‘Tourism is the future,’ he said to mother. ‘We will rent the upper floor to the Czechs until Marija gets married. When she is married, we will build the second floor for Ivanka. I want us to live all together.’

The following summer, Marija’s floor stood above the ground floor. It was a pathetic unpainted cube with tiny windows and long shallow balconies bordered with fake baroque balusters looking like glued kidneys. That summer, I was 12 and discovering shame. ‘Look at those monsters,’ said the bathers going down to the beach and carrying inflatable mattresses. ‘Jesus, it looks like the Schwarzwald Clinic3,’ somebody said. Pretty soon, the whole village called our house ‘Schwarzwald’ and us ‘clinic kids’. Czechs, Hungarians and Slovaks took turns on the first floor. There were Škodas and Trabants parked in our backyard all summer long. Father would descend from Marija’s floor each Friday with pockets full of black market currency. As the first floor paid off in just one summer, father was ready for more.

One morning, however, neighbor Batinić came down the slope. He had grown old in the past three years, his short beard sprinkled with gray, but he was still robust and muscular. He came into the house and wanted to talk to father. They had their discussion in the kitchen, while I eavesdropped in the front yard.

‘This wasn’t the deal,’ said Batinić. ‘You have the permit for one storey only.’ Father asked: ‘Is this my land now?’ ‘It is,’ Batinić replied, ‘but I lost my view of the sea. I’m losing tourists.’ ‘Is this my land?’ father was repeating stubbornly. Batinic said “see you in the court,” and then left., and Batinić eventually stood up and said: ‘See you in court.’ He darted past me, huddled behind the door, and left.
…

I’m wearing high heels, so I’m barely able to walk on the uneven ground, layers of trodden gravel and pulverized bricks. I approach the house and look it over. The only untouched part of my father’s castle is the porch with the trellis, the same porch from 1987, the one where mother peeled potatoes and crushed almonds. Everything else is just rubble, rubble with a plan and an intention still shining through.

This house was a copy of my father. It was a child of his brain, complicated, incomprehensible and tyrannical, just like him.

‘I want us all to live together,’ he used to say. He said it to Batinić, he said it to mother, to us. It was his project, his life’s work— this house was just a concrete manifestation. I didn’t understand it then, but I do now.

I climb the steps to the veranda. They heard my steps. The door opens and mother stands on the veranda. She cut her hair to a perm, a modern look. It doesn’t suit her.

‘You came,’ she says.
‘Where’s dad?’
‘In bed. Since yesterday.’
‘How are you?’
‘Where’s Marija?’ she asks, ignoring my question.
‘Marija is fine.’
‘She didn’t come with you?’
‘She couldn’t come.’
‘I know, because of Jerko…’
…

Jerko. It took someone like him to tear down my father’s plan. It all went well for him as long as he had only us women and Stipe, his faithful dog. But the summer of 1991 brought the war, Batinić sued us because of Marija’s floor, while Marija married Jerko in early September. Jerko was a kid from the cove, his father had a barka fahren rent-a-boat and grilled mackerels on the seafront. The war drove away the tourists, mackerels and a barka fahren became useless, and Jerko moved into my father’s house and started helping him with aluminum fittings.

The local kids went to war that autumn, and Jerko enrolled in mid-October. My father got mad when he heard about it. It was their first big quarrel. Father was an émigré, a respected category at that time. He called the municipality and Jerko’s army file suddenly disappeared. Jerko boiled inside but yielded. He saw off his friends, who rode in trucks to positions on the Neretva and Pelješac, and worked aluminum in father’s workshop.

3 Schwarzwald Clinic is the name of a German soap opera, popular during the time in which this story takes place. Schwarzwald Klinik, or Black Forest Clinic, revolved around a country hospital in Germany.