One Day in May - Catherine Alliott [42]
The shock rendered me speechless for two days. During those days I stayed inside the Mastlovas’ house and saw no one, telling Pablo to tell the others I’d be back at the warehouse when I was able. We all needed to do that from time to time, so I knew I could. I sat in that cold empty house, in the grandmother’s upright wooden settle, by the fire, which I didn’t have the energy to light, the dogs around my feet, feeling numb and empty. On the opposite wall, the priest, Ibby’s grandfather, gazed back. It seemed to me his eyes never left me.
Two days later, Brett, who’d been on a week-long convoy all the way over the other side of the Balkans to Masticstan, came to the house. More savvy than Pablo, he persuaded me to talk. Once I’d started, I couldn’t stop. Couldn’t stop crying, either. The family Brett was living with had a car, a beaten-up old Peugeot, and when I’d recovered sufficiently, Brett and I went back to the hospital.
The baby had been taken to an orphanage, we were told by a nurse. It was housed in a convent, and operated out of a bombed castle on the outskirts of the city. Brett knew it. It was run by nuns he told me, strictly Catholic, and by all accounts the best amongst many in the city. The least grim, at any rate. I asked him to take me there.
In some godforsaken wasteland on the edge of town, towering grey crenulated walls rose up from a sea of bricks and rubble. We banged on the huge studded door until finally it was opened. A young nun in a blue habit and starched headdress stood there, stony-faced. I explained. A baby had been brought here, another victim of the atrocities; his mother, father, sister, grandparents, all dead. Could we see him? Such stories were commonplace in this city. She crossed herself and said a silent prayer. Then she turned and led us down a corridor.
We followed her down the echoing stone passage, doors either side flung wide. Inside were rows and rows of cots with tiny babies, then a room full of older children, who, in a gentler age might just have been starting school or nursery, but who were also in cots. Their eyes followed us, dull and listless as we passed. In a smaller room, a few newborns lay asleep in makeshift cribs, drawers from chests, I realized. The baby I was looking for was amongst them, I was told. The one on the end: dark hair, swaddled.
A different sister appeared, elderly, no English, in a blue habit, a huge bunch of keys on a chain around her waist. We hadn’t spelled it out to the first nun for fear of not getting in, but she was given to understand, through Brett’s minimal Croatian, why exactly we were here. She was wary, doubtful. Many foreigners wanted these children: couples from Florida sending emissaries waving cash, particularly the tiny babies. They had to be very careful. No, it wasn’t possible. She disappeared and we were shown out.
The following week, we were back: this time with the full weight of the UN and its aid agency behind us. The same sister appeared and in as many moments as she’d efficiently dispatched us last time, this time gave us her consent. The Foreign Office, it transpired, had already been in touch. Papers had been sent, permission had been given, red tape miraculously severed. At that time, in the chaos of civil war, in the former Yugoslavia, anything could be obtained with money, influence and papers, and I had all three. I was deemed the official adoptive parent and Seffen – as I knew Ibby intended to call a boy – left the orphanage in my arms. We returned to England three weeks later.
I’d been almost eight months in Bosnia, or Croatia, or Herzegovina, or whatever you wanted to call the Balkans, depending on your creed, your culture, your background, which, apparently, was what the fuss