His home was at the edge of the village, it was not that he did not have one. Yes, he did; it was made of rammed earth, rather crumbled, but to him it was good. For him and for all of his memories, and for all the photographs, blurred by time, of the ones who were born in it, lived in it and left it for a while or for good, there was quite enough room. He had somewhere to lie down, to eat, to look through a small, squinting window, and nod his head to the house saint whose blackened icon hung on the wall, as old as the house itself, never moved from its place. Behind the house there was a garden, conquered by weeds long ago. Cats rambled through it; lizards would, like a lightning, be seen briefly as a flash of green, and neighbours’ hens got lost in there, attracted by mulberries that fell from the tall, stooping and gnarled mulberry tree. There, also, stood what once was a little stable, crumbling and dishevelled with straws sticking out from the earthen walls. He had not gone near it for a long time; the door was barred with a rotting board.

That was no mansion, no estate, but it was more than enough for him. He had never married, had no children, relatives rarely remembered him. As far as he was concerned he missed none of that, and what he had was enough to live through winter. After all he was not used to something bigger, and he did not need it; his world was outside the walls and windows, had no roofs. He only spent winters there, waiting for snows to subside, for mornings with frost icing to recede, and for nights to stop biting with cold. For days on end he would be traipsing around the yard looking for even the smallest sign of a bud on the branches of wild fruit trees that looked more like wickers. And, as soon as he felt it under his fingers, a bud as small as a crumb, he would start to wake up and go to the vineyard, where his true, his only life was.

He was a pudar; his real home was without walls, the sky was its roof, the stars gave off light so he could work at night as well; by his steps he measured the world he guarded. Sometimes it seemed to him that he knew every grapevine and every leaf; he watched its birth, saw it unfolding, turning green; every grape of the future clusters, growing from a thing smaller than the head of a pin to the sweet grape filled up by the Sun. He quarrelled with starlings, and suspiciously looked at all passers-by, checking to see if they would really continue on their way or step into his patch, into the vineyard. He loved rains, especially the summer ones that came after being long awaited. He watched as their drops exploded against the dust, joining and drenching the thirsty soil. There was no one else who could hear the vines drinking, just lapping up the heavenly water.

Workers, field hands, bosses, owners and experts, they all came; they worked, appraised, measured things all around the vineyard, and he never let them out of his sight. He followed them, checking their every step and touch; he picked up from the ground the fallen grapes and leaves, touching the grapevines as if to calm them down and comfort them.

At night he sat on the bench in front of the little shack at one end of the vineyard, leaning against the wall. He would stretch out his legs and look down, beyond them, at the black sea of grapes in front of him, covered by the dark blue velvet of the sky. He listened to every sound: bird cries from the undergrowth, rustle of hedgehog’s steps, wind squeezing between the vine leaves. At times he would readily bet he could hear the stars twinkling.

He guarded all of that until harvest time. And then he helped, although so many people in the vineyard upset him – all the noise and laughter. He deeply inhaled the sweet fragrance of ripe grapes for days on end. And then, although all the grapes had already been taken away, he stayed there among the vines. He toured the vineyard watching the leaves change colours to golden and red, lined with the colour of earth. He could sense the nights breathing cold, that frosts would soon gnaw their teeth, and that icy rains and sticky mud would come. All would turn silent; bare grapevines black against the white snow, the sky cold and gray. The silence would fall upon the earth, deaf and heavy. And even then he would keep on guarding, watching all that he had although he had nothing; all the smells, all the sounds, every inch of soil under the grapevines and every rustle of leaves on them, all the colours of grapes, every breath of the sweet sun in them.

For, he was a pudar, guardian of the vineyard world.

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*Pudar – Serbian (u = oo as in book), a paid employee, most often for a lifetime, guarding the vineyard, very often maintaining it and/or taking care of the work needed to be done.