Read Online Under a Croatian Sun by Anthony Stancomb - Free Book Online Page B

which.’
     
    By the time Karmela left, Ivana was humming with ideas and pacing up and down the kitchen.
    ‘I’m going to visit all medicine-making grannies. Most of them live with their families, and it’s a wonderful excuse to get to know more people.’
    ‘You can’t just knock on someone’s door and say: “Hello, do you have a granny at home and does she make medicines?”’
    ‘Oh, I’ll tell them you’re suffering from something. They’ll never think that I’m making it up. Karmela says that everyone thinks you’re so thin and straggly that you must be ill. I’ll tell them about your back – or, even better, I’ll talk about our family illnesses. Everyone over sixty likes talking about illnesses, and it’ll make us lots of friends, I know it will. We’ll get to the village through the grannies. See if we don’t!’
    The next evening, Ivana marched me off to Grandma Gokan’s and knocked on the blackened door. A pleasant-faced girl opened it.
    ‘My husband has a bad back and I wondered if…’
    ‘Come in, come in! You want my grandmother. She’s out the back killing chickens. I’ll go and fetch her.’
    ‘Killing chickens!’ I whispered to Ivana as the girl went out.
    ‘Now don’t you dare spoil it,’ she hissed back.
    I looked around. In the middle of the low dark kitchen was a large wooden table, and on the floor underneath were baskets of oddly shaped roots. Along the walls were shelves lined with strange-looking jars and the light from the window gave theirmurky liquids an eerie, alien glow. Were they for drinking or for rubbing on to the affected area? From what we’d heard about grannies getting their potions wrong, you wouldn’t want details like that to be lost in translation.
    The pendulum clock on the wall ticked unnervingly loudly and a blackened pot on a thickly encrusted stove at the back of the room bubbled ominously. The smell coming from it suggested pig’s face boiled in grease. Was it too late to do a runner? Then a clack-clack-clack of footsteps came down the corridor and a tiny old black-scarfed woman with a fearsome expression appeared in the doorway. Her voluminous black skirt made her look almost as wide as she was tall, and I was alarmed to see white feathers clinging to the skirt.
    Without introducing herself, she pointed at Ivana. ‘Is it you?’
    ‘Oh, no!’ said Ivana, momentarily flustered. ‘It’s my husband. His back is really bad.’
    I gave her a ‘let’s not exaggerate’ grimace.
    ‘Well, it’s not that bad, I suppose,’ she faltered. ‘It’s more of a dull ache.’
    Damn. I shouldn’t have put her off the script.
    ‘Lie here!’ said the granny, pointing to the kitchen table. With no obvious exit at my disposal, I got up and stretched out on my front. She hauled up the back of my shirt, yanked down the top of my trousers and prodded me fiercely at the top of my bottom. I whimpered. I’m a pretty accomplished actor when it’s a matter of just ‘appearing ill’, but, when it’s the real thing, I can be very realistic. She now stopped prodding and I heard the clack-clack-clack as she moved round the table to my head. I tensed. Was she about to yank my neck about? She bent down to peer into my face and for the first time she smiled. She must have recognised a nervous patient.
    ‘Artichoke root, birch bark and egg are what it needs,’ shesaid over her shoulder to Ivana, ignoring me completely. I remained face down and listened to the screech of metal steps as she dragged them over to the shelves, and then I heard the clink of the jars. The footsteps returned to the sink and there was the sound of cracking eggs and whisking as she beat away at what I presumed was the ‘root in viscous’. The footsteps then came back to the table and a bowl was clunked down. It gave off a strange, pungent smell and I looked round to see her scooping up a dough-like substance and slapping it on to the small of my back. I stiffened, but it didn’t