An Anthology of Croatian Literature

Visnja Stahuljak (1926- )

Višnja Stahuljak (1926– ) A professor of music, actress, puppeteer, and well-published author, Stahuljak has poetry, novels, and many works for children to her credit. She has received several literary awards for her efforts. Croatian history and animals are featured prominently in her writings, which she began to publish in 1953 and which continue to the present. The following is an excerpt from the historical novel Zlatna vuga (1998, Golden Oriole), drawn from Most/The Bridge 1–2 (2004): 119–21. The translator is Graham McMaster. An Anthology of Croatian Literature 232 Golden Oriole: II (Excerpt) The wind that Matijas had heard in the tops of the firs suddenly stopped. The all-embracing silence halted him for a moment. He glanced up and looked around. Quite a time had passed since he had dropped down from the trodden path on the way from Gerovo to Praputisce. It was hard going over the softened snow. For a moment, he was sorry that he hadn’t brought the snow shoes for walking more easily over the snow, and wondered, standing and listening, whether he shouldn’t leave the path and go to a secret hideout where he kept several pairs of snowshoes, made from a framework of tightly woven bent elm wands, woven across with hazel strips or leather thongs, like other things that might come in handy when he was moving along the forest wastes towards Risnjak or Pakleni, or when he was hunting and going in the opposite direction, in the hidden passes towards Čabar. Or still further, in the direction of Prezid. Or when he was dropping to the south, towards Crni Lug, Lokve, or Delnice. He hesitated a few moments. The clouds had completely cleared, so the sun was glittering in thousands of crystal beads of snow. It glinted from the peaks of the mountains on the white coat of the conifers all the way to the thickly drifted stands of beech and hornbeam, to the snowy-white, level ground on which Matijas Bolf stood motionless . Then he heard a distant sound high up, as if some heavenly trumpet had sounded. They came from that very blue infinity that had opened up over Matijas, smiling graciously, after it had, for months, inimically hidden its omnipotent face away from people. The sound of the trumpets came closer. It flew high over the mountain tops and with it came a rushing sound, a flapping and fluttering, with which, like an echo from space, came a loud sound composed of many voices, reaching the earth as a uniform and unreachably distant call. Only in the infinite silence that was formed when the clouds separated and the wind stopped could Matijas see and hear the great flock that had appeared at a great height, flying from south to north. “Swans,” whispered Matijas, watching in a trance, squinting in order to get a better sight of the birds drawn against the clear blueness, protecting his eyes from the glare of the reflection off the snow. This year they were returning too soon. What kind of a hot year was it going to be, what premature spring? It occurred to him that if the snow melted too fast, there could be the kind of flood that had already happened when the swollen brooks poured into the Čabranka River, which then broke its banks, sweeping away everything in Višnja Stahuljak 233 front of it in its course towards the Kupa River. The captain too thought it might be dangerous. He kept staring at the flock of yellow-beaked, singing swans heading away towards the north, but even when it disappeared out of Matijas’s sight, there was still trumpeting from the sky. Shading his eyes with his hand, he stared into the emptiness of the firmament that remained behind them. Nostrils dilated, he smelled the clean, brilliant air with the prudence of a wild animal. He dropped his hands and turned, following the trace of some scent to the south. Not a wolf’s stink, he decided. Again he snuffed the air in strongly and he was sure, it smelled of bear. The sheer strength of the smell took him aback, because it led him to the conclusion the bear was dangerously close, but he couldn’t see it. He quickly stooped, hunched on the snow, watching in the direction of the stink to the south and hoping that the invisible...