Petrijin Venac -1980- -

It was 1980. Tito’s picture hung in every schoolroom and tavern down in the valley, but up here, on the venac, the only portrait that mattered was the one in Saveta’s mind: the face of her husband, Petar, who had gone to Germany to work on the autobahns in 1968 and had never come back. Not because he died. Because, as his rare postcards said, the asphalt is smoother here .

“What will they put in their film?” Jela asked. Petrijin venac -1980-

But she let them stay. The village had seven souls left: Saveta, two other widows (Jela and Kosana), a deaf shepherd named Mirko, and three children whose mothers had sent them up from the town for the summer, to learn "where food really comes from." The children hated it. They wanted to watch Little League on the new color TV at their grandmother’s apartment. It was 1980