Baba Yaga Laid an Egg

Beba and Kukla were pleasantly surprised at breakfast the following morning, when they caught sight of the elegant young man whom Beba had almost knocked over the previous day in the hotel doorway. A still greater surprise ensued when the young man got up from his table, came over to theirs and asked them politely whether he could join them. Kukla and Beba’s jaws dropped in amazement when it turned out that the young man spoke Croatian, with an English accent, admittedly, but still quite fluently. It turned out that the young man was a lawyer by profession, that he lived in London and that his daughter was at that moment in the pool with the hotel swimming instructor. The young man was evidently not someone inclined to beat about the bush. Kukla and Beba did beat about the bush, however, because if they had not first asked where he lived, what he did for a living and where his daughter was, they would probably have discovered immediately what soon followed. And the discovery that landed in front of them, like a thunderbolt out of the clear blue sky – on the table with its snow-white linen tablecloth and embroidered linen napkins, with its coffee cups and plates of the finest porcelain, with its silver cutlery, with slivers of pink salmon covered in cream and laid on crisp pancakes, with a little basket full of fresh rolls, with butter in a porcelain dish ringed with ice, with a porcelain bowl of raspberries, blackberries and blueberries that looked as though they had just been picked – was that the young man was none other than Pupa’s grandson!

‘Grandson!?’ exclaimed Kukla and Beba in the same instant.

‘That’s right,’ said the young man.

‘Can you prove it?’ asked Kukla cautiously.

‘Oh, yes, I can show you all the necessary documents. We’ll get to that in a moment in any case,’ said the young man pleasantly.

‘So, you’re claiming to be Pupa’s grandson!’ said Beba, presumably to gain some time, although during that time she did not manage to think of anything apart from what she had already said.

‘Yes,’ said the young man succinctly.

‘Thank goodness you’ve appeared. Your grandmother passed away yesterday,’ said Kukla, who evidently coped with surprises better than Beba.

‘That’s what I thought,’ said the young man, not remotely taken aback.

The wind blows, then calms down, but Pupa’s trouble lasted her whole life. While life is lived slowly, the tale is told quickly, so we shall now briefly relate what Pupa’s grandson told Kukla and Beba.

Pupa Milanović, née Singer, enrolled at the Zagreb Medical Faculty in 1938. In her first year she fell in love with Aaron Pal, a fellow student. Pupa very soon found that she was pregnant, the young couple married and in 1939 Pupa gave birth to a little girl, Asja. In 1940 Aaron’s parents could see that things were looking bad everywhere in Europe, so they moved, with the help of family connections, to London, taking advantage of a brief green light offered by the British authorities, and joining Jews from Poland and Germany. Pupa and Aaron decided to stay in Zagreb. Aaron’s parents suggested that they take Asja with them, which seemed a sensible solution to Pupa and Aaron at the time.

‘How could they agree to be separated from such a small baby?’ Beba interrupted the young man. Like Kukla, she was hearing this story for the first time.

‘They knew what was coming, and that the doors of European countries were closing to Jews. But they had their studies to complete in Zagreb and they just hoped that the evil would after all not spread there… It’s hard for me to answer that question. I know that it’s because of their decision that I’m sitting with you at this table today,’ said the young man, smiling his disarming smile.

In April 1941 Croatia brought in a racial law: ‘Legal Provision for the Protection of Aryan Blood and the Honour of the Croatian Nation’. They introduced the obligation to wear a yellow star, soon followed by the persecution of Jews. Pupa’s parents and younger brother were deported to the Jasenovac camp, where they were killed, some time in 1943. Pupa and Aaron fled to the woods to join the Partisans at the end of October 1941, after the Jewish Synagogue in Zagreb had been destroyed with the blessing of the new Ustasha authorities.

‘There were a lot of Jews in the Partisans, incidentally, from Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, but you must know that better than me,’ said the young man.

‘Oh my God, what a story! Why didn’t she ever tell us any of it? Did you know?’ Beba asked Kukla.

Kukla shook her head without a word. The story had affected her as deeply as it had Beba.