Names That Ripen
In my grandmother’s stone house in the Dalmatian hinterland, a single quince — dunja — sat on top of the wardrobe every fall. We never ate it. It was too hard, too bitter. But over time it softened, and scented the whole room: the linens, the walls, our sleep. I didn’t think much of it until years later, when I remembered the girls I used to walk to school with: two sisters, Višnja and Dunja. Višnja was the oldest, then came Dunja, then me. Each of us two years apart, like the stages of ripening. Their names were fruit, but they were also girls. They walked ahead of me on the dusty path, skirts brushing thistles, their voices rising like bees in the summer heat. I followed, as I was the youngest.
Their names puzzled me. Not saint-names like mine—Ana, like my aunt; Mara, like the Virgin’s sorrow; Iva, like a willow bending in prayer. The sisters were called Višnja and Dunja, and later, in school, I sat next to a cousin named Jagoda. It didn’t make sense. Those names weren't just fruity-sounding — they were fruit. Not just names, but living things that ripened and lingered. Sweet, soft, wild fruit. Not Catholic at all. I assumed—because I had no better explanation—that they were Communist names. Neutral. Unbaptized. Assigned by ideology instead of godparents. But Jagoda went to catechism with us, prayed the rosary in her thin voice, knew the Hail Mary by heart. So maybe my theory was wrong. Or maybe names belong to no side at all, just to the earth, and the people who taste it.
Višnja was the fruit that grew in rocks and survived. Her namesake, the marasca cherry, Prunus cerasus, is native to the Dalmatian coast, dark and tart, used for višnjevača, a maraschino liqueur. A tree that takes root in stone and gives back something sharp and red. I thought of her that way even then: sturdy, bright, and hard to soften. The kind of girl who might someday be bottled, offered, remembered.
Dunja was quieter. A quince, Cydonia oblong, is not meant to be eaten raw. It waits, perfumes, softens in silence. When I looked at her, I saw a girl becoming scent. In the old houses, people placed a single quince on the wardrobe, not to eat, but to change the air. Her presence lingered. She was the kind of girl you didn’t notice until she was gone, and then everything seemed less full.
Jagoda was smallest, the wildest. The real kind of strawberry—Fragaria vesca — not the bloated market kind. Just a fingertip of sweetness hidden in weeds and ditches, shy and low to the ground. We never grew her. We found her, always by surprise.
Years later, in California, a neighbor arrived with a sapling from a marasca cherry tree from his native Zadar, Croatia, wrapped in cloth under his arm. Not fruit, not syrup — but wood. A promise. He planted one near his garage and gave us another. We planted it in our garden, not knowing if it would take. It did.
Maria B. Olujic is an anthropologist and writer who served as Deputy Minister of Science and Technology in wartime Croatia during the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia. Read more.