If We Exist

5.

I'm my father's brevidijemal. I'm his firstborn son. To be more precise, I'm his only heir. That's what brevidijemal means. Whether it be in Dronesk or in Rujga—essentially everywhere I had been and every person I had met knew the responsibilities of such a position.

I don't like to think of myself as having been a lonely child. Yet, thinking back on my childhood, some of my earliest, fondest, memories were of looking out my bedroom window, at the wilderness of Ljerumlup. If one made a motion picture of those times, I'm afraid it would be hours on end of me playing some make-believe game all by myself.

My parents divorced when I was four years old. My mother remarried shortly after and settled down two blocks from her childhood home in Rujga. I was born with asthma and both my parents decided that the clean air in Dronesk was better for my health. Not that living with my mother had ever been a topic of debate. These things were written in stone. I'm a brevidijemal, but more importantly, I'm Stefan Konstantin's son, and so, custom mandates that I grow up in my ancestral home.

The older I get, the harder it is imagining her ever belonging here, surrounded by evergreens. She always seemed like a city person to me, with her partying and her incurable taste for high heels that were ill-suited for Dronesk's rugged streets. I convinced myself that the reason she never once returned was that she felt homesick. Because that's what she always said on the phone: there's no place like home, but deep down I knew my father would've never allowed it.

There were times when I was younger when she would break down in the middle of our phone call, sobbing how she was a bad mother. She weaved beautiful tales about how when I came to live with her in Rujga, I would get everything I wanted. She never stopped trying, but as I grew older, I came to realise the extent by which my life was governed by structures neither of us could break. In Ljerumlup things were often as they were for no other reason than that's how they had always been.

My aunt and her husband, and their two children, Adriana and Viktor, were our only neighbours. Up until I was eight years old Adriana was my only friend in Ljerumlup—in Elhem, in all of Dronesk. But she's never been just a friend, she's a Konstantin as well. Moreover, she had always been the strictest enforcer of brevidije mal. Being four months older than me, she was the example I was made to follow. Everything she did was constantly praised. Our differences, at that age, were rooted in that she felt nurtured by our parents' approval whereas I felt stifled. I didn't realise how many codes of conduct and century-old customs we had in our little bubble in Ljerumlup until Yuri Karamov held them under a microscope.

The truth was that behind his back I was still calling Karamov a bumpkin, even after that afternoon spent taking pictures in his backyard. I didn't see the harm in my behaviour since deep down I thought I knew Yuri better than my classmates who were perpetuating the use of the nicknames. Yet, I didn't want to seem like I was favouring him over the other Brommian at school (some which I thought deserved the nicknames) so I called all of them bumpkins and dimwits, and whatever else was popular.

In my mind, I thought of Yuri as my friend long before I could admit it out loud. I not only daydreamt about striking up a conversation with him, I went as far as playing out scenarios of us going over to each other's houses. We would play chess and tinker with his analog camera. The days I felt particularly isolated at home, I would envisioned us chasing our bikes downtown to the Center. It might not sound like that big of a deal, but to actively seek a friendship with Karamov, a Brommian, was...strange. I felt ridiculous for even wanting to, but even more so of never having had to make a friend before. I didn't know how to go about it.

It wasn't until the middle of January that the opportunity to shed my pride and to strike up a conversation with Yuri presented itself. But like with most aspects of life, it wasn't an ideal situation.