Crusellin Sita
Six months before the onset of the war, Hakim Vokovic left Croatia with a recently earned degree in Engineering to accept a position for a company in Nuremberg, Bavaria. Six months later the news arrived that his mother and sister were imprisoned in the Omarska concentration camp, where in time his mother died and although his younger sister Lana was released, she became fatally ill and so passed away at the age of 25. Hakim was 28. He never knew his father yet retained one shadowy image of the man that haunted him the whole time he was growing up, forced, by his own conscience, or pride or fear, more likely, to become ‘the man of the house’.
He was a toddler in the back seat of a rusty red Volkswagen and could see his father’s hairy profile as he drove the car, smoking a cigarette and singing a song. The weird thing was that Hakim, barely having formed a vocabulary, remembered the song: a cover of The Beatles Nowhere Man by a then popular 60’s Yugoslav band called Indexi. That was it. The old man left and his dear mother’s face contorted with such pain when her children first asked about him that they never did so again. His name had been Rafee, Rafee Vokovic, a cool name; such a cool name that when Hakim was an adolescent he developed a secret, glorified fantasy that his absent father, all this time, had been travelling the globe as a drummer in a rock band. Why a drummer? Because in that single remaining memory, Rafee’s strong fingers were tapping the steering wheel to the beat of the song, focus on his hard knuckles and the brown filter of the Lord Extra, the moisture on the windshield.
He did not like his job in Nuremberg. He hated his boss-- a caricature of the austere, sex-less Fraulein, and he was indifferent about his five story walk up, three room apartment in a faded pink, half timbered gothic style building on the Ostendstasse. He was good with lines. He liked to draw bridges. He received the telegram about Lana one evening while he was sipping hot tea and watching his cat Beppo eat its dinner. He cried, alone, and went to work the next day and the day after that then quit and did nothing for a while but feel that he was now in fact an orphan.
The Bavarian woman he’d been casually seeing disappeared. Fuck it, he didn’t need her anyway. He forsook his religion and started to drink. He began to frequent the casinos and discovered a talent, or rather, a gift of luck for playing Black Jack. He let himself fall into a dark well. Vodka and cards choked his soul. He became involved with debased people and committed petty crimes to try and cover the great debts he’d incurred from gambling. Alas, luck is ephemeral. Then one day he woke up in the arms of a woman, in Helsinki, Finland, in the heart of winter. That was twenty years ago, just after the end of the Bosnian war.
Her name was Venla and she rented a studio on the third floor of a depressing brick tenet building in the northern park of the city. The front window looked out onto Heisinginkatu where the tramway rattled from aurora till midnight and a small balcony on the side looked out over a mean courtyard littered with paper wrappings from a Hesburger joint on the corner. Yet the studio itself was clean, cute even. A pine green wooden ladder led up to a comfortable loft bed and the little white kitchen was well equipped with chef quality utensils, pots and pans. She kept her bicycle in the entrance way and it always got bumped into when they came in or went out. Yes, he stayed with her for a year. Venla was a model; she modeled shoes, nail polish, stockings, bras, panties and hair products yet her face was never in any of the pictures. It wasn’t a bad face, or a nice face, it was a simple face, eyes, nose, mouth all very normal but remarkably un-expressive in a thousand ways like a mannequin. She liked Hakim. He was, it must be said, a very handsome man; tall, rugged in the sexy-- bad boy kind of way, slender, wispy dark hair, Etruscan nose, dark, pretty eyes and pouty lips that made dimples in his cheeks when he smiled. So she made him a deal, that he could stay in her studio on the Heisinginkatu as long as he followed three rules: 1. No drinking. 2. No gambling and 3. Fuck her at least once at night and twice in the morning 6 days a week. He was allowed to rest on Sundays. He was at that time, a desperate man, a lost man. He took the deal knowing the first condition would presently be rather difficult, the second, less so, but was confident he could do it and the third, well, no problem! While Venla went to work each day he’d wander around Hesperia Lake Park that was just across the way and think. Sometimes the thinking turned to dreaming and occasionally into a nightmare. But he stayed sober and started to draw again. By the spring he found a job at an Engineering Firm in the center and was happy to embark, this time, it seemed, upon a promising career. He liked the work-- in the design department, and he became friends with his boss, a jolly, healthy example of the blond, svelte Finnish male stereotype, named Aapo. In the summer they went fishing out near the islands and had picnics in the park with Venla and Aapo’s wife Inka. Inka was beautiful, a female version of her husband but more intense and talented as well. A gifted clarinetist in the Helsinki Philharmonic orchestra, she adored the work of the Finnish composer Bernhard Henrik Crusell, whose clarinet concerto in F minor, opus 5 was the epitome of her repertoire. Those August afternoons, drifting in Aapo’s yacht on calm waters, after a lunch of smoked salmon and chilled white wine, when Inka would play, her blond hair caressed by a supple, warm breeze… it must have been then that Hakim fell in love and secretly began to crush on her big time. The fucking requirements at home had obviously mellowed, yet yeah; he pretended (now down to three, four times a week) that instead of Venla, his dick was throbbing in Inka’s pussy. Venla never fell in love with him and he never even came close to thinking of her as anything more than a friend. He concentrated on his work and in the dead of winter one year later, left her.
He rented a studio in the south of the city on the Tehtaankatu. It was a bit bigger than Venla’s place and far more aesthetically pleasing with a wide arched window and a communal sauna on the first floor. He got a charcoal grey cat and named her Sasha and treated himself to lavish dinners at a nearby Russian restaurant called Saslik where his favorite dish was deep fried lamb pelmeni with Smetana and lingonberries. Work was fine and his infatuation with Inka had faded months ago, keeping his close friendship with Aapo in tact. He met a Russian woman named Klementina and fell completely in love for the first time in his life. She was an interior designer from a wealthy family and they had the grandest wedding imaginable, that is, in lieu of the fact that he’d never in a million years imagined his own wedding at all. But oh, how he adored her. She was smart and sexy and tough. He was promoted at the firm and they bought a house, or more like a little mansion, on the Rehbinderinite across from Eira Park. They had a son and named him Gerasim Luukas Vukovic.
Soon after the birth of Gerasim, Inka was diagnosed with cancer. During her illness and imminent death, Aapo’s grief kept him increasingly away from the firm and Hakim was put in charge. He worked hard and in time his designs were selected for the construction of a new bridge across the Ruohslanti Channel that led out of the south west of Helsinki into the Baltic Sea. In honor of Inka and sympathy for Aapo, he decided to name the project the Crusellin Silta, after her favorite composer. Hakim was a happy man for the next ten years, Gerasim, the light of his life, but Klementina changed, divorced him and re-married a Finnish guy, for, in Hakim’s perception he was a guy, more than a man, named Hedley. They sold the house in Eira and bought a decent but much less elegant place in Puu-Villila, a residential district in the northeast where classical Nordic wooden homes, originally built to house factory workers in the early 1900’s, had been refurbished and painted in an array of sunny pastel colors. So now, his dear Luukas, five days a week, lived in a lime green house on a street lined with oak trees. To be honest, the area was quite charming, especially in the autumn; candy colored two story boxes peeking through branches of copious crimson, rust, brown and yellow leaves.
Hakim moved into a top floor flat on Kellosaarenranta over-looking the Ruohslanti canal and with a grand view to the left of the bridge that came from his idea. It was unintentional of course; the bridge just happened to be there when he found the flat and knew he would like living there, on the outskirts of town, where things seemed simple by the water.
For the past five years Hakim would pick up his son on Friday nights and drive him back to the ‘lime house’ on Sunday evening. Hence, the weekends became the best bit of his existence. The boy was tall, healthy and active like his father and although he was very bright, had little enthusiasm for school. His passions were directed towards all things physical and he was deeply involved in rugby during the spring and hockey in winter. How proud was Hakim on Saturdays! Sitting on the bleachers watching his only child kiss ass out there! Yes, the weekends were special; they’d try new restaurants, see new films and play cards. Alas, Hakim taught the kid to play black jack and poker and although quite in check, he could not disavow the old thrill. When Gerasim turned twelve he bought a gift for both of them; a 37 foot 1980 Nauton Swan sailboat. It was a fixer-upper but only cost him 46,000 euros, a good price for it had a newly rebuilt engine, an analogue Hercules 190 navigation system, a maple wood cabin, a teak deck and an aluminum mast with double spreaders and boom.
How could the summer weekends get better? They’d spend all day into the early evening working on the boat then take her out to sail the Baltic Sea under a sherbet colored sky where the sun would not set for months yet to come! Of course as Luukas entered his teenage years his attitude reflected the natural need for independence and Hakim could only sigh yet with delight and wonder that his dear boy was growing up. Then at age 15, Luukas got his moped license and his father, knowing full well what he was doing, bought him a brand new Vespa Primavera, jet black with a white and fire red seat. But he was a responsible kid and although he was out buzzing about town most of Saturday, he’d always make it home before 10 p.m. to sleep in his own bedroom at his dad’s. And on Sundays, except for the winter months, they’d still take out Lana, the Nauton Swan, of course named after Hakim’s sister, by now, both father and son well on their way to becoming expert sailors.
It was a Tuesday morning in January when he first noticed her. Hakim stood in below zero weather on his balcony with a blanket around his shoulders drinking coffee, half awake, gazing over the channel toward the west at the steel and cable obstruction that was ‘his’ bridge. She wore a red wool coat with a fake white fur collar. Even from his distance he could somehow tell it was fake. Why he decided to take his coffee on the balcony in the freezing cold that day he could not say, maybe some hidden instinct inside him had listened to fate. She crossed the bridge at a regular pace, not rushing to escape the icy air, nor particularly relishing it either. Her long brown hair spilled out from a black knit cap. She turned onto Kellosaarenranta and proceeded along the lane and was soon passing directly below his balcony where she slipped on the ice but didn’t fall, just skipped and regained her balance. When she did that, Hakim stood up from his chair as if he would rush down to help her, then sat back down and watched her, not knowing why, as she continued along the canal until she came to Faro, the bar and restaurant on the corner, where she opened the front door and went in.
He took his coffee outside in below zero temperatures on Wednesday morning again, and again watched her red coat cross the bridge, pass below his balcony and move into Faro. It was snowing heavily on Thursday and Friday as well, yet he saw her en-route, obviously going to work, on schedule each morning at 9 a.m. The odd thing was that an expedient tram did cross the bridge and yet in such weather she insisted on walking. She must like the exercise, he thought. Why he thought of her at all he knew not, he couldn’t see her face clearly from his balcony, or get a good idea of her body beneath that bulky red coat, but by the end of the week he was curiously infatuated. So on Saturday, he took Luukas out to dinner at the restaurant. Although it was right on the corner of the Kellosaarenranta, not once in the five years he’d lived there, had he ever felt a desire to eat there, perhaps because in the summer it was a famous tourist spot. Father and son got a table over looking the grey, frozen canal, glowing with yellow stripes from the outside lights of Faro. Their waitress was not the woman who walked the bridge as he’d hoped. He looked around-- not the other waitress or the hostess or the bartender. The menu was surprisingly rather gourmet.
“What are you going to get?” Hakim asked Luukas.
The boy knew right away after reading it once, “Grilled ox with red wine sauce, chorizo, green beans and crispy potatoes.”
Hakim laughed, “Ox? Hey, you just chose that because of the crispy potatoes.”
Luukas smiled, “So what?”
“Well, I think I’m going to have the Risotto with a black salsify puree, fried mushrooms and Pecorino cheese… and a glass of Alsace wine.”
“Can I have wine too?”
Hakim shrugged, the kid was sixteen. “Sure.”
The meal was truly spectacular, absolutely delicious-- especially Luukas’ ox which his father tasted. But she was no-where to be seen. ‘Of course,’ he thought to himself, she had the lunch shift…
So they went back to Faro on Sunday for lunch yet to no avail. ‘Right, she must have Sunday’s off.’ The restaurant was closed on Monday and he tried to forget about her. He woke late on Tuesday and took his coffee inside and the next few days too, trying to get her out of his mind. But on Thursday, around 8:30 a.m., he was awakened by an irritating car alarm on the street below. Fuck it, he got up, made coffee and went out onto the balcony. Just in time. The red coat had just crossed the bridge and was heading his way. He got so excited he wanted to call out to her but that would be ridiculous. Then immediately as she passed below, she looked up deliberately at Hakim in his boots and blanket and smiled… or did she? The January sky was so dense and dark in the morning, yet it became obvious that she must be aware that he had been watching her and suddenly he felt crazy. He went to work and in the evening, stopped off at the Faro bar and drank vodka tonics until things began to get blurry. On Friday he forgot about her-- or made himself forget her, picked up Gerasim and took him to the movies.
“Are we going to go to that restaurant tonight?” Luukas asked him on Saturday.
“Why? You want to eat ox again? I thought we’d try that Turkish place in Eira.”
“Not ox but I wanted to get something different. I really liked the food there.”
“I mean yeah, sure, if that’s what you wanna do.” And then it dawned on him, she did work there but not in the front of the house-- she must be in the kitchen, maybe even the chef herself!
Hakim ordered a starter-- snails with gorgonzola, parmesan and garlic and his entrée-- Halibut sautéed in butter, lobster foam, fennel and potato puree. After some deliberation, Luukas settled on Corn beef in a soft briossi bun, sauerkraut, Dijon mustard, aioli and chips. Hakim got a beer and his son, a coke. The meal was excellent and as the waiter was clearing their plates, Hakim told him, “My son here would like to compliment the Chef, is that possible?”
“I do?” Luukas smiled.
“Yeah, you do.”
“But of course,” said the waiter, “I’ll tell her right away.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to--” Luukas began but his father interrupted him, “When you like something somebody does for you it’s good practice to let them know.”
The boy shrugged and within a minute she was there, standing at their table. Her long hair was pulled back in a messy twist and her face tired and naked in no makeup. She was pretty, very pretty and he could tell that beneath her white jacket and black slacks that her figure was curvy but trim.
She looked first at Hakim and then at Luukas as he told her, “You’re a really good cook.”
She smiled, “Thank you. What did you have?”
“This time I got the Corn beef but I had the Ox the first time we came here.”
“Well, I’m glad you came back.”
“It’s a fine establishment.” Added Hakim yet she seemed to ignore him on purpose and grinned again at Luukas, “I have to get back into the kitchen but please, go ahead and order a dessert on me.”
“Really? Cool.” The boy already knew what he wanted; white chocolate mousse cake with biscuit base and fresh passion fruit puree.
The following week on Wednesday, holding out as long as he could, Hakim went to Faro at nine p.m. and sat at the bar to sip a glass of pinot noir. The kitchen closed at ten although the place was open until midnight. At 9:45 she came through the kitchen door into the dining room and saw him at the bar but continued past him. He paid for his wine and left the place a second after her. It was snowing, gentle, fat flakes. He scuttled up beside her as she started down the Kellosaarenranta and said, “Hello.”
She picked up her pace and ignored him. He stayed beside her. “We met the other night.”
She stopped, “Pardon?”
“My son liked your food.”
“Oh, right. He seems like a nice kid.”
“He is.”
She walked on and he stayed beside her until she stopped beneath a street lamp to look at him closely. “You’re the man on the balcony.”
“Guilty.”
“Ok, so you’re a creep, a stalker…”
“No, no.” he laughed, “Not at all! Please, no… I’m just… I don’t know why I’ve been… I saw you for the first time a few weeks ago, crossing my bridge in a snow storm and--”
“Your bridge?”
“Yes. I built it.”
“Right.” She walked on, faster.
He caught up to her, “I mean I designed it. I came up with the plans. It’s my job…”
“What do you want from me?”
“Want… I don’t… I suppose I’d like to get to know you, that’s all.”
“Why?”
“Not sure really. But why don’t you take the tram?”
“I like the exercise.”
“Thought so.”
She stopped again. They were directly below his balcony. “This is where you live, isn’t it?”
He nodded.
She walked on and he followed, “Can I walk you home?”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“Of course, I can see why you might think so. Alright, but I’m a good man and as I said, I thought it might be nice to know more about you.”
She sighed, “I’m very tired. It’s been a grueling day in the kitchen. I have to get home.”
He nodded but before she could escape him he offered, “Can I buy you a drink at the bar after work sometime?”
“How do you know I’m not married or involved or…”
“Are you?”
She sighed, smiling. “My name is Nikolina.”
“Hakim.”
“Sunday…” she hesitated but soon added, “We’re closed Mondays.”
Hakim put his cold bare hands in his coat pockets and watched her walk toward the bridge. The light from the street lamps along the channel created patches of blue and yellow shadows glistening over a world of white snow. The thick clumps of snow shoveled to the sides of the walkway, the beds of snow covering benches, the sculpted snow burying forgotten bicycles on a nearby rack and the labyrinthine lines of fallen snow upon naked branches all suddenly appeared submissive to him and his heart ached with loneliness in that silence.
She said yes, she said Sunday; she had asked ‘what do you want from me?’ And in that moment in the dead of night before he turned to unlock his door, he knew the answer.
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