It was a damp, southerly winter morning when he woke me. "We're going to Luštica for wood. Come on..." He pulled the duvet off me. I barely swung my legs from the bed to the floor, sliding down to lie on the cold parquet. He laughed.
"Come on, come on. Didn't you ask me to call you next time I went? I know you love splitting wood."
"I do," I said sleepily. I was proud of that image of myself: a nine-year-old boy with an axe on his shoulder, hunting for dry branches. "Ilija's dad bought a whole truckload of wood," I said, curious to see how he'd react.
"That fire has no scent. Nothing burns like olive wood," he said, his eyes sparking.
In Luštica, during the time he grew up, people lived for olives—and with olives. Houses were designed for the pressing and storing of olive oil, which people treated like gold. The cellars, the stone mills, the large oil jars (pila), the woven baskets for harvesting—everything was secondary to that natural sanctity. The locals say, "We're going to harvest wood." I have never heard that expression anywhere else, before or since. Probably because they rarely, if ever, cut down an entire tree. Usually, they only remove dry branches from the canopy, making room for new shoots to spread, which most closely resembles a harvest. There is an archaic, almost ritualistic devotion to the process.
In our case, any other scenario for getting firewood would have been easier. Literally any. First, we went by boat to Rose, crossing the sea in winter; then by car with a trailer to the old house on the peninsula; then across the estate from olive tree to olive tree, mostly on foot, removing dry branches with a chainsaw, then carrying them on our shoulders to the trailer. And then, the loop in reverse: car to boat, boat to car, unloading in front of the house, splitting, and finally stacking on the terrace. Every log that ended up in our fireplace had survived an identical Odyssey. We would regularly return from these expeditions exhausted, hungry, and drained—but we never complained, neither he nor I. All the frustration would vanish with the first sparks and the crackling of dry branches. That's how it was that evening.
I was hovering over his head with a book in my hands. I waited impatiently for him to light and stoke the fire so I could settle on the woodbox, stretch my feet toward the hearth, and lean against the wall. That was my favourite spot, my reading position. I love books and the fireplace more than anything in the world, I remember thinking to myself.
He rose from his armchair, moved to the old olive-green wooden chest we used for wood storage, and lifted the lid. The suffocating scent of ancient wood dust filled the air. At the bottom of the chest, covered in yellowed newspaper, were only two logs.
He stirred the embers with a poker and blew hard. With black tongs, he brought a log and lowered it onto the embers held over from the morning fire. Tiny flickers of glowing air glowed around the coals. I watched him intently. His sequence of actions made it seem as though there was no other way to start a fire. He looked in turn at me, the chest, and then the balcony door. Mom was sitting on the sofa, a sleeping baby in her arms.
During the day, the wind had turned from the south to a bura. Compared to the warmth of the room, the outside looked merciless, like judgment day. Tired and grumpy, I lazily stretched and went out to the balcony for an armful of dry logs, covered by a tarp in the corner. There was no point in arguing with him; whatever my reasoning, he was the elder. The "errand boy" is always the youngest—that's how it was for him as a child, and for everyone before him. I quickly gathered several logs and ran back inside. A rough branch scratched my forearm, but I kept quiet and endured it, carrying more than I realistically could. I dumped the armful; the chest gave a dull thud against the rustling paper. I shook off the dampness from outside. He looked at me and smiled with satisfaction.
"Come here."
He sat on the chest, pulled me into his lap, and rested his large hand on my back. Without a word, we both watched the flames grow. The olive bark darkened and curled, snapping away from the smooth, dry branch beneath. Sparks caught on the soot-stained vault of the fireplace, flickering like a miniature constellation. In his other hand, he held a crust of bread and a dozen almonds.
"Want an almond?" "Mhm." "And a bit of crust?" "I do." I reached out and took everything he had left. He laughed like a child.
Thirty-odd years passed.
"Want to come with me this afternoon?" I asked Dad. "Where?" "To the cottage at Trešnja, to replace the stove door." "What door?" "A small one, on the burner. You'll see." "Let's go," he agreed easily. Sitting in an apartment in a big city was the harshest punishment for him. Restless in spirit, like a child, action always brought him joy.
We bought that house outside the city just before my fortieth birthday. I had missed having a fireplace from the moment I left for university. After twenty-odd years, I finally had the chance to open a book again and read to the crackling of a fire. I was burning with impatience; waiting until the weekend wasn't an option. And I felt a pull for us to do something together. We had just finished renovating the house, and one of the last tasks I gave myself was to find a way for the four of us to watch the fire during long winter afternoons. The existing stove had its original, traditional steel door, which I intended to replace with a new one featuring a glass pane. An improvisation, but one worth trying.
We're both quick and skilled; we'll swap the doors and be home by ten, I planned to myself.
We drove there quickly and jumped into action. I expected some minor adjustments, a few screws, and some sealant for the corners. What I absolutely did not expect was that the stove door's hinges were embedded in a concrete block with steel pins, forged the old-fashioned way and designed to Austrian standards—to last forever.
"This is all one concrete block," I said, surprised.
"Move over, let me see," he nudged me gently. "Yep. Do you have a grinder and a stone-cutting disc?" "I do." "Go get them." "You think so?" "I do. We can't rip this out any other way. Bring a chisel and a hammer too, if you have them."
It wouldn't be possible for the son of Niko Marinović not to have everything one might ever need in his tool shed. Or not. Regardless of the occupation, and the fact that I run a business by "doing something on a computer," as Dad usually explained it. It's how men are supposed to be.
Exactly six hours later, deep into the night, we were sitting on the floor with dusty hair, exhausted, our hands raw from chiselling, grinding, and every kind of improvisation with whatever inadequate tools we had at hand. The newly renovated and cleaned house was a construction site again, covered everywhere in white concrete dust like snow. The new door, with its matte black frame, tempered glass, and small decorative latch, was mounted.
"Should we light it?"
"Are you crazy? Look at the hour! Let's go to sleep, Mitar." I could see in his eyes that he was tired, but satisfied.
"Just to try it. After all this struggle..." I wouldn't give in. I felt a deep desire for us to be by the fire again, just the two of us. It's as if nostalgia has a trigger, a zone or a phase of life when it wakes up, pulling out memories and notes that repackage the soul in its depths.
I carried in a few logs on my forearm, like before, and a box of firelighter cubes.
"You're not going to light a fire with those, are you?" he said, looking at me in disbelief. "As if I never taught you anything! You're still a novice, eh?!"
"Come on, don't start. Where am I going to find paper now? Hand me that lighter." "Tsk..." he clicked his tongue in disapproval and shook his head, disappointed.
Smoke filled the room through the open door as the chimney slowly warmed. The familiar scent didn't bother us. We sat next to each other on the floor in the dark, our hair and eyebrows white with dust, like two old men with hypnotised faces illuminated only by the flickering light from the miniature burner.
"Try closing the door, see if it still draws?"
"It has to," I answered confidently.
I closed the latch. The small glass pane fogged up for a moment. I stepped back, momentarily thinking that the fire wouldn't be visible after all, and that I had ruined a clean house for nothing. The next second, the window into the fireplace was crystal clear. I breathed a sigh of relief. The flame grew stronger, and Dad ran his hand over the tiles, from bottom to top, following the spreading warmth.
"It heats up fast." He had no experience with this type of stove; he liked the principle.
"It's German engineering," I replied with a sentence I had often heard from him as a child. I soaked in the warmth, tired and content. He sat beside me.
"Do you know that watching a fire, the sea, or a forest has a meditative effect on the psyche?"
"It relaxes you," he said shortly.
"Do you know why it relaxes you?"
"Because you don't think of anything else."
For a moment, I was speechless. His deep sense of the essence—without grand doctorates, mammoth projects, or an international network of friends and colleagues—stopped me from diving into the depths. I wanted to tell him that brain waves align with Earth's Schumann resonance, that we are all one, and that everything is connected and in sync… He didn't need to understand all that; his model was to live and act, think and speak, exactly as he felt.
"What is this, beech...?" he interrupted my thoughts.
"No, cherry and apple. I harvested the dry branches when we bought the property." That "harvested" took me back to a November in Boka.
I handed him half a tangerine I had just peeled. I opened the door and threw the peel inside. In an instant, everything smelled of Boka. We sat in silence for a while, the fire crackling quietly behind the glass door, while the ash gathered at the bottom of the metal frame.
"Nothing burns like olive wood," I said into the silence.
"Nothing, son."