Famous Loves
KING STEFAN OF DEČANI AND QUEEN THEODORA
Like a Knife into Milk
Into that whirlpool, she pulled everything of hers. In that whirlpool, she drowned her love, her patience, her suffering, all her modesty. Dušan was the one who came out. Her younger son. The storm of her soul. All her hidden anger in him. Pure defiance and enormous strength. Not to be ashamed of people and not to fear God. Not to take after his father. To conquer the whole world and to spread it before his feet. He was such when she gave birth to him. Made him. Mighty. Against the world and against Stefan – fearing of God, abandoned, eternally sad and always deceived, lost for everyone in this world, her husband. Now she could again try to love him. In his quiet and resolute way. Beautifully, easily and somehow by the way
By: Milena Z. Bogavac
 This thing with you, Theodora, could have only been happiness itself. Pure happiness. The gift of God is the meaning of your name, everything with you could have been a gift, from the almighty God. However... Not he. He, Stefan, could not see happiness.
The saddest one of all, the owner of all miseries, the king of the sorrowful, unwilling, unloved, Stefan, could not see that. His eyes, dark, deep, always saw the darkness in everything. His eyes, Theodora, were an abyss. A chasm. The dark. And you, tame, always alone, just slipped down… There. Where nothing is ever intimate… Where nothing warm, simple from God, gifted as pure love, ever collapsed, ever. Nothing ever simple. Forgive, Theodora!
”Who knew not how to be a slave, shall never know how to be King.” With that sentence, his father saw him off, for the first time. He does not remember his mother. ”Kings do not need mothers. They need fathers even less. One who has not chopped off the head of his father, or at least the crown from his head – can never know how to become King.” Then follows laughter.
With such laughter, his father, Stefan Uroš the Second Milutin, answered the question: who is my mother?
”No one, my son. Kings do not need mothers.”
”Who has given me birth, gentle and honorable one?”
”My sins. Towards my neighbors, before the Almighty. I have given you birth. So that you would cost me my life, son. So that you would buy out my death with your deadly sin.”
Too much. Do not think! Refuse! Move away! May that thought never land, never for your enormous eyes, never into your black, no! ... Chase it away like a bird. An owl. The one that does not sleep. The one that hunts by night and foresees, hoots, announces near death by day.
He wishes he could.
He wishes he could have had more time with his father. He wishes they could have spoken about it a few more times, alone. He wishes that his, a little of a father, more a king, had not sent him away that day. Far away. From everything close. From himself, actually. Only from himself. King Stefan Uroš the Second Milutin drove his eldest son away from himself. Everything else, everyone else was insignificant. The boy, Stefan Uroš the Third, shaggy, dingy, dark, with eyes like coal – black coal as the one the Saxon miners take out from the bottom of the earth’s gorge, from the fire of hell; with dark eyes; like the wing of the raven, the night – he was the only person that boy had. Only him, his father, did he love in the presence of only one witness.
”Lord, God?!...”
That is how he left. With this question. Little, brave Stefan. To a country foreign and strange. With suspicious customs, changing borders, even more suspicious faith. Yes. That is where he was. Exiled, condemned, far from everything familiar, dear, close. Close to unusual people. In a court ruled by cruel Nogai, the shaved, sharp, terrifying as a razor, smooth, slimy, horrible and funny Tatar khan.
MEMORIES OF THE UNKNOWN  Years have passed. If he had had a mother, he would have forgotten his mother’s tongue. If he had had a father, he would have forgotten his words. If he had had a home, he would ride towards it as fast as lightning. However, Stefan remembers everything. And spares his black, small, but strong horse. He is not hurrying anywhere.
Nobody is inviting him anywhere. He is his own guest, no one else is waiting for him there. Prince Stefan and his suite ride slowly towards the West. The Sun is setting. Down, somewhere deep, one can hear the river murmuring. A small one. A stream. A small stream. Fast and arrogant, clear. Resolute in its echoing murmur, like a memory. Of the people, land, language and mother’s love, which he has never known. Where does the memory of everything you do not know spring from?
Such a small river, he thinks, and so boldly fast and clear. Bistrica (diminutive of ”clear”), he gives it a name. Bistra (clear) – bistrija (clearer) – mnogobistra (very clear) – Bistrica. He plays with words, Serbian words, murmuring clearly in his throat. He feels a torrent. The ice under his chin melts, spring, words will start flowing. The words in the mother tongue of Stefan Uroš the Third motherless, will take away everything. They will overflow and wash away the years of slavery in the Tatar court, they will cover the distance and join, as the river connects its spring and confluence. A beautiful view from here…
This is a good spot, thinks Stefan. Ascended, flat and grassy. It lies highest, made of various trees, very branchy and very fertile, and from everywhere the sweetest waters flow and great wells spring. Divinely beautiful, very strange. He will spend the night here. And there, in that spot, eyes wide open, Stefan listens to the murmur of Bistrica in his throat. Stefan lays, watches into the dark and the starry.
He is not sleeping. To his eyes, black and shiny, as the spring sky over his head – on which only a little, just, just a little, like grass under snow, just that little hair grows – to his eyes, black and shiny, as the spring sky, a dream has landed. He was not sleeping. He was dreaming. Awake. Of the Holy One.
They say dreams are a deception. They say: God is the only truth.
Stefan dreamt of the Holy One awake.
He hasn’t been dreaming.
Morning. Like a knife into milk. A flash. The Prince is still not sleeping. The first fiery ray of Sun stabs his pupil. It hurts!
– Prince, are you still awake?
– What is this place? he asks.
– This place is called Dečane. The Hvostan area... Can you hear it? The blackbird is singing. We are home. Almost at home. We will already be in Nerodimlje until the Sun comes up. When the shadows disappear from the road, we will arrive to your father’s court.
EYES FOR THE OTHER WORLD  Morning. Like a knife into milk. It just hurts. Forgive, Theodora!
This thing with you, Theodora, could have been joy itself. Pure joy. And still, you are the only one left alone. Not he. He, Stefan, could not see you. His eyes, dark, deep, have always looked at some other world. His eyes, Theodora, were a hole in the sky. A shine. A glimpse. Like when the first ray of Sun reflects in silver. Cross. And you, gentle, always good, just disappeared, up… There. Where nothing is ever clear. Where never anything sweet, dear to a man, such as a woman – such as, just, just as much as a woman, had wandered, ever. Never anything funny. Smile, Theodora!
And she smiled. She always smiled. Whenever she, only if just for a moment, crossed her eyes with the eyes of her husband. She tried.
She was passionate, then cold. Close, then distant. Brave, then completely afraid. Faithful to him, faithful only to God. She tried everything. Lord, God! … And then, finally, she receded. When Dušic, their elder son, still a boy, parted with his soul, she was left without hers. When his heart stopped, hers broke. It did beat faster and deeper than before, but it was cracked. Through those cracks, all the love for her husband flowed out. For Stefan Uroš the Third the Distant. Stefan the Third the Wretched. Stefan the Third the Exiled. Blind. Dingy. Weak. She did not love him anymore. He, their son, her body, death, slaveries and luxury, crying, laughter, everything became the same. It all melted into the same. Into darkness.
She only seemed tame. She only seemed dear. She smiled, hiding rage behind her smile. Enormous. Sharp. Loud. Omni-penetrating, omni-devouring. Like when you bite your lip with your teeth, feel the taste of your own blood, like when you try to hit something in your dream, hit, and your hands are powerless, like when the earth is shaking, when rain pours, when you cry aloud, when your body is tearing apart and when, instead of words, screams burst out of your mouth. Like terrible nocturnal birds. Like when the calm surface of the river hides a whirlpool somewhere deep inside.
Into that whirlpool Theodora pulled everything of hers. In that whirlpool, she drowned her love, her patience, her suffering, all her modesty. Dušan was the one who came out. Her younger son. The storm of her soul. All her hidden anger in him. Pure defiance and enormous strength. Not to be ashamed of people and not to fear God. Not to take after his father. To conquer the whole world and to spread it before his feet. He was such when she gave birth to him. Made him. Mighty. Against the world and against Stefan – fearing of God, abandoned, eternally sad and always deceived, lost for everyone in this world, her husband. Now she could again try to love him. In his quiet and resolute way. Beautifully, easily and somehow by the way. Between misery and misfortune. Bad and worse. So that her love would be invisible to him.
THE THING LESS CRUEL THAN LOVE  And she smiled. She still smiled while looking at him, hiding her tears, which Stefan, like her smile, the sunshine, the spiteful face of his son, could not see.
Why into the eyes, my dear? Why not lower? Straight into the chest. Straight into the heart. Why into the eyes, Father?
He wished he could. He wished he could ask him that.
He wished he could love him, as he did that day, that distant day, the only day they talked, he and Milutin, like father and son. Stefan Uroš the Second and Third, on the day of his departure, when, instead of a hand, he offered him eternal war. The cruel rules of the game. ”Who has not chopped the head of his father, or at least the crown from his head…” Strange love story… ”So that you would ransom my death with your deadly sin.” He wishes he did not have to. He wishes his lost eyesight would never return. He wishes he did not see… Still, her eyes are bright. The dress she is wearing is blue and somehow Stefan knows it. He wishes he did not. He wishes nobody would know his secret. He wishes nobody would know he knows…
This has nothing to do with you, Theodora. This with you could have been love, but… He could not. He, Stefan, could not love anyone. To love means to kill. To trample. To strangle. To defeat. To exile. To drive away. To chop off. To order. To blind. Straight into the pupil with an iron rod heated in fire… Like a knife into milk. Like when the earth shakes, when rain pours, when you cry aloud, when your body tears apart and when, instead of words, screams burst out of your mouth. Like terrible nocturnal birds. To love means to hunt in the dark and anticipate near death. To remain resolute as the memory of what you do not know. To dream awake. Not to dream. To cover a distance and join.
This is not simple. Forgive, Theodora!
I would give another name to all this with you. Very beautiful. Divine and strange. Good and beautiful. Less cruel. Since everything, Theodora, is less cruel than love.
***
The Power of the Unsaid
King Stefan Uroš the Third Nemanjić (ruled from 1321 to 1331), also known as Stefan of Dečani, is one of the most tragic figures of Serbian history. His father, king Milutin, ordered for him to be blinded, while his son, emperor Dušan the Mighty, condemned him to death by strangling. The historians are uncertain who his mother was. According to one version, he was born in Milutin’s marriage with the Bulgarian princess Ana Terter, and according to another, the daughter of Sevastocrator Jovan Angel gave birth to him. The turbulent love life of Stefan’s father Milutin leaves space for many assumptions, so some sources mention Jelena, a Serbian woman of noble origin, as Stefan’s mother. Stefan of Dečani spent a large part of his life in exile. He grew among the Tatars, as a prisoner in the court of Nogai Khan, and after he returned and started an uprising against his father (1308), he was blinded and sent to Constantinople, to emperor Andronicus, Milutin’s father in law and father of his last wife, queen Simonida.
After his father’s death, Stefan returned to Serbia and enthroned as king, after winning many who sought Milutin’s throne. Shortly before that – it is believed to be a miracle performed by St. Nicholas – his eyesight was returned. Grigori Tsamblak, an educated monk, writer of the Hagiography of Stefan of Dečani, states that this saint and king had presentations of St. Nicholas in all important moments of his earthly life.
Stefan’s endowment, the monastery of Visoki Dečani in Kosovo, is a true master piece of medieval art. The English itinerary writer Evens calls it ”the most noble edifice in the Balkan Peninsula”, and Milan Kašanin ”the crown of our ecclesiastical architecture”. The king got his name after his famous endowment: Stefan of Dečani.
As a young man, Stefan of Dečani was married to a Bulgarian princess Theodora Smilec. Not much is known about this woman, although she was the mother of the first Serbian emperor, Dušan the Mighty. In her marriage with Stefan of Dečani, she also gave birth to a son Dušic, who passed away in Constantinople, during their exile.
After the death of queen Theodora, Stefan of Dečani married Maria Paleologus, daughter of Philip of Taren, cousin of emperor Andronicus.
It is considered that this marriage had a strictly political purpose, therefore interesting is the fact that the younger daughter of Stefan of Dečani and Maria Paleologus was named Theodora.
This was history. Everything else here belongs tof belletristics. |
