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  • "The First Matins with My Father"1
  • Laza K. Lazarević
    Translated by Pavle Popović

I was only nine years old at the time. I don't remember the exact details of what happened, so I can only tell you what I recall. My sister who is older than I am remembers too, but my younger brother, on the contrary, knows nothing about it. I was never fool enough to tell him. When I grew up, I questioned my mother, who told me many things about the affair. My father, naturally, never breathed a word.

He, my father, was, of course, always dressed as a Turk. I can still see him putting on his clothes. He wore a short undervest of red velvet edged with several rows of gold braid, and over that a green cloth jacket. Behind his belt, which was stamped in gold, he stuck a thin walking stick with an ivory top and a dagger with silver scabbard and ivory handle. A fringed sash, tied on the left side, covered the belt. His trousers were ornamented with silk braid and embroidery, huge flaps hung half way down his legs, and he wore white stockings and flat shoes. A Tunisian fez, worn a little over the left car, served as headgear. He carried in his hand an ebony pipe with an amber mouthpiece, and stuck in his sash on the right side was a tobacco pouch embroidered in gold and false pearls. He was a real dandy.

His disposition was peculiar, and though it is true that he was my father, since I have started to tell the story, there is no use in lying about it. He was extremely severe, he always commanded, and if his orders, given once for all, were not immediately executed, there was nothing left for you to do but to escape as fast as possible. Passionate and forcible, he required that everything should be done in his way; in short, no one dared to have the audacity to contradict him. When he was really angry, he would blaspheme the Alleluia. He never gave but one blow, but my dear fellow, you were on the ground as soon as you were hit! He was easily offended; when he scowled, bit his lower lip, and twisted his moustache, turning up the ends, his eyebrows joined across his forehead, and his black eyes gleamed. Woe, if at that moment [End Page 147] someone came to tell him that I did not know my lesson. I don't know why I was so afraid. Hc might have boxed my ears once. But his eyes made me shiver, and when he turned them on you like a bullet from a sling, you would begin to tremble like an apple twig, without rhyme or reason.

He never laughed, at least never like other people. I remember one day, when he was holding my little brother on his knee. He had given the child his watch to play with, and Ðokica insisted on jamming the watch into his mouth and yelling like one possessed because he couldn't open it. My sister and I almost died laughing, and the thing seemed amusing even to my father, for he several times partly opened his mouth on the left side and his face wrinkled at the corner of his left eye. This was an extraordinary event, and was his way laughing at a thing which would have made anyone else roar so that they could be heard at the Inn of Tetreb.

I remember the day that my uncle died, Papa's brother and partner, whom he cared for deeply. My aunt, my mother, my cousins, all of us children sobbed and groaned, with tears and lamentations, all, all, crying aloud. But Papa never faltered, he did not shed a tear, or even say an "Oh" of pain. Only as he went out of the house his lower lip trembled nervously and he shivered. He was white as linen and supported himself against the doorway, but he did not open his lips.

Even at the risk of his head, he would never go back on what he had said, though the thing...

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