"To Matins with Father for the First Time"

"I was only nine", he says, "at the time. Personally, I don't remember everything in exact detail. I will tell you only what I can recall. My older sister, also, knows about it, while my brother, who is younger than me, knows absolutely nothing. If I told him anything, I'd be completely insane!

While I was growing up, my mother was answer to most of my questions. My father naturally never uttered a word. So, I asked her.

He, that is, my father, dressed, of course, like a Turk. I can still see him putting his clothes on: short under vest made of red velvet rimmed by several golden braids; green cloth jacket over it. Behind his belt decorated in gold, he stuck a thin walking stick with an ivory top and a small dagger with silver scabbard with a handle in the shape of the catfish bone. Over the belt, a fringed sash, beat against his left side. His breeches were ornamented with silk braid and embroidery, wide legs of the breeches were half way down, and he wore white leggings and flat shoes. He put a Tunisian fez on his head, slightly skewed to the left. An ebony pipe with an amber mouthpiece was in his hand. On the right side, under his sash was stuck a tobacco pouch, embroidered in gold and trinkets. He was a real dandy!

His nature was—he is my father, true, but it's no use in fooling you since I've already started telling you the story—his nature was peculiar. He was strict to the extreme, always bossy. He gave an order only once, and if you didn't do what you had been told immediately—the only thing you could do was—run for your life! He was short-tempered and biting, wanted everything to be done in his way; that is, no one had the guts to oppose him. When he got really mad, he blasphemed the Halleluiah. When he beat, he used only one slap. But, oh boy, when he hit you in the face, it was enough to put you on the ground! He easily got angry; he bristled, bit his lower lip, stroked a right moustache-turning its end up, his eyebrows met across the forehead, and those black eyes piercing. Woe! And at that moment if anyone told him I did not know "my lessons"!

I don't know what I was so afraid of, and if he eventually smacked me on the face, so what? But I feared those eyes: those two pointing guns at me, and you didn't even know why, you were shaking like a leaf—and why, I don't have the slightest idea!

He never laughed, at least, not like the other people. Oh, I remember one time. My father was holding my baby brother on his knee. He gave him a watch to play, and my little brother Ðokica was trying to put the watch in our father's mouth, shouting at the top of his lungs because our father refused to open his mouth. My sister and I almost died laughing, our father found the case somewhat amusing as well, so he stretched his mouth to the left several times and skin around the corner of his left eye wrinkled. That was extremely rare, but that was how he "laughed" at something that the others would burst of laughter and could be heard all the way to Tetreb's Inn.

And, then again, I remember the day when my uncle died, my Dad's brother and partner, the person whom he loved deeply. My aunt, my mother, our relatives, us children—we all sobbed, moaned, cried our hearts out, while my father did not make a move, he did not even shed a single tear, not a sigh "oh" out of pain, could be heard of him. Only when the corpse was being taken from the house, his lower lip trembled, his body shivered so he had to lean against the door, white as a...