For this week’s Translation Tuesday, we bring you a timely tale of intrigue, political paranoia, and mortality from Montenegrin writer Dragana Kršenković Brković, deftly translated by Andrew Hodges and Paula Gordon. In the hills just outside Titograd (now Podgorica), a doctor, Dušan, is held captive by three members of Yugoslavia’s secret police—three men who refuse to believe his relationship with a Czechoslovakian woman, Janika, is merely an innocent love affair. What follows is a story by turns fantastically surreal and punishingly spare; relief may await Dušan in his dreams, but in the real world the mindless, brittle cruelty of the state returns his every truth with a blow. Writes Andrew Hodges, “Brković’s style is literary and fantastical, mixing surreal scenes full of abstract, dreamlike imagery with everyday encounters. This imagery, which here draws on contrasts between peaceful forest scenes and a violent human (political) encounter, is woven in alongside reflections and emotions that point to the futility and alienating power of politics. “The Mountain Hut” blends dreamlike imagery with Slavic mythological themes and enduring cultural motifs, all viewed through the prism of a specific political moment—the fallout from socialist Yugoslavia’s split with the Stalinist block.” Read on!
Forest on a mountain outside of Titograd. October 1948: Three months after the Tito-Stalin Split.
The weak light of the battery lamp moved through the dark, in sync with the short man’s heavy, uneven strides. Occasionally the light reflected off the glassy surface of the October snowdrifts, which had arrived earlier than usual, and sometimes it penetrated the thick needles of pine and fir, their snow-covered crowns drooping. The feeble beam sank into the depths of the wood, creating a trembling play of slender, spindly, dark blue-black shadows.
The frost tightened its grip.
Dušan fell into snow up to his knees, the three silent men surrounding him. The men he knew were behind Janika’s disappearance the week before.
Oh, Janika. A tear streamed down his cheek. Heavy breathing and the crunch of their footsteps were all he could hear, all he could process.
The night had a deep, murky darkness to it that seeped out of the sky’s suffocating black expanse. Another night of somber, scattered clouds covering the pale moon and the numerous twinkling stars. An ominous gloom fell on the steep mountain passes, the silent woods, and Dušan felt a distant, indistinct emptiness as one of the men pulled him up. Restlessness and anxiety shot through him, the emptiness awakening a dampened discomfort. Dušan’s attention was strained, focused on the three men’s fierce gaze.
The mountain hut, which villagers used as a refuge from the summer rain, emerged out of the darkness on the steep slope. The battery lamp lit up dark planks of wood, a broken window, and crooked eaves on the front left-hand side. Without speaking, Dušan approached the weary hut and stopped a few paces from the entrance.
A burly silhouette separated off from the head of the column and stalked toward the hut. This tall figure tore open the door and stepped into the room. Pitch black. From the entrance, Dušan saw nothing for a little while, and then the glare of a battery lamp changed everything. The interior’s indistinct shapes came into focus.
Dušan, wrapped up in a coat with no jumper or scarf, tripped over the doorstep and almost fell into the middle of the small room. The tall man looked down at him, while one accomplice, a short, thin man in his forties with rosy cheeks and a thick mustache full of tiny water droplets, retreated into the gloom of the hut’s far corner. The man stood blank faced and leaned against the wall, made of old planks of wood. Dušan stood up. He squinted, confused, and tried as hard as he could to see what was happening around him. The thick rope tied firmly around his hands was becoming more and more painful.
The silence endured.
Then the third man appeared, walking slow circles around Dušan. He’d been hanging around the hospital Dušan worked at, popping in and out for a few weeks now. This man had knocked on his door a week ago; he’d been so polite and well spoken. He was around thirty years old and clean shaven, with a flat nose, vicious eyes, and a vertical wrinkle cut deeply across the middle of his forehead below his graying hair. He stared at the floor as he walked. His heavy footsteps mingled with the shrill creak of rotten floorboards. He paused every now and again. Then, with the tip of his knee-high polished boots, he kicked a frozen piece of manure covered in hay to one side. Clear proof villagers frequented this hut in the summer months with their flocks of sheep. But not at this time of year.
“How long has this been going on?” said the tall man with one lighter eyebrow, his cold voice ominous and threatening.
“What? Going on, what?” Dušan stammered in confusion.
The man repeated the question. He stood behind the lamp, and only then could Dušan see his features clearly. The lamp’s intense light now burned his eyes. Dušan blinked, then averted his gaze, trying to escape the brightness. What did they expect him to say? They had forced him out of bed and dragged him here over the nearby slopes in the dead of night. They tied his arms so hard they were on the verge of bleeding. Dušan’s confusion turned to anger and spilled out of him. “Fuck you,” he shouted, charging and straining against the ropes binding him.
A sharp hit to the back of his head interrupted him. He fell to his knees.
Fresh kicks and punches rained down on him. Dušan spat blood out of his mouth, then retreated into a corner, into the gloom, trying to stop his sobbing and violent shaking. His pride made him cover his injuries, his pain, and so the three men kept hitting him.
The interrogation continued.
“Who contacted you first?” said the persistent stranger, his light and dark eyebrows dancing above the lamp.
Dušan ground his teeth and spat out some blood.
“I want to know who contacted you first? Tell me,” the stranger continued, beckoning the other two men to come closer.
“Maybe you don’t understand what I’m saying. Who approached you in Paris?” he asked again, his tone flat, not giving anything away. “You met up with someone. Who?”
Smack.
“When?”
Smack.
“Where?”
A harmony between his voice and his punches emerged, a rhythm that shot up to a crescendo, becoming more intense with each passing second. It had an unusual melody.
“Was that her? Your supposed wife?”
Thump.
“Were you assigned to her? Did you report to her?”
Thump.
“What were your tasks?”
Thump.
“I want you to tell me.”
Thump.
“Do you get what I’m asking?”
Thump.
“What did you tell them?”
Thump again.
“Tell us.”
Thump.
“It’s for your own good.”
Thump.
“You’re wasting our time.”
Thump.
“We hate that . . .”
Thump.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Thump.
“Can your—”
Thump.
“Thick skull—”
Thump.
“Grasp what we’re saying?”
Thump.
Dušan drifted to the edge of consciousness.
“Let’s go back to the start. Step by step. They approached you. They requested you work for them. As a cover, you married Janika? And? What have you been reporting to them? What did they want to know? Hah, did you think we’d never suspect anything? That we wouldn’t grasp what you were doing under our noses? So I’ll ask you nicely, Doctor Bukumirović: Who was the man who contacted you three weeks ago at ten in the evening? Please don’t say it was Janika’s brother. And what does that story about her father’s death mean? Is it a code? If so, what’s the key? Doctor Dušan, don’t act naive. Or stupid. You can see these men of mine have no mercy. We can throw you in the ground. Mix you up with this manure until your body is a painful, bloody heap. So go on, talk! We know you’re protecting someone. If not her, then who? Who are you sending messages to? When do you contact them? Who do you work for? You’re a smart guy. You know you have to tell us. Why waste our time? I’m losing my patience.”
The large man threw snow on Dušan’s face, and the icy sensation quickly brought his aching body back to life.
Dušan coughed.
“Come on! Just say something.”
Dušan could feel his eyelids swelling up; he tried to focus on the silent man in the corner, the short man, who walked to the window, lowered a copper pail beside a three-legged stool, then moved back to the wall and waited for further orders with his arms crossed.
The roughly cut stool, carelessly dropped beneath the window, reminded Dušan of a stool in the house he grew up in. That stool stood by the hearth. It let the fire warm him as he ate breakfast there and wiped the sleep from his eyes. During the quiet, long winter evenings, while wolves howled outside and the snow whipped up into flurries, Dušan would listen, spellbound, to his mother’s wonderful stories, full of all kinds of fantastic creatures and worlds. Those were the days! Christmas morning in midwinter. A room full of reflected sunlight, so bright after a week of heavy snowstorms that left the house dark, so much that his eyes struggled to adapt to the brightness. That morning, he sat on the three-legged stool by the hearth, placed chestnuts on the fire, and waited for them to crackle as their skin burst—the sign they were ready to eat. And his mother’s smiling, gentle face as she handed him warm, fresh cornbread. A delightful, intoxicating aroma that filled his nostrils, eliciting a smile.
That same smile made him think of Žirinska Gora, a long-forgotten memory of a steep mountain cut through by a valley with streams and riverbeds extending as far as the eye could see. As a child, he loved to sneak away and climb to the top. He would sit there, delighted and enraptured in the long grass, absorbing in silence the breadth of the enormous space before him. The beauty and harmony of this clear blue expanse lured him to a faraway place in his thoughts, to places he had never been. The peace and harmony of a warm mist invigorated him, a mist that gently descended from the sky to the meadow and gently coated the green land and mountain ranges. That divine feeling, up on that hill. The sun warming him, the sky enveloping him, immersing him in her vast expanse. Yet a sense of disquiet ate away at him, even back then. The feeling he had grown up already . . .
Now, all at once, Dušan was lying on that hill. Gentle, soft grass took the edge off the hard earth beneath his spine. Fragile wildflowers hovered over him in the long grass, brushing against him. The sky shone high above him with an intense blue glow. Dušan took a deep breath, and to his surprise, he realized that breathing was no longer painful. A gust of wind blew across his face. It made the petals sway, brushed his forehead, and scurried lightly away toward the scattered mountain peaks.
Something made Dušan sit up on his elbows.
In the distance, Janika was collecting flowers. Joy washed over him. She was here, beside him! Carefree and content. Dressed in the red skirt he knew so well. A soft smile played over her lips. Then she stood up and took a deep breath of the pure mountain air. How beautiful she was, standing there bathed in sunshine!
He wanted to call out to her. He had so much to say to her. He was so glad to see her. He wanted to tell her he missed her. He missed her presence in their living room, chatting quietly over a warm coffee or a glass of wine. He missed her at work, in their shared office. He missed her on walks in the thick woods. And in that moment, most of all, he wanted to tell her just how sorry he was about everything that had happened to them. Everything could have been so different, he thought. Everything had to be done differently. Where have the two of us ended up?
But Dušan didn’t call out to her; he simply lay on the grass, observing the small, loose clouds floating lazily across the sky. His mind jumped between a thousand different questions. Was this the moment when he could tell her he could still feel the scent of her hair on his pillow, the scent of her skin as she brushed past him, her breath on his neck? He started to say her name, but then a weight, heavy as a stone, pressed down on his chest.
The battery lamp’s bright light burned Dušan’s fresh wounds, producing a new, intense pain. The man with the one lighter eyebrow pulled him back to the wooden pillar in the middle of the mountain hut. He tried to lean Dušan against it, but Dušan’s battered body would not obey. Dušan bled. He sweated. He vomited, his frail body convulsing as he fell back down onto the sodden floor.
Through half-closed, swollen eyelids, he tried to focus on the stranger towering over him. Dušan flinched as the man dipped a finger into his dripping wounds, the blood clotting on his scalp.
“Is this worth it?” the stranger said quietly, his tone warm, almost friendly.
The man’s eyes passed over his battered face; was that a flicker of pity?
“All this suffering. Why? For whom? Would it not be better,” the man continued in the same monotone voice, “if you just owned up to everything?”
Dušan spat out blood and gazed upward.
The man continued. “You could sign a statement explaining in detail the role that Jana Kutnová from České Budějovice played in organizing a network of foreign secret agents in the country. Then we could show some understanding. After all, mistakes are so easily made.”
They’re saying: give in, Dušan thought. We all know what human nature is like. Weakness is humanity’s strongest characteristic. If I lied and said I did it, what then? I’d help these people catch whoever they are after. Help them deliver a final blow to their enemy behind the Iron Curtain and cut off the information leak. Surely I’d be forgiven. Okay, so I might get a year or two in prison; they’d need to show my re-education had been successful. And they’re even saying it would be a fair offer. How would that be fair? If I did that, I’d betray myself, my dear Jana—all the wonder and beauty in our life!
“Listen to me,” the tall man whispered. “You’d be better off admitting to it. Then we can all go our separate ways. To our beds with warm duvets and blankets. Wouldn’t you like to lie down? Of course you would. Stretch out, get comfy. Out here, the frost is thickening, the wind is blowing up a gale. At home, you’d warm up in no time. You’d be purring in your warm bed like a happy cat.”
This gentle monologue gave Dušan some time to pull himself together.
“Right. We’re going outside for a cigarette. When we return, make sure you’ve signed the papers. Do we have a deal?” The gentle voice stopped and the man handed Dušan a folded piece of typed paper and a pen. Dušan’s finger twitched; he couldn’t move. And so the man softly put the paper and pen down by his legs.
The three men left the hut in silence. Dušan saw the first light of morning and the cool mountain air embrace their hot, sweaty bodies. They stopped a few steps from the threshold, eagerly inhaling the fresh air, then reached for their cigarettes.
Dušan watched as they fervently sucked in the smoke of their cigarettes in pious silence as the darkness lifted and gave way to day. Their dense, dull shadows transformed into gray outlines, their strength restored.
Peace reigned over the steep slope lined with lavish, snow-covered conifers. During this icy morning ritual, not even the birds tweeted. The slopes lay quiet, waiting for the moment when they could throw off the threatening winter’s white blanket.
The hut was peaceful too.
Dušan sat, leaning against a round pillar full of knots and cracks. He stared at the narrow slits between the rotten planks that made up the walls of the hut, built many decades ago. The pale, scattered first light of day seeped through the gaps. Narrow milky stripes softened the threatening darkness still present in the hut.
Yes, everything in this shabby mountain hut was peaceful. A few flakes of snow slipped in through the narrow slits in the roof and landed on Dušan’s unmoving body. The thin streams of soft white snowflakes disrupted the small space’s muted, dark shadows.
Dušan thought about how he had denied all the terrible accusations these people had thrown at him, but what good did that do? They hadn’t listened when he tried to convince them they’d made a mistake, when he’d tried to make them realize their story didn’t make sense, was a fabrication. He observed the snowflakes fluttering from the roof to the floor like feathers, and he felt neither the cold nor pain. Just the sadness of Janika not being here.
Then, gradually, he swore he could make out Janika’s face in the distance. Her features emerged from the depths of the horizon, from the narrow lines barely separating the clear sky from the sharp contours of the mountainside. It penetrated the ruby-gold layers of the nebulous vapors that mingled with the dawn light, and it floated over the whole region.
Breathless, Dušan observed her figure surrounded by a veil of light, a special, near-transparent aura. Then Janika raised her head and stared at him, her gaze long and piercing. He trembled.
“I miss you so much.”
That was Janika’s voice. Muffled, yet clear.
“Our walks, our conversations, our laughter . . . our work together. Even your gemstone collection.”
Dušan froze, completely taken aback. This really was Janika! How was that possible? Visions that speak in the sky? No, it can’t be. It must have been something else.
A moment later he heard her voice again. He stood up, there in the middle of the hut.
“Is there any hope left for us, Dušan? Even if I’m here and you’re there . . . Can you hear me? Dušan!”
Her voice became a whisper before disappearing completely.
As a fresh silence enveloped him, Dušan became convinced something terrible had happened to him. That he’d crossed the thin line between the exterior world—the world of clear forms—and another world, one of blurred outlines and ideas.
He clenched his fist until it hurt and, with his final ounce of strength, said: “This is what I’m losing.”
Then he collapsed onto the floor. All he felt was the fall, plummeting into darkness with nothing beneath him. After a little while, the sensation of falling vanished too.
Dušan could see his body lying, unmoving, on the floor of the hut. The three angry men had thrown away their cigarette butts and returned. Now they stood over Dušan Bukumirović’s heavy, relaxed body, which was lying in a pool of melted snow, blood, and manure.
For some reason, the man with the lighter eyebrow entered last of all. As he moved toward the window, Dušan noticed he had a limp, and then the man’s history flashed through his mind—the limp was a war injury, a consequence of a challenging battle. And since the war, the man had barely been able to stand on it when tired. He tucked his head into his shoulders and stood, lost in thought, staring out the window at the forest spread out peacefully before him, at the tranquil silhouette of the proud Blažuj mountain, its peak a carpet of white on the horizon. Dušan gazed down at the man, then listened to the whooshing of the wind through the treetops. The man leaned against the wall and paused briefly, acting like someone who did not want to belong to this place or to the scene that was currently unfolding.
The man finally spoke, and when he did so, Dušan heard the voice he’d got to know so well that night.
The man made a series of horrible suggestions. That Dušan had to sign the paper they had prepared for him. This signature would mean that he had renounced the enemy, that he was no longer a traitor. This Janika, his so-called wife, had obviously infiltrated Yugoslavia with malign intentions, and she would get what was coming to her. And Dušan would be given the chance to return to his people, to those who had placed so much faith in him.
“Yes, that’s how it is,” the man continued quietly, impassive and cold, his voice devoid of empathy or pity. The man stared at the landscape with his back to Dušan. “This is your only option. If you don’t accept . . . then we have no choice but to . . .”
Dušan saw the man’s two accomplices lift up his heavy body and carry it out of the hut. The biting cold would feel good to their overheated bodies. The men would walk down a path of hard, frozen earth. Dušan was sure they would give the snow-covered surfaces a wide berth. No need to leave a trail of blood. The paths were empty at that hour, the stillness protecting them. They could move without fear of being observed.
They seemed to know where they were going. They were walking toward a meadow with a deep limestone pit in its belly. Only evil snakes and—according to the locals—evil demons inhabited this vast recess.
Dušan saw them tossing his body into the dark abyss. He imagined the drop down. Long. Fast. Steep. All the blows the sharp edges would give him as he fell onto a soft base most likely covered in moss. There was his body, at the bottom. All battered and bloody as he lay motionless with snowflakes falling on him.
Dušan opened his eyes to find himself back in the hut. Silence reigned, everyone was still.
Finally, the man with the one lighter eyebrow turned round and stared into Dušan’s feverish eyes. Dušan wheezed and took a deep breath, but he didn’t move. He didn’t even react when he saw the raised pen and paper in his interrogator’s hands.
This was the final straw.
The two strong men dropped their mask of disinterest and swooped like feral dogs toward the pillar in the middle of the room. The rotten floorboards shook, and the pounding of their footsteps merged with the angry, mindless shouting that rose high, up into the gloom of the tall, sloping roof, before expanding outwards and disturbing the peace and quiet of the forest slope and the cold, limitless sky.
They’d reached the point of no return.
Dušan saw the solid outlines of the objects around him dissolving. A bright and blinding light infused the horizon. While he blinked and inhaled deeply, a powerful force raised him up high. With a newfound ease and power, he strode along the shining silver path, rushing to meet the wondrous essence at the center of his vision.
This core, this essence, grew and expanded, then it suddenly contracted and shrank before instantly swelling and puffing up again, continually pulsing with the same rhythm. Joy overwhelmed Dušan’s beating heart. This is what happiness looks like, he thought and then, without any fear or resistance within him, he surrendered himself to the light.
As he got used to the flashes and brightness, Dušan noticed the landscape coalesce around him. A wooden house with a high, sloping roof and small windows lay on a rocky plateau that sat, like a flat plate, by a steep mountain slope. The sound of rushing water reached him from somewhere close by, and he knew there was a stream somewhere here, hidden from view. Blue sky sprawled above the stone plateau.
A small, thin woman with a wrinkled face and a gentle smile came out of the house. She lifted up a copper pail from the ground and paused, with her right hand shading her eyes, staring into the distance. It was his mother who was eagerly expecting him, as he well knew. Then his father also appeared in the doorway. He came outside and walked to her, placed his hand on his wife’s shoulder, and stared at the empty horizon before them.
Overwhelmed with tenderness, Dušan took a step forward, just one. He wanted to approach them, but then his parents looked at each other. They smiled and then entered the house silently, not even noticing him.
Dušan paused. Let them live their life, he thought. There will be time to visit them later on.
He turned around and eagerly resumed his way along the silver path.
To his right was a glade with a grove and supple young aspen, elm, and maple trees. Beneath the tall treetops, concealed up to the waist in the bushes and grass, stood a dark-skinned man in his late forties. He had short hair, was clean shaven, and wore a fur hat and a wide belt.
This man held a gun in his hands and was focused on the trigger. Then he took a bullet out of his pocket, loaded the gun, gently stroked the grip, and pointed it into the wood. He paused once more and, eyes closed, inhaled deeply, smelling the trail of something known only to him. Only then did he decide where to go next and set forth. He quickly disappeared into the brush.
An undefinable feeling tore Dušan apart. Indecisive and confused, Dušan shivered. He continued walking, allowing the resurrected image to fall into oblivion, once and for all.
When a line of enormous, perhaps ancient trees appeared along either side of the path, Dušan knew he was getting close to his destination. He strode even faster, straining to see what was at the end of the path. The avenue was long and the treetops, all entwined above him, offered pleasant shade, but Dušan could not enjoy it. He was far too impatient.
Finally, the end was in sight. The parallel rows of tall trees with their lush crowns and extravagant tangle of branches thinned out, and Dušan saw a flat open area with a small house, lilac bushes, a small pond, and grapevines planted in neat rows. Janika was standing there, expecting him.
“Welcome home,” she said, reaching out both arms to greet him, before leading him into the house.
The interior was inconceivably cozy. A fire roared in the fireplace, pictures hung on the walls, books lay on the shelves, and soft blankets and throws adorned the sofa and the bed in the corner. The floor was so clean it shone, while silverware and crystal glasses gleamed on the table. A bottle filled with red wine stood by the glasses. And the fruit bowl was full of pomegranates, grapes, mandarins, and various other fruits. Janika handed him his box of gemstones and rocks, and in that moment, Dušan felt a sense of eternal happiness.
“I have a new gemstone,” he said, inviting Janika to take a seat at the table. “Look how beautiful it is!”
Putting the gemstone into her hands, Dušan asked himself whether everything that was happening was real or just a dream. He pinched himself, just to check, and was overwhelmingly happy to feel pain. This was real. Just as everything that surrounded him was clearly defined and tangible. This small, quiet house, the grass he’d trampled on, the soothing quiet, and the scents that reached him from all directions. The intoxicating scent of lilac filled the air with disquiet and a sense of foreboding. The fresh scent of water was refreshing, the scent of wine from the open bottle alluring. The scent of Janika’s hair, so familiar and enticing, was like his most fervent prayers, his most daring wishes.
He paused.
If this was his reality, what was everything that had happened before? All these images that haunted him and filled him with a sense of heaviness and unease. What was a dream, and what was real? He gazed up, away from the gemstone in Janika’s palm, and gazed at Janika. Bright dots gleamed and sparkled around her pupils, giving her entire face an unusual glow.
This is my reality. He cut through his doubt and immediately felt an enormous sense of relief. And . . . this is my life. How nice it is to know that we have all the time in the world in front of us.
And as he made that final decision, all his memories from before sank into a mist of no return, dragging the burdensome bundle of discomfort, apprehension, and fear away with them. Peace washed over Dušan.
He returned the gemstone to its box, exhaled gently, and looked at Janika with conviction. Now he knew. Contentment was such a fine and gentle feeling.
Translated from the Montenegrin by Andrew Hodges
Dragana Kršenković Brković is a novelist and essayist. In her fiction, she plays with the conventions of narrative, time, space, and traditional art forms. Her work engages with questions of memory, gender, and identity within the context of patriarchal history and the power of culture. She is also interested in exploring the role of ancient heritage in the alienation of modern individuals. She is the author of three novels, two story collections, nonfiction, and fairy tales. Her fiction has appeared in October Hill Magazine, Articoli Liberi, The Bosphorus Review of Books, The Hooghly Review, TEMA, Buchkultur, Sarajevo Notebooks, Blesok, ARS, among others. She has been awarded fellowships by various cultural institutions, including Apexart (NYC), Art OMI: Writers (NY), UNESCO (Rhodes), Goethe-Institute (Leipzig), HHH (California & Washington, D.C.), KulturKontakt Austria (Vienna), and OeAD (Graz). She is a member of the Montenegrin PEN Center and the Montenegrin Association of Independent Writers.
Andrew Hodges is a cultural anthropologist turned fiction editor, translator, and writer. Their work explores ecological themes and the poetics and politics of myths and mythmaking, queer experience, violence, and masculinities. They earned a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Manchester in 2013 and lived in Croatia from 2008–2018. Andrew published an ethnography of queer/left-wing ultras in Croatia (Routledge, 2018) and coauthored a shipyard ethnography (University of Toronto Press, 2024). Andrew’s translation of Kristina Gavran’s novel Izmedju was published in Relations and longlisted for the John Dryden Translation Competition. Andrew edits bestselling commercial and literary fiction titles for various US and UK publishers and translates literary fiction and ethnographies from the former Yugoslav region. They live in a village outside Edinburgh, where they enjoy trail running and mushroom foraging.