Branko Ćopić

AN EXPEDITION TO THE MOON

I'm only five years old, and already the world around me is starting to close
in and shrink. You can do this and you can't do that, this is good, that is not, you
can say this, you can't say that. Restrictions spring up from all sides, a flock of
angry geese, they’re also known to strike.
“You'll get yours, lad, then you’ll stop with your foolery.”
Stop how! In the morning, as soon as you open your eyes, they’re
everywhere, pecking at me like sparrows, so I have to ask questions. The world
around me is silly and foolish, not me.
The grip loosens only when the old pack saddle maker, Petrak, a tireless
hobo, shows up in front of our house. Before even entering the yard, he's already
croaking at my grandfather:
“Are you still alive, Rade, you old nag?! Well, look at you.”
Yay, it's started! If he dares to call Grandpa an old nag, there’s no end to
what he’ll do to the rest of the family. Everyone in the house will probably forget
about me, I’ll be able to make a run for it, across the stream and into the hazelnut
orchard.
When the pack saddle maker comes to visit, I’m allowed to do all kinds of
things. I climb trees, peek into the attic, wander around the stream, and even go to
a small mill tucked under a raised grove. I’d even end up in America if I knew the
way and wasn't afraid of dogs.
“Just you wait when old Petrak leaves,” the family threatens me when I go
overboard.
Those "Petrak Days", in early autumn, were usually always festive, bright,
and full of whispers, and I was carried away, dizzy, not knowing where to go first:
through the cornfields, down the stream, up the hill. I’d crouch on a willow tree
and stare at a silent, glittering swarm of fish, and then suddenly a dense treetop of a
tame chestnut tree with bursting overripe pods would branch out before my
entranced eyes: ah, to the chestnut orchard, what am I doing with these dumb fish!
I zig-zag back and forth all day, and when the dusk surrounds me and forces
me home, a new troublemaker comes around - the moon.
It surfaces from behind the scarce trees on the hill, shining, close at hand,
mysterious and silent, a golden-fin fish. I, too, became speechless, trembling with
hidden thievish hope:
 “Maybe I could touch it somehow?!”
At night, I suddenly wake up with a start: the moon is peeking through the
window, the whole yard is on fire, and the shining visitor is getting in my face,
whispering:
“Let's go!”
I get up, airy, possessed, but as soon as take my first step I am sobered by
the voice of my ever-vigilant grandfather:
“Baya, where are you off to?”
They always do that: Just as I’m about to start something, quivering with
excitement, above ground, someone shouts, and I - thud! – land on a hard grassy
plain.
Good thing Petrak's unfettered days come once a year when you can do
many different things.
So came the moon’s turn.
The family was making brandy from some early plums, which lasted well
into the night. Couldn’t be better for me! There was a blaring fire under the
cauldron, Uncle Nidžo got drunk early and fell asleep, and only Grandfather and
Petrak remained by the hearth, in the wagon barn. Grandpa was looking after the
cauldron, and the old pack saddle maker was just keeping him company because he
never got involved in any sort of work directly related to people. If the horses
drank brandy, it would be a different story.
I hang around the two of them, doing more harm than good, eavesdropping
on their conversation, and finally, I get up the courage to sit quite close, ready to
ask questions. They mentioned the moon.
“Grandfather, could you reach the moon with a rake?” I suddenly speak up.
“Heh, look what's on his mind!” replied Grandfather somehow from above,
not addressing me but the pack saddle maker. “He wants to reach the moon.”
The pack saddlemaker sighed and looked at me over his glass.
“So what, the boy is right.”
“Right about what?”
“Let him try. I wish I had, maybe different birds would be singing for me
today.”
“Ah, what birds, what... You're already drunk like my cheerful Nidžo.”
“Nah, my friend” replied the old man gloomily. “I remember as if it was
tonight: the moon appeared over the grove, a hundred meters above our house, and
my legs carried me towards it all on their own. “Where to?” pop shouted, reaching
for the tongs, the whip, for... whatever he could get his hands on. He beat me,
whipped me, and I lost my soul at a young age. If only once I broke free and ran
off, Rade, my brother...
“Oh, c’mon now, look. Don't spoil my grandson.”
“Ah, Rade, Rade ... if it's too late for the two of us, it's not for this boy.
Come on, son, get up, find a rake, so you and I can go, there it is behind the hill.”
I scamper to the corner to get our longest rake, and the old pack saddle
maker slowly straightens his legs, then his back and neck, and turns to grandfather,
who is sitting motionless and baffled.
“The two of us are leaving, and you watch the cauldron, you old mill
horse.”
Grandpa is so taken aback that he can't even move or ask anything. He holds
an empty glass in his hand and looks after the two of us: they’re probably joking or
something.
We make slow progress up the dark, whispering hill. Above us, the burning
sky announces the approach of the most mysterious traveller, the moon. Ha, the
rake’s here, all we have to do is hook it and pull, and it’s in the lap in no time.
A shout echoed from the fallow fields, from the direction of grandfather's
small, murky fire:
“Hey, fools, come back!
I feel sorry for that fire in the valley, I feel sorry for the shouter, but the fire
above me is getting redder and wider, while my companion plucks up the courage
to shout a jeering reply:
“Shut up down there, you old fart.”
We push forward perseveringly. I'm already feeling a bit fearful, wondering
what it will be like being face to face with the moon, and then, as if just for spite,
more shouting is heard coming from below:
“Hey, you donkeys, “vantasizers”, you'll catch a cold, God damn it!
“Get inside the barn, you old jackass, and bray in there,” retorted the pack
saddle maker.
The feeling of sadness for the valley and the grandfather I left behind is still
eating at me, but when, through the dense treetops, a huge moon fire erupts before
me, very close, I forget everything and begin cooing with excitement:
“Here it is?”
“Yep, see it?”
The old man takes my hand and now, together, we conquer the last short
slope, and when we reach the very top, the moon suddenly jumps out before us
from behind a tree, appearing bright, shrunken and innocently calm above the
neighbouring hill slope.
“Aha, it got away, didn’t it!” shouts the old man victoriously. “The rake
frightened it, rascal.”
The pack saddle maker gives me a firm hug, trying to chase away my
sadness, and says, comforting me:
“The scoundrel ran away, of course. No matter. C’mon, find me one boy
down in the village from whom the moon slipped away so quickly. There are non.
It's you, only you, and me with you.”
Hm, not one?! ... Well, there’s no such boy in our entire valley. I’ve neither
seen nor heard of him. There’s a reason why Petrak comes to our house. I'm there,
me...

“Our tough guy,” adds Petrak as if he had finally found the right, final words
for all my spellbound sleepwalking towards the moon that filled my mind so much
that it too began to glow and shine like a yellow pumpkin left behind in a harvested
cornfield.
“Grandpa’s clever little head!”
The bearded man smiled.
I'm standing there in the moonlit night, before a chilly unearthly view that
appears only in dreams, it's a bit scary and sad... You either can't or don't go any
further, unless the traveler is a fool and a "vantasizer", in the words of my
Grandfather, a kind, good-hearted old man whose love warms me even here, on
this dangerous edge where one flees this earth and harsh everyday life.
Still ... still bravely, with conviction, I swallow this bitter drop of my first,
boyish, crucifixion: next to me, with his had on my shoulder, is the bold, unfettered
one, who wants and can do everything, and below, waiting for me in the warm
valley, is the other, the good, kind grumbler, who would grieve and remember me
always if I get lost on my amazing journey.
“Grandpa Petrak...” I start to say, feeling a lump in my throat, and the old
vagabond, sensing my unspoken childish sadness, readily adds:
“Let’s go, tough guy, let’s go. We’ll come back, no hurry”.
One foot in front of the other, downwards, in the moonlight! Every step of
our return, so dear and fulfilling. And as it grows larger, grandfather's tireless fire
starts to enflame the very heart. There she is, watching, calling and showing us the
way.
 “Heh-heh, the old nag is still waiting for us,” shouts Petrak. “You don’t
write off two tough guys like us that easily.
“Here they are, the fools are coming back!” Grandfather Rade welcomed us.
He even walked up to us as if we were arriving from God knows where, maybe
even from America. “What happened, did you touch the moon?”
“Don’t you worry about that,” the pack saddle maker brushed him off. “You
just sit by that cauldron and brew your brandy, the two of us know what we’re
doing.”
Do we or don’t we, I’m not really clear on that, but, excited and tired from
the wonderful night experience, I quickly dozed off between my grandfather's
knees, me, the tough guy, the daring moon hunter, armed with a rake three times
longer than myself. The last thing that my eyes remembered from that evening was
the playful flame of my grandfather's fire, which imperceptibly moved into my
dream, where it grew into a powerful and terrifying moon fire.
My grandfather, they say, carried me to bed (how embarrassing for a great
traveller!). I spent the whole night talking in my sleep, tossing and turning and
waking up my brother, my roommate. Grandpa scolded Petrak and “his hare-
brained moon”, mom washed my face with ice water, and when that didn't help,
she smacked two or three times on the cheeks, so I calmed down and slept like a
log.
The next day, in the blue, sunny morning, everything was already behind me
like a dream, just a dream. I wanted neither to talk nor ask about it. It seems
Grandfather and Petrak felt the same way. They were sitting by the cauldron, and
when I appeared, they didn’t mention last night's event. It was as if they
embarrassed to be reminded of something far from light, day and sanity, where one
shouldn’t find themselves either as an accomplice or as a witness.
Only uncle Nidžo, who neither saw nor heard anything, stepped, hungover
as he was, on the sinful conquering rake, then continued rambling on, unable to
leave it alone: “who leaves a rake where it doesn't belong, and how is a rake
needed to make brandy, and then do “those squanderers” (who are those?) know
how difficult it is to find a good rake, this house is falling apart, and on and on...
Finally, he got so annoying with his rambling that Petrak simply had enough, and
he, as a guest and an older man, felt inclined to reproach him:
“Calm down already, you horse fly! What were we doing? Collecting
moonlight and dividing it into stacks, that's what we were doing. You could have
been with us if you hadn't gotten liquored up.”
 Uncle grumbled under his breath that "sleepwalkers" aren’t God knows how
much smarter than drunkards, and quickly disappeared. (“He’s off to sleep,”
observed Petrak.) I remained, somehow as an equal and third party to the
conspirators who knew about last night's experience with the moon.
And still to this day, just like back then: I stand torn between Grandfather’s
calm fire, which burns steadily in the dark valley, and the terrible, flashing fire of
the moon, cold and unfaithful, which grows expands across the horizon and pulls
violently into the unknown.
But then, every so often, I dolefully ask myself, as if I had stepped on
Uncle's rake from childhood:
“Is it smarter to be a sleepwalker or to sit peacefully at home, and when
things get tough, comfort yourself with brandy like my Uncle?”

samardžija – zanatlija koji pravi i prodaje samare, drvene naprave slične sedlu koje se
stavljaju na leđa konju, mazgi ili magarcu
parip – konj;
podrugljivo: zdrav, snažan a tvrdoglav čovek
čeljade – čovek, osoba uopšte (muška, ženska, odrasla ili dete)
gaj – šumarak
ljeskar – leskova šuma;
leska – stablo lešnika
našušuriti – učiniti da se nešto raširi, izboči; natrpa naborima, ukrasima
ledina – zapuštena, neobrađena zemlja (obično obrasla travom); dugo neorana zemlja
kolnica (kolarnica) – pokriveno sklonište za kola
grablje – alatka koja služi za skupljanje sena, lišća i slične poljske poslove
pobratim – čovek koga prijatelj bira za brata
mašice – duga, metalna štipaljka za hvatanje i razgrtanje žara
kamdžija – bič
kljuse – slab i mršav konj; konj niskog rasta
kenjac – magarac
durašno – istrajno, izdržljivo
delija – zdrav, snažan i lep čovek; junak
prijegor (pregor) – odricanje od ličnih interesa u korist drugoga, požrtvovanost
potukač – lutalica, skitnica
rakoliti se – praviti se važan, šepuriti se, hvalisati se
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