Potica

Anton pointed at his watch.

“Soon,” he said.

I nodded and dipped my hand into the clear water of the marble fountain. The coolness rushed up my arm and I felt the urge to go swimming.

The square was long and open, ascending in gradually-stepped stone staircases toward the Art Institute on our right and stretching down into Ljubljana on our left. Anton had not told us why we were waiting at the fountain. He had led us there, spoken quietly with Mila, and turned to face the Art Institute, arms folded. Mila was sitting on the edge of the fountain, watching joggers scrape across the dusty white gravel.

“They’re here!” Anton suddenly turned and walked away from the fountain. A family emerged from the grassy park beside the square, and three small children piled onto Anton’s back. I looked at Brooke, puzzled. She shrugged.

“Luka is here,” said Mila, beaming, pulling me away from my fountain-swimming daydreams. When I looked back at Brooke, struggling to catch up, she whispered, “Wait, they have children?”

Anton and Mila introduced us to their son Luka, his wife Alja, and their grandchildren Elena, Bine, and Lovro. Somehow, all of our pre-journey Facebook stalking hadn’t revealed that Anton and Mila were parents; yet here we were with their grandchildren scaling us like trees. 

“Food,” said Anton.

We set off across the square, Mila’s Yorkies fluffing along the path in front of us. We had only known Mila for 18 hours and I already hated those dogs.

Anton led us to an outdoor restaurant in the shade of a eucalyptus grove. Luke and Alja were silent, eyeing their sprinting children. Their somber expressions made me think they were perturbed at being summoned into the city to meet a random couple who claimed to be their American relatives.

The food was delicious. We sat under the breezy eucalyptus trees and enjoyed the cool, malty Slovenian beer. Luka and Alja left the table periodically to retrieve a child or two.

“Good?” said Anton, pointing to my risotto.

“Very,” I said.”

“Good.”

Mila laughed. “He doesn’t like using English, but he knows a lot of it.”

Anton raised his eyebrows.

“Do most Slovenians speak English as well as Slovenian?” asked Brooke.

Mila frowned. “Maybe. Not all,” she said. “But many speak both. You have to in the city.”

“Italian,” said Anton.

“Oh yes, also Italian,” said Mila. “If you live in the west of Slovenia, you will speak some Italian.”

“German,” said Anton.

“And German, too,” said Mila. “If you live in the north, by the Alps, where you were yesterday.”

We nodded. Yesterday felt like an eternity ago. So much had happened since then. But we had been 7,000 feet above sea level yesterday, scaling the white stone ridges and gaping at the Triglav peaks that cut away on all sides into shimmering valleys.

“Croatian,” said Anton.

Mila laughed. “Yes, yes, also Croatian.” She smiled at us, her eyes crinkling at the edges. “Anything else to say? Eh?” She gave Anton a playful jab on the arm. Anton kept eating.

“This one is strange,” said Mila, smiling and nodding at Anton. “But he is right. There are very few who speak Slovenian only. Here, you must have something else. Another one. You must. There is no way without something else. But I always speak Slovenian to the young ones because I don’t…I—” she picked at her polenta — “I don’t want our language to die.”

We were silent for a moment.

“Good?” asked Anton, pointing at my beer.

“Very,” I said.

After lunch we wandered through the city, stopping at grassy parks and playgrounds whenever the grandchildren wanted to. The city was drowsy in the midday warmth. Anton led us back to the square, then up the stairs to the Art Institute and along the river. Around the edge of a wooded park, we turned right and found ourselves in a long, smooth walkway that sloped down across the park and back up again to the foot of a spectacular mansion. Brooke and I murmured at the elegant beauty of the building.

“Tivoli Mansion,” said Anton, yanking the Yorkies away from a cluster of pigeons.

The walkway gave us sufficient time to admire the mansion as we approached. A gilded stone porch and series of marble fountains embossed its front lawn. The rust-colored tile roof dipped over exquisite windows that wrapped around to the back lawn. It reminded me of Captain von Trapp’s mansion in The Sound of Music. I looked at Brooke and knew she was thinking the same thing. I grimaced, realizing that fragments of “My Favorite Things” were going to be running through my head for the rest of the day.

Mila tied the dogs to the bottom of one of the patio tables while Anton went to the bar and ordered a round of café Amaretto’s. The sweet, creamy liquor and cold coffee washed the heat away. We listened to Anton and Mila converse with Luka and Alja in Slovenian. Brooke put her hand on my thigh, like she usually does when we haven’t touched in a while.  

           The Amaretto had worked wonders for Anton, who was holding forth an extended monologue on a local soccer club’s playoff chances. Mila leaned toward us. “Alja doesn’t like to speak English,” she whispered. “She thinks she is bad at it, but she is actually good.”

           Alja glanced at us.

           “Perhaps a couple drinks will help?” said Brooke.

           Mila winked and rapped a forefinger on her temple.

           “Next round is on me,” I said. I went to the bar and ordered a round of port for everyone. When I returned, Anton confronted me.

           “Do you know Doncic?” he said.

           “I’m not sure who you mean.”

           “Doncic. Basketball. Name of this one.” Anton pointed at Luka. It took me a moment to realize who Anton was referring to.

           “Luka Doncic! Yes, I do. Very popular in the states.”

           “He is Slovenian,” said Anton proudly.

           “Really?”

           “Yes, Slovenian.”

           “He’s from Ljubljana,” said Luka.

           “I had no idea.”

           “It’s true.”

           “Small world.”

           Anton treated the table to iced coffee and rum before I was halfway through my port. Droplets ran down the outside of the glass, and the cream meandered through the coffee like the roots of a thirsty tree.

           Alja was suddenly awake.

“Yes,” she said, “but you haven’t seen it—”

           “You don’t do—”

           “No, I am telling you—”

           “You can’t—”

           “You know I’m right!” Alja pointed at a smirking Anton. “There is a snake in there. I won’t go there if there is a snake.”

           Mila turned to us. “Luka says he saw a big snake in the cellar of our house. He is trying to make Alja go down there and see it.”

           “How big was the snake?” I asked.

           Luka held his hands out, roughly three feet apart, then slowly began widening them and grinning at Alja. She slapped his arm and we all laughed.

           “I’ll go with you, Alja,” said Mila.

           Alja turned to us, red-cheeked, gesturing. “Never!” She was trying not to smile and failing miserably. “You won’t make me go down there.”

           “What if Brooke goes with you?” I asked.

Brooke grinned. “I’m not getting anywhere near that cellar,” she said. 

           “Maybe another Amaretto will help you think about it,” said Anton, already en route to the bar.

           That night, at Anton and Mila’s Ljubljana apartment, we ate apple cake and drank wine and talked about our families across the ocean. Luka and Alja and their children left around nine o’clock, and Anton and Mila went to sleep just after ten o’clock. Brooke and I stayed up and made love on the couch with the lights of Ljubljana twelve stories below us.

           The next morning we drove north. Anton and Mila said we were going to their house in the mountains. The hills around Ljubljana turned into fields of hops, encircled by mountains that appeared out of the morning fog like oversized buoys on the misty ocean. I gaped at the rivers that shimmered down out of the mountains, with their glassy trout holes and sparkling riffles. Farmhouses with faint trails of smoke coming from their chimneys and goats romping on their roofs clung to the side of careening slopes that bottomed into the valley below. Mila’s stories about the peaks she had climbed in her youth mixed with the Yorkies’ quibbles in the trunk kennel. Eventually we began to descend, winding down the other side of the mountain and panning into the broad, green valley as the early afternoon sun illuminated the limestone-grey peaks above us. Anton pulled into the driveway of a large house. The air smelled of manure.

           “Mila!”

A woman strode toward us with blonde pigtails bouncing on her shoulders.

“Ema!” Mila spread her arms wide and the two embraced.

           Anton leaned toward me. “Sisters,” he said.

           Ema led us behind the house, revealing a pole barn and a pasture that stretched up the incline of the mountain behind the house. Highland cattle, their shaggy heads punctuated by massive, sweeping horns, dotted the hillside. Ema disappeared into the house and returned with a large pitcher and several glasses. We sat on benches outside the barn and drank glasses of light Austrian beer while she and Mila conversed in Slovenian.  

           “Ema married a German doctor,” Anton explained. “They lived in Germany. Hamburg.”

           “Why did they move back?” asked Brooke.

           “They didn’t,” said Anton. “He died. She came back after that.” He swung his arm toward the house and pasture. “All this—Ema and Mila were children here. When Mila and I were first married, Ema was still living in Slovenia,” Anton continued. “We would come up and help with the farm sometimes. Maybe once a month, maybe more. But then I hurt my leg and we stopped coming.” He pointed to the exposed hardware of the artificial leg underneath his khaki pants. Mila had told us during our Facebook conversations that Anton had lost a leg. I wondered momentarily how one might lose a leg.

           “Tractor went over my leg,” said Anton, as if reading my thoughts.  

           Brooke winced. “I’m so sorry,” she said, “That must have been terrible.”

           “It was,” said Anton. He watched the breeze ruffle the hay fields, nodding. “But I am OK.” He downed his beer.

           We arrived at Anton and Mila’s house as the afternoon turned into evening. A light rain was misting as we unpacked our things in the small upstairs room that looked down over the glistening fields and melted into the valley. Mila set to work making dinner in the round stone hearth in the living room. Anton’s muffled activities sounded like they were coming from the cellar.

           “Do you think there’s actually a snake down there?” said Brooke. The bed creaked as she sat down on the hard edge of the mattress.

           “Is there a Loch Ness monster?”

           “Maybe.”

           “Whatever.”

           “Just saying, it’s possible.”

           “Right.”

           “Look, Alja seemed pretty scared. Scared enough to have seen it before.” Brooke raised her eyebrows at me. The sound of a cork popping out of a wine bottle carried up the stairs.

           “Tell yourself whatever you want,” I said, grinning.

           After dinner, Mila brought out a wooden tray with a loaf of what looked like banana bread but was filled with a swirling ring of raisins and nuts on the inside.

           “Potica,” said Mila. “Ema says your grandfather, when he was a child in Slovenia, loved to eat it.”

           Brooke and I smiled at each other, thinking of Grandpa’s stories of “that Slovenian bread, the one with the raisins, the one my mother used to make.” When a food struck him as particularly excellent, he used to kiss his fingers, extend them upward in a gesture of delicacy and admiration, and exclaim, “Delizioso!” I took a bite and savored the sweet raisins, the crunchy walnuts, and the warm density of the bread.

           “Delizioso,” said Mila.  

           “I need this recipe,” said Brooke.

           Mila handed her a note card. “I knew you would ask,” she said.

           “There are not many foods like this,” said Anton. “Foods that come only from Slovenia. We are a small country, you know? Very small. But we have potica. That is ours.”

           That night the rain pattered softly on the roof.

           The next morning Anton stood at the side of the road as we loaded our suitcases into the back of our airport rental car. The Yorkies sniffed the Deutschland license plate and sneezed. Mila emerged from the house with a roll of warm potica, wrapped in foil.

           “For your travels,” she said.

           “Now it’s your turn to come visit us,” said Brooke, her arm around Mila.

           “Oh, I don’t know,” said Mila, smiling sadly. “We are getting too old for that.” She was right, of course. We knew they wouldn’t come—couldn’t come—but it felt right to say that they should.

           “Save some potica for your grandmother,” joked Anton. He kicked the front tires of the car.

           “Not a chance,” I said.

           They stood in the road and waved until we disappeared around the bend of the mountain. Two days ago, they had been distant relatives, discovered on Facebook, from the other side of the world. Now they were family, and other side of the world didn’t feel so far away.