Page 15 of Slanting Towards the Sea

FOURTEEN

FOR A TIME BEFORE we graduated, Vlaho and I discussed where we should live.

If we should stay in Zagreb, or go to his town or mine.

The thought of staying in Zagreb wasn’t palatable to either of us, even though we both had better chances of finding jobs and building meaningful careers in the capital than either of our towns.

But we longed for home—for the oxygenated skies, the centering that is the sea.

It is deeply ingrained in us, Dalmatians, this yearning to return home.

Like we are born with a homing beacon, this need is always present, a rope tightening, pulling us back.

Vlaho and I were also practical, or so we thought back then.

We wanted to have children sometime down the line, and we knew that, with the way childcare worked in Croatia, it would be wise to be close to at least one of our families.

My hometown was bigger than his, and it was also one of the rare cities, apart from Zagreb, that housed the headquarters of a bank where Vlaho could find the kind of job he’d hoped for.

He had gone in for exactly one interview at the bank, while we still lived in Zagreb, and that was that. He got the job, and the matter of our relocation was settled. We were moving to Zadar.

But over the few years I’d been away studying, Zadar had changed. It used to house several chemical plants, factories, and labs, and opportunities for employment abounded. This had been something I’d taken into consideration when I’d decided to become a biological engineer.

What I hadn’t known, because I’d only been eighteen when I left, was that the process of decay had already been underway.

Transition from a planned to a market economy had started before the war, along with the privatization of state-owned companies.

But, as often happens in Croatia, noble ideas gave way to sordid execution.

Many of the companies had been bought for mere kunas by corrupt individuals who’d then sold the assets for personal gain and declared the businesses bankrupt.

Hundreds of people were left unemployed.

By the time I finished college, the once-prosperous industry already lay in ruins. The whole economy of our town and region took a sharp, unsatisfying turn toward tourism, the beauty of these parts the only thing we still had to offer to the world.

Another hard truth about potential is that it needs favorable conditions to materialize as the best version of itself, just the way the bacteria cultures in a petri dish grow better if the conditions are just right. And here was the truth about my petri dish when I returned home:

Zadar’s multiple labs and chemical plants closed in the transition.

Interview after interview at the few state-run places that still hired biological engineers, with committee members nodding, seeming impressed with you as a person and your knowledge, and, oh God— potential!

—and then finding out the person who got the job was the mayor’s semi-illiterate nephew, who had probably purchased his way to a diploma as well.

An occasional gig in a school teaching biology, but permanent placement out of reach because the ruling party had made sure only “suitable” people got the coveted permanent positions.

Vlaho’s wage barely enough to subsist on, covering rent and utilities, and not much more than food. Standing in front of a storefront, eyeing a nice jacket you can’t afford, feeling ashamed to ask either your husband or your parents for money to buy it.

Having only one handbag with straps so frayed that, during the next interview, you fold them in your hand to try to hide them.

The shame of asking for a bit of money from Mom to buy new panties because the old ones have holes in them (and the shame of undressing before your husband in panties with holes in them in the first place), only to hear her venting to her neighbor friends a few days later about how she is still supporting you because this country is beyond repair—but the emphasis always on her still supporting you.

Finally, you’re the problem your mother is solving, but your brother managed to get it all right at last—a job, a functioning relationship—and now your mother is turning into a person who loves solutions more than she loves solving problems.

People telling you to ask your parents for money, because your parents aren’t exactly poor, but all you can think about is your mom’s venting to neighbors about supporting you.

Not asking for a dime as a matter of principle, because you do still have your pride, until you ask for a few carrots because you can’t make lunch without them that day, and she buys you zucchini and peppers, and potatoes, and parsley too, and you’re grateful in the way that makes you loathe yourself.

Your husband coming home from work with a satisfied look on his face—he learned something, proved himself to his superiors in some new and exciting way, but gradually, he stops sharing stories of his workday, and you don’t know if it’s because the novelty of the job wore off, or because he feels sorry for you.

Him, getting a raise, and then a promotion, and you’re happy, but your happiness tastes bitter, until you can’t stand the duplicitous nature of this new reality between the two of you.

How you want only the best for him because you love him so much, and how you simultaneously resent him for his success, and then hate yourself for resenting him.

People telling you to have children—if you can’t get a job, why not at least get that out of the way?

—and you fuming because how easy it comes to them to propose that when they haven’t considered that you need to accrue at least twelve months of work within an eighteen-month period to qualify for maternity benefits.

And how could you afford having a baby otherwise, except by asking for your parents’ help, but then there would be more venting to the neighbors.

Dad’s story often came to me in those days, the one about rabbit fur and poverty.

I had always thought of it in black-and-white terms, like an old movie, a story from times long gone.

But here I was, living the twenty-first-century version of it, the dignity and pride I thought inherent to me obliterated.

Six years, and I was done.

By then, Mom had already died, and I was in the process of divorcing Vlaho, and everything felt even more irrelevant.

I found myself at the counter of a stationery shop near my old elementary school, copying documents to apply for yet another pointless job interview, and I saw a small note on the counter.

Workers needed. Something inside me spiked, sharpened like the tip of a pencil.

What was the point of playing the game if the rules were rigged against me?

The joke had been on me, sending the same résumé, the same required documents again and again, hoping against hope for a different outcome.

So, when the saleswoman approached me, I pushed the last copy she’d made of my CV back into her hand and asked her to give it to her boss.

Dad thought getting a job at the stationery shop meant I was settling, but I wasn’t.

It was an act of defiance.

I was done catering to the logic of this twisted system.

I was flipping it the middle finger.

When Mom died and Dad resolved to turn Lovorun into a heritage hotel, he was convinced it would be a silver bullet for us both. He would have left a mark in the world, and I would finally have a real job .

“You’ll see, Ivona, it’s going to be the best thing that ever happened to you,” he said.

But the hotel was never my dream; I never wanted to work in it, the introvert that I am.

So much energy went into our confrontations over this: “Can’t we just renovate and leave it be?” I’d ask, and he’d tell me we can’t invest so much money only to use the estate for our own enjoyment; investments don’t work that way, where is my instinct for business?

“You’ll finally be able to quit your job at Indigo,” he’d say.

But I didn’t want to quit my job at Indigo, not to become a hotel manager, at least.

Dad couldn’t understand this. Why wouldn’t I want to make use of this opportunity he was creating for me when I didn’t have anything better going than selling pens and staplers?

He thought working at a stationery shop was beneath me, and he wasn’t wrong.

I was capable of so much more, had worked with rigorous diligence throughout my school years toward so much more.

But if there was one way of becoming less myself than by selling stationery, it would have been by pretending to have a semblance of a life, a semblance of success, just because someone else had installed me in a better-paid position.