The late Đorđe Balašević's wife Olivera has published a book titled Backyard Planet, which takes a look at her childhood. In her guest appearance on Kurir TV's The Heat of the Day, she talked about the book and revealed how she had let Đorđe know that she was writing it.
"I remember each moment. We were exchanging ideas, views, emotions, and passions for 40 years, and that is not an 'I just clicked' sort of thing. If I thought I had an idea, I would tell my children a story from when I was growing up. They would then say, 'It's like watching a movie. Why don't you write it down?' And he would say, 'You need to be very patient. You're impatient, I'll help you, but you need to be patient.' The arms that sheltered me for 40 years, never instilling fear. He always supported me, and the arms are still there. The load that I carry with me, which is here no matter what, ends up being carried by those flying too high. Going down memory lane, at this age, as a mother and a grandmother, I think of my mother, a single mom, and all the hard times that she had been through. I was describing a difficult time that she had faced at one point, an unrequited love. She had just arrived from the war orphans' home in Kovačica and this prejudice succeeded in taking her away from love, which involved him as an only child and her as a blind girl from an orphans' home. As I was writing down a situation that I found myself in, as a mother of two children, I was describing dialling the number hoping that my father would pick up. I sincerely hoped, I hoped that when he saw the picture of a little girl with six medals in the local newspaper Zrenjanin – and that's why I had picked gymnastics, I thought that the name of the athlete would be printed in the newspaper. I thought that, when he saw a picture, the graduation picture, or a picture from Arena or TV Revija, that his heart of stone would soften up a bit. That didn't happen and, as I wrote in that part of the book, I took my courage in both hands and took that step. I called him, introduced myself using my old first name and new last name, explained, wanted to let him know that he had two granddaughters. There was a long pause, and after a while, I could hear his voice through the wire, saying, 'Wrong number.' I went and read all that to Đorđe, to see if the anguish was that deep and if it was clear enough. It isn't easy, Đorđe is a demigod. He used to handle emotions in the most refined of senses, and you had to walk in front of him, tremble before the dragon, read it to him. My nose went red like Rudolph's, and he said, 'I didn't know that, you never told me you had called him.' It's part of life, the anguish. I never told my mother this. It's that yearning of mine, the desire to stack things up like a natural in music. He shed a tear and said, 'I think you're past it.' I'd been lugging that cross more than carrying it, I never let it hold sway. That's for the most part why he respected me," Olivera said.
"This book is a story of victors without a medal award ceremony. There are a great many of them, they handle it stoically, like my mother did, who taught and shaped me," Olivera said, revealing how she had obtained the balance beam on which she practiced gymnastics:
"The situation I was in after the second formal reprimand in the first grade, because of unruly behaviour. I was a hyperactive child. On our way back from the meeting with the homeroom teacher that my mother was invited to in September, when a written reprimand was entered into my school report, she never said a word. Afterwards, she said, in a voice that sounded like it was coming from the netherworld, 'Look, Olja, if you ever pull something like this on me again, you will float down the Begej.' That afternoon, when I returned from school, the balance beam was waiting for me in the backyard. For me that was the greatest playground. 'Mom, mom, we have a balance beam! Where did we get it?' She looked at me standing by the stove: 'Eat up, and then you'll learn how to do a cartwheel on the balance beam.'
" 'You know I work at the pharmacy? Once, all of a sudden, I saw something over the bridge. The Begej was carrying something, and I realized it was a balance beam. Fell off a tugboat perhaps. I looked around, took off my shoes, went into the Begej, let myself downstream, got it, took it out onto the bank, dried off a bit, and there you are – a balance beam. ' I never knew until then that my mother could swim," Olivera said.
Once, Đorđe asked her to dance with him on the stage to the "Northern Waltz".
" 'Come on, you and me, you know the moves.' He got me on a dare. I thought he would forget when the ovations started and there was an audience there. And then this instrumental starts, he comes down, puts out his hand, and there was no turning back. I put out my hand, took a couple of steps, put my hand on his shoulder. He did it well, spun me around, and lowered me towards the seat, so that I could get off the stage. When he turned me around to face the auditorium, I missed a step. It ended like this: 'What does it say on the ticket, do you have any objections?' he asked. 'I'll never tell you again,' I said. It was a moment of becoming aware of the position he was in and of what he was playing and also fighting with. What his talent and capacity was."
She also revealed how Đorđe had given back an apartment that he could have inherited from his father:
"A couple of days ago, a petite lady, about my age, said to me, 'I signed the retirement decision. On the first day of work at the municipality office, Đorđe came in to return the apartment keys.' We lived in Đorđe's father's apartment, which he had got through diplomacy. We moved here, into my grandmother's house, in 1988, and Đorđe said: 'Dad's dead and, you know, I thought that we should return the apartment, the 118 sq. meters one.' I said, 'What else can we do? If you don't return it, I don't ever want to see you again.' And that woman came to me and said, 'We remember that, him returning the keys to the apartment. Our jaws dropped. It was the most beautiful moment in my entire career, " Olivera revealed in The Heat of the Day.
Kurir.rs/S.M.
Bonus video:
