Spring 2024 - Recrudescence

“Through the Plague”

he wants to die, he will die. I’m not out of my mind; if there really was a plague, would I even be putting on a wedding?!”

The old men shuddered. The hope that everyone secretly

held in themselves awoke and they trusted it.

“The hadji is right,” they were saying to themselves. – “It

couldn’t be a plague; it must be fear…”

Only Grandpa Neyko persisted.

“What about hunger? Nobody has any flour anymore.”

Hadji Dragan waved his chibouk around.

“My barns are full. There’s enough to feed the whole vil lage. I will give everyone flour. I will not give it to them just like that though, they’ll have to pay me back when they can, but I’ll give it to them. As for the wedding, we’re going to celebrate.” Later, when Tiha entered the room and brought a full pot of Hadji Dragan’s old red wine for the third or fourth time, she found the old men talking all at once, merry and drunk. And she walked among them, smiling and throwing her jokes at them even more boldly.

“You’re commemorating yourselves while still alive,” she told

them.

The old men shook their heads, laughing, and in the sweet intoxication of the wine, which seemed to rock them on swings and make them forget their age, this black-eyed girl seemed so naughty, so beautiful!

*

The afternoon passed as Hadji Dragan had said it would: the 193