Katia Grubisic explores the harrowing journey of a woman seeking liberation from herself and others
Volja and the Mountain is a short story by the 2024 Governor General's Literary Award winner
Volja and the Mountain is an original short story by Katia Grubisic. It is part of Mirrors, a special series of new, original writing featuring work by the English-language winners of the 2024 Governor General's Literary Awards, presented in partnership with the Canada Council for the Arts.
"Volja and the Mountain is about a traveller escaping over a mountain. As she climbs, she sheds words and objects until she reaches a cabin where she might be able to reinvent herself. The piece explores themes of exile, departure and identity, and the aesthetic is a kind of brutalist magic realism," Grubisic told CBC Books.
CBC's Radio One will host an episode featuring participants from this original series.
Grubisic won the 2024 Governor General's Literary Award for French-to-English translation for Nights Too Short to Dance, a novel written by Marie-Claire Blais and translated by Grubisic.
You can read more works from the Mirrors series here.
Volja and the Mountain
Imagine leaving.
Imagine the scree grappling down, sharp, sharp, from the darkness of the looming woods. Imagine weaving back and forth, avoiding the road, rushing up to the treeline, lashed at last by the long boughs of dogwood.
Volja leaned hard against the scaly bark of a pine. Her legs were shaking. If she sat down now she might never get up. Her own mother didn't know where she was or if she was alive at all; her father. Maybe they would find out, months later, from a travelling cleric or from a coded message in another language on a postcard of an ancient square in another country, with pigeons platooning over cobbles. Imagine that was all they had, and maybe a photograph, the faded sepia of her national document. The picture was already a few years old; her hair was longer now, and her jaw leaner. The eyes still bright and black.
Rummaging through the pockets of the thin nylon jacket her cellmate had given her, a men's garment three times too big, she found chalky chocolate, a penknife and a pack of cigarettes, crushed but still smokeable. She coughed and spat out on the ground a word hard and round as a pit: voda. She was thirsty. More importantly, water would lead her. Volja scanned the hill for the olive catkins of a willow. The knowledge burst like a bubble, releasing the word, vrba. The forest was all shadows, the trees keeping their counsel. She edged out into the open … There, to the west, through the trunks: the tentative fingers of ferns.
Even low in the Alps, the climb was steep and Volja struggled to find her footing. She hadn't had anything to eat or drink since the night before. Her chest felt tight. Her mouth was clay. Sure enough, tracing the lush foliage up a couple hundred metres, she found the stream.
Imagine the miracle of water in its absence. The brook ran clean, making its own secret way down the mountain, singing its freedom easily.
One of their punishments in the prison had been to fetch water: they had to make their precarious way to the craggy shore, fill heavy rusted buckets and lug them back up to fill leaky barrels. It wasn't as bad as for the men, though: her brother, Volja knew, was made to smash rocks — for nothing, just for the smashing. The uselessness was almost worse than the labour itself. They were like animals tied to a wheel, flogged to go nowhere, round and round in the implacable wind.
Imagine the miracle of water in its absence. The brook ran clean, making its own secret way down the mountain, singing its freedom easily.
Their father had been a mason. Her brother should have come of age working by his side, but he had neither the inclination nor the instinct for stone, so he was sent to school. He learned to read and write — so many words — and met others like him, like them. He learned that some words brought trouble.
Volja stopped to drink. The water was cold and clear but fast, and although she squinted into the flickering surface, she couldn't make out her reflection. She cupped her hands to splash water over her face and throat, and through her fingers, words ran out: vrat, vrata, vatra, vratiti, settling into eddies in the shallow pool before blazing down the mountain, going back to where she never could.
The forest echoed with the unmistakable crack of a footstep. Volja froze. There was a throaty grunt, and from the apse of conifers, a round hulk of brown emerged, a wet snout, the soft tufted ears. Volja dropped another word, vepar, thick with lost magic. The boar stood on the other side of the stream, staring back at her. In the black moons of the gilt's eyes, Volja glimpsed her own, and the scythe of her nose, her mouth. Reflexively, she brought her hands to her face. The animal snuffled and turned to meander back between the trees.
It started to rain. Night fell, and Volja laid some words at the foot of a tree: večer, venuti. She followed the narrow track of trodden soil up and up, slowed to a scuffle, willing herself forward until the next day dawned, damp and grey.
She ate the chocolate. Hours passed, another day and night. This was where other people were from, names written in the dust on the side of the road from nowhere to nowhere.
The ground under her feet suddenly shifted from the dense certainty of the forest trail to the frittering of gravel, jolting her to herself. The scrubby weeds gave way to a road, overgrown but definitely there. She had stumbled onto a switchback — the border couldn't be far, and asylum, and sleep.
A raw wind swept out over the steep hollow of the ravine. Volja shivered. There would be patrols, dogs. She darted back to her trees. The trail widened, and she tripped, scattering words. Softly, they fell from her — voditi, voliti. Harder ones too, vojska, vjera. She climbed to the crest of the hill, past the sign, five hundred metres, two hundred, Achtung, running, running. Not once did she look back.
In the valley, she came to a cabin. Knifed the lock. It was empty and smelled good. It smelled like words she didn't remember.
In the valley, she came to a cabin. Knifed the lock. It was empty and smelled good. It smelled like words she didn't remember. There was a cot, a basin and a mottled mirror above on the wall. She couldn't find matches.
The bed had been made up neatly, with a wool blanket that was threadbare but cornered and tucked with care. It seemed destined for someone else's rest, not hers, Volja thought, and if she laid down now, she might never get up. When she glanced in the mirror there was nothing. In the end, the cigarettes she left behind.
About Katia Grubisic
Katia Grubisic is a writer, editor and translator. She has been a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for translation and the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry. Her collection of poems What if red ran out won the Gerald Lampert Award for best first book.
About the series Mirrors
The English-language books that won the 2024 Governor General's Literary Awards demonstrate how stories help us reflect on our lives, understand ourselves more deeply and see the world in new ways.
CBC Books asked the winners to further explore the power of reflection in original works. The special series, themed around the theme of mirrors, challenges how we see ourselves and our society — unearthing hidden truths, exploring alternative identities and blurring the lines between reality and fantasy.
Volja and the Mountain was Katia Grubisic's contribution to the series.
