he stopped at the market and bought a piece of fish for Mačka. Lev felt light, floating almost at the prospect of a life repurposed. In this swell of emotion, he considered the outlay appropriate.

On entering the house he called Mačka. Normally she came to greet him at the door. The kitchen window was open as usual, so that she could come and go as she pleased. He took off his boot, replaced it with his indoor shoe and walked into the kitchen. Mačka was not there; she was not in any of her normal places. He stood and considered the scene. There was a small indentation on the shawl on Veronika’s bed, where Mačka usually napped. Apart from that the only evidence of her occupation was a half-empty bowl of water on the floor by the sink. 

Perhaps Mačka was out hunting. Lev busied himself with preparing to warm the fish in the oven. He massaged it with salt, and thyme from Vanya’s garden. Such occupation untied memories of his wedding. He chuckled as he remembered the barantanje, the negotiation of Veronika’s bride-price. He had confused the residents of Ćipernik by insisting that in every other Slovenian village it was they who had to pay him to marry Veronika! He had settled with the men of Ćipernik on what was considered a bargain in Kranjska. He and Veronika had laughed about it on every wedding anniversary.

Veronika Kovač, his great love, his wife. She who had taken a poor town boy to heart, convinced him that he had the talent to weave quality baskets. She whom he yearned to have children with. She whom he had comforted when the doctors in Ljubljana had confirmed she was infertile. She whom he had told again and again how it didn’t matter, that as long as they were together he would be happy. She who had believed him. Finally he realized that he had believed him as well. She truly had been all he had wanted. He knew that her death had cut him adrift in his sorrow, but thanks to Mačka he had emerged from the drowned darkness of his soul.

Mačka was still not home by the time Lev went to bed. He became concerned. What if something had happened to her?

The next day Mačka had not returned, and Lev set out to look for her. Every time he saw some unidentified lump by the side of a road his hands exuded a fleshy film of sweat. Sometimes the lumps were dead cats, but none of them was Mačka. He could not walk that far in a day, so he enlisted Mirko’s and Vanya’s help. But after a week of searching they had found no trace of Mačka. 

Lev never saw Mačka again. But in the laughter of the children he helped to care for, he celebrated the brief companion who had saved his life. Through her forgiveness he was able to remember Veronika, who had loved him, and whom he had loved with every turn of the world.