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After the McGregor hike, two things changed.
First, I found Kathy and Olivia’s endurance and courage impressive. I had to grapple with the fact that I chickened out. I had felt so out of my element, I couldn’t force myself to make the last climb to the top. I had been afraid.
The other thing—the worse thing—was that the past began to haunt my thoughts. I had worked hard to put the past behind, but it came seeping back.
My thoughts drifted back to Croatia, to before the war, to Anya and Nik.
***
Early in our relationship, I visited Anya in Bihać and worked out with Nik. Nik and Anya’s mom invited us for dinner one evening. I was eager to go, wanting to make a good impression on them, but Nik said he didn’t want to go. He asked me to go out for a beer after practice instead. Anya said no problem, since her dad, or Tata as they called him, would be leaving early for a meeting of the Communist Party. She would visit with their mother, Mati they called her, and meet us back at the apartment later.
Nik seemed in a dour mood and pounded a few beers down faster that our usual pace. His eyes grew glassy, and he glanced at me a few times as if he wanted to tell me something but couldn’t quite bring himself to do it.
“Is something on your mind?” I finally asked.
He ordered another beer. “Yeah. Tata,” he said after the beer arrived. “I went over to the house yesterday. He was home alone and had been in the plum brandy. I asked him where Mati was. ‘Out at a sewing club or some damn thing,’ he told me, then he studied me for a long time. I went into the kitchen and got a glass of milk, and when I came back, he asked me if I was a man.”
Nik took another slug of beer. “I figured there would be no pleasant way out of this conversation, so I said, ‘Yeah, I’m a man. One of the best men in the country, on the Yugoslav national canoe and kayaking team.’
“Tata waved his hand at me as if it were nothing. I planned on drinking my milk and leaving, but he made me sit down and asked what I’d done for the Communist Party. I told him I went to meetings once in a while. I just wanted the conversation to be over.
“Tata laughed at me and said, ‘That is nothing.’ Nik imitated his dad’s gruff voice. ‘You young people don’t know what it’s like to sacrifice for Tito and country, for the party.’
“I told him he was right. I gulped down my milk and took the glass into the kitchen, hoping to leave. But he sat me down and told me what he had done—what he still does—for the Communist Party. Then he told me about the first time he was sent alone to solve a problem for the party. And that was the first of many.”
