Paper Boats

1

In a world specked with olive trees, seagull screams and citronella candles, the salty air is something you became accustomed to easily. At first, you noticed it. Then, you cherished it. Eventually, you forgot it, like you forgot about the ticking of a clock in your living room that’d been hanging on the wall for decades, or the bell chime of the church you’d been living next to for as long as you could remember.

For Sanya Skorić, to forget meant to let go deliberately, to let the memories slip through like a paper boat getting carried away by the stream. She couldn’t forget, and so she devoted herself to bittersweet remembrance.  For twelve years, she’d remembered. For twelve years, she’d spent her life without her husband Joško, and time seemed to have slowed down ever since.  She couldn’t let go. The night they met at a cocktail bar on the riviera, when they danced until the first beams of golden sunlight merged with the waves. The first time he told her he loved her. The first time she said it to him. Their seemingly endless walks along the rocky seashore of the Croatian peninsula they both lived on. The chirping of the cicadas. The songs he played for her on his acoustic guitar that was so ancient she could’ve sworn it would fall apart if he’d played a wrong note. The motorcycle rides, where they would drive up the hills of the mainland and look over the whole peninsula and the infinite sea behind it, and when they’d waited long enough, they’d witness the moon starting to glow in the night sky, and it was beautiful, and Santa had never felt so alive before. 

Even if she forgot everything else, she knew that this would stay, that Joško would stay, because if she didn’t remember him, who would? And so she tried her best not to forget. To keep the paper boat locked away in a drawer, far from any current.

*

The women at the Sunday market were awfully pitiful, so much that Sanya would’ve avoided them if it wasn’t for their equally great kindness. Their pity could be divided into two sectors: One being the pity for ever being granted such a sweet man for a husband, only to lose him way too early. Two being the pity for not having a husband at all anymore, given the fact that most of the other women were unhappily married to a wine-loving personification of old-fashioned vulgarity.  “Mine just won’t die!”, a small, pudgy woman selling strawberries regularly joked, nearly forcing her missing front tooth upon her with her cheeky grin. Sanya never laughed.

Nevertheless, she needed the company, the trivial conversations comforted and distracted her, and on some days, she even endured the pity. The Sunday market women were around her age, she was the second-to-youngest at 63. Week after week, they’d meet in town where the market took place, they were always there, without fail. Sometimes they’d even meet up to play cards afterwards. The others would complain about their husbands, they would joke and laugh and gossip, and she wouldn’t have much to say, but for Sanya, this was enough – most of the time, at least.