A Spare Life by Lidija Dimkovska

school and looked downhill toward the small river, where, when she was younger, our grandmother had washed clothes with the other women from the village. The village priest threw a wooden cross into the shallow, partially frozen river, and several men and boys dressed only in leggings, naked from the waist up, jumped into the water at the same time and poked around until one of the younger boys pulled the cross from the water. The priest called out, “Blessings upon you, Jovan! God bless you!” He patted the boy’s shoulder, which was turning blue, sprinkled him with basil, and presented him with a small grayish-black radio-cassette player. “Grandma, how come Grandpa didn’t come to jump in after the cross? Or Uncle?” Iasked, but, walking along behind us, she said, “Oh, they’re not keen on such things.” Grandpa only went to church on Saint Nicholas Day, and our uncle was a young Communist. It was Epiphany, and the Blessing of Water, a celebration of Saint John the Baptist’s baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River, when God presented his beloved Son to the people while the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove, flew above their heads. For years I asked myself, and once I asked Srebra: “Why in the form of a dove, and not some other bird?” Srebra said that monkeys loved to catch doves, and that is why the Holy Spirit appeared to them in the form of a dove. I didn’t believe her. But really, why in the form of a dove? And was it because of the Holy Spirit that Uncle Boro, who lived on our street in Skopje, kept a dovecote filled with such beautiful white doves? The only dove we ever had, which our uncle in Montenegro gave us, suffocated in our Škoda just as we pulled up in front of our building. That was an emptiness nothing could fill, a dove that was impossible to replace, not even by one from Uncle Boro’s dovecote. Was it the loss of my personal, private Holy Spirit? Two days before we were to go back to Skopje, our grandma said, “Your uncle is going with you. He’ll stay in Skopje till the summer; he’s taking a language course. Look after him. He’s the only uncle you’ve got. Let him eat whatever you’re eating. Give him whatever he wants, so his weenie doesn’t fall off. He’s a grown man, after all.” Our grandfather yelled, “Come on, stop it, don’t go prattling on, he’s not a child.” Our uncle spent so long in town saying goodbye to the girlfriend who was to become his wife that summer that he barely caught the bus we were on. Perhaps Grandma thought that if he weren’t with her for half a year, he would forget her. Did they really sell a cow so our uncle could study a language that he was never going to need, or was it to distance him from this girlfriend, whom they did not want as their daughter-in-law? We arrived in Skopje. Our father was waiting for us with the car at the station. First we dropped Verče off; then we went to our apartment. Our uncle asked whether our mother had returned from the hospital. “No,” answered our father. “They’re letting her go Friday.” Srebra and I said nothing. What awaited us at home was the little woodstove, its fire burned down, and a pot of beansour father had boiled. First Srebra and I ate with our uncle sitting perpendicular to us; then Dad ate by himself. Our uncle had to sleep in the big room, on the foldout couch by the door, in the room where our parents slept. Together, we somehow made up the bed. We’d have to wait for Mom to return from the hospital so she could empty a few things from the cupboard and give him space for his clothes. The next day, our uncle went to visit her. We did not. Dad said we shouldn’t go to the hospital; a hospital is no place for children. When our mother got back two days later, she brought dolls made from felt: one pale yellow, the other orange. The dolls were long and attached to wooden