Blaze (39 page)

He read the subtext of what she was really saying. ‘Nina, there are no strings, no pressures, no obligations. Yes, we have both changed – how could we not after living our lives these many years?' He paused and reached out to lightly touch her cheek. ‘Nina, could we try again? To spend a little time together? I will accept whatever terms you impose. It just seems to me that this accidental meeting wasn't an accident . . . what do you think?'

He looked almost shy, his voice was hesitant, but his sincerity and passion made it impossible for Nina to refuse. She shivered, a tremor of nerves and anticipation, as a long-built wall around the core of her heart dissolved into nothingness.

With their bags in Lucien's car, they drove south to Nuit St Georges, a famous winemaking village. It could have been the moon. But they would never forget what they ate, the name of the little restaurant, the name of the small pensione they checked into.

They strolled around the village shops and, finally, after a romantic dinner – where they tried to make sensible conversation but kept breaking into smiles – reaching for each other's hands, they slipped between crisp cotton sheets, two naked bodies, too many years apart, that melded together as the one they should have always been.

In the dawn light they woke and stared, smiling into each other's eyes.

‘Happy?' Nina nodded and stretched and then studied Lucien who looked, felt and smelled of the same sweet musky odour she'd always remembered. Looking at his silver hair, the softening jawline, she saw only the virile handsome young man of her youth – her first lover, the man she had once imagined she'd spend her life beside.

‘My Nina.' He kissed the tip of her nose and reached for her body, drawing its still slim yet rounded shape into his. ‘I was so worried about this . . .' He began kissing her throat, moving down to her breasts.

She tangled her fingers in his hair, smiling like a contented cat. ‘Lucien, how could you . . .'

‘I confess to you, my darling. It's been years and years since I made love. I thought it was over, I just was never able . . .' He clutched her to him. ‘You've made me a man again, a young man. I can't let you go, Nina. All my life, it's only ever been you.'

‘You're a more wonderful lover than I remember, the best, my darling. Don't fret – we have a lot of catching up to do.'

He nuzzled her belly. ‘It might take a while . . . like years.'

Nina refused to think about those lost years, or what might be ahead. For now, there was the utter joy of feeling a whole and luscious woman, worshipped by a man she'd always adored who saw her as she'd been, and would always be, the utter love of his life. He accepted her as she was now, remembered her as she'd been when a girl, and cherished her as a precious gift that could be snatched away at any time.

But for now, there was now.

Nina called Ali once more. Ali listened to Nina's excited voice as she outlined her proposal for an article on her journey to Croatia, weaving in historical background details, the effects of the wars and how it was now becoming a burgeoning tourist destination once again. ‘All told from a personal perspective as I go back to my childhood,' enthused Nina.

Ali yawned, glad they were on different continents. ‘Sounds great, Nina. I'll be interested in what you come up with. Sounds quite a challenge . . . making that part of the world and your personal experience relevant to our readers. But it needs pictures. Finding top professional shots could be tricky,' said Ali, already looking for reasons not to use Nina's piece at the end of the day. Ali thought the whole idea sounded old hat and boring. But she feigned enthusiasm. The longer Nina stayed away, the better it suited her.

‘By an incredible stroke of fate I've run into an old friend – a movie man who knew my mother. He's going to join me. He'll take photos.'

‘Bummer,' thought Ali, beginning to back-pedal. She had no intention of running Nina's story – she doubted Nina would actually do it. ‘Don't make any promises, and bear in mind our budget,' Ali cautioned.

Nina chuckled. ‘Glad to see you're keeping an eye on the bottom line, Ali. By the way, have you seen Miche's story yet?'

Ali groaned inwardly. God, was Nina trying to turn
Blaze
into a family effort – ‘How I Spent My Summer Vacation' by our editor-in-chief, ‘My First Time in Paris Seeing A Fashion Show' by the editor-in-chief's goddaughter. Just as well Nina had no other family. ‘No, I haven't seen it yet. Larissa mumbled something. I'll check on it. Now you go off and have a fantastic time, I don't imagine we'll hear from you in the depths of Yugoslavia.' Ali tried to keep the hopeful note out of her voice.

*

In the bright light of their last minutes together, Lucien was matter-of-fact. ‘I will join you in a few days. I have to finish this film tour and tidy up loose business ends. I'll join you in Zagreb.'

They parted with long hugs. Nina glanced over her shoulder as she went through the airport departure gate at Metz. Her breath was short, her chest tight. Would she really see him again?

The hotel clerk insisted on holding Nina's passport and airline tickets in the hotel's safe as was ‘customary', which made Nina nervous, but she didn't want to make a fuss. For her own reasons, she'd decided not to take the ambassador's advice and draw attention to herself. While Zagreb seemed cosmopolitan, clean and catering to tourists, she still shivered as past memories crowded in on her.

From the first day, Nina set a pattern of behaviour of walking and travelling alone at night, eating at restaurants outside the hotel. For a while she had a feeling she was being followed, but dismissed it as paranoia. But she knew she was being studied, openly and surreptitiously, wherever she went because of the way she looked – her grooming, her clothes, even though she had brought simple, unostentatious outfits. She was obviously a woman from the West and she elicited envy and curiosity. When she spoke in halting Croatian, it became evident she was one of the lucky ones who'd been fortunate enough to leave and enjoy a comfortable life, and was simply revisiting her homeland. The people she met had no idea she was successful, famous or influential in her own right.

Nina merely told people she had grown up in Australia as a young girl. When asked about her family, she had given her father's name, Trivitza. Clara had used her parents' name, Bubacic, after she was widowed. Nina still had a niggling worry about Clara Bubacic escaping illegally from Croatia with her toddler.

She fretted there could be repercussions given the fact their homes had been taken over by the state and Clara had escaped at a time when permission to leave the country was rarely given.

Nina tucked a new notebook in her handbag and set out late one afternoon to find the street where she had been born and where she had lived with her mother and grandparents after her father's death. She had the address and recalled the grand and elegant building from Clara's treasured photo album.

The area was heavily built up, not the quiet residential street Clara had described. There was an industrial plant, a few shops and a café.

Nina walked to the end of the block looking in vain for the street number – 78. She retraced her steps. She double-checked and finally saw a number high above a set of doors in a four-storey building.

It resembled a concrete box, with small windows. Absolutely no sense of style infused this functional building, either for those who inhabited its depressing flats or for those who paused to look at it. There was no grace, no beauty, no personality to this postwar piece of communist architecture. If buildings reflected their time and era, then how matter-of-fact, how unadorned, how intellectually impoverished this time had been. Many buildings in Zagreb were grand, with a fading, peeling glory, where they had once been elegant and admired. Many had been restored and sophisticated new buildings attested to the fact that Croatia was reclaiming its past glory and moving on in the new millennium as a tourist destination once again. But this dreadful block of boring flats would only ever display a lack of colour and imagination until, in decay, it would one day disappear.

Nina was aghast. The Bubacics' beautiful town residence had been replaced by an architectural monstrosity of public housing. The stylish heritage house, which had graced the avenue for more than two centuries, had been destroyed. Why? Because, she told herself, in the postwar era of communist revolution, housing the underprivileged was more important than the preservation of a wealthy family's conservatory, formal lounge and huge dining room, maids' quarters, reception foyer and five luxurious bedrooms. But attempting to understand the possible reason for demolition did nothing to ease the pain of loss, a pain of such intensity that it almost had her in tears.

A man emerged from the entrance and she glimpsed a small, gloomy lobby. She pushed open the door and stepped inside to find an old man sitting behind a desk with mail slots set to one side. Behind him on the wall hung a large print showing heroic workers rallying behind a red flag carried by a man with a raised fist and a rifle slung across his back.

‘You want something? Looking for someone?' asked the man at the desk rather gruffly, after giving Nina a swift assessment from shoes to hairdo.

‘Good morning,' replied Nina politely in her best Croatian. ‘I am a visitor. I once lived in a house at this address. A long time ago.'

He briefly raised an eyebrow, the only acknowledgement that the encounter was of uncommon interest. She was obviously a foreigner of Croatian background. No doubt American. Her grasp of the language was, he decided, only very basic, so he spoke slowly. ‘Your house went years ago from what I remember. I grew up in this area after the war. Probably all that's left of those days is the garden out the back.'

Nina tried to control her excitement. ‘I vaguely remember playing in the garden. It was a magic place for me as a child. Could I have a look?'

The old man took time to light a cigarette before answering. ‘Yes, I suppose you can. But there's nothing much to see now. Down the hall there, and through the big door at the end.'

‘Thank you so much.' Nina turned and walked down the corridor, momentarily closing her eyes as her steps echoed on the bare wooden floor. Wishing she could have been walking down the hallway of the family home, an image that had gone through her mind over the years.

At the door she paused, took a deep breath, then opened it and let out a light gasp. The past came flooding back as reality, not an image of memory. The courtyard style garden was real. Despite the changes, there was something familiar and welcoming and she quickly recognised what it was – the tree.

She walked slowly over to it, reached out and stroked the bark, then stepped closer, wrapped her arms around it, pressed her lips to it and cried.

From the doorway the old caretaker watched and scratched his head in puzzlement, then went back to his desk and the morning paper's analysis of Sunday's big soccer match.

The tree was a solid link into her childhood and Nina closed her eyes, smelling once again the beautiful garden flowers her grandmother had lovingly tended, seeing her dolls set out for a picnic, hearing Opa's favourite music drifting from the upper floor, Clara singing. Despite the tragedy that had unfolded around them daily, music gave normalcy to their lives. How loved and treasured Nina had been. How glad she was that she had given love, care and security to Clara in return. How sad she was that she had no children of her own to cherish.

Nina sighed and looked around the untidy, neglected garden with its few stunted shrubs and plants, patchy grass. The glorious garden of her grandparents had vanished. She glanced back at the building, which had only a few small windows overlooking the garden. She studied the ground around the tree. Was it possible that whatever grandfather had buried was still there? After all these years the garden didn't appear to have been disturbed since the flats were built. How could she bring a shovel here and start digging? Should she even bother? This brief pilgrimage had given her fodder to write about. But curiosity and the memory of the intensity of Clara's last words convinced her to continue.

Nina began working out a possible scenario. She went back to the old man.

‘Are there any empty apartments in this building that I could rent for a short time?'

Within a day Nina had possession of the key to the vacant rear ground-floor apartment. Before checking out of the hotel, she rang and left a message for Belinda asking her to notify the Baron, Ali and Larissa, who would pass the news onto Miche, that she was staying longer than planned. She rang Lucien and told him what had happened and that she'd be staying in the flat, but only for a few days. ‘Not that they know that – I've paid two weeks rent in advance.'

‘I'll meet you at the hotel on the seventh, Nina darling. We can go back and take whatever photos you need and then play ordinary tourists,' said Lucien. ‘Perhaps the tourism people could help us. Have you contacted anyone yet?'

‘No. I want to keep my personal inquiries private. If my grandparents kept something so secret for so long, it could be sensitive.'

‘Perhaps, but it's more likely monetary and material objects that were hidden during the war. It's a shame they were never able to go back to retrieve whatever it is.'

‘A government official probably lived there without knowing what was in the garden. And now that beautiful old house is gone. At least Clara kept a photo of it. Oh Lucien, I feel so odd. It's like going back in time and re-entering my grandparents' life.'

‘I'm worried about you creeping around. Be careful, Nina my love, I'll be there soon.'

Sitting in the very basic and sparsely furnished flat, Nina began making notes about what she remembered of her childhood in this place. While she had centred on her own desires in life – helping the cook in the kitchen, dressing up in her grandmother's hats and shoes, playing under her magic tree – other images began to have meaning. Worried visitors who came to the house and hurried into Opa's study and closed the door. Peeping out of the window at night with Clara who was frightened of a big, dark car across the street. Finding her grandmother and Clara weeping and being comforted by Opa. Rushing into Opa's study to tell him something and finding him opening a safe in the wall behind a picture – which made him shout at her to go outside. Opa never shouted. Had that really been a gun she'd seen?