Ninnosperononek
by Ryan Matera
[A story adapted from Dr. Paula Hay’s 2009 biography of Tíba Bartoš (1908 — 1994), whose legacy continues to evolve. Dr. Hay has since retracted many of the assertions she’s made regarding Tíba’s ideology.]
That summer, as I prepared for the final year of my doctorate, I took a job organizing the papers of a well-known psychologist. Dr. Tíba Bartoš had spent his career developing theories of masculinity in post-communist Eastern Europe, and despite the hyper-specification of his field had a small but devoted following who awaited his publications with an assiduous zeal. Though our fields didn’t necessarily cross, Tíba was always partial to his female students. My grandparents also happened to be from a village in Slovakia nearby his own, and he must have seen in me a paradigm of evasion from the harshness he devoted his career to studying.
Whatever attracted Tíba to me was quickly snuffed in the face of my incompetence, which I admit was little more than well disguised apathy. We spoke little, and he often told me, after I’d arrived down the long promenade which separated his manse from a rural Georgian pike, that there was no work to be done. Still, I’d remain at his house for the allotted time in order to justify the measly paycheck.
He was a fading man, though I observed several times in him certain surges of energy. In such a state he would feverishly scribble notes which I’d later transcribe. They seemed, to me, to be the product of a mind with its final brilliant idea far behind it. One warm afternoon, as the roar of locusts drowned out the persistent hum of his neighbor’s leaf-blower, the old man sat in an Adirondack chair on his portico and sipped from a mug of brandy. As I busied myself with the meaningless shuffling of papers around his desk and toyed with the set of Newtonian balls on the ledge of his window, I caught sight of him outdoors, and was curiously struck by some significance in his look; something in his distant stare which looked uncannily like yearning. He stared down the row of the hedges towards his lawn— a meadow which he allowed to grow wild for the sake of local fauna. He was not in one of his energetic moods, but there was a concentration in his posture, as if he was admiring that something tangible and geometric was his, defendable by contracts. I felt overcome by the urge to step outside and ask if there was anything else I could do.
“No, no.” he quietly muttered as he continued to look outward. “Thank you.”
I stood still, as if caught by some ethereal insistence that there was more to these words. He eventually turned, and looked me in the jaw with the reticence of a man who had created a bloodline of reticent, second-generation men; hard-working and lurking in the shadows of commerce. He and his wife, now deceased, had only sons, who in turn had only sons of their own, diligent and quiet all. I couldn’t say why it was me he chose to tell about Ninnosperononek, but it was the longest I would ever hear him speak, and I suppose the longest he did speak in the latter portion of his life, before succumbing entirely to that old wasting silence which awaits all our elderly.
He grew up an hour outside Banská, in a small mountainous “city” which many rural roads passed through to access the Danube. His mother had died by a long and brutal illness following his birth, and he was raised by his father, who transported wheat along the river for months of the year. Those trips grew longer and longer throughout Tíba’s life, until by the age of sixteen the boy was accustomed to living with neighbors. He often stayed in the attic of the house next door, where an older woman (whom his mother called Zampa, meaning ‘aunty’) would cook meals for him. Tíba spoke of how Zampa would stare over him as he pushed food around his plate. “Picky in a time when such a trait was dangerous,” as Tíba put it. He would work for the town in small ways, assisting in the cleaning of houses once people died, or collecting taxes door-to-door; on occasion even painting a weathered fence, or carting waste towards the landfill at the edge of the city. There was an administrator who took Tíba on as an assistant, and it was in this capacity that he was asked to escort Eliška.
“I was a quiet young man,” Tíba said. A change had come over him when he mentioned the woman’s name. He adjusted himself, placed his mug on the deck beneath his feet and looked away from me, towards the woods where the locusts crowed.
“She’s new here,” the administrator told me, “and anxious about meeting people.” I suppose he trusted me in my youth to be a minimalistic guide. And he was right. As quiet as I was, I remained even moreso out of deference. Deference, and whatever else roils in a young man in the presence of such beauty.”
Tíba’s accent grew particularly strong as he thought of his home, of the alpine meadows and the lower Tatras, the beech and sycamore groves which climbed the rolling hills, abundant swaths of bellflower stretching towards the road from the front of every house. After a thoughtful pause Tíba turned to me, and asked if I had ever seen an Edelweiss.
“No,” I admitted, and he told me that it was a prized flower, sought by adventurers and botanists for their rarity.
“They’re seen as a symbol of the alpine spirit,” he told me. “Though in that time, no one in our village cared about such luxuries. We might see one and not even know it as unique; might walk right over it on our way to church or the square, and hardly think to appreciate it at all. Not Eliška. She was adamant about capturing them for preservation. When she first arrived she stayed bed-ridden for weeks, and people would slow down outside the window of the administrator’s house, just to try and see the enigmatic figure at the center of so much gossip. I heard from one source that she was from the mountains, and had come to our community when her village was burnt to the ground; or that she was a city-dweller, escaping some awful husband, perhaps on the run from the law. I admitted earlier to being reserved, but I was also rather slow. The light of intellectual fervor had not yet sparked in me, and I’m afraid the world made little sense. I suppose that’s why I spoke so little, out of fear that my ineptitude would be revealed. My truth is that I could not understand, in the slightest way, a single thing about my fellow men. After I had been in America for a few years, this unknowable factor of the world became infuriating to me. And though I don’t believe that anything has just one cause, it strikes me as reasonable that I chose psychology as my field.“They’re seen as a symbol of the alpine spirit,” he told me. “Though in that time, no one in our village cared about such luxuries. We might see one and not even know it as unique; might walk right over it on our way to church or the square, and hardly think to appreciate it at all. Not Eliška. She was adamant about capturing them for preservation. When she first arrived she stayed bed-ridden for weeks, and people would slow down outside the window of the administrator’s house, just to try and see the enigmatic figure at the center of so much gossip. I heard from one source that she was from the mountains, and had come to our community when her village was burnt to the ground; or that she was a city-dweller, escaping some awful husband, perhaps on the run from the law. I admitted earlier to being reserved, but I was also rather slow. The light of intellectual fervor had not yet sparked in me, and I’m afraid the world made little sense. I suppose that’s why I spoke so little, out of fear that my ineptitude would be revealed. My truth is that I could not understand, in the slightest way, a single thing about my fellow men. After I had been in America for a few years, this unknowable factor of the world became infuriating to me. And though I don’t believe that anything has just one cause, it strikes me as reasonable that I chose psychology as my field.
“Our town was peculiar in that many would visit on pilgrimage. To which gods they prayed, this was always unclear. But very often, especially in those spring months, communities of devotees would arrive in caravan, and walk through town in solemn procession towards the mountain above. These days— maybe you’ll visit—people ski and hike on trails there. But back then it was a difficult journey to the top, and these followers would climb barefoot to find… whatever it was they were looking for. Forgiveness, I suppose. If I thought anything of Eliška, it was that she was one of them. Until, that is, she healed. And soon after, the administrator asked me to guide her and her son up the hill to seek the Edelweiss.”
He stepped inside to refill his drink, and I remained outdoors, looking over the low Georgian sun as it settled behind the willows at the edge of his property. At that time, I suppose, there was none of the responsibility which now purfles my waking life. There was no family, no career, none of the dynamic urban necessities and worries which have caused my hair to gray and my knees to ache with age. Though it wasn’t a conscious stance, I now see that era as a series of conversations, which I entered into with open eyes and ears as I kept a quiet inner-monologue, seeking data on the world. I can’t say whether my time with Tíba had any serious impact on the direction my life has taken, but if there has been, it would be in the ability to understand an individual as a collection of mournful memories.
A brief glance at my watch told me my shift was ending any minute, but when I heard him returning I settled into a relaxed pose to let him know that I’d listen as long as he was willing to speak. He had a full mug, and handed me one of my own, and I thanked him as he sat down and remained quiet for a long while.
“The boy was named Luka,” he eventually continued, “and would remain hidden
behind the hem of his mother’s dress as we walked out of the village and up into the Tatras. I remember the other kids my age— who I always felt estranged from, who never had me over for dinner or games the way they’d have each other— watching the three of us leave town. I was an oddity to them, neither an orphan nor one of the normal boys. And silent, eerily silent.
“We were a strange, leaderless crew, the three of us. Each more timid than the other. When we began to climb, leaving our shoes on, Luka explored each craig and cavern as if there’d be something hidden in there. ‘We’re too low yet, Luka,’ his mother would say, but I could tell that it wasn’t Edelweiss the boy was looking for. He had a mission separate from hers; as did I. See, in that moment I felt it imperative to protect this woman, nine years my senior. Though there was a hardiness in her gait and a solidarity in her character, she was left feeble from whatever illness kept her bed-ridden for weeks. If it were up to me, she wouldn’t be undertaking the hike at all, but I said nothing. Merely observed the two as they strolled ahead, and wondered why I was there in the first place.
“Soon the slope levelled out, the rocky bluffs were replaced by shorter and shorter conifers which then dissipated altogether, leaving only meadows of Aster and Gentian, and the breezes which hummed through the grasses became sweet with nectar. We spoke about God and hope in clipped sentences, each weary of vulnerability but feeling liberated by the mountain air and fading remnants of civilization. She averted my eyes, keeping her gaze trained on her son; for all the time I knew her I always felt she avoided looking at me directly. But upon her downward cast brow and in the sturdiness with which she scaled the rocky bluffs, I found an incredible tenderness to her. As Luka ran off through the field, I realized at once that I had become obsessed with Eliška. I didn’t dream of having her, in any capacity. I only knew that she existed on the other side of a barrier between me and what was real, and that as trapped as I felt by my small way of thinking, she gave me then a glimpse into fullness. She turned to me between tufts of grass with a profound smile on her lips, and asked if it wasn’t the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.”
“Back in town she removed from her pouch the three or four Edelweiss which she had found in the shadows of spruce trees on the western façade. She pressed them between two glass panes, which the administrator had supplied her, with a care which broke my heart. Luka must have taken a liking to me in the mountains, and he now ran in circles with my hand in his, shouting out prísť, prísť— Spin! Spin!— and I laughed until I was dizzy, and could barely study the faint good spirit which remained on Eliška’s face.
“The next morning I approached the house in the early hours, thinking they’d still be asleep, and laid a basket of fresh eggs on their front porch. She opened the door just as I walked away, and, seeing the eggs, told me to come in for breakfast.
“She stood at the stove, and I prevaricated over whether or not to offer help. Luka stood beside me— at four years old nearly as tall as I was while seated— and pulled on my cheeks and laughed. ‘He rarely takes to anyone so quickly,’ she said without turning from the stove. When she placed the omelet on my plate I felt an excitement for food, hitherto unknown in the presence of Zampa’s grey meals. ‘This looks delicious,’ I told her, and she muttered something about not having a real kitchen.
‘ “My father’s house,” I nearly blurted out, “it’s empty these days,’ I told her, perhaps too eagerly.
‘ “Why aren’t you there?” she asked.
‘ “He travels, and I usually stay with neighbors. It makes it easier for meals, and such.”
‘ “You must miss him,” she said, and Luka watched on silently.
“I think I was coming to terms, in that time, with what it meant to be alone. I watched it in my father, throughout my life, as he descended from reality in the absence of my mother. He was a bit of a fanatic, the man, and took to reading the Bible for hours every day, developing a particular relationship with it which I was never comfortable with. I didn’t know him as a husband, but the sense I got was that his harsher tendencies might have been tampered, if there were warmth in his life.”
“What sort of ideas?” I asked.
“Oh, the traditional, fundamentalist sort of thing. Nothing he ever expressed outward, but…” Tíba trailed off and considered, perhaps for the first time in ages, what it was his father believed. “I’d say at the root of it was this idea that the Fall— the tragedy of Adam— was a traumatic event for humanity. He’d take that very seriously. He might say that the dysfunction from it continues to scourge through generations, still haunts us even today. In our field we’d talk of ‘cognitive binary processing.’ The introduction of an ontological zero to our primitive one. I imagine he was haunted by thoughts of awareness; of understanding, perhaps, what ought not be understood. But he was uneducated, and would instead just mumble about returning. In moments of agony, of blinding rage, he’d look at me with a cruelness in his eyes and mutter about returning.”
The sun had finished its descent, and Tíba and I were left in a slowly deepening darkness. He made a movement, as if to stand and turn on the light, but did not rise. I had made the same effort, once or twice throughout his story, but decided it would be easier for the both of us if we stayed in the dark. Every moment of his tale felt inclined towards tragedy, though as he continued, I noticed a building naivete, as if he were once again fooled by his own declaration of love. As if lulled by the meadow and hopefulness of that spring in the mountains.
Eliška moved into his father’s house, and out of gratitude cooked him two meals a day which they ate together while Luka played in the yard. Tíba and the boy became inseparable, and as Eliška ventured more and more towards integrating with the city he would offer to watch him. Though it was rare for her to feel safe while separated from her son, as spring turned to summer she found a trust in Tíba which she once confessed was healing.
‘ “I arrived here terrified of the world— a refugee,” she told him one night as Luka slept on her lap. We were beside each other on my father’s sofa, watching the fire dwindle and ignoring the dirty dishes on the table beside us. “The boy’s father… it would be best if he were never to know we were here.”
‘ “Who is he?” I asked.
‘ “A man who I once thought was brilliant. And who I now know to be nothing but a brute.”
“I felt a sudden hatred for this stranger, and sat up in anger, promising that he would never find her. ‘You’re safe here, Eliška.’ And I meant it, too. Without a single instance of violence in my past, I knew what I would do to protect her and Luka. And it scared me. She must have felt that bitterness, and she smiled before asking, ‘What will you do with your life, Tíba? Will you remain here forever, taking old women on hikes?’
“I blushed, never having seriously considered the question. Life up to that point felt like one long wait for my father to return. Now I was seventeen, and knew that it hardly made sense to continue living with Zampa, but the bridge between childhood and manhood was never shown to me. I was silent for a while, and she kidded me, saying I was on another one of my inner-adventures. ‘I would like to teach,’ I said. Her smile faded, and she looked at me with a sense of deep understanding.
“You’ll make a fine teacher, Tíba.”’
When the darkness became too deep for us to find our own mugs I finally stood, moved to the switch and flicked on the light, illuminating the portico. There was a brief and eerie moment then, as I stood by the wall of the house and looked back towards Tíba, seated, who continued to stare at his lawn in a detached silence. Beyond him was a wall of darkness, made unpleasant as I struggled to adjust to the light. And yet, he seemed to somehow remain unfazed, eyes glued outward, as if communicating with the harsh chorus of locusts just beyond the fray. I remember in that moment the strangest sensation overcoming me as I studied the man’s silhouette. It was little more than a flash, is all, where I had the undeniable sense that Tíba was lying.
“Have you loved?” Tíba asked, and the sensation passed. I found my knees and moved back to the chair beside him.
“Yes, once.”
“And did there come a time in that love when you were forced to face a mirror, and did not like what you found? It is a cruel thing,” he continued, “to attach yourself to someone, when you don’t even know what sort of thing you are yourself. It may seem hollow, to someone your age. But it is a cruel, cruel thing.
“One afternoon I took Luka into the square to buy him a toy. The boy was on my
shoulders, and I suppose that at that very moment Eliška was back in the house, arranging things. It was a sparse, often unoccupied home, small but comfortable. Almost devoid of keepsakes. Suddenly the square transformed, and the customarily empty space was filled with worshippers of a sort I’d never seen. It was thrilling, at first. They wore long white robes, and masks made from reeds which depicted the strange, elongated snouts of unfamiliar animals. The day seemed to slip immediately into night, and these celebrants produced torches to light the square in a flickering ember glow. Luka asked to be let down, and I cautiously did, but he quickly caught sight of something which pulled him away from me. I trailed him, as closely as I could, but in the commotion of the festival I lost track of where he was. ‘Luka!’ I yelled, but it was futile over the humming of these congregants.
“I felt my chest compress, felt horrified by what I had done. And each shoulder I turned in search of Luka produced another hidden countenance behind a demonic mask. Soon I was stewing in the most abject self-abnegation, horrified that I’d failed Eliška. And simultaneously, somehow, I was enchanted by the unnerving refrain which they hummed in unison: Ninno-sperononek, Ninno-sperononek. It was likely only a few minutes, but when I found the boy it was as if I hadn’t seen him for years. He was encircled by a group of children, robed and masked, who each reached forward to lay hands upon Luka’s shoulders. Without knowing whether to intercede or not, I waited. And Luka’s look of fear became acceptance, until he soon began to return the gesture, placing his own hand on the children’s before him. I watched as a massive figure approached from behind, and felt at once the urge to stop whatever sordid ritual was occurring before me, but I couldn’t. I was frozen. Something in the gait of this figure
sparked a curious familiarity in me, and I felt powerless. And on they chanted— Ninno-sperononek, Ninno-sperononek.”
I tried to picture the festival, this old-world effluvium of chaos where no comforting power, no guiding hand of reason, might step in to restore order. I tried to picture the towering figure, robed and masked, as it lifted Luka above its shoulders and the crowd rejoiced, raising their torches in the air. Tried to picture Eliška barging through the crowd, shoving the worshippers aside to try and reach the center of the crowd, where a petrified Luka gripped the horns of the leader’s mask for safety. Then Tíba, unmoving, watching the crowd move away from the square with Eliška now in it, with Luka still atop these looming shoulders, as it moved towards the mountain. Oddly stunned by the towering figure, Tíba shook in the reflection of his own cowardice.
Soon it was over, the square was returned to silence, and Tíba remained in that spot for hours, watching the glow of torches fade upwards as the group scaled the Tatras into silent darkness. When he arrived home he was met by only more silence, and found little trace that Eliška or the boy had been there at all. He found his bedroom empty, the linens pulled tight against the mattress and Eliška’s few belongings tucked under the frame. He wandered the hallways, desperate for some release from the sense of dread which pervaded his body. In his father’s room there was little out of the ordinary, but for a portrait which Eliška must have dug up, showing Tíba and his father, unsmiling, in the hall of the administrator’s house.
“It was from years before, when I still a boy, and a photographer visited town offering portraits for a fee.”
I recalled having seen the photograph, faded from years of exposure and tucked away on the upper shelves of the library in Tíba’s office. It showed a boy, small and haunted, standing separately from a massive figure beside him.
~
The summer ended, and despite vague inclinations towards correspondence with Tíba, we never spoke again. At his funeral, years later, my husband and I sat in the furthest row from the altar. His sons lined the front, with their sons in small clusters behind them, and each watched on as the priest delivered an impersonal eulogy. Beside me was a man in a frayed suit, who watched the entire affair with an anxious, thumping knee. As the procession passed through the nave, I noticed each son glancing toward the man beside me and quickly averting their gaze. Before he could leave, I asked how he had known Tíba.
He responded with a thick accent, similar to the one I heard that night on the portico. “It is a very good thing he is gone,” the man said, and was out of the church before I could register his words.
Back in Georgia, after Tíba had finished his story, I collected the mugs and moved to carry them inside. I paused at the door, turning back towards the man immobile in his chair, and felt again that strange sensation. Under the weak light, swarmed by moths, he sat before the inexpressible maw of his meadow. Beyond him the grasses teamed with formicating life— spiders drawing traps upon the dewy blades, June Bugs prowling for the remnants of wildflowers. The only release from the harsh black was a scattered puncturing of fireflies, and I felt compelled to speak.
“What does it mean, Ninnosperononek?” I asked, but the man remained silent.
I moved forward, stepping in front of him, and leaned my back against the railing of his porch. I stared into his face, and after defying to return my stare he eventually looked up, meeting my eyes. In them flickered something— something I couldn’t quite register until after it was gone. It wasn’t rage.