| THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL SON |
Stevan Orescan
I think just about every son, grandson or great grandson has thought about visiting the “old
country” at one time or another if for no other reason than just to see from whence his roots sprung.
Having visited Russia during the Soviet Union period and been utterly fascinated by my mother’s
country of origin in spite of government restrictions, suspicious bureaucracy, lack of food, rudeness
of the people and rampant alcoholism, I was finally ready to visit Yugoslavia, the country of my
father’s birth, a side trip as I returned to America after a years sojourn in the bowels of Asia.
I departed from Bombay dressed in long Indian kurta-pyjamas, backpack, and beard and hair that
had not been cut for a year and disembarked in Athens, my plan being to take train and bus to my
final destination, the village of Perna, a small Serb enclave in the middle of Croatian territory near
the city of Dubrovnik. This was some years before the war and though there were rumblings of
discontent even then I had no reason to expect any display of ill-will or unfriendliness. After all, I
was an American, a relation, a kindred soul connected by blood and collective memory, a link that
went back many generations and I would be welcomed with open arms.
I had little interest in remaining in Athens, a city filled with American tourists, mostly of the teen-age
variety, and young, handsome Greek men of the prancing predatory type who wore tight trousers,
shirts unbuttoned just enough to show their chest hair and gold crosses, and all who seemed to
carry little leather purses containing cigarettes, a silk handkerchief and probably condoms. After a
year immersed in the depths of Indian life with its poverty, hardships and rich spiritual tradition I
found Greece to be superficial and depressing and had no care or curiosity to linger.
A series of uneventful train and bus rides dropped me off on the outskirts of Dubrovnik in the early
morning where I commenced a hitchhiking journey through small quaint towns and villages. The
people that I met on the way were unsmiling and uncommunicative, not hostile or antagonistic but
predisposed, absorbed, preoccupied with thoughts and feelings I could not interpret, and as I
continued on my way I realized that there was an undercurrent of emotion or passion that in my
ignorance I attributed to the suffering Slavic soul and the alcohol that was freely consumed in the
many stand-up bars that seemed to be on every corner. Running in for a quick drink was a national
pastime I assumed. and after my experience with Russians and their vodka I thought, well, that’s
just the way it is.
I then entered a town that was a little larger than the previous ones that I had passed through and
there were police roadblocks at all the main intersections. My first encounter with Yugoslav
authorities.
“Passport” the burly cop in an ill fitting blue uniform demanded as he surveyed my Indian dress and
beard with a suspicion bordering on disbelief. I dutifully handed it over to him.
“Ah! Americanski! CIA,” he loudly proclaimed calling several other of his uniformed cohorts over
to inspect in great detail every page of my well stamped passport. A lively conversation between
them in Serbo-Croatian interspersed with suspicious eyeballing of me went on for several minutes.
“Why you in Yugoslavia? You CIA? Why you have Serb last name and Croat first name?” He
demanded.
Indeed that was true and how was I ever going to explain to these goons that though my father was
Serbian I was born in a Catholic hospital staffed by nuns, and the good sisters, being good sisters
and wanting to save as many little souls as possible, registered my first name, contrary to my
parents wishes, with the Catholic Croatian spelling rather than the Serbian spelling.
“Look in pack Americanski, take off. Inspection.”
Having learned never to argue with the man with the gun I dutifully took off my pack and emptied
it in front of everyone. Out came dirty laundry, sleeping bag, washing kit, maps and writing pad, a
jar of blackberry jam with a small piece of hash buried in the bottom, half a loaf of bread, a hunk of
cheese, a bowl made from a human skull, a horn made from a femur bone and assorted papers,
one of which was a dog eared baptismal certificate that testified to the fact that I was baptized in
the Serbian Orthodox Church in Gary, Indiana by a certain Reverend Popovitch that spelled my
name correctly. Luckily I had thrown that in at the last minute before leaving the US as I thought I
might visit Mount Athos if I got around to that part of the world.
The graveyard relics caused quite a stir, for which I was grateful, as the two grams of hash in the
bottom of the jam jar gave me heart thumping anxiety for about twenty minutes until the police
captain appeared on the scene. Fortunately he spoke a better brand of English than the others and I
was able to explain to him the inconsistency in the spelling of my name with the help of the
baptismal certificate and that I was on my way to visit the house of my father who left Yugoslavia
when he was ten years old. He tooted on the femur horn as I repacked my backpack and then
wished me good luck in my travels with the cryptic warning, “Be careful Americanski, these are
troubling times.”
I reached the village of Perna around three in the afternoon. It was a strange little burg, quiet and
empty save for an occasional tractor chugging through pulling a hand made cart with big balloon
tires piloted by taciturn looking farmer types in overalls and funny little pork pie hats sitting on top
of their heads. No place for a cup of tea or coffee and even the little standup bar was closed. It
was a good hour before I managed to get some vague directions from a distrustful looking old man
who peered at my clothes and beard with both astonishment and a touch of fear.
It was late afternoon when I finally found the house, a massive timbered, hand notched
construction with a large porch, slate roof and accommodations for the cows, goats and chickens
on the ground floor and a pig pen as a separate enclosure off to the side and underneath the eaves.
A bright red, government issued, tractor was parked in a shed next to the house which was set
back from the road about fifty yards.
An idyllic picture of old country peasant grandeur, just like the painting that hung in my father’s
office over his desk that had been a part of our lives since I was a little kid.
The large field slopping gently down to the road from the house was being worked by two men
and an old woman dressed in black. The men were digging furrows and the old woman was going
behind them, stooping as she planted seed. I took off my pack and stood watching for several
minutes until they noticed. They looked up for a moment then resumed their work. The men looked
familiar. Yes, they looked like me, like my father, an eerie sensation. They felt the vibration, the
pulse, the connection, something was happening and they stopped working, looked a little
uncomfortable with this stranger staring at them. They were peasants, rough hewn, stern, dirty
clothes and hands, a few missing teeth, not used to eccentric looking newcomers in the
neighborhood. I was an oddity, from another planet, strange dress, hairy, maybe a vagabond,
dangerous, they suppressed their discomfort and continued to work until I took out my baptismal
paper with my Serb name before it had been anglicized and waved it at them. They looked up,
hesitated, nervous, maybe a crazy man, didn’t quite know what to do. “Hey!” I shouted,
“Oreschanhin!” our name in the vernacular as I waved the paper. The younger one dropped his
mattock and slowly approached. He was about my age, my cousin. With awkward, tense curiosity
the others came forward. Nobody spoke a word of English but somehow I managed to get across
to them that I was a relative from America, son of Dragan, grandson of Stevan and Stannica.
A few minutes later everyone was grinning, laughing, trying to communicate. Tools were
abandoned, work was finished, up to the house for food and drink, large water tumblers of
slivovitz, the local plum brandy, was poured by Pytor, the oldest cousin, Franco the youngest just
sat and stared, another cousin appeared, Daniela, a beautiful woman in her mid twenties, to help
Babushka, the old grandmother with food. A dilapidated wooden cabinet was rummaged through
and a fat envelope with many faded pictures brought out. There I was, age six, on my bike, all the
relatives from both sides of the family peered at us through a sepia gauze and we peered back
through a vaporous veil of alcohol fumes, everyone chattering in their own tongue with a few words
of German tossed in here and there.
The food was ready, huge round loaves of warm bread and a ceramic tub of a clear, thick, hot
liquid. Pytor, the head of the family started tearing off hunks of bread and everyone followed,
dipping into the liquid, more slivovitz, dip, slurp, guzzle, tearing into the food like starving prisoners,
strange tasting, what is this stuff? Franco pointed over the side to the pig pen, ugh! Pig fat! I nibbled
at the bread, sipped at the booze, my California, vegetarian, pot smoking sensibilities were in
shock, must not violate or offend their hospitality but I suddenly had no appetite.
Not like the other relative from America, they were thinking, who came several years before
driving a big American rental car loaded with whisky, the other son of Big Steve and Stanicca, the
blustering engineer from Chicago who got drunk every night and sang boisterous songs for
everyone’s amusement. He was a real Serb.
The word spread quickly in the community that a relative from America had arrived so a feast was
scheduled for the next day, Saturday. After a good nights sleep in the rickety old bed my father was
born in, I woke up to a bowl of thick, black coffee and bread, passing on the tumbler of brandy
and pig fat that the others were having. After breakfast we walked over to the neighbor’s farm
where the party had already started.
The setting was peaceful, idyllic, a beautiful old hand built farmhouse with rolling lawns and large
trees and by 11:AM thirty to forty people had gathered, men, women, children, all rural peasant
folk dressed in work clothes, the women wearing bonnets, the children dirty with runny noses and
all passing me by for a curious look-see at least once.
As the neighborhood gathers, the slivovitz flows, a fire is started, a pig is brought out in a burlap
sack. Cousin Pytor who has been elected to do the honors runs his finger over his blade testing its
sharpness, the pig is released and Pytor grabs it with the help of his assistant and calmly,
deliberately and with palpable pleasure, slits its throat. As the pig struggles and gurgles the other
pigs in the pen snort and squeal simultaneously until the bleeding stops. Then all is quiet for a
moment as the crowd nods their approval, then everyone goes back to their drinking and chatting.
The blood, having been caught in a bowl, will either be drunk straight or made into sausages later.
Yes, I could see how the killing, the throat slashing, the raping could come easily to these people
that I am descended from. I shiver for I recognize that part in me buried deep down, deep in the
collective unconscious, but still there, ready to spring forth with certain provocation.
The pig is quickly gutted, a stake run through its rear end and out its mouth and put on the spit
over the fire to be rotated by two huge bodied, retarded giants, each with his own quart bottle of
fire water. As the guest of honor I was presented with the choicest part, the raw heart. I simply
could not eat this bloody mass of flesh, not even sautéed in wine with parsley and small potatoes,
much less raw. They looked at me in amazement then ate it themselves.
I am stunned by the coarseness, the sheer animalism, the brutishness of these people whose blood
I share. I take a walk to ponder this and to smoke a small joint I had well hidden in my kit. My
God! These are my people, I can’t quite believe it, yet there they are, they even look like me, like a
knife thrust into my delicate, philosopher’s heart, this fragile flower that I call my Self, past
behaviors become clearer, the masks of my father no longer hidden behind three piece suits, soft
felt hats and pointy-toed shoes.
The party rolled on, drinking and shouting, another pig on the spit, everyone gorging on greasy
white flesh, greedily devouring half cooked pig meat like hungry ghosts with small mouths and
enormous bellies, washing down with alcoholic fumes of aggression, kill, consume, we are what we
eat. In the old house that my grandfather built the out house was on the second floor in a small
overhanging balcony room directly over the pig pen. The pigs ate the shit consuming everything in
their quest for bits of undigested food. The Oreschanhin family eats the pig, an endless recycling
process firmly
programmed now into our genetic code with killing an integral part of the process. Life is hard and
then we die. One needs to kill to survive. Love, peace, joy? What’s that?
My grandfather, a resourceful man with intelligence and sensitivity knew that this way was not for
him, that there was a better life in that land across the ocean in the “new world,” and by hook or
crook managed to get most of his family out. He was lucky. We were all lucky for had he stayed
we would have all been a part of Hitler’s madness, Tito’s regime and the ugly scene that was to
follow a few years later in the push for a “greater Serbia.” After the second world war Yugoslavia,
“land of the South Slavs” was formed by merging Serbia with a number of its neighbors most of
who had been part of the old Austria-Hungary Empire before the war. No one was happy with this
arrangement and resentment quietly seethed until Milosevic came along to stir the pot.
The next morning, Sunday, I awoke early for nature’s call. It was still dark but the one bare light
bulb was on in the kitchen. I walked in to find my two cousins sitting at the table drinking coffee. I
startled them as they did me for both were dressed in black and their faces were blackened as well.
They wore heavy boots of a military style and old second world war carbines were slung over their
chairs. Sunday was usually church day in this Orthodox village but it seemed other services were on
the agenda. I murmured an apology, went to the outhouse to make my offering to the pigs and
when I returned they were gone. I went to my room, stuffed my sleeping bag, packed my
backpack and was on the road as the sun was rising up over the horizon.
country” at one time or another if for no other reason than just to see from whence his roots sprung.
Having visited Russia during the Soviet Union period and been utterly fascinated by my mother’s
country of origin in spite of government restrictions, suspicious bureaucracy, lack of food, rudeness
of the people and rampant alcoholism, I was finally ready to visit Yugoslavia, the country of my
father’s birth, a side trip as I returned to America after a years sojourn in the bowels of Asia.
I departed from Bombay dressed in long Indian kurta-pyjamas, backpack, and beard and hair that
had not been cut for a year and disembarked in Athens, my plan being to take train and bus to my
final destination, the village of Perna, a small Serb enclave in the middle of Croatian territory near
the city of Dubrovnik. This was some years before the war and though there were rumblings of
discontent even then I had no reason to expect any display of ill-will or unfriendliness. After all, I
was an American, a relation, a kindred soul connected by blood and collective memory, a link that
went back many generations and I would be welcomed with open arms.
I had little interest in remaining in Athens, a city filled with American tourists, mostly of the teen-age
variety, and young, handsome Greek men of the prancing predatory type who wore tight trousers,
shirts unbuttoned just enough to show their chest hair and gold crosses, and all who seemed to
carry little leather purses containing cigarettes, a silk handkerchief and probably condoms. After a
year immersed in the depths of Indian life with its poverty, hardships and rich spiritual tradition I
found Greece to be superficial and depressing and had no care or curiosity to linger.
A series of uneventful train and bus rides dropped me off on the outskirts of Dubrovnik in the early
morning where I commenced a hitchhiking journey through small quaint towns and villages. The
people that I met on the way were unsmiling and uncommunicative, not hostile or antagonistic but
predisposed, absorbed, preoccupied with thoughts and feelings I could not interpret, and as I
continued on my way I realized that there was an undercurrent of emotion or passion that in my
ignorance I attributed to the suffering Slavic soul and the alcohol that was freely consumed in the
many stand-up bars that seemed to be on every corner. Running in for a quick drink was a national
pastime I assumed. and after my experience with Russians and their vodka I thought, well, that’s
just the way it is.
I then entered a town that was a little larger than the previous ones that I had passed through and
there were police roadblocks at all the main intersections. My first encounter with Yugoslav
authorities.
“Passport” the burly cop in an ill fitting blue uniform demanded as he surveyed my Indian dress and
beard with a suspicion bordering on disbelief. I dutifully handed it over to him.
“Ah! Americanski! CIA,” he loudly proclaimed calling several other of his uniformed cohorts over
to inspect in great detail every page of my well stamped passport. A lively conversation between
them in Serbo-Croatian interspersed with suspicious eyeballing of me went on for several minutes.
“Why you in Yugoslavia? You CIA? Why you have Serb last name and Croat first name?” He
demanded.
Indeed that was true and how was I ever going to explain to these goons that though my father was
Serbian I was born in a Catholic hospital staffed by nuns, and the good sisters, being good sisters
and wanting to save as many little souls as possible, registered my first name, contrary to my
parents wishes, with the Catholic Croatian spelling rather than the Serbian spelling.
“Look in pack Americanski, take off. Inspection.”
Having learned never to argue with the man with the gun I dutifully took off my pack and emptied
it in front of everyone. Out came dirty laundry, sleeping bag, washing kit, maps and writing pad, a
jar of blackberry jam with a small piece of hash buried in the bottom, half a loaf of bread, a hunk of
cheese, a bowl made from a human skull, a horn made from a femur bone and assorted papers,
one of which was a dog eared baptismal certificate that testified to the fact that I was baptized in
the Serbian Orthodox Church in Gary, Indiana by a certain Reverend Popovitch that spelled my
name correctly. Luckily I had thrown that in at the last minute before leaving the US as I thought I
might visit Mount Athos if I got around to that part of the world.
The graveyard relics caused quite a stir, for which I was grateful, as the two grams of hash in the
bottom of the jam jar gave me heart thumping anxiety for about twenty minutes until the police
captain appeared on the scene. Fortunately he spoke a better brand of English than the others and I
was able to explain to him the inconsistency in the spelling of my name with the help of the
baptismal certificate and that I was on my way to visit the house of my father who left Yugoslavia
when he was ten years old. He tooted on the femur horn as I repacked my backpack and then
wished me good luck in my travels with the cryptic warning, “Be careful Americanski, these are
troubling times.”
I reached the village of Perna around three in the afternoon. It was a strange little burg, quiet and
empty save for an occasional tractor chugging through pulling a hand made cart with big balloon
tires piloted by taciturn looking farmer types in overalls and funny little pork pie hats sitting on top
of their heads. No place for a cup of tea or coffee and even the little standup bar was closed. It
was a good hour before I managed to get some vague directions from a distrustful looking old man
who peered at my clothes and beard with both astonishment and a touch of fear.
It was late afternoon when I finally found the house, a massive timbered, hand notched
construction with a large porch, slate roof and accommodations for the cows, goats and chickens
on the ground floor and a pig pen as a separate enclosure off to the side and underneath the eaves.
A bright red, government issued, tractor was parked in a shed next to the house which was set
back from the road about fifty yards.
An idyllic picture of old country peasant grandeur, just like the painting that hung in my father’s
office over his desk that had been a part of our lives since I was a little kid.
The large field slopping gently down to the road from the house was being worked by two men
and an old woman dressed in black. The men were digging furrows and the old woman was going
behind them, stooping as she planted seed. I took off my pack and stood watching for several
minutes until they noticed. They looked up for a moment then resumed their work. The men looked
familiar. Yes, they looked like me, like my father, an eerie sensation. They felt the vibration, the
pulse, the connection, something was happening and they stopped working, looked a little
uncomfortable with this stranger staring at them. They were peasants, rough hewn, stern, dirty
clothes and hands, a few missing teeth, not used to eccentric looking newcomers in the
neighborhood. I was an oddity, from another planet, strange dress, hairy, maybe a vagabond,
dangerous, they suppressed their discomfort and continued to work until I took out my baptismal
paper with my Serb name before it had been anglicized and waved it at them. They looked up,
hesitated, nervous, maybe a crazy man, didn’t quite know what to do. “Hey!” I shouted,
“Oreschanhin!” our name in the vernacular as I waved the paper. The younger one dropped his
mattock and slowly approached. He was about my age, my cousin. With awkward, tense curiosity
the others came forward. Nobody spoke a word of English but somehow I managed to get across
to them that I was a relative from America, son of Dragan, grandson of Stevan and Stannica.
A few minutes later everyone was grinning, laughing, trying to communicate. Tools were
abandoned, work was finished, up to the house for food and drink, large water tumblers of
slivovitz, the local plum brandy, was poured by Pytor, the oldest cousin, Franco the youngest just
sat and stared, another cousin appeared, Daniela, a beautiful woman in her mid twenties, to help
Babushka, the old grandmother with food. A dilapidated wooden cabinet was rummaged through
and a fat envelope with many faded pictures brought out. There I was, age six, on my bike, all the
relatives from both sides of the family peered at us through a sepia gauze and we peered back
through a vaporous veil of alcohol fumes, everyone chattering in their own tongue with a few words
of German tossed in here and there.
The food was ready, huge round loaves of warm bread and a ceramic tub of a clear, thick, hot
liquid. Pytor, the head of the family started tearing off hunks of bread and everyone followed,
dipping into the liquid, more slivovitz, dip, slurp, guzzle, tearing into the food like starving prisoners,
strange tasting, what is this stuff? Franco pointed over the side to the pig pen, ugh! Pig fat! I nibbled
at the bread, sipped at the booze, my California, vegetarian, pot smoking sensibilities were in
shock, must not violate or offend their hospitality but I suddenly had no appetite.
Not like the other relative from America, they were thinking, who came several years before
driving a big American rental car loaded with whisky, the other son of Big Steve and Stanicca, the
blustering engineer from Chicago who got drunk every night and sang boisterous songs for
everyone’s amusement. He was a real Serb.
The word spread quickly in the community that a relative from America had arrived so a feast was
scheduled for the next day, Saturday. After a good nights sleep in the rickety old bed my father was
born in, I woke up to a bowl of thick, black coffee and bread, passing on the tumbler of brandy
and pig fat that the others were having. After breakfast we walked over to the neighbor’s farm
where the party had already started.
The setting was peaceful, idyllic, a beautiful old hand built farmhouse with rolling lawns and large
trees and by 11:AM thirty to forty people had gathered, men, women, children, all rural peasant
folk dressed in work clothes, the women wearing bonnets, the children dirty with runny noses and
all passing me by for a curious look-see at least once.
As the neighborhood gathers, the slivovitz flows, a fire is started, a pig is brought out in a burlap
sack. Cousin Pytor who has been elected to do the honors runs his finger over his blade testing its
sharpness, the pig is released and Pytor grabs it with the help of his assistant and calmly,
deliberately and with palpable pleasure, slits its throat. As the pig struggles and gurgles the other
pigs in the pen snort and squeal simultaneously until the bleeding stops. Then all is quiet for a
moment as the crowd nods their approval, then everyone goes back to their drinking and chatting.
The blood, having been caught in a bowl, will either be drunk straight or made into sausages later.
Yes, I could see how the killing, the throat slashing, the raping could come easily to these people
that I am descended from. I shiver for I recognize that part in me buried deep down, deep in the
collective unconscious, but still there, ready to spring forth with certain provocation.
The pig is quickly gutted, a stake run through its rear end and out its mouth and put on the spit
over the fire to be rotated by two huge bodied, retarded giants, each with his own quart bottle of
fire water. As the guest of honor I was presented with the choicest part, the raw heart. I simply
could not eat this bloody mass of flesh, not even sautéed in wine with parsley and small potatoes,
much less raw. They looked at me in amazement then ate it themselves.
I am stunned by the coarseness, the sheer animalism, the brutishness of these people whose blood
I share. I take a walk to ponder this and to smoke a small joint I had well hidden in my kit. My
God! These are my people, I can’t quite believe it, yet there they are, they even look like me, like a
knife thrust into my delicate, philosopher’s heart, this fragile flower that I call my Self, past
behaviors become clearer, the masks of my father no longer hidden behind three piece suits, soft
felt hats and pointy-toed shoes.
The party rolled on, drinking and shouting, another pig on the spit, everyone gorging on greasy
white flesh, greedily devouring half cooked pig meat like hungry ghosts with small mouths and
enormous bellies, washing down with alcoholic fumes of aggression, kill, consume, we are what we
eat. In the old house that my grandfather built the out house was on the second floor in a small
overhanging balcony room directly over the pig pen. The pigs ate the shit consuming everything in
their quest for bits of undigested food. The Oreschanhin family eats the pig, an endless recycling
process firmly
programmed now into our genetic code with killing an integral part of the process. Life is hard and
then we die. One needs to kill to survive. Love, peace, joy? What’s that?
My grandfather, a resourceful man with intelligence and sensitivity knew that this way was not for
him, that there was a better life in that land across the ocean in the “new world,” and by hook or
crook managed to get most of his family out. He was lucky. We were all lucky for had he stayed
we would have all been a part of Hitler’s madness, Tito’s regime and the ugly scene that was to
follow a few years later in the push for a “greater Serbia.” After the second world war Yugoslavia,
“land of the South Slavs” was formed by merging Serbia with a number of its neighbors most of
who had been part of the old Austria-Hungary Empire before the war. No one was happy with this
arrangement and resentment quietly seethed until Milosevic came along to stir the pot.
The next morning, Sunday, I awoke early for nature’s call. It was still dark but the one bare light
bulb was on in the kitchen. I walked in to find my two cousins sitting at the table drinking coffee. I
startled them as they did me for both were dressed in black and their faces were blackened as well.
They wore heavy boots of a military style and old second world war carbines were slung over their
chairs. Sunday was usually church day in this Orthodox village but it seemed other services were on
the agenda. I murmured an apology, went to the outhouse to make my offering to the pigs and
when I returned they were gone. I went to my room, stuffed my sleeping bag, packed my
backpack and was on the road as the sun was rising up over the horizon.
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